There are thousands (millions?) of new Web tools coming online every day it seems, and thanks to TechCrunch and Tim Lauer, I think I do a fair job of keeping up with the most interesting ones. MyStickies is one of those tools that I think has some cool thinking behind it, and one that I can see immediate application to the classroom.

It’s a Firefox extension that basically allows you to create Sticky Notes on the fly, tag them, and archive them with links back to the original page. So say I’m doing some research on the ways in which schools are trying to control this new Web and I find a salient paragraph in that Wall Street Journal article I referenced yesterday. I just highlight the text, ALT-drag a MyStickies notebox over it, and a sticky pops up with the highlighted text already included. At that point, I can add my own notes/reflections, and then tag the sticky under any number of headings. When I go back to my MyStickies dashboard, all of my notes are displayed along with links back to the original page, sortable by tags or the sites themselves. In the near future, I can add friends to the process…the obligatory pinch of social goodness.

The downsides:

I want it to save the whole page like Furl.net.

I want an RSS feed for the notes/tags

I want it to be bought my Yahoo or Google so it won’t go away.

I want to be able to export a bibliography of sources.

Hmmm…maybe it would be better to ask Furl to add a MyStickies feature instead…

Still, I can see this working for collaborative teams of researchers working under the same login collecting relevant stuff in a pretty easy and organized way.

As long as my quick launch toolbar doesn’t quite have enough icons to fill up the entire width of my screen, I’ll keep Tim Lauer in my aggregator. Not only has he done some really cool things with these technologies at his school, he is without question one of the best at finding new tools and apps to play with.

Gizmo is like Skype except you can record your conversations. Nice. Since the thought of me droning on by myself in a podcast is why I’ve basically stopped podcasting, this might make it easier to get back into it. My Gizmo came is willrich45 (just like Skype) if anyone might want to try it out.

He also mentions a Firefox extenstion that makes it easy to geotag your photos at Flickr and embed Google maps with them. That also will make it easy to locate the many pretty scenes that show up there every day.

I think it’s been a while since I’ve asked for a few more hours in the day. I think I’d like three. Eh, maybe four. I’m staring at about a zillion leaves in my front yard…
—–

If you want a nifty little tool for teaching basic information literacy in these days of the Read/Write Web, go to Blummy, create a bookmarklet with the links outlined below, and put it on every computer in your school. Why? Because not only can you replicate much of Alan’s multi-post bookmarklet (which I’m still keeping, btw,) but you can also add links that will (using my homepage as an example):

automatically look up who owns any website you’re on (pick the “Whois” bookmarklet.)

show who is linked to a particlular site (pick the “who’s linking” bookmarklet with the Google logo.)

and shows (literally) the page that every link on the site, well, links to, creating a page of active mini-browser windows. (Pick the “linked sites” bookmarklet) This takes a while, but it’s worth the wait, and you can even set the size of the screenshot that comes up. Amazing.

As Alan November likes to point out, those are three basic pieces of information that every teacher and student needs to begin to evaluate the authority and accuracy of a particular site. Knowing who owns the site tells you something. If every outgoing link is a link back to the originating site, that tells you something. If every incoming link is a link from some spam blog, that tells you something too.

There’s more to talk about here, and I’m sure this isn’t any huge programming marvel, but the big news is that I haven’t seen an easier way yet to get this crucial information. Very cool.

This week, our Educational Technology Committee will make a recommendation on what route to take regarding the classroom model pilot we’ve been running here the last two months. For those that may not have caught my previous posts about this, our pilot model is a teacher Tablet PC, wireless network/Internet connection, and a wireless, ceiling mounted projector with screen. In preparation for the meeting, we’ve been collecting the responses from a survey of our pilot teachers, reflections the superviors at our school, and the report of an independent researcher we had come in to observe and interview the teachers. Hopefully, I can give a more complete picture of what the results a bit later on, but I just wanted to share some of the early feedback from the teachers. I will tell you that all of it, 100% has been positive. Here’s a sampling:

“It is simply amazing – access to information, always having everything WITH you, students having hands-on engagement.”

“The level of student interest and comprehension has never been higher when I am using the tablet.”

“This has changed education, and special education specifically, in my opinion. It easily brings out the best in a teacher.”

