Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

Getting ready to start a classroom 2.0 panel -- going to participate and take notes in backchannel today - http://www.chatzy.com/610230759294 -- password is:  necc Hyperlink for page - http://necc2008.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=1997968%3ATopic%3A11028

Handipoints Login Cool page to work with children. Can also use with a personal report card and add teachers. tags: education , all_teachers , edu_newapp

Ustream channel Broadcast by Ustream.TV Will be live blogging Edubloggercon here. May have some other people join me.Also, a monstrous group chat is evolving here. (Passcode: bikx9 )

Adding to my list of reasons to go back to England, my friend Terry just sent me this hilarious video where he interviewed his wife. I love her! Like I always say, behind every great man is a woman who keeps him humble! Elaine Freedman, you're my kind of woman -- I want to meet you! I just love Terry -- he is one of my most trusted advisors and has been one of our many amazing researcher/pedagogical experts who tells us the truth about what we need to do on things like Horizon and Flat Classroom . Terry is a "straight shooter" and also has practical classroom experience in his back pocket. I am very grateful to all of his hundreds of hours and assistance he has given behind the scenes. Oh, btw, Terry recorded this as he was evaluating the flip video . Terry Freedman, humor

techLEARNING.com | Web 2.0: from Curious to Competent New web 2.0 ebook - I haven't read it yet, but would like to see your thoughts on this. Those who read book get 30 days of atomic learning. tags: education , web2.0 , technology , techintegrator , professionaldevelopment The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives | WHDb Very nice article sharing about the open source alternatives to proprietary programs. tags: education , techintegrator

BubbleShare: Share photos - Powered by BubbleShare I chronicled my trip from Twitter frustration to curiosity about plurk . Follow the journey. However, as you can tell, my recommendation is, don't jump the twitter ship yet. Plurk isn't instant, you can't import your e-mail, although it says you can. There are features in there that just don't work, and yet plurk doesn't say it is in "beta." I really like the interface of twitter better. My thought: hang tight and see if twitter can get its act together. Use Summize to see one's replies by typing in @yourid -- just remember, this will only show you replies of people who are on the public timeline. For right now, twitter is like a bad boyfriend: you're crazy about him but he's just not there when you need him. He's still the best one I've got for now. Maybe he'll fix his wandering ways and shape up! My plurk page twitter, plurk

A friend of mine from high school, Scott Rigsby , is the first double amputee to complete an iron man in history. We did an amazing interview with him on Wow2 a while back and I've blogged about him before . I'm asking you to do me a favor, he is in the running for the "Energizer Keep going Hall of Fame" but it is determined by votes. You may vote here once a day until July 26. (and read more about the contest) Please help me help him win this! I appreciate it very much! Scott is an inspiration (as are the others who are finalists.) The difference is that I know Scott and his journey out of addiction to pain pills and depression in order to get where he is today -- to run his first iron man at 40 on prosthetic legs -- wow! Thank you! I would consider this a favor to me if you would pass this along!

K12 Online Conference 2008 | Announcing K12Online08 Keynotes! Keynotes for K12 online 2008 -- you have 16 days to submit your proposal. This is a wonderful conference and Julie and I are so excited to be keynoting the strand, "Kicking it up a notch" -- we're working hard when we meet at necc to "kick it up a notch" as we brainstorm on this keynote! tags: k12online2008 , education , professionaldevelopment Publishing : Posting to your blog - Google Docs Help Center Publishing from Google Docs to blogger. So, this is what you could do. The teacher has enabled the link to the blog in the teacher's account settings. Students and many others create a document and then share it with the teacher. After the document is as it needs to be, the teacher can then post to blogger from google docs automatically. This really gives you the best of wikis, blogs, and peer review as well as the ability to look at the revisions and who has contributed. This is something th...

Notes from Google Teacher Academy Note: I took these notes in Google notebook and exported them to Google docs and after they were formatted, I posted to blogger from Google docs. Google Teacher Academy Teachers Going to Google :) Home - Teachers Going to Google :) This is what many of these teachers feel like -- 250 applications for 50 spots here. I wish everyone could come! 5 different countries - Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Phillipines, 56 people in the room. Chris Walsh - Introduction - Google Teacher Academy Chris Walsh Google for Educators Site - http://www.google.com/educators/gta.html This is about the innovation that Google brings to the table to the classroom. Note from Vicki : I agree with this totally, I use a method in my classroom called 'Google Led Socratic Teaching" Google has created an atmosphere that promotes innovation -- Note: Bicycles are everywhere, most people are casual, microkitchens, decor -- it is a really cool envir...

