Category Archives: technology

Microsoft Word Column Limits

A class was trying to do a project today and the idea was to use Word in three column format to create a magazine style article. The problem was that they needed to be able to insert a picture and the teacher wanted that picture to be able to span several columns and have the text wrap around it but still stay in column format. Microsoft Office 2000 and 2003 were being used. I tried to figure out a way to make it work and created a text box to use as the container for the picture. On my MacBook it worked like a charm. Unfortunately the text wrapping part didn’t work so well when I tried it on the PC.
Microsoft Word worked better on my MacBook than on the PC? That is just weird.

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K12 Online Conference Dean Shareski Presentation

I am slowly getting to more presentations from the conference and today I watched “Design Matters”. I have been thinking about this for awhile. Whether it be our classrooms, offices, textbooks, powerpoints – everything deserves our attention because as human beings we respond on a level that isn’t even always conscious to our first exposure to something.

My lab is straight rows of computers all facing the front. From the standpoint of me sitting at the back and being able to see if there is a problem it’s great. From the standpoint of an instructor being at the front with access to the data projector it works well.

Unfortunately it’s ugly. I hate it. I look at it from the perspective of someone wanting to learn and I have difficulty concentrating in there. Of course it was put together about nine years ago (I think). It has the obligatory chalk boards at the front with florescent lighting. The students bring their backpacks and have them between the rows so it is difficult to get to them if they need help. They bump the back of machines as they move down the row and loosen connections (and occasionally swap the mouse and keyboard for fun) I realize that there was no way we could foresee where we would be now and even less possible to imagine where we will be in twenty or thirty years.
I’d like to see some images of computer labs at other schools, particularly ones where thought was given to designing for aesthetics as well as purpose. In my mind I keep going back to a center oriented layout. I imagine centers for multimedia, centers just for wordprocessing, an area with something like study carrels where students who are easily distracted or just have a need to concentrate can work independently. I’d like adjustable lighting that can be dimmed as low as needed.

We need storage, both lockable for extra cables and equipment and open for backpacks and books. I’d like an area with a white board and a table where a group could sit comfortable and watch a presentation. It would be wonderful if there were a way for a group to have headphones that hooked to the same source for the group to use or a way to close the area off if needed for small groups to to staff development or view and hear media. One of the worst problems in the average lab configuration that I can see is that as more and more of the information on line is multi-faceted. It’s visual, audio and interactive and in a group it is impossible for an individual to see and hear and not bother everyone else around them. I’ll be talking about this subject in future posts – not just about my lab but about design in general.

Making Childhood Dreams Come True

Watch this video of a lecture by Randy Pausch. Be prepared. Get a snack and a drink – it’s about an hour and a half long but it is worth your time!

Pausch received his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Brown University and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. He has been a co-founder of CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator, and a Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellow. He has done sabbaticals at Walt Disney Imagineering and Electronic Arts (EA), and consulted with Google on user interface design. Pausch is the author or co-author of five books and over 70 articles, and the founder of the Alice software project.

Battle with cancer

Pausch has been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and was told in August 2007 to expect a remaining three to six months of good health.

Pausch delivered his “Last Public Lecture”, entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”, at CMU on September 18, 2007. This talk was modeled after an ongoing series of lectures where top academics are asked to think deeply about what matters to them, and then give a hypothetical “final talk”, i.e., “what wisdom would you try to impart to the world if you knew it was your last chance?” Before speaking, Pausch received a long standing ovation from a large crowd of over 400 colleagues and students. When he motioned them to sit down, saying “make me earn it”, some in the audience shouted back “you did!”

Wikipedia

You can also go to his homepage and get a PDF transcript and more information
Dr. Gabriel Robins has a website with more links and a wonderful Halloween picture of the Pausch family.

That gives you the who and what but not the why. I completely forgot about the cancer as I watched and listened and even took notes. There is so much in this video and I will tell a few of the ones that remember best.

How about going out for football and showing up at practice and finding you will be playing with no football? If you know me at all you know I know nothing about sports. There are 22 men on a football field at one time. Only one has the ball. This coach was teaching what the other 21 should be doing. Fundamentals…

Sometimes you run into brick walls when you are trying to make your dreams come true. “Brick walls exist for a reason – they give us a chance to show how badly we want something – they stop the other people”

“Sometimes brick walls are flesh”

“most of what we learn, we learn indirectly (or by “head fake”)”

“If you are going to do anything that is pioneering you are going to get arrows in the back – put up with it”

(he got an award that consisted of a vest that had arrows sticking out of the back)

He advises that we learn to recognize the moments that change our lives, don’t bail – the best of the gold is at the bottom of barrels of crap, and don’t complain – just work harder. Jackie Robinson’s contract said that he would not complain even when fans spit on him.

