I heard about BumpTop a few months back when it was Windows-only. It’s makes your desktop 3D in an aesthetically-pleasing way. This week they launched the Mac version which I found out about via Mashable. It turns out that Mashable had 100 free ‘Pro’ upgrades to give away and I was lucky enough to be quick enough to apply to get one. This gives BumpTop extra functionality and features.
My thoughts can be found in the following quick overview:
(higher quality version at the Internet Archive – do they not do transcoding any more?)
Just to mix things up a bit, I thought I’d do this as a series of videos – it seemed appropriate to the subject matter. Learning Score is a visual planning tool for educators. And. It. Rocks.
Official promotional video
My quick overview
Planning a lesson from scratch in 10 mins
1. Official promotional video
2. My quick overview
3. Planning a lesson from scratch in 10 mins
You can get a 14-day free trial at http://www.learningscore.org/trial, but if you’re quick you can get a longer trial at http://www.learningscore.org/bett!
The most significant things I’ve learned this week have been snow-related. Have a quick look at the above YouTube video of me building an igloo. That took me 7 hours! Instead of getting all philosophical and talking about how good it felt to create something out of nothing and how I started to feel ‘at one’ with the snow, I’ll reflect on some practical considerations:
I should estimate how long things are likely to take before they start
The size of an igloo depends on the angle of the walls – easy to forget!
There are lots of different types of snow.
Igloos are actually quite warm!
I considered sleeping in it, but having worked on it for 7 hours straight every single muscle in my body hurt. I went in the bath, read my book and went to bed…
Here’s a brief overview of other stuff I’ve learned this week, broken down by category.
Tech
Flocking.me allows you to search through your friends’ tweets only (via TechXAV)
Pretty much everything you need to know in terms of how Google’s new Nexus One phone stacks up against the Motorola Droid and Apple iPhone can be found in this post at Mashable.
Encoding.com looks like a rather useful way to transcode video so it’s in a suitable format for various mobile devices (via Mashable)
Confused by what the ‘Semantic Web’ and ‘Web 3.0′ are? Try this video!
Jay Cross posted links to Handy free online tools this week – including the rather useful-looking Rypple (for getting anonymous feedback)
This Google page is very handy for showing people the various types of searches you can do and information you can find quickly and easily.
I really, really want this iPhone stand that makes it look like an iMac!
Chris Messina, only a few days younger than me, has celebrated his 29th birthday by announcing he’s going to work for Google. I suddenly feel a lot more confident about Google’s ‘openness’.
Google Chrome extensions are now available for Mac (if you install the Developer build). I’m running several without slowdown! (via Mashable)
Seth Godin on why you should stop blaming other people and external circumstances from holding you back.
Academic
I read about Tetrads on Harold Jarche’s blog and incorporated it into my Ed.D. thesis. He’s also got a useful post entitled Sharing tacit knowledge on how hierarchies aren’t great for emergent practices.
Wirearchy is “a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology” that is replacing hierarchies in forward-thinking organizations.
This resonated with me – via Jennifer Hagy @ indexed
The ever-relevant and insightful Harold Jarche looks back at Seth Godin’s predictions for 2009 from 5 years ago (startlingly accurate) and his own from 2007, as well as looking forward to new and emerging business models.
Mashable reflects on ways social media has changed us. This post makes a lot of sense and I’m going to start to use the term ‘ambient intimacy’ to explain a lot of what goes on, online. It makes sense.
BBC News posted a great satellite photo of what Britain looked like without the Gulf Stream last week.
There are some places in the world you’re just not allowed to go. This post on listverse (via @dougpete) highlights the ‘Top 10′ of these.
Vicki Davis (aka Cool Cat Teacher) in a reflective and revealing post entitled Sojourner Truth outlines her recent struggles with blogging and celebrity.
Quotations
You’re only given a little spark of madness. You musn’t lose it. (Robin Williams)
A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it. (Bob Hope)
It’s rare in this fast-paced world of Twitter and synchronous communications to come across high-quality reflections on how we connect online both professionally and personally. The video below, put together by D’Arcy Norman with contributions from the likes of Dean Shareski, Jim Groom and Barbara Ganley, is 15 minutes long. It’s absolutely worth your time – watch it now:
Connecting with people online is, in a sense, a very strange experience. I can know a lot more about someone that I’ve never (and probably will never) meet in person who lives on the other side of the world than I ever will about a work colleague. In fact, as I’ve often commented to people when doing this, I think meeting people online actually leads to better relationships than if the situation is reversed.
For instance, this might sound silly but I’m always very careful never to wear my glasses when meeting people for the first time. Why? I don’t want them to pigeon-hole me. The next time they see me and I’ve got my contact lenses in I’m the guy ‘not wearing his glasses’. It’s a perception thing.
Meet people online, however, and it’s almost a window into their soul. One thing I find fascinating is people’s choice of avatar on Twitter. Some people choose to have an image of themselves to aid recognition when people meet them in person. Others change their avatar often. The people I’m interested in, though, are people like me: people who stick to one avatar and use it everywhere they go online. Presumably that’s because their avatar says something about them. Here’s a few by way of example from people in my Twitter network – what do you think their avatar and bio says about them?
