This Site Has My "Stamp" of Approval

Don't ask me why, but I'm tickled to find this site out there: The Mailbox Locator

Find a mailbox pretty much anywhere in the U.S. Find mailboxes by state, city, or by zip code. Click on a particular mailbox and get the pick-up times, a map of the location, and other pertinent details.

What a blast! (Yes, I know you're wondering why I have so much time on my hands!)

Still, it's worth a visit now and then. It could just come in handy if you've got an important letter or package to mail and need to find the nearest mailbox and best pick-up times.

Check it out!

P.U.M.A.S.

If you're interested in Math, Science, and making the learning of same more "practical" for students (and probably everyone!), you should visit this NASA-sponsored site called P.U.M.A.S. The acronym stands for:

Practical Uses of Math and Science

This seems like an eminently good idea to me. Maybe that conviction reflects my school experience with those subjects that seemed not very related to real life (at least as I defined "life" as a student).

Still, this is a great site and a great idea!

More Leonardo

I've written about Leonardo da Vinci before but I've come across another online exhibit that seems too good to pass up.

Currently on display at the Alfred and Victoria Museums is a wonderful Leonard da Vinci exhibit. Since the actual museum is in Britain, click here to transport yourself virtually to the exhibit.

You won't regret another encounter with this incredible artist, engineer, and creator.

Giving Thanks For The Cranberry

It's a little early to be thinking about Thanksgiving dinner (maybe) but I was for some reason. One of the traditional staples of the dinner menu to accompany the turkey in many homes is cranberries.

Lo and behold there is a site dedicated to this fruit. Click here for all you need (or want) to know about the mighty cranberry!

Just Two More Weeks

I pretty much steer clear of politics on this site, but I will put a plug in for the Online Newshour (with Jim Lehrer) site that's dedicated to the upcoming mid-term election.

They've called it Vote 2006 and the site presents many of the issues and races of regional and national interest in a straightforward way including as many points of view as possible.

We are entering the final phase of this campaign and, boy, is there a lot going on!!

Undersea Wonders

Undersea vents, and the rich variety of sea life that those vents sustain, is the subject of this website put up by the National Science Foundation.

This offers undersea views and interactive tools that lets you get an up-close (though virtual) look at a world that few of us will ever likely actually visit.

Click here to be taken there!

Web 2.0? What Does That Mean?

Though no expert myself, there seems to be much discussion and a great deal written about Internet use given the umbrella designation: Web 2.0.

The Pew Institute has done a series of studies about the Internet and future use. Click here to view a recent report about this direction an apparently growing number of people see the 'net going in. (The report is available for download as a .pdf.)

300 Million And Counting

Much has been made leading up to today as our country has apparently reached the 300 millionth citizen. Supposedly this landmark event took place today at 7:46 a.m. (Eastern).

The Census Bureau has prepared a special page to mark this occasion. It takes a snapshot of normal "facts" of American life in 1915, 1967, and 2006, these being the years when the U.S. reached 100 million, 200 million, and, now, 300 million citizens.

Click here to check out what some common aspects of American life was like then and now.

Elections In The USA

Just over three weeks from now, our country is going to go through another election cycle...in this case, an "off year" national election. No presidential race, but all the House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate. There are, also, a number of local races, initiatives, and bond issues.

The Library of Congress has a set of resources that highlight the American electoral process. Click here to visit this excellent site (labeled as Teacher Resources, but there's lots here for teachers and non-teachers alike!)

Supremely Interesting Cases

This current session of the United States Supreme Court began early this month. It is difficult, sometimes, to understand the impact decision made by this body have on the day-to-day life of us in the United States.

Two organizatoins, Stree Law & the Supreme Court Historical Society, have put together a site dedicated to the landmark cases that have, in our history, made a mark on our society.

A site well-worth visiting.

Landmark Supreme Court Cases

Cooking With What You Got

Thanks to the imagination of Tom Tuke-Hastings, there's a website that helps all those who cook come up with recipes in that particular condition cooks everywhere now: I didn't have time to get to the store....what can I cook?

His site, CookByNumbers.com, lets you check off the items you have left in your fridge and in your cupboard. Once you indicate the stuff you have around, you click a button "Find Recipes" and up will come a list of recipes using as many of the items you have lying around. Cool!

Give it a try! There were a lot of recipes for things that never occurred to me that I would be able to put together from what I had in the house. Like I said.....cool!

The List of the Longest of Just About Everything

This site dedicates itself to producing evidence of the longest item in many categories: song, building (could also be classified as the tallest), conga line, eyelashes, hammock, last name, NBA game, neck, ski jump, URL, Yo-Yo spin, zucchini, and many others.

If you want to check out the interesting and.....bizarre!.....go to:

The Longest List of the Longest Stuff at the Longest Domain Name

You won't be disappointed!

Free Reading and Definition

If you've ever got a word you forgot to spell -- or have some free time for reading and you're online, too -- check out one or both of the following.

The Free Dictionary

The Free Library

Lots, lots, and lots more there!

Our Constitution -- What Does It Mean?

There are times when I wonder if we, as a society, spend enough time pondering things that we take for granted. Like what? Well, I think we Americans talk a lot about our freedoms and the rights we have in this country, but I don't think we spend enough time looking at the Constitution itself, read its language, and think about what it means and why it's in there at all. Why did the Founders think those principles were important enough to be in that document.

The American Bar Association has a site to promote just this kind of analysis and reflection. Called Conversations On The Constitution, this is a site that provides plenty of concepts and principles to discuss. There are interactive pages that "test" your knowledge of this crucially important document.

I hope to be spending much more time there.

News To Wake Up To

If you've ever wondered about the caffeine content of some of your favorite brews (tea, coffee) or soft drinks, check out this site courtesy of the Mayo Clinic. It lists a set of common beverages that many consume, yet we/they may not know how much caffeine your downing.

Click here to find out!

Music From All Over The World

Wesleyan University offers this site where you can see and hear instruments from all over the world. Offered by region or by instrument type or by material they're made from, this is a terrific place to plunge into the wide, wide world of world music.

Click here to check out the Virtual Instrument Museum.

Traveling Nightmare -- Airport Division

I don't travel that much but I was intrigued by this site: The Budget Traveler's Guide to Sleeping in Airports.

As a concept, the whole idea seems like torture, surely banned by the Geneva Convention. But take a look at the ratings and where the airport near you -- or the one(s) you're going to be traveling to -- compare. Naturally there are tips for where you'll get the best chances for shut-eye.

Good luck!

Automobile Longevity

As the owner of a car with (real) miles now approaching the 150,000 mark, I hope I qualify as someone who understands the value of proactive car repair and maintenance.

For those who have yet to learn the advantages (and virtues) of taking care of those wheels so that don't fail you at the worst possible inconvenient hassle-inducing moment, take a moment and visit CarCare.org.

Who knows? Not only might it save you money, but a lot of time, anxiety, and money (to pay for the anger-management sessions).

Get A Load Of These Match(less) Wonders!

In case you've ever wondered what some people do with their spare time -- especially if you've wondered about people who have a lot of spare time -- check out the Matchstick Marvels Museum.

Amazing, amazing, amazing.

Remember, I Promised Variety!

