Couros

I wrote a brief post on the possibilities for Flowgram a few days ago. Jen Jones just posted her use of the Flowgram tool, a reflection of how she used her network to prepare for a presentation. Click on Jen’s Flowgram below:

Jen has provided us with a good example of how one would use Flowgram. More importantly, Jen highlights the processes she uses for learning from and being creative with her social network.

There has been some important discussion as of late about renegotiating relationships and our ties with social network tools and online spaces. For those of you still finding your way, here’s a cute video that may help.

This is part of a viral advertising campaign from meetup.com. The company’s strategy tagline is “use the Internet to get off the Internet.” Check out the “get your friends unplugged” page, where you can send your friends a reminder to get offline. Yes, it’s viral marketing so as always, carefully critique the sender and the message.

Go outside!

iLeonardo looks like a promising social research tool. The “about” page describes iLeonardo as “a Social Utility for connecting to people and their collections of relevant information on the web.” Using a bookmarklet, you can find and clip text, image links, and URLs, and store them in “notebooks”. Or you can find other people who have created similar notebooks and browse and copy from theirs, or collaborate. The tool seems like a cross between Delicious and Google Notebook.

This video may give you a better idea of how it works:

The service is seems to be in a closed beta right now. You can request an account, or let me know and it seems that I can send you an invite.

I do not know much about this free tool, but I was just notified that Edmodo has launched.

Edmodo is a private microblogging platform developed for use in the classroom by teachers and students. Edmodo provides teachers and students the ability to share notes, links, and files to foster communication inside and outside of the classroom. Teachers also have the ability to post alerts, assignments, and events to share with their students.

Edmodo looks like a very useful tool, has a clean interface (feels a bit Drupaly), and could be an excellent tool for classroom teachers looking for a private blogging option. If anyone starts using it with their students, please let me know.

Adfreak featured a piece on Sarah Haskins today who has been putting together some really neat literacy pieces related to advertising targeting women. Take a look at some of the “Target: Women” series on Current. I have posted links below.

Birth Control:

Yogurt Edition:

Weddings Shows:

Chick Flicks

I like Haskin’s approach to media literacy. While I don’t find it very deep (nor think that’s her intention), she identifies key issues and does it in a humourous way. The technique is key. And, if you are looking for something to critique with your students, here is my growing list of videos for discussing media representation.

Technorati Tags: media, literacy, videos, haskins, critique, pedagogy

Flowgram is a nice tool that I think many educators would find useful. Flowgram allows you to take webpages, photos, or PowerPoint presentations, put them into a linear sequence and add audio narration and notes. The result is somewhat like a screencast. It is free, does not require a download, and Flowgrams are embeddable in your blog, or can be shared in other ways (e.g., Facebook, Delicious, etc.)

Abhay Parekh, founder of the company, created a Flowgram to demonstrate the capabilities of the tool. Click on the image below:

Flowgram may be useful to yourself, or students. I can think of a number of educational applications.

In a California copyright infringement case, Io Group v. Veoh Networks, the Court has granted the defendant’s motion for summary judgment, on the basis of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), holding that the defendant’s video-sharing web site complied with the DMCA and was entitled to the protection of the statute’s “safe harbor” provision.

In its 33-page decision, the Court noted, among other things, that the DMCA was “designed to facilitate the robust development and world-wide expansion of electronic commerce, communications, research, development, and education in the digital age”, and rejected that plaintiff’s contention that Veoh had failed to reasonably implement its notification policy for repeat offenders. (link)

Read the entire 33-page decision here.

From BBC:

A Capuchin monk, Brother Cesare Bonizzi, is the lead singer in a heavy metal band which has just released its second album. The 62-year-old monk’s love affair with heavy metal began when he attended a Metallica concert some 15 years ago.

Brother Cesare: “I do it to convert people to life, to understand life, full-stop.”

Are you living the mashup?

This is inspirational. For everyone that needs a reminder (or a kick in some cases) why they became teachers, let Dalton Sherman inspire you.

