Serendipity35

Bringing Back Video to the Classroom

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:20:00 -0500

Fritz Nordengren's post has me right at the opening by saying, "I’m not an evangelist of tools. I am an evangelist for how tools empower learners."

The post is about the Flip video camera B001HSOFI2 which I have seen written about online, but not paid any attention to as far as a purchase. That's odd because my MA focused on film/video and I taught video production courses for a few decades. I have a museum of video cameras in my own basement from VHS, to VHS-C, to mini-DV and early digital video cameras that I never really bothered to use for anything meaningful. I even saved my half-inch reel-to-reel student projects from the pre-VHS/Betamax period (though I have no way to play them).

So, why have I been ignoring video both in and out of the classroom?

If Web 2.0 was about being a creator and not just a consumer of web content, part of that is creating video. Students are doing it using their cell phones and web cams and posting it to Facebook, YouTube and other sites. What I don't see is that much video coming out of classrooms. (I don't see as much video being consumed in courses as it was in the late 20th century either - but that's for a post tomorrow.)

Back to the Flip video. I saw the Educause “7 Things You Should Know About Flip Camcorders” report that says:

For educators, these small camcorders facilitate visual learning, which is frequently more engaging than other kinds of instruction and can transcend language barriers. A video artifact can be a highly effective tool for assessment, and the Flip camcorders offer easy access to this medium.

And I agree. But - I have not seen any compelling use of video in the classroom lately. I think it's because I have been away from K-12 where I suspect the most innovative applications of video to teaching are probably being done.

via Educause:

Those struggling to provide classroom technology on limited budgets may find an inexpensive digital camcorder offers more educational impact per dollar than a new laptop. A Flip could be used to record simple lab procedures for training purposes, such as clinical tasks for nursing or microbiology. The Flip functions well in low light, and students recording field trips, campus life, and peer interviews find the Flip’s low profile doesn’t act as a barrier between interviewer and interviewee. The Flip allows users to create video stories and essays, document procedures, interview experts, and record other activities, even as the technology itself becomes invisible.

FLIP BASICS The Flip MINO HD runs about $200. There are less expensive models too like the Flip Video Ultra. The camera attaches to your computer with an attached USB port (nice, no cables) and doesn't need an external battery as it also charges via the USB port. They are small digital camcorders, easy to use, have about an hour of recording, come with software (built in to the camera, no installation) to not only create (mp4 files), but edit and post the video to a site like YouTube. The software is not "pro" but you can copy and do some basic trimming of video and basic edits. (What is known as assembly-edits, not the fancier inserts where you move pieces of video out of order - like dropping in a later closeup to the master shot which we are so used to from TV and movies.) Of course, if you have the time, software and talent you can take your raw footage and copy it to your computer and get fancier.

As Nordengren says about having students use it:

They can edit at home, in class, in a shared lab, at Aunt Tillies….the need for dedicated editing platforms becomes a thing of the past.
This is not professional video camera for documentary work, or commercial work. It does not produce “broadcast quality” video. However, I hesitate to use that phrase as a reference point as it is a descriptor of quality that has decreasing relevance in today’s media world. The Flip does deliver very attractive images and reasonable sound that — on first glance — exceeds what we have previously seen in camcorders. The email function is probably easiest — in that it sends the video to a Flip server and sends a message to the recipient where they view the video on line as a flash video. This would be an easy way for students to turn in work. A more public display and potential source of peer critique is the built in posting to YouTube.

What probably interests me the most is summed up pretty well in this from the ducause document:

To the extent that media including video become accepted formats for academic work, devices like the Flip will open other avenues for student assignments. This will draw attention to the importance of developing new rubrics for effective evaluation of multimedia and will raise questions of fair use and appropriate attribution. Finally, students who use the Flip in academic exercises that begin as lifeblogs or citizen journalism may find that their learning opportunities have expanded beyond the classroom and into the wider community.

"Become accepted formats for academic work" is a key to this idea. It reminds me of my earlier attempts with Norbert Elliott to get "The End of the Essay" into motion.

OK people, show me the videos...

Browser Wars

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:08:00 -0500

I was messing for a few days over the break with a website I designed because I realized that some crazy stuff was happening when you viewed it in Internet Explorer. I automatically default to Firefox myself and usually check sites there first, but you can't ignore the majority of Net users.

