Thing 23

Now that I have completed my 230 things I can collect my 16 CEUs, right? I can truthfully say that I have spent more time on these "Things" than any other CEU activity I have ever attempted. If anyone wants to lobby for increasing the 1.6, count me in. Now that I have that off my chest, it is time to reflect. Don't you just love those education buzzwords? Like every other "innovation", these Things should all be evaluated objectively. Some teachers will embrace them and invent new and exciting ways to use them in the classroom and beyond. Some would have to be dragged kicking and screaming to even get near these Things. Most will end up somewhere in between those two extremes. The bottom line for me is, as it has always been, does all this new technology increase student learning? The answer is, of course, maybe. Like any other tool, technology can help teachers accomplish goals if used properly. If it is used for its own sake, it can become a colossal waste of time and money. Of all the information presented in this activity, there was one in Thing 19 that that really bothers me. The presentation was titled, "Giving the Students What They Want: Short to-the-Point e-Lectures." To that I say, "don't give them what they want, give them what they need."

Thing 22

While adding my entry to the newington23things wiki, I started wondering about a few things. Wikis open to editing by members appear to be "wide open". I tested that by editing my wife's entry with her permission. Sure enough, I could change what she previously entered. I am not sure how that would work in an educational setting. When I setup my blog in Thing 2, I purposely set it so I could moderate any comments. That would prevent anything "inappropriate" from ever being seen in public. (Not that this group would ever do such a thing!) I guess that highlights the difference between the two. A wiki would be a more interactive way of collaborating, while a blog could become a place to pontificate and accept or reject any comments. I then created my own wiki and tried entering text, links, images, and video. It was all quite easy and sort of anti-climactic after all we have been through.
FairWind Wiki

Thing 21

Is there anyone out there who has not used Wikipedia? I know anything you find there must be, how should I say it, "scrutinized", but I must say it sure is easy to find answers there. It makes a good starting point anyway. The video on Wikis showed an interesting example for a collaborative activity that could be adapted for many different uses in the classroom. Someone commented that Lee LeFever seemed over caffeinated. I was wondering if they sped up the video! Next, I tried each of the wikis on the list. The Comparing Hemispheres project was cute and Welker's Wikinomics looked quite extensive. The wikiHow site was interesting. Building the world's largest how-to manual? I wonder who checks the accuracy of the posts? Well, I checked the one on testing the intelligence of your dog. If I don't agree with some of the answers, should I join wikiHow and dispute them? In any case, I was not inspired to create a wiki. I decided that anything I could think of is already out there. My hurdle to creating a wiki would be lack of interest. My wife says overcoming this hurdle would require a brain transplant.

Thing 20

eBooks are great, just ask my wife! She really enjoys her Kindle, but I am not sure if I completely understand the fascination. Luckily, by waiting so long to purchase one, she has the second generation device. Apparently, the first version suffered from poor battery life. The current unit can go three weeks on a charge. The books we have downloaded have been free (so far) because many of them are "classics". Does that mean buying the Kindle has saved us money? As far as eBooks in general, I can remember attending a conference at MIT many years ago where the researchers claimed no one would read books on a computer screen until the resolution reached about 2,500 dots per inch, which is the same as a printed page. Computer screens are still nowhere near that, but the Kindle uses a new technology which is effectively electronically deposited ink. That makes it easier on the eyes than any computer screen, but still not as good as a book.
I checked out some of the sites to obtain eBooks and chose manybooks.net to explore more fully. It has an easy to use search feature and contains over 26,000 free books. I downloaded Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum, the first person to accomplish that feat. You can download the books in 25 different formats! Of course, I picked the Kindle format. I then tried some of the NHS eBooks and found a title on Alternative Energy. Did you know that polar bear fur converts 95% of the sun's UV rays into heat? I also checked out the British Library and had it read me some of a book. The reader had a nice accent!
This is a technology that has far reaching implications for education. Just think, no more visits to the Chiropractor for all those students carrying heavy backpacks! It should also save money and trees. I am not sure if we are quite there yet, however. The devices will need to be improved in three main areas: increased battery life, more robust construction, and color screens. Finally, all the publishers will need to come on board to make this transition possible.

