February 2009 Blog Posts (194)

web log 4

Web log 4

Remix means to take cultural artifacts and combine and manipulate them

Into new kinds of creative blends. Until recently, it mainly referred to us-

ing audio-editing techniques to produce "an alternative mix of a recorded

song that differed from the original.

Lessig (2005) argues that digital remix constitutes a contemporary form

of writing on the scale of a mass cultural practice and raises issues demanding

serious reform of current copyright… Continue

Added by SHELDON SMITH on February 22, 2009 at 12:53pm — No Comments

CR 2.0 Live Workshop Honolulu

After spending about 17 hours immersed in CR 2.0 with Steve Hargadon and company, I'm so inspired to move forward into "21st century teaching (aka social networking)" with Web 2.0. Thanks to Steve, I am now the proud owner of 5 domain names (thinking about a few more to add!), a ning for our French teachers association and google sites for each one of the five French classes that I teach. I also did the live workshop on Voice Thread before our Saturday session which was very "elluminating"!… Continue

Added by Cathy Pettit on February 22, 2009 at 12:05pm — No Comments

Avatars Used to Translate Text and Speech into Sign Language for the Deaf - By Lance Winslow

By Lance Winslow

You know those cute little characters you pick to represent you on Internet forums and Blogs, well imagine a dynamic Avatar that works with speech recognition software and coverts it to sign language? A deaf person could attend Professor Lectures, Speeches or listen in on a group discussion without having to read lips. How about a Text to sign language Avatar that would read a book to a deaf person or an… Continue

Added by Lance Winslow on February 22, 2009 at 1:50am — No Comments

Great post by Miguel Guhlin regarding employing mobile devices in education

This blog post comes to via Miguel Guhlin. He composed a post regarding the use of mobile devices by administrators.

The post is a worthy read and sets out a series of five straightforward guidelines for administrators and educators when utilising mobile devices within… Continue

Added by John Larkin on February 21, 2009 at 5:45pm — No Comments

Math GPS sequencing is wonky

I am not, nor have I ever been a fan of the way the GPS was implemented. However, I have larger qualms with the sequencing of the topics in the middle grade mathematics curriculum.

The math curriculum was rolled out in middle school and because of this the 6th grade mathematics curriculum has, at last count, 11 units. I was told that this was done to bridge the massive gap that exists between elementary school and middle school....but I digress.

I understand the need to… Continue

Added by Jovan D. Miles on February 21, 2009 at 4:47pm — 1 Comment

The Blogosphere is Calling

I’ve been a little surprised and, honestly, a little disappointed that so few students have started blogging on the ISA Internship Ning. In January, there were 9 blog posts written by 5 different students—more or less the same students who wrote the 14 blog entries that were posted in… Continue

Added by Honor Moorman on February 20, 2009 at 9:00pm — No Comments

MediaWiki, LaTeX and teTeX

Spent the greater part of the day getting matrices and \mathbb to work on my FreeBSD/MediaWiki install.

The issue is with amsfonts. I installed the latex port, but this does not include amsfonts. Deinstalled and installed teTeX, restarted apache and voila I now have vectors, matrices, and more.

Visit: Maths to see some matrices and \mathbb's

I posted what I did in some detail to:…

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Added by Geoff St. Pierre on February 20, 2009 at 6:31pm — No Comments

Character Poster

On Tuesday, our Educational Technology teacher taught us about Character Posters. We used Microsoft Excel to upload our pictures, and then wrote three things: Our name, an adjective that described us, and the meaning of the word. For example, “Friendly: \ˈfren(d)-lē\ adjective 1: of, relating to, or befitting a friend: as a: showing kindly interest and goodwill”. The digital image needed to have a high resolution so that when printed out, it wouldn't look distorted. This was for the whole class… Continue

Added by Mai Chan on February 20, 2009 at 1:00pm — 1 Comment

Help with Inner Wealth Initiative-Classroom Management

I am in a book study group of K-5 educators who are reading The Inner Wealth Initiative by Tom Grove, Howard Glasser and Melissa Block. We are really interested in adopting these strategies in our school. We would like to have information about the sucess of the program from teachers who have actually put the strategies into effect. What was powerful? What worked well and what might you suggest for a school or teacher interested in using the program?

