A cool tool finds that sweet spot between doing something novel and something really practical and helpful--that meets a real need, not a manufactured need to just play with technology for its own sake. Cool tools enhance our ability to create and contribute.

For me, snap shots from snap.com is such a tool. It provides readers some additional functionality when reading your blog.

I just installed this free, cool little tool on Practical Practice. Oh, yes, I said the magic word, didn't I: "free." snap shots enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, displays inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more. Try the previous links to see how this can be useful for your own links on your blogs as well as when reading Practical Practice.

Often snap shots brings you a preview that gives you the information you need, without your ever having to leave the site. At other times it allows you to "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not--a feature I especially appreciate.

I've set up snap shots on Practical Practice to activate only when you hover (don't click unless you want to visit the link) your mouse over the little bubble icon that now appears next to most of my links. So if you don't want the preview to appear, just avoid the little bubble next to the link.

On your own site you can choose not to turn the bubbles on if you don't like them. Instead, if you want, you can set up snap shots to show the preview when the user hovers over any part of the entire link. And you can turn the previews on or off for individual links and even whole sections of your site. For example: none of the links in the banner or sidebar of my blog use it.

Should you decide the previews on my site annoy you, you as the reader can always turn them off. (That element of choice is so important in life, isn't it!) Just hover over one of the bubbles so the preview appears and click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the preview window and select to opt-out.

A couple of other settings and options: I've set up my preview window to default to the large size. Advantage: my old eyes can read it better; disadvantage: it loads the preview slower. Change it if you wish. When a preview appears, you can select to view the page or the RSS feed summary if one exists. The icons to control this feature appear in the top left of the preview window. In the example pictured below the RSS icon is selected. The preview window would display the RSS feed summaries. To switch to the site view, simply click on the icon to the extreme left.

Of course, as with anything cool, there's always more. Check out the snap.com site for lots more information. You will want to know a little bit about html in order to install it on your site (or have someone with you who does), but it's not hard!

As the students are fond of saying: Sweet. Very sweet!

I spent this past week in a remote area of the Smoky Mountains. I say it was remote because I felt rather disconnected. My cell phone didn't have low signal strength but stated instead, "no signal." Internet was only available via dialing up a long distance telephone number or through a satellite connection. Naturally, I chose the satellite connection. More times than not, however, I would get a "Satellite upload link error. Please try to connect again later." message. And most of the time when I could get a connection, the data would trickle in just one kilobyte at a time--literally!

I realized just how important my being connected, being plugged in, being that "live node on the network" is to me. No, I take that back. It's essential to me. But I think we have to be connected on at least two levels: in our immediate space with those we know and love, and in our virtual spaces (the cell phone and the internet). The substance of both of those levels of connection is vitally important, not just the connection itself. In that regard, I've had some interesting conversations with students about how social networking sites like MySpace an FaceBook are redefining their concept of "friends."

"My mom said that none of my online 'friends' are going to put their arm around me when I'm sick. None of them are going to be there when I really need someone." Seems to me that mom is teaching her daughter balance between being a node on a network and being a human being in the here and now. Finding that wonderful, meaningful balance between all of the things that compete for our attention is increasingly hard to do as the number of things entering the competition increases exponentially along with the vigor with which they compete.

Perhaps because I couldn't be that live node on the network this past week, I noticed a few more things that may have otherwise not caught my attention. About half of the drivers who passed me, waved at me. In the 20 years I've lived in Atlanta, I don't think anyone has ever waved at me as I drove by, except for that one unfortunate incident a few years ago with what one would more accurately characterize as an inappropriate hand gesture! :o)

I also casually noticed a street sign as I drove by, a sign I probably would never have seen in the normal rush of my day, one that demanded I take its picture. Yes, needless to say, this photograph will find its way into a future presentation! I loved it! And one other location required I pull off the road: the old truck in the field of goldenrod set against the backdrop of a cool, cloudless, mountain day. Notice, in the larger pictures available below, someone shot it one time in the center of the hood. If you like it, you can click on one of the pictures at the end of this post for a large version you can use as your desktop picture (Windows users call it Wallpaper.). Yes, the larger version includes an inconspicuous logo for my website. Directions, if needed, are at the end of this post.

The point of this post: Old School Rd. isn't all bad unless it's your final destination. And just as the old truck got put out to pasture, today's technology isn't the answer to all of the complex problems we face in the classroom. (I'm fond of saying that bad teaching with technology is just more bad teaching, faster!) Balance and best instructional practices are essential.

