doug - off the record

Your school doesn’t need a webmaster

dougpete — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Ever since there was an internet, there’s been a desire for schools to have a website. And, roughly a month after that, there were dated websites. For many schools, having a website was something that was created and done. Fini. A volunteer goes to a workshop on Dreamweaver or Frontpage and then enthusiastically pulls together a webpage or, hopefully, a website for the school. There might be an announcement of an upcoming basketball game or a fundraiser and it draws the educational community in to get the details. Your website URL appears on the district’s directory, on school letterhead, on the sign outside the building, and anywhere you can post http:www.heywegotawebsite.ca.

As the basketball games or the fundraiser becomes a memory, for many schools, it still remains posted on the front page of the website. Why? Typically, webmaster is a volunteer job done with the very best of intentions. But then, life gets in the road. Time can’t be found to make the necessary changes to keep things current. Or, the website was created as a project for a course. Or, the website was created by students for class marks. Or the eager teacher transfers schools taking the necessary skills with her/him. Or, … I’m sure anyone at a school level can fill in their own blanks.

It’s one thing for a corporation to have a dynamic website. They have the resources to hire someone or a team or to farm it out. That’s typically not so for schools; having a webpsite is a desirable thing and becomes a volunteer job. There are some who do a great job as volunteer. You will see some great websites but others, not so much.

How can we fix this? It’s not really a hardware or a software problem. You can go out and implement the best open source content management system or buy the best commercial one but that’s just going to move the problem to a new platform. You could hire a webmaster. Yeah, right. Or, you could rely on so and so’s husband, because “he knows computers”.

I would suggest that there’s a better way. You don’t need a webmaster much. In fact, if you look at your existing website, there’s probably a lot of good material that needs to be there and is valid from the first of September to the end of June. You know, things like bell times, exam days, professional learning days, parent/teacher interviews. Those types of things could be installed once and maybe even be a project for a summer AQ course. Or, just share a template from another school. Instead of their purple and yellow colours, change to your red and white, change the school logo, and you’re good to go. Unless someone holds them up side by side, they are two different sites for all intents and purposes.

It’s the dynamic day to day content that is the challenge. If we remove the webmaster from the mix for any of the reasons above or other, how can it be done? That’s where the webmaster replacement steps in. You don’t need a webmaster; you need a community manager.

The rest of the content can be created daily or, in fact minute by minute, with the right social tools.

Consider all of the great social media tools that are your fingertips. More and more teachers and classrooms are using the independently – why not bring in your community manager to make it work for you. In addition to the static things that you’ve already posted, leave some room to;

incorporate your class, student, and teacher blogs into the mainsite via RSS. A link takes the visitor to your content;
incorporate your class wikis or indeed a school wiki in the same manner. Unlike a webmaster who is the sole guardian of the password and content, build a learning resource with everyone contributing;
use Twitter widgets devoted to each classroom (even with their own hashtags) and every class can update the world 140 characters at a time;
got some great pictures from an assembly or other event? Encourage the audience to take the pictures and post them to Twitter with your school/class hashtag instead of waiting until someone needs to clean out the school camera and finds them;
need to post notes from a meeting or a guest presenter? Embed a Coveritlive session and post your notes as they happen. You could even do a play by play of a basketball game this way;
got some bandwidth? Consider live streaming and recording graduation so that all can enjoy.

The list goes on and on. There’s a not so subtle shift happening. Instead of updates happening when the webmaster can get to it or even if she/he can find and talk to the right person, it’s posted the minute that it happens. Everyone, principal, teacher, student, parent, can be content creators to show how vibrant and dynamic the school is.

Imagine, no more dead websites.

