Kevin Helmer, who I met this past April during a Storychasers “Celebrate Texas Voices” workshop in Lubbock, Texas, tweeted me the following 3 photos tonight of the dust storm today (Monday, October 17, 2011) in Lubbock.

Posted via email from wesley fryer’s posterous

Dust Bowl Nightmare in Lubbock originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 17, 2011.

Allyson McDuffie manages the SketchUp for Education Program at Google, which has taken her to many parts of the globe spreading the SketchUp love to educators and students alike. She has been with Google for 5 years and is a co-organizer of the Geo Teacher Institutes. She graduated from Ohio University with a BFA in Studio Art, and an MFA in Printmaking. Although an Ohio native, she has lived and worked in Boulder, Colorado for the past 19 years. She enjoys making art, hiking in the Rocky Mountains, and raising her 10 year old daughter, Avery, who is destined to save every animal on the planet.

Incredible Google Sketchup videos by Andrew Nathanson who started using Sketchup in middle school

Google Tech Talk by 16 year old Eric Yam in 2009: Designing a Space Settlement

Project Spectrum was created to give people with autism the opportunity to express their creativity and develop a life skill using Google SketchUp 3D modeling software

SketchUp Pro K-12 Statewide Grant
- check your state, you may already have free licensing available
- NZ has a country-wide license for students

Hundreds of Google SketchUp tutorials are all available
- official Google SketchUp Blog

Susan Willard is a Google Engineer who worked on the original Google Sketchup, every time a new version of SketchUp comes out a new person/model is included to give designers a relative sense of scale. She’s the first female to be the default SketchUp model! (Version 8 is out now)

SketchUp is primary a “click and release” program, generally it does NOT require clicks and drags

The push/pull tool is the primary thing SketchUp is known for (40 commands aren’t required to create a simple cube)
- it’s a patented tool
- you have to be hovering over a surface, and it highlights to show you are “about to engage” with that surface

Triple click any object in SketchUp and EVERYthing connected to that object will be deleted

You can enter specific dimensions after you create a shape by clicking in the dimensions field (lower right corner)

Use the arc tool: click on top two corners of a rectangle, then move your mouse up to create an arc
- then use push pull tool to push in 5 inches… use selection arrow to choose the interior
- draw a line on the front of your doghouse to make a triangle at the top, then use push/pull to create an overhang

Next tools we learned:
- move/copy
- fill (paint bucket)
- colors (roofing and brick/cladding)

We also saw how to make an item a “component” so every change you make to one of those component objects affects/takes effect on the others

Now learning the offset tool making our dog bowl

Used “Water Pool Light” color for the water in our dog bowl

Remember you can triple click (fast) an object to select the entire thing (you can also click and drag a box that surrounds it)
- for our dog bowl, after selecting it we right clicked and choose MAKE COMPONENT

Then to make 5 copies, I held down the option key, used the move tool to click and drag the bowl to the side, then after releasing the mouse IMMEDIATELY typed “5x” and pressed return.

You can edit components by right clicking them and choosing EDIT COMPONENT

Choose WINDOW – COMPONENTS to directly search the Google 3D Warehouse from inside Google Sketchup

When you use other people’s components

My final doghouse!

NEW PROJECT: Now we’re going to learn how to model a real building that actually exists
- first step, go to VIEW – TOOL PALETTES, GOOGLE to show the Google tools

437 New Jersey Ave NW, Washington DC

Very important step: change your axis setting in SketchUp

Now, we’re going to use the “penman” icon in the same Google toolbar to import actual textures from the REAL building, taken with Google street view cameras

Select the face of the building you want to import, click on it, then use the photo textures window to select (grab) and import the part of the building photo you want

This is the imported texture of that building

If you don’t have a street view image, you can take your own photograph and import it (FILE – IMPORT in Sketchup)
- right click the imported picture and choose TEXTURE, then mark the parts of the image you want to use/import

To import the overhead footprint of the roof, select the paint bucket tool. Hold down the command tool, then click somewhere beside it. (you’ll have an eyedropper tool when command is held down)

Next, release the command key and click on the roof. Whoa la! You have a textured roof!

Big tip: to be accepted into the 3D warehouse, you MUST use photos for your building textures, you can’t use colors/textures built into Google SketchUp

My final firehouse!

Now… preview in Google Earth in the correct location!

Here’s my OWN model of this firehouse building in Washington DC, previewed in Google Earth! I’m so excited – can’t believe we actually learned to do this today!

Remember there are LOTS of great video tutorials on our GTI website!

Also remember to join the Google GeoInstitute Group!

Technorati Tags: design, geography, google, gti, gti2011, sketchup, model, modeling

Google SketchUp Workshop (Sept 2011) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 27, 2011.

I took this photo with Pro HDR for the iPhone!

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from wesley fryer’s posterous

This is a big map! (Giant Traveling Maps from National Geographic) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 27, 2011.

Toby Lester is a contributing editor to and has written extensively for The Atlantic. A former Peace Corps English teacher (in Yemen) and United Nations observer (in the West Bank), he lives in the Boston area. The Fourth Part of the World (2009), his first book, was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers Award, and was picked as a Book of the Year by The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and several other publications. His second book, Da Vinci’s Ghost, about Leonardo’s iconic drawing of a man in a circle and a square, will be published this February.

The Fourth Part of the World: An Astonishing Epic of Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, and the Birth of America

This is the first map ever created which showed the Americas surrounded by water. The first map to show the entire African coastline, showing that Europeans could navigate all the way around Africa and successfully trade with the East. That was BIGGER news than seeing the Americas. This was also the first map to include a full 360 degrees of longitude. This map was widely printed and widely disseminated.

This is the mother of the modern map as we know it.

Christopher Columbus died one year before this map was printed and made, and he died thinking he had discovered Asia not a new hemisphere.

Letters of Amerigo Vespucci were fictionalized by printers in the early 1500s, stories of sex and cannibalism were added, and one was printed with the title, “A New World”

Prior to this map, wall maps were only owned by kings and queens and possibly rich merchants
- this map, however, could be printed inexpensively in 4 panels and showed up in a lot of classrooms
- supposedly 1000 copies were printed, but it largely disappeared

In 2003 National Geographic finally was able to purchase the map for $10 million. It is the most expensive item the Library of Congress ever paid for any document. A few years earlier they paid $8 million for an original copy of the Declaration of Independence. That was a big thing that caught my attention.

I thought I’d just be telling the story of how the map was found, but as I started exploring it I found it was a very rich source of history and information on its own. This can be a GREAT interdisciplinary tool for kids and adults not only in the study of history and geography, but also

“If I hadn’t had a deadline, I still wouldn’t be finished with my book.”

Makers of the map added a title which said, “This is the center of the cosmos”

Washington Irving was one of the primary people who played up the myth that people believed the world was flat
- people laughing ant Columbus and convinced he was foolish were doing so because he was terribly wrong about his estimates of how large the earth was and is

There is very interesting history going back to ancient times that there was a belief in a 4th part of the world, in addition to “known” parts of the East, Europe and Africa

Photos on maps from this era reflected a belief among Europeans that fantastic, strange creatures lived on the fringes of the known world. This had important implications for missionaries / the church / evangelism, because it meant Christians had to go explore and convert people in these areas.

Sailor’s charts from early 1500s didn’t have a true north or top or bottom. They were basically placenames along coastlines, named accurately

Ptolemy’s early world map showed a land bridge (which he assumed) connecting Africa to Asia
- Europeans in the late 1400s were obsessed with the challenge of sailing around Africa to the East

MY THOUGHT: THIS IS SUCH A GREAT PRESENTATION, AND REALLY MAKES ME THINK ABOUT THE SPIRIT OF EXPLORATION WHICH CAN STILL BURN IN OUR HEARTS TODAY… MAKES ME WANT TO BE AN EXPLORER AND SHARE THAT PASSION WITH OTHERS!

This map embodies the idea of a 3 part world, the idea that man (people) could comprehend it all (an idea from the Renaissance), building together Ptolomy’s map with the sailor’s maps with placenames, and the idea that there is a “fourth place” of the world…

I audio recorded almost all of Toby’s presentation and it’s shared below with his permission.

The Fourth Part of the World by Toby Lester originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 27, 2011.

Dan Beaupré is Director of Education Partnerships for National Geographic Live, the live events division of the National Geographic Society. He directs National Geographic Live! student programs, the Giant Traveling Maps project, and the National Geographic Explorers Camp. He is a former classroom teacher and curriculum writer for several PBS productions. Beaupre is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Danish-American Fulbright Commission, and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. In 1998 he received the Distinguished Teacher Award from the White House. Beaupre graduated with honors with a B.A. in History (Honors) from the University of Vermont in 1990, and has a Master’s Degree in Educational Administration from Harvard University. He lives in Middlebury, VT with his wife Amy Oliver Beaupre and two children, Nicholas (10) and Louisa (8).

We like to think BIG about geography at National Geographic!

Our old mission: dissiminate geographic information to the world

our new mission: inspire people to care about the planet

this project was created as a platform to inspire others

in some cases the maps we produced for this project are the largest EVER created for particular regions/areas

we want to help kids generate questions, see maps as an endless source of information

started with Giant Map of Africa we had at Google 6 years ago: 26 foot by 35 foot map, weighs 102 pounds!

A map this size really invites a physical experience for kids
- kids play a lot of games on the map

Activities on the maps include: safaris, scavenger hunts, team and competitive games

Asia map was 2nd one we created

Most popular game kids love playing on our maps: “Simon Says”

Wherever out maps go, they tend to get lots of local press and coverage on television (great PR opportunities for schools)
- we have 17 maps now, they are booked throughout the year

(To get an idea of how much they cost, 1 of the maps a participant at my table is getting costs $1725 to keep for 2 months. It’s $480 for 2 weeks, but the longer you rent it the less it is. Borrowing time is two week minimum)

“A map is the greatest of all epic poems. Its lines and colors show the realization od great dreams.” – Gilbert H. Grosvenor

There is a group in the state of Washington who have created a huge map like this

All maps are 26 x 35 feet in size

Generally these maps NEVER go outside, but today in Lewiston is an exception to that rule! The other two times we’ve had a map outside was at Google and at the home of a National Geographic person [I didn't catch the name]

Giant Traveling Maps project from National Geographic originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 27, 2011.

Technorati Tags: earth, edtech, google, gti2011, learning, maine, school, teacher, sketchup

A Google Geo-Teacher Learning Day Story: In Tweets originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 26, 2011.

John Bailey’s Google Earth resources (not all recently updated) – http://snap.uaf.edu/earth/

John Bailey is an Assistant Research Professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). He holds a PhD in Volcanology and Remote Sensing from the University of Hawaii, and was previously a postdoc at the Alaska Volcano Observatory. John currently works for the Scenarios Network for Alaska Planning (SNAP), a climate change education and research group in UAF’s Geography Department. He specializes in creating geovisualizations for education/outreach, and teaches workshops on how to use Google Earth. He also created and teaches the first accredited university class in Google Earth and KML. He spends his spare time traveling and playing floorball.

KML = code used to create content in Google Earth (Keyhole Markup Language)
- we’re going to use GUI interfaces in Google Earth to create KML files

Google Maps interface changes often because it CAN: all you need is a browser, no software needs to be downloaded

I really like to navigate with the keyboard with both Google Maps and Google Earth
- Google Earth keyboard shortcuts

“Pegman” takes you to street view in Google Maps

Google has special boats and bikes to collect street view images from places like National Parks (like the Grand Canyon)
- drag the Pegman to places where photos have been taken

Get directions in Google Maps is great for many reasons, including the way you can drag your route and change it!

Turn on layers like traffic and photos in Google Maps

Google Maps has shaded elevation layers, that layer is not currently in Google Earth

The Google Earth Plugin gives you the ability to embed a version of Google Earth right in Google Maps, on your browser

Google Labs are being closed as its own area, and moved into the respective “departments” or areas of Google

Example: Maps Labs

Turn on distance measurement tool in Maps Labs:

After it’s activated, click the distance measurement tool in Google Maps in the lower left corner:

You can click “I’m feeling Geeky” to choose alternate measurement units in Google Maps, just like you can with Google Earth. Example: How many Olympic Swimming pools is the distance across the English Channel?

Customized Google Maps can also be exported as KML, then you can open it in Google Earth
- some people find it easier to create KML files within Google Maps
- remember the COLLABORATIVE option within maps in Google Maps (can’t do that kind of realtime collaboration within Google Earth)

Fusion Maps can be used with both Google Maps and Google Earth

Google Maps can be used to create KML files, and you can open a Google Map directly in Google Earth using provided links/buttons:

Folks vetting pictures for Panoramio don’t like having people in them for privacy reasons (you can share your photos)
- wait time is 4-6 weeks to get photos on Panoramio (Jerome Burg found 2-3 days can be waiting time)
- you can submit photos which show that PLACE

80 million trees are modeled in Google Earth and growing… and they are species specific models!

3D Tours is available in the Google Earth Gallery

Also remember you can do an advanced Google search for KML/KMZ files by file type

Google works with National Geographic on Project Blue for current expeditions

The Google Earth 3D Trees forest Collection is awesome!

Tip: use COMMAND and arrow keys on a mac to tilt up or down in Google earth

Video: New Seafloor in Google Earth Tour

Keyboard

N = north
U = up
R = up and north at the same time!

