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Today I had the privilege of listening to Hall Davidson, head of the Discovery Educator Network, speak on a topic entitled, “Revenge of the Digital Natives“.  He spoke of how the digital natives (children growing up with technology) have the ability to multi-task unlike any generation before them.  While the amount of time these students spend watching TV can increase their inability to attend, they can also multi-task with several different medias and expect to learn with several different medias. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Digital natives typically spend 2 seconds on a webpage before they decide whether or not the page will yield the information they are looking for.  What does this mean for teachers?  Think of the media you use in your class.  Mr. Davidson gave the example of how the old way to show an education video in schools was to play the whole 30 minute video.  Now with resources like United Streaming, teachers have the ability to download a short video segment that narrows in on their objective that they are teaching.  No more wasted classroom time! 

Mr. Davidson also shared some websites that can be used in a new way to engage students in the classroom:

• Google Lit Trips: Virtual field trips in Google Earth around famous works of literature
• Google Sketchup: Construct a 3D building
• Gcast: Call an online service, leave a message, and turn it into a podcast automatically
• Polleverywhere: Participate in a survey via your cell phone and results are displayed on the website live
• Jott: send yourself reminders via email by calling the Jott.com number

I have seen Mr. Davidson speak at the Day of Discovery in Silver Springs, MD back in August, and still find that he has new ideas to share with his audience.  I hope to continue to be as motivated and excited about technology as he is!

RELATED POSTS:

MD, VA, DC Day of Discovery

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Virtual worlds like Second Life have exploded with the rise of the Internet. Interacting in a virtual world means you need to have an avatar, a virtual representation of YOU.  But how many people actually make their “virtual” selves look similar to their real selves?  I dare you to compare! 

Hair down, hair up.  Let’s look at the avatars now.

This is my avatar from a manga avatar maker. (see above)

Here is my South Park avatar. (see above)

Try as I might, it was impossible to look good as a Simpson’s avatar. (see above)

And finally, my avatar in Second Life.  (see above)

Given the chance, would you try to improve on your real self or try to make your avatar really look like you?  One person on Second Life who tries to make his avatar look like himself is David Warlick. 

What would YOU do?

Often teachers come to me and ask for a way to resize their pictures at school.  Luckily teachers have access to Image Blender, a photo editor by Tech4learning that allows them to do this, but they only have access to it in the computer lab.  If teachers want to resize or edit digital pictures from the comfort of their own home or classroom, Pixlr is a great option for them.

There are several online photo editors. What makes Pixlr so special?  It’s one of the only free photo editors that allows you to resize pictures in pixels. This is incredibly handy if you are trying to find a picture to fix exact pixel sizes for avatars or icons on websites.  Pixlr was created for non-professionals and has many features including: resizing, cropping, layers, filters, etc.  When you are finished with your picture, you have the option to save in JPG or PNG format.

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There are several sites available that allows you to see current news articles in a different way.  I like a few of them, and some of them I don’t understand at all.

The first one is the Spectra Visual Newsreader by MSNBC.com.  The best way for me to describe it is a cross between an aggregator and a customized start page.  The user has the choice of adding topics that he/she is interested in and the site will arrange your articles in a moving, interactive orb of news.  It is hard to capture this as an image since the articles are always moving allowing you to zoom in on different topics. I like the colors and the movement. I felt like a baby staring at a mobile at nap time.  Pretty! Pretty!

The next one is World News Maps by TSmaps.com.  This one is a bit more simple.  You have a world map.  Click a country.  Thumbnails of articles from that country appear.  Simple. Easy.  It’s okay.  I can’t see myself using it personally.  See below.

Third, is NewsGlobe sponsored by Yahoo.com.  It looks very similar to Google Earth’s globe, except there are long red poles sticking out of the earth, which represent different news articles around the world.  Obviously, this provides a visual representation of where the news is actually occuring at the time, which is helpful when teaching current events.  However, I personally would still find myself going to Google Earth to show students the exact location of the article versus an approximate location.  I did like how NewsGlobe has an “AutoPlay” feature that allows you to sit back and watch the news jump around the globe or an “interactive” feature that allows YOU to be the explorer.

Finally, there is a site called Doodlebuzz.  This site boasts, “DoodleBuzz is a new way to read the news through an experimental interface that allows you to create typographic maps of current news stories.”  Basically, you type a word in the search field.  Then you start doodling on the screen to get the news to appear.  The result, to me, is a huge mess.  There are titles of articles all squished together and you have to keep doodling to get the rest of the story.  Eventually you can click the article to be taken to the site featuring the article.  It’s A LOT of work to get to the news.  I don’t get it.  I don’t understand why it’s worth the effort.  I found this site frustrating, but “to each his own”, I guess.

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Have you seen Bubbl.us? It is a free service that allows you to diagram and brainstorm online with webs. The site boasts:

“Why use bubbl.us?

Because you can:

• Create colorful mind maps online
• Share and work with friends
• Embed your mind map in your blog or website
• Email and print your mind map
• Save your mind map as an image”

How cool is that? I am using it to store webs online for peer review and discussion. In addition, I don’t need to worry about whether or not people have the software to view my web. Instead, they can go to bubbl.us and view it without software. Think of brainstorming in your classroom if your school does not have web software like Inspiration or Kidspiration. You now have a free alternative! You can customize the bubbles with fill color, and make main idea bubbles as well as several sub-topic bubbles. Zooming in and out allows you to view the web easily as it grows in size. Here is a sample web that I created on Bubbl.us. This is just a small section of a very large web AND I don’t need to worry about saving it to thumb drive since it is saved online.

See the controls on the bubble in the bottom right of the picture above? These are all the controls you will need to create a web within minutes. You can change the color of the bubbles, link to other bubbles, or create new ones within seconds. I find it to be a great alternative to use when Inspiration is not available.

