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For SMBs, it does beg the question though. What should you do about social media platforms like Twitter?
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A first for me – bookmarking before it goes live so that I remember to check out. Lots of buzz today.
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Using RCA Small Wonder camera in the classroom
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GM, which has been slashing jobs, plans to cut its U.S. brands to four from eight and said on Friday that it expected to have about 3,600 U.S. dealerships by the end of 2010, down from just under 6,000 as of mid May.
Key upcoming dates for GM are as follows.
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VocabGrabber analyzes any text you're interested in, generating lists of the most useful vocabulary words and showing you how those words are used in context.
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Let's face it, when it comes to technology, teenagers are wired!
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A lateral thinking process, brainstorming demands that people come up with ideas and thoughts that can seem shocking or crazy.
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Open Curriculum Science Resources
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Google for kids – dinosaur theme
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Using wikis to promote quality learning in teacher training
Monthly Archives: May 2009
Who can you trust?
We’re living in a world that is headed to the clouds. There is no doubt of that. Just head to a bookmarking service like Delicious and so a search for Web 2.0 and see what turns up. These are only the bookmarks with that particular tag. Try Web2.0 or Web 2.0 or Read/Write Web or Interactive Web to find even more. And, these are only the applications that have been identified. We see new ones every day.
To stay on top of all of it is just impossible so you do the best that you can do and hope that you’ve got what you have for your fill! I am so thankful for my friends on Twitter and Facebook to keep me up to date on their finds and I try to reciprocate myself.
When you find a good resource, it can truly change the way that you do business. You also have to be cognizant that these things are subject to their ability and each service talks about their terms and reliability when you sign up. In particular, they all have a warning that their service may not always be there 24/7. We typically ignore that and just get to it. Some folks don’t even bother reading the terms and conditions at all.
So, we sign up for a service and life is good. Until *it* happens.
Now, *it* generally proportional to the size of the company. Many startups work on little budgets but the bigger ones have a pretty substantial backing and you should be able to rely on them.
For example, does it get much better than Google? Here we have a huge company that provides excellent services on a global scale. How could you go wrong?
Well, *it* happens to the best of them and it happened yesterday. There were slowdowns in the services that Google provides. The first indication that something was amiss came through on Twitter. The unfortunate tag included RIP. You’d think that it was the end of the world.
For some, it was.
When all of your eggs are placed in a particular basket and that basket springs a leak, you’ve got a problem. When it happens to Google, you have a big problem.
Now, we’re talking about a service that we all agree to certain things when we sign up for our Google accounts. But, more and more, the functionality and reliability draws users and companies to the service. The free service is powered by advertising so you are reminded that you get what you pay for. To its credit, Google did restore its services and apologized with an explanation.
But, we’re all interested in getting in the cloud and using the excellent services that are available. To what extent should we be doing this? How close to mission critical content belongs there? Who will we trust with our information – not only to keep it secure but to have it reliably there when we need it? What should our expectations be for continuity of service?
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links for 2009-05-14
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Everybody likes to indulge themselves. Some by eating sweets and some by spending money. Both can become addicting. There is a difference though, when one takes eating sweets to the extreme, it will show in their health. When one takes spending to an extreme they, or their purchase, is likely to end up on this list of the ‘Most Expensive’ things.
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Create photobook and animations online
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Online photo editing utility
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Daniel Cook's interactive website
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Twitter has of late been inundated by, shall we say, “normals.” What was once our little playground has become rather more populated. But that doesn’t make it any less effective a tool for communication. It just means we have to stick together, and keep the geek community thriving.
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Gettysburg Address as Lincoln would have delivered it with Powerpoint – including speaker's notes
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The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is an Open Source project based at Tufts University. The VUE project is focused on creating flexible tools for managing and integrating digital resources in support of teaching, learning and research. VUE provides a flexible visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information.
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The near ubiquitous role of bulleted lists is a phenomenon that has developed in the last ten years, and Ivan Keneally really doesn’t like it. He makes an extremely well-argued case against PowerPoint, pointing out that it’s hard to have real discourse on a subject when you’re in a darkened room illuminated only by a projector.
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Apple has made no more than $20-45m in revenue from the app store « Lightspeed Venture Partners BlogAbout a month ago Apple announced that one billion iphone apps have been downloaded in the first nine months. That’s an amazing number. I wondered how much money Apple was making from the app store.
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From the pages of my Blog, I give you a simple Twitter Guide.
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spree is an expert search engine where users ask questions to find other participating users, who are knowledgeable in that area and willing to help.
Labels
I was thinking about a conversation that I had yesterday and the comment directed to me was that I must be a real “left brain“er. It had to do as a result of me helping someone with a problem by stepping them through a solution. I think that the comment was supposed to be a compliment. Or, maybe it was a put-down. Or, maybe it was a comment that the person had directed inwardly because they were unable to solve the situation themselves. I didn’t acknowledge the comment because I wasn’t sure how to take it and it didn’t really matter anyway. I even thought to myself – if you wish to express thanks, you could pay me. Trouble shooting like that would cost you big-time if you went to a service for a solution.
