10. Cooliris (pictured above)

If you don't use CoolIris on your web browser, you're missing out!

Now Cooliris is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The gorgeous 3D Wall interface allows you to easily and beautifully search news, photos, and videos from YouTube, Google, Flickr, Yahoo and others.

Scroll across the wall by flicking with your finger or simply tilting in the direction you want to travel. Pinch and expand to zoom in and out on the 3D Wall. When you want to drill down, simply touch to play the video, see the larger image, etc.

You can save directly to your device photo gallery, email, or view pictures or video in your device's Safari browser.

11. Air Sharing (pictured to the side) and MobileFiles (pictured at the bottom of this section)

These are similar applications. With Air Sharing you can mount your iPhone or iPod Touch as an external drive and place any number of document types on the device for later viewing and sharing.

You can place files in the public folder in Air Sharing to give others access to them from your device!

Mobile Files provides similar functionality but works in conjunction with a paid MobileMe (.Mac) account. MobileFiles allows you to access and sync data from your .Mac account onto your device.

  

12. Fitnio  

Using the GPS in the iPhone (Sorry iPod Touch users, this app will not work on your device.) Fitnio calculates, in real time, your speed, distance traveled, and calories burned as you walk/jog/run or ride. It also keeps a running total of the data from a comilation of each walk/run/jog and cycle. I use this little app every time I walk and cycle. OK, OK. So I need to get out there more often... :o)

I must confess that I had a hard time getting accustomed to not pressing the power button to put the device to sleep after starting Fitnio and didn't collect the data from several events because I couldn't break that habit. But when you follow the directions, it actually works amazingly well!

7. Instapaper, and Instapaper Pro

Sign up for your free Instapaper account. Drag the "Read Later" button to your browser toolbar. When you find an article of interest while surfing the net, but you don't want to read it at that moment, click the button. Now you can read it on the go, say: on the plane on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

The paid version has a wonderful feature I wish every application had on the iPhone: tilt scrolling: the more you tilt the device, the faster the text auto scrolls! You just read.

8. NetNewsWire

I've been a fan of NetNewWire for a long time, from back in the days when you actually had to purchase it for your computer. Now it's a free RSS feed reader for your computer and your iPhone or iPod Touch.

With NetNewsWire, your RSS feeds are always at your fingertips. Organize your feeds. Open selected feeds up to a blogroll. Include headlines on your blog from selected feeds. Use clipping folders. NetNewsWire is a powerful feed management system!

In your NetNewsWire account, you can set up locations. If you use a specific location for your iPhone, you can choose which feeds you have on the go with your iPhone or iPod Touch.

9. WriteRoom, EasyWriter, and EasyWriter Pro

These programs are very similar, but with slightly differing feature sets at present, I can't decide which one I like best. WriteRoom is known for its distraction free word processor for the computer desktop.

Their iPhone (iPod Touch) application gives you a larger keyboard in landscape view and allows you to share documents through your browser (unsecured) over the same WiFi. I find that I can actually type a good bit faster, making fewer typos, with this keyboard! You can send the text through email. You can email entire documents and get typical document statistics.

EasyWriter also gives you the larger landscape keyboard and includes easy access to email. It allows you to create your own text snippets that can be used over and over between documents––their solution to the lack of a clipboard on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

WriteRoom (below)

4. iBlogger

If you like blogging with ecto, Mars Edit, or Contribute, you will probably like iBlogger. iBlogger connects your iPhone or iPod Touch with all of your blogs--in one easy-to-use interface. I can now do "mobile blogging" on the go without going through the tiny web interface of each of my blogging systems. The screenshot from my iPod Touch (to the right) shows you what yesterday's post looks like through iBlogger.

A significant number of blog engines are already supported, and more are being added. All of my blogs on MovableType and Blogger work. I can easily publish text, pictures, links, and select categories and tags. If I wish, I can even include my GPS location in any post with a simple click.

iBlogger is a nifty little application that is made by illumineX, inc., who just bought ecto from Adriann with an understanding that he will continue to work very closely with the company as they develop ecto3 and add a richer feature set to iBlogger.

5. Stage Hand  

I give lots of presentations through Keynote, Apple's amazing version of PowerPoint. Using Stage Hand, I can control my Keynote presentation from my iPhone (or iPod Touch). Using your device, connected to your computer over a WiFi or a computer-to-computer wireless network, Stage Hand allows the you as the presenter to see on the handheld device the actual slide the audience sees, rotate the device to see the slide notes, the presenter's display, the elapsed time or a countdown timer. On the iPhone (not available on the the iPod Touch), the countdown timer will gently alert you at specified intervals by vibrating the phone in your hand.