Tomorrow on this blog, you'll get a lot of links. Also, I have a post coming from Google docs with my notes. Although it is 12:10 on the east coast and I'm dead tired, I just have to reflect on my thoughts about Google Teacher Academy today. It was a wonderful experience. To be here at such an icon of our time... the company who showed what it was like to become so wildly popular as to literally become a verb, I felt like a part of history. I am proof that a teacher who was formerly behind and didn't know a thing about anything Web 2.0 can jump into these tools and combine a commitment to excellence with a desire to learn more and share the process of learning -- can make a difference. And I'm not the only one. There are many of us teachers who are reaching and connecting like never before. I dream of a day when many teachers present at 5-6 conferences a year about best practices in the classroom. I dream of a day when pd is embedded as part of our day and that read...

A VC: Am I Bored With “Web 2.0”? Nice post. I think many of us are wanting to push past the cool and trivial and use Web 2.0 to do meaningful, authentic things (imagine how students feel.) I think a more important question is that "Are students bored with worksheets?" Authentic and network building experiences and learning should become part of what they do. They don't want the trivial any more than we do. tags: education , web_2.0 , social_networking

k12learning20 » home This cool course is fascinating. I've been getting a lot of links titled "Thing 1" or "Thing 8" -- didn't know what it was and now I do. The 23 things is a fascinating way to teach teachers about these tools. Great resource for professional developers to look at. tags: education , edu_trends , professionaldevelopment Sample Tweetboard Tweetboard lets you follow specific tweets with certain people. I asked yesterday how this worked and now I know -- this is fascinating. tags: education , twitter

I've made an event in slideshare for your presentations for NECC. Just upload your presentation as usual and then add it to the event. (I do think you have to join the event first.) Also, the presentations that are uploaded have been added to the feeds on my NECC Netvibes page . This is yet another way to bring others in. IF you wonder why I'm using #necc in the title, it is so when my blog post is tweeted that it will be pulled into the hashtags feed for twitter. I blogged about this yesterday , but hashtags lets everyone be involved in the conversation, even those not on twitter. All of the things done here, you can do for your school or group to facilitate communication. necc, necc2008, twitter, hashtags, education, learning, conference

Hashtags - NECC For those of you who don't twitter but would like to follow what twitterers are saying about NECC -- this is one of the hashtags that may be used. To make this work for you, you must be following @hashtags and then use #necc in your title -- I like it sans date, but am finding some people using #necc08 and #necc2008. I'll probably use #necc to save tweetspace. tags: education , necc , necc2008 , necc08 Twitter Hashtags and Groups « American Pai Great information on how hashtags and groups work-- I think those of us on twitter should follow @hashtags and then use #necc to find out whose at NECC - then no one is left out! tags: bestpractices , education , edublog LenEdgerly.com: A New Joy Discovered on the Kindle Fascinating viewpoint on how use of the Kindle changes the author's reading methodology. I find this fascinating. tags: education , reading , literature Turbo Tagger - Instantly create Technorati tags for free! Cool little page that helps add techo...

Every time my students and I have a new topic, we create a new PLN. A personal learning network in the form of an RSS page aggregates all things of interest and gives one a starting point. If you have netvibes, here is the page I've made over there, or you may click the button below to just add it to your own netvibes - Opening Twitter to everyone It is so important to be inclusive. Not everyone is on twitter, but shouldn't they be able to be "in on" the tweets? You'll see that the netvibes page has a hashtag for twitter on it. Here is how it works: Follow @hashtags Hashtags is an "opt in" service, which means you have to tell it that you want to be indexed. If you don't follow the hashtags user, you can use #necc all day but WILL NOT be included. Don't worry, hashtags won't tweet you back, it doesn't work that way. When you tweet about something at necc put #necc in your tweet. It will then automatically go to the hashtags page fo...