The whole premise of this blog is finding things all over the map. I would certainly consider the following to be in the relatively off-the-wall category and of almost not improtance....but kinda fun!

We've all seen the ads or found the phonebook listings for companies who have phones numbers with words in lieu of just numbers. A oft-use example in our household -- as Earthlink subscribers -- is 800-EarthLink (which, of course, is actually 800-327-8454).

Not that I've thought about it all that often, but I've occasionally wondered if my own phone number spells anything.

Guess what! There's a site that will take numbers you type in and tell you what words can be made of it.

Give it a try. It's PhoneSpell.Org.

Rich Stores of Educational Resources

I came across two extensive groupings of Internet resources related to education. Housed at Kean University, they are:

Educational Links for Middle School People

Educational Links for New Teachers

I haven't had time to check out all the links here -- and there are many, many of them -- but these look like valuable resources. They are double-chedked a couple times every year so should be both there and reliable.

The many links on each page are organized by subject area and, though, the pages are long, they have anchor links and "back to the top" links that make navigation fairly efficient.

I know I'll be coming back to these pages often in the future.

A Less Renowned Presidential Assassination

I'm old enough to have the indelible stamp of the moment when I heard that President Kennedy had been shot. I realize that more than one of our past presidents have been killed while in office. I just finished reading the most fascinating book, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson.
I've come across a website that covers the assassination of another of our presidents, William McKinley. I haven't explored this in depth yet but it looks like a well-done site and has, no doubt, a number of fascinating details about what happened. Click here.

Giving "Voice" To Our Literature

I just found out about a website dedicated to producing audio versions of all books in the public domain. Called LibriVox ("acoustical liberation of books in the public domain"), volunteers read chapters from works in the public domain. These audio files are then made available for downloading and can be accessed in a similar manner to a podcast.

What a wonderful communal effort on the part of people who both love literature and believe strongly in making these books available in more than one format.

Not Just Your Run-Of-The-Mill Fiddle

For those of us interested in music -- and perhaps in sounds and timbres in general -- here's a site which has a gallery of unusual instruments. It's the Gallery at Oddmusic.com.

Click on the link for the instrument that piques your curiosity and you'll typically see a picture or pictures of the instrument. Many of them also have sound files available to listen to, as well.

Check these out: LightHarp, Skatar, Uncello, Triolin, Cymbalom, Bazantar, Aerolian Wind Harp, and many more!

Historical Yo-Yos

I don't know about you, but I certainly went through a phase where I couldn't get enough time playing with a yo-yo. Not that I mean to imply that anyone, any age, couldn't while away their time quite usefully learning all the fancy yo-yo tricks and techniques.

Well, whether you want to look back through the prism of nostalgia or just check it out because you love your yo-yo, check out the Museum of Yo-Yo History.

The (Record-Making) Wrap on Gum

Chewing gum and I have a checkered past. I've had times when a wad of bubble gum or Juicy Fruit was something to relish. But there were also all those years as a music teacher and the iron-clad rule of "no gum." (How can you play the clarinet or even a string instrument with gum in your mouth?)

Why then am I directing you toward a site that celebrates an almost unimaginable level of gum use? A site dedicated to a gum wrapper chain clocked at 48,077 feet in length as of March, 2006? Why?

No good reason really. Just one of those feats that seems unbelievable.

The man who has accomplished this is Gary Duschl of Viriginia Beach, VA. The guy has earned your visit to his site. Click here.

The Vincent van Gogh Gallery

For those of you who are fans of van Gogh, he is an online gallery that purports to have all his works available for viewing via the web.

What a resource! Visit The Vincent van Gogh Gallery

An "Elemiddle" School?

I had never heard of the term "elemiddle". Period. Turns out it is a termed coined by those who advocate K-8 schools as the most effective model for educating those years. If you're intrigued by the notion at all, you might be interested in the article linked below:

American Association of School Administrators - Publications - The School Administrator - The Rise of the ‘Elemiddle’ School

Digital Photography Lessons

Check out this site (I think it's really a blog) for what looks like some very good tips on taking photos with a digital camera.

Need To Take A Snooze?

Maybe you really should get more rest. Turns out sleep is very important, even though it's not fully understood why humans, let along most other organisms, check out of consciousness and zone for hours every day. Enough of us learned in college, at least, that no one can go that long without a good snooze.

Check out a wealth of information at the National Sleep Foundation. This may be one case where what you read will put you to sleep....and that's a compliment!

Harold's Lausanne Log -- Day 3

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

No keynote address today. After breakfast it was off to a workshop..

Session 1

Direct from NECC: Debut of Inspiration’s Brand New Software – InspireData!

Presenter: Jennifer Wagner

This session was actually added at the last minute. Jennifer had attended NECC which was about a week after InspireData was released by Inspiration. She saw it at NECC and found it to have much potential and was excited about this approach to having kids work with databases.

As before, I think it will be better to link her presentation here and retype it all. There is, of course, information available directly from Inspiration, too, that shows what InspireData can do:

http://www.inspiration.com/productinfo/inspiredata/index.cfm?fuseaction=features

I came away from the workshop pretty enthused about what we might be able to do with InspireData. The only drawback was clear in the demo today: it’s still so new that much remains to learn about it and, as a brand new product, there are glitches, some of which we saw today (some freezing of the program, for example). InspireData is definitely worth a second and third look.

Since this is the last day of the conference, and the final group session takes place in just a bit, I finally sat down and took the time I needed to go online and complete the evaluations for the sessions I had attended and for the conference itself.

Everyone gathered back in the Elder Performing Arts Hall for the much-anticipated final get-together which included – yippee!—door prizes. The potential booty ranged from laptop cases to software licenses to a tablet PC (!). It was a nice concluding event – and, no, I didn’t win any of the door prizes. However, in these three days, I was definitely a winner in the sense that I was exposed to a range of new thinking and ideas that will give me plenty to chew on for some time to come.

As I look back to my days at the 2006 Lausanne Laptop Institute, I am extremely grateful for having had the opportunity to attend this event. As was the case last year, as much as I’ve enjoyed the other conventions I’ve attended both in Seattle and other parts of the country, my Laptop Institute experiences outpace them all as interesting, effective, and engrossing experiences (I must say that this year’s first PNAIS Tech “Share” Conference was also very, very good). I can’t believe it’s all flown by so fast! Everyone here has been incredibly friendly, approachable, energized, creative, and dedicated to their work with students. The weather was a drag with the triple digit daytime highs but, then, pretty much everything here is air-conditioned so it didn’t really put a kibosh on anything except long walks in the afternoon.

If I were to assign “tags” to this year’s Laptop Institute, the ones that come to mind first include tablets, blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, moodle, collaboration, “the world is flat,” and constructivist teaching and learning. Allowing for hype, there does seem traction to the notion that we’re coming to a realization of the power of sharing information and collaboration through online tools and resources. It’s a very exciting time to be in schools and, at the same time, in educational technology, where change and creativity seem everywhere. Remembering that you can do only so much “online,” I can’t forget to repeat that it was wonderful to think, listen, and learn in the midst of such a great group of people with such dedication and passion about their work in schools. Blogging or IM-ing or posting to a forum are all great ways to communicate these days but nothing yet can substitute for meeting with and talking to people face-to-face. Great conference!