Be watching for the two head fakes about this speech – he will explain at the end. After the video – go to Alice.org and download the software. It will walk you through and give you an idea of his his work. Anyone who wants to get girls more interested in programming…..

He is definitely someone worth knowing.

More Reasons to Love Google and Firefox

I recently added some plugins to FireFox that I love. One is Googlepedia which includes a relevant Wikipedia article with Google and Yahoo search results. Another plugin that plays well with Googlepedia is Google Preview. It adds a thumbnail of the website to the search results.

Another tool I have been using a lot is Gmail This. You can get it by following htis link or clicking on the gmail this link on my sidebar. You just drag the link to your browser bar and when you want to send the link to the website you are visiting you just click gmail this and a new window opens up allowing you to compose and send the email from your gmail account.

Here is a screenshot of Googlepedia and Google preview:

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Overheard In A Teacher Chat!

I am amazed, amused, and awed!

  • “I got my truck stuck in a Blog
  • He looks naked without a Starbucks cup next to him.
  • What system is Halo on?
  • Halo who?
  • does the audio sound like…chipmunks to anyone else?
  • the minds of our school board members are boundaries
  • their boundaries are in their minds
  • …..and in our firewalls
  • I think we are sometimes our own limiting boundaries!
  • I can’t search google images or right click!!!
  • The IT department often are boundaries
  • I think his point today about needing to create and define new boundaries given the “loss of boundaries” was an important statement
  • my boundaries are clear and blocked
  • Ignorance is a boundary… must educate more teachers!
  • networks are our information
  • traditional school has focused on information, but david is right, the focus on OVERWHELMING quantities of info is new
  • remind me to thank my district IT guys tomorrow…despite our differences in vision, they are nowhere near as obstructionist as what I am reading here…
  • We discussed the value of YouTube for education at school today.
  • I can act individually with information but its nowhere near the experience if I work with that same information in a network of people.
  • Policy’s simply need to be more accomodating. Things don’t move in 5 year plans anymore.
  • we just rewrote our tech plan around ideas instead of tasks
  • who will decide the content?
  • they can’t make decisions ahead of the changes
  • Kids may not all be more information literate but they are actively engaged in social networking. That’s why I think David said we need to provide the traction and learning to help them learn to teach themselves.
  • intellectual capital will be the value
  • that point David is addressing is the ATTENTION ECONOMY
  • relearn, unlearn & Learn
  • Our IS department was pointing out that their own jobs are now 24/7
  • Educators can’t be afraid to right/click
  • creativity almost entirely defies traditional measurement methods
  • Hard to assess W 2.0 using AD 1950 multiple choice
  • we can each recognize creativity, but we can’t put that in a bar chart in the same way we can with test scores
  • opportunities to fail and learn
  • How do we emphasize balance video games with real world experiences?
  • I think a big part of having a learning engine in the classroom is writing hyperlinked texts
  • effectively writing hyperlinked texts is a measurable outcome of the learning engine classroom
  • digital doppler
  • I’m a proponent of gaming, but balance is so important
  • Something wrong with my kids, they don’t like gaming
  • I’m TOTALLY unbalanced, but I love it (though I need to exercise more than my mouse-finger)
  • they have treadmills with computers built in to the front now.
  • We had some success with getting them to participate in gym class by using DDR.
  • Wii rocks!
  • i think “digital discipline” is a good term in this context. we all need it. balance fits in there too.
  • DDR is a blast
  • I think we all strive to have some “grounding” with the flexibility to fly a bit (or more)!
  • Heard a discussion on ReadingTeacher this week where they said balanced doesn’t mean equal time for everything (as in balanced literacy).
  • if you ban it, kids never learn to balance their lives. We have to let them fail. That’s where lessons are learned
  • how do we bring down the walled garden at school?
  • I think the best advice is to throw out the textbooks
  • I still see way too many teachers thinking integration is focusing on the technoogy instead of the content…
  • I’m launching a year-long classroom blogging unit (major overhaul from last year) – key elements: they claim their blogs on Technorati, they link to at least one blogger from the real world that they admire, they blog about what THEY’re interested in (within limits), and their goal is to grow readership network and extend self-directed learning.
  • if only we had time to learn with the kids – partners
  • I’m finishing a degree in assistive technology, and I signed up for a lab class this semester that has no lab… its all lecture
  • it’s because librarians don’t get enough partnership with teachers!!
  • so the teacher becomes the affective filter
  • The teacher is the model – not the information giver
  • I’m finding that it’s really tough to move students beyond the “consume and remix” stage in information processing. They love the creative aspect of playing with the tools, but to many the tools are more important than the message. I’d like students to take the time to “digest” the info and build it into an existing framework, or better yet, make a case for revamping the framework – then creatively communicate the learning.”

