Tales of a Technology Omnivore

A friend sent this to me and I couldn’t stop laughing! See how much technology has changed things — even for you!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning … uphill BOTH ways … yadda, yadda, yadda …

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it! But now that… I’m over the ripe old age of thirty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today.

You’ve got it so easy!

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The Journal Magazine’s September issue has a wonderful article on a product that we love in NYC: Tabula Digita’s Dimension M educational gaming software. You don’t have to be a gamer to love this! Students enter a virtual world where they complete missions that teach them pre-algebra and algebra concepts. Using the latest 3D engines, these immersive environments are fun, have quality on par with commercial games, and educational. Here in Brooklyn, three of our schools piloted the product with tremendous results. Not only did the students love it, but most showed a marked academic improvement. The children learn the concepts without realizing they’re learning because it’s so much fun.

Check out the article: http://www.thejournal.com/articles/21291_1

The title of this entry is from an article in the September/October issue of Learning and Leading with Technology which says how the threat of security is hindering the integration of technology into the classroom:

There is increasing evidence that many policies being imposed by administration as efforts to protect students and personnel from lawsuits are actually decreasing the availability and utility of integrating technology into teaching and learning.

The article starts with a story about a high school science teacher who was in his classroom on a Saturday getting ready for back to school and before he left, he ordered bulbs from an online flower company. The personnel director sent an email and then stopped by his room to tell him that he was now being monitored for inappropriate uses of the Internet and that repeated abuses would be noted in his personnel file! On a Saturday!!!

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For two reasons.

One — that I want to share the Soapbox service with you as an alternative to Youtube! As Americans we love choices and now we have another choice for our video sharing needs! Soapbox is connected to MSN Video which is connected to MSNBC so tons of video content ranging from Nightly News to the Today show already populates the site and is embeddable in your blogs. For those of you who work in the internet jail called the NYC Department of Education, you already know that YouTube is blocked. For now at least, it seems like Soapbox works. Enjoy it while it lasts!

Two — that I wanted to share this video that I watched this morning on Soapbox. (more…)

A school district in Arkansas felt bad for their students who sit through long bus rides to school every day (some an hour and a half!). So they decided to make the time productive. They installed a wireless router in the bus, gave some kids laptops and some video ipods loaded with educational content from high quality sources like National Geographic. What a great use of dead time! Instead of starting fights, they can spend the time learning! Now let’s try this in Brooklyn and see how it goes.

Read the MSNBC article: Back to School 2.0

Many of you know that I went swimming with my cell phones this summer. I took my Blackjack swimming at the beach in July and then in August, I took my 3125 for a swim in the pool. I ruined 2 good phones and I really wasn’t planning on getting a new phone right now! But anyway — I’m looking and that’s a good thing because cell phones are my passion. I read cell phone blogs every day religiously.

These are the phones I’m checking out… (more…)

OK So I found a widget that counts how many visitors have been to your site and gives you a detailed report. It’s called Statcounter.com and it’s really amazing what data can do for you. Looking at the site visit statistics I see how many visitors come to this site on a daily basis. Not many I tell you. But enough to make me feel guilty that I haven’t been updating on my target frequency: daily (except on the weekends when I can’t think of anything to write). I’m fully aware that regular updates are what drives repeat visitors which is the key to building readership. So it’s time to practice what I preach! If I want people to come back on a regular basis I should provide new content for them to see on a regular basis.

OK — so Statcounter.com. Create an account there and they give you a widget with directions on how to add it to your Blogger page (or any blog actually). You paste the HTML code in and voila! Site statistics. There are options to make the site visit statistics available publicly and hide the Statcounter logo. Many asked how they can see how many visitors they’ve had? This does that and more. Check it out:

http://www.statcounter.com

To all the staff developers, teachers, principals, directors, and educators (everyone in the education industry): Check out this excellent article entitled, “10 Things you can do to make your presentations more effective“. What a well written reminder of how to present your ideas clearly and persuasively. I like the “Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them.” advice. And when speaking from a powerpoint, embellish, don’t read — they can read the slide themselves! Some real good common sense advice! Enjoy!

Wired magazine has an article entitled, “Virtual Schooling Growing at K-12 Level” which introduces readers to the popularity and concept of virtual schools. It starts off with a vignette of a student that switched to virtual schooling in Florida and watched her grades skyrocket from C’s and D’s to A’s and B’s — she is happier, more productive, more interested in her education, and her teeth are whiter.