OTR Links 01/28/2012

dougpete — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 05:30:44 +0000

Computer Programming Code Of Ethics

This article attempts to enumerate the key points of proper conduct for Computer Programmers. Much of this is based on the Code Of Ethics of the now defunct International Programmers Guild.

tags: computer programming code ethics
40 Secret iPhone Features and Shortcuts | iPhone.AppStorm

There are lots of things that you can do with your iPhone, sure, but we’re willing to be that there are a few more that you either don’t know about or haven’t used before, particularly with all of the additions in iOS 5. Did you know you can put in typing shortcuts similar to Text Expander? Or that you can make custom vibrations for each person? If you didn’t — or just want to brush up on your iOS trivia — hit the jump and find 40 top secret, ultra-cool tips for the iPhone.

tags: secret iphone features shortcuts
The Teacher Report: 5 Components of a Great Lesso… – WeAreTeachers

Last month, we sat down with a panel of teachers to learn more about their best lesson ideas. Since then, we’ve read through hundreds of lessons and talked to dozens of teachers to help narrow down exactly what makes a lesson great. And, while there is no one factor that makes a tried-and-true lesson work, we did find five commonalities that seemed to be woven through all of our panelist’s favorite lessons.

tags: teacher
50 new tech tools you should know about – CNN.com

New mobile apps, services, social networks and other digital tools pop up so frequently that keeping up with them is a nearly impossible task. Just when you think you’re up to date, something newer and hipper comes along.

tags: apps tools
Microsoft researchers find new type of stealth malware – 26 Jan 2012 – Computing News

Security researchers have uncovered a new type of malware that appears to be benign as it is downloaded, potentially fooling security software, but which morphs into malicious software once it is on a user’s compute

tags: microsoft researchers find stealth malware computing news

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Village Gets Bigger

dougpete — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Remember the proverb “It takes a village to raise a child”? I’m happy to note that the Ontario educational blogging village got bigger this week. Check out the LiveBinder or the Scoopit page for the latest. From the Scoopit page, you’ll see the entries in LIFO (Last In, First Out) format. i.e. the latest additions at the top. If you check the LiveBinder site, you’ll notice that there’s a new tab.

This is a new category. While we are all advocates at our various level, there was a whole group on the Ontario scene who had been excluded. With the advice of @ShannoninOttawa, I’ve opened up this new category to recognize the blogs of people who aren’t directly employed by the educational system and yet have a deep interest in making sure that students in the province receive a superior education. Please welcome them to the fold.

OurSchool.ca
Lorna Costantini was keeping an eye on my old stomping groups – the Avon Maitland District School Board and Director Ted Doherty’s inclusion of parents in their strategic planning.

All school districts struggle with all kinds of issues. What a progressive concept to reach out in this manner to invite parents in the process. After all, it only makes sense – they provide the student bodies that make the district what it is.

Safety 4 our Schools
The latest issue here revolves around school districts that don’t require background checks for volunteers in schools. The body of a message from the Minister of Education appears in the latest post and there’s a table identifying which school districts require and which don’t require background checks. Interesting.

SheilaSpeaking

There’s more about parent involvement in schools from Sheila Stewart’s blog. Her current entry is Part II of a series examining the state of Parent Involvement Committees in the province. They are legislated; but how effect are they? Do they even have a significant existance?

I think that the addition of this new group of bloggers will enrich the messages that we have the opportunity to read regularly. Please welcome to the group and certainly feel free to head over to their blogs and comment on their messages. They have some pretty strong messages as advocates and may well be our political friends at some level in the future.

OTR Links 01/27/2012

dougpete — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:31:03 +0000

Why you should NOT install ‘Fun & Entertaining’ Facebook applications | facecrooks.com

We often have readers ask us questions about specific Facebook applications. Some apps generate an enormous amount of spam and can annoy the heck out of your Facebook friends. Others are outright scams and should be avoided entirely. For example, any application offering to show you who has viewed your profile, who your Facebook stalkers are etc., are guaranteed to be fraudulent. Facebook doesn’t allow developers access to the data required to create apps like this.

tags: fun entertaining facebook applications com
E-ngage Live – Welcome to Engagelive

Engagelive is an award winning educational platform used across the world. It provides a secure environment for students of all ages to practise strategies that they will need in the community. The difference between Engagelive and other platforms is that it is truly interactive as subject experts are on-line to answer specific questions to individual student queries as they arise.

tags: engage education
Make School more like Kindergarten – Mitchel Resnick [#lwf12 @mres] | Oliver Quinlan: Live Blogs