Harold's Lausanne Log -- Day 2

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Keynote Address

1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs That Work

Speaker:

Pamela Livingston, The Peck School, Morristown, NJ

Tuesday began with the second keynote address of the conference. Much of her presentation derived from the book she just finished and is (or will soon be) published by ISTE.

Her main points were:

• laptop programs do exist out there that are successful
• laptops promote self-directed learning and support constructivist instruction
• laptops help students stay organized.

All these things can contribute mightily to learning, especially in 7^th grade and beyond, according to her research.

She went on to list a number of observations about 1-to-1 laptop programs that applied to teachers:

• increased planning, teaching, and communication
• access to a wealth of curricular resources
• increased communication with students, colleagues, and parents

Some observations for schools with 1-to-1 laptop programs:

• student attendance and enrollment can be improved
• student achievement can be improved
• home-to-school communication can be improved

Pamela seemed quite taken by the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) Project and showed a picture of the $100 laptop, had us use a pipe-cleaner to form an imaginary crank. We weren’t sure why, but we turned this “crank” for 30 seconds. Her point? In those 30 seconds of cranking, a person with the OLPC computer would have a number of minutes of computer use time since the OLPC Project computers have a built-in hand-crank generator. These portable computer can truly be used anywhere; lack of AC or battery power won’t be a hindrance. It gives a new spin on “anywhere, anytime” computing. The OLPC program apparently has the goal of distributing 150 million of these $100 laptops worldwide.

Here are the components Pamela listed of successful 1-to-1 laptop programs:

• planning
• steering body or committee
• multiple constituencies
• learning from what other schools/districts/states have done
• professional development
• logistics – networks, firewall, anti-virus measures, spam, spyware, etc.
• just-in-time tech support
• attention to teaching approaches that evolve to take advantage of the laptop in the classroom and with the student at home
• effective classroom management

(she suggested videos on this subject from the Irving School District in Texas)

Some successful programs she cited from her research (I don’t think she did much research in the western portion of the US):

• State of Maine
• State of Michigan
• Forney ISD (Texas)
• The Peck School (where Pamela works)
• St. Thomas Episcopal Parish School (Tampa, FL)
• Henrico County Public Schools (Richmond, VA)

Pamela also made special mention of an examination of adult learning espoused by Malcolm Knowles. The term he coined is “andragogy”. Background on Mr. Knowles and his theories about adult learning can be found at the following site:

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-knowl.htm

Session 1

Tables, Tablets, and Technology – The Rocky Hill Model

Presenters:

Stephen Farley, Head of Upper School, The Rocky Hill School

Scott Young, Science Department Chair/Physics, The Rocky Hill School

Mr. Farley began by emphasizing what he feels schools should promote:

• a culture of thinking
• a culture of authentic participation
• a culture of reflection

The Rocky Hill Model, which extends from the design of the building to the way classrooms are run to the way administrators make decisions for the institution:

• transparency
• communication
• accountability

(some examples: the building is filled with light and rooms are separated by walls of glass which keeps that feeling of transparency and contant reminders of an environment of learning)

He also emphasized the importance his school attaches to being

• partners with our students
• willing to be patient, to fail, and to evolve
• welcoming to innovation, to invest in the “humanware”, and to celebrate faculty accomplishments

Scott took over and showed some examples, illustrated by pictures from the classroom, or the use of tablets and the Harkness table. Students and teacher all face each other at the table, an installed projector and screen (wirelessly accessed and available to all students), and the transparency, communication, and accountability are built into this format. The whole class is gathered face-to-face (no hiding in the last row), the layout strongly encourages discussion among all, and the ability to display student work for all to see reinforces the accountability.

He also displayed examples of student and teacher note-taking using the tablet and made the case that the teachers liked the ability to be able to hand-write comments/corrections on student papers and return to kids, and that kids liked the ability to take notes by hand. He did point out, though, that there are a number of kids who use their tablet in the “notebook” mode (clamshell opening style) rather than the flat tablet mode because many feel they can type faster (or at least far more legibly) than they can write.

There were a number of presentations at this year’s Institute that featured discussion about the use of tablets in the classroom. There was enough “buzz” about tablets this year that I’ve begun to wonder if we should take a harder look at what tablets might offer in our setting, as well.

Session 2

Paper to Electronic Delivery

Presenters:

Rachel Holsinger – US Science Teacher – Sayre School, Lexington Kentucky

Debbie Wheeler – US Science Teacher – Sayre School, Lexington Kentucky

Website for presentation materials:

http://sparta.sayreschool.org/faculty/rholsinger/

The presentation PowerPoint plus some of the documents used in the demo are available at that link.

Rather than retype everything, I will link the presentation here in the online version of my Lausanne Log.

What I will say is that these two gave one of the more effective presentations of the conference. Why? 1) the information they shared was valuable; 2) their delivery was positive, energetic, and responsive to the audience, and 3) their materials were attractively and effectively designed.

This session was an example of a session where the focus was clear and effective. I believe Rachel and Debbie attended last year’s Institute, took home some ideas and tried them. They found that they had to tweak things to make them work in their school. Their presentation, then, seemed very practical and quite a bit less theoretical than a fair number of sessions I’ve attended over the years. By showing their “problems” they encountered in fulfilling their goal to become as “paperless” as possible in the classroom, their solutions taught us methods that will work for us, too.

Besides, as I said, Rachel and Debbie were both tremendously effective as presenters. This was a winner!

Session 3

Moodle, The Free Open-Source CMS

Presenter:

Peter Richardson, Director of Technology Serives, Rutgers Prep School,

Peter pointed out that Moodle is a Content Management System (CMS) and that it is an open-source program supported by many worldwide. It came about through the work of people deeply interested in social constructivist pedagogy.

Mr. Richardson shared his PowerPoint with me so I have that for reference.. He put great emphasis on the ease of setting up Moodle, especially with the help of a download from a group (in Germany) called apachefriends.org (www.apachefriends.org). By downloading one of their files (I believe he said the package is called XAMPP), the php, MySQL, and other component requirements will get installed automatically. Sounds kind of too good to be true but I’m going to look into it more when I get back.

Unfortunately, since some sessions in different strands overlap in the schedule, I had to leave early from this Moodle presentation in order to get to…..

Session 4

Using Wink to Create Custom Tutorials

Presenter:

Melissa Wert – Harpeth Hall School mwert@harpethhall.org

We had gotten an e-mail just before the conference to download the current version of Wink, if possible, so we could go through the steps of creating a tutorial during this workshop. I was ready to go.

Melissa walked us through the steps of creating a tutorial for a simple set of operations in Paint. After thinking about the potential for something like Wink, one of the reasons I really wanted to attend this presentation was to see if there was any potential for Wink to be used to do some kind of assignments in Laptop Prep next year. Why not ask 7^th graders to create tutorials with Wink to demonstrate that they know how to run a ChkDsk, or update and run SpyBot, or set McAfee for scheduled updates and system scans? Some might even be good enough to keep in a library of tutorials for other students and/or adults.

Be all the above as it may, Melissa’s presentation showed that Wink is good at what it does although it is not quite “fall off a log” easy. It’s quite likely that the kids will have an easier time of using it than I guessing from this exposure to how Wink works. The potential is definitely there for curricular use in Prep class. There’s also the option of my creating tutorials for adult or student use quite apart from Laptop Prep, so I’m glad I attended Melissa’s session.