If you're in that majority of users, you use Internet Explorer as your browser. But according to preliminary data from Net Application, Mozilla's Firefox browser crossed the 20% market share for the first time last November and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 just went under 70%.

Google's new Chrome probably had around 1% by the end of the year. Apple's Safari made pretty significant gains during 2008, probably due to sales of Apple hardware.

But the big news in this is IE's decline during 2008. All the other major browsers nibbled away at IE's share with Firefox taking the biggest bite.

And the news for 2009 might have something to do with the upcoming release of Internet Explorer 8 (the beta version of IE8 is out there already). It gets good reviews but most reviewers I have read still like the extensibility and speed of Firefox.

I wouldn't count out Google in this war. You know they are working on extension architecture for Chrome, so that developers can move their Firefox plugins to Chrome and give them some of that Firefox share.

Of course, there's that 0.22% of fringe people, like Tim, who check out Serendipity35 in oddball browsers. Sorry, but I don't design for you guys, but don't worry because Tim will probably continue to use browsers like the deprecated Netscape and scold me for for things that don't play nice with the code!

Life Hacking The New Year

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:06:00 -0500

Work smarter, not harder. It's a phrase I've heard over the years. I saw it on a site I came across called hackcollege.com which is a site that its describes itself this way:

Lectures are boring and inefficient. Long hours spent studying hand-written notes is very 1994. Anyone graduating today needs to know not how to operate a computer, but when. The fault is both with the students and the teachers. HackCollege is changing education. HackCollege is educating the students of the world about effective, open source software, putting techno-political arguments in everyday language, and creating a cult of "Students 2.0." If we can change the way 1 percent of college students and faculty in the world view education and technology, we've done our job.

Most of us think of "hacking" as as computer term and probably as something negative. ("They hacked into the computer system and launched the missiles!") There are actually lots of different hacks out there - many tech-oriented, but not all. (A hack is also a row of stacked green [unfired] bricks protected from the rain by a covering of straw, slates or special wooden hack covers, the sides protected by mats or planks. You learn something every time you read Serendipity35.)

The term life hack originally referred to productivity tricks that programmers devised to organize their data. Those life hacks were often quick and dirty (shell scripts and other command line utilities that filtered, munged and processed data streams like email and RSS feeds - things Tim cares about more than me).

The term spread as a meme and now anything that solves an everyday problem in a clever or non-obvious way might be called a life hack.

Even though I have given up on new year resolutions, I thought I might just look online for where lifehacking is today. Hackcollege is for students but teachers and staff need help just as much as students.

There is, of course, a site called Lifehacker. I think it's odd that the lifehacker.com website is so busy looking that I had to read some haiku to clear my mind. Being that I'm still old school on many things, I started looking at Amazon.

So here are some lifehacking book recommendations.

Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better by Gina Trapani, who is the editor and creator of Lifehacker and this is her second book about managing your digital life better. (see bottom)

Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day is the first book by Trapani and it has ways to keeps things simple and offers 88 hacks for your computer life.

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferris. A major hack of your life.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. A "classic" He came up with "getting things done"(GTD) methodology which actually has had an impact on personal productivity.

From Gina Trapani:

The second edition of the Lifehacker book, Upgrade Your Life, is a compilation of the best 116 hacks and downloads from Lifehacker's archives. This dead tree version of the web site transforms dozens of blog posts into comprehensive, edited tutorials, which will be familiar to longtime readers. While an official electronic version of Upgrade Your Life isn't available, today I've pulled together links to all the past posts that informed each book chapter to give you a one-stop preview of what's inside that cover. Consider this post the unedited web version of the book. After the jump, get a ginormous roundup of all the posts that created Upgrade Your Life by chapter. And shhhh, don't tell my book publisher I'm giving this all away.

If this is all just too overwhelming for you, start with this lifehack.org piece on "How To Procrastinate."

Current Events Are The Teachable Moment

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:05:00 -0500

"All I know is what I read in newspapers." - Will Rogers

Humorist Will Rogers said that back in the 1920s and I doubt that he would agree with himself today. To keep up with what is "in the news" today you had better be looking beyond newsPAPERS.