* * * * *

Click on the image size below you think best matches your screen size. After the larger version loads on your screen, then right click that image to save it to your computer. You can then assign it to your desktop image. (If you download the smaller images you see below, you will download a tiny picture unsuitable for your desktop size.)

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I found this article on CrunchGear interesting. And while I do agree that much of Web 2.0 is digital fad, buzz, and empty hype, and that the popularity of many of these "tools" does seem to wane in time, I'm not so sure we can simply ascribe the reason to human laziness. I suspect that as long as these tools are used merely for the fun of consuming other people's attention (that transient sense of popularity), have a narrow focus and represent little substantive contribution to larger human themes, they probably need to pass into the history of pop culture fads like clackers--yes, mine were spelled with a "c." (Do you remember those? They were the rage when I was in 7th grade. But all they did was bruise our arms and make a lot of noise. Eventually, and rather quickly might I add, they faded from "like, the groovy scene, man.")

... If the defining trait of the first Web cycle was the stupid animated GIF, the current “It” sites all have one thing in common: They are, to varying degrees, reliant on user-generated content. ... And that is why the Web 2.0 era will come to end sooner rather than later. Because if there is one immutable law of humankind, it is that we are really, really lazy. ...

Right now, the bubble that the Web exists in is not so much a financial bubble as it is a time bubble. There is still a novelty for a lot of people associated with finding friends on social networking sites, Digging their favorite stories, updating articles about the history of pinball, and leaving comments on their favorite blogs. But that will wear off. People will revert back to the things they used to do: like Minesweeper and work. And without millions of generous mouse-clickers, most of Web 2.0 is weakened, if not entirely useless.

Source: The Futurist: Will Human Laziness Burst The Web 2.0 Bubble?

No, I don't fault people for enjoying that which is novel. Novelty is indeed, by its very nature, transient. And, quite frankly, I don't fault people for valuing economy of resources expended for value added.

If Web 2.0, or anything for that matter, is going to stand the test of time, it does so because the tools lend themselves to being used to meet real needs of real people in efficient and effective ways. Rather than bemoan laziness, we need to develop and use products and resources in ways that add some substantive value to our life experience.

As a classic example of a "hot" Web 2.0 "tool," I just don't see the twittering and tweeting of others adding a lot of value to the state of my human condition. But not to worry, my crystal ball tells me that in the not too distant future, twitter to go the way of clackers.

Years ago I purchased NetNewsWire, an RSS feed aggregator designed for the Mac by NewsGator Technologies. (Their Windows RSS feed reader, FeedDemon, also seems to get high reviews, but, being a Mac head, I have never used it.) I actually tried several feed readers at the time I began feeding at the RSS trough, but of all the readers I tried, I fell in love with NetNewsWire.

In an extraordinary move, a few weeks ago NewsGator Technologies made all of their RSS feed readers, including NetNewsWire, free downloads for everyone--not your standard business model! (They do sell other software and services.) I highly recommend this cool tool. No, I highly recommend this essential tool.

Many people still don't know or have a really fuzzy understanding of what RSS feed aggregation is. And for those who do know, RSS is often used much too little. RSS is far too powerful to be so little used. If you do not subscribe to RSS feeds, you are really missing out.

What Is It?!
The easiest way to explain RSS feeds and their aggregation (fancy word for "collection in one place") is by example: If you had a child at Mabry Middle School, where every teacher blogs (even the counselors, media specialist, nurse, the PTSA, etc.), you could easily have to check 10 or more web sites (blogs) to keep up with what is going on in your child's school. On some days the teachers have posted, and sometimes they have not. The daily process of checking each blog quickly becomes a little tedious--even with the generous use of numerous bookmarks.

So, let's make this easy!

On the first day of school, use an RSS feed aggregator, like NetNewsWire, to subscribe one time to each teacher's blog. (You never need to go to those blogs again if you don't want to.) From that day on, every time you launch NetNewsWire, or any RSS feed aggregator you choose to use, NetNewsWire tells you how many new posts have been published by which teachers. All of the posts come to you in one place--in my case, NetNewsWire. When I launch the program, it looks at every blog or website to which I have subscribed and brings me the new posts.

