Room With A View

This looks like a useful tool.

The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, constructive, goal directed (i.e., reflective), authentic, and collaborative (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003).

via Technology Integration Matrix.

Class blogs: a better way to teach? | Education | guardian.co.uk.

Looks at a primary class in the U.K. and how the teacher and students are using blogging. It’s an interesting read. I especially like the part about the importance of comments. I need to do more of that myself.

I recently watched Chris Anderson’s TED Talk in which he describes Crowd Sourced Innovation. His talk has sparked a lot of thought and connections to things I’ve been reading and trying in my practice. I need to reflect on them and write about them but I don’t have time this morning to do so in detail it deserves. Crowd Sourced Innovation is a fascinating and exiting concept but what struck me most was his suggestion that the rise of online video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo will spark the same revolution in how we learn, as Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press.

He suggests that before the printing press face to face communication was the norm and that we had thousands of years to perfect our face to face communication skills. With the invention of the printing press face to face communication was supplanted as the main form of broad communication and the written word took over. This happened because of the printed words efficiency at mass communication. One to many communication was possible because of the printing press.

Now with the advent of online digital video Anderson suggests that face to face communication with the power of voice inflection and body language can be used to reach large numbers of people in the same way that Gutenberg could with his printing press.

The implications for schools, teaching, learning and curricula are many.

Apple of My Eye is a great example of the potential of video technology in skilled hands. If you haven’t watched it, do so now. The story is shot and edited on an iPhone 4 but don’t be fooled into thinking that because it’s a simple camera it’s a simple movie. These guys know how to shoot a flick.

The film makers, Michael Koerbel and Anna Elizabeth James, are MFA students at the University of Southern California and founders of Majek Pictures. They know their stuff. Their camera techniques, lighting, and music are what make this such a great film.

The iPhone 4 in unskilled hands will just make the usual run of the mill cellphone movies. It shows the importance for kids to learn the techniques involved in telling a visual story. When they are taught and given these small powerful ubiquitous cameras, the potential is very exciting.

For more about on the new “indie” genre of iPhone film making checkout CNN’s article on the topic.

The iPad is great for displaying photos. Before my trip I knew I’d be staying with friends and I knew they would want to see photos of the kids and some of the things my family and I have been doing since we last saw them. As our family photos are on my wife’s MacBook I made some albums in iPhoto, connected up the iPad and synced them across. I also had a few albums on my work computer that I wanted on my iPad but this is where things got frustrating.

The iPad only wants to sync photos with one computer so I couldn’t sync the iPad with my computer as easily as I had with my wife’s. After some quick googling I found Photo Transfer App which let’s one transfer photos over one’s local wifi network. With it one can transfer photos between iPads, computers and iPhones. It’s quite simple to use but as it uses wifi it’s slow to transfer a lot of photos. The biggest limitation is that I couldn’t organize the photos once they were on my iPad. Photo Transfer App dumped all the photos into one album and once there I wasn’t able to sort the photos into albums, rename or tag them–very limited. I checked Photo Transfer App’s website and according to them this is a limitation in Apple’s Photo App. I hope this is improved in the next iOS update which is due out in November.

I should mention that I do not have the dock adapter that allows a camera’s memory card or transfer cable to be plugged into the iPad. I tried to get one but at the time the iPad was not sold in China and therefore, the Apple Store didn’t have them. They may be available now but I don’t think the adapter would give me the ability to organize my photos. It would just help me get my photos on my iPad directly from my camera.

For a traveller, the iPad does a great job of displaying photos. The screen on the iPad makes one’s photos look fantastic. As a tool for sorting and organizing photos, it’s limited. Until it gets this functionality one still needs a computer which is pain because I don’t want to carry a laptop and an iPad when I travel.

As much as I like my iPad it’s bit awkward to write with. It’s okay and on this trip it’s worth the few hassles involved to save the weight in my shoulder bag but there are a few compromises to make when using it.

First, the on-screen keyboard is pretty good but I make a lot more typos with it. I’m a touch typist so I can’t type as well as I do with a real keyboard. I could add a keyboard but then that would defeat the purpose of traveling light. A hunt and peck typist may actually have an advantage over me when using the on-screen keyboard.

Second, I can’t use the visual editor. Instead I use the HTML editor. It’s not a big deal. I don’t have to mark every paragraph or anything but it is a factor.