Utilize the help resources in Google Earth!
- great things written in the Google Earth Community!

Explore the Ocean in Google Earth (and download KML file)

The creator of the Google Earth blog is ex-NASA and makes a 6 figure income from the site… he’s now touring the world on his yacht. Nice!

Don’t make your Google Earth place marks in the SEARCH panel, instead make them in the PLACES panel so they can be saved

Best practices:
- when you are working on a KML project in Google Earth, save your file OUT from Google Earth frequently
- also quit Google Earth periodically and re-open it
- it can crash and you’ll lose stuff when that happens… so backup often!

One of my test questions for students: Name 8 ways you can create a place mark in Google Earth (there are about 11 ways to do it!)

Great example shown by John (not online yet) is a National Geographic lesson plan “Go with the Flow” which has connected elevation info with position data on a river, showing how elevation changes with location on a South American river (this will be released/announced soon)

Turn on historic imagery in Google Earth

Placemark hierarchy
- point placemark
- path / linestring
- polygon
- model

Great “official” recommended Geo-blogs for new info from Tina O:
- Google Lat Long Blog
- Official Sketchup Blog

Overlays are VERY powerful for Google Earth
- USGS Topographic Map Overlay

Another source of free topo maps: http://mapserver.mytopo.com

Because of map projection differences, it’s often necessary to stretch and tweak maps

Historical maps which tell a story can be great to use as overlays in Google Earth in the classroom

Rumsey Historical Maps are a built-in layer of overlays in Google Earth’s Gallery

Looking at chance over time in the cultural as well as physical environment is very interesting
- 1903 Klamath Basin is an example with a map overlay

Opacity slider is at the bottom of the PLACES panel in Google Earth. This is an example of an 1875 Rumsey historical map of China

Great activity: Overlay this WikiPedia commons image on Google Earth searching for “bligh reef, valdez alaska” (reef where the Exxon Valdez ran aground)

Tutorial: Adding Overlays to Google Earth from www.virtualfieldwork.org/How_tos/How_tos.html

Remember when you are in “tour mode” in Google Earth, until you close out of it the tools at the top will be greyed out

MY CLOSING LINKS:
- I started a Twitter list related to Geography: twitter.com/wfryer/geography/members
- Here are Geography-related blogs I follow (a Google Reader bundle)

PLEASE SHARE OTHER GOOGLE EARTH / SKETCHUP RELATED SITES AND RESOURCES YOU LIKE WHICH ARE NOT HERE.

Technorati Tags: earth, geography, google, howto, institute, map, maps, teacher, gti

Google Earth and Google Maps GTI Workshop (Sep 2011) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 26, 2011.

Sean Maday is a geospatial engineer at Google. He served as an Air Force intelligence officer from 2005 to 2010, and formerly worked for a research and development lab at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Michigan State University.

Google Earth has now been downloaded and installed over a billion times

How do I make my maps link up to Google Maps or Google Earth?
- previously this has taken a lot of coding

Now we have Google Fusion Tables
- these have been around for 2 years
- spatially aware database in the cloud
- you interact with it via a web browser
- doesn’t matter if you’re on a desktop, laptop, or Chromebook
- power of the processing takes place with Google’s servers

Can show overlays of a heat map of earthquake intensity since 1973, and the location of nuclear power plans around the world

newspapermap.com
- newspapers are discoverable geographically

MY NOTES FROM THIS SESSION ARE WOEFULLY INADEQUATE TO CONVEY MY EXCITEMENT FOR THE INFO AND POWERFUL TOOLS SEAN JUST TOLD US ABOUT. I DID AUDIO RECORD HIS SESSION AND GOT HIS PERMISSION TO SHARE IT. GOOGLE FUSION TABLES ARE THE MOST EXCITING AND IMPORTANT THING I’VE LEARNED SO FAR HERE AT THE INSTITUTE… THIS IS THE REASON I TRAVELED TO MAINE… TO LEARN ABOUT THIS. WOW!

Technorati Tags: earth, gct, geography, google, maps, visualize, fusion, tables

Google Fusion Tables: Geo-spatially connecting database data originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 26, 2011.

MotionX-GPS app for iPhone: creates Google Earth KML/KMZ file with your speed/location as you travel

Bring live hurricane and tropical storm data into your classroom via KML/KMZ files: www.nhc.noaa.gov/gis/

Bring live earthquake data in KMZ format from NOAA: earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/catalogs/

Get local: Google Earth KML/KMZ data files for Maine: www.maine.gov/megis/catalog/

Margaret showing aggregated hurricane / tropical storm tracks in Google Earth, asking, “Where AREN’T there hurricanes?”

Some Pasco sensors have GPS included, so as you paddle down a river and take a water sample the GPS coordinates are also recorded with your data

Google Earth Pro can not only handle global data, but also large quantities of data you collect with your students about your LOCAL area

Margaret used a Pasco sensor to measure water temperatures in her Kayak, and was showing us here how that can be visualized in Google Earth Pro

Google Earth Pro costs $400 per year for a license, but educators can get it free

Technorati Tags: earth, gct, google, visualize, gti2011

Visualizing Data in Google Earth originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 26, 2011.

The Google Earth YouTube channel is one of the suggested resources for the Google Geo Teachers Institute which I’ll be attending in Lewiston, Maine, September 26-27, 2011. It’s going to be a GREAT two days of geo-learning!

Technorati Tags:
earth, education, geo, google, inspiration, maine, video, workshop, institute, matters

Great Reasons Geography ROCKS! originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 23, 2011.

This screenshot was captured and annotated with Skitch in Google Earth. We didn’t doubt this as a family, but this is certainly more visual proof we live in tornado alley!

Visualizing Tornados in Oklahoma City with Google Earth originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 10, 2011.

The four minute video, “Waterfalls of Eden in Glacier National Park” showcases some absolutely AMAZING waterfalls flowing down the east side of the continental divide just east of Logan’s Pass on “Going to the Sun Road.” This spectacular scenery made me think of Eden. Words and video images are entirely inadequate to capture the splendor of this place.

“Hike to Avalanche Lake in Glacier National Park” is a seven minute edited video of footage from August 5, 2011. Avalanche Lake is a beautiful lake fed by snow and glacial runoff not far from the west entrance to the park.

“Driving on “Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park” is a five minute video taken with my iPhone outside the sunroof of our rental car on August 5, 2011. The audio track isn’t edited, so it’s basically wind noise, but the video will hopefully give you a sense of how dramatic and exciting this drive is!

Technorati Tags:
glacier, iphone, iphoneography, montana, national, park, video, videography, youtube, going, to, sun, hike, hiking, outdoors, spectacular, amazing, beautiful

iPhone Videography from Glacier National Park originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 8, 2011.

Yesterday morning we went north from St Mary (on the east side of the park) and entered through the third entrance by Many Glacier Hotel. Wow want a place and a view! The hotel was built by the Great Northern Railroad in 1915, along with others in a “Swiss chalet style,” to encourage tourism to Glacier National Park and other points west of St Louis. This is a photo from the parking lot above the hotel.

This is a panoramic photo from the same location, taken with the iPhone application Pano.

Here is another panorama, which I took from the porch of the hotel.

In addition to enjoying the mountain views and seeing a grizzly bear from the porch, my dad and I had lunch in the hotel restaurant. This reminded us both of Old Faithful Inn and Lake Hotel in Yellowstone.

This is one of my favorite photos from yesterday, it’s a “Prevent Resource Damage” sign at Logan’s Pass atop the “Going to the Sun Road.” The impressive backdrop makes this sign much more persuasive, IMHO!

Some people actually brought sleds and snow saucers and went sledding in the snow fields above Logan’s Pass. This is a photo of a deer grazing near the Visitor’s Center. Note the snowfields in the background.

These folks had finished sledding and were packing their snow saucers home.

Glacier NP is a perfect destination for HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. HDR software takes a brightly exposed version of a scene and combines it with a darkly exposed version to render a digital image with greater color depth. One disadvantage of my favorite iPhone HDR app, Pro HDR, is it does not automatically include location EXIF (geo-location) data with photos. The HDR photo below looking up at Jackson Glacier, on the east side of the continental divide on “Going to the Sun Road,” shows one of the twenty-six rapidly disappearing glaciers in the park. (My favorite iPhoneography capture apps are included in this Appolicious list from July.)

Here’s another HDR image looking up toward Jackson glacier.

This screenshot of HDR processing shows the two original images which were combined to form the one above. (This was created with the built-in HDR feature of the iPhone4′s camera.)

Glacier National Park had 150 glaciers in 1850, now there are just 25 or 26 left. Climate models predict all the glaciers will be melted away by 2030. If you haven’t made a visit to Glacier NP yet, it’s time to go.

This is my favorite photograph from yesterday. It shows waterfalls flowing down from the snowfields above Logan’s Pass, just on the east side of the continental divide. I used this for my Photo 365 image yesterday and titled it, “An Eden of Waterfalls.”

I’ll close with a photo of a Glacier National Park animal icon. The fleet of red “jammer” buses in GNP have a mountain goat on the side of them.

These are refurbished buses from the early part of the 20th century.

We did see quite a few mountain goats in our two days in Glacier, but yesterday just below Logan’s Pass we saw a herd of big horn sheep! This was more big horn sheep in one place than my dad or I had ever seen. This was very exciting for us, as players of “the game game.”

If you have not already, make plans to visit Glacier National Park someday soon. It’s an incredible place that will take your breath away.

My hotel bandwidth isn’t fast enough to let me upload HD videos from the past two days, so I’ll save sharing those for another day.

Remember you can also explore my Glacier National Part photos from yesterday via this Flickr map of saved geo-locations. Not all the photos have locations saved, and some are guestimates, but most are there. I REALLY like this feature of digital photography! (More details on this post from last night)

Technorati Tags:
iphoneography, photo, photos, glacier, national, park, travel

More Highlights from Glacier National Park originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 7, 2011.

You have told me you believe that the No Child Left Behind Act has prompted some schools—especially low-performing ones—to teach to the test, rather than focus on the educational needs of students. Because of the pressure to boost test scores, NCLB has narrowed the curriculum, and important subjects like history, science, the arts, foreign languages, and physical education have been de-emphasized. And you are frustrated when teachers alone are blamed for educational failures that have roots in broken families, unsafe communities, misguided reforms, and underfunded schools systems. You rightfully believe that responsibility for educational quality should be shared by administrators, community, parents, and even students themselves… So I want to work with you to change and improve federal law, to invest in teachers and strengthen the teaching profession. Together with you, I want to develop a system of evaluation that draws on meaningful observations and input from your peers, as well as a sophisticated assessment that measures individual student growth, creativity, and critical thinking. States, with the help of teachers, are now developing better assessments so you will have useful information to guide instruction and show the positive impact you are having on our children.

Following these ever-so-slightly positive words from our national education secretary, however, I had a severe case of cognitive dissonance this evening watching Oklahoma State Superintendent Janet Barresi‘s latest video message. In this post, I’ll explain what caused my confusion and highlight the way I used both Google Earth and Google Maps to solve a problem and share a solution which this situation presented: Which Oklahoma City Public Schools fall within the boundaries of the 89th Legislative district (currently represented by Rebecca Hamilton) which allegedly:

…not only do not provide them [students] with the kind of education they need to have a future, they destroy their souls while they’re at it.

Those are strong words, to say the least, and deserve careful scrutiny as well as investigation. Inquiring minds want to know: Are educators at Jackson Middle School, Adams Elementary School, and/or Rockwood Elementary School in Oklahoma City Public Schools “destroying the souls of children?”

View Oklahoma Schools in 89th District in a larger map

At the 1:38 minute mark of her April 29th video address, Janet Barresi shared the following quotation from Oklahoma legislator Rebecca Hamilton. Barresi prefaced the comment with praise, stating Hamilton “said it well.”

In case Flickr is blocked in your location and you cannot view the image above, here is the full quotation:

I represent children who go to schools that are essentially factories. Those schools not only do not provide them with the kind of education they need to have a future, they destroy their souls while they’re at it.

This is a serious charge from a state legislator, and it’s both endorsed and amplified by our elected state superintendent. Both women are not simply observing that test scores are low or the majority of students served at these schools come from low income families, they are asserting the educators in one or more of these three schools (Jackson Middle School, Adams Elementary School, and/or Rockwood Elementary School) “destroy the souls” of students. Can an accusation of educational malpractice be more vitriolic and passionate than this? If so, I have not encountered it before today in the public record.

A statement this strong deserves further investigation, so (of course) I turned to Google for assistance. A quick search produced both the official Oklahoma legislative page for Rebecca Hamilton, and an official map (available as a PDF) showing the boundaries of her legislative district.

To figure out which Oklahoma City Public Schools fall within the boundaries of District 89, I used the polygon tool within Google Earth to draw a map of the district 89 boundaries. Then, I searched for “school” and added the three public schools which showed up inside the polygon to the Google Earth folder I’d created for this little project.

To share my map publicly, I created a new Google Map (in “My Maps” after logging in to Google) and chose to import the KML file I’d saved from Google Earth to my desktop.