In NetNewsWire I can read a summary of each new post. If I find it of interest, I can click on the summary and see the entire post. I can even click on the title of the post and open the blog from which it came.

If I have two children at Mabry, I can have two folders: one for the teachers of one child, and one for the other child. I can have a folder for news sites like CNN and the BBC, a folder for technology sites like Wired and Boing Boing. I can even have NetNewsWire search the internet for posts about specific topics and keywords with which I want to keep informed with the latest information. In this post I am only scratching the surface of the many powerful possibilities, but lest I overwhelm those who are first learning about RSS aggregation, I'll stop here.

As far as I am concerned, every student in middle school and up (at the least!) should use an RSS aggregator daily. This can be a powerful learning and research tool when used well.

Why Not Use Your Browser's RSS Capabilities?
For one thing, only the latest version of Internet Explorer has any RSS functionality built into it. Since a significant number of internet users use older versions of IE, this may explain why RSS subscription has not become standard practice. The old version of IE can't work with it at all.

And while both Safari (for Windows and Mac) and the new version of Internet Explorer have RSS functionality built into them, they lack some of the amazing additional functionality provided in the free RSS feed aggregators you can download from NewsGator Technologies.

How Do I Use It?
All you need to know is that blogs and even many websites create RSS feeds. One of the ways you can tell a site has an RSS feed available (not all do): they are typically identified with an icon that looks much like the one pictured next to this paragraph--small orange, "radaresque" icons. (I picked one that's a little fancier than usual.) You click on the feed icon which launches NetNewsWire or whatever aggregator you have installed on your machine. (The fancy feed icon pictured in this paragraph is linked to this blog's RSS feed!) You select the folder you want the posts from the feed to appear in within NetNewsWire. You have now subscribed. Now all of the new posts from that feed, that web site, that blog will automatically appear in NetNewsWire everytime you launch it.

Go ahead and try it. Download a free aggregator from NewsGator Technologies. Click on my feed icon near the bottom left sidebar or in the paragraph above, and watch what happens. This is a better, more efficient way to work!

Teach the parents of your students how to subscribe to your blog. Teach your students how to subscribe to your blog. (Don't even tell me you don't have one! I'll leap right through this screen and point my finger in front of your nose for your not using best practices!!)

If You Are A Geek (Like Me)
You will want to check out this post about tweaking NetNewsWire to provide you with abundant functionality. Also read this post. You can: have NetNewsWire feed you your blog stats, your mail, posts about you, comments made to your blog, podcasts, create smart folders, post an article to your del.icio.us account, post an article or a highlighted section from an article to your blog, show you blogs that aren't actively posting, show you blogs that are using the most bandwidth, send podcasts to iTunes to sync to your iPod, send your feeds to Safari on your iPhone (or other mobile devices, or any computer browser in the world), have your feed summaries appear in the sidebar of your blog, and on and on and ...

Educators, this should rock your world!

Articles on Wikipedia
RSS
Web feed
Aggregator
NewsGator Technologies

Articles about Blogs and RSS for Teachers and Parents at MabryOnline.org
Under the Hood of Our Website
How to Subscribe
Overview Information (which contains numerous resources about RSS)

and some thought! Unlike the state of Oregon that wants to claim its laws are copyrighted and can therefore not be posted on online sites, this video speaks to the heart of the internet as a sharing machine...

Source: CharlesLeadbeater.net
Book: We-think: mass innovation, not mass production

The web lit up after Clay Shirky spoke at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week. Blip.TV is hosting his 16 minute presentation--a must see. I'm embedding it below. I want to encourage everyone to go beyond taking the time to watch it; really soak in what he's saying, giving deep thought to its implications for the art and science of teaching and learning. Aside from being an engaging story-teller, he skillfully unwraps some compelling and powerful ideas.

Here are just a few of my take aways:

• "Media [dare I substitute 'classroom instruction'] targeted at you that doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for."
• Focus our attention on designing for, rather than trying to dissipate, the cognitive surplus: what are we going to do with this new architecture of participation to move it from social crisis to a meaningful asset?
• For our present generation, new media [dare I substitute 'classroom instruction'] moves from just consumption to also include producing and sharing [--or, as I like to sing: contribution].
• If we could leverage just 1% of the cognitive surplus soaked up by watching television, we would have the equivalent amount of time to produce 10,000 Wikipedia projects.
• Moving to participatory contribution is a one way shift we are growing into, not a fad that will pass.
• How are we as educators going to leverage and manipulate the cognitive surplus, through our students' unparalleled interest in this emerging architecture of participation through technology, to move them beyond the mindless stupor in which we grew up passively soaking up television (and our teachers' endless lectures)?

