2¢ WorthSomething New from Google - SearchWiki
After doing just a little bit of work in our new Class Blogmeister Ning Social Network for Class Blogmeister teachers, it was past time to start final preparations for today’s presentations at the Leading & Learning Conference in central Alberta (Red Deer). I needed to be reminded of my day’s schedule so I didn’t go to my e-mails tagged for the event, nor the wiki that Brenda and I keep with details for my work, nor even the folder she slips into my computer bag as I leave. I went to Google, and I Googled warlick red deer (see below).
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At the top of the listing was “Leading & Learning Conference - Schedule” — Excellent — followed by a Twitter message I posted at an airport yesterday and reference to Warlick Ancestors in Red Deer (Will have to check into that one). But what really caught my attention was the slighted grayed buttons to the right of the title and at the end of the hit entry.
Now, as usually scurries through my mind at times like these, “What was the latest add-on I’ve put into FireFox — have I really mucked things up now?” So I did the easy thing, I Googled it — or actually, I went to The Official Google Blog and found an entry posted yesterday afternoon (SearchWiki: make your search your own).
Today we’re launching SearchWiki, a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. With just a single click you can move the results you like to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don’t feel belong. These modifications will be shown to you every time you do the same search in the future. SearchWiki is available to signed-in Google users. We store your changes in your Google Account. If you are wondering if you are signed in, you can always check by noting if your username appears in the upper right-hand side of the page.
Go here to read the entire article and even view a video demonstration.
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November 20, 2008
Just So You’ll Know
The history teacher in me caught hold of this post from Next Web. I never do get all that deep into my RSS reader. Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten captured the information from a Neatorama post, The Wonderful World of Early Computing. What drew Zanten’s attention was the first computer bug.
Click to Enlarge Apparently we call them bugs because Grace Hopper found the first computer “bug”: a moth stuck between the relays on the Harvard Mark II on September 9, 1945. These early computers were attracting lost of moths who got stuck between the light-bulbs inside the machines. At times there were so many relays malfunctioning that they had a fill time bulb changer working to fix find all the ‘Bugs’ stuck between relays.
Read the Next Web post to learn more about Hoper and the Early Computing post for a lot of information about the early days.
I must confess that I miss talking about abacuses and Jacquard’s Loom in computer literacy.
It seems that Grace Hoper is also credited with coining the phrase…
It is easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.
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November 19, 2008
Multi-touch for Kids
I just uploaded a Connect Learning podcast, featuring a conversation with the booth rep for Smart Technologies at the T+L conference in Seattle recently. She took me on a tour of their Smart Table and I was very excited to see it and too play. The YouTubes featuring demos of the technology (not to mention Tom Cruise in Minority Report [vid]) have had me itching to get my finger tips down on that surface.
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I have to confess just a bit of disappointment, though. To be completely fair, it’s a product that isn’t even out yet, and they are just now starting to develop applications for it. The ones that I saw quite effectively illustrated how multi-touch works. However, they were not all that impressive in terms of how children learn collaboratively. But, again, this is just the bare infancy of the technology.
Causing my heart to beat even faster was the discovery that the hotel I was staying in (Sheraton) featured about a half dozen Microsoft Surface or Milan tables (MS). The performance was mountains better than the Smart Tech table, and the image quality was much more satisfying.
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That said, after about ten minutes, I found myself becoming bored with the thing. Of course, I didn’t really have a task to do, I was just playing — and working the thing would probably make a difference. But I suspect that we haven’t really discovered the killer app for this technology.
Enter Durham University’s SynergyNet, a project whose aim it is to:
- To create a radically new technology-rich learning environment that integrates with traditional classroom layouts and collective activities.
- To design and implement a new form of user interface for educational multi-touch systems.
- To formulate a new pedagogy that eases transition and movement between teacher-centric and pupilcentric interaction.
- To analyse pupils’ learning strategies to inform fundamental research by capturing data as pupils use the SynergyNet environment.
