Like Never Before

The thing that excites me most about technology happens when it enables you to do something, to see something, to experience something that just isn’t possible any other way without huge expense or effort.  The fact that I can do it from the couch in my living room makes the experience so much more impressive.

In fact, it just reinforces in my mind that if all that technology does in the classroom is take something that’s traditionally done and just moved to being done on computer.

I spent way too much time today watching and, indeed studying this video.

The video is entitled “What does it feel like to fly over planet Earth?”  The descriptor for this video that’s been viewed close to 7,000,000 reads

A time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night. This movie begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica. Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, El Salvador, Lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Lake Titicaca, and the Amazon. Also visible is the earths ionosphere (thin yellow line), a satellite (55sec) and the stars of our galaxy.

I had a discussion today with a technology nay-sayer who just couldn’t agree that technology has a place in the classroom.  I wish that I had my computer to pull out and play this video for her.  Where else, and how else could this be done without the technologies that we use and enjoy so much?

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OTR Links 02/18/2012

• Loupe | Shape Your Photos

  Shape your photos

  tags: photos collage image Graphics web20 tools

• Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning – Educational Research

  25 practical ideas for using Mobile Phones in the Classroom

  tags: mobile learning m-learning education CellPhones ideas pedagogy phones

• http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/preschool/animals/ocean/animaloceancreate.swf

  Click on the ocean objects, move them where you want them and click again to reate your own animal ocean.

  tags: ocean animals science education

• Home » LibreOffice

  LibreOffice is the power-packed free, libre and open source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and GNU/Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base. Support and documentation is free from our large, dedicated community of users, contributors and developers. You, too, can get involved!

  tags: productivity

• 62 First Grade Websites That Tie into Classroom Lessons « Ask a Tech Teacher

  These are my 62 favorite first grade websites. I sprinkle them in throughout the year, adding several each week to the class internet start page, deleting others. I make sure I have 3-4 each

  More 1st Grade Websites
  week that integrate with classroom lesson plans, 3-4 that deal with technology skills and a few that simply excite students about tech in education.

  tags: grade websites tie classroom lessons tech teacher

• Record mp3: record live audio and get an mp3

  Just click the button above to start recording. We will give you an mp3 you can save, and a link you can share with anyone.

  tags: Audio mp3 Record podcasting tools tool recording recorder

• Student’s Facebook Photos Stolen and Posted to Pornographic Site | facecrooks.com

  The FBI is investigating an incident where pictures of teen girls were taken from Facebook and placed on a pornographic website. The victim’s ages range from 14-17 years old.

  tags: student facebook photos site com

• Kids and Ebooks: The Future of Digital Learning | Knowledge Management System (KMS) Blog

  Kids make up a large portion of the ebook audience. Very often when a parent buys a new device–whether a tablet, smartphone, or ereader–the previous device gets turned over to the kids. As a result, the amount of electronic children’s offerings available is growing, both revamped classics as well as new titles designed as ebooks from the start.

  tags: kids ebooks future learning knowledge knowledge management management system blog

• Report: Google Tracked Safari Web Users

  The ongoing tech privacy debate, which began when Path was exposed for accessing user data without permission, took a new twist after Google, and a number if advertising firms, were revealed to have been overriding privacy settings to track Internet usage on Apple’s Safari browser.

  tags: report google safari web users

• Students Have the Technology. It’s Time We Let Them Use It. | EdTech Magazine

   In 2008, Scarborough Research named El Paso, Texas, the top texting market in the United States among cell phone users age 18 and older. As director of instructional technology for the 65,000-student El Paso Independent School District, I find this statistic telling. It shows that even in a 230-square-mile area of low socioeconomic status with a population composed primarily of minorities, our residents are “connected.” Whether their school-age children are using these phones for learning is less clear.

  tags: students technology time edtech magazine

• Social Media for Education Leaders

  Why, then, do so few schools take the jump into harnessing social networks for disseminating information, connecting with the learning community at large, and, dare I say, for learning? Schools, by and large, have resisted the seemingly irresistible call of social network culture to engage learners in new ways, on new planes. 

  tags: socialmedia

• iPad Kindergarten Research Starts Turning up Results

  Initial results from the nation’s first kindergarten iPad initiative show modest increases in literacy test scores, Auburn School District announced Thursday February 16.

  tags: research iPad kindergarten

• How Mountain Lion stacks up against Windows 8 – Neowin.net

  With the Windows 8 Consumer Preview right around the corner, Apple decided to one-up Microsoft and release a beta of their own OS X Lion out of nowhere today. How’s that for an unusual event in February? The folks over at Microsoft News have come up with a pretty cool comparison of the two upcoming OSes.

  tags: mountain lion windows net

• Keylogger poses as Facebook and Microsoft, steals login credentials | The Barracuda Labs Internet Security Blog

  Most computer users have a haunting fear that somehow malware will find a way to sneak onto their PCs  when they are not looking. The truth is that while this does sometimes happen, the most common types of malware rely on trickery to invade and infect your computer.

  tags: keylogger poses facebook microsoft login credentials barracuda labs internet security blog

• Microsoft creates mini internet to reliably test and improve Internet Explorer | ExtremeTech

  With the grandiose bluster that only an aging juggernaut can pull off, Microsoft has detailed the Internet Explorer Performance Lab and its extraordinary efforts to ensure that IE9 is competitive, and that IE10 is the fastest browser in the world. Here’s a few bullet points to reel you in: 140 computers, 20,000 tests per day, over 850 metrics analyzed, and a granularity of just 100 nanoseconds.

  tags: microsoft mini internet test explorer

• Scooch Over LMS, E-portfolio Wants a Seat at the Table | Getting Smart

  Do you want to give your students a digital footprint? Even if your school is not already practicing e-learning or blended learning, you can still accomplish that with an e-portfolio. If you’re already using a Learning Management System (LMS), you might already have an e-portfolio available that can showcase authentic work.

  tags: lms wants seat table getting

• How data visualization promotes eLearning through effective story telling | Conspire: A Mindjet Publication

  “It’s like you’re telling a story,” says Mayra Aixa Villar. “That’s why I find data visualization tools so fascinating. They can give you new ideas.”

  tags: data data visualization visualization elearning story mindjet publication

• The “Mathlash” To Silicon Valley’s Move Into Education | Co.Exist: World changing ideas and innovation

  The “Mathlash” To Silicon Valley’s Move Into Education

  tags: silicon valley education world changing ideas innovation

• Mobile Learning should be more than converting Desktop eLearning to HTML5 | Trends in eLearning & mLearning by RJ Jacquez

  In other words, while I think HTML5 will play a big role in how we develop and deploy learning and how our learners will consume those learning experiences on mobile, I think mLearning should be a lot more than just ‘converting’ desktop eLearning to HTML5.

  tags: mobile mobile learning learning converting desktop elearning html trends mlearning

• The 15 most useful Android smartphone widgets | TechRepublic

  One of the biggest advantages of Android over iPhone is widgets. Here are 15 of the best widgets available for Android, updated for 2012 and selected by TechRepublic Editor in Chief Jason Hiner.

  tags: android smartphone widgets

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