Kevin Jarrett has more information on this video at his blog.

From the Edtech Posse site:

Ewan McIntosh came over from Scotland to share a pint and a pretty decent conversation with us. Rob Wall, Alec Couros, Dean Shareski, Cindy Seibel and Kyle Lichtenwald sat down with Ewan at Bobby’s Tavern in Moose Jaw. A big thanks to Dean for hosting a great get together in his home city.

(Photo credit, Dean Shareski)

It was terrific to meet Ewan, and it was a great day for learning with good friends.

I just discovered MovieStorm, free software for Mac or Windows that allows users to create animated movies. The software download is quite large (in total, almost 500 MB), so if you are trying this, be sure to use a solid, high-speed connection.

Click here to watch a demo.

While I have not had a chance to dive deep into this tool, it seems fairly easy-to-use and has enough potential to keep more advanced users engaged. The tool could be used as intended for creating and narrating movies, and then sharing with a wider audience. Or, the program could also be used to plan, storyboard, or sketch ‘real-life’ video projects, including set design, lighting, camera angles, and script. While the tool is free, there are content packs that can be purchased.

I am not sure how long this tool has been around, or if there has been much work done with it in classrooms, but I am excited by the possibilities for movie production and storytelling.

Watch Emily speak about Image Metrics, “a marker-less performance driven animation company.”

Emily – the woman in the above animation – was produced using a new modelling technology that enables the most minute details of a facial expression to be captured and recreated.

Very neat stuff. Read more at timesonline.com.

The University of Nottingham has created the Periodic Table of Videos, a terrific resource that features a video describing each element of the Periodic Table.

This is a fantastic idea, and while I have not clicked on every element, the ones I have seen are very well done. Check it out here..

Below, you will find a trailer for the resource.

Unwrap Mosaic, a technology being developed by Microsoft, provides some very neat possibilities for video editing.

Read more here.

This is an interesting interview with Stephen Spoonamore, CEO of Cybrinth, regarding the hackability of Diebold voting machines (or electronic machines in general).

I stress the importance of these points:

– “There is no system, none, in the world, that cannot be hacked.”

– “You cannot have secure electronic voting. It doesn’t exist.”

– “Two graduate students in 3 hours successfully hacked the machine. And once they had completed writing their hack, they then successfully added a 4 line code of self-erasing virus to allow it to propagate across the network. That’s just two guys with two hours who had no interest or motivation in doing it other than scientific interest.”

– “There are people out there, and there’s a lot of them, who don’t really want to win elections. What they want to do is they want to steal them. They have an enormous incentive for power. They have an enormous incentive for money, And, they have an enormous willingness to go and do it.”

– “I don’t want to have a society where we’re not sure who won. I want to live in a democracy where there is a valid capacity to audit the entire trail.”

While this may come off as conspiracy theory, I do not believe it is as simple as that. When a democracy relies too heavily on electronic technologies to tabulate the outcome of elections, we must be extremely cautious. And while there has not been the criticism in Canada for voting machines as as there has been in the US, I would suggest all citizens monitor the possible ubiquity of such machines in the years ahead.

I’m back to work tomorrow, so I expect to focus on this blog a bit more. But, keeping with the playfulness I have enjoyed for the past couple of months, here is set of photos I created using yearbookyourself.com.

Do yourself a favour and take some time to watch Professor Michael Wesch’s brilliant presentation to the Library of Congress, June 23, 2008. The video is 55 minutes long, but is an excellent backgrounder to social media, user-generated content, and online communities through the lens of anthropology.

This will be required viewing for my students.

This conversation is a mid summer musing by Heather, Rick, Dean and Rob on the great Scrabulous implosion, twitter, connecting and disconnecting. Shownotes are available at http://edtechposse.wikispaces.com/4.4

I had to miss this conversation as I was disconnected myself. Thanks to Rob for getting this up so quickly.

