Mike Romard's Page

Welcome to the Mashup, Mike. How ever did you end up teaching in China? I used to think that was where I'd go next (after retirement) but my life has gone in such new directions in the past year, I don't think China is where I'm headed now.

Do you know Clarence and Dean? I've left Dean an invitation on his Classroom 2.0 page but he hasn't replied. Clarence Fisher is not in the Classroom 2.0 member list. Perhaps you can contact them and suggest that they join us?

Hi Mike,

I'm sending out messages to everyone I know right now, and this classroom20 network is no exception. (I've also sent this out on other Ning networks you may be a part of.) My name is Alyshia Olsen; I am a 20 year old college student from Olin College of Engineering. I am a part of a group of 6 Olin College students (we're in Needham, MA, and engineering students) who have taken a year off to work on an education related project. Since you are in the 'connecting content and technology' group, I thought you might be interested! Our project is called AlightLearning, and this is our "short" project description:

Under the assumption that within ten years, the landscape of modern education will have fully integrated what we now define as new classroom media: video, online collaboration, open source curriculum and other web tools, we hope to pioneer a web software tool that acts as a platform for this new media, bringing the power of the web and its tools to students, teachers and parents in a secure, comfortable and innovative environment. Our goal is to have our free software at a pilot middle school by April 15th, 2009, continuing to develop and coordinate with our users to create a product that other schools want to pilot and use at their schools, while allowing individual teachers to implement this tool in their own classroom.

Our project, titled Alight Learning, is currently trying to win an idea competition on Ideablob.com You can find us at http://ideablob.com/3975 . We would love your support in the form of a vote within the next couple days, but more importantly we'd love your feedback and comments. Our description on Ideablob is short, and even the one above hardly gets at many of the issues we would like to take a stab at solving, but at least it's a start.

Feel free to email me back, check out alightlearning.com, anything you like!

Thanks,

Alyshia Olsen
anotherdayaway42@gmail.com

Hi Mike -- I'd like to invite you to join a Classroom 2.0 group called Canadians Mashup. I'm trying to build a network of Canadian educators and bloggers. No discussions yet. I'm just starting out by trying to find where everyone lives and what they teach. If you're interested, please add me as a colleague as well.

If you add yourself to the map, please include a name or a photo of some sort. There seem to be a lot of unidentified people from unidentified places and the map is getting stuck on for some reason. The problem is that I can't tell from the members’ list which anonymous hits are real people and which were just false starts. The company does not differentiate members unless there is a picture or a name. Location only is not enough to help me know which entries are not real ones. THANKS!!!!

I did purchase a small camcorder from Best Buy here in Canada, but I may take it back and exchange for the Flip HD if they have it. You are very convincing and it has movement stabilization which the other Flips do not.

Hi Mike.

I do believe you win the award for colleague FURTHEST from me!

I found PS3 to be a great tool for the finished product of DST. It is easy to get started, but has enough flexibility for more sophisticated applications. Also, you don't need weeks to teach the technology...It's like playing racketball...easy to get started, but challenging to master. I have seen kids as young as 7 get a product done with minimal assistance. I believe, though it's all about the story...Pix, voice, and music are the supprt...not the stars. My web page, http://jonorech.wikispaces.com has lots of resources, tutorials, handouts, and sample stories. I will always talk to people about DST...so don't be a stranger. Love working with kids and training teachers as well.

Also, I am following you on Twitter now too.


Tell me what you currently do. I have always worked with HS kids, and am always wanting to improve my knowledge of younger kids.

Jon

Beautiful baby - I have a couple of pictures where dh and ds are wearing the same clothes... very cute :)