Answergarden: What is your goal?...

Answergarden: What is your goal?...: "Answergarden: What is your goal?..."

Answergarden: What is your wish?...

Answergarden: What is your wish?...: "Answergarden: What is your wish?..."

Back to School

It's that time of year again, back to school. As part of my new back to school outlook, I have decided that I am going to use my blog not only as a means of sharing new technology tools with my audience, but also as a journal of projects I have been spending time on so that I have some documentation at the end of the year. I do not know how this documentation will be used, but it will be nice to reflect on my activities as they occur.

So, this is the third day of school, which makes me behind already.

On Thursday, August 28th, we had a Teachers' Workshop Day. My principal asked me to give the staff a quick review of Infinite Campus. This was a little stressful for me in that I did not have all that much experience with IC. After a quick immersion from our SIS Coordinator, I felt much better. I then created a little cheat sheet for the staff that they could download and use. I also created another instruction sheet for staff to use so they could access their documents on our new file server.

On the first day of school, September 2nd, I spent a good chunk of my day troubleshooting issues staff had with printing, connecting to FirstClass or Infinite Campus etc. I was thrilled though to be asked by the Kennebec Team to do something that actually had to do with integration. In years past, this team would have students do a desktop publishing activity using AppleWorks called Kennebec's Most Wanted. They asked me to take part in making this activity happen again, but possibly updating it. I immediately thought of using Pages instead of AppleWorks and instead of the teachers using a digital camera to take all of the students' pictures, transferring them to a computer, and then making a web page from the pics and posting it to their site, I would have each student plug in an iSight camera and then use Photobooth to take their own picture which could then be put right into iPhoto. I created a Pages template of the activity and then made it available to the students through an activity blog in iWeb which I put on the Kennebec Team's site. I ended the day with a Technology Integrators meeting where we made plans for the year and set goals.

On the second day of school, September 3rd, I presented the new and improved activity to the Kennebec Team. We made plans on the logistics of the activity. I also spent a bit of time transferring some staff files from the old file server to the new one.

That finally brings me to day Three. I started out this morning reading my email and found one from the folks at Nettrekker. What was intriguing about this email was that it was letting users of Nettrekker know that they have free access to hotmath.com from 5AM to 5PM. So, I checked that out right away. OMG! What a cool site! Check it out if you get a chance. The next thing I worked on was the issues that the Saco Team was having with their homework calendar and the Lang. Arts teacher wished to do the same Pages activity that the Kennebec Team was working on. So, I set her up with that, created an activity link on their team page, and then fixed their homework calendar as well. That is about as far as I have gotten. It has been busy, busy, busy.

So, if you have a moment, you may want to check out some of the links I have added to this post.

Playing w/ Community Walk

I was doing a little surfing around and discovered a blog in which the writer was providing viewers with a list of his 15 favorite Web 2.0 tools. I decided to check out a few that I was unfamiliar with. On was a site called CommunityWalk where users can create their own Google-esque maps complete with markers for places and provide images of those places. This would be a great educational tool for students to create virtual field trips of a city, town, state, or country. Users can also copy and then paste the code necessary to post their map on to their blog or web page. This could be a really cool tool for visual projects. In my playing with it, I created a map showing the schools within my district. It should appear below.

CommunityWalk Map - Lake Region School District

Playing w/ Slide

Playing w/ Photobooth

Today I was playing with Photobooth on my MacBook. I loved this Andy Warhol effect. I was able to export the pic to iPhoto and then play with it a little bit. I really liked this.

My Wiki

If you look at my links on the right side of this blog you will see a link to my wiki. On this wiki you will find (at the time of this post) information about myself and a link to a page about some of the Web 2.0 tools I discovered while at the FOSSEd conference this past June. For those of you who do not know what a wiki is, to put it in simple terms, it is a webpage or site where other viewers or friends can change and update the information on it. You have probably heard of wikipedia, which is entirely created by various viewers who are self-proclaimed experts on the topics that provide content for. A wiki has great potential in the classroom. There are teachers who use wikis for collaboration activites. One example is creating a wiki about a novel a class is reading, with some groups working on chapter summaries while others are creating pages on vocabulary, information about the author, or plot mountains. Another classroom use of a wiki is to have the teacher and students collaborating together in creating the textbook for whatever topic they are studying.

