I started out by plotting where I was going and using the GPS to, what I felt, was blindly guide me there.  I ended up getting to my destination, but when I looked at the route the GPS took me on, it was a round-about way that I would not have taken if I used my handy map.  I went on another trip a few weeks ago to the ECOO board meetings and took a route that I used to take to my cottage.  I programmed in "via points" and off we went.  Well, wouldn't you know it we ended up in a subdivision about 2 miles from our intended destination.  On the way home we followed the route the GPS calculated and ended up taking another round-about way that I would have never have taken...GPS navigation saver...not yet!

 So I started thinking about this problem and started thinking that this technology might cause our students to lose the sense of navigation that has helped us navigate through the years.  But then I started seeing similarities with other tools when they were first introduced.  I wonder if people felt the same way when calculators were introduced?  Did they think people would lose their reasoning and mathmatical skills...I know they felt that way.  How about the computer.  Did people feel that they would "run our lives' and we would not want to do anything for ourselve?  I bet that was the case.  In both of these examples, when the initial dust settled, it is obvious both of those tools did not cause us to lose our skills, but instead enhanced them and allowe us to reach further into the future by allowing us to build on our already established skills and enhancing them with technology.

 I suspect the same will be the case with the GPS...but for now, I still check that map to see if the route is the best one to take!

/shawn

Here is a TED video describing the WWT

For more details go to:  www.ecoo.org

Please pass this on to any teacher in Ontario who might be interested!

 Thanks,

/shawn

This research confirms exactly what we all have been believing the last few years.  Students believe in instant gratification and they are ever becoming producers of content and expect others to view it, comment it and expand on it.

Our profession needs to increase its technology skills to better meet the needs of students, or at least use our students' knowledge to increase our own knowledge, thereby empowering our students to take control of there own learning...and if we don't...dinosaurs come to mind, but then again, I am preaching to the converted aren't i?

/shawn

ps here is a great video take off of "Student's Today" by Digital Ethnography, it is "Student's Today K-12"

Very soon school boards may not have to purchase apps that ensure their students are getting the just below-industry standard software that will allow them to learn how to utilize tools to move ahead into higher education.  These types of applications are paving the way for full curriculum delivered via web-based applications, which can be a saving to any school board (though an increase in bandwidth usuage will occur).

 Well done Adobe, this app looks awesome!

https://www.photoshop.com/express/index.html

By creating a video relating to curriculum expecatations and then uploading it to teacher tube (www.teachertube.com) you are eligible for the 3 prizes of $300 each! As well, as the teacher involved, you will be invited to share your experiences in an ECOO conference session in the fall!

For contest rules, please see: http://www.ecoo.org and click on the Secondary Media Contest link or view the attached file.

This type of issue is going to be happening more and more frequently with students understanding and using social networking sites such as Facebook to their advantage.  It will not be very long, and in fact I am sure it is happening in K-12 without folks even knowing, until we are faced with similar dilemmas in K-12.

Weather we like it or not educators are going to move, slowly maybe at first, but quicker as these technologies get more pervasive, into being faciliators of learning instead of those who impart learning.  Being a big believer in Project Based Learning, I believe that this can be a good thing, but we also need to ensure that students can learn in a multitude of ways including  lecture, experiential, project-based, discovery to name a few.

It will be interesting to see how the first school board in Ontario deals with a similar case to this Ryerson student...it really is only a matter of time!

For more information you can go to  www.chf-partners.ca/medialiteracy.

Good luck with the contest! 

 /shawn

With Sea Dragon, the whole premise is to smoothly browse visual information, regardless of the amount of data or the bandwidth.  The video demonstration is truly awe-inspiring.  To be able to view entire books and then zoom in to see the chapters, paragraphs, lines and letters with ease is incredible.  By wikipedia's definition, hence our definition, of web 3.0, this application appears to fit as the application is trying to provide accesible content in a whole different environment.

The Photosynth demo was eqully amazing.  What the application does is look at a large collection of photos, analyzes them for similarities in photos that are meta-tagged in flickr (or any other photo repository) and then creates a composite 3-D simulation of the place or object, all contributed to by the many photos of that place or object.  Obviously the more photos about that place or object would result in views from different angles and the ability to zoom in on the smallest of details.  The more photos that are taken and entered into the photo databases about the place or object, the more detail, views and better the construction the 3D image becomes.

I know some of you might think, wait a minute, let's get our heads around web 2.0, but when I saw these apps demonstrated, I then knew that there was the potential to moving to web 3.0 and apps like these will be leading the charge.  The collective fruits of our labours can result in an encredible breadth and width of knowledge with these two applications allowing us to collectively increase and demonstrate that knowledge.  I tried to run the demonstration of Photosynth on my desktop and laptop, but I'm going to have to wait until my new one arrives next week.  I can't wait!

Photosynth demo @ TED: 

Developer demo's photosynth: 

 Wired Science clip on photosynth: (no controllers on this one, takes about 5 mins)

After you view the demo and interviews, I think you will be inspired.

/shawn

It was very easy to connect to a session, with an easy interface and an easy administration panel.  The Movi server negotiates the connections and has some built in echo cancellation, which is critical on a web-enabled app.  Overall the app was easy to load and run, though ActiveX controls needed to be installed, which would be an issue on a locked down machine.

Some of the big things I was looking for were screen size control, multi-point connection, firewall transversal, and since Movi  is based on the SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) framework, I wanted to see how it was handling h.323 connectivity. 

While very promising, I was a bit disappointed in the lack of screen size control. In v.1, you only have a limited screen size and you cannot resize it.  The Movi server does not handle multiple connections, so you would need to add an additional MCU to ensure that you could have a multi-point session.  In v.1, they have not been able to work around firewall transversal, and suggest that you provide interested parties who you want to connect with a VPN to punch through your firewall, which can be quite dangerous in the wrong hands.  It appears that there is no direct h.323 compatibility, instead you need to connect through a MCU bridge in order to connect the SIP Movi connection and a h.323 endpoint.

The application showed some great promise and would be good for companies that have travelling employees who want to connect directly, through a VPN, to others within their own firewall.  I don't see the application in its present form being a viable solution for education at this point.  Screen size control, multi-point connections, firewall transversal and h.323 connectivity are all issues that the Tandberg people are saying will probably be addressed in its next release scheduled for the fall.  

I believe that web enabled video conferencing is the only way the industry can move, and I must give kudos to Tandberg for being one of the first to move in that direction.  I am looking forwards to trying out the next release scheduled for the fall, but until then, I'm going to hold off moving to Movi for now.