End of day two. It's been a pretty packed experience and very rewarding!

Harold's Lausanne Log -- Day 1

Monday, July 17, 2006

As the shuttle bus from the hotel made that last turn toward Lausanne Collegiate School in Memphis, I felt that sense of anticipation and familiarity as I recognized the place I had had such a rewarding experience a year ago. Yes, I had been at last year’s Lausanne Laptop Institute and that experience was very positive. I was sure, as I disembarked from the air-conditioned coach, that the 2006 session was going to be a great experience, too.

After a bit of granola, coffee, and fruit, I was off to the Elder Performing Arts Center for the opening keynote address of the conference.

Keynote Speech

Redefining Literacy in the 21^st Century

Speaker:

David Warlick, The Landmark Project

As most conferences do, this one opened with an address from an invited “expert” or “guru” and Lausanne was no different. David Warlick, of the Landmark Project and many other educational technology initiatives, was set to speak on the subject “Redefining Literacy in the 21^st Century”. But before he spoke, a few minutes were dedicated toward welcome to the 460 (!) attendees of this year’s Laptop Institute. Stewart Crais, Lausanne’s Director of Technology and Lorrie Jackson, the person most responsible for organizing this year’s Institute (she’s a tech integrationist at Lausanne, I believe) made sure we all felt welcome and ready to start a stimulating conference.

Not surprising in this day when Internet access is viewed by a large cross-section of people as a daily activity and routine, David’s talk began with a list of online resources up on the big screen These were designed to illustrate various points he was about to make in his address to us. They included:

About Wikis:

http://davidwarlick.com/wiki-warlick/index.php?title=Redefining_Literacy_for_the_21st_Century

Web links related to this specific presentation:

http://davidwarlick.com/wiki-warlick/index.php?title=Web_Links_Related_to_this_Presentation

David Warlick’s own Wiki:

http://davidwarlick.com/wiki-warlick/index.php?title=Main_Page

Presentation handouts:

http://handouts.davidwarlick.com

The homepage of Mr. Warlick’s Landmark Project:

http://www.landmark-project.com/index.php

David directly launched into an example he felt illustrated the importance of teaching our students the “new literacy”. He asked, “Does a social studies teacher need study guides anymore?” Instead of a study guide produced, printed, and distributed by the teacher, he invited that hypothetical teacher to consider creating a wiki page devoted to the particular curricular unit. Assign students to make their own contributions from their own research to the collected information that the wiki will form. David maintains that today’s literacy is marked by communication and collaboration. Why not use the power of the group to find the information and collaborate on a study guide rather than doing the traditional teacher-centric version yet one more time?

But what about making sure each student knows the body of knowledge needed for that curricular unit? Wouldn’t the social studies teacher be abandoning her/his responsibility to monitor each student’s learning by doing a wiki or allowing group work and collaboration?

David would argue, no. There is nothing in this model that means minimum requirements for each student are gone. It does mean the teacher would have to re-think the assignment, perhaps adjust the goal of the assignment and certainly the method for completing it. She/he would also have to re-design – or at least re-think – the way to assess student learning and what constitutes completing the assignment. David reminded us that even as wiki pages evolve, are edited and re-edited, the previous versions are archived. All page edits are identified with the author which means that all individual student contributions could be identified and assessed.

Even factoring in a little inborn skepticism on my part, I thought such a methodology would be well-worth trying. I certainly agree that all our online resources make collaboration very easy. Why not use those tools to build student knowledge, too?

After just a few minutes of speaking, David took us a little by surprise saying he was going to skip to his conclusion: Stop integrating technology in our schools.

Instead, we need to teach our students the primary importance of verifying information (in this day of information overload), as well as techniques and tools for sifting through the stuff they don’t need and find the material they do.

We must teach our students (and probably ourselves, too) how to uncover the origins of information we access and use.

On the subject of information and how much there is out there, David gave us a statistic to the effect (I may not have this absolutely correct): In 2003, the amount of new knowledge added that year amounted to 5 exabytes*…or 37,000 Library of Congresses-worth. That’s a heck of a lot of data!

I have been well aware that there is a near-unlimited about of data out there but hearing that rather dramatic statistic does underscore the need on all of our parts to know how to make sure the material we’re reading/hearing/seeing, is legitimate and trustworthy.

To illustrate this last point, David displayed a web page with background and biographical information about Martin Luther King. No author or sponsoring organization was listed but there were pictures and paragraphs of text. The page itself had a polished and professional look that certainly looked authentic.

However polished, David warned, without clear information about authorship and/or organization responsible for the page (or site), one can’t consider this a trustworthy site and it’s not possible to verify the content.

We have to verify.

And to illustrate why, David tried to find out who was the author or sponsor. By deleting the page name in the URL, he found the parent page, which was an introductory page about Martin Luther King with, of course, a link to the page we started with. The parent page had the same great professional look. Yet, there was still no indication of an author or sponsoring organization.

At the bottom, you could click on a link to contact the webmaster. David looked at the mailto: link, found a name and a domain. He didn’t recognize the web master’s name or the domain. He could have searched on the person’s name, but decided to start by seeing if there was a website with that domain name. He inserted the domain in a URL. To our collective surprise (and shock) we were looking at a white supremacist website! The sponsoring organization for this ostensibly authentic website about Martin Luther King was really a white supremacist organization! These specific pages have since been removed but this scenario certainly illustrates the importance all of us need to accept to verify online content.

The Literacy Tasks David laid out include:

• find the information
• decode it
• critically evaluate it
• organize the information into personal digital libraries

David showed a study of a group of online retailers (Rhapsody, Amazon, and Netflix) which showed there to be a so-called “long tail” in terms of availability of content. A link to the actual study is at: http://www.wired.com/wired/images.html?issue=12.10&topic=tail&img=2

The upshot is that there is a body of titles – music, books, movies – which amounts to common core of titles widely available. The titles, you might say, are the core group that you’d find at brick-and-mortar retailers. What has changed in recent years is the “long tail.” If you look at the right portion of the group, the “long tail” is the much flatter part of the graph that represents titles published in far few numbers than the core group. What has changed is availability. Before the advent of online bookstores, music download sites, and other online venues for buying content, you’d be looking at “out of print” notices. Now, however, there is far greater access to content that is way off the best-seller charts which gives us yet more access to information and points of view.

David gave the example of his own book. Once he finished writing and editing it, he used a self-publishing site on the web (http://www.lulu.com/) to get it “out there.” David claimed his book was available for purchase about two hours after he finished submitting it online. This is, obviously, much different than the way authors used to publish their books. Similar opportunities are available to composers, musicians, and film makers.

Not to mention our students: students can upload their movie to any number of sites (i.e. YouTube). Or their digital pictures to Flickr. Or they can put their short stories on a blog. Or they can podcast an audio diary to iTunes. The landscape for accessing and sharing information is changing!

It has never been easier for anyone to get their work distributed to a worldwide audience.

Another concept David put out there is that it should be one’s goal in her/his writing expresses ideas in a compelling fashion.