How are we going to engage our students authentically to empower their contribution? In a way, this reminds me of the horrible cycle of child abuse that is perpetuated from the abused to the next generation. We do what we know. Now, we need to move on to doing what we know can be done: leveraging the cognitive surplus for meaningful participation and contribution.

I remain fascinated by the disruptive impact of technology, and not just in schools, in other institutions and whole societies around the world. The ease of use of pervasive technology, digital cameras and video, with access to immediate global distribution will inevitably be used in social activism that challenges existing social, corporate, and political structures the world over in ways that will make the 1960's in the United States look boring and passé.

To date such activities largely have been entertaining and benign as this video by "Improv Everywhere: We Cause Scenes" demonstrates. They mobilize large groups of people via the internet to show up and stage an improvisation in a public setting.

But in the last couple of days two videos have been posted to YouTube that I suspect are an omen of things to come: people leveraging these tools to make global statements challenging the status quo. In this first example, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer begins a lecture at a university in Hungary as a protester stands up, accuses Microsoft of stealing billions in Hungarian taxpayer money and then throws three eggs at the CEO.

Then Russian presidential candidate Garry Kasparov was delivering a speech when a modified, remote controlled, toy flying helicopter carrying male genitalia came flying toward him. Russian speaking commenters over at Wired.com's post about the incident offered the following translation of Kasparov's comments after the flying object was smashed by security:

I think we have to be thankful for the opposition's demonstration of the level of discourse we need to anticipate. Also, apparently most of their arguments are located beneath the belt." Someone in the audience shouts, "Finally the political power shows its face!" Kasparov quickly replies, "Well, if that's its face..." to laughter from the audience.

I do not speak Russian and have no idea if the translation is accurate or not, but another commenter seems to indicate it is. (Don't watch the video if it will offend you. That's certainly not the point of my including this link to it.)

I include these examples, not to entertain, embarrass, or offend, but to make the point that these tools will inevitably be used for activism--probably in more significant ways that these examples begin to demonstrate. Perhaps this is among the reasons we have seen China's efforts to centrally control the internet in China.

And while governments and corporations the world over have been increasingly leveraging technology for surveillance of their citizens, citizens the world over are going to turn that surveillance, that reporting, that global transparency on the goeverments and corporations themselves. The fact that the technology is readily available to everyone will disturb a delicate balance.

As a photographer who reads numerous photo-related blogs around the world, I have seen an increase in posts about the legal rights of photographers as increasing numbers of photographers, while taking pictures in public places, are claiming to be harassed by police and security. In fact a large protest rally is being organized in Los Angeles.

But It Just Got Even Easier
A company in Israel, FlixWagon, has now made it possible to broadcast live from your Nokia Series 60 3rd edition cell phone! (Here is a link to an interview with FlixWagon by Robert Scoble over at FastCompany.TV.) Now, as long as a cell phone signal is available, security will not be able to confiscate the video shot of a staged incident or event as it will already have been broadcast. Certainly this is only the beginning of an increase in this capacity to broadcast your life coming to market. People seem to love it!

As I have mentioned before, our capacity to develop technology is vastly outpacing our capacity as a society to come to terms with how to use this technology in ways society feels are appropriate, fair and proper. Social norms have yet to be formed about any of this. What is private? What is public? What expectations should I have to anonymity of person, of information, of data?

Implications for School
This technology has significant implications for learning. If I were a teacher today, I would be all over uStream.tv! For some time now educational technology enthusiasts have chided our profession for banning cell phones from our classrooms. The more cautious educators have been reluctant to change practice citing the ways the cell phone can be abused in the school setting.

And now that live CellCasting (remember you first read the term here!) is possible, I can see this debate heating up significantly. I for one do not blame schools for wanting to proceed with cautious deliberation and informed integration. But, in the long term, school is likely to be the place this new disruptive technology has the least impact.

The world is being carved wide open, and, for better or worse, we will all get to see what it looks like.

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"]

I've been a huge fan of Yo-Yo Ma for many years. His recordings stretch the bounds of classical music, infusing into art a remarkable dance of depth, joy, and celebration. I could go into specific recordings with delight, but I want to focus on something he is doing now, in collaboration with Indaba Music, that is stretching the bounds of classical music in a very new way.