“When I haven’t used my tablet, I feel like I’m not teaching correctly anymore.”

“In teaching a special ed class, the level of participation & interest that this tablet has generated is AMAZING.”

“My students and I both use the tablet function every day. We keep classroom notes on it, we annotate documents, we read documents together and implement closer reading strategies. Next quarter I plan on using the tablet to grade and respond to student work. I think the tablet function is invaluable.”

“The versatility is excellent–I have annoated college essays for students wanting extra help, without having to set up dates and times that students usually miss. There are many time-saving and student-helping results from the inking aspect of the tablet.”

“I believe that the students are volunteering to answer questions far more frequently because they don’t have to walk up to the board with the eyes of every other student in the class at their back.”

“The writing tablet function of the PCTablet has opened up many doors for curricular as well as personal uses. Taking notes on student presentations, having students define terms right in the tablet, and a personal calendar that translates my writing into word document print are just some of the great features offered by the Tablet.”

Now I know there are other solutions out there, and I’ve been getting into some “debates” with people about interactive white boards and tablets. (I think tablets win, hands down.) But I have to tell you that even though I personally would never be without a tablet PC, I never dreamed the response from my staff would be this positive. And it has the whole school buzzing about what the future might hold.

Ironically, I saw my first ever Tablet PC commercial over the weekend, for Gateway’s new model. Now I really wonder if Michael Dell will read our pilot report when we send it to him in January…

Much blogged about elsewhere, suprglu is a tool that allows you to bring a whole bunch of rss feeds onto the same webpage, and the educational potential of it is pretty clear.

Aggregate all of a students production in one page.

Bring a bunch of differerent search feeds together for easy viewing

Create a class site that aggregates whatever content feeds you’re providing for students (See Dave’s detail on this.)

Create a collaborative project site

Bring teacher lesson plans or ideas together on one page. (I wish I could host suprglu on my own server…)

Now suprglu doesn’t solve my continuing dilemma of how to conveniently store the important snippets of information that I find on the Web (though I have to say the more I use del.icio.us the more I’m starting to understand the power of it, not so much the social connections but the personal organization standpoint. I just wish I could add more text than it lets me.) However, I think it might be a very easy way to get teachers to begin to understand the power of RSS feeds. It’s one thing to talk about aggregation at Bloglines, but being able to show information coming together in this way, and being able to make it happen so easily makes this a very intriguing tool.

Our Tablet PC pilot keeps rolling along, and we’ve been collecting some regular reflections from our teachers that I thought might be interesting to share. Let me just say that personally, I think the tablet technology is potentially transformative for teachers, and as you’ll see if you read all the quotes, it’s been transformative for many here. Now I know that we are extremely fortunate to be able to test this model (Tablet PC, wireless Internet access, wireless ceiling mounted LCD projectors), and we’re hoping to expand it to most if not all faculty next year should things continue to go well. The creativity that inking allows, the “never have your back to the students” mobility that wireless connectivity allows, the abilty to save and share the work you do on the tablet, and the hand-off-ability of giving it to students to show their work renders a lot of other technologies (i.e Smart Boards) pretty irrelevant. It’s been a treat to watch.

So anyway, here are a few teacher comments, and you can read a bunch more excerpts if you like.

–To tell you the truth, I feel like I am a better teacher since I have acquired such wonderful technology.

–I love this model and can’t wait to get to class each day. It makes each lesson unique, even when I am just creating notes, or showing a PowerPoint.

–I’ve found that one of the best things about the tablet is the increase in student participation.

–I am finding that the tablet has become almost necessary in order for me to complete my lessons…Finally, I am relieved when I remember that if this model is not implemented next year, we all get to keep these awesome tools that I feel have enhanced my teaching, my organization, and most importantly, student learning in my classroom.

–Still, I am sometimes suspicious that my dear tablet is occasionally possessed by the devil (and I’m not referring to the Regan-like swiveling head)… Hall duty is paradise now instead of banishment; I must get 10x the work done. I grade and and enter into GradeQuick immediately, work on PowerPoints, research online, check my email, work with other teachers, etc. Additionally, I feel like a constant tablet commercial: everyone stops by to ask questions and ask where they can get one…Although the tablet occasionally creaks and moans and rattles, all in all it’s been a treat. I consistently feel empowered.