On the drive home, I started to think about this whole situation and started to get angrier and angrier. It was the computer programmer in me that was wrestling with this. So often, we label people who enjoy programming, with this tag. In reality, they may well be some of the most balanced individuals as it’s the creativity and insights into technology and how people use the final product that makes their abilities, skills, and insights so unique.
Then, I read Jeremiah Owyang’s blog today. He’s live blogging a session that he’s at about Digital Natives. I find this comment amusing and probably so true…
[By age 20, kids will have spent 20,000 hours online –the same amount of time a professional piano player would have spent practicing --Dr. Urs Gasser]
… for some of them.
Then follows a list of generalizations about what a Digital Native is. I don’t have a particular problem with the summaries. Yes, some kids do grow up today connected and have an MP3 player in their ear and on one hand and a cell phone in the other. The part that bothers me is the flip side. It’s the generalization that if you’re not a “Digital Native”, you’re a “Digital Immigrant” and are someone kicked to the curb because you didn’t grow up this way.
But, you know what? Not every kid fits that generalization and not every person not born in that timeframe doesn’t. I know — you’ll need a truth table to parse out the negatives.
I look at the list from Mr. Owyang’s blog and I’d like to think that much of that describes me. But, so what? Instead of trying to find a label for people, why can’t society spend the time and effort to find out what makes each individual person tick and then respect them for being who and what they are? Let’s use this information wisely to the benefit of all.
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links for 2009-05-13
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Very cool animation and music mashup
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Take a picture and turn it into a dot to dot puzzle
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Apple iTunes now features a section of their store called iTunes U which features free audio & video downloads from dozens of universities across the United States and around the world including Stanford, Duke, MIT, Arizona State, and more.
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A sociology student placed a fake quote on Wikipedia, only to see it show up in prominent newspapers, revealing that a lot of the press doesn't go much further than most 'Net users when it comes to researching a story.
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Twitter offers a real-world education, right at your fingertips. It is a wonderful tool for collecting information, much of it educational. You can find educators, librarians, museums, and more on Twitter. Read on, and you’ll find 100 of the most educational feeds on Twitter.
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# Create a poll.
# Forward the link to the poll to the participants.
# Follow online what the participants vote for. -
Now you can use all of the mini-movies from Alphabet Geometry offline! Each movie is a Flash .swf file and can be downloaded and inserted into a SmartBoard Notebook presentation.
Google Search – Now With More Options
You’d have to look very closely to see the new features that have been added to the Google Search page. But, look for them because there are new features that will allow you to dig deeper into your search results and, hopefully, find your search topics easier and quicker. At the same time, you might get some inspiration for a related topic that you weren’t originally looking for!
Below, I’ve done a search for “Ontario” and got results that I’m sure will be relevant for me. But, the sign that something new is afoot is the understated link that says “Show Options”.
Click to reveal the options and you’ve got a whole new set of tools in a sidebar to let you dig into the results, striving for the most relevant.
The top part is pretty straight forward. Yes, I’d like just videos instead of websites at times or, if I’m looking to buy something, community reviews are always handy.
The time feature should prove to be very handy. As the internet gets older, so does a lot of the content that’s on there. There are really times when you want results that are relatively recent so being able to filter on a timeline is handy. But, hold that thought for later because we’ll revisit timelines again.
Having more control over the results from a search is a sweet feature. How many times have you done a search, followed a link, and then realized that it wasn’t what you were looking for anyway. Now, you can ask Google to show you some images from the results that it’s returning. So, you can get a visual of the proposed content. And, if the short snippet of text that’s normally provided isn’t enough, ask Google to give you “More Text” and the amount of text that has been found on the website is expanded. With luck and a little media literacy, this should cut down on the number of internet wild goose chases.
Then, we have a couple of “wow” moments.
The “Wonder Wheel” lets you springboard from an original concept to related concepts via an interactive graphic organizer. Click on a link to see expanded ideas. Very nice. Below, I started with the concept of “Ontario” and then to Ontario Universities to finally the Ontario Universities Application Centre. Now, that might be of great value to a non-Ontario student looking to apply at an Ontario University. She/He might not be aware of the application process.
Of course, all along, Google is keeping track and providing related links to the right of the graphic organizer. It’s interesting that UOIT is the first university that’s identified. We Waterloo grads need to protest!
Finally, the timeline. Everyone’s all about visualization these days. If the text timeline sorter above doesn’t cut it for you, how about a visual representation? You’ll see from the graphic below, a histogram of content spread over a timeline. Mouse over the timeframe of interest and zero in on results by a year range.
All of these new features flow nicely from doing a search. It’s another great set of tools for users to efficiently zero in on just what is desired.