When I was in elementary school, we always did "current events" in class. I remember having homework assignments to cut out an article to explain to my classmates. Do teachers still do current events in class? I doubt that many people call it that any more, but how can you not bring what's going on in the world to your classroom?

I suppose it would be better to call using events in the news a "teachable moment."

I have written here about the "death of newspapers" but I also believe that they are more dynamic than they ever were in my school days with more photos, charts, graphs, maps, color, and magazine-like features. Couple that with their online resources and today's newspaper is still something that needs to be taught.

I did some searching to see what's out there to teach the news. I was surprised to see that the first news source I can recall using in school is still around and online. Remember My Weekly Reader? Now, it's available for kindergarten students. (No one expected us to be be readers in kindergarten in the 1950s, and none of my classmates had gone to any "pre" schooling.) They have online materials for teachers to do current events.

If you're looking for trends and topics for students online, you can certainly look at the Google & Yahoo sources that I wrote about at the end of 2008.

This Education World article, "Why Teach Current Events," is a good starting place as is another piece on "Twenty-Five Ideas for Using Current Events Across the Curriculum."

More links

list for classroom use at http://www.csun.edu/~hcedu013/cevents.html
http://news.yahoo.com/
http://www.google.com/Top/News/Current_Events/
on The New York Times Learning Network
http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/lesson_plans/current_events/
Information Please has events going back to 1997 month by month

Microsoft Lets Students Steal Office

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:10:00 -0500

Nothing illegal going on here. Microsoft calls it The Ultimate Steal. It allows college students to get Office Ultimate for $59.95 (91% off E.R.P.).

Eligibility Info: You must have a valid e-mail address at an educational institution ending with the domain suffix .EDU (ie, serendipity35@njit.edu) OR have a valid email address at one of the educational institutions listed on the site. You must be a student at a U.S. educational institution and must be actively enrolled in at least 0.5 course credit and be able to provide proof of enrollment upon request.

The site is part of their Student Experience area. There are other student discounts there too. It's not a bad resource to point students at for other freebies. There are resume templates, cover letters, interview tips and followup letter etc.

Microsoft doesn't always get things right. I was listening to a podcast that was talking about some retro Windows t-shirts that Microsoft was making available - but they weren't selling them online (huh?) or telling you online what stores would carry them (duh!). But they do offer some good things online for free or discount.

If you're not a student, I hope you have at least checked out the many Office templates that are offered for free download.

The Serendipity35 Review For 2008

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:33:00 -0500

Serendipity35 has been getting a pretty consistent one million plus visitors per month during the second half of 2008.
That both pleases us, and makes us wonder if we shouldn't have gone commercial rather than the non-profit route!

Our Top 10 visited articles

Personal Video Online: YouTube and Beyond 49103 visits
Public iTunes U Sites Still pulling in visitors at 43837
Online Socializing: How Are Schools Reacting? 40804 visits
This conference is only online 39676 visits
Back to the Future Must have been that title that brought in 36370 clicks
Google Page Creator 35073 visits - though Google dropped this in favor of Google Sites
About Us 2.0 35010 people must be curious.
Bookmarklets and Favelets 34129 visits
Personal Broadcasting: Podcasting and beyond 32672 visits
Classroom 2.0 Live: A Free Meetup 32395 visits

Proving that there is a long tail in blogging when you have an archive of entries, an early one about the writer William Gibson brought in 31913 visitors, and even though the news is outdated about Tim & I and About Division 35 at NJIT 31494 inquiring minds wanted to know.

New entries on the blog usually take about a week to get about a hundred "direct hits" on them. Those come when someone find that particular post's URL via a search engine. When you visit our home page, you could read all 11 posts that show up, but it wouldn't be recorded as anything but a general hit on the site. We added the counter to each entry to see how much attention individual posts were getting, but we realize that those numbers are probably low. I myself read most blogs that I follow in my Google Reader application and I'm not sure that those reads count as anything other than another "subscriber" to the blog's owner.

I continue to get email about presentations that I have done at conferences that have accompanying entries on this blog. I did one on Social Computing at the NJEDge.Net Faculty Best Practices Showcase in 2006 when I was pretty new to blogging, wikis and all that, but a lot of other educators were even more Web 1.0 then. That post has pulled in 31369 visits.

