Tech Texts
Found these in our local Parent/Teacher store…
See and download the full gallery on posterous
The descriptions on the front of the “Blogging in the Classroom” book makes everything seem so easy!
“The Importance of Urgency”: Interview with John Kotter
Without a true sense of urgency, any change effort is doomed. Watch John Kotter discuss the need for urgency and how managers create and sustain it in their organizations.”
Update!
It certainly has been a long time since I have updated this blog! Been busy the past few months with finishing graduate school (this is my last semester!), website projects, and regular school work. This school year has been going by super fast!
In the next few days I have some resources to share and will post them as soon as I can. Currenty I am posting this from the Wordpress application on my phone. It is a great application for those who use Wordpress and have an iPhone.
If you are interested and don’t follow me already I am @mrcirce on Twitter. I tend to post more in short form over there than I do here. This year I hope to change that though!
Another Video of the SMART Table
Just found this video, along with some others, via Engadget today and I wanted to share one of them…
I like how it is not only multi-touch, but it is also multi-user.
Still, for right now, very expensive. But in 10 years, I could see something like this as a learning center in my elementary school classroom or as something I have in my own house for my kids!
The SMART Table: Classroom Desktop Computing
Posted by admin in SMART, Technology, computing on October 22, 2008
Hmm. Interesting. Reminds me of the Microsoft Surface.
It is hard to form an opinion yet based on an advertisement. I would like to see how this is used within the context of an actual classroom. Also I wonder if the table runs with its own open source operating system, or comes with a proprietary SMART O.S. Most likely I assume the table will function like the SMART Board and can be plugged into a local computer.
What do you think about this?
Missing Treasures: Hand made greeting cards…
My wife was cleaning this morning and found the first Mother’s Day card that we made for her. My son and I are perplexed why it is not framed and hanging above the mantle! The nerve!
Low tech. crafty creation = hilarious and creepy. No wonder this was stuck between old bank statements and expired gift cards from 2006!
“Acquia Debuts Drupal for Free”: My Thoughts…
This is pretty exciting news especially since I use Drupal for my classroom website! (I flushed out last year’s content and have been updating slowly this month. Been playing around with design and CCK features; awaiting the big move to an updated install). It could mean improvements in the future such as a one click update module (I have hoped for this for a LONG TIME) just like the Wordpress InstantUpgrade plugin that I love. I looked around a little to find some business information on Acquia and it was nice to find out who is running the show over there.
Acquia Readies Commercial Drupal CMS
“Acquia is headed up by Dries Buytaert, the founder and still a lead developer of Drupal.”
(Via GigaOM.)
This is a good thing, in my opinion, because it hopefully means that there will be significant initiative to push out updates/improvements to the community instead of keeping them proprietary and closed source.
At least this is what I hope!
I just installed Acquia’s flavor of Drupal on my hosted server (the same that hosts this blog) and already I really like the administration panel across the top of the page.
Later on I will have to copy over some of the modules I use over at my classroom website to see how well they function.
Still looking forward to the DrupalEd update that should be coming soon. I will wait until then to make my decision on which version to start pulling my content over to.
“Acquia has announced the availability of Acquia Drupal, a free and commercially supported distribution of the popular Drupal open source social publishing system. They also unveiled the Acquia Network, which offers subscription-based access to technical support and remote network services that simplify the development and operation of Drupal Web sites. Entry level subscriptions to the Acquia Network will be free of charge through the end of the year.
For those that aren’t overly familiar with Drupal, it’s an open source web development and content management platform that publishes, manages and organizes a wide variety of content on websites. Tens of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal.
With the release of Acquia Drupal with its streamlined packaging of Drupal and a support system via the Acquia Network, there will definitely be a tremendous increase in Drupal developers and websites powered by this Drupal.
All subscribers to the Acquia Network will gain access to the Acquia Network’s subscriber forums, remote network services such as software update notifications, uptime monitoring, Mollom spam blocking, and Acquia Drupal documentation.
What all this means is that many more companies, especially enterprise class entities, will be much more willing to dip their toes in the Drupal pool now that there’s a commercial grade package available that includes tech support. If all this sounds familiar, you’re probably thinking about Linux and how similar its path has been to the corporate world. At one point, only extreme geeks used Linux, until some big names like IBM and Novell started proving technical support plans with their Linux offerings. That allowed larger companies to try Linux much the same way they will try Drupal thanks to the Acquia partnership and support offering.
It seems like the natural evolutionary progression for all open source projects to go from a handful of geek’s using it in their basement to the corporate enterprise once a commercial package with tech support is distributed. It will be interesting to see what kind of websites and social networks are born from this marriage between Acquia and Drupal.”
(Via Mashable!.)
Found this ironic…
Yesterday I was at the store and instead of seeing a traditional paper shredder I saw this instead…
Would this have caught your eye as well?
Shiny Eyes
Posted by admin in entertainment, free, podcast, video on July 2, 2008
The other day my wife, son, and I traveled upstate to spend some time with our family. Along the way we listened to a couple TED talks. These talks are free to download via the TED website or you can subscribe to a feed through iTunes. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design and their annual conference brings together some of the most interesting speakers from around the world. These individuals range from famous politicians to scientists doing some amazing work. They are given 18 minutes to give the “talk of their lives.” Often I look for talks related to education or technology but somehow a talk on classical music slipped in.
We had finished listening to four other talks when I decided we should give the last one a listen.
We listened and we loved it.
The talk was given by Benjamin Zander and the most memorable part of the talk is when he speaks about “shiny eyes”. He relates his experiences as a conductor and his personal realization that he wanted to consistently “awaken possibilities in other people.” In order to assess how he was “awakening” these possibilities all he had to do was look at their eyes to see if they were “shining”.
“Who am I being if my players eyes are not shining?”
For parents, relatives, and teachers…
“Who am I being that my children’s eyes are not shining?”
As a parent and a teacher this caused me to pause and think about what I do daily to awaken possibilities in my son’s life and the lives of my students. Often we can get caught up in the daily grind leading to the simple things and glorious opportunities passing us by.
Take a listen to the talk and enjoy. We loved it and I hope you do too!
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