These technical procedures allowed me to put some school names with this accusation of “teachers destroying the souls of students.” Educators at Jackson Middle School, Adams Elementary School, and/or Rockwood Elementary School are “the accused” in this serious allegation by Oklahoma elected officials.

The second phase of this needed investigation can’t be answered with Google – yet. I (along with others in Oklahoma City) need to visit these three schools and interview students as well as parents. Armed with flash-based video recorders and recording only after parent permission as well as student permission (if the interviewee is a minor) have been obtained, we can ask some very simple and straightforward questions like these:

1. What teacher has made the biggest impact on you at [insert name of school] and why?
2. Do you think your soul [or the soul of your child] has been destroyed by [insert name of school] and the teachers at the school? (Why or why not?)
3. If you could change one thing about your school today, what would it be?

These videos can be uploaded to YouTube with a common tag, like “district89schools” so they can be readily aggregated and shared by others. Then, this “video evidence” can be compared to the assertions of Rebecca Hamilton which Janet Baressi amplified this week in her video message.

There is a statistical chance Hamilton and Baressi are correct, and “the souls of students at one or more of these schools are being destroyed.” I am extremely reticent to believe, however, all the teachers at any one of these schools are actively destroying souls. Inquiring minds want to know: What is the truth?

The good news is, powerful tools for video documentation and viral media sharing are at our fingertips today. I don’t have time to contact PTA / PTO representatives at these schools this week to see if they’d like to help organize a social media video response to these strident accusations or not. Perhaps later in May? We’ll see. This is a videography research project worth pursuing.

Without a doubt, we have SOME teachers in our public schools today who could be doing a MUCH better job teaching, inspiring, and caring for their students. At the same time, however, we have MANY public school teachers doing a phenomenal job developing relationships and helping students learn new knowledge and skills every day in the classroom. It is neither fair nor accurate to demonize ALL teachers as professionals, yet the campaign to deride and discredit educators continues to gain steam in our state as well as across the nation. Yes, we must work hard to improve and transform our schools, but we must NEVER do so by condemning all educators. Accusations of incompetence and malfeasance are serious, and deserve critical examination rather than passive acceptance.

My cognitive dissonance this evening was triggered by a message to ostensibly highlight Teacher Appreciation Week, which in the same breath accused all educators on at least one of the district 89 public school campuses (Jackson Middle School, Adams Elementary School, and/or Rockwood Elementary School) of “destroying the souls of children.”

If I was writing a thank-you card to the professional educators of our state, that wouldn’t be something I’d write. But that’s just me.

What’s your take?

Technorati Tags:
education, google, janet, oklahoma, poverty, school, schools, teacher, video, youtube, baressi, rebecca, hamilton, appreciation, arne, duncan, maps, earth

Demonizing Oklahoma Public School Teachers While Praising Them? originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 3, 2011.

First, make sure you setup your Google Map for collaboration / shared editing. If you don’t have the map set for everyone to edit it, you’ll need to add each student by email address (using the same email they use for their free Google Account) so they can have edit rights to the map. Click the COLLABORATE link on the map to change these settings.

The image you want to add within a placemark in Google Maps needs to be saved somewhere online so you can add it by web link. Google Maps doesn’t provide image hosting, like Google does for other services like Google Sites and Google Docs. You add the image with it’s direct link, starting with “http://” and ending in “.jpg” You’ll want to copy that image link FIRST before trying to add it to the map.

Once you (or a student) clicks EDIT on the map, make sure you’re in RICH TEXT mode and click INSERT IMAGE.

The image should then appear in your placemark. Click SAVE and DONE when you finish editing. That’s it!

This is the collaborative map workshop participants and I created during our time together at Heartland eLearning.

View Heartland 2011 Favorite Places in a larger map

Collaboratively edited Google Maps like this are a great way for students in one class or different classes to cooperatively add links as well as rich media content (images and YouTube videos) to a project.

I love geography, maps, and Google Maps! Creating shared maps like this is a super way to “talk with media.”

Cross-posted to “The Infinite Thinking Machine” and “Talk with Media.”

Technorati Tags:
google, share, map, gct, collaborate

Tips for adding images to Custom Google Maps #gct originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 15, 2011.

It’s easy, as a regular traveler on airlines, to take the experience of flying for granted. What a marvelous thing it is to be able to fly, even as a passenger aboard a commercial airline! Flights like this which skim the clouds (even briefly) allow passengers to have a much more acute sense of speed.

Technorati Tags:
memphis, photo, photography, fly, flying, delta, speed

Descending into the clouds at sunset (video) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 17, 2011.

Geo-Apps: Geographic Curriculum Connections (Google Maps and Google Earth)

Talk with Media: Using Copyright-Friendly Images & Audio
http://talkwithmedia.com
and
http://info.storychasers.org/home/resources/copyright

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

iOS Apps for Productivity & Fun (iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch)
and
http://www.appolicious.com/users/wfryer

The only bummer about the conference was I think I lost one of my digital audio recorders, which I’d used to record several sessions this week as well as at the MACE conference last week in Kansas. Maybe it will still turn up…..

Remember if you’re interested in inviting me to share one of these presentations for your school, organization or conference, an electronic contact form is available on my blog.

Technorati Tags:
conference, creativity, heartland, heartlandconf11, ios, ipad, iphone, ipod, oklahoma, uco, elearning

Presentation Links from the 2011 Heartland eLearning Conference #heartlandconf11 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 8, 2011.

Everyone with a smartphone or ANY type of camera which can record the location where a photograph was taken via geo-tagging should be aware of related privacy implications. Yesterday in my “Technology 4 Teachers” class with undergraduate pre-service students, I demonstrated the free iOS application “Cinch” on my iPad. After recording an audio message, the app prompts users with the option to “Tag current location.”

When I asked my students if it was a good idea to turn that on or off if we were recording an audio message at school, several students immediately responded, “OFF!” My response was, it’s fine to turn it off if you want, but if you’re posting from school and then sharing that audio recording on a school or class website… Anyone with half a brain is going to be able to figure out the location from which you’re sharing the media. The precision with which GPS-enabled geotagging of photos makes possible is eye opening, but it shouldn’t be reason for widespread panic. One of the news anchors in this NBC segment vehemently proclaims, “I’m immediately turning off that feature on my phone as soon as we finish this show.” It doesn’t harm anything if she takes that action, but it might be an over-reaction. Similarly, the reporter’s self-perceived heroic actions of visiting the home of a suburban mom to warn her that her children’s bedroom location was discoverable from her Facebook photos was over-the-top. Should moms and dads everywhere be warned IMMEDIATELY, by a strange reporter or other community do-gooder, that they need to change their smartphone photo privacy settings RIGHT NOW?! Probably not. This is an important capability and privacy issue to discuss, however, but hopefully more balanced approaches can be advocated rather than the one highlighted in this news spot.

When SHOULD geo-tagging be turned off? It might be a good idea to turn off geo-tagging when taking pictures from home. If someone is really intent on stalking someone, however, it’s unlikely a lack of geo-tagged photo information is going to stop that individual. If someone is involved in a hostile divorce relationship or other situation where it’s much more important than “normal” to keep current locations private, not only should geo-tagging be turned off smartphones in the family but photos should probably not be shared online at all. I personally don’t think geo-tagging photos and other recorded media at school should be a big deal, but that (like most things) will vary by location and school context. This is yet another issue which could be taken up by groups fostering conversations about social media guidelines in schools.

What do you think of photo geo-tagging and privacy risks? Are you finding ways in your school and community to promote conversations about these issues and others relating to social media use? What specific advice are you following personally when it comes to geo-tagging of photos and other media? What advice are you giving to others?

Hat tip to Bill Warner for sharing this video.

Technorati Tags:
facebook, geo, news, parent, photo, photography, privacy, share, youtube, geotag, risk, predator, nbc

Photo Geotagging Poses Privacy Risks, But Is NOT a Reason for Panic originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 17, 2011.

1. Few sites offer real educational interactivity- involving user
   choices that change stories and promote creative and critical
   thinking.
2. The internet alone has not really “knocked down museum walls,”
   mobile technology has.
3. Physical activity and mental challenge are integral parts of learning.
4. Technology is a tool, not an educational objective.
5. Most members of the public must see the value of a technology
   before adopting it.
6. There are a vast number of communities with ignored but valuable
   stories to tell.
7. Mobile technology can help to positively settle the land
   ownership and zoning controversies in public history.

As we consider the (hopefully) imminent development and release of an iOS/Android application for Storychasers, I’m watching projects like HistoriQuest with heightened interest. Our abilities to create mash-ups of content including videos, images, audio recordings, and text overlaid with maps and mobile applications providing real-time / current-context information is extremely exciting. I’m betting we’re going to see great things from HistoriQuest in the months ahead.

photo © 2010 Tom | more info (via: Wylio)

Technorati Tags:
android, app, edtech, education, ios, learning, mobile, technology, history, socialstudies, geography, design, augmented, reality

Civil War Augmented Reality Project Becomes HistoriQuest originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 14, 2011.

Please forward this info and these links to any educators in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area who might be interested in attending, as well as others who might want to virtually attend. While these workshops will focus specifically on educational applications of Google Docs as well as Google Maps / Earth, this is an introductory workshop which can be beneficial to anyone getting started with these powerful, free tools.

Google Documents, Spreadsheets, Forms, Presentations & Drawing BYOL Workshop: Thursday, February 24, 2011 from 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (CT) in Claremore, Oklahoma

Google Maps and Google Earth BYOL Workshop: Friday, February 25, 2011 from 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (CT) in Claremore, Oklahoma

I’ve created a 1 page PDF flyer about these workshops as well, which you’re welcome to download and share with others.

Google Tools Workshops for Educators: February 2011 in Claremore, Oklahoma

photo © 2009 Casey Florig | more info (via: Wylio)

Technorati Tags:
development, edtech, education, google, oklahoma, pd, professional, tools, tulsa, workshop, claremore, geo, geoapps

24-25 February 2011: Google Tools Workshops in Claremore, Oklahoma (Tulsa area) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 12, 2011.

Hat tip to App Safari.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Fotopedia Heritage for iPad #edapps originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 31, 2011.

My flight from Denver was fortunate to land early this afternoon because of heavy fog in Missoula. Thankfully the visibility was just good enough for the pilot to make the landing. I took a couple panoramic images this afternoon of the striking geography: We’re surrounded by mountains! (I can easily get as excited as Bilbo speaking to Gandalf when it comes to landscapes like these.)

This is a 360 degree panoramic image I took today in Missoula with the iPhone app, Sfera. Click the link to view the webpage version, it’s an image you can click and drag to “move” within, similar to the old QTVR. (QuickTime Virtual Reality)

fullsize

I should have continued adding several more images to the Pano photo below, but the light at the intersection changed so I couldn’t!

I spent some time this afternoon in the local Best Buy as well as Barnes and Noble. It was interesting to visit with the lady at the information desk in Barnes and Noble, who was attempting to provide technical phone support to a customer who had recently downloaded the Nook application on their smartphone. They were not sure if they had an Android phone or something else, which made it difficult to provide phone support. B&N needs their own “Genius Bar” like Apple Stores have. The employee, who was elderly, had a conversation with me afterward about how the Nook and the Internet are changing the numbers of books they stock and the ways people are encouraged to buy books. She lamented the changes from “the old days.” Signs of technological convergence and the influence of the Internet are evident in many places.

The Nook Color, released in December 2010, now sports a full touch screen. It’s not multi-touch, but it is much more usable than previous versions which were more like an old Palm screen that was stylus-sensitive only at the bottom. The ad I saw today heralds it with the words, “Touch the Future of Reading.”

This isn’t the future of reading, it’s the present… At least for those with the money to purchase digital devices and enjoy connectivity. Best Buy was selling some gift cards I hadn’t seen previously: Facebook credits (I definitely don’t need these, I steer clear of virtually all Facebook apps now) as well as Zynga credits for Farmville players as well as addicts. I’m not in that group either.

In the Apple section of Best Buy, gift cards were available for iBooks.

The local Staples store had a “help wanted” sign out. Computer skills mandatory, sales experience optional.

I’m surrounded by stunning geography here in Missoula, but it seems the influence of the digital world is as powerful here as it is at home in Oklahoma.

It’s time to make some changes in our schools…

We’ll be encouraging all our workshop participants tomorrow and Friday to participate in a Twitter backchannel using the hashtag #mtvision, short for “Montana Vision.” With a tub of Flip cameras to use during our group work time in the afternoon, I’m sure we’re in for some memorable experiences that will be shared.

Technorati Tags:
education, leadership, schools, vision, mtvision, montana

Mountains, Gandalf, Mountains! #mtvision originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 26, 2011.

Waze is a social mobile application providing free turn-by-turn navigation based on the live conditions of the road. 100% powered by users, the more you drive, the better it gets. Join the community of drivers in your area today!

Today on a trip to the Dallas area to reconnoiter office furniture from IKEA for our new Storychasers office, I had an extended opportunity to put Waze through its paces. I was very impressed how it recalculated routes based on my position as well as local traffic reports and updates from nearby Waze users.

The Waze app (also available for other mobile platforms besides iPhone) doesn’t let you text while driving. It senses your movement via GPS, and you can only enter text into the app when stopped. Other navigational options can be selected while in motion, however.

It even gives Smokey reports! (Ah, remember the old days of CB radio, talking to truckers on channel 19?!)

