What was hot at FETC January 26, 2009
Posted by edtechlearning in Uncategorized.Tags: Bitstrips, FETC, The Flip, UStream
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I just returned from the FETC (Florida Educational Technology) conference in Orlando. I’ve been to this conference many times when I worked at Tom Snyder Productions. I usually spent most of my time at our booth in the exhibitor area. It was nice to go as a learner this time. I went to lots of workshops and learned about lots of new and exciting technology tools for schools. Here’s a quick sampling.
UStream is a free site that lets you create your own live video broadcast. In just minutes, you can broadcast and chat online with a global audience. All it takes is a camera and an Internet connection. My new MacBook Pro has a built-in camera so I was excited to try it out. Here’s my first test drive. You can record your broadcast which is what I did for this one. Ironically, I had to post it to YouTube in order to easily embed it in my WordPress blog. For some reason WordPress doesn’t embed UStream videos. Anyway, there could be some interesting uses for this service in distance learning. It also allows for a live chat window while the show is broadcast. I’m planning to try it in the online course I’m taking. We’ll see how it works. And free is free.
Bitstrips is an easy-to-use onlin comic strip creator. You can make a cartoon version of yourself and star in your own comics! Because they have so many options to customize the characters, I was surprised how accurate my final character looked.
The site bills itself as the “You Tube” of online comics. With it’s built-in community features and ease of use, they might be right. So is it educational? I could imagine it could be a powerful creative outlet for struggling writers who would respond to its engaging context. It gives students a chance to express themselves artistically and through the written word.
I think I need to work on the mouth. OK, so my pecs aren’t quite so ripped…but this is the domain of super heroes. Hmmm… I wonder who my alter ego will be.
The Flip is a small and easy-to-use video camera. What I really like about it is the built-in USB “arm” that makes it easy to connect to your computer and immediately post your videos on YouTube or wherever you want. Also, because it’s so small it’s easy to carry around and it’s pretty inconspicuous. I think it would be great for kids to use for creating multimedia projects. They also have an HD version. The New York Times calls it ‘one of the most significant electronic products of the year” for 2008.
My Favorite Christmas Toy December 30, 2008
Posted by edtechlearning in Handhelds.Tags: iPod touch Bloom Brian Eno handheld
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It’s a couple days after Christmas and I can’t stop playing with my new toy. Santa brought me a new iPod Touch and I feel like a kid again. I’ve had one of the original iPods for the last 5 years, but this is a totally new experience. Playing music is just a small part of what this device can do. In fact, it’s starting to feel like a really small personal computer. I can browse the web, check my email, watch videos, get driving directions, and keep a to do list.
I love my iPod Touch
But what’s really cool about the new iPod Touch or iPhones is all the applications you can run on them. Five months after Apple launched its iTunes App Store there are more than 10,000 of these applications available. Lots of them are free. The most popular free download is Pandora. It lets you type a song or artist’s name and it will create an instant personalized radio station inspired by your selection. In some cases, you can buy the music you hear through iTunes.
My favorite app so far is Bloom. Bloom lets you create dreamlike ambient music by randomly touching different parts of your screen. Your touches also create a mesmerizing light show of dots that dance up and down and change color depending on your mood settings. I felt I was creating the soundtrack to a futuristic mystery movie. The program was created by Brian Eno, an original member of Roxy Music and a longtime collaborator with David Byrne of The Talking Heads. As Eno describes it, “Bloom is an endless music machine, a music box for the 21st century. You can play it, and you can watch it play itself.”
Here’s a video to give you a feel of how it works.
What I liked so much about Bloom is that it lets you be creative and generative. In that way it is educational in the true sense of the world, since education literally means to “lead out.” This program helps draw out your potential creativity with a device that can fit in your hand. And since the iTouch is so portable and starts up immediately there is no barrier to experimenting in your free time like there might be if you had to start up your personal computer and then launch an application. The immediacy of all these applications is very powerful.
So what impact can these new iPhone/iPod applications have in schools? A quick look at the most popular downloads from the iTunes App Store seems to show that foreign language and vocabulary programs are the most popular. This is the type of curriculum content that lends itself to flashcard-like applications that work well with a handheld device. But with the rapid growth of Apple Apps it will be interesting to see if someone can come up with a real breakthrough application. If anyone knows of one, I would love to hear about it. In the mean time, I’m going back to play with my toy.