So, ironically, Userland is building in even more flexibility for teachers and students in it’s 9.6 version due out soon. CEO Scott Young says:

This is an important issue for many educators using blog technology in the classroom and revolves around the ability to protect and insulate the student’s work from criticism – especially the destructive kind – before its released to the class or the school in general. As such the teacher needs the ability to review a students work and comment / advise before its published. This iterative process may require several cycles before the work is ready for prime time. While an editorial oversight process is pretty different from the way most blog software behaves, its crucially important for academic blogging applications.

So for Manila 9.6 we will provide the ability for a Managing Editor to moderate and approve material before its published to a wider audience. On a site with this feature enabled, all items the students create will be “pending” items. Pending items can only be seen and edited by the creator and the Managing Editor. To simplify the process of collecting and reviewing “pending” items, they will be collected for review on a single page by the site’s Managing Editor (the teacher). The “pending items” page will list the author, department/category, date created, date last edited and by whom, a checkbox to delete the item, and a button to “publish” the item to the home page.

Ok, I think I get that. When students are contributing to a teacher-owned site, the teacher can now review what students write before it gets published. But on a student owned site, if the student is a managing editor, there is still no way to do prior review unless the teacher takes the managing editor role on the student’s site and the student is given a lesser editorial role. Get it? I think I’d rather do that a bit differently.

I’m rewriting the Manila documents for my teachers today (if anyone wants a copy of what I come up with, just let me know.) But there is still one thing I won’t be able to add that for a split second when reading Scott’s post today I thought I would:

“And, Manila also allows site owners to moderate comments that are left on the site by approving their publication before they can be seen publically.”

Scott, if you’re listening…

So it’s taken me until now to really start digging into Manila 9.5. I’m starting to set up sites for teachers and students for the news school year, and I’m just realizing how much more Manila can do in terms of determining who sees what and how. It’s going to take some time to play, and I’m already trying to enlist some teacher volunteers to push the envelope a bit for me here, but here are some pretty cool aspects right out of the box:

Teachers and students can set up private posting relationships on individual sites. For instance, if I want to respond to a piece of writing and maybe even add a grade, we can do that privately on the student blog by creating a separate “cohort.” So there may be a lot of posts that only the two of us can see and interact with.

And cohorts are pretty flexible. With a little thought, you can create all sorts of content subgroups within the site. For instance, if three students are working together, they can now make all that work for each other’s eyes only, and then publish the final copies for just the class or the world to see. Very cool.

Students can even set time paramaters for posts to be readable by cohorts. That would be great if you were asking students to give feedback by a certain time.

You can even make the built in Manila aggregator available to only certain people. Same with search and access to site stats.

It even has a wiki-esque versioning capability allowing you to see who has done what and restoring earlier versions of content with one click.

I know I’ve been hoping to do a comparison of the tools out there, and I still mean to as soon as I get a few more days in the week. But with this upgrade, Manila has really given teachers and students a lot more flexibility in the ways they can work and collaborate without the whole world watching. And that has been a concern of many Manila teachers. I’m looking forward to seeing how it’ll perform in practice.

Now, if only they’d build in comment approval…
—–

Is it just me, or is Blogger for Word a pretty big deal? Now would be bloggers don’t even have to open up a blog to post; they can do it all from within a very familiar, spell-checkable environment with just two clicks of a button. Not the most powerful little app, but I think it might just raise the comfort level quite a bit. No? Seems like another step toward the seamless integration of publishing tools into the “normal” work environment.

Sliced bread just got a little less great.

Imagine being able to go to a site where you plug in the latitude and longitude of a particluar place and get not only a map of the area but a satellite photo AND links to any pictures of local attractions (or whatever else) that have been posted to Flickr.

Well, now you can.

Just click in the comments section where it says “geotagged” for this photo of the Vietnam Wall that I took and uploaded to Flickr. Watch what happens.

Then start considering the possibilities…

Have I mentioned lately that I really love this stuff. No, really.

I mean it.