WOW!

For more on filtering there is a very thought provoking article on Doug Johnson’s blog.

(posted on my school blog)

K12 Online Fireside Chat and More

Today was just a day but wow – exhausting, frustrating, exciting, enlightening. I was busy all day because grades were due to be exported and it was taken a little more seriously than the three weeks progress reports so there were a few problems to be ironed out underlining the value of that first export. Troubleshooting that should have been done happened today when we were under the gun.

The day that seemed to not end did and I came home and ate supper while I signed in to Elluminate for the K12 Online Conference Fireside Chat with David Warlick. This was my first experience with Elluminate which is a fee based meeting software package that donates the space to the K12 Online Conference. There are multiple windows. On the far left is a window that contains first a picture of an old-fashioned microphone, To speak you click on the picture and then click again when you are done. There is a hand icon that you can click to virtually raise your hand. There are emoticons and as people enter the session the list of names grows and automatically adjusts to remain in alphabetical order. There is a running tally of how many people are in the session. When things got going there were 105 people from all over. Mostly from the U.S. but some from other parts of the globe as well including Sudan, Seoul, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Scotland Click the thumbnail to see a screenshot.

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There was a white board and video and as the session went on, questions were asked on the white board as a rapid, unending discussion by the attendees. I went crazy trying to concentrate on what David was saying as well as keeping up with the “stream of consciousness” instant messaging. I managed to speak a bit when we were divided into separate rooms at the beginning and I was able to text once or twice but by the time I could type a question the conversation would have changed. There was serious energy. These folks are jumping in the deep end of the pool and splashing for all they are worth. They are calling out to the rest of us to tell us to come on in – the water is fine. Some of us are dipping a toe in and shivering, some are paddling around with nose plugs and life preservers. Some of us are sitting it out and some are underwater with flippers and scuba gear.
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There was a 14 year old student in the session and the possibility of adding a student strand next year was mentioned.

My favorite quote was ” become the guide on the side not the sage on the stage”.

I watched the keynote by David Warlick this morning and I’ll blog about it later. I want to let it marinate a bit but it was awesome. It is well worth the time – if you right-click and save link as you will have a copy of it to view whenever you have time. – which is the beauty of an online conference!

K12 Online Conference Connections

One of the things that I have learned about conferences that are related to technology is that bloggers will write about them. The presentations begin conversations that continue throughout the blogosphere and even when the conference or event is not an online conference people who are not present can participate. If you want to have a way to keep up with those conversations on the K12Online conference here is a tip.

Go to technorati and in the search box put k12online. You will see a list of feeds of all the blog articles about the conference. There will also be the little orange RSS button you can click to subscribe. You can then choose from several – blogline and google are two of the choices. Subscribe in the reader of your choice and throughout the conference, blog articles that reference this conference will show up in your feeds.

You can also look here and here – David Warlick has set up a wiki for the conference.  You can also check out the hitchikr site.

K12 Online Conference!

It will be here any minute!! well pre-conference starts October 8

3 Reasons Meme

Three reasons to participate based on my experience from last year!

1. It is staff development the way I like it – at home, in my jammies, with a cup of decaf latte.

2. No Crowds! No driving! No hotels! No airports! (yes I know – technically that’s four – so sue me)

3. You can go back and review the sessions at anytime (unlike virtual conferences where you have to get everything you can right then because when its over, it’s over)

Ya’ll come!

Links For Education

As I write this post I am listening to a podcast found at LearningOutLoud.com. There are sections on biographies, great speeches in history, Literary summaries, founding documents in audio form, free audio book of the month, art history, all categorized and subscribeable.

There is a section on test taking. You can wander through a very large online catalog of subjects to integrated podcasts into your classroom.

Here is a great article with an interesting way to talk about internet safety with students. Instead of giving them a list of “don’ts” here you can find a list of questions to open up a discussion with them. One of my favorite questions was:

If people were to Google you, what conclusions would they make?

Students can take online quizzes that look more like games but are tagged according to quiz subject matter at PurposeGames. Creating an account is optional but if you do you can see your score history. You can also create quizzes if there are none that fit your needs.

Another link for today is VoiceThread. You can upload pictures, record audio and create a multimedia show and tell online presentation. There are plenty of examples and instructions to make the process pretty painless. Even if you are not planning on creating one of your own it is very interesting to play some of the examples!