Unfortunately, due to lack of time, the final tenet of the new literacy that David had up there on the screen he had to skip. The word up there was “Ethics”. Even though he didn’t have the time to spell this out, it certainly makes sense to me that just as we must verify information, we must also bear in mind the importance of ethics with respect to the production and use of ideas and material. This is copyright and fair use, certainly, but I imagine David would have elaborated in more detail about the role of ethics as it plays out in the day of wide dissemination and sharing on information and ideas so often accomplished with a mere click of the mouse. I’m sorry he ran out of time.

As you want any keynote address to do, David Warlick’s talk gave me much to think about. I’ve bookmarked a number of his sites and will look for time to go back to them, re-read his thinking, and do a better job of digesting it all.

[By the way, David requested that, if we blog about this presentation, we include these three words in the blog text or tag:

redefine --- literacy --- warlick

Why? Our networked world makes it possible to share information in ways not possible before. By including those specific words a search/gathering tool he has set up will add that blog entry to all the others that contain those words, forming an ever-growing and ever-changing collection of thinking and observations. People can read and think about other people’s ideas and perspectives while sharing their own. Amazing!]

David’s contact info:

david@landmark-project.com

919-414-1845

*In case you’re interested – and I was because I had never heard the term before – an exabyte amounts to a billion gigabytes.

Now begins the conference and the scheduled sessions.

This year, the sessions are organized in various strands. There are strands for Integrationist, Teacher, Support, Administrator, plus some for exhibitors and so on. My first session was in the Integrationist strand.

Session 1

Tech Goal-Setting Strategies

Presenter:

Deidre Brown – Staff Development Coordinator – Randolph School – Huntsville, AL

Ms. Brown comes from the Randolph School in Huntsville and she is the Staff Development Coordinator there. Her focused on aspects of the professional development system at Randolph

To begin with, at Randolph each department has a Technology Integration Consultant (known as a TIC [sic]). They are the go-to people for members of their department. Randolph has a tech team as well. The way Deidre described the set-up of TICs, it must work pretty well. The TIC is a contracted position with a signed contract and stipend.

Randolph asks each faculty, staff, and administrator to come up with an annual Individual Learning Plan (ILP) in which specific technology goals are set by the individual. Each ILP is presented to the person’s respective TIC and to the department head, and perhaps the division director. At some point in the year, the TIC will check on the various goals the individuals have specified; Deidre puts all the people and their goals on a spreadsheet of her own. That way, come late winter or spring she can approach her colleagues, ask how the progress of attaining their tech goals are going, and offer help with any still unmet These tech goals are not part of the individual’s yearly evaluation and, if they miss making a goal, they can roll it over into the next year. The ultimate goal of the program is not to admonish failure but, rather, to encourage learning, professional growth, and success.

Deidre gave us samples of ILP forms – blank and filled out.

Another document she shared was a skill sheet which gathers skill lists, various programs, and assorted other tech information for reference. Why? People can’t decide on a tech skill goal if they don’t the skill they don’t yet have. This sheet offers a wide array of possible opportunities for new learning. Think of it as a way to “prime the pump” for setting tech goals.

At some point in the year, the each department head presents the group department goals at a department meeting.

Teachers at Randolph may apply for grants to present their own summer technology trainings. If their proposal is accepted, they receive a small stipend.

Session 2

A Guide to Web 2.0: The Changing Shape of Information

Presenter:

David Warlick (see background info above)

In some ways, an extension of his keynote this morning, David Warlick focused on the future and information, if not literacy per se. Information, he said, in the last ten years, has become:

• networked
• available in digital form
• overwhelming (which I took to refer to the flow and breadth of information coming at us every day)

Furthermore, he said, in the last two years:

• content is created more and more based on conversations (blogs, forums, e-mail, wikis, etc.)
• content depends on the behavior of readers and users
• content is increasingly connected with others through ideas

David recommended a downloadable book by Terry Freedman called Coming of Age. I’ll try to get around to downloading it and see what it has to say.

David recommended another book – The New Shape of Knowledge, by Dave Weinberger

David went into mashups which he defined as websites that gather information from a collection of other websites and makes something new of that info. The Wikipedia definition of mashup is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)).

One example of news tracking David showed was Buzztracker (http://buzztracker.org/). Buzztracker monitors news and notes where the news is from or about. It compiles these feeds, tallies how many refer to what place, and then indicates this activity with dots on a world map. The larger the dot, the more news there is about that city or place. To quote its own introductory blurb:

Buzztracker is software that visualizes frequencies and relationships between locations in the Google world news directory.

Buzztracker tries to show you how interconnected the world is: big events in one area ripple to other areas across the globe. Connections between cities thousands of miles apart become apparent at a glance.

Buzztracker keeps an archive of each day’s activity and map. Going back in the archive is a way to watch the change in the news from day to day

David has created a mashup called Hitchhikr (http://www.hitchhikr.com/) which is focused educational technology events, conference, blogs, and other resources.

To quote his introductory remarks about his site:

In changing times, we need to raise our heads out of the water every once in a while, take a drink of kool-aid, network, learn, and energize. Yet, we can't always make it to the conferences we need to attend to mix with the people we need to see -- face-to-face. This is why Hitchhikr was invented, to provide you with a virtual space where, thanks to blogs, podcasts, and RSS, we can connect, share, respond, and grow knowledge out beyond the place and time of the event.

An example of how this works: To assure that any blog entries about this particular presentation gets linked to other entries about the same event, David requested that people be sure to include “web20” and “warlick” (without quotes, of course) somewhere in the text (or as tags). That way the entries get picked up by Hitchhikr and collected with other entries with the same terms. This, then, being an illustration of how information can be shared widely and immediately to interested audiences in a way not possible even five years ago (or two?!).

How to do wade through all this content? A tool David pointed to was RSS. He demonstrated his favored aggregator and explained, for those who had not encounted RSS feeds before, what they were. I’ve used SharpReader as a stand-alone aggregator as well as the online options such as Bloglines. I’ve gotten the RSS “habit,” too, but I still struggle with how to wade through all the content, even with aids like RSS.

David reiterated the point that “we connect to each other through the content” we seek.

As people use tools like blogs, RSS, wikis, and so on, they create their “personal learning network.” Building one’s own personal learning network is what we must teach our students.

Note about aggregators: David showed the group Bloglines as an online way of subscribing to RSS feeds along with other online content. He also made mention of a new(ish) tool he has started using called Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com/) which offers a bunch of configurable tools you can add to your page (plus add other tabs for more content) including RSS, Gmail, and other options. Right now in beta, this is a free service out of Paris. When I get a chance, I’m going to set up my own netvibes page.

Tonight is the big dinner of the conference and will be held here at the Hilton in one of the large ballrooms/dining rooms.

Dinner was held in one of the very large convention dining rooms that are here at the Hilton. This year they suggested we find a table with our “strand” indicated so that we would be grouped according to our job focus. In other words, tables were labeled Teachers, Integrationists, Administrators, Support, etc. I sat at one of the Integrationists tables and recognized one person I had already met earlier today, a couple folks familiar from last year, and a group of people new to me. The geographical range at our table ranged from Florida to Tennessee to Iowa to Seattle. We had a nice meal (grilled boneless chicken, grilled veggies, and grits [that’s what the Tennesseans at the table said it was!]).