I many Kindergartens children are actively involved in designing and creating things that matter to them. They learn some specifics from this, but Resnick says what they learn that is most important is the creative process. Rather than simply imagining, they create, iterating with their creations and learning as they go.

tags: school kindergarten oliver blogs
Google Says Chromebooks Now in “Hundreds of Schools”

On stage at FETC today, Google announced that “hundreds of schools in 41 states” have adopted Chromebooks in one or more classrooms, and some 27,000 students in 3 states — Iowa, Illinois and South Carolina — will soon go 1-to-1 with the devices.

tags: google says hundreds schools
Utah Moves to Open Textbooks | iterating toward openness

The Utah State Office of Education announced that (1) it will be supporting the development of Utah-specific open textbooks for all secondary language arts, mathematics, and science courses, and (2) that the USOE recommends that all schools across the state consider these open textbooks for adoption in their secondary language arts, mathematics, and science courses for this fall (2012).

tags: utah moves textbooks openness
How to Create Your Own Textbook — With or Without Apple | MindShift

How to Create Your Own Textbook — With or Without Apple

tags: ebooks textbooks e-textbooks textbook technology
Top 13 Web 2.0 Tools for Classrooms « Ask a Tech Teacher

Every day in my K-8 tech classes, I use a variety of cloud-based tools to enhance the learning experience for my students. There are more of these ‘Web 2.0′ tools than I can keep up

tags: web2.0 Edchat Tools
Bill Gates discusses Steve Jobs, iBooks and education in new interview | TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog

When you think of Apple, you may think of their longtime rival in the OS space, Microsoft. When you think of Mac OS, you may think of Windows (drawing comparisons between the two since Windows debuted), and when you think of Steve Jobs, you often think of Bill Gates

tags: bill gates steve jobs education interview unofficial apple weblog
10 Designs Inspired by Microsoft’s Metro UI | Fuel Your Creativity

Since Microsoft first unveiled the Metro UI on Windows Phone 7, the rollout has been gradually taking place across every Microsoft product and website. It is the cornerstone of the Windows 8 interface and one of the most notable official uses of Metro UI available now is the excellent implementation on the Xbox 360 dashboard. The new design language has been a refreshing sign that Redmond cares about fixing its messy, bloated and ageing image, and the company is following through and executing.

tags: designs microsoft metro fuel creativity
8 Must-Have Tools for Windows Phone 7 Development – Diary Of A Ninja

8 Must-Have Tools for Windows Phone 7 Development

tags: tools wp7
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org: MyNotes – #iPads in the ClassroomFive Essential Steps

MyNotes – #iPads in the ClassroomFive Essential Steps

tags: org ipads essential steps
The Classroom Evolved: Creating an Active Learning Environment — THE Journal

In the first of a new series of articles focused on classroom design, we take a look at a private high school in Florida that’s borrowed ideas from two major universities to create classrooms that support interactive, hands-on learning.

tags: classroom creating active learning environment journal
5 Tips For Staying Motivated While Studying Online | Emerging Education Technology

With the continued growth of online education, the challenge of staying motivated in self-directed study is something more students struggle with. Here’s a few tips to help.

tags: tips staying while studying online emerging education technology
HootSuite and Syracuse University partner to build students’ social media skills | Articles

HootSuite and Syracuse University partner to build students’ social media skills

tags: hootsuite syracuse university partner build students social social media media skills articles
10 Tips for Teaching English Language Learners | Edutopia

10 Tips for Teaching English Language Learners

tags: esl edchat ellchat
Introduce Yourself with Evernote Hello | iPhone.AppStorm

You’re at another conference. You hate these things because you’ve always got to try to pretend like you’re having a good time, even with the knowledge that your boss expects you to meet and expand your network of contacts.

tags: evernote iphone
Making Rounded Rectangles Look Great ~ Flyosity by Mike Rundle

Great product design involves thinking about what features to prioritize, planning the user flow from screen to screen, getting user feedback and lots more, but at the end of the day, someone is going to be in Photoshop pushing pixels. The final visual design of a digital interface isn’t going to design itself, and when a designer is crafting the look and feel, here are some elements they’re typically designing:

tags: making great mike buttons rectangles
Photogram: A Beautiful Way To View Instagram On The Web [Review] | Cult of Mac