Thing 19

I can remember using stand-alone products in the past to record what is happening on the screen, but I had never tried any of the online tools before. I started, as I always do, by watching all the demonstrations. Then I went to each site and clicked on record. I noticed they all wanted to access my computer. Sounds like a security risk to me, but you can't continue unless you agree. I checked the certificates on all the sites and screencastle.com was not certified, so I did not try that one. The other three worked fine. What is everyone having trouble with? Screencast-o-Matic seemed to slow the computer down and did not have a full screen button. Screenr requires you to post to Twitter. ScreenToaster seemed like the best bet, but I tried all three anyway. So here they are. The first two are just for testing. Unfortunately, ScreenToaster cut me off at 2 minutes 45 seconds while I was still talking. Sorry for the abrupt ending!
Screener:

Screencast-o-Matic

ScreenToaster

Capture your screen in seconds

Thing 18

Podcasting is a great way to take audio entertainment with you on the road. Some of my favorites are Whad'ya Know?, Wait... Wait Don't Tell Me!, and Car Talk. I watch video podcasts on the computer. The iPod screen is kind of small for those. With the ability to subscribe, it is easy to record your favorites for use at any convenient time. That makes it ideal for use in the classroom. It certainly beats using a VCR! Most people never mastered the programmed recording features anyway. The flashing 12 on the VCR used to be a measure of technology illiteracy. I guess we need to use a different method now.

Thing 17

When I started comparing Slideshare and Zoho, they appeared to be quite similar. Until I clicked on the Zoho Home link, that is. Wow! Zoho has 22 things listed on its home page. Almost as many things as our 23 Things! You could spend days just checking out all the productivity, collaboration, and business apps on that page. It would be very interesting to compare the Google and Zoho offerings. Of course, someone has done that already. Here. Actually, there are at least four more web apps to compete with Google Docs. Check them out here. It's enough to make your head spin. Zoho looks like it has the most complete solution. On the other hand, perhaps I just enjoy saying Zoho Show Two Oh. To use it, you no longer even need to create a new account. You can use an existing Google or Yahoo account. Time to embed a show!

Thing 16

After looking at each of the tools on the list, I decided not to sign up for any of them. Not because I did not like them, but because I don't really need them. Besides, if some of that functionality is not available on Google, it probably will be soon after Google acquires the company! In the meantime, why burden yourself with five different ways to do a calendar? In my job, I spend all my time reacting to problems, nothing is scheduled. There is a meeting to attend every Wednesday at 8 a.m., but I don't need to enter that anywhere. At home, we enter events on this old fashioned paper thing hanging on the wall in the kitchen. It works great and you never need to reboot it! The bubbl.us brainstorming tool was interesting. It looks like an online version of the Inspiration or Kidspiration software we have at school. The collaboration features that the Internet facilitates could make it quite useful.

Thing 15

Look, that cloud is shaped like a bunny rabbit! Wait a minute..... That is not the cloud we were supposed to look at. I will fix my gaze on the Internet cloud instead. Now here is something that can be very useful. No need to carry around a flash drive, floppy (remember those?) or a re-writable cdrom, we have a place somewhere out there where we can save files. Sounds like a computer panacea, does it not? Well, like everything else in life, it has potential problems. What if you type that ten page paper, go to school to retrieve it, and the Internet is down. I know it happens infrequently, but it does happen. (Maybe that is not important, since we are helpless these days without Internet.) What if a file is deleted by mistake and is not stored anywhere else? That provides us with a new student excuse, "the cloud ate my homework." The one thing that seals it for me, however, is a privacy issue. Have you ever noticed that when you use Gmail, the advertisements that appear on the right are based on the content of your mail? That is because Google is data-mining your email. If you also use Google Docs and the new Google Voice, they are looking at everything you email, type in a document, or say on the phone. Kind of scary, isn't it? Do you really think I should put my backups on Windows Live Skydrive? Great! Now both Microsoft and Google know everything about me. Oh what the heck, they probably already do.

Thing 14

I already had a Facebook account because that is what my friends use, so I did not create another one. In fact, after reading some of the material for Thing 14, I did not want to increase my exposure in this area and tightened up the security on my existing account. Truth be told, I am not sure why I have one at all! I do not use it very much. My basic feeling is that too many people use social networking sites too much when they could be doing something more productive. That said, the fact remains that my daughter received her last job offer on Facebook. Perhaps it is more useful than I thought! Should a site such as Facebook in education be used at school? My feeling is that there are plenty of other more appropriate tools to use.

Thing 13

I had a Delicious account years ago, but I could not find the login information, so I created a new one. After reading the comparisons, I decided to create a Diigo account to compare the two. Again the Yahoo password problem surfaced with Yahoo continually prompting for a password when switching back and forth between the different services. Yahoo asks for my password more often than my bank software! I then exported my bookmarks from Firefox as an html file and imported the file into both Delicious and Diigo. An immediate difference between the two was that Delicious imported 645 bookmarks and Diigo imported 628. Perhaps Diigo checks for duplicates? I then added Newington23 tags to some boating links in both services.
Which one would I pick to use? Diigo has the highlighting and sticky note features, so it wins the comparison on a features basis, but it also has advertising. Diigo is like Delicious on steroids. I can see how these tools would be very helpful in the classroom. Unlike the links we use on our Webnet pages, students could access them at school or at home. Very nice for adding some direction for students on the Internet.

