Category Archives: Technology Resources

Bill Moyers takes on what is contributing to the Digital Divide, looking at corporations that don’t care enough about many communities (rural, urban) to provide high-speed connections. Simply put: the profit isn’t there and companies are built for profit. But what is that unequal access mean for our students and then future? And shouldn’t our government be doing more on this?
Here is just one clip:

from the show’s promo:

“America has a wide digital divide — high-speed Internet access is available only to those who can afford it, at prices much higher and speeds much slower in the U.S. than they are around the world.

But neither has to be the case, says Susan Crawford, former special assistant to President Obama for science, technology and innovation, and author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age. Crawford joins Bill to discuss how our government has allowed a few powerful media conglomerates to put profit ahead of the public interest — rigging the rules, raising prices, and stifling competition. As a result, Crawford says, all of us are at the mercy of the biggest business monopoly since Standard Oil in the first Gilded Age a hundred years ago.

“The rich are getting gouged, the poor are very often left out, and this means that we’re creating, yet again, two Americas, and deepening inequality through this communications inequality,” Crawford tells Bill.

– from http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-who%E2%80%99s-widening-america%E2%80%99s-digital-divide/

These are issues we need to pay attention to.

Peace (in the equity),
Kevin

I saw this site from a tweet from Troy Hicks and I like it. This site — Noodletools Show Me — is a way of providing scaffolding to evaluate books, websites, and more through simple strategies. It’s another entry into information literacy strategies (which is a key part of the Common Core). The site is divided into three categories, so you can tailor it to the level of your students. I liked the “junior” level, as it connects a lot with some of our work around evaluation of sources. (I also note that these free tools are connected to a paid service. I am hopeful the top layer of options remains free, but you never know).

choose your source…

Peace (in the share),
Kevin

Have you heard for the Up-Goer Text Editor? It is an online tool that was inspired by an XKCD comic that explained space travel in a comic with writing from the 10,000 common words list. Now, you may think: so what? 10,000 words is a lot of words. What’s the rub? Actually, 10,000 words is not a lot of words, particularly when you are dealing only with common words, and it is quite difficult to explain a complex idea (like space travel) in that way. I guess someone was inspired by that comic and created the Up-Goer Text Editor, which provides you with a box to write in and alerts you when you have slipped the bounds of the 10,000 words. It’s pretty interesting.

Check out how I did:

And this is what it looked like when I corrected it:

How did you do? Give it a try.

Peace (in the words),
Kevin

PS — thanks to Doug Belshaw for sharing this site in his most recent newsletter.

Haiku Deck is the best application for creating presentations on iPad

I’ve been playing around with HaikuDeck on our iPad. It’s a presentation software, so it works like Powerpoint or Keynote. The difference is the “feel” of the app (it is only available on iPads, I believe). It’s very design-conscious, and works best with short text superimposed over beautiful pictures. The app searches Creative Commons for images that you can use (or you can upload your own). I need to play around with it some more, but I like the way it works.

I decided to explore the question of “why I write” with images and simple text.

Peace (in why I write),
Kevin

It’s been some time since I checked out Gooru, and boy, it sure has grown since. I went back to the site, which is a sort of filtered/collected search engine space, this morning because I know my National Writing Project friend, Paul Allison, is going to be talking about Gooru tonight on the Teachers Teaching Teachers webcast.

This is what Paul sent out, in case you can join him. (I am going to try …)

How do you teach with Gooru? We’ll be talking with teachers who use Gooru in their classrooms and want to connect and collaborate with other teachers. Hear from Gooru power users, share best practices, exchange ideas, and tell the Gooru team what we can do to improve Gooru for you.

Check out Gooru through the lens of this analysis of OER Project Blue Sky: Big Boost to OER From . . . Pearson?

We’ll be joined by @jackcwest @gooruteacher  Xenia Shiah: http://www.linkedin.com/in/xshih , Jody Donovan, @leahousdIT and YOU!

Join us at edtechtalk.com/ttt at 9PM ET/6PM PT/World Times: goo.gl/5Vr8M on Wednesday 1.16.13

So, this morning, I went to Gooru to poke around a bit and remember what it is about. When I had been there last, the site had recently launched and I wasn’t quite sure what they were up to. There didn’t seem to be a lot of content. Now I understand. The site is another way to help students streamline their research queries (sort of like Instagrok, which I use) and for teachers to build up “collections” of resources that can be shared. I like the overall feel of the site — it takes a few minutes to get a sense of what to do, but once you understand it, you will see there are powerful paths to follow.

First, there is the basic search, which breaks down queries into categories, such as video, lesson plans, resources, etc. And along with peeking at the collections of other teachers, you can begin to create your own, too. (I started building one about Civil Rights, and then added in some collections of other teachers who had already been doing some of the same work, so that I did not have to do it all over again). There are places to add interactive quizzes, study areas for math and science and social studies (they note that ELA is on the way) and … more stuff that I had time to play with.

In the end, I think Gooru is another interesting research tool that can help students find information they need, in a meaningful way, and might allow teachers another opportunity to teach web-based search for projects. My history colleague is teaching Cuneiform writing right now, and so I did a search on the site for him, and what came up would be very valuable for his work with students, I think. Same thing for my science colleague, who is teaching volcanoes and has students doing some basic research right now. (In fact, we had a discussion at lunch about how so many of our students don’t have the basic search skills — even though I did a whole unit around it with them at the start of the year! Ah.)

Peace (in the share),
Kevin

This is a pretty amazing find from Twitter this morning: a Google Doc with listings of hundreds of TED talks. Actually, there are more than 1300 talks listed on this spreadsheet, with links and titles and more. I feel smarter just looking at the short descriptions. Wow.

Check out the TED Talk list

Peace (in the new year),
Kevin