We love Jeff Broderick’s work here at Cult of Mac. We’ve told you about some of his web app projects, like QuickWiFi and QuickContact, and his latest creation is called Photogram. As the name implies, you can use Photogram to view Instagram in your web browser. The app is beautiful and optimized for both the desktop and mobile experience.

tags: way view web review cult mac
IDroo Whiteboard for Skype

IDroo – Online educational multiuser whiteboard

tags: whiteboard collaboration skype idroo web2.0 tool IWB education
QR Code Addin for PowerPoint | PowerPoint Presentation

This QR Code Addin for PowerPoint helps you to embed QR Code in your PowerPoint slides. You can use this QR Code Addin to generate a QR Code for your contact slide or to be used in many other creative ways.

tags: qr code code addin powerpoint presentation

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Vindictive — and a Discovery

dougpete — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

I should acknowledge right from the beginning, it was my fault. I have nobody to blame but myself. But, what followed, was a very pleasant discovery.

My fault – I very seldom turn my computers off. I just close the lids and let them go to sleep. Doesn’t everyone? It’s just that they really should be rebooted from time to time just to have a fresh start. But, I’m bad and don’t until I get a crash or a Microsoft update that needs to reboot the computer so that the new updates can take effect.

So, having said all this, you know what happened. I was entering some marks for my class into LibreOffice, my spreadsheet of choice, when I guess I asked it to do something it didn’t like. I asked it to round off the calculations to one decimal place. Who knew that would cause such grief. Now, we all tell students “save early, save often”, but we never do it ourselves – right? At least not me.

So, LibreOffice crashed and I lost about half an hour’s work and I’m kicking myself for not saving. Of course, LibreOffice will restore from crashed memory upon restart but I wasn’t having of that. Earlier that morning, I had read about Kingsoft Office Suite. So, I figured; what the hey, I’ll use this as an opportunity to download it and kick the tires. After all, the folks at Cnet had given it a glowing review. The author had indicated that they had created a ribbon interface that rivalled Microsoft’s. So, I decided to give it a shot.

I was pleasantly surprised with the software. It was relatively small in size and gives a product that does word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. Unlike the original article though, there was no ribbon interface on the free version. Instead, it was a throwback to Office 2003. But, it did a nice job and I got my work done. I played around with it for a while and was impressed with how nicely it worked and, importantly, how quickly it loaded. The other point of note is the discussion at the end of the Cnet article. Want to know thoughts about software developed off-shore, which came first Word or WordPerfect, some other free alternatives, – wade your way through the comments.

The one area that I enjoyed focusing on was the interface and I thought of the tools that I regularly use.

Google Docs

LibreOffice

Word Web App

Microsoft Word Starter

and now, Kingsoft Office.

Each of the titles has its own benefits and drawbacks. One of the things that does bother me is how slow a wordprocessor is to start. It was there that the Kingsoft Office really excelled. I was up and running in no time. Of all of them, LibreOffice is the only product that has everything. Each of the others can always have more features once you present a credit card.

But, hey, it was fun. If you’re looking for a change of pace, take a look at Kingsoft Office. I’d be interested in your thoughts.

OTR Links 01/26/2012

dougpete — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:31:09 +0000

Assistments

I used ASSISTments today for an open-response question about electricity and circuits. WOW! How powerful.

tags: assessment math education mathematics Technology tutoring
Is This the End of “Don’t Be Evil” For Google? | Gizmodo UK

In a privacy policy shift, Google announced today that it will begin tracking users universally across all its services — Gmail, Search, YouTube and more — and sharing data on user activity across all of them.

tags: google gizmodo privacy
ZCubes – Do It All, Browse, Paint, Teach, Draw, Play, Write, Publish, Handwrite, Watch, Listen, Network, Learn or Sketch, Create Albums, Homepages, Greeting Cards, read News, create documents, Create presentations, slide shows, spreadsheet, resume, zpaint

ZCubesTM is the world’s first website where you can browse, calculate, create, edit, draw, handwrite, watch, paint, publish, search, print, network, learn and express.

