Pages

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Who is the MySpace Generation? Why Do We Care?

Who is the MySpace Generation? What is different about them? Why should we care?

ISTE will be holding a Webinar on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2008 at 3:00 CST entitled Learner 2.0: The MySpace Generation by Chris O'Neal. These are some resources that might be useful for you to review before (or after) webinar.

BusinessWeek headed an issue with their article by Jessie Hempel entitled The MySpace Generation: How Companies are Reaching Them. This article investigates the Social Networking phenomenon. It talks about how youth are using MySpace, Facebook, and a variety of social networking systems to make contact with others. Their group is not geographically limited. It is primarily defined by like interests. BusinessWeek provides a podcast about its cover stories (CoverCast). This is an interview with the author about the content included in the cover story. Jessie Hempel provides an insightful perspective on this topic in the podcast. This podcast does an effective job of describing what is happening and how it displays youth's priorities.

Dinah Boyd has spent a great deal of time investigating the social networking world and I found an informative 71 minute lecture by her on YouTube Dinah Boyd: A Discussion with Danah Boyd.(2005) She is talking with a group of university students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Boy does she know what she is talking about. She cuts through the baloney and "tells it like it is."

A more recent lecture by Dinah Boyd (2007) is her presentation at the Australian Library and Information Association - Generation MySpace - Social networking and Its Impact on Students and Education.

PODCAST: A Discussion of the Issues Surrounding Social Networking Between Faculty and Students This is an interesting 25-minute discussion between a couple of K-12 teachers. They discuss how Facebook fits into their interactions with students and what new challenges it provides. Quite informative.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

How Would YOU Create Your Future?


The best way to predict the future ...
is to create it
. - Alan Kay

Yes, it is exciting, bewildering and even scary to try to decide you would like to be able to do if you could do ANYTHING in the future.

I recently asked the students in one of my undergraduate classes, "What would you want to be able to do if you could do ANYTHING? Imagine that it's possible. Think about what you would like to be able to do personally, professionally, and educationally." This yielded a number of interesting responses. Here is what they replied:

"I want a computer that will read my mind. I can think of thinks and it will write documents, answer questions and take pictures of my memories.,"
"Technology shoujld be more accessible - cost wise."
"I want to see the next generation of electronic portfolios where we can actually see students teaching."
"We need a better way to show our skills in portfolios. Not just paper and text."
" I would like to see a computer/webpage that changes automatically based upon the grade level of the user. Modifies the audio, text, and even the vocabulary."
"I would like to see how webcams can help sick students attend school."

There are more to come . . .

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Interesting Places on Second Life


There are a bunch of great places on Second Life but I can never find them when I need them. Thought that I might place the here on a posting at Second Life so that I could always refer people to the SLurl for the site. A SLurl is a web address that you can use get to a place on Second Life.

Here's a site where you can create your own SLurl, SLurl Builder. All that you need to do is enter the coordinates and it will create the SLurl for you.

My House (& UNI IT House)

More to come . .

This is a wonderful opportunity for you to share your URLs as well. Add your URLs as comments. I look forward to seeing what you have to share.

Z

Thursday, January 17, 2008

What's Your Epsonality?

I don't believe it. I actually enjoyed having Epson survey me and select a printer that will best fit my needs.

Don't know if you have seen this yet, but Epson now has a website where you can answer a few questions and then they will suggest a printer for you. It is called Epsonality It isn't the printer that impresses me but the creativity that this interactive site can bring to the table.

This is the sort of creativity that needs to be in our schools. It would be useful to have this sort of video to identify learning styles and then propose various strategies that would best fit the learner's needs.

What are your thoughts? "Post an idea using the comments button below."

Leave it to Epson. In the 80s they had their Epson Connection books where they enlisted the top authors to write books about how their printers could be used with various computers and in various professions. ;-)

Z

Monday, January 14, 2008

Mapping My Friends with Frappr

R U My Friend (or colleague or associate or have heard of me or read this blog or semi-interested complete stranger)?


If so, Click the Join button in the upper left corner of the map and place yourself on this Frappr map. You will notice that I already have a ClustrMap (love how everybody drops the E in ER in Web 2.0 titles) in the upper right corner of this blog. It shows who has visited the blog. Looks like they are from all over the world. But this is an involuntary recording of people's visits.

Frappr allows you to create an active community of members who are there by choice. It is a way to create a global (or State-al) community of members. Sure it would be interesting to do this with a number of people who are from the same state (much like my Classroom Computer Applications students) but imagine if you were running a collaborative learning experience between 3 classes in different states (or countries).