Thing 12

Before I studied tagging and social bookmarking, I thought my bookmarks were organized. I have been using Firefox as a browser on all my computers for years with an extension called Xmarks. This keeps all the computers synchronized, with the bookmarks categorized in folders. The advantage of tagging is that each bookmark could have multiple tags associated with it instead of being repeated in multiple folders. The social bookmarking features would make it easy to share bookmarks with others and have those bookmarks available on any computer.

Thing 11

Did anyone else notice that the Google site alone had 142,000 widgets to pick from? I had to look at the number a few times before it sunk in. Imagine how many there are on all the sites listed! In the end, I decided to go with a boating related widget. I found one called geoWake on Widgetbox that leverages Google Maps and NOAA charts to provide an interesting product. I must be getting comfortable with embedding code because it placed the widget in the sidebar and I had to move it to the post. Unfortunately, it starts in Florida. To use it, just enter a search location, then click on the X. The chart button will display the charts available at your location. All navigation aids are clickable. Quite a useful widget for the BoatMan and in teaching geography.

Thing 10

I created my Twitter account and clicked on the link to follow Technology. The first thing I noticed was Biz Stone is the co-founder of Twitter! I wonder if I'm related? Perhaps an email would be a more appropriate place to ask. I then posted a few tweets and logged out.
The best of list contained links to many sites we have covered or will cover in this activity. Investigating every link on that list would take a lifetime.
I watched the video about Twitter and I remain a skeptic. I really don't understand the need for this type of communication or how anyone would use this in the classroom to enhance student learning. It seems like it would be just a distraction.

Thing 9

After watching the video and reading the article about copyright, I started to wonder if I should take down the video I posted for Thing 7. I decided showing 22 seconds of a one hour show should fall under the fair use guidelines. Besides, watching the clip might cause someone to click on this link and buy the series! The value of the work has not been diminished.
The Internet has certainly opened a brave new world for copyright issues. While most people are aware that copying books and movies is a violation of copyright law, many seem blissfully unaware of these issues when copying music. It has simply become too easy with the equipment available today. This means that as educators, we must be aware of these issues and communicate them effectively to students. The Creative Commons approach appears to be a way to manage some of these concerns.

Thing 8

I uploaded some videos to YouTube using various methods in order to check out the process. I used PWNYouTube to download and save a video. I then edited the video using iMovie and used its share feature to send the video directly to YouTube. While in iMovie, I also shared some of my own videos. I then tried emailing a video from my cell phone to YouTube, but the quality was not very good. In the end, I decided to share a video shot last summer with my digital camera. It is a re-enactment of the Golden Spike Ceremony in Promontory Point, UT. It depicts an important moment in the history of transportation in the United States. For the first time, it was possible to travel from coast to coast by rail.

Thing 7

It was a lot of fun looking at the list of suggested sites on YouTube. Since TV today seems to consist of crime shows and "reality" shows, it was especially nice to watch the Carol Burnett show outtakes. That means anyone wishing to watch variety shows from years past can easily find them on the Internet. It was interesting to see that the laughing baby video has been viewed more than 100 million times! It also becomes quickly apparent there is a lot of school inappropriate content on YouTube. That is why it is filtered for students, but available for teachers in our district. Hopefully, teachers will use it wisely in the classroom. I chose to leave a comment on one of my favorite episodes from the original Star Trek series called By Any Other Name. It contains Scotty's famous line, "It's green."

Thing 6

Since I have been using Yahoo Mail for years, I checked my account and found I signed up for Flickr in 2002! For this assignment, I decided to create a new account anyway. What I noticed was, unlike Google, Yahoo keeps asking for your password when you go from one thing to another on the Yahoo site. What a pain! Maybe I will use Google and Picasa in the future.
For the second task, I uploaded some pictures, setting some to private and some to public with the tag Newington23. I then did a search did not see my photos. I checked the FAQ and found out that it can take 24-48 hours before photos appear in search results. I spent too much time checking out some of the Flickr Tools, but I enjoyed Flickr Memry on pimpampum.net and Jigsaw on Big Huge Labs.
I can see how teachers could post photographs to Flickr and use them as the starting point for classroom discussions. Actually, with two billion images available, you would not need to post anything! If what you want is not on Flickr, it probably does not exist. Like everything else on the Internet, it would have to be done with care.