tags: web2.0 tools collaboration paint ajax browser web office
Welcome to Fluidinfo

Type anything of interest below, then click ‘Go’ to look it up and tag it.

tags: tag concept view data
5 Misconceptions of Blended & Online Learning | TeachHUB

5 Misconceptions of Blended & Online Learning
By: Teach on the Edge

I spend most of my time teaching online to students in a brick-and-mortar school, so I also spend a great deal of time clarifying what it is and isn’t (or at least, what it can be and shouldn’t be).

tags: misconceptions blended online online learning learning
A free Microsoft Office alternative that’s actually good | The Cheapskate – CNET News

About a week ago I featured Kingsoft Office Suite Professional 2012 in a bonus deal. Since then I’ve been test-driving the software on an old laptop. And you know what? I like it!

tags: free microsoft office alternative cnet news
6 Video Games To Use In Your Classroom Tomorrow | Edudemic

Realistically, a “with it” teacher can teach almost anything using almost anything. I’ve been taught trigonometry using a paper clip, and expository structure using paint. Tech is great, but nowhere close to necessary. But if the underlying learning process is well-thought out, tech can provide powerful common ground for teachers and learners.

tags: videogames gbl
TechLearning: Top 100 Sites of 2011

The time is finally here for my annual list of favorite sites of the year. This year I decided to up my post to the top 100 instead of 25 because of the number of sites that I reviewed and the popularity of the post. I tried to cover a wide range of sites, from flash-card creators to digital storytelling, and of course social networks, which really stood out in 2011. I hope everybody enjoys the list and has as much fun reading it as I did creating it.

tags: techlearning resources education
Google tracks consumers’ online activities across products, and users can’t opt out – The Washington Post

Google announces privacy changes across products; users can’t opt out

tags: google privacy privacidad
How Apple’s Top Secret Product Development Process Works

This is how Apple’s top secret product development process works

tags: apple secret product development process works
BYOD & Education

BYOD is the catch phrase for technology education in 2012. This acronym stands for “bring your own device”, and refers to students bringing their own technology like smartphones, tablets, and laptops to school for educational use. This has been traditionally done by college students, but has now spread into K-12 education.

tags: education
Tutorials on social media

Here are tutorials our team has created to help show nonprofits, cause organizations, businesses and individuals how to effectively use social media, divided by subject area.

tags: socialmedia tutorials Twitter tutorial facebook social media web2.0

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Ontario LiveBinders

dougpete — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

I was very happy to read that the developers at LiveBinders had created a version of their product for the iPad. Of course, I had to have it and downloaded it right away. It’s not that navigating through the site on the iPad is a tough thing; it’s the idea that I could pull in resources from the iPad without dealing with the web. So, I fired it up and soon realized that my thoughts about this application were different than what I had expected. I expected much of the same functionality that I would get from the web from inside the application. That functionality is there but it spawns Safari to get it done.

What you do get is a product that lets you manage your stuff on the LiveBinder site. But, that’s OK – I do have access to my things, public and private, and LiveBinders that I’m collaborating on. Not a bad start for a version 1.0 of the product. But, I was hoping to do some searching and browsing of others’ works. I’m just not seeing it. It is a handy way to access and keep tabs on your own content though.

As I clicked the icon in the bottom left, I left the application and was on the LiveBinder site on the web. From that point on, it was LiveBindering as usual. From the recesses of my memory, there was one thing that I’d always wanted to do at the site but kept forgetting. I wanted to know what resources had been created and shared to support the Ontario Curriculum. I was nicely pleased with the results. Sadly, judging from the number of hits, these resources don’t seem to be all that well known.

For the rest of this post, I’d like to highlight what you’ll find if you search for “Ontario”.

That’s certainly an interesting collection. If the curriculum shoe fits, give one a try and see if this offers a useful collection for your classroom.

Oh, and I had created one public collection as well.

Ontario Edubloggers

OTR Links 01/25/2012

dougpete — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:30:59 +0000

FileSonic, fast and easy file storage.

Looking to store your important
files somewhere safe and secure?
FileSonic allows you to upload and retrieve them from any computer.

tags: filesharing storage sharing file upload tools
Internet TV

Internet Television

tags: television internet tv
Watch live online TV channels broadcasting on the Internet.