In my December 2nd post about Link2App, I provided some screenshots of iTunes that featured Yo-Yo Ma's holiday recording, Songs of Joy and Peace. This project features a collaboration with several well-known musicians. But he has now extended that collaboration to anyone in the world!

Since this past October, anyone could go online and, using the site's in-browser mixing console, add his/her own accompaniment, counter-melody, or set of variations to Yo-Yo Ma's recording of the melody from Dona Nobis Pacem (Give Us Peace). Submissions are no longer being accepted, but now everyone in the world can go to "the voterator," listen to a random selection of submissions, and vote each of them "Hot" or "Not."

The winner will have the opportunity to record with Yo-Yo Ma in a special one-on-one collaboration! The winner's rendition will also be featured on Yo-YoMa.com, Yo-Yo's MySpace page, and here on Indaba Music. The top ten, as voted by the Indaba community, will each receive a signed copy of Songs of Joy & Peace."

Take a moment to listen and vote!

And kudos to Indaba music (a Zulu word for collaboration within community) for providing an extraordinary social and collaborative site to serious musicians. Until recently, I had no idea this even existed. Music teachers, this is huge! I'm a former music teacher myself and now officially feel like I've been living under a stone.   

Members at Indaba music can network, collaborate, and discover new music, create a recording session, join one, watch one, upload an audition, participate in contests (such as the Yo-Yo Ma contest), find musicians, get hired, and even create virtual bands. This is unprecedented and makes me want to teach music again!

On so many levels, this is just remarkable!

I am convinced that the iPhone 3Gs is impacting the world of online video. In the last 6 months YouTube reported a 1700% increase in video uploads to the site via mobile devices. When the iPhone 3Gs was released, uploads began increasing 400% per day! And why not? It's insanely easy to capture, edit, and upload on the device!

From the YouTube blog:

This growth represents three things coming together: new video-enabled phones on the market, improvements to the upload flow when you post a video to YouTube from your phone, and a new feature on YouTube that allows your videos to be quickly and effortlessly shared through your social networks. It takes just a minute to connect your YouTube account to your Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader accounts. Complete a simple, one-time connection on our upload page to allow all your friends and followers to get a real-time stream of your uploads to YouTube, which can be essential in this age of citizen reporting and ubiquitous sharing.

When the iPod Touch is released with a camera and the ability to capture, edit, and upload video via WiFi (which I think is inevitable), the numbers will swell even more.

So now is the time for educators to come up to speed with video to capitalize on cool to create curricular cognition. And what better time than during the summer? Take those family videos and learn how to edit them and get them on the web. Then extend this learning to your teaching.

How easy is it exactly? Well, using only the iPhone 3Gs, here is a short 12 second video I shot of the cat this morning. It took about 10 seconds to edit the ending (cut the part when he jumped down off of the tub) and 10 seconds to upload it to YouTube. And then I took another 15 seconds to go to YouTube to get the embed code and paste it into this blog post. Total production time from start to posted: less than 1 minute!

But, you will not use this tool in your teaching because it is dead easy to implement. You will use it because the educational application of video production for learning can empower the highest levels of authentic engagement, critical thinking, problem solving, learning about learning, and focusing on curriculum based essential questions all neatly bundled up in one powerful learning by careful design package. The challenge isn't technical, it's designing the learning around the new form of engagement.

As I have time, I hope to post more about the video upload process. Using YouTube makes what I did this morning effortless. But you have many other other options as well.

Several months ago I had the opportunity to work with the awesome teachers at Lakeside Elementary School. We explored ways to setup and use a blog for learning. I am not easily impressed, but I must confess to having been very impressed with these teachers' positive, boundless energy and enthusiasm for their work with children--even after a long hard day "at the office." These teachers love their work.

After a couple months, I received an email from Mrs. Cockrell with a link to her new class blog. While having only had the class blog for two months, her initial efforts with third grade students have really been impressive. And since I have numerous questions from elementary teachers about how to leverage Web 2.0 technologies on the elementary level, I was delighted that Mrs. Cockrell agreed to be featured in this spotlight interview series. I'm sure all of our elementary colleagues will want to follow her work next year as she says she's just getting started!