A five-year old Native American boy has recently been denied admission to Kindergarten due to his long hair (full story). The boy’s hair is kept long and braided in accordance to his family’s spiritual beliefs. The Needville School District does not allow boys with long hair to attend their schools.

Adriel’s parents want to enroll him at Needville Elementary School. Betenbaugh sent an e-mail to the principal, asking about kindergarten and explaining Adriel’s long hair. The principal replied that the district doesn’t allow long hair on boys.
On June 9, the family met with Curtis Rhodes, the Needville superintendent. Rhodes asked what religion upheld that Adriel could not cut his hair. The family explained there wasn’t a church or doctrine they followed, but they believe that Adriel’s hair is sacred.
Arocha said that his belief is to cut his hair after life-changing events, such as mourning the death of someone he loves.

Rhodes told the family Adriel’s hair would have to go.

I tweeted this story when I saw it a few days ago, and received this reply from Tim Lauer with the School Division’s website and motto “Reaching New Heights of Excellence.”

Here are notable quotations from the site:

We expect our students to exemplify that excellence through self-discipline, character, respect for ones self, and respect for others.
To the full extent of their individual abilities, students will be provided the opportunity to develop the ability to think logically, independently, and creatively and to communicate effectively.
All students will acquire a knowledge of citizenship and economic responsibilities and an appreciation of our common American heritage.

Enough said.

Update: Well maybe not enough. Bill Fitzgerald suggests that the following information may be useful. I will email the link to this blog post to the Superintendent. I also encourage you to pass along your thoughts on the issue.

Needville Independent School District
16227 Highway 36 South
Post Office Box 412
Needville, Texas 77461
Phone: (979)-793-4308
Fax: (979) 793-3823
Superintendent: Curtis Rhodes
Assistant Superintendent: Beth Briscoe

My friend and colleague Marc (who really needs a blog) alerted me to this story regarding a recent legal ruling in the matter of the University of Ottawa and the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa (UPUO). The case arose when the U of O charged that Professor Denis Rancourt “had misrepresented his course in a detailed web posting, in such a way as to have described a dramatically different course not compatible with the official course description.” The 65-page ruling the case supported Dr. Rancourt’s actions as within the purview of academic freedom.

But here is the stuff I really like! See these pieces of the ruling that help to describe how Dr. Rancourt led this controversial course.

The ruling establishes that pedagogical innovation and implementation are fully protected under the academic freedom enjoyed by a professor, including the choice of grading system – considered an integral part of the pedagogical method.

In the specific case, the protected pedagogical innovations included:

(a) A large fraction of the class time used to present societal and political material – in a physics course intended to deliver fundamental physics concepts as the only required physics course in an environmental studies program – as a way to motivate student learning and to position the science in the broad societal context. This was achieved using invited scientist and non-scientist speakers that included activists, politicians, community workers, etc. The ruling clarifies that no “exception [was] taken to the use of activism and social and political issues as catalysts to learning.”

(b) Parallel student workgroups with evolving themes and freely changing student memberships and town-hall-style whole-class discussions instead of traditional lectures delivered by the professor.

(c) An open invitation to all community members to freely and fully participate in the class, without necessarily officially registering and paying tuition, as a way to bring in the community to enrich class discussions and strengthen relevance and community connections. This brought in a variety of perspectives and expertises that would otherwise not have been available.

(d) Large latitude in individual student decision making regarding: order in which to learn things (e.g., workgroup membership and topic), depth of treatment, method of study, method of reporting progress, degree of cooperative work, etc. (Sharing was not considered cheating.)

(e) A satisfactory/non-satisfactory (S/NS) grading system rather than the traditional letter grade system (used in all other science courses given that term).

I have been very lucky that my Faculty and University has been supportive of my work in pursuing several similar approaches in my teaching. I am pleased to see the results of this case so positive for Dr. Rancourt as it has the potential to help other professors take risks toward passionate and creative forms of teaching and learning.

Learn more about this story here.