Monthly Archives: May 2009

May 11 2009

links for 2009-05-10

May 10 2009

Two Better Search Options

I’ve been speaking quite loudly about these two options lately.  As the internet continues to expand, it takes a great deal of expertise to find just what you’re looking for with a simple Google Search.  There is no doubt that students need to be able to master this powerful tool, but there is a price to pay.  That price is time.  First, you need to spend time wading your way through irrelevant results to find the good stuff; you should spend the time crafting a perfect search using the Advanced Features; and you need to be able to allocate the time to read and discern the best of the best results.

That’s quite a shopping list of skills to use each time you need to do a search.  Consider also that they all require a whack of time as well.  So, I’m asking people to consider the following two alternatives.

Search Delicious
Delicious is an incredible resource for bookmarks of your own.  Even more powerfully, it’s an incredible resource to build a network of bookmarkers or even search everyone’s bookmarks on a topic.  The big difference here?  Everything that you’re searching has already been visited and vetted by others.

You can also use the results to consider the relevance of the bookmark.  Consider this the “authority” behind the entry.  The more times that others have bookmarked the site, the more value that the bookmarking community has assigned to it. How could that many people (in this case 17870) be wrong?  Beyond the sheer numbers, don’t ignore the fact that those who use Delicious already have a certain level of sophistication.

Create a Custom Search Engine
This might be an even more powerful strategy although it does require some extra work on your part.  Google lets you tap into the power of their search … on your terms.

By creating a Custom Search Engine, you let those who use it apply the power of Google searching against only those websites that you wish.  So, in the classroom, if you know that there is a set of excellent resources and you wish to focus student attention only on those sites, create a custom search engine just for this purpose.  There’s no limit to the number that you can create so build them for any theme that you wish.

There are many ways to provide effective search strategies in the classroom.  If the goal is to learn how to search the wild internet, there are all kinds of strategies for that.  If the goal is to use a subset of the internet to get to the content, these are a couple of helpful strategies that will make the time spent searching more productive.

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May 10 2009

links for 2009-05-09

May 9 2009

Is the future of PD grainy?

As I indicated yesterday, I watched the Will Richardson presentation over the internet using Ustream.  It was a good PD session for me but I’m sure that it was a great session for those in attendence.  Why?  All of us heard the same thing.

The difference for the folks in attendance was that they got to see all of the surroundings, could work with partners, have a coffee during break and chat about whatever comes to mind.  I couldn’t.  Their networking had the potential to build something that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

In the afternoon, Will was doing a bang up job talking about RSS and very quickly got into the intricacies of it.  On a few occasions, he mentioned that further information and details could be found on YouTube.

Ah, YouTube.  The place where you can find videos of virtually anything created by would-be and professional editors.  It truly is a place to find anything.  In a world of video, they’re there.  There’s also another genre of video called Screencasts where you create movies to show how to do a particular action.

Last year, when we rolled out a new Kindergarten report card, the documentation was delivered via Screencast.  In this case, I used Camtasia to demonstrate various components.  The good folks at Techsmith have a free offering called Jing to do the same sort of thing.

Kent Manning has created a excellent site devoted to the art of the screencast and has a whack of resources available at his site.  More and more vendors are providing tips and tricks for their products to help end users.  In the past week, I decided to try to use Prezi for a presentation that I was doing.  I was missing one step (turned out a really stupid omission on my part) but the video at the Prezi site filled the gap for me.  However, I had a certain amount of knowledge going in.

In a day and age when numeracy and literacy are paramount, high quality extended professional development session using technology are few and far between.  Sure, there are conferences like ECOO or LeadingLearning but the ongoing computer skill and pedogical use sessions are becoming rare as PD dollars are spent in other areas.

I get the sense that people are becoming increasingly comfortable with whatever skills they have and are looking for incremental gains where necessarly.  I’m reminded of the quotation “Good enough is the death knell of progress”.  I’m thinking that the screencast and YouTube tutorials fill a particular need – that of a little gap in knowledge that can be filled in a segment measured in minutes.

We talk of Twitter as being a place to cultivate a personal learning network.  That certainly is true if you work at it hard enough and cultivate a good network.  I see it as the next logical step in that it pre-supposes that you go to the network not only willing to learn, but willing to teach and to share.

But, can you do the big, deep learnings in this manner?  Could you learn, for example, how to program in Adobe Flash via screencasts or through a network that you’ve developed on Twitter?

Adobe Captivate
Image via Wikipedia

It doesn’t always work for me.  I still need to have that sustained, concentrated effort that learning together with others, conversing with others, building with others, etc. provides.

Watching grainy YouTube videos allows for filling the gaps but still is grainy in the whole learning experience for me.  Give me a project; give me a deadline; give me people to work with and I’ll do a much better job.  Working through the process in Texas with Will as the guide is far more effective that a quick video for that deep learning that I need to master a concept.

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May 9 2009

links for 2009-05-08

May 8 2009

Why Will Richardson is Better than Garlic

It’s been a long couple of weeks for me.  I haven’t been into the office at all and so the work, paper and digital, had been piling up all around me.  Yesterday was the first day that I was back on stable ground so was looking forward to tackling the piles that had accumulated.

