Taste of Tech

If this doesn’t impress you, nothing will. Maybe you haven’t bought into the hype. Perhaps all that Web 2.0 mumbo jumbo went over your head. It’s possible that I may be wrong that things are changing.

Take two minutes and go to Protopage. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

See what I mean?

For the web-challenged (or lazy), here’s a quick overview: Protopage starts with what looks like five Post-It ™ notes.

One is a welcome note. You can move this around, resize it, edit it, or delete it. You can make it say anything you want.

A second is a list of things you can try. Like the first, this is just a note. You can have as many of these as you want.

The third one has quick links. Think of it as your own customized portal page. Put whatever links you want in there. If you run out of space, make it bigger or make another one. If you have different categories of information, make several of these, one for each category.

My news is just that — news. It’s aggregated using RSS. I haven’t written about RSS yet, I don’t think. Basically, you type in a feed address, and it gets updated automatically when the site gets updated. Try typing http://www.bbhcsd.org in there. Or, try http://staff.bbhcsd.org/schinkerj.

The last panel is for quick searches. You can type in query and search your favorite search engine, right from here.

Who cares?
You should. As soon as you save this, it’s available online. You give it a name, set a password (so only you can edit it), and give them an email address. Then, it’s live. You’re familiar with portal pages (see http://www.bbhcsd.org/start/high for an example). You can make your own portal page very easily here. It’ll look nicer than anything the school has available, and it can have automatically updated content.

Let’s say you’re teaching a unit on… earthquakes. You want the kids to do a webquest style project. You go to  Protopage, and give them a few instructions. You give them links to go to to get information. You provide search tools. Maybe you include feeds from some resource that has to do with earthquakes. You’ve created a web page that’s content-specific to that particular project. Save it, name it, and move on. Make as many as you want. Link them together. Use them with kids.

Or, maybe the kids make one. They collect the resources to tell a story or make an argument or explain a topic. Give a group of kids the password and let them collaborate, editing and revising each other’s work.

Plus it’s fun.

The web has changed.

Now we know what Podcasts are (see What is Podcasting?). Are there any decent podcasts about using technology in education? Funny you should ask

Worldbridges is a collection of people from all over the world who regularly meet online and discuss various topics related to education and technology. Perhaps the most cohesive of their efforts is the Ed Tech Talk show. They also have two weekly "brainstorming" sessions that are distributed as podcasts, too. Best of all, you can join in the discussions as they’re recording the show. It’s kind of like a global call-in radio show about education and technology.

I really good place to start with all of this is episode 27 of Ed Tech Talk. They actually start from the beginning, and explain a lot about what this technology is, how it works, and how it can be used.

Then, there’s Bob Sprankle. Bob’s an elementary teacher in Wells, Maine. He teaches a combined 3rd and 4th grade class. A few years ago, his students started a classroom blog. Since then, they’ve added podcasting to their activities. They write stories and news items about what they’re learning, edit the stories, post content on the blog, and record the items for the podcast. They’re supposed to have a new podcast each week, but sometimes other things get in the way. Typically, they have 2-3 podcasts per month. You can sample their work at Room 208.

Bob also started a podcast about the process of using technology with students. Called Bit by Bit, he goes into many of the challenges he faces with the intention of helping others do similar things with their sudents.

There’s more — lots more — but this is a good place to start.

So, you take a suitcase. Inside, you put a Mac mini, a portable projector, and a heavy duty battery. You attach suction cups to the outside of the suitcase, and cut a hole so it can project outward.

When the subway comes, you stick it to the side of the train, and you have suddenly have miles of underground canvas and a captive audience. Here’s the video (from Berlin).

I’m not sure the security people would be too crazy about you attaching a suitcase to a subway car, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see advertising done this way.

All right. I found it. I’m not conceding my earlier point. I think not being able to search audio and video files for something someone said instead of something someone wrote is going to become a bigger problem as we continue to explore using these media online.

The audio I was looking for, incidently, was from Marc Prensky’s keynote speech at the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference in Nashua, NH in November, 2005. This speech was recorded by Bob Sprankle and posted as part of his Bit by Bit podcast  (episode 18).

The comment about kids using email mostly when talking to their parents came about 27 minutes into the first part of the speech.

I just found one of the really big problems with podcasts. I was listening to a podcast a month or so ago, and I heard the people talking about digital immigrants and digital natives. One of the points that was made really struck a chord. Of course, they said that the students of today are digital natives, and they’ve grown up with the technology. Their teachers, on the other hand, are digital immigrants. We’ll always "talk digitial" with an accent. They pointed out that there are always artifacts among digital immigrants, just like there are with real immigrants. There are always some things that they just don’t quite get. One example of this is the practice of printing out email (or having one’s secretary print out the email). As the discussion progressed, one of the speakers pointed out that college students have moved beyond email. When communicating with their peers, students use synchronous tools, like text messaging and IM. They only use email when communicating with adults. This was compared with cultural immigrants. The kids know Russian, but they only speak it when talking to Mom and Dad. The rest of the time, they use English.

I know that I listened to this podcast in my car on the way to work on either December 16 or December 19, because on the afternoon of the 19th, I talked to a current college student about it. He affirmed that he primarily uses email to communicate with his parents and his professors.

Yesterday, I referred to this in an email message, but I couldn’t find the source. I don’t know where I heard it. Now, I only listen to a few podcasts. If I had to guess, I would say that this either came from Ed Tech Talk or Bit by Bit, though it could theoretically have come from an NPR technology story or a Future Tense story. But I can’t find it.

In the text world, Google would be my friend. I’d type in a phrase, and find it in a couple minutes. But with audio, there’s no index. It’s not even transcribed, let alone indexed and searchable. So how do I recall something I listened to on the go? I’m going to have to take better notes when driving…