Clif’s Notes

NECC This Morning

I’ve spent most of today participating in the following sessions and meeting online friends in the Bloggers’ Cafe. I’m looking forward to the presentation of the ISTE Classroom Observation Instrument (ICOT) later today. I’m curious to see how it stacks up against similar instruments like LoTi. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to post my thoughts about it. For now, here’s what I’ve attended to day.

Diigo: A Swiss Army Knife for Your Browser by Maggie Tsai, Diigo Co-Founder
Maggie gave a crash course in the basic features and use of Diigo. After her presentation she asked to interview me on camera and I reluctantly agreed. I shared some of the most common ways that Diigo is being used by my students, teachers with whom I mentor in professional development, and by me. She also asked me to share ways that I thought their technology could be improved and I reiterated ideas that I’d previously shared on Miguel’s discussions (here and here) related to this topic. I was pleased with her responses to my technical and design suggestions (She even contacted the engineers about one of the issues while we were talking.) and she provided Diigo’s rationale for why the ads, for now, will continue to exist throughout the tool. She assured me that they are indeed considering

Creating a Ning Network from Scratch by Steve Hargadon
If you want to learn about setting up your own Ning you might as well learn from the master. I’m comfortable using this “tool” but Steve provided useful insight regarding design and implementation which I found valuable.

Using Understanding by Design (UbD) to Create Technology Rich, Deep Learning Unit Plans by Chris Lehmann and Marcie Hull
There are oodles of similar models out there but I found this one to be practical but thorough. I’m going to take another look at Understanding by Design when I return home.

This Afternoon at EBC

Diving Deep into Google Earth and Google Maps

• Lucy Gray’s presenter notes
• Adding images in Google Earth
• Geotagging
• Maps, directions, and more
• Google Book Search Library Project

Web 2.0 in Teacher Education (Program Info)

1. My presenter notes
2. Alternative to the term Web 2.0 is the Read, Write Web
3. Teacher education and professional development that effectively helps teachers better integrate technology with teaching and learning
• Allow the teachers to select their own goals and help them reach them
• Online social networks can more easily provide the in-time assistance, coaching, mentoring, etc. that individuals during development/learning, but teachers often don’t think about using the networks
4. How do we prepare teachers to teach in the 1-to-1 environment?
   • The emphasis should change from "teaching" to designing learning that engages the students.
5. Resources for future teachers
   • Social Network
   • Bookmarks

Designing the 21st Century Global Learning Environments (Program Info)

1. Building on some online discussion that has been ocurring for the past year here and here.
2. If there were no barriers what would education look like? Brainstorming notes

This Morning at EBC

I’ll be updating this post throughout the day to alert you of things happening here at EBC San Antonio. The full list of sessions is here. I’ll be sharing information form the sessions that I’m attending. The session titles are in bold.

Social Networking for Professional Development

Scott Merrick is sitting next to me and streaming this discussion live.

1. Should it be organized or self-forming?
• Should the tool(s) be dictated?
2. An atmosphere promoting risk-taking is imperative.
3. Teachers know what they want to learn. Professional development should be tailored around them rather requiring them to attend PD in which they had no say.

Social Networking in the Classroom

Vicki Davis is sitting by me and is streaming this seession here.

1. Teachers in the room are using Ning, Elgg, and several private online communities.
2. Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis updated us about the Flat Classroom and the Horizon Project.
3. How important are digital citizenship and pedagogy in these decisions?
4. If someone says a curse word in the classroom do we close the school? If there’s a fight at recess do we quit having recess? Why do we over react to these problems in online spaces?

Teaching Economics with an Educational Game

What do a stranded alien race and microeconomics have in common? You just have to see this to believe it!!!

Here are some random thoughts that I’d very quickly like to share.

Discussion

1. What is your reaction to this instructional strategy?
2. What other ways could this be integrated with the curriculum?

Newsletter on Educational Technology

Throughout the years many of the preservice and in-service teachers in my classes, workshops, and presentations have requested that I start an email newsletter. They indicate that in addition to this blog they would like to receive occasional emails sharing rich resources related to technology integration. I’m excited to announce that I have answered these requests.