1. Gayla, I understand that you have been blogging personally for about 7 years, since 2002. How has that personal blogging experience in any way informed what you are doing with your professional, classroom blogging?

Probably more than anything, it just prevented me from being wary about starting a classroom blog. I feel like a lot of teachers are unsure if they would be able to "figure it out," when in reality, it's quite simple once you just get started. So honestly, I feel like blogging is SO easy that it didn't even make much of a difference that I had been doing it personally for a while. Which is to say, if you haven't been blogging as long as I have (or at all, for that matter), it makes no difference. It is very user-friendly!

2. You just started blogging for your classroom this school year. There are so many ways a blog can be used by a classroom teacher. What are the different ways you are using your blog, and what results are you seeing from having a classroom blog?

In addition to the obvious uses (communicating upcoming dates and events, reminders, project due dates, test dates, etc.), I have found several ways to use our class blog to get the parents and students interested in it.

Some of my favorites:

• Posting videos of class performances (readers' theater, presentations, etc.) so parents can watch them at home (even students have told me they watch themselves many times!)
• Polling students and/or parents about a specific question
• Homework assignments (Usually to read an article and then answer a question in the comments section of the blog entry--I want to keep assignments short & simple for my 3rd graders so they don't get discouraged)
• Posting a game where students can actually practice their multiplication facts ON my blog without going to another website—check it out!
• Posting links to websites for specific holidays or topics
• Recording videos of “how-to” step-by-step directions on my Smartboard and uploading them to the blog so parents and students can view the directions at home. (Obviously not everyone has a Smartboard, but you can also find videos on You Tube or Teacher Tube and do this same thing.)

I know there are many more ways to use the blog, and I plan to incorporate it a lot more during the upcoming school year, but I didn’t even start my blog until April this past year! There are so many possibilities.

3. Would you share with us how the students are reacting to this new adventure in their classes?

They love it! They have their own class website, how cool!? It’s similar to how they love to look at pictures of themselves and how they love to watch the videos of their performances. I don’t know how to explain it, but they are so open to technology. Of course, they are part of a new era where they’ve never known life without technology, so it’s only natural that they would be more open to new technology than we are.

There’s something about kids wanting to feel important, and I feel this is another way to do that. Giving students the chance to respond via comments gives them a voice; the opportunity to participate and contribute to their learning. I want them to feel like their opinions and ideas really matter, because they do.

4. What do the students' parents see as the advantages of your blogging for the classroom?

For parents, I can tell it is just another way to forge positive communication between parent and teacher. I work at a school where a lot of parents are involved in their children’s education, and they really want to know what goes on in the classroom. I think they really appreciate that extra effort to include them in your classroom activities. If you think about it, it’s really great; when parents know more about what their children are learning daily, imagine what great conversations they can have at home to further develop that knowledge. Not to mention that we are essentially preparing these kids to grow up and enter a workforce that requires a sophisticated knowledge of technology. The more practice they can get, the better.

Also, parents (or students) can choose to “follow” your blog so that they receive email notification each time you update, which makes it even more convenient for parents so they don’t have to continually check back to see when you have added something to the blog.

5. As an elementary school educator, do you have any issues, concerns, or words of caution you care to share with other elementary teachers who might be considering beginning a blog for their students?

I think you definitely want to consider the safety of the students first and foremost. Keeping in mind that my blog links back to our school’s homepage, I make a point to not put their names on any pictures, and if I do include names with a video, I put the names in random order. I don’t want any stranger off the Internet to be able to drive up to the school and call my students by name!

If you find that several of your students do not have access to the internet at home, you would want to give them the opportunity to explore your class blog during computer lab time or free time.

There is also an option you can choose that requires you to “okay” any comments before they are published to the blog if you are concerned about the appropriateness of student comments.

6. Time is a huge factor for educators. How much time, above and beyond your normal teaching duties, does your blog require of you, and how do you measure this cost with the benefit of having the blog?

It depends on how much time you WANT to spend. The initial creation and set-up of my blog is what took the most time, but you only have to do that once. If I am just adding upcoming dates or writing an entry to remind parents of an upcoming field trip, etc., it only takes me about 5 minutes to update my blog. Even adding a poll to the sidebar only took me 5 minutes!