Like Foursquare or Gowalla, users earn points using the app. The more you use the app and contribute information, the better the app can assist everyone with navigation. Very cool, and very powerful! Give Waze a try – It’s free and the best navigational aid I’ve used to date on my iPhone.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Free iPhone Turn by Turn Driving Directions with Waze originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 7, 2011.

Check out the full set of archived images from astronaut Wheelock, archived in a Flickr set by Triggerpit.

Few things can inspire thinking about science, exploration and adventure like amazing images from space.

Colonel Wheelock is @Astro_Wheels on Twitter. If you’re interested in science and space, consider following and encouraging your own students to follow Wheelock and other astronauts. The official NASA twitter account @nasa_astronauts follows 26 astronauts currently. Clayton Anderson (@Astro_Clay), Mark Kelly (@ShuttleCDRKelly), Marcos Pontes (@Astro_Pontes), and many more are listed. After following an astronaut on Twitter, pay attention to the other folks Twitter recommends following as well. Ed Van Cise (@Carbon_Flight – Flight Director at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in the Mission Control Center,) Lori Garver (@Lori_Garver – Deputy Administrator, NASA,) Beth Beck (@bethbeck – NASA: Space Operations Outreach Manager) and NASA JPL (@NASAJPL – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s News Office) are examples of other, related Twitter users I learned about this way.

I couldn’t readily find a Twitter list someone else had started for astronauts, so I went ahead and created one: twitter.com/wfryer/astronauts. I’m following 33 so far. I won’t promise to keep this updated regularly, but it certainly could help you get started following more astronauts! I’m going to subscribe to this list as a new section on Flipboard (free) on my iPad.

Consider the possibilities here. Paolo Nespoli, an astronaut currently aboard the International Space Station, just tweeted a link to the following image on Flickr of an undisclosed Asian capital at night.

His challenge to viewers?

An Asian Capital. Which one?

Una capitale asiatica. Quale?

Do you think your students would enjoy using the resources at their disposal to figure out the answer? I’m betting they would. Consider giving your students challenges like these in 2011, by bringing REAL scientists, engineers, and space adventurers like Paolo Nespoli and Douglas Wheelock into your classroom via Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Flipboard, and other blended learning tools.

Not able to access those websites from your school network? Perhaps the “Balanced Filtering in Schools” project will be able to help you with that advocacy and community education need… soon. Resources like these from astronauts are exactly the kind of relevant, real-time media we need to share with students in our classrooms.

As classroom teachers, we are in one of the most influential positions to help inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, technology inventors, and mathematics gurus. As digitally connected learners, we are blessed to have access to not only Internet-based resources, but also REAL PEOPLE like these sharing their experiences with us as they happen.

Our access to plentiful quantities of information is going to continue increasing at a dizzying pace in our lifetimes. Awash in this sea of information, we will continue to find “priceless” those human beings who can inspire us to dream dreams bigger than ourselves. Never underestimate or undervalue your own potential to influence the minds of others to dream and to ask good questions.

For more inspirational photos from space, see this December 23rd post from astronaut Wheelock. Wow.

Technorati Tags:
education, learning, math, video, youtube, nasa, twitter, astronaut, astronauts, flickr, school, science, technology, engineering, stem

Tweets and Photos from Astronauts in Space: Consider the Possibilities! originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 1, 2011.

Read more about Sophie’s environmental advocacy in the February 2009 Seacoastonline.com article, “Student touts recycle mindset.” The April 2008 BioCycle magazine article, “Cafeteria Composting In Southern Maine,” unfortunately requires a subscription login to view.

I interviewed Sophie earlier this month when my daughter and I visited South Berwick to stay with friends. Sophie won the “MEGAT 2009 Distinguished Student Award” for her environmental advocacy work. Sophie and her mom have been local champions of the “Nike Reuse a Shoe Program” and were recognized for their work in August 2009.

Technorati Tags:
maine, milk, carton, recycle, recycling, south, berwick, sophie, towle, composting

Milk Carton Recycling and Composting in Maine originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 11, 2010.

View Larger Map

Currently, just 5 seats are still available for Google Documents, Spreadsheets, Forms, Presentations & Drawing on December 14th and 10 seats for Google Maps and Google Earth on December 15th. Registration for face-to-face participants closes at midnight on Dec 10th and 11th for both events, respectively.

If you’re attending, pre-workshop preparation information is available, including Google Forms to specify which yummy sandwich you want from The Prairie Gypsies! Remember virtual registration / attendance for these workshops is also available at discounted prices, but I won’t send you a sandwich if you attend online. Virtual registration closes the day prior to each workshop.

Technorati Tags:
city, google, okc, oklahoma, workshop

Location Change for December OKC Google Tools Workshops originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 7, 2010.

Google Documents, Spreadsheets, Forms, Presentations and Drawing: 14 Dec 2010 – 9 am to 4 pm CST

Google Maps and Google Earth: 15 Dec 2010 – 9 am to 4 pm CST

I’ve created a new Facebook page for Speed of Creativity Learning to share both face-to-face and virtual workshop opportunities like these. If you’re a Facebook user, please click “Like” to stay up to date on upcoming workshop opportunities.

Google Tools Workshops in Oklahoma City: 14-15 December 2010

Technorati Tags:
edtech, google, learning, okc, oklahoma, online, ustream, virtual, workshop

Virtual Participation Options for Dec 14 and 15 Google Tools Workshops originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 5, 2010.

14 Dec 2010: Google Documents, Spreadsheets, Forms, Presentations and Drawing

In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn how to use Google Documents, Google Spreadsheets, Google Forms, Google Presentations, and Google Drawing environments to create and share collaborative files saved “in the cloud.” Specifically, participants will learn how to:
1- Create documents, spreadsheets and presentations online
2- Share and collaborate in real time
3- Safely store and organize your work
4- Control who can see your documents
5- View sample documents, products and files
6- Create original Google docs independently and in collaboration with others

15 Dec 2010: Google Maps and Google Earth

In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn how to use Google Maps and Google Earth Specifically, participants will learn how to:
1- Navigate and search in Google Maps and Google Earth
2- Create a Custom Google Map
3- Customize Google Map Placemarks with text, links, images, and embedded videos
4- Share Custom Google Maps with links and as embedded maps on webpages
5- Use Google Earth’s layers, measurement tools, and places
6- Use Google Earth custom KML/KMZ files created by others
7- Create custom Google Earth custom KML/KMZ web tours and share them

Both of these workshops are designed for beginner through intermediate computer users, and will include discussion as well as examples of how these tools can be effectively used in K-12 as well as university classroom settings. Although workshops are designed primarily with educators in mind, progressively-minded business leaders and employees are invited to attend as well and learn how to leverage Google Apps and Google’s geo-applications within their industry sector. This workshop is BYOL: Bring your own laptop. AC power and wifi connectivity is provided. Participants will work independently and in collaborative teams during the workshop to create and share digital products.

These hands-on workshops meet the definition of high quality professional development as required by the No Child Left Behind Act [Title IX, Part A, Section 9101 (34)]. The activities in these workshops are directly aligned to the Priority Academic Student Skills (PASS), student academic achievement standards and assessments. The primary goal of the workshops is to improve and increase teachers’ knowledge of digital literacy and the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for teachers / administrators / students, and help enable teachers to become highly qualified. Attendance certificates for professional development will be available.

Please direct questions about these workshop opportunities to Wesley Fryer at either:

1. 405.562.6175
2. email: workshops [at] speedofcreativity [dot] org

This information is also available on wiki.wesfryer.com/workshops

Registration for each workshop is limited to 50 participants. Registrations must be submitted by 11:55 pm on Friday, December 10, 2010. Payments may be submitted via credit card or School Purchase Order. More information is available for those submitting school POs.

Learn About Google Apps and Geo-Apps Dec 14 & 15, 2010 in Oklahoma City originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 20, 2010.

Last October I had the privilege to accompany Jerome and many other outstanding educators from around the world to participate in the 21st Century Learning Conference in Hangzhou, China. Our group has been circulating emails recently after the one year anniversary of our trip, and the following photos by Carl Owens were passed around this week. Jerome is the fifth person from the left in this photo in the back, just to the right of Milton Chen.

Jerome tweeted earlier this week that big changes are coming to Google Lit Trips. I’m betting it’s going to get EVEN better! Congrats to Jerome for this new, well-deserved recognition!

See my November 3, 2009 post, “Creativity and Innovation in Chinese Society and Schools” for more background on our trip to Hangzhou last October / November. You also can check out my podcast, “Reflections on Social Media, School Change, 21st Century Learning Skills, and China.”

Technorati Tags:
app, award, edtech, education, english, geo, google, maps, microsoft, reading, trip, lit, literature, geoapp, mashup, gct, certified, laureate

Google Lit Trips by Jerome Burg: Microsoft Education Award Laureate #gct originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 18, 2010.

This is a real eye opener. If we want to help more students enter STEM career fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) many things are needed. One important need is helping students understand why engineering matters. This video provides a vivid example and story about how engineers can make a HUGE difference in the lives of millions of people.

WARNING AND TIP: As is the case (unfortunately) with many YouTube videos, the comments on this video are not moderated and include profane as well as tasteless sentences. If you’re going to share this with students, consider one of the following options so no one is subjected to the comments:

1. Download the video to your local hard drive, instead of playing it directly from YouTube.
2. Play the video from the TEDTalks website, instead of YouTube.
3. Play the video on YouTube from within the TEDTalk channel, rather than on its separate YouTube page. (This view doesn’t show comments.)*

According to his TED bio page:

Inveterate tinkerer Peter Haas is the co-founder of AIDG, the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, which connect people to electricity, sanitation and clean water through a combination of business incubation, education, and outreach.

Peter’s work would be great to share with students who are talking about ways to make a big difference in the world. I’m thinking of work Paul Allison and others are doing with students in the National Writing Project, as well as discussions Bob Sprankle, Cheryl Oakes, and Alice Barr had with Adora Svitak recently. I’m also thinking of the amazing students at TEDxRedmond.

* Hat tip to Daniel Rezac for sharing this great “in channel YouTube video playing” tip in his recent post and screencast, “You-tilizing YouTube in the Classroom.”

Technorati Tags:
engineering, failure, haiti, earthquake, stem, construction, fail

Construction Engineers and Concrete Masons can save MILLIONS of lives (Haiti earthquake story) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 14, 2010.

If you are a teacher in the United States and your curriculum includes historic documents like the US Declaration of Independence, you can and should connect at least an introduction to Charter 8 as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in lessons this year. If you teach social studies, politics and government ANYWHERE on our planet, you should share about Liu Xiaobo and Charter 8 with your students.

John Parker’s article, “Why Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize Matters‘” provides excellent insights why. He writes:

It is fair to say that wider awareness of Charter 08 within China will, just by itself, seriously threaten CCP rule in the long term, even if there are no visible changes in the short term. The Charter’s preamble (translated by Human Rights Watch in China) contains a ringing endorsement of universal human rights:

‘Having experienced a prolonged period of human rights disasters and challenging and tortuous struggles, the awakening Chinese citizens are becoming increasingly aware that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal values shared by all humankind, and that democracy, republicanism, and constitutional government make up the basic institutional framework of modern politics. A “modernization” bereft of these universal values and this basic political framework is a disastrous process that deprives people of their rights, rots away their humanity, and destroys their dignity. Where is China headed in the 21st century? Will it continue with this “modernization” under authoritarian rule, or will it endorse universal values, join the mainstream civilization, and build a democratic form of government? This is an unavoidable decision.’

Considering that Charter 08 verges on being a revolutionary manifesto, it is remarkable that its original authors, including Liu, signed the document with their real names, and were joined in doing so by hundreds of supporters, including many well-known dissidents. Even more remarkably, as the document has circulated around China since December 2008, many thousands of Chinese people, from all walks of life, have added their signatures. Since only a miniscule fraction of China’s population could have seen the Charter before Liu’s Nobel award, this certainly shows that there is genuine support for democracy in China.

Kudos to the Nobel Prize committee for recognizing and amplifying the work of Liu as well as other Chinese government reform advocates. Thankfully, the information landscape has changed fundamentally since the days of the Cultural Revolution in China.

There are many things as human beings we simply must know. Knowledge about our fundamental rights is on that list.

China matters, the people of China matter, and human rights matter. Go forth and have conversations with others you know (including students!) about Charter 8 and Liu Xiaobo!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

China, Democracy, Charter 8 and Liu Xiaobo originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 13, 2010.

It was wonderful to be met at the airport by Jeff Utecht and Tim Lauer. Of all the travel hours, actually leaving the security area of customs and moving “out” into the public airport pickup area is often the most uncertain – Wondering who will be there to meet me, if I’ll recognize them, if they’ll have a sign, etc. Friendly and familiar faces are a wonderful thing when you travel halfway around the world.

After talking with Jeff in the van from the airport and briefly doing a few things on my computer here in my room, it definitely appears the content filtering situation is much more locked down now than it was in 2007 when I first traveled to Shanghai. Back then both Twitter and Facebook were accessible, now both are blocked – Along with Hootsuite, which I use as a Twitter client. I’ve heard Julie Lindsey and others discuss this situation, but here we are – And no access to those social networks directly unless I activate or utilize a proxy service like I did in 2007. (Then I used Proxify.) Skype is open, however, and I was able to make a call to check in with both my wife and mom. Gmail is open, but Google Docs is blocked. Google Maps is available, and I started a new custom map to show where I went yesterday and today… and I’ll add to this during my week and a half here.

