7 Things You'll Wish You Didn't Know About Me

Ok, I've been putting this off long enough. I've been generously tagged by Richard Byrne, Carol Broos, Dean Shareski, Cory Plough, Jennifer Dorman and Patti Harju for the 7 Things Meme. The difficulty in writing this is that I just couldn't think of 7 things about myself that I haven't already revealed to the world. So, I'm going to share some facts about myself that some of you may know, but most probably do not.

1. Most people say I appear to be very confident. Truth be told, I doubt myself constantly.
   
   
2. I've come a long, long way since I started teaching and I would (literally) get sick if I had to speak in front of a group of people. Now, although I still get pretty nervous, I'm able to give presentations at conferences and I co-host a local TV show called PalmBreezeCAFE. Those who know me, know how far I've come.
   
   
3. Except for Canada and Mexico, I've never traveled outside the United States.
   
   
4. When I was 13, I had a CB radio in my room. My handle was "NorthStar" and I used to stay up late at night "chatting" with my "good buddies." I should have known I was destined for Geekdom.
   
   
5. In high school I was part of a dance group that got to compete in the Florida Thespian dance championship. It was our rendition of The Wiz' Ease On Down The Road that got us there. I was the TinMan! (Can't dance at all now.)
   
   
6. I collect Bobble Heads. A few of my favorites are: Dick Vitale, Steve Hanson, Mean Joe Green, Billy Lindsay and Steve Irwin (he talks).
   
   
7. I have a belly button ring.
   

So, there you have it. Belly-ring and all.

Do You Vocaroo?

Checking out Vocaroo today for a possible segment on PalmBreezeCAFE and thinking about the possibilities for it's use in the classroom. Once you record your audio, you can share the link, embed the sound file (see below) or download the file (.wav). I was able to create my Vocaroo without creating an account.

I wonder if you'd check it out too and tell me how you think Vocaroo might be useful in the classroom. But you have to tell me IN A VOCAROO. If you would like to contribute, please record your Vocaroo, then post your link in the comments here. I'll go to your URL, grab your embed code and post it here. Thanks for participating!



This first one is from me:



From MaryAnn Sansonetti:


From Mrs.McMahon


From Katie Morrow


From Jeff Richardson


From Cheryl Woolwine


From Dr. Alec Couros


From Pat Hensley



From Michelle Borgeois


From Jerry Green


From Celeste Hopkins


From Chris Fancher


From Anne Van Meter


From Flip


From Paula White


From Mark Carls


From Changing Connections


From Sheri


From John Evans

Nibipedia in Schools; Friend or Foe?

I've received a bunch of emails recently from companies who want me to check out their products and promote them either in my blog or on PalmBreezeCAFE. Now, either that's a nice nod to our show or perhaps they've got some uburgeeks writing a program that blasts their emails to every EdTech blogger.

Besides being part of my job, I'm always interested in new and exciting things popping up in the world of Web 2.0. So, it is kinda nice for some of them to find me for a change!

This past week, I received two very interesting emails with requests and links to their sites that I think would offer great value to teachers. (I'll post about the 2nd one later on.) The first one is from the folks at Nibipedia.

Hope I have the right person. Are you the educational tech blogger?
Wanted to connect, since you love all things Web 2.0 and we're working
on a pretty Web 2.0 project (we mashed Youtube and wikipedia) that's a
learning teaching environment. (www.nibipedia.com) I'd love to talk to
you about it. If you're interested, I can send the most recent press
release. We're interested in getting feedback from educators and have
a limited number of beta spaces.....
--
Sent from my iPhone
Troy Peterson

First Impressions
There are not many videos up there yet, but I decided to check out Seth Godin's Sliced Bread and Other Marketing Delights. It took only a few moments for me to get acclimated as it all pretty much makes sense right away. I clicked to play the video and I saw that as the video progressed, and as Seth Godin spoke, the images beneath the video (called "nibs") advanced to the left. When Seth spoke about "sliced bread," an image of sliced bread appeared as a "nib." If I clicked on it, the video continued with no interruption, but to the right was a Wikipedia article on bread. This continued throughout the entire video. Being a "wiki," I could add a "nib" as well. I simply advance to the part of the video where I want my nib to appear, click "Add a Nib," and enter a keyword into the search field. This field searches Wikipedia. I then just have to click on the result and it appears in the timeline for others to see and to click on when they are viewing the video as well.

There's also an option to search Amazon and leave a Nib that links there. So, if Seth refers to a book, the image & link to the book appear AS HE MENTIONS IT! I love how the video is never interrupted unless the user clicks the controls.