Give it a shot next time you’re searching. If you’re doing some media or internet literacy, incorporate this into a search and hopefully you’ll find richer results and find them much quicker and more easily.
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links for 2009-05-12
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TED does not make a big deal publicly out of the TED Commandments, but many TED presenters have referenced the speaking guidelines in their talks and in their blogs over the years
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Make picture collages in less than a minute with just a few mouse clicks
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Generously illustrated with maps, diagrams, paintings and modern colour photographs, Adventurers vividly recreates the saga of the company whose history is the history of Canada.
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Online photo sharing service
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This app lets you remote control your computer using a Twitter account. It can either shutdown, restart, or log you off your PC just by sending commands from a special Twitter account you set up for your computer. The app monitors that account for new tweets, then performs the actions you specify.
Collaboration
Last night, we had our annual CIESC Dinner meeting and wrapup for the school year. CIESC = Computers in Education School Contacts. We have at least one in every one of our schools and they’re the front line to computer professional development, support for their colleagues, abuse when stuff doesn’t work, and generally help support the cause as we push forward with technologies, initiatives, and pedagogy to support increased achievement with our students.
Over the past couple of years, we have been fortunate to have opened some new schools and so part of our agenda has been to tour the new schools. Technology and opportunities for students is built in by design and teacher generally enjoy seeing how the other half lives. Our venue for the evening has a great deal of innovations that illustrate our current thinking about how learning environments should be constructed. One of the highlights is a Snoezelen Room and its use certainly sparked some curiosity among our group.
This school year has seen a big shift towards using web-based collaboration tools and, of course, the wiki is front and centre. A lot of effort has gone into the creation of these things throughout the district by students and teachers. It was only fitting that we took some time showcasing some of the results.
After dinner, we were treated to a presentation by Rodd Lucier, “thecleversheep” as he’s know in the online world. Rodd and I have learned from and pushed each other in this space for a couple of years now. So, it was only fitting that he address the group about the spirit of collaboration as it applies to teachers professionally and in the classroom with students. In planning for the event, we batted a couple of ideas back and forth and finally ended up with the concept of 10 trends that Rodd sees happening now. Given what’s happening, it seemed like “Collaboration” would be a great title for the presentation.
Rodd was good enough to post his presentation to Slideshare so that everyone could enjoy it. During his presentation, Rodd showed the group where the slideshow was and it had already collected over 200 hits. This morning, I see that it’s sitting at 435 hits with a couple of comments already.
We live in ever changing times and just when you think you see the target, it moves. Our students are so far removed from David Warlick’s “perfect classroom” of the 1950s. The power of the web reaches everywhere and the more that we know, the more that we can leverage it in our classrooms.
That’s where the value of the CIESC group comes into play. They help shape where we’re prepared to take our students.
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links for 2009-05-11
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Why is it that so many companies are still struggling to create vibrant online communities? For every Threadless or Ideastorm, there are literally thousands of failed attempts at community-creation. What are so many companies missing?
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Twitter (Twitter reviews) references seem to be popping up everywhere. From news shows to sitcoms such as The Big Bang Theory, there’s no denying that the service is finally going mainstream. And now even celebrities are joining in.
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We’ve rounded up so many alternate uses for your camera that you’ll start bringing it everywhere. Use it as a flashlight, a memory aid, or a mirror, and you’ll never let it leave your side again.
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Seventh-graders create iPhone app TECH MATTERS | 'Since fifth grade, we've had this idea of becoming successful'
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Upload and share your documents and pictures on Twitter
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At first glance, this series might look like the idle musings of a bored person before Tivo was invented, but it goes much further than that. Pause whatever live broadcast you’re watching and take a look at the following examples.
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An audio blogging application for the iPhone
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The Globe and Mail has launched an ambitious and exciting five-part series called the Download Decade. Part one focuses on Napster with further segments planned over the next two weeks on business models, copyright laws, and more. There are lots of older articles (including one of mine), podcasts and video documentaries – the first batch available via BitTorrent. The series will apparently also launch a copyright reform project at its public policy wiki.
Celebrities
There has been much made about the number of celebrities that have taken to Twitter recently. Remember the race between CNN and Ashton Kutcher to be the first to hit a million followers?
Well, even more celebrities are realizing the power and the able to reach out and contact their fans. Who is using the vehicle?
- Oprah
- Britney Spears
- Jimmy Fallon
- Demi Moore
- Perez Hilton
- Lance Armstrong
- Cold Play
and so many more.
I’m sure that they would all like you to follow them to increase their followship numbers. However, if you’re just mildly curious, there is another way.
If you read this blog, you know that I’m a fan of Alltop. I like the personalized page concept. And, if you could have only one start page, I recommend it.
Well, there’s even more to like about Alltop – and you can follow your favourite celebrities on Twitter without subscribing to their feed. Just head over to the Celebrity Twitter page. In one location, you’re up to date on the latest from your favourite celeb.
Isn’t technology wonderful?
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