View Learning 2.010 Shanghai in a larger map

I’ll find out what the local teachers and students recommend for a proxy service tomorrow, and probably invest in a short term membership in one so I can have access to blocked sites like Twitter, Facebook and Google Docs while I’m here. Interestingly most all wiki sites are blocked in China, but WikiSpaces still is NOT. We’re using a locally installed version of Moodle for the conference, which will be great. I was initially able to both view images on Flickr as well as upload images to the site, but for some reason now I can’t view any images there. I’m not sure if that’s a filtering issue or something else. Thankfully my blog is NOT blocked in China, so I can post to it without a proxy. Since I have my WordPress site configured with the Twitter Tools Plugin, it will still auto-post the titles of my new posts to Twitter, which will cross-post to Facebook. It’s nice that functionality will not be affected by the Chinese content filters.

I’ll likely conduct a more thorough exploration of what sites I typically use are blocked in China at this point, but I did also notice this evening Posterous isn’t accessible. It should be possible to POST to Posterous via email, but Posterous sites themselves don’t appear to be accessible without a proxy. WordPress.com and EduBlogs ARE accessible, however, so it would be possible to configure a Posterous blog to cross-post to one of those WordPress-based sites and access it here without a proxy. I considered doing that for our 5 Photo Stories Posterous blog, to create a WordPress-based “mirror” site that’s accessible from China, but the problem is embedded content from Posterous isn’t accessible when it’s cross-posted to another site or on the actual Posterous servers. Tim Lauer uses Posterous a lot to post to his main blog now, and you can see what it looks like here behind the Chinese content filters: No images.

Perhaps most importantly, I can now confirm “Words with Friends” is NOT blocked in China, so my ongoing, critical scrabble games with family and friends will NOT have to be interrupted by our farther-than-usual geographic separation.

Technorati Tags:
china, content, filtering, travel, shanghai

Safely in Shanghai – Behind the Chinese Content Filters originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 14, 2010.

This past May, a devastating hailstorm in Oklahoma City totaled my less than 1 year old (for me) 2006 Honda Hybrid car.

I loved this car. It regularly got over 40 miles to the gallon, and sometimes (depending on driving conditions) could get close to 50 MPG. It had a range about twice that of my old Toyota 4Runner, and was fun to drive as well. If our family circumstances were different, I would have loved to replace that car with a used Toyota Prius or a fully electric car. Miles Electric, the company whose car I test drove in the first video above (in April 2009) has a Tulsa, Oklahoma, office. At the time I made this video with my kids, they had plans to bring a highway speed vehicle to market. Currently their website shows they are only selling low speed cars and trucks. I would love to find out more about their plans for higher speed vehicles. I don’t foresee income for our family in the near term which would let me buy a Tesla car, so options like those of Miles Electric seemed to be my best bet.

Thanks to this documentary, however, I’m now aware of a few more options. First, there is the option of getting an “Electric vehicle conversion” or EV kit. The film said the cost of these can be about $8000, to take a “regular” gas-powered car and convert it to a fully electric vehicle. Although certainly expensive, an EV conversion looks to be far cheaper than a new $33K Chevy Volt.

Before watching this documentary, I (like most people in the world, I’d guess) had never heard of the General Motors EV1 car. What a beautiful car!

photo credit: TimothyJ

It is a tragedy that GM destroyed these vehicles following the end of their consumer leases in 1999, ostensibly so more consumer demand would NOT grow for zero emission EV cars. That story is, of course, the major theme of “Who Killed the Electric Car?” The photos and video of the crushed EV1s are frustrating to watch, particularly as you contemplate the reasons why powerful, wealthy corporate and national interests in our world opposed the development of EV technologies like this.

For more on that story specifically, in addition to this documentary, check out the article, “Why did GM crush the EV1??”

In addition to EV Conversion kits, before watching this documentary I also didn’t know about plug-in hybrids. Hymotion is one type of commercially offered conversion kit for the Toyota Prius, which can offer the benefits of an all-electric driving experience for commutes close to home but the longer range of a gas-powered hybrid car for longer trips. The English WikiPedia article for “Plug-in hybrid” gives more background:

A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), also known as a plug-in hybrid, is a hybrid vehicle with rechargeable batteries that can be restored to full charge by connecting a plug to an external electric power source. A PHEV shares the characteristics of both a conventional hybrid electric vehicle, having an electric motor and an internal combustion engine; and of an all-electric vehicle, also having a plug to connect to the electrical grid. Most PHEVs on the road today are passenger cars, but there are also PHEV versions of commercial vehicles and vans, utility trucks, buses, trains, motorcycles, scooters, and military vehicles.

The cost for electricity to power plug-in hybrids for all-electric operation has been estimated at less than one quarter of the cost of gasoline. Compared to conventional vehicles, PHEVs can reduce air pollution, dependence on petroleum and fossil fuels, and greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming unless the PHEV is charged by plugging into an electric utility where coal is the predominant fuel used to generate electricity. PHEVs also eliminate the problem of “range anxiety” associated to all-electric vehicles, because the combustion engine works as a backup when the batteries are depleted. Plug-in hybrids use no fossil fuel during their all-electric range and produce lower greenhouse gas emissions if their batteries are charged from renewable electricity. Other benefits include improved national energy security, fewer fill-ups at the filling station, the convenience of home recharging, opportunities to provide emergency backup power in the home, and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) applications.

That sounds GREAT to me. You’re not going to see one of these in my driveway in the next few months, but maybe someday.

Before watching this documentary, I’d never heard of Stanford Ovshinsky. He is a brilliant inventor, and his battery technologies are in virtually all the hybrid electric vehicles on the road today. I was amazed as well as saddened to learn after General Motors purchased his battery technology to use (eventually) in the EV1, they sold a controlling interest in that technology to Texaco. Think Texaco raced to monetize the disruptive potential of Ovshinsky’s genius? Of course not.

I’m also VERY moved by the confluence of interests represented by groups like Plug In America, which is referenced towards the end of “Who Killed the Electric Car?” Former US CIA director James Woolsey explains how our continued dependence on foreign oil in the United States presents a continuing national security threat which a shift to electric vehicles could constructively address – for the LONG term. Woolsey is a founder of the “Set America Free Coalition,” and wrote the April 15, 2010 article in the Wall Street Journal, “How To End America’s Addiction To Oil.” An archived PDF version of this article is also available from the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, in case this article is later taken offline or locked to non-subscribers of the WSJ. Consider a few of the alarming statements from his article:

1. If it [oil] reaches $125 a barrel again, as it did in 2008, then approximately half the wealth in the world—above and below ground—will be controlled by OPEC nations.
2. Oil profits enhance the ability of dictators and autocrats to dominate their people. This is one reason that eight of the top nine oil exporters (Norway is the exception) are dictatorships or autocratic kingdoms, as are virtually all of the 22 states that depend on oil and gas for at least two-thirds of their exports.
3. Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth enables it to control around 90% of the world’s Islamic institutions even though it has less than 2% of the world’s Muslims. (For more on the impact of the Saudis on global Islam, see Yaroslav Trofimov’s 2005 book, “Faith At War: A Journey On The Frontlines Of Islam, From Baghdad To Timbuktu.” I reviewed this excellent book here on July 3rd this year.)

Bumper stickers like this are not uncommon where we live in central Oklahoma, in the heart of oil country.

Woolsey explains in his article why this advocacy campaign is inherently limited in its potential impact:

Drill, baby, drill? Some suggest that if we replace foreign with domestic oil our problems will be solved. Domestic drilling does help reduce oil’s share—a billion dollars a day—of our huge balance of payments deficit, and it adds some domestic employment.

But that’s it. OPEC has very large reserves and cheap extraction costs, while domestic drilling costs for new oil will be many times that of the Saudis. We can’t drill our way out of the cartel’s control of the global oil market.

In his article, Woolsey makes the case for four different ways we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil in the United States in the short AND the long term. In addition to supporting “The Pickens Plan” (as I do) he advocates for new legislation which would force car manufacturers to produce flex-fuel vehicles. “Set America Free” views FFVs (flexible fuel vehicles) as well as plug-in hybrids as the SOLUTION to our current oil addiction.

The national security implications here should be glaringly obvious to every voting U.S. citizen, as well as those too young to vote yet.

While the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” is depressing to watch at times, it’s also inspirational to see the advocacy work of so many groups who are taking ACTION to address many of the issues this film raises. Change is difficult for everyone, and certainly our wealthiest petroleum companies as well as oil-rich nations are not interested in a shift to a greener future. I am, however, and so are lots of other people around our country.

Bring on the EVs.

Technorati Tags:
car, documentary, electric, film, politics, saudi, security, unitedstates, video, ev, electriccar, pickens, plan, energy, oil

Bring on the EVs (electric vehicles,) EV Conversion Kits, ZERO Emissions Cars and Plug-In Hybrids originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 22, 2010.

I only have a few minutes before I present today, but I want to briefly share some of the fantastic resources which Mike discussed earlier this week. Tammy showed me these briefly today after I arrived.

NewsOK | nDepth – A great collection of stories about individuals sharing amazing life experiences

One Man, One Vote – Robert Jones’ Journey from Jim Crow to Barack Obama (an example from the nDepth website collection)

NewsOK’s May 3rd Tornado website – Be sure to check out the Google Map mashup with clickable media elements along the tornado’s path

I love sites which use geo-apps like Google Maps in this way, to empower visitors to access photos, videos, text, and STORIES through geographic exploration.

Woo hoo for convergence journalism – and for creative, passionate storytelling geeks!

Technorati Tags:
education, learning, oklahoma, school, may3, tornado, newsok, convergence, journalism, mike, koehler, mkokc, smirk, smirknewmedia

Convergence Media Examples from Mike Koehler of Smirk New Media originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 29, 2010.

This podcast is a fortuitous interview recording with Stacia Reddish, who was the US Air Force Public Affairs officer in charge of the “NORAD Tracks Santa” program for five years. Stacia was responsible for getting Google involved with NORAD Tracks Santa and taking the program (which dates from the 1950s) to the next level with Google Earth, KML files, embedded YouTube videos, and more. Check out the podcast shownotes for links to the official NORAD Tracks Santa website, YouTube channel, and more. I interviewed Stacia at Camp Alexander, Colorado, when we were both there for the closing campfire of our boys’ summer camp experience.

Show Notes:

1. Official NORAD Tracks Santa website (active December 1st)
2. Track Santa in Google Earth (active December 1st)
3. NORAD Tracks Santa Official YouTube Channel
4. NORAD Tracks Santa Wikipedia article
5. NORAD’s Information Page about NORAD Tracks Santa
6. NORAD Tracks Santa 2009 Trailer (YouTube)
7. NORAD Tracks Santa 2008 Trailer (YouTube)
8. Google Earth
9. Camp Alexander, Colorado

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Podcast354: Behind the Curtain of the NORAD Tracks Santa Program originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 25, 2010.

What a fantastic afternoon of fun! I do not have a lot of experience white water rafting, and this was my son’s first time ever. It’s been at least ten years since I’ve been on a raft, on the Snake River in Grand Teton National Park. That was an evening dinner and wildlife watching raft trip, however, which was quite different than what we experienced yesterday on the Arkansas River. It’s amazing to realize this is the same Arkansas River (which has its headwaters about 60 miles from where we rafted, up closer to Leadville) which eventually meanders through Kansas and down through Tulsa town about two hours from where we live in Edmond, Oklahoma. It’s certainly a much more exciting river when it’s in Colorado! My only other rafting experiences have been on a river near Cody, Wyoming, but I don’t think it was quite as long or as exciting as our adventures yesterday on the Arkansas.

Interestingly, in Kansas the Arkansas River is pronounced the “AR-KANSAS River.” In Colorado, as in Arkansas, they say “ar-kan-saw.” That’s the pronunciation the English Wiktionary recognizes as well.

If you’re contemplating a Scout, family or other group rafting trip to Colorado, I highly recommend Buffalo Joe’s! Our guide, Ben, was masterful. We were blessed with a hot day (temperatures around 90 degrees) and partly cloudy skies. The water temperature was around 40 degrees Fahrenheit, but that felt GREAT in the Colorado heat! Our starting point yesterday was in Buena Vista, Colorado.

Our troop rode home all night and morning from Colorado in a charter bus, arriving safely back in Edmond at 7 am today. Our temperatures today in central Oklahoma have exceeded 100 degrees! We’re missing Colorado already!

Many thanks to guest bloggers Miguel Guhlin, Beth Still, Dawn Danker, and Alice Barr who shared some great posts while Alexander and I were having fun at Camp Alexander, near Woodland Park, Colorado! It’s great to be reunited with our family, but I’m missing the mountains – and especially the wonderful summertime temperatures at 8000 feet above sea level!

I know I missed out on some super learning and networking experiences at BLC last week in Boston. Fortunately, as always volunteer “stringer” Bob Sprankle has already started his SUPERB series of BLC podcasts – and I’m going to get started listening to them this week!