WWITV: World Wide Internet TV
Your Portal to watch live and on demand online TV broadcasts.

This site is designed to enable users of personal computers and other consumer electronic devices
to easily find and access streaming media content over the Internet.

tags: tv streaming television web media broadcast news watch
Top ten computer science teaching resources | Teacher Network Blog | Guardian Professional

Top ten computer science teaching resources
A pioneering head of ICT shares some fantastic routes into teaching children code and computing

tags: computer computer science science teaching teaching resources resources teacher network blog guardian professional
Does Microsoft Suffer from Premature Innovation? | getwired.com

Does Microsoft Suffer from Premature Innovation?
Posted on January 20, 2012
From when I joined Microsoft in 1997 until I left in 2004, and even since then (but especially during the heady days of the DOJ lawsuit), accusations flew fast and furious accusing Microsoft of misusing the word “innovation”, that Microsoft couldn’t innovate, or didn’t innovate.

tags: microsoft innovation
Open Education Week 5-10 March 2012. Call for participation | eLearning

Open Education Week will take place from 5-10 March 2012 online (www.openeducationweek.org) and in locally hosted events around the world

tags: education march participation elearning
Stanford AI Professor Thrun Leaves University to Start Udacity, an Online Learning Startup

It’s news that shouldn’t surprise anyone that read the fine print on the registration for Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence class offered last fall: Professor Stanford Thrun has announced he is resigning from the university to launch an online learning startup.

tags: stanford professor leaves university start online online learning learning startup
Let’s Ditch Google for DuckDuckGo — The Brooks Review

I don’t remember when, or where, I found out about DuckDuckGo, but a quick search of this site has me promoting it first in February of 2011. It’s my go to search engine right now and I am trying to not use Google for anything. Here’s how I am making DuckDuckGo a default across my computing.

tags: google brooks review
Daily Mac App: AirBeam | TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog

If you have an iPhone and iPad or Mac, you can set up an indoor surveillance system.

tags: daily mac app unofficial apple weblog
Twitter acquisition confirms that curation is the future — Tech News and Analysis

Twitter made an interesting acquisition on Thursday, when it bought a young Canadian startup called Summify, a company whose service (as its name implies) was designed to cut through the noise of all those social-media streams and summarize the content that matters.

tags: twitter summify curation
4 Reasons that the ICT Programme of Study “had” to go – Articles – Educational Technology – ICT in Education

The fate of the ICT Programme of Study could have been predicted accurately long before Judge Gove donned his black cap and passed the death sentence. After several years of what might be justly described as a “war of attrition”, the weight of the “evidence”, such as it is, made such an outcome unavoidable.

tags: reasons ict programme study articles educational technology technology education
Prototyping in eLearning | Upside Learning Blog

As Instructional Designers move away from purely being creators of content, to developers of tools and applications that assist learning and support performance, understanding the processes used by the software development industry becomes rather important.

tags: prototyping elearning upside learning blog
Who’s Going to Buy Apple’s New eTextbooks? | doug woods

What I want to do, however, is take a slightly different look at the announcement; instead of looking at the hardware or software that has been announced, I simply want to ask who is going to buy the ebooks?

tags: to buy buy apple doug woods
How Codecademy got so hot, so fast — Tech News and Analysis

Codecademy is on fire right now. The startup, which teaches users how to program with an interactive and social web application, has garnered more than 1 million users (including bold-faced names such as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg) and made learning how to write computer code trendy with its “Code Year” program aimed at the New Year’s resolution crowd. And all this from a startup that’s only five months old, with just five full-time staffers.

tags: tech tech news news analysis

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

About Plan B

dougpete — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:00:03 +0000

It was with great interest that I read the article “The Ethics of Mobile Learning: Troubling and Complex” this morning. The author shares some thoughts about societal norms and attitudes in a discussion about mobile technology as a possible answer to educational issues in developing countries. It’s an interesting read and I can’t comment on the societal aspect as my knowledge is limited to what I’ve read and not what I’ve experienced.