I finish with another podcast link – I’m listening to Thomas Friedman lecturing at the Sydney Institute after dinner on The Flat World. This podcast is nearly an hour long so I would plan on listening to it on a car trip or load it on your mp3 player and exercise your brain while you are at the walking track exercising your body!

I had to add one more link. Thanks to Dan Meyer for this one – the site is called Mango and you can sign up for free to learn languages. I spent a short time today learn a little Japanese. It was fun and painless! The site includes Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German, Englich for Spanish speakers and more! Arigatou (Thank you!)

TaDa! Google Presentation – Finally!

Google has finally rolled out their presentation piece. Here is a screenshot of the main page when you click new presentation. It’s big so click on the thumbnail and you can see it full size in Flickr.

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I tried to embed but so far I see no way to do that so here is the link: BrandNew

Interesting – I tried this and while you are at the document you must click Preview before the link will work to send you back to the presentation.

The presentation describes the application for the most part. It is easy to use and if you are looking for a tool to share a basic presentation online without a lot of bells and whistles but also without a huge expense then Google presentation will work fine. I have linked to a text document created in Google to see how the two could be used together.

The links worked for me in practice and I am going to assume you can do the same with the spreadsheet piece so it is possible to integrate the applications. That could be a great tool and an answer for students who need the basics.
I hope that Google will add some more features later and will be watching to see.

Update and Link To A Web Application

It has been a long day. I attended a UIL conference today and am planning on coaching Computer Applications this year. I found that there is still much I need to learn! If anyone out there has any helpful hints and suggestions I am all ears and eyes!
My blog has a non-theme right now because I am still trying to resolve my theme issues so please be patient – I hope to have things cleaned up soon.

In the meantime check out ANIMOTO ! You need to sign up for an account and as an unusual way to request that you create an account the question is asked why? The answer – because Steven Seagal did. OK, that was different and so is the rest of the site. I created a short video in moments using some images I had on Flickr and Animoto’s music. I would have preferred some more music style choices but hey it was quick and free. It’s look reminds me of some of the applications for the Mac and I am hoping that Google pays attention as they get ready to roll out their presentation piece. This is a very pretty and easy to use application!

My Favorite Ways To Use Del.icio.us

This is a cross post from my school blog but it really is one of my favorite tools so I wanted to share it here too.
While teaching a blogging class the other day I was explaining about feed readers and I showed some teachers Del.icio.us and how you could actually have feeds set up to work for you. An example would be to type in a URL like this: http://del.icio.us/tag/scotland then look at the bottom of the page for the orange RSS button. If you right click on it and go to properties you can copy the link into your news aggregator (feed reader) and as people add links to their del.icio.us accounts tagged scotland, you will see those links as a feed. You can also do the same thing but add another criteria to the search http://del.icio.us/tag/scotland+history you can narrow down the search to items tagged scotland and history.If I wanted to keep up with what sites are popular on a particular subject I could type http://del.icio.us/rss/popular/scotland and this would generate the most popular links tagged on del.icio.us for scotland.

You can do the same thing with people instead of tags. If you have someone who is in your “circle of learning” you can subscribe to their tags (unless they have designated them private).

These and other tips can be found at Likehack.org if you would like to read more.

Technology Integration Day

My feet hurt – they are propped up and will stay that way until I go to bed. Tomorrow will be busy as everyone will be working in their rooms and they will be looking for me to solve all the minor glitches with their computers.

Today was Technology Integration Day and I did my Web 2.0 Presentation. I think it went well even though I threw a lot at them in a short time. I managed to cover everything I wanted to though I had hoped that there would be time for them to play online a bit. We finished right on time and despite my not being 100% physically and being totally distracted lately I’m reasonable satisfied with the whole thing. I had planned on WOW rather than reasonably satisfied but maybe I can build on this and work my way up to WOW!

I woke up last night from a dream where I found myself in front of a room full of people waiting for me to present and I opened my mouth and completely forgot why I was there. At least it wasn’t that bad!

I’m Still Here – Really (And Some Del.icio.us Hints)

I am working on learning to create a WordPress theme and I am making progress but slowly! I have gotten to the part where I have to verify my code and I have managed to get down to four errors from eighteen so I’m getting there. I evidently have a few things open that need to be closed but my eyes are crossed and I can’t seem to find them tonight.

Part of me wants to go ahead and move on to the fun part but I know I need to get this part right or I will have problems later. I have typed the entire thing twice just to makes sure there were no typos and I think it was good for me because it is making a little more sense. I still can’t always follow the flow and I feel like that is what I need to understand so I can tell where these tags need to close.