I'm always tempted to delete old entries that seem "dated" - like What is this thing called Web 2.0? from early 2006 - but with 30131 reads, I suppose it has "historic" value too.

Some entries get a push because of other sites linking to us or for less desired reasons. My original 2007 post about Randy Pausch unfortunately needed to be updated when the man behind The Last Lecture died 8 months later.

Serendipity35 received 540 comments which might sound like a lot, but is quite low based on our visitor count. Some of the best blogs get that many comments in a month. I haven't figured out the secret to getting readers to comment. More controversy as with talk radio and TV?

We have been averaging 4.54 entries posted per week. And the statistics machine keeps calculating: Total amount of characters we have typed = 2,591,164 characters with an average characters per entry of 3,772 - though the 2006 "A Serendipity35 Year in Review" swelled up like my stomach after the holidays to 25,352 characters all by itself. (That's because I was using tables, so most of the those characters are hiding in the code.) That's a lot of keyboard action for my two fingers.

We get a good amount of traffic from outside the United States - the top 10 other countries that visit the blog the most are:

Germany (Ken would like to go back and visit again, but his knees can't handle those ski trails anymore.)
Russian Federation (thanks, but stop the spam comments and trackbacks please!)
Canada (Hello to our friends from the north!)
Netherlands (We appreciate your windmills, tulips, cheese, clogs, delftware, bicycles, and social tolerance. Any good conferences in Amsterdam that we can work up a presentation for in 2009?)
Sweden (We realize that the Swedish Bikini Team was really an advertising ploy that used American actresses, but we are still open to a paid conference invite.)
United Kingdom (Love you guys.)
Brazil (We are ready to visit your beaches! No conference necessary. Send airfare.)
Romania (Wasn't Sibiu, in Transylvania, chosen the European Capital of Culture in 2007? Sure, we'll come and speak.)
Italy (Ken has been trying to get his wife to take him to Italy to visit her ancestors... give him an formazione o technoloy excuse to visit!)
Australia (That's a long plane ride. I may need to get a Kindle.)

About Us Version 2.10

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 00:30:00 -0500

I looked back at my first entry from February 2, 2006 and it seems simultaneously not that long ago, and a lot of posts ago.

Looking in our stats tool, I see that we have a total of 698 entries posted, but we have to get Tim's numbers up in 2009. Tim has 36 entries (5.2%) and Ken has 662 entries (94.8%). (I think Tim needs an infusion of strong coffee and cookies!)

What can I update about myself since my last update in January 2008? That was when I was leaving NJIT for PCCC. I have completed my first year at Passaic County Community College. We launched the first 3 writing-intensive courses for the fall semester, have 2 more piloting in spring 09, and will select 3 more in January to redesign for fall 09.

Our writing center at PCCC was finally completed in December. Three months late and about 3 hours before our outside evaluators came on campus to grill us on the first year of the 5 year grant. We know we didn't hit all our own high goals for year one, so we are trying some new things in year two. Luckily, not much is written in permanent ink, so we have the freedom to redirect our efforts.

Our greatest success may be in an area that all agreed was more likely to occur in year 2 or 3. A number of our efforts like using LibGuides, use of our standard writing rubric, changes to the rubric and scoring sessions for the College Writing Exam have moved beyond our writing-intensive courses to the college community with very little prompting from us.

I have a few new projects starting in January including some presentations and conferences to prep for, and helping out with another grant that PCCC acquired for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

Zeitgeist and Buzz for 2008

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:30:00 -0500

People search because they want to know about things. Curiosity is generally a good thing, especially in the education world. The people who work at search companies are also curious - about what we are curious about.

Google does a Year-End Zeitgeist that has search data from more than 30 countries and Yahoo! has a year review from it's Buzz site.

If you read any of these searched names or terms and shake your head and say "Huh? Who or what is that?" then you had better do a search on it yourself right now, or take the risk of feeling left out at that New Year's Eve party. I can carry on a reasonably decent conversation now about Boyd and American hot rods or Brad Renfro's filmography. I have to say that those will probably be better conversation starters than explaining how to create a custom theme in Moodle!