From your iPhone or iPod Touch, with a simple touch, you can also move a highlight around on the audience presentation screen and even resize the highlight in real time to focus audience attention. You can control the output volume of your computer's audio. You can fade the screen to black or white. While in the middle of a presentation you can easily navigate to a specific slide without ever letting the audience see that slide selection process.

Because of its potential, I purchased this program when it first came out even though, at that time, it had some serious limitations and significant issues. I thought the developer was on to something that just might turn out to be awesome, and I wanted to support the programs development. I must say that have not been disappointed! This app rocks my presentation world!

6. Pandora Radio

Pick a song, an album, or an artist you like, and Pandora will search its collection and create a internet radio stream to your iPhone or iPod Touch tailored just for you--for free! No advertisements, no bothersome DJ, just 100% music based on what you like and what others who liked that same music also liked.

Or, you can choose to listen to a station that has already been created by someone else. You may also choose a station based on a genre of music. Stream the music to your iPhone (WiFi or AT&T) or iPod Touch (WiFi required). If you hear a song you really like, bookmark it, bookmark the artist, buy it from iTunes, email that station to a friend: it's all just a touch away!

I became familiar with the Music Genome Project shortly after it started in 2000. I had no idea it would blossom into such an amazing social user experience.

I think of Pandora as radio without everything you hate about radio!

Yes, my name is Tim. I'm a geek. I'm not in recovery. I realized this on the first day the iPhone went on sale, and I was sitting in my folding lawn chair, surfing the web on my laptop, from inside Lenox Mall, just outside of the Apple store with hundreds of others who also needed therapy for their technology addiction.

I've loved my iPhone though I've been dismayed with the AT&T network. The phone continues to grow in functionality with the addition of the Apps store at iTunes––where users can download applications that have a growing variety of functionality. Many are free. Most are very inexpensive.

At present, I've tried nearly 100 apps. Some were quick any easy discards. Some have really limited functionality, yet I can't bring myself to abandon them yet as they are growing. Some gain more functionality as more and more people use them. And even some of the applications that I really like, have need of improvement. (This platform is indeed in its infancy.) And, finally, many will also work on the iPod Touch.

Today Time.com published their Top 10 iPhone Apps. I use and love several of the ones on their list. So, to celebrate the season, in a series of four posts, I've decided to post my 12 Apps of Christmas. If you don't celebrate Christmas, you can still join in the festivities by thinking of this mini-series as "These Are Just 12 of My Favorite Things." They are presented in no particular order.

1. Fake Calls

When I was a principal in Cobb County, I knew of several colleagues who would have their secretary call them at a particular time during a boring meeting. They would immediately flee the meeting claiming some horrid emergency at school demanded their immediate attention. Clever

Well, now the secretary no longer need be complicitous! With FakeCall, even your iPod Touch can act like a cell phone. Schedule "the call" to come in whenever you like (at a specific time or in so many minutes from now), from whomever you would like in your address book. Your iPhone or iPod Touch rings at the designated time; you act conspicuously worried as you mumble quietly, unintelligibly into your device to the imaginary caller (whose picture can even appear on your phone); you collect your belongings and quickly scurry from death by boredom.

At just 99 cents, what's not to love here?!

2. iTalk Recorder and iTalk Recorder Premium

Turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into a digital recorder. The simple, elegant user interface gives you control of audio quality. You can Pause and later append to any recording already on your device. Add notes to recordings. The basic application is free as of this writing. The premium version is selling for $4.99.

Using iTalkSync (a free computer download as of this writing), you can download the AIFF audio recording to your Mac or PC when your computer and device are both on the same Wi-Fi network. You will need to use a file conversion utility to convert the AIFF file to an mp3 format if you plan to upload it as an audio podcast to the web.