Think of the community that it would build if every student identified where they lived and posted their photos and other interesting information about them. Imagine further (don't know if this is possible yet) if this could be linked with Google Map or Google Earth so we can actually see the cities, neighborhoods and maybe schools or homes where our collaborative students live. The connections between them will be stronger and more immediate than with a mere handwritten penpal.

How do you see this as a useful tool in your learning situations? What else can you do? Can you find any suggestions on the web or in Google Scholar or any original ideas that you can suggest? If you found your ideas on the web, provide a link to your reference.

Z

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Life is Easier with Shorter URLs


I want to share an article from Businessweek that describes the best releases from the recent Consumer Electronics Show.

This is easy, right?

Just find the article on the web and then copy the URL to an email or blog post for you to use.

Here's one we can use . . .
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/01/0111_ces/source/1.htm?technology+slideshows&technology+slideshows

HUH? What is this address? It's as long as my arm and twice as hairy. It's running off the page. How many times have you pasted a long URL into an email to send to your friend and the end was cut off? Lots, eh

What's a guy to do?

Enter the URL ECONOMIZERS!!!!! Imagine a magical website that will take that mammoth URL and chop it down to a URL Mini-me . These websites are actually huge databases that generate a string of characters that they connect with your inserted URL.


http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/01/0111_ces/source/1.htm?technology+slideshows&technology+slideshows

Turns into

http://tinyurl.com/ypva6q

I would imagine that if that address is already in their database, that it will economize their work by just providing you with the link they created earlier.

Who are the URL Economizers?

TinyURL is the first one I ever found. It is easy to use. You can simply copy the URL, go to TinyURL.com and paste the link into the URL box on their page. It will create a TinyURL that you can use. BUT the REAL benefit of TinyURL.com is when you place the TinyURL link in your browser's tool bar. THEN, all that you have to do is go to your desired website and then click on the new link in your toolbar. It will immediately take you to their website with the TinyURL link already waiting for you to use.

SnipURL (or SNURL) is another one that I have found. It does the economizes URLs BUT it also copies the new address directly to your clipboard. This cuts out the copy and paste process that you need with TinyURL. It means that you just copy the huge URL into the URL box, snipit, and then paste it directly into your email or blog or ?? where you need it. The best part is that if you place a SNURL link in your browser's tool bar, it will automatically create the URL and place it into your clipboard without you even going to the SnipURL website. I love the feature but I don't understand the business model because these companies make their money on the Google Ads they have on their websites. The more times you visit the website, the more money they make.

I would assume that there are a number of other URL economizers on the web. If you know of one, leave a comment so that I can share it with our readers.

VERY INTERESTING NOTE!!!!!! I just realized something about URL economizers and Twittering. I just sent out a long URL on Twitterrific (the interface software for Twitter that I use on my Mac) and it came back as a TinyURL address. That means that the software is smart enough to run long URLs through the economizer to save on space. SOO SMART!!!!

Have a great day and remember - Economize!

Dr. Z





Thursday, January 10, 2008

Governor Richardson Ends His Campaign


Well, it happened.

Governor Bill Richardson has decided that he is no longer a viable candidate in the democratic race for president. Having received 2% in Iowa and 5% in New Hampshire, the governor didn't have the money to continue through to Tsunami Tuesday in early February.

I know that this is not a post about educational technology, but I still believe that Governor Richardson is the best qualified candidate for running our country and his decision to end his campaign is important to me.

The shining light in this decision is that Governor Richardson will be able to return to New Mexico to continue improving his state through his vision and innovations. While I will support whatever decisions he makes about his political future, I hope that he doesn't pursue vice president. The vice president doesn't do much and the Gov. will be able to affect many more lives as the New Mexico governor.

Governor Richardson was a catalyst for bringing forth important issues like an immediate end to the Iraq war. He has advocated immediate withdrawal from the beginning but his opponents wouldn't even commit to withdrawal in 5 years. Because of his untiring advocacy for this position, all of the democratic candidates are now advancing withdrawal in 18 months or less. Thank you, Gov.

It has just been announced but some journalists have already posted their articles covering this change in the presidential race. Guess they had it already written because of the governor's low returns.

Richardson Leaves the Personality Contest (Yahoo)

I must admit that I learned a great deal about elections through the Richardson race. As you may have noticed on my earlier postings, I assumed the role of Precinct Captain for Richardson and actually the first work I have ever done on a campaign. It was exiting.

I guess the next question is whether or not I will work as hard on the Obama campaign after he receives the Democratic nomination.

In closing, let me say "You're FIRED, Gov. Richardson!!!"

(This is a joke that only Gov. Richardson and campaign employees will understand. I know about this because my son, Jeff, worked on Richardson's campaign in Des Moines.