What are the two big global search trends? Socializing and politics. Social networks are 4 of the top 10 global fastest-rising queries. Our two-year long U.S. election had search action around the globe. Sarah Palin lost in the election, but won as the fastest-rising query on their global list. (Obama was #6)

I can't explain why in Poland, the #5 term was "Jozin z Bazin." The Google Blog told me that it's an old 1978 Czech song that roughly translates to, "Joe of the Swamp" and that it was a sensation on YouTube, - but, as Yoda might say, explain it I cannot. Try humming a few bars as you approach someone at the bar...

Here are some results:

Fond Farewells 1. heath ledger 2. bernie mac 3. tim russert 4. isaac hayes 5. george carlin 6. brad renfro 7. randy pausch 8. paul newman 9. boyd coddington 10. michael crichton

"Fastest rising" is the phrase they use for the most popular searches conducted for 11 months of 2008 based on how much their frequency increased compared to 2007. The Fastest Rising (in the U.S.) were 1. obama 2. facebook 3. att 4. iphone 5. youtube 6. fox news 7. palin 8. beijing 2008 9. david cook 10. surf the channel

Google's translation service (it's good for a word or phrase; it won't do your French homework) Fastest Rising (U.S.) words searched for a translation - 1. you 2. what 3. thank you 4. please 5. love

How about the most popular cocktails searched? 1. martini 2. mojito 3. margarita 4. manhattan 5. cosmopolitan 6. sangria 7. bellini 8. mai tai 9. white russian 10. bloody mary

And there is plenty more on Showbiz, Sports and the big old world.

The Yahoo! Buzz Year in Review has a decidedly more pop culture focus. But, looking at their searches under ECONOMICS, we get a pretty good picture of the year.

1. IRS Stimulus Checks 2. Oil Prices 3. Gold Prices 4. Gas Prices 5. Dow Jones 6. Sallie Mae 7. Stock Market 8. AIG 9. Foreclosures 10. Debt Consolidation

I do like that Yahoo! (must I use that annoying ! when I type Yahoo?) includes some explanation and additional links with the lists which would be useful if you were going to use this in the classroom to have students discuss or write about the year, current events or trends.

The most searched WOMEN were a mixed group: 1 Angelina Jolie 2 Sarah Palin 3 Oprah Winfrey 4 Hillary Clinton 5 Gina Carano 6 Tina Fey 7 Michelle Obama 8 Katie Couric 9 Barbara Walters 10 Dara Torres

Jane's Favorites From 2008

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 22:46:00 -0500

One of my favorite bloggers from across the pond, Jane Hart, took a look at all the resources that she had collected during 2008 on her LearnTech Library and LearnTech News and made a list of 100 favorites that should be useful to all of you.

I have been reading her blog, eLearning Pick of the Day, and occasionally stealing an item to review myself. (Though I'm always happy to post something before her, even if it's just Norad's Santa tracker.)

She also put them into Wordle to generate a word cloud and identify trends in her collection. This will keep you busy during the winter break...

Still Moodling After All These Years

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:17:00 -0500

Moodle is my favorite of the open source course management systems (CMS). [AKA learning management systems (LMS) or by many Moodle users, as a virtual learning environment (VLE)]

Beyond the software, "to moodle" is that "improvisational process of doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity. As such it applies both to the way Moodle was developed, and to the way a student or teacher might approach studying or teaching an online course."

Of course, if you applying for a grant or pitching it to a high-ranking school official who needs to approve its use but hasn't a clue about what you're talking about, you can say that Moodle stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. That will sound much better.

I have been using Moodle since 2005 starting with a comparison pilot study at NJIT with Moodle and Sakai.

There wasn't much available then about using Moodle except what you would find at the Moodle.org site and from other educators who were developing courses.

Here are 4 books that would be very useful to anyone starting to work with Moodle as an administrator, designer or instructor.

Moodle 1.9 E-Learning Course Development: A complete guide to successful learning using Moodle focuses on course development and delivery and best practices. Moodle is known for being fairly easy to install and use. Of course, any of us who use it to teach or train the teachers know that the hard part comes after the install. Three of these books might help you develop a learning process using Moodle, learn how the software works and what kinds of lessons work best within the platform.

Moodle E-Learning Course Development: A complete guide to successful learning using Moodle has the greatest emphasis on using the software for better teaching. It goes into most of the tool available such as quizzes, tests, surveys, projects and the social tools like forums, choices, wiki and journal that encourage interaction and group work between students.