@lisibo
Primary MFL teacher, ADE, eTwinning Ambassador, speaker and blogger, improving techie and generally enthusiastic gal who loves her iPhone
@durff
[no bio]
@gsiemens
Changing the node set…
In the video embedded above, Dave Cormier talks about the ‘light’ connections we make with people and how these build up over time. I think this is what D’Arcy Norman (author of the video and, as of last month, no longer on Twitter) and Stephen Downes (a one-way user of Twitter) don’t get about social networking. Yes, 140 characters may be all too brief. But if I connect with you 50 times over the course of a few days, having had to craft each message to fit within the 140-character constraint, I bet we know each other a whole lot more than we did previously. And then you can go and look at my Flickr stream, my blog, etc. for more background. It’s not a replacement, it’s complementary.
Knowing an individual’s personal background and beliefs helps you judge when making decisions on whether to follow their advice and/or lead. But that’s not always best done only on the strength of meeting them face-to-face. I, for example, am much better (in terms of being coherent, understandable) when expressing myself using the written, rather than the spoken, word. Most connections online these days inhabit a world that is partly synchronous, partly asynchronous.* People may respond straight away to something you put online, or they may respond hours, days, weeks, months, or even years later. Because online content is an implicit open-ended invitation to give your opinion and make comment, you can do so at your leisure. This promotes thinking and drafting when blogging, and iterating towards your actual opinion when using tools such as Twitter.
People who haven’t seen videos or listened to podcasts in which I feature are often surprised when they meet me in person. For a start, I’m often younger than they thought (one person commented that they assumed, because of my avatar, that I was ‘a fat, balding, forty-something’ – thanks!) People also don’t tend to realise I have an, admittedly diminishing, Northumbrian accent – replete with the rolling R’s. I’m all for personality and individuality, but sometimes these two factors – my age and my accent – have proved to be barriers in the physical world. Not so online.
So an ode to the internet and the connections it makes. No, scratch that. An ode to the people who give up their time to connect to people. To those who make my life better by contributing, questioning and criticising my work and my thinking. It’s great to have and to be part of an active audience!
* There’s probably a word for this, but I don’t know what it is!
I’m delighted to announce on behalf of EdTechRoundUp that we’ll be having a (completely online) ‘TeachMeet’ on Sunday 6th December 2009. It’s called TeachMeet ETRU edition 09 and will hopefully be the first of many!
If you’re not too sure what a TeachMeet is, watch the excellent explanatory video by the BrainPOP team below:
Please do sign up to do a 7-minute ‘micro’ presentation, a 2-minute ‘nano’ presentation or to be an ‘enthusiastic lurker’. The idea is that we’ll be using Adobe Connect Pro for the TeachMeet. Presentations can be done live, but I for one will be pre-recording mine!
I noticed that TeachMeet Falkirk had a QR code* to make life a bit easier for those publicising the event. Here’s one containing the URL of TeachMeet ETRU edition 09
Finally, please remember to include the tag TMETRU09 when discussing the TeachMeet on Twitter, uploading Flickr photos, YouTube videos or blogging about it!
* A QR code, for those who don’t know, is kind of a barcode that stores information – in this case the URL of the wiki page (more at Wikipedia). Try it by downloading the software from qrcode.kaywa.com.
A few weeks ago our Executive Principal introduced the Teaching & Learning team to Carol Dweck’s ‘mindset’ theory of motivation. I wanted to find out more and was informed (via Twitter) that she was keynoting SLF09. Spying an opportunity, I asked for (and was granted) permission to attend – on the proviso that I produced some type of ‘video podcast’ to inform staff of what I’ve learned.
The 8-minute video at the top of this post is a sneak peek at what I’ll be distributing to colleagues at the Academy this week. I’d very much welcome your feedback!
(Dweck’s book Mindset: the new psychology of motivation can be found at Amazon and, as they say, ‘all good bookshops – and probably some average ones’….)
There’s ways and means of getting to places you want to go. In the case of conferences and meetings a good ploy is usually to volunteer to do a presentation. In the past – with the BETT Show, for example – to get there I’ve either been asked to, or volunteered to speak. That’s allowed me to get there for the real reason I wanted to go. With the BETT Show it’s to attend TeachMeetBETT.
Today, however, is a bit different; I’m off to the Scottish Learning Festival for the first time. In a (slightly ironic) turn of events I’m being allowed to go by the Academy without having to speak, yet to secure my place at TeachMeetSLF this evening, I’m having to do a (very short) presentation!
The video above is a quick 2-minute overview of how we at The Northumberland Church of England Academy (at which I’m Director of E-Learning) have started to use Google Apps Education Edition. I’m hoping to inspire others to use it as I honestly believe that it can enhance communications – and therefore teaching and learning – within an educational organization.
I pushed out a new video to all staff at the Academy today. It’s 6 minutes long and demonstrates how to use Google Calendar in conjunction with Google Docs for lesson timetables and meetings. Although there’s unfortunately no RSS feed for it, you can catch these kinds of videos and general E-Learning stuff I produce over at NCEA E-Learning Updates.
This can be seen as an update to the following posts I wrote a few years ago:
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