The other nice feature is the "Other videos that link to this article."





I see a great future for not just aligning great content but truly connecting it all in meaningful ways. I can see students creating new digital stories, knowing in advance that what they say in their videos will impact their Nibs. What will this do for fluency, vocabulary, writing, listening, researching? With this, we're another step closer to being able to use the great academic content that's in some of those "evil" sites such as YouTube and WikiPedia. This may even bring us inches closer to influencing decision-makers to take another peek. At some point, someone has got to notice that there are people, companies and organizations spending lots of money and time trying to harness the educational power of these social media sites; so there must be some value!

Not to be a buzz-kill, but I believe for now it will be blocked in many (if not, most) schools. However, if the folks at Nibipedia do their homework, they'll find a way to ensure that school district IT folks' blood pressure stays down. I believe they've already thought some of these things through. In a follow-up email, Troy indicated to me:

• Wikipedia and Amazon vet their own content but others can flag the content. For inappropriate words that make it through? They are planning to ask beta testers for a list of offending words for batch removal. With the most offensive words gone, the rest can be flagged for later removal.
  
• For educators to contribute (after registering an account), you simply create a playlist in YouTube (which will also be your Nibipedia profile and ID) and all videos you add to that playlist in YouTube will automatically feed into Nibipedia.
• Troy also mentioned future Twitter integration "to release synchronous cohort learning" :)
  

It looks like a lot of thought went into this but I'm not sure how the registration process will proceed or how the folks at Nibipedia will know who is an educator. What will stop a student from registering a teacher account and throwing non-academic YouTube videos into a playlist that feeds into Nibipedia? I also wonder about the possibility of having sub-domains so that teachers can provide limited access for their students to view selected videos/nibs and add their own "nibs. Additionally, in my opinion, the fight to allow Wikipedia in schools has a light at the end of the tunnel where YouTube's tunnel's light can not be seen with the naked eye. Allowing a feed to come from an alternate source, perhaps an internal server, would be helpful.

I know my suggestions sound terribly restrictive and I can imagine that many social networking advocates are thinking that I'm choking the "walled garden" even more. If you know me, read my blog, follow me on Twitter or watch my segments, you KNOW that I'm all for putting it all out there, BUT the reality is, if we don't start somewhere, we are going nowhere.

And I do like where this is going! What are your thoughts on this?

Obama! First Ever Digital Presidential Portrait

Watch carefully these next few weeks because you'll not want to miss a thing. History is being made in many ways. Some are to be expected, but some are not so obvious.

For example; President-elect Obama has released his official presidential portrait. It's the first presidential portrait ever taken with a digital camera!

Source

Meeting Of The Minds Meme

How exciting that I was tagged by Jen Wagner for this most interesting meme. The original concept by Ryan Bretag was this:

What 10 people would you want President Obama and Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan to engage with in a Meeting of the Minds focusing on the state of education, a vision for education and education reform?

Ponder your vision for education and what people you would want before doing the following

1. Write a blog post that lists your 10 people
2. Optional: Explain why you selected each person
3. Tag at least 5 bloggers of interest
4. Optional: Link back to this blog

If you read Jen's response, you'll see that she bent the rules a little bit. So, I'm going to follow her lead and bend them a little bit more. You see, we all know someone who WILL be there at that roundtable discussion. Our very own Twitter/Plurk/Blogger and multiple award winning, Carol Broos.

Carol has invited all of us to have a say and (virtually) attend with her. She created a wiki to to help facilitate this. So, I encourage you to do one or both of these:

1. continue this meme AND add Carol's wiki to your blogpost
2. add your suggestions to Carol's wiki

Listed below are just a few people who have done a great job of keeping my attention lately. All are brilliant in their own right and have students in the forefront of their minds with every step they take. Though diverse and frequently don't agree, this list has folks who insist on seeing the "beef." Having them all in the same room, might even be downright uncomfortable, but good conversation and solutions would surely emerge.

They aren't satisfied with lots of rhetoric but insist on seeing the action steps. Their educational vision and ability to articulate can be tremendously influential and the fact that they're not afraid to ask the hard questions makes them perfect for being tagged here. Some I've seen present, read their blogs, spoken to in person, or even on Twitter and some I'm just now getting to know in my online PLN and can already see the direction their edu-love flows. For now I'd like to hear all of their voices as they address those who can really affect change.