This has been a great start to the Laptop Institute. Now to get ready for tomorrow

It's Off to Memphis!

Today I set off to Memphis to attend the 2006 Lausanne Laptop Institute, an annual conference focused on laptops and learning held at the Lausanne Collegiate School. This will be my second year in attendance and I'm looking forward to it a lot. Last year's experience was great and I suspect I'll again have a rewarding, interesting, and fun time.

A Fascinating Music Site -- Musipedia

Boasting tools that allow you to enter notes (pitches & note values, including rests), or indicate melodic contours, or whistle a tune....whatever your method, this site claims to be able to help you identify those ditties or tunes you either can't get out of your head or can't remember the name of the song.

Go to Musipedia!

Lizards and Snakes......Alive!

Come and visit this site at the American Museum of Natural History about -- well, yes! -- Lizards and Snakes. What's not to love about 'em?

More Patently Silly?

In case you've ever wondered what some of those "stars" out there expect (or demand?) when they're on tour or in some performance venue, you can check out the expectations on the part of about 200 performers at the Backstage link at the Smoking Gun website.

Some pretty amazing (and fascinating) details!

Patently Silly Is Right!

Thomas Edison these folks aren't. This site is dedicated to calling attention to actual inventions that have been awarded U.S. Patents. Well, not just to any invention but to inventions that are both patented and -- yes! -- silly.

Maybe not laugh-out-loud hilarious, a number of them will at least bring a smile to your face.

What were they thinking????

Patently Silly - The Humor of Invention - presented by Daniel Wright

Incredible Picture of Sydney Bay, Australia

If you'd like to see a nighttime shot of the harbor of Sydney, Australia that is a beautifully (and incredibly) detailed combined shot made up of 10 separate images stitched together, go here.

Now, you might be asking.....why would I want to do that? Well, the photographer, Scott Howard, has produced such a detailed photo, you can click wherever you want on the image and zoom in and zoom in and zoom in. Unbelievably, if you zoom in enough, you can get to the point where you can see individual people in the high-rise office buildings.

Apparently, this single image is near 800 MB. Talk about mega-pixels!

It's a beautiful, night shot. Take a look.

PNAIS "Share" Technology Conference -- Follow-ups and Resources

Yes, I know......I don't typically post on weekends but I thought it best to post these follow-ups and great resources that I gleaned from the PNAIS Conference sooner rather than later. So, it may be Saturday, but here they are! :-)

The following are listed for my own sake so I have some record of some things mentioned that I want to keep for one reason or another, in no particular order:

Portable MP3 player -- Olympus DM-20 digital recorder (CD quality audio, MP3 or WMA formats, highly portable, 45 hours recording time), remote control doubles as external mic (!), USB docking station

International Radio Project -- Is this the correct site where one can get student podcasts distributed? a very brief visit to radioproject.org didn't look like it . check into

Wireless mice for use in classroom -- Gyration is company (http://www.gyration.com/en-US), recommended product (at UPA) is one of their air mice (and possibly wireless keyboard) -- possible alternative to SmartBoards

Pixma i9900 (Canon) color inkjet printer was highly recommend especially coupled with after-market ink tank system (not sure where to find this)

PaperCut program for monitoring printer usage on network -- http://www.papercut.biz/pcpl/free_print_logger.htm

Hamachi.cc -- easy vpn

UW Classroom Presenter -- software tool helping make the use of tablet pcs much more interactive in class -- http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/dl/presenter/

Getting Started Guide is at: http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/edtech/presenter/doc/gscp.htm#connecting

Streaming video from Annenberg Library (Annenberg Media Leaner.org) -- http://www.learner.org/

Wikimapia -- combination of a wiki and Google Maps -- http://www.wikimapia.org/

Edline mentioned as possible alternative to Moodle: http://www.edline.com/

Webhosting possibilities -- bluehost.com http://www.bluehost.com/

and what I thought was littleorange.com but could only find asmallorange.com http://www.asmallorange.com/

Ruby on Rails -- open source programming tool http://www.rubyonrails.org/

and Ruby -- object-oriented programming http://www.rubycentral.com/

Designing Web Projects and/or Digital Assignments -- WebQuest Taskonomy -- http://webquest.sdsu.edu/taskonomy.html

point teachers here for food for thought as they design assignments using technology

Student Video Editing resources -- AFI Screen Education site -- http://afi.edu/ (American Film Institute)

Atomic Learning was also mentioned

Other video resource -- ScanTV -- http://www.scantv.org/ (which is Seattle Community Access Network)

one person said they came out and did a video-taping project at his school, brought all the equipment, etc.

Online bookmark, collaboration resources (folksonomy? [wikepedia definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy ] such as

Connotea ( http://www.connotea.org/ ) and del.icio.us ( http://del.icio.us/ )

PNAIS "Share" Technology Conference -- Day 3

The morning session I attended on Friday was "Instructional Roadkill: What Didn't Work and Why". (Now as I'm sitting here days afterward, I'm thinking that maybe John mentioned the classroom management challenge at this session rather than the earlier one. In any case, the kinda lack of agreement as it being a problem for others out there remains.) I'm going to have to consult the notes from this one, too, because I didn't take any of my own. I do think that the overall sense of this was again a bit more positive than I was expecting....in other words, some people spoke about things that didn't work but more of the comments ended up being positives, which was good to hear. There were a few tidbits of deadends and lowered expectations which will be good to refer to at some point.

The final session of the conference was our third "megasession" where we all met together, just as we had started the conference two days before. The focus was "Why We Do It: Best Practices and Best Examples of Technology Integration in the Pacific Northwest." Jim Heyndrickx moderated this session and presented three examples gleaned from volunteers among our very own group. I remember seeing Josh's Little School highlighted but have forgotten the others (again I didn't take notes relying on the Wiki or notes sent out). Although a little fatigue/overload was beginning to set in, there was enough energy left to look at these examples as ones to celebrate and acknowledge. It was a great way to end the conference.

We were sent off to head home with much learned, much enjoyed, much experienced, and a box lunch. I think the organizers did a fantastic job of putting together the event, finding such an ideal location for it (okay, I guess I will have to admit that sharing a room was a tiny downside.....I would have gotten better sleep without the company but it could be that Islandwood did not have the extra rooms, or we didn't want to pay the extra cost, or some other reason, but, if it were up to me, that is one thing I'd change for next time), great food, great company, stimulating sessions (almost all of them), and a group that was big enough to have much variety in it but small enough where you could get to know people you didn't already know (having "family style" meals helped a lot in this, too). I hope they make this an annual event.

PNAIS "Share" Technology Conference -- Day 2

First session of Thursday began at 9. I went to the one called "AV in the 21st Century." Put on by Eric Stratton from University Prep (in Seattle), there was some general discussion about multimedia in the classroom and the shift that has taken place over the recent past. The main thing Eric had to present was the changes they've made to their rooms at U Prep. Over the last two/three summers they have upgraded around 40-50 classrooms with installations that include a ceiling-mounted digital projector, a large display screen (8 ft.), DVD/VCR capability, surround sound. Cheryl Wolotira, from the Northwest School, was another presenter, and her emphasis was on the use of document cameras (although the one she had to demo was not working). This was useful and cemented my belief that we can do more at the MS to upgrade the installations there, especially with the audio & assuring the ability to show DVD/movies. I think that 8 ft screens would be great, but until we see how far and wide SmartBoards are going to spread at the MS, we might hold off on mass replacement of smaller screens.

