Some cool things going in the next few weeks for me. My wife found a UBER huge deal on a cruise out of Miami. Family of four going to the Bahamas the weekend before Thanksgiving in a mini suite for just over $700.  Too good of a deal to pass up. As is typical with an educator, I’m looking for the best way to get some educational benefit out of this trip for my kids. My son will be way too young to remember any fort we go to or any tour of the parlaimentary building in Nassau. I’ve been trying to find a way to get jump started into the world of geocaching. Trying not to point out the fact that I have no GPS device, it’s just the thing to go out and buy one.

It’s also like living in a bubble. Never knew that geocaching.com existed. Researched and found some that were close to both Port Lucaya on Grand Bahaman Island and in Nassau. When explaining geocaching to my AP and groveling to borrow her GPS device for the trip, she told me to look into buying some for the school. Not a bad deal if you ask me. Just told me to find some ‘justification’ for using it in school. What better way then showing her Ed Warkentin’s “Teach em to Fish” blog post on using geocaching in education from April 15th of this year.

More later, time for sleep.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Unlike for FAME from last week, I went ahead an created a wiki on wikispaces.com to be the launching pad for my presentations. I remember talking with Jennifer Wagner back at NECC prior to her presentation with the WOW 2.0 Ladies, and lamenting on the thought that we if we are expected to have the people who come and listen to us in conference sessions, or our teachers we work with on a daily basis, then we need to embrace the technologies and use them in our presentations. With that in mind, I created the ‘official’ Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages wiki.

Thursday afternoon’s session was titled Online Tools for Busy Teachers. The presentation was originally supposed to be given by my friend Diana, who then asked me to give it instead since the 15 or so that I had envisioned she’d never heard of. The funny part of the presentation came after the fact when we (myself, Diana and Debbie B.) were discussing how they thought it went. One of them mentioned it could have been better if the websites were shown during the presentation instead of just the wiki. Not even thinking about it, and I guess this was just a matter of me being in a ‘zone’ I don’t know. But somewhere in there I forgot to mention to Diana to go ahead and click on the links to share the webpages with the attendees. Live and learn, as with everything in life.

Friday’s two sessions went equally as spectacular in my estimation. The first AM session was “The Basics of Audacity”. I’m not a big fan of ‘how to’ sessions at conferences. So I went with the approach for the both of these sessions that I was going to give a hybrid ‘how to’ session where I did a portion of how to and a portion of thoughts on integration into the classroom. The second session was of the morning was on blogging as a reflective tool for educators. I spent most of the session discussing the importance of adding blogging as a component to reflective practice. I did show how easy it was to create a blog using the edublogs.org website.

I do know that they recorded the sessions, so I’m hoping I can get my hands on the audio file. Would love to get the files for all three and add them up as a podcast somewhere.  More on that later though I’m sure

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Thanks to Darcy out in Arizona, I was able to befriend Diana L. while out on the DEN excursion. It’s always nice when someone comes up to you and says, “Hey, you’re Tom…Darcy told me to find you and hang with you and all would be ok.” Thought that was a good way to start a friendship. Her and I were skypechatting the other day about some free resources to share with my teachers and she ripped off a couple that I have DEFINITELY never heard of. Trackstar being one of them. Here’s a direct quote straight from the Trackstar home page that pretty much sums it up better than I can.

“TrackStar is your starting point for online lessons and activities. Simply collect Web sites, enter them into TrackStar, add annotations for your students, and you have an interactive, online lesson called a Track. Create your own Track or use one of the hundreds of thousands already made by other educators.” (http://trackstar.4teachers.org/trackstar/)

I’ve not created one of my own as of yet, not that I’ve had much time. I asked Diana to pick out one that she wanted to share with everyone. She chose this one that revolves around the Flagstaff Film Festival of 2007. The really great thing about Trackstar is that you can search by Track # or author, even better is the keyword search. As Diana cautioned me, read the terms of use before creating your own. Because there are copyright issues involved with the use of it.

Several implementation ideas I have for it, and will share with my teachers when I do my online resources session. Diana’s pointed out that for her, “it’s a great way to get them focused and into the activity in the lab the second they walk in.” The author of the “track” is doing the research, the students find the results/answers. I think I referred to it as a place to house organized “online scavenger type hunts.” Second would be to have students create their own tracks at the conclusion of a unit. Working collaboratively, give students a list of about 10 vetted and appropriate websites, and let them create their own. I’ve not gone through and searched to see if this has been previously done, and I’m sure it has. Apparently this site’s been around for a while, I think she told me 10 years, so anything is possible.

I’ve had some great conversations with some of my teachers on campus over the last few days. Most revolving around the use of the word ’stealing’ ideas to use in their own classrooms. I’m VERY quick to point out that in my eyes we are all collaborating with each other to make each other’s jobs that much easier. It pains me to see teachers, who are Really good at what they do, hoard great ideas. Support each other! As I’ve been so apt to hear over the weekend, “We’re all in this together”. I cannot really believe I just quoted a lyric from High School Musical. But really, isn’t it appropriate?

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Technorati Tags: edtech Trackstar technology education

One of the things shared at the DEN was FD’s Flickrtoys. Over to the left here is a nice Motivational image tool that you can use uploaded images; flickr or photobucket images; or supply a URL of an image to create any motivational message. Lovely way to use as a ‘hook’ in a lesson, or to get your students to get creative in making some sort of caption for an image.