I added some music to my blog that would play whenever you visit the site (through playlist.com), and that took a while longer, but that is in no way a necessity! Also, I only had to do it once. If you want to upload a video or photos, that will take a little bit longer, of course, but I definitely feel the reward is worth the extra time. The time I spend on updating our class blog is NOTHING compared to how much time I spend creating lessons for my Smartboard! =)

7. Anything else you wish to share?

If you consider yourself a novice at new technology, ask around; there are bound to be at least a few teachers you work with who are familiar with blogging now that it has gotten so popular. I bet they wouldn’t mind helping you get started until you’re familiar with how to post an entry, etc. Just think of the possibilities. How much more fun is it to read an article on the internet and then answer questions as a comment on your class blog than to read a piece of paper and circle a multiple choice answer? It really speaks for itself!

Special thanks to Mrs. Cockrell for sharing her experience with us! And I hope she has given our elementary colleagues some ideas for putting their classrooms on the grid!

I've posted before about LittleSnapper, a screen capture utility for the Mac. I've just downloaded their latest version, which includes some very strong improvements. I especially like the ability to automatically sort the captures in your library by type: Screenshot, Websnap, Photo, Illustration, Mockup, iSight (camera capture), iPhone (screen capture), and other; the ability to create collections, save searches, maintain smart search folders; and I also like the enhanced tagging features.

Additionally, the new online Ember operability enhancements are awesome! Who ever would have thought about building social networks around screen capture?! Well, they did. You also have flickr upload and ftp upload capacity. They have also added some helpful screencasts on tips for use.

LittleSnapper is a great app for managing your computer and iPhone screen captures!

NetNewsWire for the Mac and FeedDemon for the PC are undoing a big transition. I'm not sure I am all that enthusiastic about this as I will lose two functions I use a lot: embedding live blog rolls on blogs and being able to create clippings folders that generate their own RSS feeds to which others can subscribe.

The stated reason for the change: the new feed readers will now sync with Google Reader instead of NewsGator's online service, which will only continue to exist for their enterprise clients. Newsgator claims this was their most requested feature. Hmm...

And, just for fun, using Little Snapper to capture the web address for "the connected scale" by Withings, I present the ultimate humiliation: a beautiful, elegant bathroom scale that is WiFi enabled, talks to your iPhone, and publishes you weight and body fat index (BMI) to the web and your iPhone. It will automatically recognize up to eight users and generates detailed graphs.

I predict we are going to see an onslaught of very personal and practical technological convergence over the next few years: embedding microchips in any- and everything and connecting it to the web. Your scale will just be the beginning.

Patientslikeme and similar services will begin to connect patients and medical machinery to other patients and their doctors' iPhones. Don't sneer, one such system has already been FDA approved allowing physicians to monitor your well being while you are connected to medical contraptions in intensive care no matter what dinner party they are attending.

Will the San Francisco parking grid will tell your iPhone where the nearest empty parking place is to where you currently are? Maybe soon it will also issue a ticket if you stay past the metered time.

An electric motorcycle is in development that uses the iPhone as a snap-in dashboard.

Use your iPhone to monitor your baby and send you an SMS when the child wakes up or becomes noisy.

iPhoto sports a rather astounding level of accuracy with facial recognition technology. Soon every photo will actually be able to tag itself by identifying the people in the photo while knowing exactly where you were when you took it.

Just this week a stolen iPhone was identified as the "alleged" thief was walking with it down the street. The police just followed the pulsing dot on the computer screen until they identified the very pocket it was in and the teenager with that pocket.

Collect and then pile all of the data together online, mash it up this way and then that, and we can know everything about you without even knowing you at all. Won't that just be grand!

I just discovered Feverº, a self-hosted RSS feed aggregator with a twist.

People are becoming aware of the power of reading RSS feeds through online feed (or news) aggregators like Google Reader and Bloglines, or applications like NetNewsWire and FeedDemon that run on the computer desktop and do the same thing: bring lots and lots of current information from your favorite blogs and other websites to you almost in real time.

The problem: most of us subscribe to so many RSS feeds, reading them becomes a time consuming challenge. Wouldn't it be helpful at times if your RSS aggregator could sift through all of your feeds and indicate trends and top discussions from among all of your RSS sources? Tah dah: Feverº!

Feverº looks for hot "discussions" across your many feeds. It actually encourages you to add more feeds, even ones you're less interested in following on a regular basis, but consider trusted sources. You add these feeds to a group called "Sparks." Fever looks through your "Sparks" and your "Kindling" (which are the feeds you read regularly) for the topics or discussions that are "Hot." Sort of an aggregator of aggregation...