I really do.
—–

In the never-ending search for ways to follow threads of conversations comes Blogpulse’s Conversation Tracker which lets you know if someone is commenting on what someone commented about something someone wrote about what you posted on your Weblog. Kind of interesting. Now is there a way to slap a link a la Trackback on every blog post?
—–

Widely linked, but I wanted to just post this news that Yahoo now has a search just for Creative Commons material. Nice.
—–

(via Tim) I’ve been lamenting lately how difficult it has become for me to read books these days because a) I think my brain is getting used to the shorter snippets of blog reading and b) because they don’t have any links. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to click on a word to see what it means or get more information from a primary source.

Well, there looks like there might somewhat of a solution to problem b) from Atlantic Monthly which has woven the hypertext idea into the cover article about talk radio. If you’re quick, you can see the entire .pdf of what it looks like. I like the concept, but I think I’m more into the digital book idea, with hypertext built in. I love reading on my tablet. But I haven’t had a chance to do the digital book thing to any great degree yet. Probably should hurry up and get there before my brain starts shutting down on anything longer than 5 or 6 paragraphs…

Jim Wenzloff has put together a nice primer on how to get the most out of Furl. I have to say it’s definitely one of my favorite tools on the Web, and more and more I’m finding it to be an invaluable, focused resource for me to mine. Of course it’s taken a while to build up the content, but rarely a day goes by that I don’t go to my archive to find something that I need. And the best part is just sharing a link to my topics when people ask for resources…
—–

Sometimes it takes me a little while to get my brain wrapped around all these new ideas, and the one I’ve been struggling with a bit lately is the concept of tagging and folksonomies and the like. I love that f-word, the idea that we can create our own taxonomies for the information we find relevant. We’re creating our own personal libraries with our own personal filing systems. I can tag Flickr posts and del.icio.us links not only to give them relevance for me but to associate them with what other like-minded folks are saving and posting. I’ve even started tagging my Web Notes as a way to easily find them when “filter” my pages. (Of course, this means that I’ve also been keeping up a list of tags so I can make better connections of ideas. It’s not as hard as it sounds…)

The rub comes when our own folksonomies don’t exactly meet up with other people’s folksonomies. And even more, when they render traditional taxonomies irrelevant. I’ve been bumping that around in my head the last few days, and then today I found this post by Jenny Levine (via Stephen Cohen) that just made it all come together:

They’ll have other impacts on libraries, too, though, especially services like Flickr and del.icio.us that let users tag items with their own vocabularies. When someone gets used to retrieving items using the words they think of, not the words we think of, do you think they’ll still be willing to type “LastName, FirstName” to find an author? Will they understand a title search that accepts exact phrases only? (Those are rhetorical questions and the correct answers are “no” and “no,” even if you offer keyword searching hidden elsewhere on your catalog.)

So how could we make better use of the integration of folksonomies and user-based vocabularies? I’m not suggesting we throw the bath water out with the baby, because I’m also a big fan of structured searching, and let’s face it – one of the things Google isn’t good at is searching structured data. But why can’t we offer both? They aren’t mutually exclusive.

Why can’t our catalogs let users find items of interest and then store them for later retrieval using their own tags. Take a look at this Flickr page for architecture. Notice the “related” and “see also” links? The same thing happens on the del.icio.us page for architecture. Imagine the display of this type of folksonomy integrated into a library’s catalog, so that users could find titles and subjects for “architecture,” but they could also browse by tags (such as “buildings” or “urban”), which they could then bookmark themselves and specify as “public” or “private” (like Furl’s “private archive” feature). Aggregate the public tags and let users access their private ones.

This is the future of search, not only getting back what the database says is relevant but associating with what other people think is relevant as well. And this is what has been bouncing in my brain, this idea that if we really want to be information literate anymore, we not only need to be able to find and evaluate a relevant source, we need to be able to find and evaluate other people out there who have similar interests and by reputation can inform our own search. We need to subscribe to those people. That’s the gist of it. It’s all collaborative, all of us working as editors and filters for each other. Like a huge organism of networked people behind the ideas we’re tracking.

Ok, maybe that’s a little much. (I’m sure Tom is streching his fingers by now.) But that’s the sense I’m getting. I need to work through it more, but in there somewhere is, I think, an important truth waiting to be found…

And if none of that really matters to you, you still have to read this fascinating description of the ESP Game which is the test your skill at folksonomies game. More, much more on all of this to come, I’m sure.

So a few months ago I noted a new school magazine blog in Viginia started by first-year teacher George Mayo. The kids have loved it.

