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Go Out With Gowalla Another location based site. To use it on a handheld - install the device. It does work on wifi devices. (My itouch works.) tags : education , geolocation Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

Trying to share as much as I can with "Mile High Learning" Here in the Social Butterfly cafe - some friends from Twitter congregated to teach beginners.  It is this hallway learning that are best. Here, you can see beginners how to set up foursquare on their iphones, itouch, and Ipad and also overhear some discussions about the potential for location based apps and education. I'll be posting another one on  Goalla . There is some discussion here of finding a location based company that would help us with setting up an educational space for this. This is something I'd really like to use on the Flint River project. for example, there is a place in the river where a sunken riverboat is and that can be seen when the water is clear - I CAN NEVER FIND IT! I want the kids to mark it with a comment. There are huge privacy issues with location based programs which is why we need educational spaces to teach kids how to be safe. Remember, we can lead them or we can fol...

Sorry my PC was a slow boot and the ISTE wifi won't connect to my laptop, so it took a moment to take notes.  This session is with Mike Muir , Cyndi Danner-Kuhn , and Sam Farsali. Moderated by Alice Owen. 1:1 Laptop Implementation Mike - "Do not do workshops around hardware and software training.  The research is clear if you train teachers how to do spreadsheets -- if you teach them how to analyze data - they go back and teach kids how to analyze data and do spreadsheets." Cyndi - "Get rid of the network nazi's -- people who are IT people with no background in curriculum or education have no business making curriculum decisions."  (Those who have heard me speak know I agree with this.) Mike- Leadership is everything - 4 characteristics of places where successful things are happen 1) Built a common vision together with the staff -- future looking - a student you care about now, what will they be doing? 2) Positive pressure and support 3) Provide...

Discovery Education: Web 2.0 Tools Lots of incredible tools from Discovery education. tags : education , web2 , learning , all_teachers ‘Generation V’ Defies Traditional Demographics "Generation V is not defined by age, gender, social class or geography. Instead, it is based on achievement, accomplishments and an increasing preference for the use of digital media channels to discover information, build knowledge and share insights." Additionally the percentages that create content, contribute, etc. affects classroom and project planning. Do we allow students to "lurk" Findings about these Generation V segments: * Up to 3% will be creators, providing original content. They can be advocates that promote products and services. * Between 3% and 10% will be contributors who add to the conversation, but don’t initiate it. They can recommend products and services as customers move through a buying process, looking for purchasing advice. * Between 10% and 20% wi...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife Here are a couple of tips for ISTE 2010 attendees.  First of all, if you're not going - follow the hashtag #iste10 and #iste2010 on Twitter to grab the ustreams and freebies that will inevitably come your way.  My firs #necc was attended that way. (Pre-twitter, though!) This is a camping term but it has great value here. If you can be as autonomous as possible, you'll be better off! 1. Pack your food and water. The lines are long and the food is expensive. You'll be busy. The best advice I can give you is to pack in your food and drinks. When we had ISTE in DC last year, we went to the local store and picked up drinks and snackbars for the day.  You just never know when you won't have time to eat or when you have a choice between a two hour line to eat or a one hour session that is really special!  If you've gotta have Starbucks , buy a cold one and put it in your bag!  Keep at least two bottles of water with you in yo...

The Innovative Educator: 5 Things You Can Do to Begin Developing Your Personal Learning Network An older post from 2008, but still an excellent one about how to begin developing your personal learning network. tags : education , learning , pln Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

It was 96 degrees as I drove past the Bank of Camilla today to the post office to mail it in. Then, I got there to realize that the post office closes early on Wednesday. It always has and they still do. So, I ran back to my sister Sarah's office and she's good friends with the FEDEX guy, so she called him and he came on over since he was in that part of town. While I was waiting on him to get there, I took a look at the pages and wondered what would happen if I just took them and threw them away.  That's right.   Threw them away and just forgot about the last three weeks. All the mornings up at 5 am and writing until 5 pm and yesterday's 19 hour binge of writing. What if I just pretended it never happened? I want to savor this moment. Not because it feels good but because it doesn't. I've always glamorized authors - they are my heroes.  Many bloggers are too. Not because they are super human, but because somehow they write things that can travel a...