1. Karl Fisch
2. Matthew K. Tabor
3. Gary Stager
4. Wes Fryer
5. Steve Dembo
6. Jeff Utecht
   
7. Daniel Pink
8. Dan Meyer
9. Sheryl Nussbaum Beach
10. Graham Wegner

• YOU
  

Oddest Gym Moments Contest

Ok, so I don't even know if there IS such a contest, but if there was, THIS is clearly the winner by a longshot!

Winning Entry:
Today I was on the elliptical machine (breathing as if my heart rate was 140 BPM) and suddenly tasted nail polish. This lady, three machines down from me, was painting her nails while she was on the machine! I HAD to ask her to stop because I just couldn't breath. Believe it or not, she was very apologetic. SHE HONESTLY DIDN'T REALIZE!!! Are you kidding me?? How stupid can you be?

If I wasn't bobbing up and down on my machine (choking), I would have taken a picture. It would have won Best 365Photo! (No contest there either, but I'm feeling particularly competitive today.)


Other odd gym moments?

• This one happens more than I prefer so it's more like a pet-peeve! I'm on the elliptical and there are at least 6 open machines on each side of me. Along comes Mr. Drippingwetwithsweatasifhejustgotoutofaswimmingpool and takes the machine right next to me! Isn't there some type of unwritten "rule" about that? I hear there is something like that for the men's restroom.

• I've seen women working out in full make-up, hair flowing all over the place and rings, earrings and other (ah-hem) jewelry. Well, sometimes you can see things, you know.

• Men working out in very short, loose shorts. 'nuff said!
  

We've all seen odd things at our gyms. Got any pet-peeves? Get 'em out here. I feel better already! Thanks for listening. :)

1934 Teacher's Catalog

1934 Teacher's Catalog
Originally uploaded by Lee Kolbert

I'm not planning on blogging every day with my newest 365Photo upload but this one made me do it. I was cleaning up my desk area in my house and as I was putting away a book, I noticed this one of my antique books. I have a small collection that includes a few original Dick and Jane readers, a Hammond's World Atlas with the 1910 Census, a book of manners from 1914, a 1943 Reader's Digest, Girls Scout Handbook from 1933 and more. They really have no cash value but I collect them because I find it fascinating to read them and imagine life at that moment in time.

This particular book, The Teacher's Catalog (Paine Publishing, Co.) has all sorts of classroom supplies for sale. I thought you might find it as interesting as I do to see a few of the items for sale in 1933.

For 50 cents, you could buy "Posters to Cut, Color and Paste; for independent seat work" tested in grades 1-8!

For $2.00 per year, a magazine subscription to: "The Grade Teacher; for Grade or Rural School Teachers with special sections for Intermediate and Grammar and Ungraded Schools."

For 40 cents: "My Work Book in Early American History in Realistic Story Form"

AND HERE'S MY FAVORITE!
Progress Books:"A new series of individual work and study books based on psychological research and survey of modern school demands. They conserve teacher energy, save pupils' time and public funds."

But...

Not a single test for sale.

I wonder how all those kids grew up!

Reflecting On a Photo

Light Reflecting On a CD
Originally uploaded by Lee Kolbert

I joined 2 Flickr groups (2009/365Photos and 365/2009). We've committed to posting one photo every day. Today I posted this. I was just playing around with my iPhone and a CD. I put the CD on my desk and thought I'd get a shot of the shine, but through the lens of the iPhone, it took on a whole other view. Kinda makes you wonder what else is out there that we never see with just our eyes.

If It's Shiny & Made By Apple...

If you've been following Apple's latest announcements, then you know Apple has brought the laptop of the future here today! Apple has done it again. This machine is amazing:

• No keyboard
• Everything is just a few hundred clicks away
• Hummingbird battery
• Virtually unbreakable (unless dropped or hit)
• and my personal favorite: the Predictive Sentence Technology
  

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Typed on a MacBook Wheel.

1000 Things That Matter

It's interesting to see what matters most to people if they are limited to say, 180 characters?

1000ThingsThatMatter is a project by blogger, Chasing Sheep. He's creating a movie about the changing nature of technology and what matters to us most.

"We need your help. We're making a film and we need to know what matters to you. So, we've just launched www.1000thingsthatmatter.com and we're keen to get 1000 entries as fast as possible. Please spread the word :) We know you all have great ideas and lots to say... and we look forward to hearing your entries. Go on. What are you waiting for?"

As school begins again in the next few days, wouldn't this be a great project for students of all ages? If you prefer for your students not to contribute right on the site, you can always create your own similar project. This can be done on a educational microblogging site like Edmodo, a wiki, blog, or just on pieces of paper and hang them on a bulletin board in your room!