Well it SAYS it is an Obama/ McCain Twitter Debate , however, it is really some of their advisors. However, there is a "twitter" debate between the two candidates nonetheless. How does it work? How to play along: 1) You can "follow" all three particpants via Twitter: Ana Marie Cox - moderator from Personal Democracy Forum Mike Nelson , who's advising the Obama campaign on tech issue Liz Mair , online communcations director for the Republican National Committee 2) Or you can search for their Tweets on Summize , using the "#pdfdebate" tag as a search term. (See Twitterfan wiki on how hashtags wor k -- this means you don't have to be on twitter to follow it.) 3) Third option: A "Tweetboard" which lays out all of the players, side-by-side. (They listed this third option -- how to do this -- I have no clue - there is no link.) I wish the candidates themselves were answering the questions, but then again, I'm not sure that they ever re...

A big hat tip to Eric Marcos, sixth grade math teacher at Lincoln Middle School in California. His video overview of the work of his students is inspiring He and his students have co created the Math Train Podcast and Math Train TV . Mathtrain TV is a "free educational kids teaching kids project" created by he and his kids. I love these videos like this area of a target circle problem . I have so many questions that I want to ask Eric! How did he set up the site? How did he do it? What does he do to record video? (There is no ambient noise in the background!) Eric also has a great website with an overview of information about him and he will be presenting at Alan November 's BLC conference this summer. (I tried to link to Alan's blog -- does he not blog any more?) I'm going to profile as many TEACHERS as I can find over the next 3 weeks of total craziness. education Alan November Eric Marcos Google Teacher Academy math screencasting Turbo Tagger

High Techpectations: Survey Results Gadgets Cool survey results gadgets from Lucy Gray -- very very cool for use with children and to demonstrate spreadsheets and charts. I like the little worms she used on her favorite colors chart. tags: education , elementary_teacher , spreadsheets , math , googledocs Advocates for Digital Citizenship, Safety, and Success This is the RSS page on netvibes that pulls together all of the most recent resources for advocates. If you have netvibes, this is a great tab to add to your group. tags: ad4dcss , education , professionaldevelopment , digitalcitizenship Group Ad4dcss's best bookmarks The advocates for digital citizenship, safety, and success diigo group has over 400 bookmarks categorized by the 9 aspects of digital citizenship that we are using to organize. Join in and share your bookmarks. This is becoming a great resource. tags: ad4dcss , education , edu_news , bestpractices , professionaldevelopment ad4dcss » I read blocked blogs The i...

It is no secret that mainstream media tends to dislike the blogosphere and many bloggers (particularly political ones) dislike mainstream media. However, I find the current Associated Press assault on quotations used on the Drudge Retort (with links, mind you) as short as 35 words to be #1 Shortsighted and #2 the wrong thing to do for mainstream media. (Hat tip to Will Richardson and Jeff Jarvis .) It is all about eyeballs. Whoever gets the eyeballs gets the advertising dollar. However, if mainstream media would wake up and realize that many of us are getting our breaking news from twitter , (I've settled for following BreakingNewsOn from the Netherlands - REAL news sources inundate me - they do about 3 updates a day.), perhaps they could add value to our lives instead of inundating us with 24/7 news online. Online, we don't want 24/7 news -- if we want that, we'll watch cable. We want snippets of the news and updates, we need meaning--- quality over quantity, for ...

Firefox web browser | International versions: Get Firefox in your language Firefox 3 is available for download now and is in public preview mode. I'm downloading it tonight and by the time this posts on my blog in the morning, I'll have some thoughts to share. What do you think? tags: firefox , education , edu_newapp Exits: Stewart Butterfield's bizarre resignation letter to Yahoo REsignation letter or work of prose? Although many write off Stewart Butterfield's letter to Yahoo, as a creative person myself, I see the point of what he's saying. Also, creative people think differently. Metaphorically. I understand what he is saying entirely. Not sure the engineers and many liked this one, but I thought it was fascinating. tags: education , yahoo , flickr

I'm fascinated by Miguel's Idea and wondering how it can best be done. Miguel says: "So, it occurs to me as I skim through the images in PassionQuilt08 on Flickr...what about a screensaver made of all these positive images? Wouldn't that be a conversation starter? The only problem...I'm not sure how to best go about this. Create a folder, drop the images in there, and then point your screensaver software to it? Thoughts?" I think that the trick would be to have automatic updates and perusing the Internet, something like PhotoCafe might do that . Just thought I'd repeat Miguel's call and also ask Miguel -- what about photo spam? Would it be better to have a moderated group so that when new photos are downloaded that someone is moderating them? Should we have a moderated photo group and some way to have an automated screensaver from them. Would it eat up a lot of resources? I don't know, but I would be ...