These hot topics are ranked in order with the hottest ones on top. You can check out the hot topics for now, today, this week, etc.

Fever will not be for everyone because it is web-based and must be self-hosted on your own server account. This means you must install it yourself on a hosting service. However, that said, I found the installation easy and straight forward. Your hosting service requirements include your typical: Apache, PHP, and MySQL.

Because you are hosting it yourself, Google isn't monitoring and making money off of what you read, and you can read from any browser, your iPhone or iPod Touch, and Mac users even have a desktop application, Chill Pill, that interfaces with Feverº to add additional functionality.

Feverº is a novel approach to RSS feed aggregation and reading and offers many things I haven't mentioned. You might want to check it out! While its current feature set is already rich enough to cause me to purchase it, I look forward to seeing it even mature further. In light of the recent changes to NetNewsWire and FeedDemon, Feverº may well become my new aggregator of choice!

This is an interesting PBS 5Across video featuring the conversation among Leif Hansen, Annalee Newitz, Dom Sagolla, Deborah Schultz, and Dr. Jim Taylor about the impact of technology in our lives.

A LexisNexis survey found that if you add up the time people spend using email, web browsers, instant messaging, and Microsoft Office, it comes to 15.9 hours per day. That's extraordinary.

Quotation: MediaShift . 5Across: How to Deal with Technology Overload | PBS

Below is a casual outline I made while listening to the video (and yes, I was multitasking so the outline is very loose). If you would prefer to skip to a particular section in the video that interests you, go to this link at PBS' MediaShift site and watch just that section.

Taking Breaks

• How can technology serve your goals
• How does it get in the way of your goals
• 12 stages: curiosity, invite participation, cut back ... get curious again
• Good or bad? = Is work work good or bad for me
• Rescue time: Break Minder (Windows), Time Out (Mac), Freedom (Mac)
• Input days or Output days

Virtual vs. Real World

• Life is dirty; Tech is cleaner and more linear
• Tech driving us vs. us using it
• Sharing physical space
• Always on, always live
• What can't be digitized from face to face

Online Etiquette

• What are the new rules, the new contexts
• Internet is a teenager
• Reflection versus speed
• Etiquette around when we are to respond to things

Psychological Issues

• External validation
• FOMO (Fear of missing out)
• Technology addiction
• Law of unintended consequences

Benefits of Technology

• Avoid judgement by shedding part of our identity
• Transparency

Implanted Technology

• Biology and technology = deeper disconnect spiritually
• Need info at my fingertips
• Need to be bored which provides discipline
• Expectations of what being present means

I'm happy to report that Twitter reset my account. I can now Tweet again. I'm not exactly sure what made it stop working. It just happened. But, now I'm up and can Tweet again!

For all of my educator friends who use Blogger, Google is about to introduce some significant enhancements to the blogging platform. Apparently competition in the blogging space is heating up a bit.

Google will be releasing 5 new dynamic templates that look really cool—see the video below. Users will be able to use and customize each template. These new templates use the latest in web technologies: AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3, to make all of their interactive goodness happen.

Google has set up a help center article about these new templates, and you can also preview them at: Flipcard | Mosaic | Sidebar | Snapshot | and Timeslide.

Finally, below is an introductory video from Google that highlights the new templates. You can see them in action.

I just read this article in the New York Times about states passing laws to require local school districts to make new rules...

Always a good idea! [Yes, sarcasm.]

Our culture is so unsuccessful at legislating common sense, but such activity makes for good soundbites!

When a small fraction of people use poor judgement, I think we are better served directly dealing with those specific issues and circumstances rather than encumbering organizations with more obligations with which, in all probability, they will not succeed. The expectation is appropriate professional judgement. True leadership articulates the vision, provides resources for accomplishing the vision (including who is hired and fired), and reflects on the degree to which an organization is successful in accomplishing the vision; so, everything remains focused, at all times, on the vision becoming reality.

You see, if we really want to get to the root of this social media problem, I think our law makers should ban electricity in schools and in the homes of all school employees and students. I am convinced that, without electricity we would all but eliminate these issues of teachers and students crossing the line with social media. Hmm, perhaps we may need to ban them from even entering into places that have electricity...

Maybe we should pass laws requiring policy makers to have common sense...

Oh for some horse sense!