Now, my workplace is an actual office, it’s actually “L” shaped and my computer area is around the corner and out of visible sight from the middle of our Program Department area.  It’s nice because you actually have to stick your head into my office to see whether I’m here or not.

And people do – I encourage it and welcome the visits and the inevitable “Have you got a minute?” lines.

On the drive in, I’m thinking that there might be a long waiting list of things to discuss with folks and that might be a constant bombardment all day long.  Did I mention that the department photocopier is just outside the door?  This might not be a day of peace and quiet; it seldom is when you need it to be.  On the drive, I was remembering that in olden days, garlic was hung over doorways to keep vampires and witches away.  If I stopped at the 24 hour shopping market and bought some, would that guarantee solitude?  Probably not – they’d just hold their noses and come in anyway and I’d have this overwhelming desire for bruschetta all day long.

I get working away – man this stuff had piled up in my absence – and I have Seesmic Desktop open on the side to keep me company.  It was either this post…

or this one

kyle

that piqued my interest.  So, I follow the link and, sure enough, Will Richardson is being streamed on Ustream doing a presentation to about 100 Texas educators.  Since I’m connected, what the hey, I’ll listen to Will doing his thing in the background while I do whatever it is that I do in the foreground.  He’s an incredible speaker and I always pick up something new each time I listen to him.  The presentation appears to be for TEC-SIG and so I’m plugging away with Will engaging his audience wherever they happen to be.  I don’t actually know where they are and it probably doesn’t matter anyway.  They have their own Ustream channel here where I was able to follow live and I see this morning that they’ve kindly archived the presentation.

The amazing thing, to me, was that I was able to work all day long with Will in the background and I wasn’t interrupted but once.  At the end of the day, I found out why.  About 4:00pm, I came out to set up for a 5:00pm workshop and got stopped three steps out the door. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you all day but we could tell that you had someone in with you”.

And that folks, is why Will is better than garlic!  The folks in Texas had a great day of learning live in a big group and I joined in at a distance all by my lonesome.  It doesn’t get much better than that if you’re a constant learner.  Check out the TEC-SIG Channel on Ustream to catch up on yesterday’s events.

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May 8 2009

links for 2009-05-07

May 7 2009

A Different Way to Web

My friend Ross gave me a heads up on this add-on for Firefox yesterday.  It’s called Hyperwords and I’m really thinking that this could change a great deal.

Before Hyperwords, when I’m on the web, I’m at the mercy of the webmaster or the blog creator to provide the hyperlinks to appropriate content.  Good bloggers will do that to link to relevant content or to provide a richer browsing / reading experience.  However, the link that they provide and how much they provide is up to them.  You’re really at their mercy.

Periodically, when I run into content that I don’t understand, I’ll highlight it, copy it, and then paste it into my search engine for deeper meaning.

With this add-on, you don’t have to do that.  Highlight the text and let Hyperwords do it for you automatically.  In the picture below, I went to my home page and highlighted the term “Professional Development”.  Now, if you haven’t head about it or it was a new term for you, sit for a second and let Hyperwords do its thing for you.

How slick is that?  In this manner, you’ll never be stuck wondering again.  Very quickly, use the elements of Hyperwords to drive meaning to your reading and browsing experience.

Thanks, Ross.

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May 7 2009

links for 2009-05-06

May 6 2009

Not now, Computer

I’m sitting in a hotel room in London. In a couple of hours, I’ll be doing a presentation to about 30 superintendents and directors of education. Like most hotels, this one is very dry.  So, the sleeping isn’t going all that well.

No problem, I just run through my presentation, create a blog post and enjoy some hotel room coffee.

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Image via Wikipedia

The internet access is “interesting”.  I was told that it might be difficult to get onto the internet using a computer running Vista.  Not a problem, I’ll do the presentation on my Mac.  As it turns out, I could get my iPod and my Vista computer on the network which is good so that I can use my AirMouse but for the life of me, I can’t get the Mac on the network.  Normally, if there’s going to be a problem, it will be the other way around.

It’s not blisteringly fast internet but it gets the job done.

Now, I’m one of those “clever people” who try to automate everything.  The computer seems a little sluggish and then I remember that today’s Wednesday.  Looking in the system tray, I see that Microsoft has something good to send my way.  Then, a little window pops up indicating that Nod32 is downloading an update.  Then, to top it off, Google decides to send off an update.  My Comodo Firewall wants a piece of my time too.  Are you sure you trust Google?  Man…I did the last time that they sent something…I’m not sure that anything has changed there but thanks for asking.  To expedite the blog this morning, I’m typing it using the WordPress editor.  It’s making backups every few minutes.  Well, Zemanta is chugging away and making suggestions for graphics for the post.  Thanks for the suggestions…let’s go for the coffee.

Isn’t it nice to live in such a connected world?  I have this whole team of folks pushing content out to me to make sure that everything goes well for me and keeps my computer safe.  I’m glad that I fired it up early to get it out of its system.  There shouldn’t be any more disruptions later on.  Well, unless Firefox finds updates to my add-on and wants me to be the first to know.  Or, ForecastFox wants to let me know what the weather is like back home.  It should be fun.

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