Firefox Memory

Image via CrunchBase

This post is part of an exercise for the Expand our Boundaries workshop.  We’re supposed to find an article of interest and blog about it.  So, what to do?  Usually, I’m good for one blog post a day and then my passion for the moment is shot!

So, looking for passion, I turn to one of my morning rituals and went to Popurls.  I actually found an article that deal with something that has bothered me for a while.  Firefox, the premier browser, is notorious for eating memory.  This morning, there’s a post from Lifehacker that has a tip for putting the reins on Firefox’s desire for memory when it’s minimized.

I’ll be checking this out and look forward to success with this tip.

Thanks for the exercise, Will.  Another thing to add to the learning for today!

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Expanding Boundaries

Day 1 of our professional development event sponsored by OTF and ECOO is in the books.  Technically, there was a glitch or two as technology doesn’t always play nice at things like this but overall, participants left with their boundaries definitely expanded.

Unless napping, the folks in the room (100-200?) all have Twitter and Delicious accounts and a brand new blog to their name.  Will Richardson is the facilitator of this event designed to raise awareness of what the key issues are as we move educational environments forward to a destination unknown.  Even three years ago, we didn’t have this sense of empowerment that these tools provide.  The day was filled with a number of direct activities that guided the audience to success, and yet, had enough flexibility to differentiate based upon need.  Even though there was room for some showcases by teachers, Will’s overall message was that teachers had to come to grips and learn the tools themselves before taking the next step.  Wise advice.

Mid-morning, we had a presentation by Bob Fisher from OSSTF about advice for using these technologies with students.  I was really interesting in hearing this message because this has to be one of the bigger myths of our time.  We’re hearing that the advice from our Federations is that you should never use these technologies or email in the classroom, period.   Mr. Fisher’s message was considerably different.  He reminded us that one of our duties as teachers is to protect students and manage any risks appropriately.  In a day and age when we’re providing instruction of entire courses online through eLearning Ontario, you know that there has to be some sort of middle ground.  Of course, just like avoiding accidents by never driving your car, there are absolute ways but the Federations are mindful that things are changing.  As the talk proceeded, the words “Common Sense” kept rolling through my mind.  At this point, there is no formal policy document or direction for the province but the need for one was certainly made abundantly clear.  It really is needed.

Throughout the day, Will spoke with the passion for students that sends the message to all that we need can ignore this.  If we’re not teaching students about these technologies, who is?  Students are collaborative by nature, let’s give them good reasons for doing it.  I captured this video with my RCA Small Wonder when Will was talking about online writing.

more about “Edublogs.tv Will Richardson at EXPB…”, posted with vodpod

It was a long day.  We did manage to share and find a whack of new friends on Twitter; we created networks of resource sharers on Delicious; we learned how to turn RSS into a productivity management system; and we hopefully will start to work the web smarter than before.

Then, comes the million dollar question – “Where do you find the time to do all this?”.  The answer is based in reality.   You need to stop doing some things to embrace the new things.  For example, don’t rely on Google to find things.  Use your network whether it be a plea on Twitter or through your Delicious network where you have folks working and researching for you.  Don’t rely on your one newspaper subscription to get all your news – aggregate it through your Reader.

As a group, we’re expanding our boundaries and thoughts.  On to Day Two…what a great way to spend a Saturday.

A reminder that a live backchannel is available at:  http://www.chatzy.com/837020922393

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links for 2009-02-27

• Are You Safe?
  Are You Safe lets you know how safe you are at all times based on your current location within the city.
  (tags: iphone apple mac mobile safety stats usa ipod)
• Social Media for Business: The Dos & Don'ts of Sharing
  It doesn’t matter if you’re on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr; your online personality is not only part of your overall brand, it becomes an interactive experience for you and your business.
  (tags: socialmedia Business twitter facebook networking marketing social branding)
• Edublogs.tv   @willrich45 quick clip 2
  Tim's video of Will Richardson during his presentation
  (tags: expbound)
• 43 Folders | Time, Attention, and Creative Work
  Learn how ganging and constraints can help you create the blocks of time you need to devote 100% of your attention to making your best work. (10:32)
  (tags: productivity blog lifehacks organization howto blogs tips hacks gtd)
• sciencefriday.com – making science user-friendly
  Making science user friendly for the masses
  (tags: Science podcast radio news education audio technology podcasts npr)
• Yellow “Star Wars” Opening Text Crawl Tutorial!
  So you’re making a Star Wars fanfilm, and you want that authentic-looking, opening yellow text scroll? Plus all the other nice frills that go along with it? You’ve googled the internet for tutorials that show you how to do those things, but it seemed like a lot of hard work, using expensive software packages that you didn’t want to buy? And even then the results were a little bit less-than-authentic looking?
  (tags: video software mac OSX movies cool apple tutorial starwars)
• Generic Error – Can Games Teach You To Program?
  After getting severely distracted by a little gem called RoboZZle I'd had to answer with a solid maybe. The idea behind the game is simple: for each puzzle, program a small robot to collect all of the stars without falling off the map. Here's a an example of a typical puzzle:
  (tags: programming game games icsxx ComputerScience/Fluency)

Give a Day, Get a Day

How’s that for a title?  It could well describe what’s going to happen this Friday and Saturday.  OTF and ECOO have jointly sponsored a two-day workshop called “Expanding our Boundaries“.  The workshop is a full two days of activities designed to help Ontario educators embrace some of the new collaborative web technologies.