If I Were Going To ISTE Jennifer Wagner shares a very nice and "on the money" post about what she'd do if she were going to ISTE. IT is a great read for someone going to any conference. I think many of us feel this way, Jennifer. Kudos on a great post. tags : education , iste , iste2010 The MY HERO Project: Mission Statement A great project for teaching digtal storytelling, history, and writing. From their homepage: "The mission of MY HERO is to use media and technology to celebrate the best of humanity and to empower young people to realize their own potential to effect positive change in the world. Our freely accessible, not-for-profit project is supported by visitors of all ages who share stories, art, and short films on our award-winning multimedia journal and digital library. Teachers use our programs in schools, libraries, after-school workshops, and in community and media centers around the world." tags : education , digitalstorytelling 7 Tips to Analyze ...

OK, Julie and I have a monstrous deadline tomorrow and I've just given you a sneak peak.  Well, not intentionally. But as we were working on an important document for this, I went in and the document "hiccupped" for a moment. Julie Lindsay , in China at well after midnight said, "Wow, I just got the strangest error as I went into the doc." Then, as we started using comments and editing, we realized that we had just seen an upgrade happen to Google Docs AT THAT MOMENT. (At least to our accounts - sometimes this sort of thing is distributed so you may not have it yet.) I don't have time for everything but here are a few things I noticed in the last fifteen minutes: 7 Things Under the Hood of the New Google Doc Upgrade Improved Commenting : Boxes, Replies, Archiving, Deleting When you comment it is now shown in a balloon on the right hand side of the document in your particular color. If you click the return arrow, it inserts a response in the sa...

I may have just accidentally republished 65 of my posts about wikis when I was trying to re-label them for the side of my wiki. I'm so sorry if I did. Just mark all of them as read and know that I won't make the same mistake twice. I'm working so hard to try to get this thing finished up and am just about done. Am going to finish the labels later and work on Julie's and my Flat Classroom book for the next three days straight! I hope you will accept my apology for the Feed reader error! Thanks in advance.

Sharing the news from your organization, classroom, or just your personal writing is easier than ever using RSS (Really Simply Syndication.) There are some very easy tips to make sharing easy. Remember, in many ways the web is distributed and people are sharing in a wide variety of places everywhere. Many organizations make the mistake of marketing to the principal or the board or the most vocal. Just because your leaders are there doesn't mean everyone else is.  It is all about who you're linking with and you should go where they are.  That is what these strategies help you do. 1) Set up a Blog This is the backbone of your sharing strategy and with most blogs like blogger (which I use), wordpress , edublogs , typepad comes RSS. It is an automatically generated "feed" that allows you to send your blog just about everywhere and make your life simple. If you want to write a blog but are scared, use something like posterous which just lets you email the serv...

Add as friend on facebook button for blogger This code should also workon other blogs if you want to "add as a friend." tags : education , blogging Russel Tarr (hitlerhead) on Twitter Russell Tarr is doing this -- it is a history project. If you tweet a message to him, he will answer it. tags : education , history Alpoy - Avatar Creator and Animator | Home To create and manage avatar photos, this website is very handy and easy to use. The main trick is when you enter text, press enter so that it will save it! tags : education , twitter , avatar Stepping In Do Great post sent to me via twitter that reflects similar ideas from the post from Saturday about looking at what we are doing and analyzing our actions to make sure the outcomes are those we want. tags : education , learning , productivity Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

About every year and a half, I give my blog a facelift. I've been working on it today but it is late and I'm not going to be done. I will say that the new blogger template is so good, that I did get rid of the almost completely hand coded site. I still have a lot of custom html that I wrote in the side widgets, but blogger does now have "pages" which looks a bit like wordpress. And it has more templates and functions a little more like weebly on the back end. Anyway, I haven't finished reinstalling the disqus comments and may just go back to blogger, although I had many times that people reported that the blogger comments didn't show. Right now the many disqus comments aren't showing, but I will figure out how to get them back up on here, I'm just too tired tonight. Also doing some things to improve the speed and improve my statistics on the back end.  When I do this, I dissect many of my favorite blogs and emulate some of the tips and tricks ...

Who are you? You are a sum total of how you spend your seconds, your minutes, your hours, your days. Improving behavior starts by understanding that formula. There are few surprises at the end of the year academic and athletic banquets.  As teachers, we see the students who are there early in the morning to work out or stay late to work on a project.  It is interesting, because often it seems students are genuinely surprised at those who "get" all state or "highest  academic achievement." They think it is "not fair." Perhaps they are too close to see the extra hours and time put in by those who accomplished so much. Maybe they were too close to see? There are few surprises in life. Who are we? We are a sum total of how we spend our seconds, our minutes, our hours, our days. Improving behavior starts by understanding that formula. Image by Getty Images via @daylife It is no wonder that Edison invented the light bulb. After all, he created so...