Thing 5

After watching the two videos, I decided the best use of Flickr would be to backup all my photographs. I wonder how long it will take to scan all those shoe boxes full of photographs? The next step would be to categorize and tag the photos. It looks like another long-term project that could be a nice hobby for retirement!
I decided to do some comparisons between Flickr and Picasa when searching for images and noticed something interesting. Picasa is much more literal with its results. When you search for "Thoreau", you actually get pictures of Thoreau. With Flickr, you get three times as many images covering a wide range of things having something to do with Thoreau. Using other search terms seemed to have similar results.
To avoid copyright issues, I decided to use one of my own pictures from Flickr. I used this photo to continue the lighthouse theme on my blog. It is a picture of Portland Head Light in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. It might be the most visited and photographed lighthouse in the United States. It was probably the inspiration for Longfellow's poem, "The Lighthouse". The park around it is an excellent place to fly a kite!

Thing 4

When I first looked at the 23 Things list, I thought Thing 4 would be easy. After all, I created an iGoogle page when they first came out, a My Yahoo page many years ago, a My Netscape page before that, and a My AOL page back when AOL was the only game in town. That must mean I did Thing 4 a long time ago!
In the spirit of trying something new, I decided to check out Netvibes and Pageflakes. I navigated to the Netvibes page and turned on all the check marks. It chugged away and informed me I had 941 new things to read. Yikes! I don't need that much news. Pageflakes seemed clean and simple by comparison. They both have good integration with Facebook, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail, but so do iGoogle and My Yahoo. I saw no reason to switch. Actually, I have my home page set to the Google search page. I find I use the Internet most often to do research, so it is a nice simple, calm place to start.
For some reason, seeing all those new home pages with their embedded weather information caused me to want to add local weather to my blog. Thus began a long involved process to get what I wanted, the data from our own weather station at Anna Reynolds. In the end, I needed to change my blog template to get the gadget to display correctly. While searching for the html code, I found some links to the data which I added to the blog. Give them a try!

Thing 3

Wow, I think it would take until March 26 just to navigate to every blog listed on the Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs blog, let alone read them! Yes, the information available on blogs is mind boggling. (or is it "mind bloggling"?) The question is, as it is with everything on the Internet, how to separate the wheat-data from the chaff-data.
The James Logan Courier blog was really impressive, until I noticed that material was repeated on the links at the right and much of it was from years ago. Wait.....That is impressive in itself. They have been blogging since March 2006! I guess we are behind the times.
The Bud the Teacher blog was interesting, but it contains another unbelievable list of other blogs. The quote from Jaron Lanier's book caused me to wonder if I should put my name on this blog. Are we in any danger with this activity?
The Superintendent's blog looks like it is the starting point for some good discussions. Hopefully, teachers, parents, and students will have some input in the decision-making process. If there is an Adirondack chair facing the view in her picture, it would be a great place for frustrated computer users to sit and calm down.
The ETLMS blog had an entry on Wolfram-Alpha. I remembered trying it out years ago, so with great interest I checked out the iPhone app. How cool would that be, having the power of a super-computer on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Unfortunately, $50 is really expensive for an iPhone app.
What should we make of all this? A blog could be a very useful tool to facilitate communication between teachers, students, and parents. It would be best to keep it simple and to the point. In other words, do not put links to 200 other blogs on your classroom blog!

Thing 1 and Thing 2

I decided to participate in this program to get an overview of the tools available on the Internet to facilitate interactive communication and see if there are any technical "issues" that might arise to prevent the use of these tools. It also appeared to be an interesting and enjoyable way to earn CEUs!
After watching the video on 21st century learners, the first thing that popped into my mind was, I must be a 21st century "forgetter". I firmly believe we all must learn something new every day. The difficult part is retaining what we learn!
As for the students in the video, someone must have told them to look bored. Unfortunately, they look beyond bored. Depressed would be a better description. Yes, today's students are familiar and comfortable with technology. The question is, what do they do with it? They spend hours on Facebook, listening to iPods, watching TV, and texting, but is it anything other than entertainment or socializing? We, as educators, need to channel those technological skills into something that will benefit them in college and the workplace.
The article was interesting, but I'm not sure how texting in the classroom could be used for constructive purposes and not get completely out of control. Meaningful cooperation between teachers in different subject areas is always a great idea. Implementation is the difficult part. The superintendent mentioned in the story must be operating on a day longer than twenty-four hours to be able to read all the teachers blogs!
Thing 2 was easy until I decided I wanted two avatars. The first one worked with no problems, but after creating the second one, saving, exporting, copying, and pasting, I ended up with two identical avatars! Can anyone guess how it was finally accomplished? The funny part is, I think it took longer to create an avatar than to watch the video and read the article for thing 1.