There are several different choices available to the educator who wants to create a classroom wiki. I use wikispaces, but there is also pbwiki, wikidot, wetpaint, and many others. You can also create a wiki in Moodle (if your district has a Moodle server).

There are many more educational used for a wiki and I have only touched on a few in this posting. If you do a search of wikis in education, I am sure you will find more ways to use this collaborative tool.

Web 2.0 Revisited

At our Summer Technology Institute 2008, it was asked by a couple of attendees, "What is Web 2.0?" A few years ago I started a web page that attempted to answer that question as well as share classroom uses and provide examples of Web 2.0 tools. It occurred to me that I had neglected to complete this page and that I was much more aware of the many tools available to educators. It also occurred to me that I was neglecting my blog, having only written a few post throughout all of last school year. So, my goal for this school year is to complete and update the "What is Web 2.0?" site and to write posts to my blog that align with those changes. So, if you frequent my blog or have it on your RSS subscriptions, this is what you can expect to see in the near future.

Donuts and Police Officers: Not What You'd Expect

I was thrilled this morning to have a two hour delay. Having a busy evening planned I was concerned that I would not have time to get to the gym today. Thankfully, mother nature was looking out for me this morning and provided me with the gift of two hours to spend at the gym. I calculated the time at the gym, showering, and traveling to CRES and left my home at 7:30 A.M.

Now I pretty much just hit autopilot when I get in my truck and set off for the gym. My mind was mulling over what I would do at the gym, what I ate last night, and how many calories were in it. A quick look in my rearview mirror revealed a dark blue SUV behind me. Another quick look told me that it was a Police SUV. A third look and his blue lights were flashing. I pulled over thinking to myself, "Hmm, I wonder what I was doing wrong?"

The police officer approaches me and says,"Now I could let go that you were going 50 in a 35 and even that you were going 40 in a 25, but when you also rolled through the stop sign too, I had to pull you over. License and registration please."

As I take out my identification from the glove compartment, he asks me if I am on my way to work. I replied that I was going to the gym and then going to work because I have a two hour delay. He asked me when the last time was that I had a ticket and where I worked. I told him I worked at CRES and that I honestly couldn't remember when I had last received a ticket (Thinking back now, about five years). He proceeded to call in my name and birthdate to find out more about my driving record. As he is waiting for the response from the police station he starts asking me questions like it is the Spanish Inquisition.

"What do you do at CRES? Where is CRES? What grades are the kids in? How many students are there? How many teachers are there?" I answer all of his questions and am finally saved by the police station dispatcher calling him back saying something to the effect that there are no points off of my license.

So the officer turns to me and says, I am going to give you four choices here...
1) I wont give you the ticket for going 50 in a 35, or for going 40 in a 25, but I will give you the ticket for rolling through the stop sign and yell at you for being an idiot.
2) I wont give you the ticket for going 50 in a 35, or for rolling through the stop sign, but I will give you the ticket for going 40 in a 25 and yell at you for being an idiot.
3) I wont give you the ticket for going 40 in a 25 , or for rolling through the stop sign, but I will give you the ticket for going 50 in a 35 and yell at you for being an idiot.

At this point I started to chuckle because I am thinking to myself, "He should yell at me for being an idiot."
He says, "I'm not done yet. Choice number four is that you need to stop and buy the teachers at the school donuts and muffins today. So which choice do you want?"
I eagerly told him that I would gladly go with choice #4. He asked if someone for CRES would need to call him to prove that I had really bought the muffins and donuts. I told him I would have someone do that if he really wanted. He told me that I looked like an honest enough guy and to just be sure to slow down and come to a complete stop at all stop signs. As I drove off towards the gym I realized what a bargain he just gave me. He could have easily given me a pretty hefty ticket which would go in the Windham coffers, but instead he decided that he would indirectly do something nice for the teachers here at CRES. So, everyone, enjoy the goodies on me.