Technorati Tags:
scout, scouts, raft, rafting, colorado, fun, travel

River Rafting in Colorado with Buffalo Joe’s on the Arkansas River originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 18, 2010.

1. The Crusades Through Arab Eyes by Amin Maalouf (no Kindle version yet)
2. A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin (no Kindle version yet)
3. Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation’s Odyssey by Fouad Ajami (Kindle version IS available)
4. The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice since 1967 by Fouad Ajami (no Kindle version yet)
5. Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong (Kindle version IS available)

I also plan to read “Understanding the Koran: A Quick Christian Guide to the Muslim Holy Book” by Mateen Elass soon as well. Mateen grew up in Saudi Arabia and is the pastor at our church in Edmond, Oklahoma. He spoke at the 2010 Men’s Conference at Mo Ranch on things many Christians don’t know about the Quran and the Muslim faith, and has an amazing knowledge of the culture and people of the Middle East as well as Islam.

Have you read any superb books about the Middle East or Islam that you’d recommend? Years ago I read “Caravans” by James Michener. I was interested to see Amazon now lists this book title as “Caravans: A Novel of Afghanistan.” I haven’t been thorough at this point in my use of Google Books, but have added a few books to “My Google Books Library.” I’ve invested slightly more time adding books to my profile on Goodreads, but haven’t settled on ONE book sharing site to really invest time adding, rating and reviewing books. I’ve dabbled only briefly with Shelfari. I suppose at some point I should “decide” which of these book sites to make my primary space for sharing books. Have you settled on a book sharing site that you love and recommend to others?

photo credit: aprilzosia

Technorati Tags:
amazon, arabia, book, books, east, google, islam, middle, muslim, reading, recommendations, saudi, middleeast, shelfari, googlebooks, goodreads, understand, elass

More book recommendations about the Middle East and Islam originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 6, 2010.

“The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.”

Do the people of Afghanistan WANT their nation to be transformed into a more first-world economy via mining industrialization? Somehow I doubt there will be a referendum on this.

Anyone else think this sounds remarkably similar to the plot line of “Avatar?”

Via http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html
Sent from my iPad

Posted via email from wesley fryer’s posterous

Mining could transform the economy of Afghanistan originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 14, 2010.

Geo-Apps: Geographic Curriculum Connections

Talk with Media: Using Copyright – Friendly Images

Videos from my breakout sessions are embedded in the above links, but videos from the keynote are not. Here they are, in case you’re interested in checking them out.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Technorati Tags:
colby, digital, edtech, education, icil2010, kansas, storychaser, storychasers, storytelling, technology

Resources from today’s #icil2010 presentations originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 3, 2010.

After having to evacuate the theater because of roof damage which led to leaks and falling ceiling tiles, we discovered my car was among about 30 in the parking lot with broken glass.

Thankfully the windshield was not completely destroyed, as the rearview glass was. We were able to drive home safely after clearing the broken glass fragments off our front seats.

This heart-shaped hail shot was the most notable.

You can get a better idea of the size of this glass puncture by comparing it to my hand in this image. I’m guessing this was caused by multiple hailstones.

I had my son record a short video of me using my iPhone, which I uploaded with the CNN iPhone app to the iReporter website.

For some reason, however, this the video did not upload and process successfully on CNN’s iReporter website. This is the second time I’ve tried to submit a video iReport with the app, and neither time has worked.

Thankfully I don’t think there were any reported tornados in this storm today, as there were last Monday. I think we had 12 tornados Monday in all in Oklahoma.

It’s definitely spring time.

Technorati Tags:
car, okc, oklahoma, photo, video, hail, weather, storm, damage, tinseltown, severe, pictures

Large hail damages car windows and Tinseltown Theater in Oklahoma City today originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 16, 2010.

This session provides participants with an understanding of how to design interactive and immersive learning environments by blending together a wide variety of different online media. Participants will have an opportunity to examine media rich resources that can be blended together through the use of embedding techniques. Participants will then learn how these resources, along with primary source content and more traditional online resources such as Web sites, can be combined together with contemporary learning platforms such as wikis and Google Earth to create dynamic learning environments for students.

Everything today is on jakes.editme.com/immersive
I am very enthused about these tools we’ll use today to create customized learning enviorments

Let’s rethink the way we share content today, and consider new ways to remix it

2 platforms today
- wikis
- Google Earth

4.3 million images on Flickr now

Now a full day of content is being uploaded every hour to YouTube
- social media growth is amazing

Today we will use:
- SlideShare
- Google Streetview
- Issuu
- Scrbd
- Jing
- VoiceThread
- Dipity
- RSS
- Etherpad
- iPadio
- delicious
- Slide.com
- Wordle
- and more….

These are all sites that accept content from everybody
- we can remix and redirect it to meet our instructional needs

1 – ID instructional need
2- Get media
3- design and mix together in the platform
4- create the learning environment

The ability to mash up these pieces of content

Define literacy
- traditionally that is reading and writing

Jason Ohler” “Being literate in a real-world sense means being able to read and write using the media forms of the day, whatever they ay be…”
- we are talking about communication

Donald Leu: Do you see the Internet (and web 2.0) as a ‘context in which to read, write and communicate?’

New context for literacy today: The Web
- teachers can really relate to and buy into this idea: same goals for literacy, but a new context

Transliteracy: The ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms and tools from orality through print, TV, radio and film, to networked digital media (from Socialtext)

This gets to the question of what it means to be literate” in 2010

All of these tools produce EMBED CODE

teachers design instruction: that is what we do every day
- now with this process we have deeper resources to tap into

wikis allow us to have a website that anyone can edit

what do server stats say about when kids are online at sites like these (wikis)
- kids come on at 9 pm, stay on till about 1:30 am
- we track this in our district

We are excited in our district about leveraging online entertainment time into online learning time

Also will create with Google Earth
- placemarks
- think of placemarks as “containers for content”

I can teach you to create content in Google Earth in about 10 min

Now showing a series of images to activate

If I needed to teach cellular devision () I could just lecture about it

or I can say: Cancer is runaway cell division
- describe tumor growth, invasive development, etc….

I am framing this content (cellular devision) in the conext of a real world idea: Cancer
- so the students’ challenge in groups is to come up with a plan to explain cellular division
- I will provide a wealth of resources via my wiki for students to use
- then I facilitate their work

Elements in the wiki resource tool I’m providing:
- Critical Reading
- Media Platforms
- Resources
- Process: examples
- Embedding Etherpad sites
- Online HTML Editor
- much more…

All of these are on jakes.editme.com/immersive

I was 4 year old when JFK was assassinated
- when I visited Dealey Plaza I was overwhelmed with thoughts of what happened there
- I can’t take kids to Dallas, but I can create an immersive online enviornment for students to experience that place and the history/issues of the time

David’s JFK immersive lesson is on immersivemedia.wikispaces.com/Kennedy+Assassination

Now showing in Google maps how to navigate straight to a location using Google Street View (drag person icon from zoom bar off onto the map)

There is an “x” on the street in Dealy Plaza for the location on the street where JFK received his fatal head shot

WikiSpaces handles embed code from all sorts of sites VERY well
- I AGREE, THIS IS A BIG REASON TO USE WIKISPACES TODAY INSTEAD OF GOOGLE SITES. SITES IS MUCH MORE RESTRICTIVE ON EMBED CODE WHICH CAN BE USED.

MY QUESTION IS: AS TEACHERS CREATE THESE, ARE THEIR GOOD OER (OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES) PLACES TO LINK/POST THESE, AND WAYS TO READILY LICENSE THE WORK UNDER CREATIVE COMMONS?

David’s district used EtherPad all the time
- iEtherpad now works
- piratepad.net

With Etherpad you can put a directory name after the Etherpad

We do a “fishbowl” activities

Etherpad OPTIONS let you remove and add colors as well as line numbers
- there are IMPORT / EXPORT options

Etherpad is free and very straightforward to setup
- no way we know of to restrict access other than using a cryptic URL others can’t guess

Sneaky thing for Etherpad: Use this custom Embed code

THIS IS A GREAT TRICK!!!

I NEED TO TAKE NOTES FROM THE GREAT WAYS DAVID ORGANIZES AND SHARES HIS WORKSHOP CONTENT…

Aside: Chicago River course direction was reversed historically so it flows now into the Illinois River instead of Lake Michigan

Now embedding a video about Asian Carp (a huge problem) into a Google Earth document

Now showing how you can create a FOLDER for placemarks within Google Earth

I NEED TO FIND OUT ABOUT WAYS TO GENERATE GOOGLE MAPS / GOOGLE EARTH VIEWS OF VIDEOS WE HAVE IN CELEBRATE OKLAHOMA VOICES

Last tool David is sharing:
Dipity lets you create timelines that you can share with the world. You can share the latest news, YouTube videos, Flickr photos, Twitter and more.

WOW, ANOTHER GREAT SESSION FROM DAVID JAKES. I LOVE GEOGRAPHY MASHUPS LIKE THIS. DAVID IS A MASTER-LEARNER AND A FANTASTIC PRESENTER. SO MUCH TO LEARN NOT ONLY FROM HIS CONTENT/IDEAS BUT FROM HIS STYLE AND METHODS. GREAT WEBSITES OF RESOURCE MATERIAL.

Technorati Tags:
geography, google, #pbtechconf, pbtechconf, djakes, david, jakes, ge

Creating Immersive Learning Environments with Mixed Media by David Jakes #pbtechconf originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 26, 2010.

GeoApps are applications which permit learners to connect concepts to geography. Google Maps is a browser-based Geo-application environment, and Google Earth is a software-based GeoApp. We’ll explore both and learn how to use resources created by others as well as make our own.

The first half of our (almost) two hour lesson yesterday was a review from the past week. It was great to be able to share not only exemplary video reflection blog posts from some of my students, but also several of their VoiceThread digital stories which are really superb for different reasons. In the second hour we focused on GeoApps, and my content was based on the Google Workshop for Educators (GWE) curriculum I used in November 2009 when I helped lead a GWE with Lisa Thumann in Austin, Texas at the Virtual Schools Conference. One notable addition to this was the following video, “Why We Need Pi,” which my children and I made a year ago for Pi Day (March 14th / 3.14) for the now-discontined “Film on the Fly” cell phone digital storytelling contest. This highlights a creative way the measurement features in Google Earth can be used to support mathematics learning.

The lecturecast of yesterday’s class (my 2nd session) is available via our T4T Blip.tv channel. I have the channel set to auto-post each new episode to our T4T Scribes / Shared Learning Blog on Blogger. For the first time, I used the web-based image editing site Picnik last night (for the first time) to add my weekly title to the show image for the video. I was interested to learn Picnik was recently purchased by Google. Online photo editing is a great feature for Google to add to its online app kit. I hope online video editing is next!

Technorati Tags:
geoapps, geography, google, earth, map, maps, googleearth, measure, measurement

How measurements in Google Earth can support math learning (Why We Need Pi) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 4, 2010.

This is the western-most providence in China which has an area of over 600,000 square miles, and as of November 5th still had Internet access cut off to the ENTIRE providence as a result of the protests, riots, and violence in Urumqi in July. Read Cui Jia’s Nov 5th article “The missing link” from the English China Daily News for additional background. This December 2009 National Geographic article provides MUCH more background about these events, their precedents, and the ways in which the September 11th attacks on the United States prompted the Chinese government to begin a unified spin campaign portraying Uyghur groups (pronounced “WEE-gur” and sometimes spelled “Uygur”) as “international terrorists” in solidarity with those opposed by the United States in its “global [and apparently perpetual] war on terror.”

I hope my reference of these topics and issues in my blog will not result in my domain being blocked in China. According to the National Geographic article, publicly mentioning Rebiya Kadeer‘s name in Xinjiang can invite governmental reprisals, including imprisonment. In this post, I am NOT explicitly advocating support for East Turkestan, the World Uyghur Congress, or other groups advocating for political change in Xinjiang. What I AM doing is highlighting this recent article in National Geographic, and asserting that the issues it raises are critical for those interested in understanding modern China.

The following 69 second YouTube video, “The Other Tibet: China’s Uygur People,” is available from the National Geographic Society’s official YouTube channel and is a “teaser trailer” for this article, “The Other Tibet.” All the photographs used in the print edition of the article are included in the video. I don’t know how long NG has been publishing article video trailers like this, but I think it’s innovative as well as effective. Take a look.

Of course, National Geographic author Matthew Teague’s use of maps in this article is exemplary. This one shows the relative locations of major cities in Xinjiang including Urumqi, Karamay, Dushanzi, Kashi (Kashgar,) Kuqa, and Shache. As a resource-rich region, Xinjiang reminds me of both Wyoming and Alaska in the United States. The strategic importance of those states to the United States is quite similar to they way the Chinese government perceives Xinjiang.

The 5000 year old silk road, the 2500 mile West-East gas pipeline (completed in 2004), railroads, and highways now connecting Xinjiang with the rest of China are reflected on this map. What is not shown, but is discussed in the article in detail, is the impact of the Chinese government’s incentive policies encouraging Han Chinese to move west to Xinjiang since 1949. The Uyghur People of Xinjiang are Turkic and predominantly Islamic. Consider the following graph I created and published this evening using data from this article and Google Spreadsheets.

You’ll recall the Chinese revolution (the final stage of military conflict in the 1946–1950 Chinese Civil War) ended in 1949.