Third, some windows in the editor don’t scroll properly. For example the window in which I am writing seems to have a character limit. I can write more but I reach a point where I can’t scroll through my entire post. To get around this I click in the post as if I want to edit a word and then slowly drag around until I get to the section of the post in which I wish to work. Another place where this is a factor is the Categories window. I can’t scroll through all my categories and I have not found a work around for it.

So, as an easy to carry blogging tool the iPad is pretty good. I should probably get an external keyboard and there are a few quirky editing things that still need to be worked on but it’s not too bad.

I’m on a week’s holiday in Malaysia and decided to leave my MacBook at home. My iPad is my computer on this trip. I didn’t make the decision to leave the MacBook at home easily. I rely heavily on my laptop. It’s never far from my reach. Notes, calendar, email, they all keep me organized and on track. I have a very poor memory so I write everything down and set alarms to remind what I should be doing and when.

The iPad has been great! It has most of the features I need while I’m on the road and it’s so light I hardly know it’s in my shoulder bag. Add in the fact that I can have a guide book plus the book i’m reading loaded on it and it just might put chiropractors out of business.

An app I find invaluable is Instapaper. I use it to load up webpages I want to read when I’m out of range of wifi–I don’t have the 3G iPad.

Before I left home I loaded up some photos of things my family and I have been up to so I could share them with friends we’re staying with in KL. The photos look great. Managing photos is not great but I’ll write about that in another post.

Movies and TV shows are an obvious plus too. VLC is now out for the iPad which meant I did’t have to reformat all my videos to play specifically on the iPad–a real time sav
er.

All in all I’m very happy with my decision to leave my MacBook at home on this trip. The iPad is a great travel companion.

This extra security level that Google is planning seems like a good idea on the surface but it may make Google’s services much harder to use with students.

The extra layer comes in the form of a numeric code that a user types in after entering the standard password into a Google account. That code, however, is a code that changes, unique to a single sign-on.

The code comes to the user by way of SMS, an automated phone call or a smartphone app and users have the flexibility to identify a regular computer, bypassing the need for a numeric code for subsequent visits.

via Google tackles password weaknesses with two-step sign-on | ZDNet .

I’ve been wondering about this a lot lately. Of course, organizations don’t learn. Individuals do. But an organization is a group of individuals and if that group of individuals is learning together then I guess one can say that the organization is learning.

I see a couple of things that need to be in place for an organization to learn. First, there needs to be structures to help the group keep track of and share their common understandings. I’m a technie so I see things like blogs, wikis, video streaming servers and such as structures for a group to share and archive their learning.

Secondly, I see that the organization needs to create a culture of learning. The tools can only go so far. The members of an organization must want to learn or at least there must be an ethos of learning. Assuming there is a learning ethos then individuals need to build time in their schedules to learn.

I’m attending Learning 2.010 this weekend and I’m a little conflicted by something I’ve heard several times. Basically it goes like this.

“Technology shouldn’t drive what’s happening in classrooms–curriculum should.”

The idea being that we shouldn’t use technology for technology’s sake and I agree. Too often people want to use the latest software or the latest gadget because it’s “cool” rather than because it has a well thought out justifiable reason to use it. But I believe it was Gary Stagger that once pointed out that technology does shape all classrooms. The technology shaping the classroom may be a chalkboard, tables, desks, whiteboards etc. All classrooms are shaped in some way by the technology environment that creates them.We should be carefully choosing the right technologies to shape learning experiences. Right now many people just take the technologies that shape influence learning experiences for granted.

Also, there is a time to use technology for technology’s sake. Things like Lego Robotics and MIT’s Scratch can be hard to fit into the standard curriculum but learning the skills and thought processes to program in these environments is valuable and worthwhile. As I type I’m using a MacBook and typing into WordPress–someone had to engineer the software and hardware to make it all happen. Some one needed to learn some technology for technology’s sake.

I realize most people spend the majority of their time on social networks or using computers as tools but we need people that have learned technology for technology’s sake. They’re called programmers and we will continue to need more and more of them.

So I am conflicted. I understand that we don’t want to use the latest software or gadget just because it’s cool. We need to clearly articulate why we want to use it. Yet, technology does change the learning environment and there is a need to teach technology for technology’s sake.