The iPod Touch will also require at least version 2.2 of the operating system and a mic attachment of some sort. The mic attachments did not work on the iPod Touch prior to OS 2.2. Several mic options are available. I have personally used these four with success:

1. My older version of Macally's iVoicePro for the iPod Classic now works on my iPod Touch with OS 2.2. I can only assume the new version of the iVoicePro works with the iPod Touch as well. The mic has a mini jack for external input. And the new version also has a USB port.
2. The Belkin TuneTalk Stereo for the iPod Classic also now works on my iPod Touch with OS 2.2. It has a mini audio input, autogain button, and a USB port with cable.
3. My old XtremeMac MicroMemo for the iPod Classic also now works on my iPod Touch with OS 2.2. The device features a mini audio line in. I do not find these available on the XtremeMac site; so, they may no longer manufacture them though they are listed on Amazon.com.
4. But I suppose my favorite is the Shure Music Phone Adpater While this attachment has some extra features that are great, it's the quality of the recorded sound that I love!   Of all of the iPod mics I've used through the years, this mic has the best sound quality by far! It's actually designed to be connected to earbuds that plug into the end of the cable so your favorite earbuds can be used with the iPhone to make calls. In this configuration you can easily switch between listening to music and taking a phone call. However, I've attached the mic, without any earbuds connected, to my iPod Touch and used the mic for recording. The wire allows you to put your iPod Touch in your pocket or on a belt clip while having the mic attached to your tie, shirt, or blouse with the tiny clip.

3. Jott Notepad for iPhone

Jott allows you to record a brief memo. Jott transcribes the memo into text with astounding accuracy and sends an email and/or a text message to the desired recipient(s). You can setup groups of recipients: the department heads, all staff, your family, yourself... Forget the typing––just Jott! Jott Notepad for iPhone is free as of this writing.

I've written about Jott before: All Good Things... . Well, I couldn't break up with Jott, even though it is now a subscription service. However, they do offer a limited free plan.

Jott has a growing feature set which can be used in conjunction with other services. For example: you can Jott to your blog (limited blog engines supported); you can Jott to Google calendar; you can Jott a tweet to Twitter. (It's just getting a bit crazy, isn't it!). Jott also has a nice web interface and a tiny "application" you can run from your desktop to manage your jotts.

If you haven't heard about Jott, you should explore it. It's one of my favorite things. When the dog bites, when the bee...

Stay tuned tomorrow for part 2!

I get this question a lot in workshops: "How did you get that YouTube (or any) video to play in your blog post?" It's easy. I'll tell you how in this post. But have you noticed that often the quality of a YouTube video is, well, just yucky?! I'm going to also tell you how to force YouTube to play the highest quality version of a video that it can play.

If you read my earlier post about LinkToApp, you have at least some vague idea about embedding HTML code for links into a blog post. Embedding a video is very similar. The most obvious difference is that instead of the HTML code showing your readers text that functions as a link to another place, the HTML code now will show your readers a video that must be sitting on some server someplace, in this case, sitting on YouTube's servers. It doesn't have to be a video you uploaded. It doesn't have to be a video you made. Many people share videos, including teachers. So, to include a video, like a link, we must embed some HTML code into our blog or webpage. Where do we get the code?

Three Ways to Get the HTML Code
At the end of every YouTube movie you see, the video screen changes to display two sets of HTML code: URL code, for linking to the video on the YouTube site; and embed code, for making the YouTube video itself appear on your blog or website. You don't have to watch the entire video to get to the code presented at the end. If you mouse over the up arrow (pictured below in the top video), on the bottom right of the time line, under every YouTube video, and click on the icon that appears with three small boxes in it, the two sets of code immediately appear. Both snippets of the HTML code also appear near the top right of every YouTube webpage (second picture below) for each movie on the You Tube site. Click on each image below to see the large version if needed.

[TeacherTube offers several version of embed codes: large versions, versions with and without video search fields, and versions for specific blog clients.]

What to Do with the HTML Code
If you want to link to the video on the YouTube site without showing the video in your blog or web page, you use the code labeled: URL. Below, in red, is that URL code for the video of Matt dancing with people all over the world. All I have to do is include the HTML link code, in blue, around that URL, just like we did in the post about linking to items at the iTunes Store.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY&eurl=http://drtimtyson.com/blog/&feature=player_embedded" >Click here to watch this video on YouTube's site!</a>

Remember the quotation marks, in blue, are critical. And remember that, if you forget to do this in your HTML edit mode for your blog, you will probably see exactly what I posted above instead of this: Click here to watch this video on YouTube's site! And finally, the text I italicized in the code above is completely arbitrary. You can type anything there you think will make good sense to your readers.

Now, if you want to embed the video itself in your blog or website, you use the embed code. Simply copy it and paste into the HTML editor for your blog. That's it. When you publish, the video should appear on your site. Be sure you have the legal authority to publish someone's video before you post in on your blog. Many people allow their work to be distributed by others.

