Monthly Archives: March 2009

Mar 21 2009

Openzine

If you follow this blog, you undoubtedly know that I’m constantly trying out new technologies as they become available, sparks my interest.  I feel that the test for my particular usefulness is how sticky that resource is for me.

So, if it sticks, I make it part of my routine.

When Openzine came along, I read it as just another blogging site.  I took a quick look and then moved on.

Something drew me back and I started thinking about the ability to publish in a different type of format.  I was thinking about kids publishing their own newspaper easily.  The writing would be the difficult part and the publishing is a final step.  Now, in Ontario schools, we have Microsoft Publisher licensed by the Ministry of Education so the concept of publishing in that format isn’t new.  Openzine adds an additional component though…it lets you publish to the web and its potentially bigger audience.  Another feature wasn’t apparent until I started following Openzine on Twitter.  In order to promote their service, they periodically publish announcements about some of the content that people have produced and published on their site.

This wasn’t of particular interest to me.  This blog gets thousands of views but what a hoot it would be for kids to publish and have visitors all over the place drop by because of an advert on Twitter.

I decided to give it a shot.  One of the frustrating things that I have is trying to find a blog post that I’ve made in the past.  So, I thought…what if I made a summary of the previous week’s posts and publish them there.  At least I could hit one page and get seven posts at at shot.  I started that and my first entry was, just OK.  I was learning the ropes and found a few strings.

Subsequent attempts are getting me closer to what I’d like to do with it.

I’m liking the format and what it’s doing for me.  If you’ve got a few minutes and want to explore alternatives to traditional blogging or traditional publishing, I’d suggest giving it a try.  I love a technology that has the potential to change everything.

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Mar 21 2009

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Mar 20 2009

Mulligans

With most of my golfing buddies, we use this term quite often.  A Mulligan is a “do over” – a second chance to make it right – it’s why they put erasers on pencils.  It’s why you have quick and easy access on your cart to a collection of balls.  I can take my mulligan and then go to the water trap to rescue the first ball.

At work, we use FirstClass as an email system.  When you send an email to another teacher, you certainly don’t want to include spelling errors because, as a breed, we really are overly critical.  That’s part of what we get paid for!  With FirstClass, there’s a really helpful button for mulligans.

Unsend is really handy.  As long as you’re sending a message to another person on the same system, you can unsend a message to correct that spelling error and resend it.  It’s not perfect – if the person is waiting for you message and immediately opens it, or if they automatically forward messages to another system, or if the email is directed to someone not on the same system, you’re caught.  However, I can’t begin to tell you the number of times I’ve successfully pulled back a message to fix this or that.  It’s a great feature and I really appreciate it.

Yesterday, Gmail announced that the it has added the same functionality to its service.  You do have to go into your Gmail settings as it isn’t on by default but you can now add the option to unsend a message.  According to the documentation on the Official Gmail blog, you don’t have forever to save face.  Gmail simply holds your message for five seconds before it sends it.  I find that the logic confirms my habit – send the message and then proofread it.  A better work habit would be to reverse these steps but we’re only human after all.

Image via CrunchBase

It may not be a feature that you use daily but I’d suggest that it’s something worthy of turning on just in case you need to avoid some embarrassment somewhere along the line.

While you’re in the configuration, check out all of the other features that let you make Gmail more responsive to your needs.

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Mar 20 2009

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Mar 19 2009

Thursday at MACUL

It’s been a few years since I’ve been to the MACUL Conference.  Either Michigan or Ontario planning or both put the event during our Spring Break and so other things had got in the road.  This year however, it was in Detroit at Cobo Centre and so I decided to hop the Tunnel Bus and go over for the Thursday events.  MACUL is one of the great conferences and I encourage you to take one in.  Cobo Centre is also such a terrific place.  Often when you get into big conference centres, finding rooms is difficult.  I’ve always been able to navigate Cobo with no problems so that’s a real plus.

I get there in lots of time (clearing customs was a breeze) in time to get the lay of the land and get registered.  Piece of cake and that’s always a good sign of things to come.  I go out to the lobby to grab a coffee and am in such a good, pay it forward to the lady behind me in line.

I did Twitter through the day as did many folks.  See the discussion here.  I had my iPod and started the day frustrated with how many keystrokes it took to get to the # key to tag my comments with #macul. For Alan November’s session, I was so riveted on content, I twittered without that tag.  For the rest of the day, I did play by the rules.  MACUL also has its own Ning available here.

The morning keynote is by Alan November.  We’re all handed out electronic voting devices as we enter and I’m looking forward to seeing it used in the hands of an expert.  I’ve always be suspicious of this type of technology with its wild claims of engagement.  Often it takes away from the flow with its constant need for attention.  My thoughts were confirmed.  Between switching cables from one computer to another and the time taken to conduct votes, not to mention the simple questions, I estimate that we wasted over 10 minutes of time that could have been spent listening to Alan speak.

Alan’s presentation really put things in context.  He’s best when he tells stories and we got to enjoy many of them.  He speaks with such passion when it comes to kids and classrooms.  There were some really salient points.  For me, the most important one was “Adding technology in the class is not enough to motivate, add jobs”.  Technology by itself isn’t as big a motivator as creating content and posting it for others to learn from.  Now, that’s really playing at the highest of levels. Alan’s a big fan of the Jing Project and showed how easily a student could create a Screencast and post it for others to enjoy and learn from.

Then, it was Mr. Steve Dembo‘s turn.  I actually took in two of Steve’s sessions today.  “Learning to Speak Native” and “Extreme Makeover”.  While the content was different in both sessions, the message was the same.  If we’re not staying on top of things with respect to the use of tools for students, we’re becoming increasingly irrelevant.  Steve really drove this home with his use of Prezi as a presentation tool and the ease of use of various other web based resources.  However, when someone uses my favourite, Crappy Graphs, I know that I’m in the right place!  I’m still amazed when he asks if anyone’s not heard of Twitter and hands still go up.  Maybe in the regular world, but this was a technology conference!