But, I can comment on my own experience with technology and education. You can’t read any article about technology infusion into a school system that doesn’t include massive amounts of professional development for teachers. It’s necessary everywhere to create that culture of eager technology learners. Nobody is apologetic about it. Teachers just want to do the best that they can. So, is working the Web 2.0 tools the answer? In a perfect world, it offers so much.

Do we live in a perfect world?

Mmmm. No.

It was last night that I read this message from @mbteach, a pretty sharp educator from Philadelphia. She’s very active on social networks and when she shares some of the amazing things that she’s doing with her students, you can’t help but be so impressed. Obviously, she teaches in a perfect world, right? After all, Philadelphia is a pretty sophisticated city. It was with surprise that I read this Twitter message from her last evening.

There’s at least two things to take away from this.

She’s planning ahead, knowing the limitations of her situation;
She’s reaching out to her vast network of almost 10 000 for new and innovative ideas for her Plan B.

You’ve got to love the web. Even those of us who think we live online know that things can go south in a moment’s notice. I know that when I’m using the web, I always have a Plan B in my pocket. A classic example would be the Great OSLA Faceoff with my friend @zbpipe. Here we are at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in the big hall set for 5 000 people. You’ve got to believe that internet access wouldn’t get much better. And yet, before we went live, we cached everything that we were going to do as our Plan B. In fact, I’m hard pressed to think of any internet presentation that I’ve done that I didn’t have something backed up on my computer or a USB key or something.

In fact, any experienced teacher has a Plan B in her/his pocket. Only someone incredibly naive would rely totally on technology and connections when it’s show time. Could you imagine a school district that licenses a piece of lesson plan software and then mandates every teacher in the system to use it and only it? It’s a recipe for disaster.

Even with this post, I’m writing it offline because of my pathetically slow and unreliable internet connection and just hope that I can upload it later.

As a teacher in that classroom, you’ve got two alternatives when things go wrong.

Implement your Plan B;
Click harder, bang the monitor, check the cables, wiggle the keyboard, scream “I told you it wouldn’t work”, weep.

Back to the original story – yes, we have to deal with the ethics, society and norms, but a complete discussion needs to talk about never-ending professional learning opportunities, including options for Plan B.

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OTR Links 01/24/2012

dougpete — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:31:10 +0000

Instructional and Educational Videos, Animated Explanations, – Explania

Welcome to Explania! Watch hundreds of animated explanations, interactive tutorials and instructional videos, and feel free to embed them on your own web pages.

tags: tutorials animation howto explanations animations web2.0 explania animated
Gap Widens Between Big 3 Search Engines & Facebook In December, comScore Says

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo sites continue to hold down the top three spots in comScore’s monthly report on the most visited web properties in the U.S., but the gap between them and Facebook grew bigger in December.

tags: gap search search engines engines facebook december comscore says
If Facebook won’t bring filters to you, these apps will bring filters to Facebook

If you’re sick of pushing Instagram photos to the site, or one of the unlucky few without a smartphone, here are three tools to bring filters to your Facebook.

tags: instagram photos images pictures filters apps facebook
Ednovo | Gooru

Technology for social transformation

tags: Gooru education teachers search students science resources lessonplans
Welcome – Programming Dojo

Welcome to the Programming Dojo. This is a place where you can learn more about programming and programming languages.

Programming is both an art and a science. It involves interpretation, abstraction and creation, as well as quantitive analysis, mathematics and algorithmic thinking. Don’t expect too much too quickly. Just like many things in life, good things take time.

tags: programming dojo reference delicious
The Six 21st Century Skills You REALLY Need | Learning Management Systems | Content, Course, Digital Learning, Education, eLearning, Improve Learning | Knowledge Management System (KMS) Blog

Given the work that I do, I’m a sucker for skill lists. As our work worlds grow ever more complex and challenging, it seems that the skills themselves become more complex too.