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Quintura Kids is a new search engine that boasts to be the “first visual search engine for the youngest web users”.  They state that they “help to find kid-related information on the web easily and interactively”.  At first glance, I noticed the search engine was colorful and eye-catching.  Users can click on a word from the “cloud” of topics or type in their own word.  What I really liked about Quintura was that the site helps children narrow the number of websites to choose from by clicking on the word clouds that appear.  For example, I typed in the word “Germany” into the field and it returned with 47 hits.  The “cloud” of subtopics revises above the field to reflect my choice of Germany.  Now there are subtopics I can choose that range from pictures to maps to history to famous Germans.  If I click on “pictures”, the pages are narrowed to 24 hits.  Clicking on “Rhine River” lowers that number to 18, and so on.  Children would find this very user friendly when looking for information on the Internet.  The only aspect I didn’t like was that the user had to click “new search” hidden in the upper right hand corner of the web page in order to start again.  Otherwise words and clicks from the “cloud” would be added onto your existing query.  As an educator, I’m not promoting unsupervised surfing on the Internet.  Children need to be supervised and have guidelines when on the Internet.  (See my previous entry on Internet Safety.)

 There is an adult version of this search engine available at quintura.com. It isn’t as colorful, but works the same way as the children’s version. On their home page, they state: “type a query or navigate the cloud; refine your cloud; save it; or share it”.  After the user types in a query, he/she can click to “share” the results which will email the page to friends or to save it for later use.  How cool! 

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With children growing up in a digital age, many kids have access to technology in their homes.  After 10 years of teaching in elementary school, it suprised me how many students had access to technology in their bedrooms.  “I don’t care if I’m sent to my room,” I heard one child say, “because I have a TV, a DVD player, a CD player, a computer, and I love to IM my friends.”  In one scary instance, I had a female student tell me about a new friend she was meeting in the local park after spending the evening chatting over Instant Messaging.  I called her parents, who contacted authorities, and a distaster was averted.  This time. 

 Kids need to be aware of the dangers on the Internet.  How do parents and educators start this dialogue with students?  There are several websites available to kids, parents, and educators with a variety of resources in digital and print form. 

 On the top of my list is the website sponsored by The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children called Netsmartz. There are separate sections for parents, teachers, and kids, but certainly adults should look at all of these resources and not just the ones under their “tab”.  For example, the kids section has several interactive games that tell about the dangers of the Internet from spam to viruses to online predators. There is a very powerful game (about 2 minutes long) called “Who’s Your Friend on the Internet?”  I projected this game in my college technology class to a group of current teachers, and they ended up making the same mistakes that children do.  Lesson: You can NEVER be too careful. 

There is also a website just for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.  They report that “approximately one in seven youths (10 to 17 years) experience a sexual solicitation or approach while online”.  Talking to your children and educating them about the Internet is the best place to start to prevent something from happening.

In addition, ChatDanger is a site “all about the potential dangers on interactive services online like chat, IM, online games, email and on mobiles”. 

Finally, SafeKids.com is a site that has a nice list of print resources including family contracts for online safety and guidelines for parents.

 Hopefully, these resources provide a starting point for discussion for your children or your students so we can be committed to keeping them safe.

If you enjoyed this post, please follow me to my new blog address where I will continue to post new tech tips:

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I came across a visual glossary of Web 2.0 options for educators on TechLearning’s site.  This is a great reference for people who are trying to figure out what all of the lingo means and how it can be used in the classroom.  RSS is on the list no doubt, but for good reason.  Real Symple Syndication can be a powerful tool to send information straight to teachers about important dates or changes.  Likewise, RSS can be used to send information out of the school to parents and students.  I have families that have subscribed our classroom podcast through RSS feeds and love the fact that the information comes to them.

Google Apps is a great alternative to the giant desk calendar that is located in the main staff hallway of every school to house important dates.  Google Apps is interactive and allows users to contribute instantly, which can also be used in a meeting situation so that you can take notes.

 My Space and Facebook are highlighted as powerful social networking sites that can be used on a school level instead of a personal level.  Schools can create pages on these sites that will allow teachers to include their blogs on homework assignements and parents can stay in the loop. 

I know of one school that is doing something similar. Peter Connor at Walnut Creek Middle School created a site at Pageflakes for staff and students.  There is a School News section, a PTA news section, a Principal’s voice section, and other great ideas.  You can subscribe to all of these feeds via RSS so the information can come directly to you.  It’s another way to ensure you’re informed about the happenings at your child’s school.  Interesting!

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There are so many websites, and so little time. How do you find websites worthy to share in your class?  First, network!  If you find a good site, post it to your del.icio.us account, an online website where you can share your favorite websites with anyone.  Here are some of my favorites:

1.  While bbc.co.uk is located out of England, it has several content based games that range from simulations to trivia to drill-and-practice.  One of the my favorite game-based simulation is The Pyramid Challenge, where you are playing the role of the head-of-state in charge of building the king’s pyramid.  You need to make several decisions: location of the pyramid, what building materials to use, how many workers to employ, and so on.  If you make the right decisions, your pyramid is constructed.  It’s not as easy as it looks, and you learn many facts along the way.  However, BBC has the best games and simulations for middle school and high school that I have seen as of yet.

 2.  Another site of interest is Learning Vocabulary Can Be Fun!  The site has several clean, motivational games to help kids learn new vocabulary words.  ESL learners can use this site to reinforce new words and practice English in a fun way.

3.  Scholastic is well-known for their book orders, but they also have an extensive website of lessons and games for all subject areas and ages.  While the games are advertised for Pre-K through 12, I have consistently heard from middle and high school students that the games seem too young for their classes.  Check it out and be the judge.