Now consider the following paragraph from this National Geographic article:

The big business in Xinjiang is oil, but all that oil is controlled from Beijing by state-owned energy companies. Many of the good jobs in Xinjiang are government jobs, and employees can advance more readily if they join the Communist Party, which requires renouncing their religion. And most Uygurs won’t do that. The result is an ironic and combustible symmetry: As Han settlers pour in, Uygurs, unable to find work in their fantastically wealthy and spacious homeland, migrate east to work in privately owned factories in crowded coastal cities.

Does the above graph, paired with these sentences, begin to paint a picture of why there is widespread and deep-seated discontent in Xinjiang? Take some time and read the full article. It is very important that we, in the West, do not view Muslims as a monolithic group and naively regard the Uygur people as terrorist allies of Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, etc. The history here is much more complicated than that.

There are big reasons why Internet access is still blocked in ALL of Xinjiang. Nine people were executed earlier this month in China because of their alleged involvement in the Urumqui riots. Adrienne Mong reported today from Beijing that international calls are still blocked to and from the province. Relatively speaking, I predict we have just begun to hear news from Xinjiang here in the West. The Chinese government appears to be making all efforts to prevent further news from the area from leaking out via mainstream media or citizen journalist channels. Given what happened a few months ago with the 2009 Iranian election protests and social media, it’s an open question whether or not the Chinese government can stop all news from leaking out of this area or prevent all individuals from organizing using digital technologies.

This 2 minute, 15 second interview with NG article author Matthew Teague gives more insight into how severe and complete the information restrictions in Xinjiang still are today. Unfortunately as a Bing Video you may have to install an updated version of Silverlight to view this, but even if you do it’s worth it to watch the accompanying B-roll footage and hear Matthew describe his recent experiences in Xinjiang writing this article.

Stay tuned, you can bet we’re going to hear more from “The Other Tibet” in the months to come.

Technorati Tags:
article, china, chinese, national, protest, zinjiang, urumqui, Uyghur, Uyghurs, geographic, matthew, teague, censorship, rebiya, kadeer

Learning about Xinjiang, Urumqui, and China’s Uygur People originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 26, 2009.

This week Oklahoma educators participated in our 29th “Celebrate Oklahoma Voices” workshop since 2008, and created some fantastic digital stories about the history, geography, and people of our great state.

Did you know Oklahoma is home to a growing black bear population and just had its first open hunting season for bears this year? Brad Hill used photos from his own game camera to create the 1 min, 17 second video, “Bears of Leflore County.”

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

When you think of tar pits, you might think of southern California and La Brea. You also should think of Lawton, Oklahoma! Alba Dissinger used her own photos to create and share the video “Fort Sill Tar Pit” to tell about this unique archeological site in Oklahoma.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Do you know the bison herd in Western Oklahoma in the Wichita Mountains was repopulated thanks to several bison sent from New York and the Bronx Zoo? These facts and many more are shared by Sydney Perry in her video, “Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge.” Sidney used the free website drop.io to have friend and refuge docent Katherine Hunt narrate this six minute video using her cell phone!

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Kacey Kinsey leads a Girls’ Circle each week in the after-school program at her school, and it continues to make a HUGE difference in the lives of students who participate. Her video “Girls Circle” tells this story, including the voices of her students.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

What’s the longest marriage you’ve heard of? Michelle LeAnn Slay‘s grandparents have been married for 70 years! Michelle used iMovie along with Audacity to create the touching video, “70 Years of Love and Marriage” during our COV workshop this week.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Isn’t it amazing to see the creative and powerful media messages Oklahoma educators can craft in an intensive, 2.5 day workshop on digital storytelling?! All these videos and more (494 in all, as of this writing) are available for FREE and OPEN access in our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices online learning community. Our collaborative storytelling efforts continue! Great work, Oklahoma educators!

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Oklahoma Bears, Tar Pits, Mountains, Girls Circles, and Marriages of 70+ years originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 20, 2009.

Aaron’s faculty page at UM

We need to figure out what “transformation” looks like
- think, act, feel

What is technology transformation?

9.5 guidelines for technology transformation (joke)
- going to show three environments: Adventure Learning: GoNOrth!
- GeoThentic
- SecondLife

reaches about 4 million people worldwide

From the University of Minnesota website:

GoNorth! is a free adventure learning program for the K-12 classroom developed at the University of Minnesota. Our team of educators, scientists, and K-12 teacher explorers are dog sledding LIVE to 5 circumpolar Arctic locations (2006 – 2010) to educate our audience around the world.

The online education program is anchored in natural and social science curricula for K-12 classrooms. GoNorth! provides each participating classroom with a free 300+ page curriculum and activity guide, a different set for each trek. Activities on the trail are synched real-time to the curriculum.

Each spring, during the 14-16 week LIVE event, learners enter the online classroom for powerful collaborative opportunities. We present live field updates and field research findings in collaboration with NASA and the National Science Foundation.

The result is a community of motivated learners on the Internet acquiring knowledge from the expedition, the Arctic peoples, subject matter experts, and from each other.

Join the team and more than 3 million learners worldwide at PolarHusky.com.

GeoThenic supported by the National Geographic Society that helps students learn geography

We are designing experiences, not products
- designing for engagement, not completion

I want my students to have valuable experiences throughout the entire learning process
Now showing a 30 second video

University of Minnesota

As a former K-12 teacher, I always wondered why we didn’t use the affordances of technology and bring them into the classroom?
- so I created “aventure learning”
- a hybrid online education approach that provides learners with opportunities to explore real-world issues through eauthentic learning experiences within collaborative…

It is not a “Where’s Waldo” program because it is focused on a theoretical foundation

1- We first identify an issue and a place

2- We next think about the narrative, the story we want to share with studetns

3- we develop the curriculum

4- we develop as many collaborative possibilities as we can

it is delivered FREE to everyone on the Internet
there are many “synced” learning opportunities with students
- as we traverse the landscape, we are collecting a variety of data on an ongoing basis which enhances learning
- we are collecting a variety of media as well as we travel, anything that can enhance learning for the students

First trip we did we went across the Canadian arctic
http://www.polarhusky.com

We deliver educational assets “from the tent” to schools worldwide every week
- we also collect snowflake data for NASA and use that within our curriculum
- we also collect and share ecological knowledge, knowledge from the elders, and share that as well

When we arrive in the communities, hundreds of students come down because they have been using our curriculum and participating in our activities
- this photo is in the middle of the arctic, where there is little more than ice and snow everyehwere

Next project was GoNorth, each year had a different focus on a region and specific topic

Here is a 2008 video of Aaron

Now discussing Geothentic
- wanted to scaffold the use of geospacial technologies with learners

- focuses on students solving problems: what areas of the world are most impacted by climate change, where is the best place to build a hospital in a specific community, etc.

Now talking about using Second Life, to design experiences
- trust is so important in an environment
- traditionally trust comes from the instructor, than from content, then design
- in online learning environments, that is flipped: trust must come first from design, then from the content, then the instructor

Learner as designers
- we try to develop opportunities for students to be designers
- in the go north project, students share their own videos with each other, from Australia, to the United States, up to the Arctic

Example from Geothemtic: student providing a justification for where they would place their hospital in the bay area, based on their analysis of the data

I also try to tap into the expertise of the students in my classroom, and thereby model “learners as experts”
- example in students’ blog, life in Kaktovik, 5th and 6th grade experts from Arctic Alaska

working together without boundaries
- designing collaboration and discourse opportunities within our learning environments
- we have both synchronous and asynchronous opportunities in GoNorth!
- showing an example of a meteorologist from a local weather station was the expert for our live chat

Here is a video about Aaron from Vimeo (OF COURSE VIMEO AS A VIDEO SHARING SITE IS BLOCKED HERE IN CHINA)

I try to always keep an eye for aesthetics

I want students to develop a self-narrative, when they are so excited about a project and learning that they go and share it with others

As an example, in the GoNorth project we always tell a story from the perspective of one of our dogs, in this case “Timber”
- students begin to follow this on a daily basis, and for many this became part of their narrative
- students really connected with this aspect of the project (showing photo of kids holding signs at the airport when Aaron came back, about Timber)
- for this reason, I try to develop narratives within my online learning envrionments

eighth principle: I try to design for TPAK: Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge
- people like TPAK, but many are not sure how to design with it or how to assess with it

So in our project, there are three different ways teachers can assess with TPAK
- one based on reflection
- another based on where students have spent the most time in the learning environment
- another is based on an objective test

We now have developed User-Driving Adventure Learning (AL 2.0) so others can develop their own adventure learning projects
- we have had many different attempts to use technology to transform education

I always try to help my learners become designers
- the self-reflective process is very important
- it is now up to YOU!

Overview of the principles we have outlined together
1- designing experiences, not products
2- trust
3- learning as designers
4- learners as experts
5- aesthetics
6- self-narrative
7- TPAK
8- innovative pedagogy
- design as a learner!

Now Q&A:
- these iterations from these learning environments have gone through numerous changes over time
- we can’t stand still and be satisfied with doing things as we’ve done them in the past

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china, education, integration, iste, technology, #xihu09, nets

Designing for Learning: Engaging Students and Teachers from the Arctic to Australia by Aaron Doering originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 1, 2009.

Web3D History
- 1994 VRML
- 1998 VRML Consortium renamed Web3D Consortium
- 2004 new VRML standard: Extensible 3d (X3D)

Digital Museum and its key technologies
- utilizes multimedia and network technologies to realize all kinds of features/functionalities utilized by real museums

Example application of Panoramic Surround Technology

There are several different versions of the Chinese Forbidden City as a virtual museum

This one is from the mainland: www.chinavir.net/beijing/guong (I COPIED THIS WEB ADDRESS WRONG AND AM THEREFORE NOT LINKING IT– IF YOU KONW THE CORRECT URL PLEASE LET ME KNOW WITH A COMMENT)

This one is a Taiwan version: www.npm.gov.tw (INTERESTINGLY THIS ONE IS BLOCKED HERE IN CHINA AND CAN ONLY BE ACCESSED VIA A PROXY)

Another one: www.airiti.com/npmoln

Best one: www.dpm.org.cn (WOW, THIS ONE DOES LOOK FANTASTIC)

Are 10 virtual museums of China now available in English

World Digital Library: released by UNESCO in Summer 2009 – www.wdl.org
- simple technologically, but is collecting a lot of information about different museums

The British Museum online: www.britishmuseum.org
- best example of virtual museum fulfilling educational purposes
- includes webquests: has one about Chinese New Year
- Ancient China: www.ancientchina.co.uk
- Early Imperial China: www.earlyimperialchina.co.uk

VR examples from www.chinavr.net

DVR = distributed virtual reality
- supports users from different locations to access virtual environments synchronously and interact with each other

I COULDN’T FIND A WIKIPEDIA ENTRY FOR DVR, BUT DID FIND “Cave Automatic Virtual Environment” WHICH I HAD NOT ENCOUNTERED PREVIOUSLY

Application of VR using HD 3D stereoscopic glasses

Now showing a bluetooth and laser-based virtual keyboard (cost: RMB 180)

Informal Learning (IL)
- since school was born, learning was divided into formal learning, which happens in specific educational institutes, and informal learning

most of human beings’ skills and knowledge come from informal learning

Categories of informal learning, according to the people involved:
- personal introspection
- two persons’ collaboration
- practice team
- online group

Visiting a digital museum is an important way of informal learning because it could provide a learning environment with rich historical and cultural heritage
- using a digital museum to do historical education related studies would be more visible, immersive, and interesting

Key factors impacting effectiveness of informal learning
- visitor’s prior experiences, interests and motivation
- society and interaction mode among entities
- physical features of museum
- frequencies of accessing

We would like to create a platform for the sharing and creation of more virtual museums

MY COMMENT: ONE OF THE HUGE DIFFERENCES WHICH CAME OUT DURING THE Q&A DISCUSSION ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION, AND DISCUSSIONS WITH OTHER AUDIENCE MEMBERS, IS THAT THE VIRTUAL WORLD DEMONSTRATIONS THAT WERE SHOWN IN THIS SESSION ARE NOT INTERACTIVE, LIKE SECOND LIFE. THESE ARE BEING PROGRAMMED IN VRML, SO YOU CAN HIT THE PAGE LINK IN A BROWSER AND DO NOT NEED TO DOWNLOAD AND USE A SEPARATE CLIENT BROWSER, LIKE YOU DO WITH SL. WE DISCUSSED ISSUES ABOUT CONTENT FILTERING OF SL IN US SCHOOLS. THOSE ARE NOT ISSUES HERE IN CHINA, BECAUSE THESE VR ENVIRONMENTS ARE NOT INTERACTIVE.

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china, education, integration, iste, technology, #xihu09, nets

Web3D virtual reality-based informal learning by Li Yi and Xiuping Ren originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 1, 2009.

Multicultural education is very important, but sometimes classroom activities are limited to just learning about holiday customs and foods in different countries. As we study other parts of the world, we should strive to PERSONALIZE and HUMANIZE learning by making direct connections with others in different contexts. Global Voices Online is one of my favorite websites to use when researching other countries to read individual blogger perspectives about and from those countries. Use the drop down menus at the top of the website to select a country, region, or topic of interest.