One of my Twitter chums, Tom Barrett, has visited the project and is working with the U.K. group to facilitate an open conversation among educators about the potentials of multi-touch interface in education. He rights about his visit here, and posted me a e-mail where he says,
They have asked me to help coordinate and facilitate the way that the wider educational technology community can make contributions to the project. They are actively encouraging many voices to assist in an open source style; as opposed to profit focused companies that want their multi-touch development to remain behind closed doors. I believe that this approach puts the Durham project in a strong position.Part of the process of contributing ideas is a Flickr group that will act as a place to add images and screenshots of learning activities that could be enhanced further with multi-touch capabilities. There is also a Ning group (part of Classroom 2.0) for further discussion.
What now needs to happen is that as many teachers as possible are made aware of the opportunity to contribute, as I think this is an unprecendented chance to help shape what future classroom technology could be like.
So let’s imaging the potentials of multiplying the angles upon which we can workable the information.
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In the News This Morning — Google & LIFE
I’m an iPhone App junkie. I scan the App Store daily looking for the coolest new tool-oy or update of yesterday’s tool-oy. But, hands-down, my most often activated app is Mobile News, powered by Associated Press. ..and this morning, I learned that Google has launched an online photo gallery that will ultmately feature millions of images from Life magazine’s archives — photos that have never been seen by the public.
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Starting today, Google offers to the connected eye and mind, about 2 million photos. The Mountain View company plans to scan all 10 million photos from LIFE’s library. According to the AP article, “About 97 percent of LIFE’s archives have not been publicly seen, according to LIFE.”1
My family received Life Magazine when I was growing up. It was one of the highlights of the month to be able to scan through the photos, those pages providing a window on our world. It, and other published and broadcasted images and sounds, had a profound affect on my generation.
Today, however, the Internet, and the inventive and often donated efforts of many organizations, like Google (but many others) are providing lenses for drilling so much deeper into our world, its workings, its past, and even the future.
Yet, for many schools today, access to LIFE’s library remains limited to that single magazine, perched on the magazine rack, along side many of the very same journals that we perused decades ago — and the shame is in our prevailing belief that schools that limit learners’ access to content remain adequate for educating our children.
We know that a crucial part of the formula that describes and defines the education experience that today’s children desperately need is access to abundant, rich media that is digital and networked. Services like Google LIFE photo archive, offer not only access to knowledge, but perhaps more importantly to the pedagogies of a digital world, raw materials for working information in ways that provoke learning, not just administer it.
According to the AP article, “The photos can be printed out for free as long as they aren’t being used as part of an attempt to make money.”
From Google’s blog article (LIFE Photo Archive available on Google Image Search) about this new offering…
One of our favorites is this classic Eisenstaedt image of children watching a puppet show.
Alfred snapped this in 1963, at the climax of Guignol’s “Saint George and the Dragon” in the Tuileries Garden in Paris. Just as the dragon is slain, some children cry out in a combination of horror and delight, while others are taken aback in shock. Every child is consumed with emotion, masterfully captured by Eisenstaedt’s camera…2
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Couldn’t we learn to capture learning, instead of just measuring it, like this.
We must make a clear statement, a demand, that 21st century learners and teachers (master learners) must have convenient access to networked, digital, and abundant content and the tools for working that content.
This is not about future schools.
This is not about special schools.
This is about the characteristics of basic education today, for today’s children, and their/our future.
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- ”Google gives online life to Life mag’s photos .” The Associated Press 18 Nov 2008 19 Nov 2008 . [↩]
- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/life-photo-archive-available-on-google.html [↩]
- ”Factory workers displaying gyroscopes from assembly line..” Google Photo Archive. Google Inc. 19 Nov 2008 link. [↩]
November 17, 2008
Suggest this One to your Students — Space Diving
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Imagine 120,000 feet, on board an orbiting spacecraft, and the door is open. There’s a red light at the door, and someone is counting down. At “0″ the light turns to green and you hurl yourself out
of the door
into space.
You have on a specially equipped suit that helps you to fall, gracefully, to Earth — and you do it for fun. Gizmodo says:
Orbital Outfitters, run by Rick Tumlinson, a longtime civilian space booster who founded the Space Frontier Foundation, and Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon, has already started to develop the equipment it thinks is needed to achieve the feat. Clark, whose wife Laurel perished in 2003’s Columbia disaster, believes that the smaller the body is attempting re-entry, the less the chance it has of breaking up - hence the thinking behind space dives being used for NASA emergencies.