Increasingly, though, I’ve begun to believe that these lists are distracting us from the real skills of success. While working with big data, operating in virtual teams and”cognitive load management”all sound great, I think there are far more fundamental skills we should be developing first.

tags: 21stcenturyskills 21st_century_skills skills Edchat 21stCentury edtech
NYSCATE 2011 – Kevin Honeycutt Keynote on Vimeo

NYSCATE 2011 – Kevin Honeycutt Keynote

tags: NYSGATE Keynote Honeycutt
http://neoformix.com/spot/#/Twitter+Visualization

Twitter Visualization
twictionary / FrontPage

A repository for the meanings and manglings of words and language on Twitter

tags: twitter words meaning
Filament Group Lab Example From: jQuery Visualize Plugin: Accessible Charts & Graphs from Table Elements using HTML 5 Canvas

Just change the table to be your own headings and numbers content (you may make more, or less, rows and/or columns).
Resultant table is editable. Click any cell to change its value. Then click outside the table and all other charts change dynamically.

Interesting way to create dynamic visualizations

tags: filament group lab example jquery plugin charts graphs table elements using html canvas
Why Apple’s products are ‘Designed in California’ but ‘Assembled in China’ | TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Look at the back of your iPhone, or your iPad, or on the bottom of your Mac. You’ll see the following words embossed somewhere: “Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China.”

tags: apple products designed california china unofficial weblog
PIPEDREAMS – Essential Tech Tools for NEW and Experienced Educators

In my current role as a Pre-Service Instructor at Brock University, I have small window of opportunity to introduce (and model) to new teachers to 21st Century Education.The following sites, and resources are what I consider to be the essentials of 21st Century tools (although there are many many more). These are my “I can’t live without” tech tools as learner and teacher.

tags: tools tech edtech educators
Microsoft Has 42,000 Cloud Computing Partners: Who Are They? | TalkinCloud

ach time Microsoft announces a new round of cloud computing wins for Office 365, Talkin’ Cloud asks the same question: Were any channel partners involved in the Office 365 deployments? Microsoft’s standard response: The company now has 42,000 cloud computing partners, up from 16,000 at this time last year.

tags: microsoft cloud cloud computing computing partners
Teachers technical expertise… | eLearning Island

I was one of a number of teachers who made a presentation to some curriculum specialists recently. They are organising content and assessment opportunities for various second level courses here in Ireland.

tags: teachers technical technology
The Ethics of Mobile Learning: Troubling and Complex | Think! blog

This article is about the ethics of using mobile technologies to deliver, enhance and support learning in developing regions of the world. The people exploring the possibilities of using mobile technologies in these ways are clearly good, nice people who are determined to do good, nice things. So, this should really be a short article.

tags: ethics mobile learning
pearltrees • Free Technology for Teachers

Pearltree with a huge collection of free technology for teachers.

tags: free technology teachers
Designing aesthetically pleasing Moodle courses | opensource.com

When you’re working online and you access a text heavy web-page that scrolls for 5 pages, what is your initial reaction? To most of us, a text-heavy page filled with a long list of resources and activities is not inviting or enticing. The same is true for students and online courses. But with a little sleight of hand, plus use of the right resource formats and labels, you can design an aesthetically pleasing online course and avoid the long scrolling webpage syndrome.

tags: design moodle
Seven Online Classrooms Teachers Can Use to Augment Their Own | Emerging Education Technology

Seven Online Classrooms Teachers Can Use to Augment Their Own

Information is abundant online. The problem is sorting out the useful stuff from the overwhelming amount of junk that exists on the World Wide Web. Educators are all too familiar with the unreliable nature of information found on the web, and most of us are familiar with having to debunk a student’s insistence that a particular fact was true because a nameless website told him so. But the high volume of untrustworthy knowledge should never overshadow the fact that the Internet contains countless sources of invaluable useful information our students can use to learn about the world and improve their own lives.

tags: classrooms education technology
The biggest news today is that Apple built a LMS :: yjsoon

The biggest news today is that Apple built a LMS

Apple announced a few things at their education event in New York yesterday. The highlights were iBooks 2, with its textbook support, and iBooks Author, its companion authoring tool. (iBooks Author looks like it has a ton of potential, and might inspire me to get off my ass and start on that intro programming textbook/comic I’ve always wanted to create.)

tags: apple lms
How action mapping can change your design process

Happy action mapping users say that the model helps them create lively elearning. But would it fit into your design workflow?

tags: action mapping change design process

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.