Well, guess what? Now there is a podcast to go along with the magazine. And it is FANTASTIC! How cool is that? This is the kind of constructivist, shared learning experience that the Read/Write Web makes possible. George says that it’s “amazing to be able to have a relatively high quality radio show so easily. Endless possibilities here.” Amen.

If we can have the world’s youngest video blogger, then we can sure as heck have the world’s youngest podcasting class. Let’s spread that meme, eh?

I’m constantly amazed at the move toward “social” software on the Internet, not so much because it’s happening (people by nature, I think, like to connect) but in the creative ways it’s happening. Not only can you connect with the people, you can connect with their ideas, like with Furl and del.icio.us. The newest example is 43 Things, a site that at first blush seems a bit silly, but once you dig a little deeper, has a really intruiging premise.

It’s simple; you put in 43 Things (or 5, or 23, or 12) that you want to accomplish and if anyone else has put any of those goals, you get linked up with them. For instance, I want to learn how to play guitar. Well, there are 11 other people at 43 Things that share that goal, and now, if we like, lilevil, and shira and bjorn and the rest could pursue that goal together by posting or blogging about our experience and commenting back and forth to one another about it. There are even RSS feeds that let you keep up with everything from your aggregator. Life is wonderful, isn’t it?

Right now, the top goals are “taking more pictures”, “stop procrastinating” and learn Ruby. (What made me think one of them would be something like “save the world from utter destruction?”) At number four is “be a better blogger”, something I know we all aspire to ;0).

So what? Well, I’m thinking wouldn’t it be cool to hook students with similar goals or assignments up in a similar fashion? Like a site that could create communities of students who were all doing fetal pig dissections or reading the same novel? They could share experiences, techniques, interpretations… Now I know there would be a lot of safety and security issues to think through. But this is an interesting model of what we can do these days, connect learners, achievers, goal setters, whatever group you want from around the world to work toward a common end.

Personally, I’m heading to the live simply group. My life is waaaayyy to complicated…

From WFMU near New York City:

  Seven Second Delay with Ken and Andy (official page with archives)–Ken and Andy further lower WFMU’s already abysmal standards as the program enters its death throes. Stunt radio which subjects the radio audience to concepts and topics which mature adults should not have to endure. Find the fatal flaw.

And:

  Jonesville Station (official page with archives)–An hour of life with Glen Jones. Talk about things that need talking about. Rants about things that could use a good rant. Conversation with folks worth conversing with.

Here’s the complete list with iPod instructions and everything.

I know I feel better now about where this is all heading…

So having said last week that I was pretty much done with the podcasting stuff, here I am, back with what I guess is Podcast #3. But, this one is a bit different.

After listening recently to an NPR audio-essay on Brian Eno I thought “now there’s an application for Podcasts” or something close to that. See, to me the power in this has always been about the audience, the ability to distribute the creation to people in the hopes they’ll listen. The Eno essayist had NPR. We, thanks to Podcasting, have the Internet.

So, I carved out a few hours, wrote up an essay, fired up Audacity, and tried to pay Podcasting hommage to one of my favorite musicians, Todd Rundgren, who came out with a new CD last year that really floored me. After a short intro, this is the result. (There’s about 20 seconds between the intro and the actual project, by the way.)

This is by no means perfection, in fact at times it gut-wrenchingly embarrasing. (The grand irony comes with what Todd sings at the end right after I sign off. Nails it.) There are lots of ps popping, and keep your finger on your iPod volume as the levels leave something to be desired. But for the most part, this is the kind of thing I see Podcasting being used for in the classroom. Of course, the big test is if Alan can stay awake…

This comment left by Anne Blocker, Director of the National Learning Laboratory is a great example of what’s great about Weblogs. Considering it was the absolute first thing I read online in 2005, it hopefully augers a great blog year upcoming.

Her comment has left me thinking a great deal about how technology offers different value to different learners. I’m such a visual learner that perhaps the iPod may not be a tool I use often. But for Anne, obviously, the iPod plays a very important role in how she learns. And as an instructional technology supervisor, I appreciate the reminder. Her process is such an eye-opener to me, and it’s got me looking for a way to replicate it in Windows. WireTap Pro looks like an amazing program, but because it’s MAC only, it’s one I can’t use, and neither can my students. I’m also thinking about her statement that “slow students need everything faster.” There is obviously a lot I have to learn.