No visit to a MACUL Conference is complete without attending at least one Leslie Fisher session.  If there is a flagship presentation in her repertoire, it’s her Gadgets session.  She didn’t let us down and took us through a whirlwind of new things to try (and buy) to up our geek level.  It was Standing Room Only, and to prove it, Leslie took this picture from the stage.  If you’re interested in the presentation, she keeps her handouts here.  Make sure that you abide by her terms.  If you’ve ever been in her session, you know that a great deal of time and effort has gone into the presentation.

A blog entry doesn’t do attendance at her session justice.  You’ve got to be there to truly enjoy it.  I’m happy to report that I did have an opportunity to chat with her and she’s confirmed as a speaker for the Western RCAC‘s Symposium 2009 in December.

You also need to spend time in the exhibition hall at these events.  Lots of things caught my eye and will rob me of some sleep over the next few days.  I’ll undoubtedly end up adding to my Delicious collection so watch for happenings there.

This had to be the shortest 10 hours that I’ve had for some time.  The Tunnel Bus stops right across the street from Cobo and it’s a short hop under the international boundary line and I’m home.  Exhausted, but I see that the excitement from MACUL continues to inspire Twitterers into this evening.

Day 2 goes tomorrow.

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Mar 19 2009

Advanced Immediacy

It seems like for every possible happening, there’s some resource your can use for research.  Yahoo! or Google or any of the other search engines in the online world provide wonderful and not so wonderful resources.  Most include an advanced search option that many people tend to ignore.

On our Student Reference Portal, I actually have a whole page devoted to search for students and, instead of the simplistic search, I send those that use it to the advanced page.  It serves you well to scrape through web resources and content to find what someone has already created.

In order to be effective, the search engine has to find and index the resource somehow to make it findable.  There are all kinds of algorithms to determine what result is posted first.

More and more, I’m finding myself intrigued with finding a resource right now.

For that, you can’t beat a Twitter Search.  But, even then, you’ll be buried with all kinds of results.  In a little link off the side, you’ll find that even Twitter Search has an Advanced Search to help you find immediate results with relevancy.

This opens up a whole new world.  Immediate results have not be categorized or ranked at any level.  But, their value lies in the immediacy. You can even prime the results by sending out a comment to Twitter and watch the results come rolling in.  It’s another new and important literacy that has huge potential when you use it and realize what the results actually mean.

This is another incredible tool to add to your searching toolkit.

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Mar 19 2009

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Mar 18 2009

Blogging for Reflection

In all of my teaching career, I’ve always encouraged my students to pause and reflect on what they’ve done at the conclusion of any exercise.  In my Computer Science classes, it was to take a look at what they’ve just programmed with the idea of making it more efficient or more user-friendly or more accurate.  In my pre-service university class, I encourage my students to force themselves to reflect on every lesson, every learning activity that they’ve asked students to do.  What can be learned?  What can be done better?  When went wrong so that you don’t do the same thing again?

In my own lesson plans, I have a section at the bottom of each entitled “Reflections”.  I use it all the time to remind myself what went well, what went not so well, and what to do or remember should I get an opportunity to teach the same thing again.  It’s good for me and a process of refinement to make things that I do better in the future.

In the electronic world, I do encourage folks to share their successes on Twitter.  It’s potentially a more global audience.  It’s probably not the best place for a deeper reflection with the 140 character limit, but that’s where having a blog puts you over the top.  Blogging is a discipline and you need to force yourself to do it regularly in order for the writing to help you with the benefits that writing can provide.  It’s strangely cathartic but does do the job if you let it.  Just by commiting your words or emotions to print can be a form of release.  I encourage everyone to give it a shot and see if it works for you.

Yesterday, I’m sitting in a medical waiting room ready to give up some blood and it’s going to be a while.  None of the reading material looks interesting (or sanitary) so I pull out my Blackberry to check what’s happening in my slice of the Twitterverse.  One of my friends and followers is pcornqueen.  Other than online, I’ve never met this lovely lady but we share tweets back and forth almost daily.  Usually, it’s just a simple good morning and “how’s the weather?”  She’s from Western Michigan and generally is a 3-4 hour weather heads-up forecaster about what’s about to hit us in South Western Ontario.

So, we do our regular pleasantries and she mentions that she had created a blog post, if I was interested.

The lineup is long so I decide to check it out.  Reading a blog on a Blackberry can be an interesting process.  In particular, when someone adds a long entry, there’s a great deal of scrolling.  pcornqueen’s entries can be long but I’ve got to be 10th in line so I decide to read it.

From the start, this appeared to be more than the regular blog-fare that you run across on the web.  It’s a tribute to a young man, her brother, who had a short life.  The content gets very deep, very emotional in a hurry as she describes his life and his unfortunate choice to get into a car with a driver who had been drinking.

It’s yet another story that talks about the pain that comes when a single bad decision can ruin so much  and the impact that it has on family.  In this case, it isn’t one of those commercials that you see on television.  It’s cold, hard life.

I didn’t reply to the blog entry via Blackberry but did respond on Twitter noting that that would have been a difficult post to compose.  Of course it was, but it was also a personal way to cope on what would have been a significant birthday.

Reflection can be so powerful and can reach out to others when appropriate.  To share the moment may help others deal with similar situations and also, hopefully, discourage those who would put themselves in a similar situation.  There are so many alternatives than to get into a car with a driver who has been drinking.

You can read the entire entry here.

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Mar 18 2009

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