FD’s Flickrtoys has a wide range of toys to choose from; including: a badge maker, a calendar maker, a mosaic maker, movie poster maker, or a magazine cover maker. These are just to name a few. LOVELY way to incorporate several different types of tech tools into one project.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Technorati Tags: FLICKR flickrtoys techtools

I really couldn’t believe my eyes when I was reading about this. So I of course had to run over to Google Maps to see for myself. Have to be honest with everyone here, I’m having a hard time concentrating on getting this post completed! I keep wanting to go back and look at street level views on the maps.

As it looks now though, there are only 5 cities available with the 360 street views: San Francisco, Las Vegas, Denver, New York and Miami. I’m still trying to wrack my brain to figure out integration methods for this, but the first thing that comes to mind are the common virtual field trips and writing prompts. An easy way to work with students in using descriptive words expressively.

For now, I think I’m going to head back over and look some more at Las Vegas. Having visited there for the first time a few years back, I’m still intrigued by the city itself.

As always, I’m…

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

• “An update to Second Life’s client server will coincide with a 6 hour outage from 6am-12 noon PST Wednesday and Second Life users are not happy.” Being the gamer that I am, I’ve experienced 24 hour plus outages to World of Warcraft, Ultima Online and Everquest. We’re talking about games that I’ve probably sucked thousands and thousands of dollars into over the last decade. After the downtime, the product was better. Suck it up, enjoy your FIRST LIFE for 6 hours. This is getting into the ‘addiction’ part of this type of ‘tool’. Be warned about what we wish for.
• “The then there is the various police investigations in a number of countries. The FBI recently started investigating Second Life for illegal online gambling. Police in Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands are investigating whether virtual rape in Second Life constitutes an offense, and German Police are investigating pedophilia on a service where virtual “age play” and bestiality are widespread.” And we want to use this as a platform to educate our children on? I don’t think so. Not with such rampant vulgar and obscene places, people and things out there. I’m not trying to be a holier than thou’ist here. I’m firmly of the belief that people have the right to choose where they go on the internet, what they view, and the things they do. Who am I to judge? I’m not. I just choose not to partake in such frivolity. However, without safeguards in place at the client level, we are putting our children/students at a higher risk of the things we strive to protect them from.
  

I will agree that Second Life is a great avenue to get together and have virtual one on one/face to face professional development opportunities. I myself just cannot support going into such a place that allows such things to exist. Again, this is my decision and I don’t judge, nor begrudge those that utilize the service. Until such measures are taken to rid the Second Life world of such things, I think I’m going to take a pass. I know, what a turnaround after blogging about my first Second Life experiences just about a month ago. Opinions change.

As always, I’m…
Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

Citation:

Riley, Duncan. “Anarchy, Discontent Plague Second Life.” Tech Crunch. 23 May 2007. Tech Crunch. 23 May 2007 <http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/23/anarchy-discontent-plague-second-life/>.

Our supposed laid back gathering turned into a full blown Voki session. Each of us created our own characters. Our homework was to put a voice to the avatar. As Steve pointed out, you can use a microphone, call in, have them call your OR type the text in. I found typing in the text, that you were VERY limited on the amount you could say.

Here I am creating my voki character, and WHOA! What type of laptop am I using here??? Can it be a mac?? I personally think it looks ALOT like me. Not bad for about 10 minutes worth of work on the mac.

And for the finished product…look to the left in the widget bar–>

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.

**portions of this post is double posted on the Discovery Educator Network Florida Blog**

You gamers out there, know what I’m talking about. What’s out there are several variations of this new language. You have your regular IM speak as we refer to it. For example: “Nd 2 bio. BRB”. Ok very basic and all I could muster on a few hours of sleep. But basically “I’m going to be right back because I need to use the bathroom.”

There’s also what’s called dOOd speak that’s out there. This is a hybrid version of IM speak that’s a little more difficult to translate or understand. It uses numbers in place of letters as well as inserting capital letters into words. Some examples would include:

• L33t – elite
• S3kr3T – secret (of course)

Again, that’s all I can muster in my head at this early in the morning, plus I’ve been out of gaming for about 6 months and they really aren’t coming to me as quickly as they used to.

Here’s the main difference between the two. The age brackets involved. Many of the older gamers, and this is going I would say from ages 18 -19 and up to even grandparent age (yes…I have a 70ish year old grandfather that plays in my guild). The dOOd Sp3aK as we like to call it comes from those 18 and under gamers that are usually associated with a guild of people of about the same age. My guild of 500 (The Syndicate) has restrictions on such stuff as we try to portray ourselves as a “Mature and Professional Guild”.

If you are having issues understanding this new language, it is definitely worth the visit to fiddle around on the website. Could also be a neat tool to use with your class to try and decipher a paragraph and have them rewrite it using regular language.

Translation:

I saw DIS on Steve Dembos Media m@Rz blog (frm Discovery Educator’s Network) d othR dA. I had 2 stifle a chuckle wen I saw it. Not so much dat I thawt it wz fune, bt dat d fact I cn undRstNd d lingo. d websIt iz caLd transl8it.com. It transl8z yor wrds in2 IM spk 4 EZ transl8nz. My gaming roots hz put me rght smk dab n d midL of DIS nu lngwij. David Warlick discuSD DIS n 1 of Hs sessNz lst fri. @ d tek 4m hEr n Orlando. Hes also discuSD it n Hs “Connect LernN” podcasts on ocasN.

U gamers out ther, knO wot Im talkin bout. wot’s out ther R sevrl variations of DIS nu lngwij. U hav yor reg. IM spk az we refR 2 it. 4 exmpl: “Nd 2 bio. BRB”. k v basic & aL I c%d muster on a few hrz of slp.

That’s the first two paragraphs of this post. I won’t bore you with the whole thing. You can get the idea from just reading that. Post your comments in IM speak if you wish and let’s see if we can understand what you are saying.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.