The session is facilitated by Will Richardson.  If you’re reading this blog, undoubtedly you know of Mr. Richardson’s stature within the online community.  Author of the book “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms“, Will is a speaker of incredible knowledge and passion for using collaborative technologies in order to develop your own personal learning network and affording opportunities for students to do the same in the classroom.  It really strikes home when exhibit A is Will’s two children and his desire that we become the teacher that he would send his kids to.

The event is more than that though.  Success stories from online Ontario educators will be shared throughout the two day event and a portion of this morning is devoted to the union advice about keeping yourself and your students protected.  It appears to be a well thought through and complete agenda.

Will’s Ontario adventures started a couple of years ago as he keynoted the Western Regional Computer Advisory’s Symposium 2007.  We asked him to stick around for a second day and conduct a hands-on blogging and Read/Write Web session.  Both events had huge impact on a number of people helping them see the benefits of this technology and to this day you’ll find blogs that starts as a result of the workshop and continue to this day.

I kid Will that I should get finder’s fees.  Since he set the world on fire at our Symposium, he has been invited to do similar presentations in many locations throughout the province, including our Vision to Practice conference last summer.  He doesn’t beat you up with his message, but there’s no denying that he’s spot on when he encourages you to find your passion and build your professional network around that passion.  I know that advice has built me a terrific network in the online areas that I frequent and there doesn’t go a day where I don’t learn something new.  Can there be no better compliment for an educator?

One of the keys to success in an event like this is a lasting connection to someone of a similar mindset.  Beyond the inspiration and insights that Will provides, that’s what I hope I get as a take away from this event.

If you can’t join us, ECOO has set up a backchannel on Commun-it for the comments to flow.

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links for 2009-02-26

• Once Upon A Teacher: From PLN to P-L-A-N for Moving our School Forward
  That's what I love about being connected with so many educators, there is always a new idea, always something new to learn and always someone to support you as you try to build a PLN for your workplace.
  (tags: pln blog education techintegration ideas teacher)
• Photojojo » The Photographic Dictionary
  Whether you’ve got writer’s block or photographer’s ennui or the systemic aesthetic doldrums, the Photographic Dictionary is good for what ails you.
  (tags: photography dictionary photo photos literacy words)
• State of the Art – Google Geniuses at Work on Free Goodies – NYTimes.com
  any time you cram some 20,000 of the world’s smartest people into one company, you can expect to grow a garden of unrelated ideas. Especially when you give some of those geniuses one workday a week — Google’s famous “20 percent time”— to work on whatever projects fan their passions.
  (tags: igoogle google labs research)
• Writing in the 21st Century
  Today people write as never before—texting, on blogs, with video cameras and cell phones, and, yes, even with traditional pen and paper. People write at home, at work, inside and out of school.
  (tags: writing literacy assessment education english 21stCenturySkills digital history ncte)
• 15 online photo editors compared | Webware – CNET
  Tools that let you edit photos in the Web browser have come a long way in the last few years. We wanted to take a moment to do a feature comparison with a grouping of editors–big and small, to see what each one is capable of.
  (tags: editor online photos photoshop software images photo photography)
• Tikatok – Imagine a Story. Create a Book.
  Tikatok™ is where kids channel their imagination into stories – and publish those stories into
  books for you to share and treasure with friends and family.
  (tags: web2.0 storytelling kids reading tools publishing books writing)
• Digital Humanities in 2008, II: Scholarly Communication & Open Access « Digital Scholarship in the Humanities
  Open access, just like dark chocolate and blueberries, is good and good for you, enabling information to be mined and reused, fostering the exchange of ideas, and ensuring public access to research that taxpayers often helped to fund.
  (tags: openaccess opensource Academic anthropology e-learning digitalhumanities)

Better than RSS?

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been an RSS user for a long time.  The RSS reading feature was one of the more compelling reasons for me to make Flock my browser of choice.  Rather than dealing with an external reader or aggregator, I just had it open and I could skim the feeds to the places that I turn for news and opinion.

Ever lazy, I was finding that using RSS was becoming an event.  It was something that I actually had to force myself to do.  It still is a terrific way to get a sense of what’s happening and provides a deep background of the most recent entries.