If you’re looking to make a direct connection with teachers and students in another country, utilize one or more of the following free websites and learning communities to find a partner classroom: ePals, Teachers Connecting, the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration’s Collaboration Center, the Global Education Collaborative, Global SchoolNet’s Projects Registry, and Classroom 2.0. The K-12 Online Conference is a great place to make connections as well. These links are provided on my workshop wiki, “Connecting and Collaborating with International Teachers Worldwide.”

Students benefit when they are guided to understand that learning does not have to be limited to a purely cognitive, isolated and disconnected experience. Service learning:

… is a method of teaching, learning and reflecting that combines academic classroom curriculum with meaningful service, frequently youth service, throughout the community. As a teaching methodology, it falls under the philosophy of experiential education. More specifically, it integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, encourage lifelong civic engagement, and strengthen communities for the common good.

The National Service Learning Clearinghouse contains a wealth of resources you can use to start and support service learning initiatives in your classroom and school. If you’re involved in a service learning project, consider empowering your students to become Storychasers. Storychasers can use digital and social media technologies to “tell the story” and “chase the story” of their service learning project, heightening awareness and realizing the project’s objectives with powerful communications technologies.

While local community service and action is vital, it is also important to help students understand their decisions and actions can have a global impact. Kiva is an outstanding project to consider joining as an individual and as a classroom to make a real difference in the lives of others through fundraising and providing entrepreneurial loans. According to Kiva’s about page:

We Let You Loan to Low Income Entrepreneurs: Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.

If you join Kiva and make a microloan, consider joining Karl Fisch’s “Shift Happens” Team on Kiva. See Karl’s December 2008 posts, “Give Until It Feels Good: Join Team Shift Happens on Kiva” and “Kiva Update and a Not-So-Modest Proposal.” Students can help determine which country and what person to which they’d like to make a loan, and then track over time the progress of that person in reaching their entrepreneurial goals.

Once the person to whom you and your class have made a loan repays that amount, your “investment capital” is then freed for you to make another loan to someone else. This project can not only help students in your class make more personal learning connections to people in other countries, it can also help students learn about economics and how their actions can make a positive difference in the lives of others fighting poverty, by supporting entrepreneurs. The fact that your class can periodically log in to check up on the “progress” and status of Kiva entrepreneurs to whom you loan money can also add to the potential value and impact of this activity.

A final classroom project idea less focused on “changing the world” through service learning and activism, but none-the-less potentially exciting for students as they expand their geographic worldviews, is to create a classroom “travel bug” and set it loose amidst the world’s geocaches. According to the English WikiPedia:

A Travel Bug is a registered trademark of Groundspeak, Inc. used to describe a dogtag used in Geocaching. It is moved from cache to cache, and its travels can be logged on the geocaching website (www.geocaching.com). Each travel bug tag is printed with a unique PIN, which is needed to post a log online. Some tags are fastened to an object, such as a plastic figurine, before they are put in a cache.
Travel bugs are tracked on the Groundspeak-owned website Geocaching.com, but there are a number of other tracking sites such as Geotag Tracker or Traveler Tags that log other trackable items.

After participating in Beth Goodwin’s ACTEM 2009 workshop last week (“Geocaching In and Out of the Classroom”) and hearing how much fun her own students have had creating geocaches in historical sites of interest around Wells, Maine, I realized that “travel bugs” would make a great classroom project as well. You can choose the “mission” or destination for your travel bug, and that can be directly related to your geographic studies in the classroom. Geocaching can be fun as well as educational, but the learning can be taken to another level through the creation and release of “trackable” items like “travel bugs.”

We need to take global awareness seriously in our families, classrooms, and communities. Silvia Tolisano‘s K12Online07 presentation, “Travel through Space and Time,” is a great professional development session which emphasizes the importance of global awareness and also provides more concrete suggestions for classroom projects that can enhance students’ global literacy.

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Global Awareness, Community Service and Classroom Project Ideas originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 19, 2009.

Thanks to the hard work of many teachers and parents, 148 sixth graders from Classen School of Advanced Studies (a public magnet school) in Oklahoma City Public Schools spent a VERY memorable 4 days together in “outdoor school” this week learning about geology, meteorology, hydrology, fossil hunting, and much more in the best science classroom of all: The great outdoors! Here are a few highlights and reflections from our week of outdoor camp.

Water and rain played a big role in our week, but thankfully it did not impede any of our major activities. On our “three falls” hike, we had to ford or otherwise walk across streams (on rocks or logs) six different times. This was a novel experience for MANY of the students in our group, and probably some of the 28 adults who were sponsors and chaperones. It reminded me of backpacking on the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island, where (in the summer of 1987) I spent many hours hiking up river valleys and crossing streams. No, the topography of the Arbuckles does not equal New Zealand– but few things can beat the opportunity to experience the challenges and thrills of the great outdoors firsthand, wherever you may live! Many of Alexander’s classmates at Classen may never get a chance to hike in New Zealand, but now they can all proudly say they’ve been hiking– a LOT– in Oklahoma’s Arbuckle mountains!

Our activities were organized on a “matrix” schedule designed by Mr. Ed Holtzberger, who has been taking Oklahoma City Public School students to outdoor camps for several decades. I really can’t praise “Mr. H” enough, along with all the other teachers from Classen SAS who made this week possible. While my son has had a variety of previous outdoor experiences thanks to his involvement in Boy Scouting as well as our own family camping trips, it was phenomenal for him to be able to experience “outdoor school” with his new Classen classmates and be exposed to so much contextually-rich, experiential learning in one of the most beautiful parts of our wonderful state. I wish every student could be so fortunate to have a “Mr. H” working MANY, MANY extra hours to provide an outdoor school experience for so many students and parents. It was a week I’m sure we’ll never forget.

Our first scheduled activity was boating on the waterfront, in rowboats and canoes.

For the majority of boys in our cabin (14 in all) this was their first experience paddling or rowing on a lake. No one capsized, but we did have some high stress levels when a caterpillar dropped down onto the life preserver of one of our students! From his reaction, you’d have thought a crocodile had his leg in his jaws! Lots of memorable experiences were had by all, and many of the most memorable were not expected or predicted! When you get a group of students, teachers and parents together in an environment like this with a flexible schedule for learning, amazing things are bound to happen — and of course, they did!

The archery range was definitely a favorite of many of our students this week. Again, many had never had an opportunity to shoot a bow and arrow previously. The archery range was always open for use during free time, and just required a parent to supervise and manage the range when students used it. I think our cabin group shot at the archery range at least 4 – 5 times this week, to include a final trip this morning after they finished packing and cleaning up our cabin.

A big highlight was learning about fossils and actually finding them. Most of the fossils we found were crinoids, estimated at 400 million years of age. It’s pretty amazing to find something that old yourself in the dirt, hold it in your hand, and have permission to take it home (up to four per student) so you can show your family as well as examine them further.

Snakes and other creepy/crawly animals and insects are always a sure way to get the attention of young people, and Mr. Preston did a great job sharing his knowledge and collection of snakes with our kids. Some students were able to hold snakes. Usually each one would ask as they received the snake, “It won’t bite, will it?” to which Mr. Preston would truthfully respond, “Now I didn’t say that…” (No one got bit, however.)

Mr. Preston’s presentation on “skins and skulls” was one of my personal favorites. This next photo is Alexander with Mr Preston, with Alexander holding a black bear skull (which has molars as well as carnivore teeth, since it’s an omnivore) and Mr. Preston holding a wolf skull, which just has flesh-tearing and eating incisors since it’s 100% predator.

In this next image, Mr. Preston compares a wolf skull (on the left) with a much smaller coyote skull (on the right.) What a difference!

Here are two of my favorite images from the week: This is Mr. Holzberger teaching the kids on the fossil hike about the age of our earth. This is an image of an amazing science teacher, teaching in what must be one of best science classrooms in the world for geology: the Arbuckle mountains!

In this activity, students took 1 step for every 100 million years of earth history, and Mr. Holtzberger had different parents stop and remain at different key times in geologic history. This was a great method for trying to help others visualize just how HUGE geologic time is, especially compared to our short, human history.

I really enjoyed leading some optional geocaching activities for campers and parents on both Wednesday and Thursday. These were the GPS units we used: Five Garmin eTrex units and my Garmin eTrex Legend.

Our groups found four of the five geocaches hidden by Camp Classen staff around the camp. They used small Pelican cases for their geocaches, and each was secured to the ground with a metal wire and stake to prevent it from “walking off” with a camper or an unsuspecting muggle.

One of the caches had not been properly closed by the previous finders, and the effects of water as well as bugs made a clear visual aide for making the point to our students: Be sure to securely close the geocache after you sign the find log!

I could recount more experiences and memories, but I’ll close by again noting how VERY appreciative I am to Mr. H, Mrs. Carlton, and many, many others who made this week’s outdoor school experience possible. Alexander and I are quite proud to now call ourselves Classen Comets, and we’re likely to never forget this week’s experiences in the Arbuckles with his Classen classmates in the Class of 2016!

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In Praise of Outdoor School, Ed Holzberger, Classen SAS and Oklahoma City Public Schools originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 9, 2009.

…often used by political commentators and journalists to describe a state perceived as having failed at some of the basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government. In order to make this definition more precise, the following attributes, proposed by the Fund for Peace, are often used to characterize a failed state:

1. loss of physical control of its territory, or of the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force therein,
2. erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions,
3. an inability to provide reasonable public services, and
4. an inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community.

The article’s opening story about 18 year old Mohammed is eye opening:

Mohammed is a fisherman. Every morning at five he pushes out into the water with his nets in a small boat. Whatever Mohammed catches, he hauls by wheelbarrow to the market. On mornings when the wind is not too hazardous, his catch fetches two or even three dollars—which means that he, his parents, and his two younger siblings will have enough to eat that day. A mortar blast incapacitated his father years ago, and his family has depended on Mohammed’s income since he was 14. He cannot afford the ten-dollar monthly cost to attend school. And anyway, all his former schoolmates have disappeared. Most have joined the Islamic extremist militia called al Shabaab, which in Somalia’s latest chapter of misery is locked in a ferocious power struggle with the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), a shaky alliance backed by the United Nations. For young males like Mohammed, al Shabaab is a tempting exit strategy from powerlessness. Then again, many of his former playmates are now dead.

Consider sharing this school-related statistic and story with your students this week: In Somalia, it costs some young people $10 per month to attend school, but even at that price many cannot afford to attend. Statistics and stories like these can help us establish some global perspectives on issues like income, educational opportunities, and prosperity.

You may have read or seen news stories in the past year about the terrible problem of piracy off the coast of Somalia. Piracy was discussed in our April 2008 conversation and podcast, “Stories of Life on the High Seas by Jonathan Gayton in Perth, Australia to Oklahoma Over Skype.”

The online photo galleries which accompany the online, full-text version of this article include many images NOT in the print edition. The power of images and visual storytelling here is clear.

Students are engaged to a much greater degree by sophisticated, complex tasks rather than overly simplified, straightforward ones. Why does my 11 year old son LOVE the iPhone game “Civilization?” One big reason is that it’s complex, and there are multiple paths of learning which he must follow to be successful at it.

As we consider the assignments and topics we provide for our students, we should embrace complexity. Consider the statement and question which accompanies the photo gallery for this online National Geographic article:

Mogadishu is ground zero for the failed state of Somalia, a place where pirates and terrorists rule. Yet to the north, the breakaway region of Somaliland is stable and at peace. What happened?

That’s a great question to consider posing to a group of students engaged in social studies research. With access to the Internet, students should not only have access to rich, static online resources they can use to answer this question, but they can also access country-specific experts via email, website comments, and interactive conferencing technologies like Skype. Anytime your students conduct country-specific research, show them the website “Global Voices Online.” The following is a quotation from a Syrian blogger, quoted in the November 2008 post by Ayesha Saldanha titled, “MENA: How to deal with Somali piracy?”

Apparently this Somali piracy issue has only become a problem since 2005, around the time that somebody started supplying the men with fast white speedboats. There is probably some truth to this, and somebody is probably making a lot of money out of this, so the actual pirates are getting only a fraction of the takings. Still, there are huge sums of money being paid in ransoms, lots of good which are being stolen and I’m not so sure I understand how well these goods are being sold in a country with practically no infrastructure. Recently a shipment of Russian tanks was also seized. Interesting that Somalia was only recently “liberated” by Ethiopian troops with US blessings.

Did you know U.S. forces three years ago supported the Ethiopian military in overthrowing the regime in Somalia? Did your students? We need to help our students become more internationally and interculturally literate, and that process should go far beyond learning about holidays and foods.

More posts about Somalia are available from Global Voices Online.

What should the international community do to help the people in Somalia? That is a question worth exploring and answering both inside and outside the four walls of the traditional classroom, and this recent article from National Geographic by writer Robert Draper and photographer Pascal Maitre provides a great starting point for such an investigation.

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Considering Somalia’s Situation: Rated as the #1 Failed State originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 4, 2009.

Two of the most notable things about the trip here were the number of folks wearing health masks at all times, because of concerns about H1N1 flu, and the fact that Hong Kong had a typhoon yesterday which cancelled school for everyone. Glad I didn’t try to arrive a day sooner!

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Hello from Hong Kong originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 15, 2009.