While in the midst of a huge undertaking at our church this week, every afternoon and evening is spent working on presentations for the next two weeks. It will be a very exciting few weeks with many things planned. I'll keep "official" events on my public calendar on Airset and in the list below. I'm so excited about Google Teacher Academy next week and about Edubloggercon . Also, over the past few weeks, I've booked my school year and now am totally done with that. (Can only do 7-8 days out of school per year.) But really, the most exciting thing about conferences is getting to meet other teachers and see what THEY are doing. It would be easy to get caught up in my own things and what I've done, but I know, it is not enough. I'm not going to teach myself anything new! There are only two things that truly change our lives: reading new books and meeting new people. That is it. There is another thing to remember: When you're green, you're gr...

Funky Ways to Express Yourself - BeFunky Cool website that turns real photos into cartoons uvatar (looks more like you than a random avatar) and video cartoonizer (cool) which takes video and turns it into a cartoon. This should be another cool website to enjoy w/ your digital photography and eventually videos. tags: edu_newapp , technology , all_teachers , education

Who am I? Well, when I use wordle to take a look at the tags I use in delicious, I see a lot about who I am . (to see the larger image of this picture, look at this Java image in the Wordle Gallery .) Wordle takes a word cloud of any text that you either paste in or your delicious tags. The larger the word, the more you use it. So, obviously, education is something that is important to me. Other things: teaching, web 2.0, blogging, tools, free, innovation, flat classroom, horizon project, wow2.... all of these give a snapshot of the things that are most important to me. Interestingly, although these tags come from delicious , it wasn't until I began using diigo that true consistency emerged as I would like to see it. The ability to have standard tags (so I don't accidentally misspell, etc.) has helped me. I have been accused before of wanting to "standardize the Internet." Nothing could be further from the truth! I don't want to standardize -- folksonomy is...

The Top 100 Management and Leadership Blogs That All Managers Should Bookmark - HR World This lost of the top 100 Management and Leadership blogs may have some great blogs for administrators and headmasters to read. tags: education , administrator , bestpractices , edu_news , professionaldevelopment Pluto gets a new name: plutoid | Oddly Enough | Reuters OK, Pluto is now a "plutoid" as are many other asteroids that are the size of pluto -- pay attention science teachers -- plutoid should now be in your book. (It is in Wikipedia -- but again, your book is outdated.) tags: education , science , edu_news

This amazing story really moves me as we think about Father's Day. I'm so fortunate to have an amazing husband who is unselfish and helps his family be so much more. As I watched this other video profiling the pair and listened to the e-mail message sent to Dick Hoyt, I was moved to tears how sometimes when we have struggles and share them, we can inspire and affect people more than we know or understand. I'm so busy right now - haven't had much time to blog, but this sort of video reminds me about what is important. tag: Rick Hoyt , Dick Hoyt , inspiration

Microsoft Innovative Teachers network Microsoft's Innovative teacher's network. Another network for teachers. tags: education , microsoft , edu_trends , edu_news OnlineKnowHow.com - Open Source Finder Google Gadget Those people who are open source junkies -- this is a great google gadget custom search engine to add to your igoogle or gadget. It will help you easily find open source software. tags: newapp , opensource , education , edu_newapp , techintegrator Windows and OS X Software Alternatives | Linux App Finder For those using linux, this linux app finder helps you find what will replace other apps that you may be used to. tags: education , edu_newapp Adobe - Adobe AIR Marketplace Audio & Music Adobe Air will let you store searches on craig's list and access them even when your computer is offline. Adobe Air has some cool things that are coming and this is just one of them. I wonder how it will affect download time? tags: education , edu_newapp Why Users Don'...

Like many bloggers, I rethink everything I do here so much. This vacation was no exception. But when I came home to see this link on my rss reader, it brought tears to my eyes. Bloggers, beginners, and anyone creating a Web 2.0 website, links mean a lot to bloggers. And this link is especially precious because it is what I aspire to be. So, I want to give a shout out to all of you who commented while I was away (I'll be responding soon) and to all of those who offer encouragement. Thank you perkone , we all need encouragement sometimes. I just want to make sure that I return the favor. I hope you'll take some time this week to find a blogger who needs encouragement (I love to find beginning bloggers) and comment or link to their blog. Many people don't understand how the technorati authority rating system works . The Authority rating system is determined by how many BLOGS have linked to you not how many links have. This is why I have a long blogroll and it will get lon...