Clif’s Newsletter on Educational Technology focuses on the effective integration of technology with teaching and learning. Subscribers of this free service will receive occasional emails providing valuable resources and information about lesson plans, activities, technologies, research, etc., related to educational technology.

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Subscription to this newsletter is open to everyone. You are encouraged to share this with everyone with an interest in education (teachers, administrators, homeschooling families, friends, classmates, co-workers, etc.). Everyone is invited to receive this free newsletter.

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MANAGING SUBSCRIPTIONS
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New STEM Resources and Games from PBS KIDS GO!

Our kids watch several of these programs and have enjoyed playing these games. All things considered these games are pretty good.

April 23, 2008 – Several new online science and math games are now available from PBS KIDS GO!

Fetch!: CSI: Squeak Sneak
Use problem-solving and logical reasoning strategies to deduce who stole Ruff’s squeaky toy. Search for clues at the crime scene, analyze and identify the clues in the crime lab and identify the thief by matching clues to suspects.

–From PBS Teachers

1 Thing

I’ve added a new feature to Clif’s Notes called 1 Thing. This special section is an area where guest bloggers can communicate “1 thing” they would like to share, suggest, say, demonstrate, etc. about a particular topic. This section will forever be a work in progress, so feel free to suggest guest bloggers and topics anytime. You can easily access this section by clicking on the 1 Thing link in the main menu.

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A Fun Mini-Game

One of my brothers sent me the link to this mini-game. It’s a very quick game, but it’s addicting. My best time so far is 11.625 seconds after 9 attempts. How well can you do? Post your best time in the comments and let’s declare the king of the red square.

What are some ways that this could be used in the classroom?

Review of Frontline’s “Growing up Online”

I watched the program last night. (PBS has made the full version of the program available online, along with extended clips, discussion boards, and a chat room.) Given all the chatter before the airing I found the program to be more balanced than I was expecting, but it was not without bias. Here are some of my random thoughts related to the program.

• It cautioned that kids may be smarter and safer about online socializing than we think. Are they learning this from themselves, school, parents, media, or …?
• The program dedicated more time to the use of technology for socializing rather than for educational purposes. I’d like to see a follow-up program deal with that topic.
• I’m not sure that everything in the program is generalizable to the larger population. While the episode never overtly made any such claim it’s important that viewers not make that assumption.
• There are excellent teachers that do not make any use of technology in the classrooms. The use of technology does not necessarily make one educational experience better than another.
• The issue of parents’/ schools’ safety concerns and children’s privacy is one that deserves a great deal more consideration.

FRONTLINE: growing up online | PBS via kwout

Here’s what others are saying:

1. Comments to my (Clif’s) initial post
2. Infinitude: Part I, Part II
3. Jennifer Maddrell
4. Weblogg-ed: Post 1, Post 2
5. Geeky Mom
6. Nick Pernisco
7. The Official Growing up Online Discussion Board

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Tennis Notes

Tennis Stars Cup is a free online tennis game. I think my friend, Dennis, might call this a mini-game. Thanks to JD for sharing the link.

Here’s are a few notes about the Australian Open.

• I said from the beginning that I’m pulling for Djokovic and Davenport but I’m expecting Federer and Henin to win.
• Davenport lost in her 2nd round match against Sharapova. Her story is unbelievable and I hope she has an outstanding year.
• Roddick is out! Undoubtedly, his best tennis is behind him. Just as I’ve always expected, he will never live up to the hype.
• James Blake has made it through to the quarter finals and plays Federer next. Blake’s best tennis may be ahead of him. Go Blake!
• The stories of the Serbian players are inspirational. Djokovic, Jankovic, Ivanovic, and Tipsarevic have all proven to be among the world’s elite players.
• The women’s draw is down to the quarter finals. It’s an exciting bracket. No matter what happens, all the remaining women’s matchups are intriguing.
• The men are also down to the quarters. The top half of the draw (with Federer, Blake, and Djokovic) seems much tougher than the bottom half with Nadal.
• Having both ESPN2 and the Tennis Channel broadcast coverage has certainly made the tournament more accessible.
• Chris Fowler does a good job anchoring the majors. How does he know so much about tennis?
• I like Darren Cahill as a tennis commentator. He fits in well with Cliff and Patrick.