A Blessing and a Curse December 18, 2008
Posted by edtechlearning in Uncategorized.Tags: Harvard Square, Internet and Culture, Postman
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Out of Town News is heading out of town
I heard the other day that the landmark Out of Town News stand in Harvard Square is shutting down. Another victim of the Internet. It made me sad. It also reminded me of the social critic Neal Postman’s famous line that every technology is both a blessing and a curse. As he says “technology giveth, and technology taketh away.”
Out of Town News was the kind of place where you could find every major newspaper or magazine in the world. I’ve been going to this oasis in the center of the square off and on since 1976 when I would ride the T into Harvard Square from the Boston suburbs with my high school buddies. I remember the thrill of browsing in the narrow aisles and rubbing elbows with Harvard professors and exotic older women speaking foreign languages. I would casually pick up French magazines to look sophisticated and hope for some racy pictures. It felt like the whole world was at your fingertips.
Of course today the whole world is literally at my fingertips as I sit here in front of my computer with my broadband Internet connection. But somehow it’s not the same. There’s no smell of cigars, coffee, and perfumes from all the international students and business men who would crowd in the small space everyday to stay in touch with their native lands. Striking up conversations with strangers who spoke the same tongue.
Now they’re probably instant messaging online in ” My Out of Town Space”. It’s not the same. I’ll leave it up to you to ponder whether it’s better or worse, all I know is it’s different. As Postman says “culture always pays a price for technology.” Harvard Square just lost a big part of its culture.
Tell Me a Story… December 16, 2008
Posted by edtechlearning in narrative.Tags: conference, narrative, Web 2.0
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A couple weeks ago I attended the MassCUE (Massachusetts Computer Using Educators) conference in Sturbridge, MA. The common theme through all the keynotes and workshops I attended was Web 2.0. – teachers and students using the web to create, collaborate, and communicate. There was lots of talk of the revolutionary changes that we will see in 21st century schools. One presenter called it “the death of education, and the dawn of learning.” There were workshops on blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, tag clouds, Skype, Scratch and MUVEs – the conference programs should come with a glossary! But hidden beneath the jargon, the hype, and the wow factor of all the new technologies was a more timeless theme, the power of narrative in teaching.
In Wes Fryer’s keynote he started by showing slides with pictures, quotes, and links. Then he showed a VoiceThread slideshow that told the story of two sweethearts in Oklahoma during the Depression who were not allowed to marry. Suddenly the room of about 500 people was silent. The story ended by telling how the two lovers finally reunited in their 70s and got married. You could hear sniffles around the room.
Later I went to a GoogleEarth workshop presented by Kevin McGonagle from Cambridge, MA. He showed lots of cool features of GoogleEarth like the 3D building flyover and the movement of the sun across the sky, but the most engaging was a map of the actual route of the ducks in the classic story Make Way For Ducklings. In fact, there is a new website, GoogleLitTrips, devoted to showing how you can use GoogleEarth to travel to the actual locations of books such as Into the Wild and My Brother Sam is Dead.
Finally, I attended a workshop about the use of blogs in high school English classes given by Liz Davis. She shared how her students’ writing improved drastically when they used blogs to share their writing with their fellow students. The one example she played was a podcast of a boy reading his story about the day he heard from his parents that they were getting divorced. The emotional voice of the boy brought the room to a hush. It was a powerful example of the use of blogs, made more powerful by the engaging story that drew the audience in.
The power of narrative in learning is not a new concept. The cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner theorized that our brains are hard-wired to remember things most deeply when they are communicated in a story. This approach helped shape the design of the award-winning educational software of my former colleague Tom Snyder. I’ve seen it work in classrooms across the country in programs such as Decisions, Decisions, The Great Ocean Rescue, and Science Court.
So while we continue to hear about the latest new, new thing in the Web 2.0 world, it’s important to ask ourselves: Can this technology help engage students in a compelling story? If so, there’s a good chance that it’s worth looking at.
That’s it for now. I’ve got to go upstairs and read my kids a story. Let’s just hope it’s not the same Thomas the Tank Engine story I’ve been reading for the last four nights.
What’s this blog about? November 24, 2008
Posted by edtechlearning in Uncategorized.add a comment
After 16 years working for Tom Snyder Productions, a great educational software company, I’m leaving the nest to fly on my own. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the future of educational technology, particularly the whole collaborative world of Web 2.0.
I hope this blog will be a conversation. I’ll be sharing my thoughts on educational technology and other things on my mind. I look forward to reading your comments. I’m sure there’s much I can learn from you.