Falling to Earth would have you traveling over 2,500 miles per hour. Approaching the outer atmosphere, you would engage your drogue chute, which would bring you down to a more manageable 120mph. Finally, a more traditional chute would be deployed, bringing you to a soft landing.
Then it’s back up again. But up may not be such a problem either, with Japan expected to start development of its space elevator sometime in 2018.
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Phase 3 of Big Ideas 4 Education
First of all, I want to thank each of you who have already contributed to this project. The final document will be a compilation of and hopefully a tribute to the power of a community of thinkers.
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Phase 3, and perhaps the most important phase, has begun. We are starting with a list of eight basic topics related to retooling education for an unpredictable future, extensively networked learners, and a dramatically new information landscape. Within each of those are statements that were submitted by educators during phase 1, and then associated with the eight topics by contributors in phase 2.
Today, I am asking you to pick one or more of the eight topics, thinking about them in terms of relevant education, and contribute your more thoughtful ideas and arguments concerning the topic. You are encouraged to click into the associated topics (click the plus by the topic to see the most strongly associated statements, and Show All, to see all of them), and include responses to those items as well.
So that this more thought conversation can be brought together to one place, I ask that you include the tags that are attached to each topic and statement. For instance, include at the end of your blog article about topic 2 with comments about the second statement:
bigideas2 bigideas243
If you do not currently have a blog, you can set one up in less than 10 minutes with Blogger.com (video tutorial here).
Finally, I have fixed the sidebar link badge, so I encourage you to spread the word with a badge or just point folks here as you have the opportunity.
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Thanks!
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November 15, 2008
Can you Concept Me?
By way of Stephen Downes’ connection (Live Bloggings at DevLearn) to the live bloggings from DevLearn, I linked over to
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Clark Quinn’s Concept Map of a presentation by Tim O’Reilly. Looking at his map, I found myself wondering of someone, watching one of my conference presentations might be able to record their notes via a concept map.
I purposely try to organize my presentations around three (or four if forced to) foundation elements, a structure to hang the concepts and skills from. But delivery is an entirely different thing. Perhaps I might provide, in the online handouts, a link to some concept mapping services, and suggest that audience members use them for their notes.
On a similar note, I tried something the other day during one of my presentations for the 1st Annual Virtual Technology Conference (VTC) held by the Education Service Center 11 in Texas (not sure where that is geographically). I wanted the 60 or so virtual attendees to understand the experience of cooperative information environments.
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We were using Eluminate as the presentation platform, so as I was talking about these information landscapes, I used my mouse to roughly draw two eyes on the whiteboard. Then I turned the whiteboard over to the attendees and said, “Ya’ll finish the drawing.”
There was only a slight hestiation, but with more and more people shoving their mice around, drawing lines and swirls, the image grew. I stopped it after about ten seconds.
The activity exceeded my expectations — and that doesn’t happen everyday.
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November 14, 2008
Technology Literacy?
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I will likely be interviewed by phone for a magazine at some point today, probably in an airport somewhere. The question will be, “Can you tell me about technology literacy?”
My immediate response is that technology literacy is not an issue. Our students are coming into our classrooms with a seemingly uncanny ability to use and learn to use new technologies. They’ve had lots of practice. Each new video game that they learn challenges them to master some new skill. Even though the Digital Natives/Digital Immigrants comparison is often abused, I think that there is a clear distinction between people who have grown up with technology, and those of us who have watched technology grow before our eyes.
That said, there is certainly an issue of great concern, in that there are many children who are coming into our classrooms with no experience with contemporary information and communication technologies (ICT), and this is a huge problem. But generally speaking, technology skills seem to be happening.
What is the issue, in my opinion, are the ways that our information landscape have changed, as a result of ICT, and the new skills required to work that information environment to accomplish goals. Basic literacy has changed…
- What it means to be a reader when information is networked,
- What it means to be a processor of information when information is digital,
- What it means to be a communicator when we are overwhelmed by information,
- and the ethical implications of information empowerment.
I’m posting this at 06:30 EST and should be landing in Chicago in about three hours. Would love to read your feedback then…
Cheers!
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November 12, 2008
Phase 2 of Big Ideas 4 Education
Sorry for the delay in starting this phase. I got distracted by an invitation from Chris Smith to attend a panel discussion in Second Life™ (see blog post).