Pepsi & iTunes

As I said in the last post, I spent some time at the iTunes Music Store over the past Christmas break searching for songs for my son's new iPod Nano. Luckily, he also received for Christmas, a gift card for the online store. As I entered in his card # to redeem the $15 on it, I was take back to 2004 when Apple and Pepsi teamed together to give away one million songs at the iTunes Music Store after the Super Bowl. During this promotion, codes for one free song were printed at the under the bottle caps of one in three Pepsi bottles. I thought back to how after entering in each code, your credit to your account would increase by one song, or $1.00. I wondered whether they were gearing up to do the same promotion by any chance since the Super Bowl is coming up relatively soon.

I did another little Google search (makes me wonder what I ever did without Google) and discovered that Pepsi has dropped Apple in favor of Amazon MP3. Now I had no idea whatsoever that Amazon was in the .MP3 business, but apparently they are. So, I did a little more research and playing around. I created an Amazon MP3 account for myself, downloaded and installed the Downloader software, and tried downloading a song for the first time.

There were a few cool things about doing this: One, the song was completely compatible with iTunes, so as soon as it downloaded, it played in iTunes. It even downloads the album artwork! Two, just like the iTunes Music Store you can preview the song prior to purchasing it. Three, it seems that the prices for these songs (especially if you a buying entire albums) are cheaper than iTunes.

Now it seems that I have yet another reason to look forward to the Super Bowl. (If the New England Patriots being in it wasn't enough of a reason.)

Trying Out Some New Things / Ringtones

I have been spending some time trying out some new technology related things lately. I hope to share some of them in the next several posts. Some of these new tools are items I found in issues of Macworld (subscription~priceless) and others I just sort of looked into because a need or curiosity arose. I will start with the latter.

During this past Christmas break I found myself spending a lot of time waiting around in my truck, usually for one or both of my boys to get out of or return from some sort of sporting or social event. I took this as an opportunity to spend some quality time with my cell phone. I downloaded an application so that I could find, preview, and download different ring-tones. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my cell phone (which I picked up at a yard sale for $5) would play ring-tones that were pieces of actual music, not just the MIDI variety. I soon discovered that these cool ring-tone would run about $3 each to download. That just seemed like too high a price to pay, so I kind of let the topic slip to backburner of my mind.

Another way that I spent some of my precious Christmas vacation time was downloading songs and videos to my oldest son's new 3G iPod Nano which he purchased using Christmas $. While at the iTunes Music Store searching for songs, I noticed that some of them had little bell icons next to them. My son told me that they were songs that could also be used as ring-tones. "Ahh Haa!" I thought. "Maybe I could use one of these as my ringtone?" I wondered. A little research into this idea came up fruitless for two reasons, one, it costs $2 for the ring-tone from the iTunes Store ($1 for the Song and $1 for the ability to edit it into a ring-tone) and two, they only work on iPhones. So, that option was out.

I finally decided to search for an easy, yet free, way to get actual music ring-tones on to my cell phone. A quick Google Search lead me to Mobile17. Once you register you are able to create ring-tones using .mp3 files you have on your computer. It will ask you to browse for the file. Next, it will ask how many seconds/minutes into the song you want to start the ring-tone. Then, it asks how long you want the ringtone to last. Finally, after hit SEND, it sends the ringtone (in my case as a PICT) to your cell phone. You open the PICT message, save it, and then select it to be your ring-tone. I tried this out twice for myself and it WORKS! I love finding ways to do things for FREE.

In my next posting I will share another cool thing that I found just from need or curiosity.