I’m finding that I’m becoming more of a news junkie these days.  I don’t mean that I need to sit down with a newspaper and read it from cover to cover.  I want to know what’s happening RIGHT NOW.  What’s happening; what’s trending; what are the big news stories this moment.

I’ve been experimenting with various ways to make this work for me.  The rules for this to work for me has to be that it needs to be easy, portable, auto-start by itself, flexible, expandable, …  Hey, I want it to be everything.

Twitter and Twhirl come to the rescue again.  One of my most powerful uses of Twitter is to connect and interact with so many powerful and knowledgeable people.  But, there are things other than people on Twitter and I decided to focus in on them.  In particular, the news services to feed my need for information.

I created a second Twitter account for this purpose. Twhirl handles multiple accounts nicely.  With my second account, I subscribe just to news feeds.  Currently, I’m subscribing to…

• cbctoronto
• cbcnews
• NBCNews
• googlenews
• SocialMedia411
• bbsworld
• Reuters
• CNETNews
• weirdnews
• foxnews
• BreakingNewz
• BreakingNewsOn
• cnnbrk
• mashable
• guardiantech
• BBCClick
• nprpolitics
• nytimes
• edubeacon
• thw
• RSS_BBC
• HenryNews
• WOODTV
• SkyNewsAust

It’s quite a collection.  Now, I don’t sit there fixated for hours on end … but a quick glance up and down of the 10 stories in the viewer window gives me a pretty good idea of what’s happening!

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links for 2009-02-25

• WildEarth.TV … it's in your nature. – wildearth.tv
  Watch earth's wildlife live.
  (tags: web2.0 safari animals video webcam science live Education)
• Wall of Words
  Creative a wall of words
  (tags: games literacy grammar language reading interactive punctuation writing)
• TileStack – Your Creative Playground
  a series of interactive scenes that collective tell a story or serve a purpose
  (tags: web2.0 software mac apple web programming cool tools hypercard)
• ReView Online Criteria Based Assessment – Home
  ReView online criteria-based asssessment is a catalyst to assist staff in making explicit the assessment criteria aimed at the development of these important 'attributes' over time and across different subjects or units in a course of study. It also enables students to 'self-assess' their own work against those criteria and monitor their own development of the important discipline-specific attribute categories.
  (tags: online Education assessment evaluation)
• Physics Games – online physics-based games
  Online activities for use in the physics classroom
  (tags: games physics flash free science Education kids game gamedev)

Inspiration from Kids

In preparation for my presentation tonight at the Ontario Educator’s Meetup, I decided to confirm that what I’ve been thinking actually works.  So, I set off to see what was happening at Gore Hill.  There were a lot of other things that all fell into place to require me to head to Leamington anyway.  One was to work with a kindergarten class, but that’s another story.

If you are not familiar with the area, Leamington, Ontario is definitely a place that you want to visit if you head to South Western Ontario.  One of the huge local employers is Heinz of ketchup, mustard, and pickles fame.  There is agriculture everywhere and lots of greenhouses.  This is also Point Pelee National Park which is spectacular.

Folks that live in the Leamington area are some of the nicest, honest, and most hard working that you’ll find.  The same thing can be said of the students there.  The teacher, Mrs. Snow, talks with great pride of the data wall documenting growth in this particular class all year.  It’s because of great teaching and learning and I’d like to think that the use of technology works as a motivator as well.  The class also has the added advantage of four students who are doing their practice teaching from the Faculty of Education at Gore Hill.

Leamington loves the fact that their students are online.  Like most towns, there are a number of fast food outlets and they let you know how proud as you head to Gore Hill from Windsor.

In a previous CIESC meeting, Mrs. Snow had been bragging about the projects this class was involved with and I happened to eavesdrop and it was the inspiration for a page in my February newsletter.  This wasn’t lost on the community either.  As you continue the drive…

I was introduced to the group and we chatted briefly about various things.  I noted that technical writing is among the hardest of writing there is.  It has to be precise, accurate, and complete.  We talked about the need for good writers.  Inspired by Erin’s success, quite a number of hands went up when Mrs. Snow asked if others had created instructions to do a particular task.  I’m going to try and get my hands on some of them for my March newsletter.  What a great group of budding authors.  I certainly hope that they keep at it.

While I was there, the lesson was about editing audio with Audacity.  Unlike so many podcasts where random thoughts are read, this was the ultimate publishing event for the writing process.  Each student had read at least one of the novels for the Forest of Reading and were creating trailers to publish to the class wiki.  As with writing, we need to strive for perfection in this arena as well.  While I was watching, they were working as a group around a projected image trying to seamlessly edit a cough from the middle of a production.  These potential disk jockeys wanted nothing but the best for their efforts.  After all, there is a massive audience just waiting.

