I have made my first widget for Mac OS X! It was much easier than I thought it would be. It is a simple countdown clock. The goal - MCHS Class of 2009 graduation.
This widget won’t be of much use to anyone not at MCHS but I just felt like sharing. It is available for downloading in a zipped file for anyone who wants it.
I just added this cool online tool to my Resources - Links+ list but wanted to share it in a post also. This is such a cool site - and it is FREE. I can see SO many EdTech uses for it!! Have students create animations easily and then save them as Flash files or animated GIFs. Students can tell short stories, give demonstrations, create simulations, and much more. Math students could show how to solve particular types of equations step by step and then share their demonstration.
Even though I have a big background in music, I don’t listen to music in the car too often. I really prefer to listen to talk radio when I am in the car. Even though today is Saturday and is the start of my Spring Break, I was up at my usual 4:30 am because I accepted the request of a friend to take her to the airport to catch an early flight. On the way home from the airport, I caught a great story on the NPR show, “On The Media.”
This story is the first in a three part series:
The Net’s Mid-Life Crisis (March 13, 2009)
The basic architecture of the Internet hasn’t changed since it was conceived 40 years ago. But what was once the playground of wonks is now the main staging area for the global economy and open to an array of security vulnerabilities. Brooke talks with Internet experts who ponder a vexing conundrum: adjustments that increase security simultaneously hamper innovation.
I won’t try to give you the exact words but the one section that really stuck out to me was when they were talking about security and the Internet. A comparison was made to the Interstate system. A person said does it make sense to say we are going to modify the Interstate system to stop criminals from committing crimes? It makes just as much sense to say we are going to modify the Internet (the global superhighway) to stop cyber-criminals. I am looking forward to the next two shows in the series and will post links to them when they come online.
I am presenting two sessions of this technology workshop at Millington Central High School this week.
Here is the QuickTime version of my Keynote presentation (click to manually advance each slide) - file size is 2 MB.
Here is a PDF of the presentation slides with room for notes - file size is 1.1 MB.
Here are the links provided in the presentation:
I just accidentally came across a neat feature in Apple’s Keynote. I am not sure how many other programs this works in but I plan to try it and let you know.
When typing in Keynote, if you aren’t sure how to spell a word, type a few letters of the word and then hit the ESC key. A pop-up menu appears that gives you suggestions for completing the word.
If you have never visited AcademicEarth, take a moment to check it out. It has thousands of video lectures from the world’s top scholars in a wide variety of subject areas and it is free.
You can, if you wish, register and make an account but you don’t have to. If you do create an account, you can make playlists of videos which can make classroom presentations go a bit smoother.
If you show any of these videos to your class, connect via Ethernet for a cleaner presentation.
Note that you can also embed these videos into your website or blog.
I came across this blog post on the EdTech Gold Rush website. No sense in recreating the wheel and making a similar set of instructions here so I am just providing a link. Consider setting up something like this if you have your students working on a project and you want to limit their Internet search to specific websites.
My computer is sick. :-( I was having problems connecting wirelessly so I took it over to the Apple Store and let a genius take a look at it. They confirmed my suspisions and diagnosed a bad Airport Extreme Card. Luckily, my laptop is still covered under my AppleCare plan until August so the repair won’t cost me anything. I hope to have it back soon.
One of my latest activities is playing an online game called Tribal Wars. Tribal Wars is a free browser based MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game). After choosing a world (I play in Worlds 17, 18, and 24) you get one village. That small village will grow bigger and bigger as you construct buildings and train troops. Neighbors are also looking to expand their influence. Players join together to form tribes. Players attack players. Tribes attack tribes. Wars break out. Villages get conquered.
What do I like about Tribal Wars? I like the sense of community formed by the tribal structure. I am lucky to belong to good tribes. I have had conversations (and planned attacks) with players from all over the world. I also like how organized a player needs to be in order to successful. I am a very detail oriented person and this game is a good outlet for me.
I expect I will write more about this at a later time but I just wanted to throw this on my blog to see what anyone else thinks about this?
I came across this video on dailymotion.com and just thought it was so cute.
And I came across this site when stumbling around the Net: Let’s Be Friends