Sometimes if I just put something like this aside for a bit and let it percolate I can come back with a fresh eye and do better so I’m going to shift gears for a bit.

While teaching a blogging class the other day I was explaining about feed readers and I showed some teachers Del.icio.us and how you could actually have feeds set up to work for you. An example would be to type in a URL like this: http://del.icio.us/tag/scotland then look at the bottom of the page for the orange RSS button. If you right click on it and go to properties you can copy the link into your news aggregator (feed reader) and as people add links to their del.icio.us accounts tagged scotland, you will see those links as a feed. You can also do the same thing but add another criteria to the search http://del.icio.us/tag/scotland+history you can narrow down the search to items tagged scotland and history.

If I wanted to keep up with what sites are popular on a particular subject I could type http://del.icio.us/rss/popular/scotland and this would generate the most popular links tagged on del.icio.us for scotland.

You can do the same thing with people instead of tags. If you have someone who is in your “circle of learning” you can subscribe to their tags (unless they have designated them private).

These and other tips can be found at Likehack.org if you would like to read more.

Just an Update

It rained this morning. This has not been an unusual occurrence in Texas this summer but this morning we got a little over three inches in a very short amount of time. There was street flooding all over including the drive into the school where I was supposed to meet for a class. It didn’t make any difference that the little entry road was flooded because the power was out too.

A house just a few streets over caught fire. There had been one of those cracks of thunder that shook so hard you could feel it in your chest and it came almost simultaneously with a lightning strike and I would be willing to bet that is what caught the house on fire. We were running around looking out of the windows trying to see where it struck because we knew it was close. It blew up my answering machine.

There is more rain predicted for tomorrow….

My friend B.J. is one the road again. He has been to two of my favorite places – Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.

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Another one is Rocky Mountain National Park where the chipmunks are so used to people that they will come up and beg for food.

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He was at Mt. Rushmore and hasn’t uploaded those pics yet but I will be watching for them.

You can see more of his travel pictures and some wonderful local ones on Flickr.

I spent a lot of time today installing xampp and WordPress on my computer so I could work on an online tutorial for creating themes for WordPress. The tutorial can be found here at WPDesigner and I finally have at least the basics of a title, post titles, content, and header information. I also got a little help from Geeks Are Sexy and both sites were tremendously helpful. It never ceases to amaze me how generous people are on the internet with their knowledge. Both these websites had to have taken hours and hours of work and yet the information is shared freely and extra help is given in the comments sections.

I hope to create a new theme for this blog and maybe some more. I like doing the “pretty stuff” as far as images and colors – what I’m learning right now is the nuts and bolts of how to get everything to go where it belongs!

Goodnight B.J. and Colby somewhere in South Dakota – see you soon !

Computer Centers for the Classroom

In a post on a student leadership panel by David Warlick, one of the students made the statement that she was tired of going to the lab to do technology. The statement was made that we do not make employees share computers at work (which isn’t entirely true, at least in education) the students felt that all students should have a laptop. If that isn’t an option but creating some project centers in classrooms utilizing xtenda boxes is – I’m thinking about what we could include in the way of software that would give maximum use for students. The following is my list but I would be glad to here any suggestions. Most of what I have listed is opensource and I’m concentrating of budget-friendly, but if you have a software piece that your students just couldn’t do without, let me know.

  • Firefox – of course for the browser
  • VLC – media player
  • Audacity – audio editing
  • OpenOffice – office suite
  • Abiword – basic word processing
  • GimpShop – graphics editing
  • Inkscape –
  • Google Earth
  • Comic Life
  • TuxPaint (graphics for lower elementary)

I’d like to know about a video-editing program that is either opensource or at least low priced and fairly easy to use. I have been spoiled by my Mac and want somethings that are “Mac easy” for the students to create with. I have included software ideas for elementary through high school. I know there is more out there and I will add to this list if I think of some more.

Software additions!

MovieMaker

Are We There Yet Blogging Style!

We had our second blogging class today. I have three more classes to go this month and so far at least 6 brand new bloggers out there. I hope I am teaching them what they need to get started – but here is what they do NOT know:

The new bloggers don’t know that I am sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for them to post, excited about new voices in the blogosphere.

They don’t know that I will come to their school, meet them at the local coffee shop, whatever it takes to help them get comfortable with their blogs.

They don’t know how excited I am to have new friends blogging!
They don’t know how much FUN it can be!

They don’t know that if they give it time they may find themselves traveling some surprising paths because of who they “meet” and what they learn.

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Welcome to the world new bloggers! As soon as you are ready I’ll add links to your blogs to my blogroll here. In the meantime – I’ll try to be patient and not peek.