Gettysburg Address as Powerpoint

November 19, 2007 in Education, Technology | No comments

To illuminate how Powerpoint presentations can be abused, Peter Norvig (research director at Google) has recreated Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as a Powerpoint Presentation. [Link]

My favorite part is the introduction (we’ve all been here/seen this):

Good morning. Just a second while I get this connection to work. Do I press this button here? Function-F7? No, that’s not right. Hmmm. Maybe I’ll have to reboot. Hold on a minute. Um, my name is Abe Lincoln and I’m your president. While we’re waiting, I want to thank Judge David Wills, chairman of the committee supervising the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery. It’s great to be here, Dave, and you and the committee are doing a great job. Gee, sometimes this new technology does have glitches, but we couldn’t live without it, could we? Oh – is it ready? OK, here we go.

To distill something as profound as the Gettysburg Address into a Powerpoint presentation is utterly ludicrous.Thus, Norvig makes a poignant example of how effective oral communication can get lost in the bells and whistles of technology.

Powerpoint (and other technologies) should be tools that support our teaching – not replace it. That’s something that we as educators need to teach to our kids, and to ourselves. I regularly make a point to preview my Powerpoint slides and remove as much of the text as I possibly can. I try to remember that I am the teacher – the presentation isn’t.

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But SHOULD you take it?

November 9, 2007 in Technology | No comments

Jeffrey Branzburg recently wrote an article for Technology and Learning (techLEARNING.com) entitled “You Can Take it With You” (How to integrate video segments in curriculum – without worry). To summarize, Branzburg is teaching us how to download video clips from YouTube, Google Video, etc (as they might blocked through many school districts).

Here are his suggestions for showing ‘blocked’ videos in class:

  1. Link to the video or embed the video code in a blog or website
  2. Video Downloader 2.0 (http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php)
  3. Vixy.net (www.vixy.net)
  4. Zamzar (www.zamzar.com)

But the question still remains – even if we can download these internet videos – should we?Some of the content on these sites is illegally posted, so by showing this content in class, you could be violating copyright laws.

Ok – so avoid downloading episodes or clips from major networks. What about content that’s NOT stolen from network and cable television? Here’s the legalese – the YouTube Terms of Use (section 6 part C) allows its users to “…use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service.” The catch here is “through the functionality of the Website”.So by downloading content outside of the website, you are technically violating the agreement.

Thus, legally – it is ok to link to and embed code from YouTube and Google Video. But be careful when you bypass their user agreements to download their content.

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DE Streaming vs. Safari Montage

October 19, 2007 in Education, Technology | 1 comment

I am fortunate enough to teach in a school that provides both Discovery Education Streaming and Safari Montage for streaming video. They both contain good content (from different media companies), but there are a few differences. Here is a rundown of those differences (presented in alphabetical order):

de-streamingDiscovery Education Streaming (formerly United Streaming)

  • Accessible anywhere via internet (on-site server available at extra cost)
  • Individual teacher signup required
  • Streaming video, audio, sound effect, articles, quizzes, events, lesson plans, images, clip art, etc
  • 4,000+ video titles
  • All content downloadable, some editable
  • Content can be made available with password protection (i.e. within Blackboard)
  • Some content grainy, lower quality video
  • Professional Development component through Discovery Education and the Discovery Educator Network (DEN) including webinars, online training, regional support, and much more
  • Content: Discovery & Discovery Education Titles (including Planet Earth), Suburst, AIMS Multimedia, Weston Woods, and many others

safari_splashSafari Montage

  • On-site server only = no outside access, but reliable intranet connection
  • No individual teacher signup necessary
  • Streaming video only
  • 1,000+ video titles
  • Broadcast quality video
  • Content: WGBH/PBS, Schlesinger Media, National Geographic, Sesame Street, BBC, A&E, Disney Education, etc.


Summary

The content from each provider is quite different, so educators of different levels and content areas might prefer one service over another (for instance, DE Streaming has some exceptional content for high school science, and Safari Montage carries Bill Nye the Science Guy, which might be better for elementary and middle school science).

The School Library Journal Recently compared the two services, giving DE Streaming an A- and Safari Montage an A+. Safari Montage earned the ‘plus’ distinction due to the higher quality of their videos.

While DE Streaming quality isn’t as good as Safari, DE Streaming offers more for students and teachers. DE Streaming provides a slew of professional development opportunities, more media options and their content is accessible anywhere and is downloadable. This allows DE Streaming content to be more flexible. Some titles are even editable, so educators and students can manipulate them in multimedia presentations.


More on DE Streaming and Safari Montage:

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Margarine for Learning

October 5, 2007 in Education, Science | No comments

Today is the Friday of Homecoming week, and you can feel the energy pulsing through the students and staff in the building. During the week we have plenty of spirit building activities, such as dress-up days, music in the halls, voting for homecoming court, penny wars between the student classes, and a float-building party with bonfire and games on Thursday night.

As we get closer to the pep assembly and game on Friday, the students’ minds drift farther away from the classroom. This can be an obvious frustration for any educator who doesn’t want to waste class time. I see many teachers showing movies for entertainment, giving large tests, or simply shutting down and letting their classes talk the entire hour about their weekend plans.

 

One way that I engage my chemistry students right up until the pep assembly is with a margarine lab. Essentially, the students select a margarine sample, heat it up until is separates into oil and water, freeze the oil, and extract the water. By getting the mass at each step, they are able to easily calculate the percent of water in margarine.