When You Want the High Quality Version...
Well, first, YouTube must have one on their server. If the person who uploaded it only uploaded the low resolution, highly compressed video, that's all you will get. But by simply adding a little bit of code, if a high quality version is available, that's what you will get. It makes a noticable difference.

Simply add this code, "&ap=%2526fmt%3D18" without the quotation marks to two specific places in the embed code. Below is the low quality version of the embed code without the additional higher quality code followed by the higher quality version of the embed code to show you the two places where you must add the additional code shown above. The web address portion of the embed code, in green below, is different for each movie, so that will always vary from movie to movie. In these two examples it remains the same because it links to the same movie, just one regular quality and one higher quality. The only difference between the two is the added higher quality code shown in red.

Shown Below: The regular, highly compressed embed code YouTube typically provides
<object width="425" height="344">
    <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zlfKdbWwruY&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" />
    <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" />
    <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" />
    <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zlfKdbWwruY&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344" /></embed>
</object>

Shown Below: The high quality embed code is added in two places to the embed code YouTube typically provides
  <object width="425" height="344">
    <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zlfKdbWwruY&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18" />
    <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" />
    <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" />
    <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zlfKdbWwruY&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344" /></embed>
  </object>

When you embed these into your post, I suspect you will see little of no difference in these two examples because YouTube is using this particular video, which is wildly popular, to highlight their higher quality "feature" player and no longer has the lower quality version online. If you check this link to the video on their website, you will see what a drastic improvement it is from their typical player.

I forget where I first read about this little tip, or I would credit the source. I think, but am not sure, it was over at iLounge.

I'm crazy about my iPhone. I was one of those Apple fanatics that actually waited in line for about 4 hours to get one on the day they were released. With WiFi in the mall, my outdoor chair, and my laptop, while waiting I even shot a movie with the lady next to me--yes, a total stranger. She too was a little "out there." At some point in the future I need to do a series of posts about using the iPhone and/or the iPod Touch as a 1:1 computing platform. But I'll save that for another time.

The iPhone (and iPod Touch) as a computing platform deserves some consideration. And while the device will not do everything a computer will do, it is very affordable when compared to a computer purchase. And with a growing number of increasingly sophisticated applications one can download from the iTunes Store, many of which are free, the device is becoming more and more powerful. Enhancing the capability of this media rich device will only continue. I suspect in some future iteration, the iPhone will be able to stream live video to the world.

Since thousands of applications are available for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, how do you share links to a specific application at the iTunes Store with friends and colleagues? For example, here's an application I just found and love: iBlogger, which allows me to connect to all of my blogs and post to any one of them right from my phone (or iPod Touch), shoot and upload pictures from the phone or the phone's photo library, upload my current location on Google Maps, links, etc. So, how did I do that? How did I give you a link directly to the iBlogger application at the iTunes Apps Store? You simply copy and paste the URL from the iTunes Store into your blog post, email, or twitter tweet!

But Wait! Aren't those URLs long and weird, making them exceedingly difficult to type and too long to post successfully in an email? And besides, some folks still don't know how to post a URL into a web-based document. Tah Dah! This post to the rescue!

Where to find the URL and how to copy it
Launch iTunes (By the way, this also works for any online link.) Find a link to anything at the store: an individual piece of music, an album you want to share, or an application in the Apps Store. Right click (<control> + click on a mac if you don't have a multi-button mouse), and select "Copy iTunes Store URL" from the popup menu. Three examples are pictured below. Click each to see a larger image.

<a href="REPLACE_THIS_TEXT_WITH_THE LINK_YOU_COPIED_AT_THE_ITUNES_STORE" >Click Here</a>

If you're not in HTML editing mode in your blogging system, you will get results, like you see above, where everything is written out and a link doesn't appear like this: Click Here, which is a link to my blog.

Be sure to paste the link you copied from the iTunes Store into the text so indicated above, but don't accidentally remove the quotation remarks. They matter--a lot! The copied link text must be enclosed in the quotation marks.

In my example above, the words "Click Here" will be the underlined link to the item at the iTunes Store. You don't have to use the words "Click Here" and can replace them with anything that makes sense to your readers looking for the place on which to click.