According to the author:

When I wrote Moodle E-Learning Course Development, I started with Moodle and worked towards creating an online course that adheres to good teaching practices. The book is organized according to the workflow that works best in Moodle: create your course, add static course material, then add interactive material, then add social material, then customize the roles for your course...and so on. The approach in this book is to start with what Moodle can do and work towards creating an effective e-learning experience. The keystrokes and clicks in this book apply only to Moodle.
When I wrote Moodle Teaching Techniques, I started with a list of proven learning principles. I then developed Moodle techniques that used these principles. Some of these techniques work around Moodle's limitations, which makes them inappropriate for a book on using Moodle as it was intended. Others combine features, or use features in unexpected ways. In each case, the approach in this book is to start with a research-based learning principle and work towards creating an effective e-learning experience. Moodle Teaching Techniques is less about keystrokes, and and more about teaching techniques. You could probably apply all of the techniques in this book to another LMS, like ATutor or ILIAS. The keystrokes and clicks would change, but the most important parts of the book would not.

The social constructionist learning philosophy is at the heart of Moodle. The philosophy predates social networking as we use the term online these days, but Moodle fits very well into that. If you believe that all of us construct knowledge through interactions with one another and with learning materials in a social way, then Moodle (and these books) might seem quite natural to you.

Hopefully, you and you fellow educators are past arguing whether or not a virtual learning environment should be used to support traditional class teaching. (The idea that all of this is just for online and distance learning courses is not worth my time to argue.)

Moodle Teaching Techniques: Creative Ways to Use Moodle for Constructing Online Learning Solutions This book (and the 2 other non-admin titles) is written by William Rice. His infrequently updated blog also has some good Moodle info (here's a Moodle versus Sakai post) This is the newest title of this group. It's tough to teach/learn software from a book, so there are many screenshots in these books so you can see what a course looks like - hopefully, the version matches the one you are using. This book assumes you have some basic background with Moodle (it's not a how to use Moodle book) and want to get into using it to teach. More Ed, less Tech.

Finally, Moodle Administration: An administrator's guide to configuring, securing, customizing, and extending Moodle is written in a problem/solution style for technicians, systems administrators, and academic staff. It's not for novices to Moodle or to IT administration.

A Holiday Spreadsheet

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:25:00 -0500

How geeky a Christmas post is this?

Four elves worked together simultaneously on a single Google Docs spreadsheet.

Each cell in the 100 row x 186 col spreadsheet was filled using 18 different colors. The entire process was captured in time-lapse for the video below:

You can get the original spreadsheet used in this video and learn how it was created at: http://docs.google.com/holiday

Snow Days

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:24:00 -0500

If you were lucky enough to get some snow days when you were a kid, and you ended up staying in education as an adult - then you know that it's just as exciting to have a day off from school when you are an adult.

Amazingly, though it is ruled to be too snowy to get to school, kids all over America are able to make it outside and to hills covered with snow.

I was thinking about Randy Parker in a Christmas Story all bundled up so he could no longer have any fun in the snow as I watched some kids last Friday sledding down the hill at the park.

I'm not crazy about shoveling snow, icy roads and all that, but I think I would miss snow days.

Apparently, in warmer climes they only get "weather-related cancellations" which does not sound like any fun at all.

Where's the EdTEch in this? It's a stretch, but you can check cancellations.com to find cancellations or delays in your area, and the wonderfully titled SchoolsOut.com lists school closings in 18 U.S. states and Washington DC.

I'm not sure if snow days translates all over the world, but I did find snowday.co.uk which can be used to find out if schools or colleges are closed in bad weather in the UK.

Using Tech To Track Santa's Journey

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:01:00 -0500

http://www.noradsanta.org

Yes, you can use the high tech of NORAD to track Santa's journey around the world.

The NORAD Tracks Santa Web site is a kind of public relations effort by the extremely serious people at North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Every year for the past fifty Christmas Eves, NORAD has told stories of how their powerful tracking systems (such as the Distant Early Warning Line or DEW Line) detected Santa Claus leaving the North Pole to deliver presents. The past few years they have also been using Google Earth to display the trip in 3D.

The action really starts on Christmas Eve as the long journey begins. Prior to that you can get updates from the North Pole, and there are also things being added to the Kids' Countdown.