Phase 1 of this project received 179 contributed statements, which surprised me. This volume of ideas necessitated a slightly more sophisticated way to organize them. So I read through all of the statements and came up with eight foundation topics (see below) that seem to cover all of the statements.
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- Establish a education vision statement that combines trends, students’ info-experience, & a prevailing digi-networked information landscape.
- Rewrite standards to more accurately reflect today’s environment, our students needs & unique capabilities, and their future.
- Establish new methods and structures for improving community communication.
- Overhaul teacher education, and policies and procedures for professional development.
- Facilitate an exploration of new education methods and pedagogies that reflect today’s children and their information experiences, abundant and connective information environments, and 21st century skills.
- Restructure the school environment including grades, school day/year schedule, building (or lack there of), information infrastructure, roles & rules, staffing, governance, and choice.
- Commit to funding that is adequate to true education reform that reflects today’s rapidly changing world, our students’ info-experiences, and a dramatically new information landscape.
- Overhaul state and national assessment policies and procedures.
For the sake of sorting and organization, I am asking you to continue your support by helping to match the statements with the foundation topics. I’m asking that you sort five. Should take no more than a few seconds. If you want to match more, then just click the [Yes] button and it will give you five more.
Here are the instructions as posted on the Big Ideas web site:
Instructions
- I am asking folks to match only five items. You can match more if you have time.
- To the left (see image right and click to expand), you see one of the statements submitted during the past two days. Just beneath that are eight foundation topics that I have culled from the 176 items contributed by educators. There are four more statements beneath the foundation topics, waiting to be considered.
- Read the statement at the top and then decide which of the eight topics it best fits into and then click the [Put Item ## Here] link to the right of the topic.
- When you click the link, that item will go away, replaced by the next one. Again, select the most logical topic and click it.
- You will be asked to match five statements. At the end, click [Yes] to match five more.
Added: Also, I know that the sidebar link that I included in the initial blog post didn’t work for a lot of people. It seems that textarea tags do something quirky to apostrophes and quotes. I’ve redone it, and this appears to work. So, if you have time and the inclination, please post this code in the side bar of your blog.
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<a href="javascript:window.open('http://landmark-project.com/bigideas/', '_blank', 'width=700, height=600, toolbar=yes, menubar=yes, scrollbars=yes, resizable=yes, location=yes');void(0);"><img src="http://davidwarlick.com/images/bigideas_badge.jpg" border="0" /></a> |
Thanks so much for your contribution to this project — whose final product is yet to be imagined. But at least it is going to be a fine collection of our thoughts and experienced insights.
Cheers!
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Live Blogging Panel Discussion in International School Island
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I have a self induced deadline to have the second phase of Big Ideas up by 8:00 AM, but just captured a Tweet from Chris Smith (AKA Shamblesguru Voom), of an interview in Second Life with Fire Preibisch (AKA Fire Centaur). He’s talking about his first night in Korea as an International School teacher — got lost his first night. But people are incredibly kind, and he’s stayed. To combat culture shock, he learned salsa, and goes salsa dancing with a community of dancing Koreans.
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His main reason for coming to Korea was the bandwidth. It’s 1.5 MB/s to 4MB/s, and everyone appears to have Internet — no digital divide.
They’re starting to talk about English Village now, Fire’s space on Second Life. When he first entered Second Life, he uploaded covers of some of the books he was teaching, and when he learned that you could assemble a Smartboard-type of display he knew he had something. Fire also has a holodeck where he can res different environments, since he’s limited to only 16 acres.
The island features a French Villa, scooters, talking signs that he’s loaded his voice into, and a thumbnail smartboard. There is also a a giant dinosaur robot that will take you on a tour of the island.
Fire has a blog called English Village Asia.
We just played a game with skeletons and zombies coming out of a funnel. You destroy them by clicking on the vermin, and then filling in the blank of an English Idium. Fun, though the floor was covered with bones.
The finale was a ride on the dinosaur robot. I tried to capture with my screen capture software, but the resing was so choppy that it didn’t come through. One of the pictures to the left is me approaching (carefully) the dino to get a ride on its back.
Fun!
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