I am watching my students do the lab right now. They are active, engaged, enjoying the oh-so-buttery-good smell in the lab, and even doing a little math. In fact, it’s the same math that we will see in the future when calculating % composition. It’s perfect activity to keep my students active and even trick them into learning.

On a day like this, what are your tricks to keep students motivated to learn?

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Websenseless, Part II

September 25, 2007 in Technology | No comments

This little story illustrates the absolutely ridiculous nature of Websense – my district’s internet filter.

While perusing through my feeds on Google Reader this morning, I found a link to a New York Times article about how the state of New York is investigating Facebook’s safety rules.

Needless to say, I was websensed. While trying to link to this article, I was blocked. Thinking this was just a fluke, I typed ‘facebook’ into the NY Times search field:

nytimessearch.jpg

Again, I was blocked by Websense:

websensed1.jpg

To recap, my district’s internet filter is not only blocking Facebook (with which I completely agree), but they are also blocking information about Facebook!

Where am I – the United States or China!

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Websenseless

September 22, 2007 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

In anticipating the release of Google Presentation, The Official Google Blog recently released a neat little video describing the power and utility of Google Documents. The video speaks for itself and is worth watching:

My biggest problem is that our district has blocked Google Docs via Websense for fear that students might use it to chat (in a quite convoluted way) and import inappropriate content from outside of their safe little fortress of an intranet. This same mentality has them blocking flickr and slideshare.

And this is also why the district blocks YouTube (I might remind you that Google owns them). But stupefying as it may seem, Google Video is open!

When I question these practices, I usually get this response: “what happens if a student imports porn this way?” To which I mentally reply “yeah, that is a LOT easier that plugging in a USB drive full of porn into any district computer.”

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Rule the Web, One Day at a Time

September 15, 2007 in Uncategorized | No comments

For those of you following Dale Basler’s blog, you’ll remember that he recently posted about Mark Frauenfelder’s book Rule the Web (how to do anything and everything on the internet, better, faster and easier).

While I realize that some of you still open books and read them cover to cover, Mark has created a blog for his book that caters to some of us who like to get information in short, abridged segments.

Most of these episodes are actually short audio segments, and you can easily listen to them with the embedded Pickle Player. Here are a few of the latest ones:

You’ll note that these episodes are fairly new, so this is your chance to get on board with a new resource from its beginnings!

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In an Ideal Classroom, NoteSake would Rock!

September 11, 2007 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

I stumbled across NoteSake from a recent LifeHacker post. This little gem seems like a great idea – take notes and tag ’em, send/share them, and organize them. So I tried it out.

The editor takes a little getting used to, but seems like it has quite a few features. For instance, I can do superscripts and formulas, which is definitely important to me as a science teacher. I realized that it isn’t very easy to paste old notes (taken from MS Word) into the editor, but when you are done, you can easily export the notes out as a Word document or a pdf.

notesample

Perhaps the neatest functions of NoteSake lie in the ability to tag your notes and to share them with others. Imagine being in a class where all students took notes with NoteSake, and were able to collaborate their notes together in a group.

However, this is an ideal tool that is not realistic for most public high schools. Most kids do not have laptops or even computers in their classroom, and may have limited internet access. In order for this to be effective, students would have to transfer their notes (which is not that easy) into NoteSake instead of taking them on-the-fly.

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Doing e-mail for good, not evil

September 11, 2007 in Uncategorized | No comments

Wired Magazine’s How To Wiki Blog recently posted an article on how to Write a Perfect EMAIL. As educators are flexing their fingers for work after resting this summer, this is a perfect article to kick off the school year.

Here is the annotated list:

  • Be Brief
  • Put your message in context
  • Make your requests clear
  • Include a deadline (if appropriate)

Dale Basler and I recently presented The Basics of Online Communication to NSTA’s National Science Congress. We’d add a few more tips:

  • Use bcc (blind carbon copy) for multiple addressees
  • Trim unnecessary ‘fat’ on forwards
  • Choose function over form (i.e. avoid fancy formatting)
  • Don’t use e-mail for everything (not good for chatting, etc.)

You can see the video and powerpoint of that presentation at Zentation (below):

The Basics of Online Communication
44:27
Maintaining successful and effective communication in the digital world.

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These Kids are Hot!

September 10, 2007 in Uncategorized | No comments

After a few days of unbearable heat in my classroom (no air conditioning in my school), I decided to quantify my misery.

Using a Vernier LabPro and Surface Temperature Sensor, I collected temperature readings in my classroom (in Fahrenheit) over the course of 8 hours of school. Here is the resulting graph:

temp

You’ll notice two things:

  1. My room got hot – up to 85ºF, which was actually cooler than the day before (~89 ºF). Our district touts equity, but seeing as the other high schools in our district both have air conditioning, I can assure you that the district is NOT equitable in providing a classroom environment conducive to learning.
  2. The other interesting thing is that there is a noticeable change in room temperature when the kids are physically present. Notice the two dips in temperature (marked by the arrows). They represent two hours the chemistry room is vacant. Thus, body heat can significantly raise the temperature of any classroom.

Keeping these two things in mind, I have a suggestion to maintain ‘equity’ – keep rooms cooler in non-air conditioned buildings with lower class sizes!

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