Christmas in the classroom may be a controversial topic where you work. Maybe you can just use the tech take on it, or the different languages that are available. Google Earth geography lessons from it? All right, it's just fun.

You can even track the journey on your cell phone.

Fireside Chats 2.0

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:22:00 -0500

A number of bloggers are announcing that the spirit of Franklin D. Roosevelt's regular radio broadcasts that were known as "fireside chats" is back in version 2.0 with President Elect Barack Obama's weekly address to the nation using via YouTube.

Roosevelt's chats occurred in a financially troubled time for the nation, and he used the popular medium of the day - radio - for his informal and folksy talks. Obama plans to talk about the economy, energy, healthcare, education and other issues.

When Obama talks about tech issues like a commitment to making broadband connections "as common as telephone lines" and calls it "an enormous economic engine," it is compared to FDR's construction of railroads.

His transition website at change.gov is now supplemented by its YouTube.com/user/ChangeDotGov channel.

It makes sense, since Obama's win is at least partially due to his team's adept use of the Web and new media. Some have dubbed him the first Blackberry President (though it seems he will have to give up that favored mobile device due to presidential restrictions). His campaign team used Twitter and garnered 150,000 followers (though that stopped on November 5th) and created an "internet army" of financial contributors and volunteers. Their email and mobile phone numbers database is supposedly over 10 million users. Plus he's on Facebook and other social networks.

On the change.gov site you can submit questions and vote on those you most want answered. The "Open for Questions" feature logged 1000+ questions and 70,000 votes cast in its first day. That feature promotes the ideas of government transparency, and priorities guided by the people.

From the site blog on December 15:

"Last week, our Open for Questions feature was particularly well-received: more than 20,000 people cast nearly 1,000,000 votes on questions posed by the community. Overall, just over 10,000 questions were voted up or down and ranked by visitors to the site. The result is a snapshot of the issues you're concerned about as the pieces for the next administration move into place."

There's also a discussion board where the Obama team asks the question and users can respond. Some topics have included: "How is the current economic crisis affecting you?" Perhaps some of the responders have had some experience in a course management system because their answers are often quite detailed.

In a CNN poll, 79% approve of Obama's performance so far during the transition. That gives him 14 points higher than the approval rating for President-elect George Bush in 2001 and 17 points higher than President-elect Clinton's rating in 1992.

The team hasn't only used Obama on YouTube. Senior advisor Valerie Jarrett also appeared to talk about the transition and explain new policies regarding lobbyists.

Other tech plans mentioned include:

videos of government and "town hall" meetings
an online database of government spending where you can track your tax dollars
appointing a Chief Technology Officer
a goal to broaden Internet access. The United States currently ranks 15th of the 30 top industrialized nations in terms of the percentage of citizens with access to broadband.

The Obama team continues to use the Net to organize grassroots efforts. They have a holiday break assignment for you.

Sign up to lead a Health Care Community Discussion in your home, community center, or even a local coffee shop, anytime until December 31st. We'll provide you with a special Moderator's Guide that will give you everything you need to get the discussion going. Secretary-designate Tom Daschle will even choose some discussions to attend in person. He recorded [a] short video message to talk a bit about why these discussions are so important.

Winter Solstice

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 07:04:00 -0500

Well, Serendipity35 just moved into winter...

Winter Solstice began December 21, 2009 @ 17:55 Greenwich Mean Time. If you're like most Americans, you have no idea what time that is in your household - so check the World Times Zones site.

The solstice is either of the two times a year when the Sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator. In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice occurs either December 21 or 22, when the sun shines directly over the Tropic of Capricorn. (For summer solstice, the sun shines directly over the tropic of Cancer. In the Southern Hemisphere, the winter and summer solstices are reversed.)

The winter solstice has the shortest day and the longest night of the year.

Since the sun appears at its lowest point in the sky, and its noontime elevation appears to be the same for several days before and after the solstice, people once thought it had stopped. Solstice comes from Latin solstitium, from sol, “sun” and -stitium, “a stoppage.”

For the optimists in the crowd, after this the days begin to grow longer and the nights shorter.

For my fellow Druids, let's gather around a tree (I have chosen my Charlie Brown tree) or build our own little Stonehenge and celebrate the rising sun and more sun time. For those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, send us pictures of you at the beach.