After a break came the second session of the morning. I attended the one called "K-12 Computer Science Curriculums: Is Symbolic Reasoning Essential for All Students?" and was presented by Jim Heyndrickx from Oregon Episcopal School. Jim started with a fairly impassioned advocacy of moving beyond merely automating tasks we already do (moving from hand-writing text to typing it into Word) to info-mating material, meaning primarily that the tools afforded by technology give us an opportunity to re-think how we collect, present, and distribute information. I believe the "automate" "info-mate" distinctions come from his ready of a book by Jane Healy where she lays out these principles (I believe in her book, Failure to Connect). He went on to strongly advocate for programming to be taught starting in early elementary (with programs such as Microworld), moving on to Squeak. In middle school, he advocates for robotics to be the center of the programming effort, moving to Alice 3D programming (http://www.alice.org/) in high school. He is working right now to get a computer science graduation requirement added to his high school's curriculum.

Then it was time for lunch break and another quite enjoyable Islandwood meal.

In the afternoon, the first session was another full-group (or "mega-session") called "The Dark Side of Technology". Meant to prompt discussion of some of the things that didn't quite live to up the promise or hope, it was an interesting exchange of things people have tried and the results. I didn't take notes during this session and am looking forward to the notes being sent out soon (or on the Wiki). I believe it was in this session that John brought up a concern that I certainly share, which is "classroom management." Surprisingly -- at least to me -- there was not much follow-up on that subject. Maybe it's just an issue that we are challenged by more than other school environments. I think that one of the reasons there is some wavering of support among some Middle School teachers about the laptop program is due to the amount of time/effort/persistence necessary to maintain focus and concentration in the classroom. More time than I would think necessary seems to be devoted to policing laptops rather than making optimal use of them. Other subjects discussed during this session seemed more positive and less "dark" so, again, I'm looking forward to the notes.

The second afternoon session that I attended was "Digital Multimedia Authoring: How to Integrate Creative Digital Media Technologies in the Classroom". The areas of focus here were 1) Digital Storytelling (stories told through pictures & text; simplest in terms of technology; final product often PowerPoint or web-page); 2) Stop Motion Animation (story told with pictures & text but with motion added; can use drawings or physical media; might require special software/hardware; often results in movie); and 3) Digital Video Authoring (story told through pictures, text, sound, and video/film; can use existing or student-produced footage; also often requires special software/hardware, and end product is usually movie [video]). We were reminded that the formula for most digital (multimedia) projects is 80% planning/20% "doing" & 80% content/20% technology. Also: K.I.S.S. (aka "Keep It Simple and Straightforward") and guideline that for every minute of finished video count on 3 or more hours of post-production. All these principles are very important to bear in mind when putting a multi-media assignment together. As much as we want to challenge our students *and* get them to use technological tools to boost their creativity and learning, we also want to program into the assignment/challenge as much success for them as possible. Forgetting some of the basics of what it takes for them to put together an effective, successful digital media project is going to lessen the learning and probably hamper the creativity.

Next came a free time in the late-ish afternoon. I took this opportunity to walk as many of the paths in Islandwood as I could. I had seen in the Welcome Center a map that laid out the grounds and the landmarks....buildings, paths, and so on. I also had heard of a couple that were not on the map including a tree house that sounded quite amazing. So off I went looking for some of these things I had seen only on a map. I found the Bird Blind, the Tree House (which is truly amazing...hugging the trunk of the tree, substantially built, with a great view of the bog below), then headed the other direction and found the suspension bridge, Mac's Pond, and a fairly long walk. The scenery was great and the walk wonderful after all that sitting. Another tasty dinner followed and not long after dessert came the presentation in the Great Hall of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". That was fun to see after having seen it way back when!

PNAIS "Share" Technology Conference -- Day 1

Arrived somewhere around 2:30, found a place to park, packed up my miscellaneous bags, and headed for the Welcome Center. First impressions of Islandwood School was that this is quite a natural, unspoiled setting. The buildings are wooden, large but not out of place in the wooded area that is Islandwood. Checked in with the folks in the Welcome Center and traipsed off to where I was going to stay. First encounter after checking in was with a deer who was chomping on grass in a meadow adjacent to one of the housing structures. She looked up at me, gave me a good checkout, and resumed her grass munching. We were maybe 10-12 feet apart. The quiet and that sense of nature (and, dare I say, peace and relaxation) that was manifested there was a great introduction to Islandwood.

Our group assembled in a large meeting room for our first meeting which was scheduled for 3 p.m. Called the "Great Hall" no doubt because it is the largest open gathering room among the buildings, it still is not a huge place. We fit in there nicely. Noticed there was no air conditioning (the first observation about the "nature friendly" spirit of the facilities and all the amenities -- I didn't see a television once!) although the temp inside the building was very comfortable.

The introductory session was called "Cool Stuff" and pretty much turned out as billed. People volunteered a series of programs, strategies, etc., that worked for them. This entire conference was billed as a series of "sharing" sessions and this first get-together did just that. I hope the notes that were taken get shared. (At our final group session, it was stated that a wiki was going to be started that would grow out of these three days of sessions and I look forward to accessing & contributing to that resource.)

After a break, we had our first "break-out" session. I went to the one entitled "Choosing the right SIS (Student Information System). Much of this information was new to me. It involved various experiences, programs, strategies people were using at their schools to create, maintain, and share databases within the school community. There was a fair amount of discussion about one fairly widespread (the name of which I forgot!), SASI, and a couple others. We use our own in-house system, some of which is commercial (i.e. business office system) and some is custom software by Tom Rona. Although not exactly relevant to what I do, it was still very useful to hear about all the aspects of running a school -- including student records, grades, comments, but also development, alumni relations, finance -- that ideally would be great if it would work together seamlessly. In most schools, it sounds like this remains a dream much sought after.

A social time came next followed by dinner. The food was great (chicken, rice, tossed salad, steamed potatoes/carrots/beets) and dessert.

After dinner was unscheduled time. Some people finished get checked in -- my two roommates arrived at this time: William Larrimore, Technology Manager of the Meridian School in Seattle (in the Good Shepherd's Home in good ole Wallingford; and Kwame Pobee, who is the Network Administrator at Annie Wright in Tacoma. Nice guys and we had a little time to chat.

80 Days That Changed The World

Go to this TIME Magazine site to be reminded of historical events that have been monumental in their impact on our lives.

I suspect, as soon as you see the pictures scroll across the screen, you'll understand exactly the import of these events.

Virtual Skies: Aeronautics Tutorial: Introduction

I've always wanted to fly. Yes, me, actually fly. Not just in an airplane, but all by myself. Like most of you, I've dreamed of floating around and have, on a couple occasions, almost convinced myself that I could fly by flapping my arms.

Well, before that really happens, I'm going to have to conquer the realities of aeronaturics.

No better place to learn about what it takes to join the birds in the sky than the site below. A very well-written tutorial.

Virtual Skies: Aeronautics Tutorial

"Common Sense" Copyright Licensing

We spend a lot of time in our Laptop Prep classes talking about copyright, copyright law, and fair use.

