Monthly Archives: April 2006

BarCamp: The unconference

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I’ve been to enough conferences over the last three years to realize that the most valuable experiences are often the ones that happen over a round of beers after the day’s sessions are done. The most recent example was a fantastic conversation I had at FETC. These conversations form what amounts to a parallel conference experience.

So I was especially interested in BarCamp when I discovered it recently. The site proclaims:

BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join. When you come, be prepared to share with barcampers. When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world.

Barcamps tend to be small. It seems like 100 attendees is typical. The foremost Barcamp rule is “No spectators, only participants.” This isn’t just a theoretical interest. minnēbar is this Saturday, and I’m signed up as a participant. I’m not sure what I will present, but I’ve got a few days to figure that out. :-)

This brings up the ultimate point of this post, and that is to suggest that this kind of event lends itself especially well to ed tech folks. How cool would it be for even a dozen innovative tech-using educators to get together for a day of show-and-tell? I think we need a trial run at an Ed Tech BarCamp in the Twin Cities. Anyone interested?

barcamp, minnebar

Google SketchUp: Your weekend assignment

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Here’s yet another cool product from Google. It seems that they recently purchased SketchUp, an easy-to-use 3D modeling tool that I played with a bit a few months ago. The new product, Google SketchUp, is now free for personal use and integrated with Google Earth. Unfortunately for me, like Google Earth, Google SketchUp is only available for Windows right now. A Mac version is “coming soon” according to the site. Check out the examples that demonstrate SketchUp objects georeferenced onto Google Earth maps.

The learning implications are huge. At a minimum, students could collaborate to build a model of their school and expand to other buildings in the neighborhood. And SketchUp isn’t just for buildings. You can model any object in 3D. Maybe you’re working a project where students are designing a future settlement on Mars. Now they can create those structures in 3D instead. How about creating 3D representations of historical artifacts? Wouldn’t it be cool to involve students in designing the school or city of the future?

Another new product related to Google SketchUp is 3D Warehouse, a collection of user-contributed 3D objects to facilitate model building. Need a “Greek Pillar Without a Base”? Here you go. Once students start modeling objects, they can be contributed to the 3D Warehouse for other people to use. Sounds like a fun weekend project.

I have always appreciated design and the intense intellectual effort it requires. Design is one of those skills we really need to ramp up in our students in this “flat world.”

google, sketchup, design, 3d

Shuffling off to Buffalo

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It’s official as of tonight’s school board meeting. My job search is over.

Starting July 1st I will be Director of Technology for the Buffalo-Hanover-Montrose Schools. Buffalo is a growing school district of almost 5,000 students just to the west of the Twin Cities metro area. As Director, I’ll be responsible for all aspects of technology in the district.

This is a slight move toward the IT world for me, but there will be plenty of opportunities to stay connected to what goes on in the classrooms too. I’m really excited to get started. My current position in Hopkins ends June 30 so I won’t have much of a break before jumping into my new role. I’ll have a bunch more to say in the future to be sure. Regular readers may see some additional focus on school IT topics here, but I will keep looking for cool classroom applications for this technology that continues to capture my imagination.

A big thanks to everyone who sent words of encouragement and even job leads. I appreciate the support.

Handy email etiquette tips

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Our students may believe that email is for “old people,” but 90% of Internet users send and receive it. Email use has become so routine that I think many of us have gotten a little lazy about basic email etiquette. It nevers hurts to get a reminder.

My recent reminder came in the form of an old post from Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders blog. The post, sensibly titled “Writing sensible email messages,” is full to the brim with great hints to make your email communication more efficient and effective. Take a look and see which of the tips you can incorporate into your own email practices. Your colleagues will thank you.

email, etiquette, merlin mann

Bernajean Porter: Digital Storytelling, Part 2

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It’s been a long time coming, but the second part of my podcast series on digital storytelling is ready. My guest for the podcast is Bernajean Porter, a writer, speaker, and digital storyteller. I heard Bernajean present last October at the T+L Conference and blogged about it.

Bernajean picks up where the first episode with Joe Lambert left off. We talk about some of the resources available on Bernajean’s DigiTales site, and she gives some great tips for teachers who are interested in trying a digital storytelling project with students. Check out her Digital Storytelling Camp page for links to specific documents that she mentions.

I didn’t have the cleanest Skype connection for this recording, and you’ll hear some distortion in Bernajean’s voice. The distortion isn’t too bad though, and the podcast is definitely worth a listen.

Download: STP-BernajeanPorter-1 (17.9 MB, 38:50)

VBrick video distribution

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I’m at a meeting of local ed tech people today learning about VBrick. VBrick is a video distribution system that the Edina Public Schools purchased recently to replace their aging system of racks of VCRs. They passed a bond in their community that funded the system, including hundreds of LCD projectors in classrooms. They are in the process of converting their old analog video library now (at least the titles for which they could acquire the rights to do so) and only purchase titles that include video distribution rights now.

They bought Hitachi CP-X443 projectors that include four speakers instead of the standard one speaker. Apparently the sound from the projector is quite good and is loud enough to be heard throughout a classroom. If true, that’s a big improvement.

The VBrick management system is Web-based. Teachers visit a URL for the local VBrick server and can watch live TV or any video content that’s in the library. Media staff can schedule programs to be recorded which will then be available to all teachers. The sales guy says that they can integrate with other video streaming systems like United Streaming.

We continue to look at video streaming systems in my district, but we need to expand the availability of LCD projectors to make it work well. So far we’re buying projectors a few at a time which isn’t ideal, but it’s all we can do without a large source of funding to do a big project.

vbrick, videostreaming

Google SMS

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Samsung t809 Phone (T-Mobile)

My old mobile phone was acting up so I picked up a new one a few days ago. The Samsung T809 is pretty cool on its own, but I’ve had the most fun playing with Google SMS. If you haven’t ever tried text messaging, find a teenager somewhere and ask him or her for a quick “inservice.” With a little practice, and a predictive text system like T9, you can enter short messages pretty quickly. (T-Mobile is running a deal for unlimited messaging for $10/month right now. I wouldn’t be doing this if I had to pay for each message.)

Google’s SMS system makes it possible to check the weather, stock quotes, driving directions, sports scores, movie listings, and much more by sending a text message. For example, to get the current weather in Minneapolis, text “weather 55455″ to 46645 (GOOGL). Within ten seconds, you’ll get a text message back from Google with the four-day forecast.

You can’t do regular Google searches with their SMS interface, but try out a demo interface at the Google SMS page. Still think it’s useful to have students memorize state capitals? With over 160 million mobile phone subscribers in the U.S. alone, text “capital minnesota” to Google and watch the value of that knowledge drop to $0.

t809, google sms, sms, google

Web 2.0 panel at the U.

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I had the privilege of participating in a Web 2.0 panel discussion sponsored by the Digital Media Center at the U. of Minnesota recently. My fellow panelists were David Ernst from the College of Education, Shane Nackerud from the U. library, and Clancy Ratliff from the Department of Rhetoric.

Dave introduced the topic, Shane showed and demonstrated UThink, and Clancy covered social bookmarking. My role was to give the professors and others in attendance a glimpse at the kind of work that’s being done in the K–12 world by students who will be theirs very shortly. I showed the Hopkins Moodle site and some student podcasts.

If you’ve got about an hour to kill, you can watch the whole thing as an archived Breeze presentation. (I believe the Flash plug-in is the only requirement to watch it.)

web2.0, uthink, uofmn, umn, breeze