Point A to Point B

  • Podcasting “Behind the Scenes”

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    I had the pleasure of getting a behind-the-scenes look at producing a podcast today. My brother works at a local radio station. Each night they produce a podcast of the daily call-in show. I got a personal tour of trimming the audio file, converting it to m4a format, adding podcast chapters, and updating the xml file that is read by iTunes. While there are a few different steps to keep track of, it is a very straight forward process, and fascinating to watch in action.

    I’m intrigued by the possibilities for podcasting in school. Just waiting for the right opportunity and audience to appear…

  • Firefox Fun

    So, having a little time this week, I’ve been playing around with Firefox themes. I usually don’t mess around with these (meaning no time…) but it’s kinda cool to change things around. I found and really like the Noia 2.0 eXtreme – click on the image to enlarge.

  • Service

    Education is (should be?) a service industry. The cool thing, though, is that the service, learning, is rich and rewarding for everyone. Our business is learning, and our clients are the students. I love days where I’m helping to put technology tools in the hands of students, and guiding them towards their goal. I find more solutions and better questions from talking with kids. Given the right opportunities they can do great things.

    Teacher and students

  • Naming Tip

    Tuesday’s Technology Tip
    (Little bits of information to hopefully make your computing life easier)

    On Dells, there are certain characters that should not be used in folder or file names. If you have a file that seems not to work, check to see if it contains one of these characters:
    \ / : * ? ” |

  • Moving Up & On

    This is the beginning of what I plan to be my mission. As I work with people (teachers, students, community members) I always take them for where they are at. No one can grow, no one can learn, unless you take them from wherever they are (point A) and help them get to where they need to be (point B). They may not make it, or they may not know where they need to be, but if you don’t start where they are, nothing will happen.

    This new endeavor will have an audience of one for a while…until I feel I have found my voice, and know who I want to have a conversation with.

  • A New Appreciation…

    Great news – the electricians have determined what the issue is has caused the power problems we have had. I have a new and renewed appreciation for electricity that we depend on every day. Not only for how it powers everything we do, but for how powerful it is. Check out this BrainPOP movie for a quick overview, or this HowStuffWorks article for a more in-depth discussion of electricity.

    I also highly recommend a visit to the Niagara Power Project Power Vista in Niagara Falls. It is a free hands-on learning center to discover electricity and how the massive power plant there was built.

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  • If I had this in college…

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    This year we have started using an awesome new online citation assistant called NoodleTools. With it, you can plug in the information about each source for a project, and get a properly formatted works cited list to print or download. All 7th and 8th graders have created their personal folders at NoodleTools, and are already much more in-tune with how to do proper citations.

    If I only had this tool in college, many of those papers would have been done so much sooner…

  • Online Classroom “Comes of Age”

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    For quite a few years now WITS (Williamsville Information Tracking System) has been growing in the amount of information it stores and provides. In the last year it has become the starting point for most teacher and student work. It acheived a milestone recently, I believe, in its ability to be the online virtual classroom to connect teachers and students.

    Document posting is now availalbe in WITS – teachers can post files (homework, class notes, just about anything) for students to download. This feature, along with notes, links, forums, grades, etc. are breaking down the walls of the classroom and extending it into the web where it should be. Security reasons prevent students from being able to post documents to teachers. Hopefully at some point this can be worked out so 2-way communication can happen.

    Enjoy the safe, secure, stable virtual classroom that WITS is!

  • The Point of PowerPoint

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    “There is an ever present danger that the excitement of creating multimedia slides and presentations will distract students from the very real and difficult challenge of addressing a human audience, face-to-face, eye-to-eye.”

    – McKenzie, Jamie. “Scoring Power Points.” From Now On 10.1 (Sept. 2000). 30 Jan. 2006 http://www.fno.org/sept00/powerpoints.html.

    The point of PowerPoint is to be a presentation TOOL. It should not be the focus. An excellent presentation is done by a person who knows what they want to say, speaks clearly and confidently, makes eye contact, and connects with his/her audience. PowerPoint can provide visual and audio support to make the presentation better. It cannot (and should not) be a substitute for a good speaker.

    Before you ever start a PowerPoint, know what you want to say. Then, figure out what is most important and highlight that on the slides. Put in supporting material (pictures, audio, etc.) to enhance your speaking points. THEN make it look nice (backgrounds, fonts, etc.).

    The best looking PowerPoint in the world is no good if there is no worthwhile content in it, and no knowledgable speaker in front of it.

  • Keeping Up

    I was teaching an inservice with Mr. Saia today about Internet search strategies. He made a comment that resonated with me – he said, “…the things we are showing you now about searching will all be different in 6 months…” Well, it was something along those lines – maybe not exactly.

    The point is, the Internet changes constantly…new ideas, new technologies…keeping up can be tough. Maybe that’s why we “surf” the Internet rather than “swim”? Maybe we need a jet-ski?