It’s interactions like these that make me such a blogvangelist. Like Anne, I can’t imagine my life without the constant learning opportunities that these tools offer.

Here’s to a great year!

So I did manage to get the last 40 GB iPod in New Jersey right after Christmas and I’ve been starting to play with it in between family gatherings and big meals. Let me first say that I am very psyched about the Belkin microphone adapter I got which allows me to use the iPod as a recording device. I’ve been interviewing my kids, and I can see all sorts of ways to use just that piece of it in the classroom…recording classwork, oral histories, interviews for MovieMaker voice overs. The best part is that it automatically dumps each recording as a .wav file to your hard drive when you sync up with iTunes on your computer. That’s an easy import into Audacity if I wanted to include them in podcasts.

Problem is, I don’t know that I’ll be doing much podcasting in the future. While my two attempts were fun, I guess, I can’t help but wonder what anyone really got out of my droning on about my high-fallutin thoughts on the education world. No links to follow. No way to engage in the ideas. Nothing there that wouldn’t work just as well in a blog post.

And on the listening front, I have to say most of what I’ve heard so far has been pretty uninspiring. At the risk of being snarky, my reaction to today’s daily podcast by one of the A-listers was downright discomfort. References to the horrors in the tsunami stricken countries was peppered with questions about whether or not to each the cheesecake before the guests arrived. The “concern” was so gratuitous that I had to turn it off. And most of what I’ve listened to is either equally self-indulgent or doesn’t get over the would-be-just-as-good-if-not-better-in-a-blog bar. Talking through a list of links that’s posted somewhere else just seems kind of pointless. I have to agree with Alan when he says that most of this comes closer to yawncasting than anything else.

There are some podcasts I do enjoy because they are intended to instruct or make me think rather than spew personal interpretations of the day’s events. For instance, Rob Reynolds at Xplana does a five-minute essay on tech related issues that is obviously well-written beforehand and usually leaves me thoughtful. Or the IT Conversations recordings of tech events or special shows. Some of the Engadget shows are pretty interesting as well. And I’m sure there are others that I’ll find as I continue to dig through the list at iPodder.org.Not all of it is great radio, but at least I feel like it was time well spent.

Of course, as a faithful listener of NPR, my assessment of all of this amateur radio is probably a bit unfair. But I think podcasting should be an attempt to emulate the good stuff we hear on radio not just idle rambling about why one beer is better than another. There should be some reporting, some background work, some meaning.

I’m thinking about how to do that. One idea I like right now is doing some regularly scheduled 20-30 minute interviews with edubloggers to pick their brains about how best to make all of this work in schools and where it might all be going. Or maybe doing some interviews with teachers about what they see the roadblocks are. It would be like research shared through a syndicated MP3 file. I’m open to ideas.

I don’t want to dissuade people from trying the technology and seeing what it and they can do. That’s the only way we’ll see what podcasting might be good for, the old “see what sticks” method. But I’m pretty much finished with the personal podcasting meme. To quote Alan once again, “If I am absorbing content by audio form, it should be because it presents it in a way that extends the information in fresh ways.” If it’s just as good in text, why bother.

Pardon the really bad title, but this Skype thing is just way too much fun. Just got off the Skype with Ian Yorston from who Skyped me up from England and sounded like he was just down the road. Earlier today I chatted with Jim Wenzloff in Michigan. And I got contact info for Tim Wilson and Joe Luft, who with any luck will be back to blogging here real soon.

So yes, this has the potential to be all sorts of disruptive, but it can also be productive. I mean Ian and I chatted about the possibilities of collaborations among our kids; hopefully we’ll get back in touch after the New Year. And what about author chats or classroom interviews or… I mean, how easy (and cheap) is this? Just get a microphone and a set of speakers and there you go.

And goodness, what about Podcasts?!? Next Skype I get, I’m going to see if I can record it. (If anyone’s got the how to on this, let me know. I’m thinking I can make it work with Camtasia…maybe? Audacity?) And if I can do that, then the first edublogger-conference-Skype-podcast is scheduled for right after the new year. I call moderator. (Am I strange that the thought of that gives me chills? Really. Am I?)