In these days of great amounts of information -- with so much available at the click of a mouse -- the issues involved in complying with copyright, in spirit and by the letter of the law, is daunting.

The Ceative Commons movement seems to be gaining more prominence as more of a "common sense" response to the challenges to copyright.

Creative Commons is a way to license creative works so that they can be more widely shared while maintaining some protections for authors/creators.

To quote their opening paragraph:

Creative Commons licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators. We have built upon the "all rights reserved" concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary "some rights reserved" approach. We're a nonprofit organization. All of our tools are free.

This is a subject worth exploration in much greater depth. I hope to cover it next year in the unit on copyright.

Welcome | Creative Commons

Leonard da Vinci -- The Real Artist, Not The Movie

I'm not sure how I feel about the release this week of the movie based on the book, The DaVinci Code. I've never read it and there has been so much publicity -- and this week so much hype -- about the movie that I'm going to stay on the sidelines and not rush out to this flick.

However, da Vinci, the artist, deserves on-going attention in a big way. I've run across an online exhibit at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science called:

The Mind of Leonardo -- The Universal Genius At Work. Get your mouse pointing in this site's direction. A wonderful site. (This site, by the way, is available in both Italian & English.)

Oddly Enough There Is News Of The Weird

Once you've been to and left the Oddly Enough site at Reuters news service, click your way to Craig Shepherd's News Of The Weird. Check 'em out!!

In Case You Don't Have Enough To Do

Why not check out the case against Ken Lay and cohorts at the Enron trial. All you'll ever want to read and know is right here at the US Department of Justice site.

National Baseball Hall of Fame - Dressed to the Nines

Now that baseball season is underway, why not have a link to a historical look at one of the distinctive aspects of the game: the uniform.

Click on the following link:

National Baseball Hall of Fame - Dressed to the Nines

The Immigration Debate in the Classroom 2006

Today President Bush is making a speech to the nation on the subject of immigration. Some educational resources for this important topic and its many implications are available at the links below.

The Immigration Debate in the Classroom 2006

Public Agenda Issue Guide: Immigration

The Price Of Gold Back When

I'm not sure why this resource seems so fascinating to me. It's a site that will tell you the value of gold by various measures --- the official British price from 1257 to 1945, the official US price from 1786 to 2001, the London market price from 1718 to 2001, among others. All you have to do is select the price measure you want, plug in the year or span of years, and it will tell you.

A bit fascinating, I'd say.

Economic History Resources - What Was the Price of Gold Then?

They Test the Driving Tips

This portion of Edmunds.com is a place to go to find out how the "great" driving tips you get actually pan out. In this day of ever-rising gas prices, it's not a bad place to start and see what the real skinny is on saving gas and improving mileage.

We Test the Tips

Visual Learning - Example diagrams

We're all aware that our students -- heck, even ourselves -- have different learning styles. We have worked with kids we would classify as "auditory learners," "visual learners," and various combinations.

The software application, Inspiration, is an especially helpful tool to use with visual learners as it provides a way to show ideas and their relationship to each other in a visual fashion (you may have heard of this referred to as 'conceptual mapping').

Here are some lesson plans and ideas that use Inspiration in Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, Math, among others.

Visual Learning - Example diagrams

More Da Vinci

Here is a site that focuses on Leonardo's famous painting, The Last Supper. You're able to view some of the restoration work as well as preparatory drawings by the artist as he planned his panoramic painting.

Cenacolo - Last Supper

MySpace, Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites: Hot Today, Gone Tomorrow?

Sites such as MySpace are garnering a tremendous amount of publicity. Some of it positive about the changes such sites are making in terms of "social networking." Others are very concerned, especially parents who wonder if & how their child might have a site on MySpace and how much personal information they are sharing....not to mention the extent to which their child may be communicating with who-knows-who on the Internet.

Check out this article that examines the current and future implications of such sites.

MySpace, Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites: Hot Today, Gone Tomorrow?

(For those who may not be that familiar with how sites like MySpace operate, click here to go to an article at the HowStuffWorks site to get some background info.)

Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body: Home Page

I suppose I add this type of site to this blog at my -- and your! -- peril. Just exactly does "forensic views of the body" mean??

Still, with the popularity of TV programs such as CSI, a number of us are fascinated with many aspects of crime-fighting.

So, without further ado:

Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body: Home Page

School Technology Plans Online

Although, as we all know, technology is changing all the time, including the way in which we use technology in the classroom, it is important to have plans that look at where we are now and plot a course in the next few years.

We can learn a lot from each other, so here's a collection that Dr. David M. Marcovitz of Loyola College has put together of the technology plans of a group of schools.

School Technology Plans Online

Wacky Recipes

In our household, I generally do the cooking, at least for the main meal (dinner) on most days.

I wouldn't say I'm the most imaginative cook; I have a range of "specialties, but I realize there is a cycle of "favs" and that some of them do return now and then.

So, what could be better to run across than this website to whet my appetite for new fare at the dinner table.

Despite the "wacky" name, the recipes themselves are not way-out and more than a few are worth trying. You can also submit your tried-and-trues, too.

Visit Wacky Recipes!

The Challenges Of Being A Responsible Digital Citizen

The world is indeed changing and the cliche is that the world of technology is changing the fastest. Don't know for sure if tech is changing faster than anything else but it is certainly moving at a clip.

The challenges for all of us is how to be residents of this digital world in a way that's safe and responsible. And for those of us who are parents and teachers have the added responsibility of trying to help the kids we work with learn to make "safe" decisions about how to use and be part of the digital world.

The link below will take you to a page on the Lowell School website that has some useful resources to think about and learn about digital citizenship. Quite a useful site.

Lowell School - Washington, DC

We Sure Can Use Some of This Every Day

Everyone should make a stop here at least once a day!

HappyNews.com - All The News That's Fun To Print

The Best of the Humanities on the Web

This is a collection of many interesting and useful humanities-related sites on the Internet. A terrific place to start exploring

EDSITEment - The Best of the Humanities on the Web

San Francisco Earthquake

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the 7.8 Richter scale earthquake that hit (some say "devastated") San Franciso at 5:12 a.m. Then, following the earthquake came the fires.

A few sites you might consider if you're interested in viewing this calamity that took the lives of more than 3,000 San Franciscians (some thing many more than that).

The 1906 Earthquake Centennial Alliance

Eyewitness accounts

The Wikipedia article about the San Francisco earthquake and fire

San Francisco Chronicle coverage

Another potentially useful tool....and it's free!

ScreenHunter Free is a screen capture tool that I discovered and will try. Thought you might find it useful, too. There are version that are not free, but this version (which is) seems to have a lot going for it.

Go to:

ScreenHunter Free Screen Capture

Wonder If You're Clogged Up With Duplicate Files

From what I've read, this utility is a boon to those of us who have saved a file in various places on our computer.....and we can't remember where all those places are. It will help you find them, delete them, or move them where they need to be.

Go to:

DoubleKiller - find and remove duplicate files (Big Bang enterprises

A Handy (Free) Media Conversion Program

Check out Digital Media Converter.

Go to:

Media Conversion Software: Digital Media Converter

Out Of This World!

Google has added a new "out of this world" website for those with an eye for other-worldly places.....Mars!

Try Google Mars!