I’m still wondering how they got those call letters.  Perhaps CGOR-FM was already taken?  We talked about how easy it was to create an edit these audio reviews.  Wouldn’t it be terrific if they spent five minutes after every book read to record their thoughts and even share with the author?

Then it was hands-on time.  Students worked in pairs with their laptops doing some research and recording.  In the library, they quickly dispersed to carve out their own creative learning space.  From what I observed, there were two rules important rules.  The computer screen always had to be visible and the laptop wasn’t allowed to be on a lap.  So, they were working on tables, on the floor, and sitting on the floor with the laptop on a chair.  But, the important thing was the level of engagement and the focus on the task.  Wow.

You can also note the level of sophistication of students by the amount of assistance that they require getting started.  In this case, none needed.  They went right to work and most were going to work through recess on various projects.

Only saddening comment came in an email from the teacher later that night.

Asked one of them (Ryan) if you were what he expected.
His comment was, “NO! I thought he’d have to be young because he knows so much about computers.”

Hey, bud, even us over-30’s can push our walker up to a keyboard and use a mouse…

Yes, I was right.  What I saw confirmed that there are web applications that put things over the top.  I’ll look forward to sharing some of them tonight.

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links for 2009-02-24

• Learning Styles Online.com – including a free inventory
  Learning styles are a way to help improve your quality of learning. By understanding your own personal styles, you can adapt the learning process and techniques you use. This site is dedicated to helping you better understand learning styles, as well as providing an easy way to discover your own styles.
  (tags: learning education psychology teaching Reference Life tools quiz learning_styles learningstyles)
• David's Google Earth files
  This page is a collection of my experiments with Google Earth as a tool for highlighting and visualizing environmental issues.
  (tags: environment googleearth google maps green earth tools Science deforestation)
• Vocaroo | Record and send voice emails
  Vocaroo – The premier voice recording service.
  (tags: web2.0 audio voice recording tools podcasting podcast voicemail)
• LendAround
  LendAround is a free web tool that helps people to borrow things from their friends — starting with DVDs. It lets you keep track of what you own, what you've borrowed,…
  (tags: sharing social dvd free community video recycle sustainability)
• Fruugo.com
  We want to make it easy for you to get nice things from retailers you might not have known about – and from places you might never have heard of.
  (tags: web2.0 shopping business startup Technology webdesign design tools ecommerce)
• Fuego Nation
  Fire up your passion
  (tags: web2.0 social socialnetworking groups social_networking)
• HYPick.com – Hype a Topic • Home
  Allow your stories to be submitted to a whole new and engaging audience.
  (tags: marketing Media news online pics social sports tool)
• Loobalee – Guest Home Page
  A new alternative for buying, selling, and donating kids gently used and new kids clothing on-line
  (tags: web2.0 online Clothing buying retail)
• book reviews, book clubs, free ebook and book recommendations – BookArmy
  Tell us the name of a book you love below & we will do the rest.
  (tags: web2.0 book Networking social socialnetworking community publishing books bookarmy)
• bopaboo Invites | Mashable
  Bopaboo is your place to buy and sell digital music
  (tags: music retail sell)
• Show My White Space
  The transition to digital TV on June 12th will free up a vast amount of wireless frequencies that can be used by anyone – for FREE!
  (tags: wireless television free Bandwidth)
• Shmoop: Study Guides for Literature, US History, Poems, & Essays – Homework Help and Teaching Resources
  Shmoop wants to make you a better lover (of literature, history, poetry and writing). See many sides to the argument. Find your writing groove. Understand how lit and history are relevant today. We want to show your brain a good time.
  (tags: literature Education history poetry resources research reference english)
• BuiLD YouR WiLD SeLF
  Choose animal parts to build yourself online
  (tags: web2.0 flash art kids interactive animals fun avatar)
• Switch Zoo – Animal Games
  This quest takes you on a tour of Switch Zoo and challenges you with nine animal-related games and activities. Completing the quest will earn you the title Switch Zoo Guide.
  (tags: animals fun games science kids design zoo activities)

Web Apps That Actually Work in Education

Image via CrunchBase

What a presumptuous title!

That’s going to be the topic that I address during Ontario Educator Meetup #3.  It will be held this Wednesday evening at 8:00pm at http://connect.tcdsb.org/ontmeetup.  Check here for the time in your location. 

In this day and age, there are so many applications online that you can use.  Certainly as educators, we should be able to and are able to use them ourselves.  But, how about students and in the classroom?  In this session, I’m going to take a look at some of the ways that web applications are being used by our teachers and students. 

Then, the floor will open for participants to talk about tried and true and really worthwhile applications that have educational value as we address curriculum expectations.

So, grab your headset and I’ll look forward to meeting up with you tomorrow night.

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