Added by Earlyne Mullen on February 20, 2009 at 12:43pm — 1 Comment

Platform Learning Management Systems—Creating a Knowledge Base

Open for discussion—any comments appreciated and very welcome!

Most universities and colleges nowadays employ course management systems to enhance instruction. Besides commercial systems such as Blackboard, quite a few Open Source learning management systems have become available in the last years, such as Moodle, ATutor, Ilias, Claroline and many more—some of which even have won awards. While I have encountered Moodle to be used as an alternative to Blackboard at the same… Continue

Added by Almut Haboeck on February 20, 2009 at 11:00am — No Comments

What is Differentiation - Really?

There are a lot of books on the market to address this buzz word - differentiation. New teachers are told to be sure and differentiate while experienced teachers have sat through many a staff development which shared the theories – they may even be able to recite CarolAnn Tomlinson’s content, process, and product with great reverence. All that being said – what is it really?

I would like to propose that is a way of life. It can be studied; it can be analyzed but in order to be a… Continue

Added by Breeze (Laurie Westphal) on February 20, 2009 at 6:52am — 2 Comments

Web 2.0 Class for SJS Faculty - March 2009 - (3 Credits)

The course has been approved.
Course materials will be posted in our private group here and in other websites.
More information will be provided…

Continue

Added by ROLLY MAIQUEZ on February 19, 2009 at 10:04pm — No Comments

Parents on Facebook

A class entitled, "Parents on Facebook: Connecting with parents using Facebook & What does it mean to be a digital parent?" will be offered on Monday, February 23, 2009 at 8:00pm at https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/launch/meeting.jnlp?sid=2008350%3DM.612F85D6F8C95E7398CA7C70EEFFB2 A post explaining how to participate is located at http://edtechtalk.com/node/3633 Please share this information with your parents, family, and friends. This informational session is being offered by Lorna… Continue

Added by Durff on February 19, 2009 at 8:39pm — 1 Comment

Learning

This came up on my random quotes; and it struck me!

Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.

Abigail Adams ( 1744 - 1818 ), 1780

cout "Geoff\n";

Added by Geoff St. Pierre on February 19, 2009 at 6:30pm — No Comments

Social Network

What should you remember when creating a social network in a classroom environment? Who should you invite?

Added by Dr. T on February 19, 2009 at 5:30pm — 1 Comment

What the...?

I'm not even sure where this will show up, but here goes nothing! Maybe I'll learn more at the workshop... already have a school blog going, and that's fun. Now on to twitters and wikis and glogs and Nings and, and, and...

Added by Mary Roy on February 19, 2009 at 3:32pm — 1 Comment

Technology through my Life

I have vast memories of using technology starting at a young age.

I remember when my dad bought our first computer. It was a Compaq model that took forever to even set up (in hindsight). I was about 7 years old when he bought it, and I remember watching him use it for business and the internet. Meanwhile, in school, we were being taught the basic functions of computers, ie., paint, typing, basic games, etc. I took interest in computers and my dad taught me a lot on our home computer.… Continue

Added by Kristin McCloud on February 19, 2009 at 11:30am — 1 Comment

Black Out

I noticed this today on Twitter and it caught my eye, but I really didn't know why. It just stuck out like a sore thumb.…

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Added by John Costilla on February 18, 2009 at 9:59pm — 2 Comments

Searching for multimedia related to Cisco class

I am now teaching a high school Cisco networking class. Multimedia is hard to find. Sometimes I create it myself, but I would also like some professional and polished stuff for the students. I ordered a Cisco training CD and I hope that works well, but anybody know of some descent free stuff out there?

Added by Shawn Nutting on February 18, 2009 at 4:43pm — 1 Comment

'Inanimate Alice' and Teaching English

In the past few months 'Inanimate Alice' has made great progress in reaching out to educators around the world. The Education Packs associated with the series have been accessed from 35 countries. These are available at http://www.inanimatealice.com/education/index.html

'Inanimate Alice' is a born-digital fiction, an interactive story for kids growing up in the videogame generation. About an hour of on-screen time and associated material makes for an in-depth look at what the digital… Continue

Added by Ian Harper on February 18, 2009 at 4:39pm — No Comments