Ah, but for applications (only), there's now an easier way!
Introducing LinkToApp. This convenient new website is like TinyURL but for Applications at the iTunes Store, but even easier. Instead of having to go through all of the above steps in the iTunes Store, if you know the name of the application to which you want to link, simply type: "http://L2app.com/NAME_OF_APP_GOES_HERE" as in the above example where you would have pasted the long and crazy iTunes URL you copied earlier. If the application name has more than one word, for example: "Super Money Ball" you use the "+" sign instead of spaces.

So here's a comparison of the ways to link to a wonderful little application that will listen to the music you are hearing and tell you the artist, the track, the album, and even give you a link to purchase it at the iTunes Store!

<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284993459&mt=8" >Shazam</a> is the actual HTML code used to create this link: Shazam.

<a href="http://L2app.com/shazam" >Shazam</a> is the actual HTML code used to create this link: Shazam.

Since both links will take you to the same application on the iTunes Apps Store, which one would you rather type in a blog post?! And for a tweet, you would just type the link text itself, http://L2app.com/shazam.

The website even gives us a bookmarklet that you can drag into you bookmakrs bar. One click on it opens a dialogue box in which you type what you think is the name of the application. The bookmarklet then takes you to that place in the iTunes Store so you can be sure you have the name correct.

Convenient free tool! (And the Yo-Yo Ma album, Songs of Joy & Peace, used in the screen shots above has some wonderful holiday tracks in it!)

The Impact of the Economic Crisis on Classroom Instruction

I was sitting in the Houston airport waiting for my flight. CNN was blaring. As I so rarely watch television, I somehow always feel like I'm being victimized by Big Brother when I walk through a place and the same television channel is talking at me–this is no comment on CNN, it could be any channel attempting to broadcast its way into my cognitive state. But now I'm way off track from the ideas through which I wanted to meander and reflect.

CNN is apparently producing a segment on "Who's Hiring." This particular segment was speaking about public schools as a potential employment opportunity for the millions around our country who are losing their jobs in this terrible time of economic "downturn," of "recession." The reporter presented what is required in most states to earn certification for teaching. One might think, on the face of the idea, this to be a wonderful solution: millions of people need jobs. The nation is in need of millions of teachers. Match made in heaven? Not so fast!

Actually, I was rather troubled by this thought. Being a teacher requires so much more than a state teaching certificate. Teaching is so much more than a profession of economic last resort.

As a retired school principal I believe that perhaps the greatest legacy a school principal can leave in a school is the staff that s/he hires. Finding exemplary staff that are not only passionate about subject matter but also have the capacity to inspire learning within a classroom of human souls is a challenge not to be taken lightly. The teaching profession is both art and science requiring perhaps the highest attainment of creative endeavor to which anyone can aspire. The act of teaching, of truly unfolding substantive and meaningful content in a way that creates a thirst for deeper understanding and for fashioning that understanding into relevant solutions for the world's greatest challenges is, in my opinion, nothing short of heroic work. This is all but the work of gods!

Regrettably this work has rarely earned the respect from American consumption-based culture that is deserved. In the 1990's I recall a school board member going on a crusade to make public schools more like businesses–a model which was gaining national traction and one which I found rather offensive at the time. Emphasis on this model still exists today, fed by the very structures of NCLB, with for-profit industry trying to make money off of the education of our children in what I believe to be a seriously flawed ideology that the public trust is best served by a capitalist model. I could not disagree more! (I'm trying to avoid yet another opportunity to go rogue in this post!)

The teacher focuses on the empowerment of people. Business focuses on profit margins. Capitalism gone awry focuses on maximizing profit margins above all else to the complete neglect of the social contract that each of us has to our fellow humans. We have seen where unfettered desire for profit takes business: the creation of an unsustainable "it's all about me" consumption based economic model that has little regard for those upon whom it feasts.

Greed and excess can not sustain themselves. We have seen this before in our own history. Sadly, how quickly we forget.

For over a year now, I have had the great privilege of traveling and meeting teachers the world over. In every city, every country I've been, I see the same characteristic in the teachers I meet: Teachers don't work a job, as do many business people. Teachers live a calling. They thrive in their reflections in the eyes of their pupils as they join together to explore, to create, to fashion anew, to inspire, to empower, to unleash, to transcend, to care. Teaching isn't about profit margins or numbers, despite the appalling emphasis on the later by NCLB. Expertise in teaching is not earned by a degree nor by a state teaching certificate.

Teaching must always remain a calling of the heart and soul.