Clif’s Blogroll

• A Day in the Life
• Among the Wildflowers
• And Yet It Moves
• Around the Corner
• AT Cubed: Assistive Technology Tools, Tricks, and Tips
• Be a Techie - Using Music and Technology Together In Education
• Beth’s Thoughts on Technology in the Classroom
• Bit by Bit
• The Blue Skunk Blog
• Changing High Schools
• Classroom 2.0
• Classroom Blogging
• Cloudy Tag Thoughts
• Common Craft
• The Connected Classroom
• Daddy Brain
• Dangerously Irrelevant
• Designed to Inspire
• dy/dan
• edtech VISION
• EdTech Workshop
• EdTechRoundUp
• EduTechie
• Effective Design.org
• The Elementary Teacher
• The Fischbowl
• The Four Eyed Technologist
• From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Schools
• Geek of the Week: Tools for Teachers
• Have a Good Life
• H I T
• ICT in My Classroom
• Ideas and Thoughts
• Infinite Thinking Machine
• Injenuity
• Innovative Educator 2.0
• International Edubloggers Directory
• John Connell
• KidCast
• Learning Is Change
• Learning Is Messy
• Light in the Woods
• Moving at the Speed of Creativity
• Moving Forward
• My State of Flux
• The Open Classroom
• Open Thinking & Digital Pedagogy
• Opening Doors to Digital Learning
• Parents As Partners
• The Playground
• Random Ramblings
• Rick West
• Spotlight Blog
• Stephen’s Untold Stories
• Steve Hargadon
• The Strength of Weak Ties
• Successful Teaching
• Teach42
• TeacherJay
• Teachers Teaching Teachers
• TechChickTips
• Tech Learning
• Virtual High School Meanderings
• Weblogg-ed

“Growing up Online” on PBS’ Frontline

UPDATE: The program has aired and you can read my review.

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Free Open Source Software (FOSS)

I’ve run across several lists of free open source software (FOSS) in the last few days. I’ve added each to my del.icio.us bookmarks (see My Bookmarks in the main menu) but I wanted to a bit more proactive in sharing this information with teachers, thus the reason for this post.

Free/Open Source Software for Kids - This list was generated for those teaching 3-12 year old students. It suggests FOSS for music composition, painting, space exploration, math, and more.

KDE-Education Program - This group is “developing high-quality educational software for the K Desktop Environment. Our primary focus is on schoolchildren aged 3 to 18, and the specialized user interface needs of young users. However, we also have programs to aid teachers in planning lessons, and others that are of interest to university students and anyone else with a desire to learn!” You’ll find about 30 educational software games/ tools related to math, science, languages, art, keyboarding, and more.

23 Most Valuable Free Software - A list of the most outstanding free/open source software.

GIMP - “The GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.”

Exploratree - Exploratree is a free web resource where you can download, use and make your own interactive thinking guides, concept/semantic maps, organizers, charts, tables, and more.

Firefox - A cross-platform browser, providing support for various versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. However, the source code has been unofficially ported to other operating systems. This project has a large community of external contributors. If you haven’t already switched from Internet Explorer to Firefox (or at least something else) then I strongly suggest that you consider it.

Blender - “Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite.”

For even more, you can also review my previous notes on other FOSS and TeacherJay’s Free Software Guide.

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Free Educational Software

My friend Neil Hokanson had an interesting post on his blog about a suite of open source (which also means FREE) educational games for young children. The software is called Childsplay and is available from SourceForge.net. Neil explains that Childsplay has “several games in the software that test basic math and language arts skills along with other exercises that practice matching, listening, and memory skills. The activities help children learn fine motor skills as they navigate the computer keyboard and identify specific number and letter keys, mouse, and mouse pad movements.”

I encourage those of you with learners that are under 10 years old to take a look at Childsplay. Please share your review of the games in the Comments below.

Clif

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Here’s a bit of information about about SourceForge.net for the gamers, programmers, techies, etc. that visit Clif’s Notes. “SourceForge.net is the world’s largest Open Source software development web site, hosting more than 100,000 projects and over 1,000,000 registered users with a centralized resource for managing projects, issues, communications, and code. SourceForge.net has the largest repository of Open Source code and applications available on the Internet, and hosts more Open Source development products than any other site or network worldwide.”

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