Photo by: amrufm at flickr.com

I have been reading CogDog (Alan Levine) for many years. He's brilliant! He has a really interesting post about Ocarina, the iPhone application that turns your iPhone into a wind instrument--magic flute. The application lets you listen to people around the world playing their iPhone Ocarina in real time. Check it out at the iTunes Store at this link. Astounding!

Alan posted a screenshot from his iPhone of what the application looks like as you listen to someone, someplace in the world, playing their iPhone instrument. Their notes just float off from the face of the earth as you listen to their ethereal tones. So cool!

I knew I had seen a post months back about screen capture for the iPhone, but didn't remember how to do it. So, for everyone with an iPhone (iPod Touch?), here's the magic trick: Press and hold the "Home" button, and then press the "Power" button at the top of the phone, and: snap + white flash, a capture of your screen is stored in your photos on your phone. I'm note sure if this will work pre-version 2 of the software. You can see the example I shot from Ocarina below.

So, now you know how you can turn your iPhone into a flute, listen to peaceful music being played around the world in real time, and create a screen capture from your iPhone.

Check out the high resolution YouTube movie, embedded below, about the Ocarina. In a future post I'll share how you embed higher resolution video from YouTube into your blog when a high resolution video is available.

In the meantime: Enjoy!

Because you are here!

I talk about this a lot in my presentations: empowering children to make the world a better place because of their school work. The internet affords each of us, adults and children, that very capacity. It affords us as educators the capacity to empower children to create content in school that literally makes the world a better place. In its purest forms, this is such a simple process.

I just came across this project by a young man, Matt Harding, and his girl friend, Melissa Nixon. They just travelled the world with a video camera dancing with people, mostly children, and set it to Praan, by Garry Schyman, who set to music an adaptation of the poem below, Stream of Life, by Rabindranath Tagore. They recruited vocalist Palbasha Siddique from YouTube to sing the piece for the video.

This project is brilliant, from the way it was conceived to the way it was executed. Matt connects to and shares the joyous rhythm of life that has pulsed through all of time to unite us into one humanity. To see his finished project is to just want to stand up and start dancing with them–everyone, everywhere. What a joyous and celebratory journey made possible by a simple idea to create a new kind of music video that brings people, the world over, together in harmony through social media.

Watch the video, and then check out the next video of Matt talking about how they did this.

Brilliant! Joyous!!

In the video below, Matt talks about the project.

The lyrics, which are adapted from a Rabindranath Tagore poem, are also very significant in understanding the full scope of Harding's vision. The poet describes an epiphany in which he sees all of existence, from the natural world around him to the entire history of humanity, dancing with the same blood - the same stream of life. Thus in Harding's video we are all tied by this unseen energy, personified in dance, and illuminated by the joy that surrounds us as we watch. In many ways Facebook, YouTube and the rest of the Internet have improved our access to the stream, but it is up to us to follow Harding and continue to make art that ties humanity together.

[From Obtusity: The Life-Throb of Ages: Garry Schyman "Praan"]

Wow! I can't believe that I haven't posted in so long on this, my professional blog--not that I haven't been doing a tremendous amount of writing in other places because of my passionate stance in this past election cycle. I try to keep my blog free of partisan politics*, which is very difficult for me to do because of the intensity of my deeply-held political beliefs and my broadening concerns about the future of our nation and the world we are leaving our children.

Additionally, I have been busier in the past few months traveling and presenting to audiences all around the world than I ever anticipated I would be. In fact, I just totaled it up. In the past 7 weeks alone, I've flown over 50,000 miles and worked in four countries with students, parents, and educators from four continents.

Hopefully, with a bit of a slower travel schedule in December, I can catch up on some other things that are important to me, including blogging here as well as working on several recording projects in which I am involved.

In the meantime, I want to share a video I find very moving.

As you watch it, keep in mind that the "Generation We" depicted in this short needs the progressive guidance and wisdom our best educators can offer them.

• We, the educators, need to be front and center in facilitating the development of a better future for our youth, the hope of a better tomorrow.
• We, the educators, need to shape and fashion an educational setting that speaks to the deepest part of who we are inclusively as an American people, what we as a people cherish in our souls, and what we as educators fundamentally believe is sound educational practice for the children entrusted to our care.
• We, the educators, need to aggressively re-evaluate and re-invent our instructional practice.
• We, the educators, need to offer the youth of our nation the very best job performance we can breathe our life breath into in this moment.

Never, in my lifetime, has America needed more what we, the educators of this land, can rise up to provide. Never have we needed to be more politically and civically active, more socially active and responsible, more attentive and inclusive, more participatory in the shaping of our communities and our nation's future.

This is an historic moment. This is the time for metamorphosis!

This is a call to our destiny!

*Not to be confused with non-partisan policy positions such as those espoused by NCLB!

Come to an End?

From time to time I share with groups to whom I present, usually the administrative groups, Jott. Grab your cell phone. Press the speed dial for Jott. Talk. Jott then transcribes your voice and sends a text message or email to the person you sent it to (might even be yourself, your spouse, your family). It can even send to groups–maybe your staff, or a department, or the leadership team. The service does many other nifty things as well, and the transcription is amazingly accurate. Aside from the phone call, Jott also offers several other quick and easy ways to interface with its service: the web, an application for your iPhone or BlackBerry, and a desktop dashboard.

But the free ride appears to be over.

After becoming very comfortable with a workflow that includes Jott, the service now is moving out of beta and is offering a tiered user plan: Jott Basic (free, but with ads and limited services), Jott ($3.95/month), Jott Pro ($12.95/month), and even pay as you go plans with longer transcription times. Current Jott users do get a 26% discount for their first year if they sign up for a year.

I've often said that free isn't a sustainable business model. I knew this service eventually would have to become fee-based. But it still stings.

As people become more and more comfy with "cloud computing," they will need to get more and more comfy with opening up their bank accounts to these services: $47.40 here, $24.95 there. This will not be just nickeling and diming you to death. The price point will be whatever the market will bear. The cloud does indeed have some significant things to offer, not the least of which is that you must pay your licensing fee or be dropped from the cloud to your more mundane terrestrial habitat. While many technology enthusiasts appear to be charging forward, embracing the cloud with enthusiastically open arms, I still remain highly skeptical of the cloud, for any number of compelling reasons–compelling to me any way. :o)

So, I don't know what I will do with my Jott account, which I have grown to love. Will we break up? Will we commit to each other? I have until September 8th to decide.

I came across this post over at lifehacker about other services, similar to Jott, that, as of this writing, remain free.

Here is an interesting article for those districts, schools, and teachers who use Brother printers. I can't vouch for it being true or working without damaging your hardware. But, I present it for your further exploration. You will have to visit the link below to get the link to the full article.

Slate's Farhad Manjoo has some great tips for outsmarting the greedy, lying sensor in your printer that wants you to change the super-expensive cartridge before the ink runs out:

"This guy had also suspected that his Brother was lying to him, and he'd discovered a way to force it to fess up. Brother's toner cartridges have a sensor built into them; OppressedPrinterUser found that covering the sensor with a small piece of dark electrical tape tricked the printer into thinking he'd installed a new cartridge. I followed his instructions, and my printer began to work. At least eight months have passed. I've printed hundreds of pages since, and the text still hasn't begun to fade. On FixYourOwnPrinter.com, many Brother owners have written in to thank OppressedPrinterUser for his hack. One guy says that after covering the sensor, he printed 1,800 more pages before his toner finally ran out."

[From HOWTO trick your printer into using ALL its ink - Boing Boing ]

I frequently quote Clay Shirky. His thinking is consistently deep, insightful, and thought-provoking! This video, filmed in July, 2005, was just posted at TED last month, July, 2008. I highly recommend educators follow his work.

Take about 20 minutes to watch this presentation on the norms of institutions being challenged by new collaborative infrastructures. "The printing press took us to 200 years of chaos. ... [With this new, emerging, digital, collaborative infrastructure] I'm predicting 50. ... Institutions are going to come under an increasing degree of pressure. And the more rigidly managed and the more they rely on information monopolies, the greater the pressure is going to be. ... The forces are general, but the results are going to be specific."

I have to listen to him at least a couple of times to get my head around the magnitude of what he is saying!

Photo credit: CC by eirikso @ flickr

The New York Times has an interesting article on iPod Touch and iPhones on university campuses this Fall session. You will have to get past the advertisement to see it at this link.

When new technologies challenge existing norms, we see interesting ideas and application emerge. Some compete against others. Some ideas flourish and evolve in transformative and empowering ways. Overall, I think we will see huge potential for learning develop in the emerging technologies surrounding iPod Touch and iPhone. We just have to get beyond the adolescent exploration and trial and error phase of the implementation cycle—the one we seem to still be in with the internet and Web 2.0.