The idea is to prepare some media for sharing, and the automation can do the rest. It is definitely worth a try. I only wish they would have shown us more of the Mac manipulation than the hosts.

For more, check out padilicious.com/.

This past school year, I attended a CocoaTouch class on building apps for iPhone – and dropped out early, in part, because it was way over my head. But having taught educators how to use Scratch and Alice both, this new development platform from Google which uses the block metaphor from MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten group looks interesting. Real interesting.

You might ask what this means for kids–is it simply a tutorial for programming? I’m not sure the programming aspect is the real key here, but instead, it’s the fact that kids can create programs they can really use. There’s a difference here: Alice and Scratch for the most part run in their respective environments. Scratch, especially (strong in my opinion of the two development environments) is geared towards sharing your creations online with other peers. But what’s next when you’re ready to graduate from Scratch?

Alice is an obvious choice – but while Alice has a richer programming heritage behind it, the social aspect is missing which makes Scratch infectious for young learners. But imagine when a class all has an Android phone (or device) in their pocket… and they can run those apps!

Our own Virginia DOE has put their weight behind Apple and app development for iOS with two recent contests. With this Google tool, and a few months of maturity behind the platform, I think educators will finally have a chance to really give such a challenge a go. I don’t personally own an Android phone, so I take this all with a biased look… my iPhone preference aside, I think this is big news.

If kids can create real apps that they can run on their own (real) phones, it’s gonna be huge. Even if they are simple apps like the one demonstrated in the video – I can’t wait to see where this is going. I’ve already signed up to be a beta tester and await to try it out myself. For a non-programmer (or one that hasn’t programmed since the 1980s) CocoaTouch was a nightmare. Block-based programming takes the syntax element away and lets app development flourish.

Of course, just a few weeks earlier, FB was in the news (if not casual conversations) due to issues relating to privacy settings. The company made news for making privacy complicated to control. What I personally found more troubling is that the company could not always honor its own privacy principles. Friends would tell me “My data is secure, I made all the right settings and de-friended the right people.” Meanwhile, the company reveals that private information was compromised for a short period of time.

Educator Liza Wiemer has recently published a post about the assumption that there is no real concept of “privacy” on a social network. She names our favorite FB (surprise!). This doesn’t surprise me, and I tend to agree with her thinking.

But while I’d be the last one to start defending the social network, I will say that the advice she gives is sound for almost any forum or space you may choose to communicate with online. Reading the hints seem like banal common sense. But for folks who have spent little time thinking about what publishing content to the online communities that now exist means, let alone “publishing” anything, they seem easily tripped up.

Where will we be with tools like these 5 or 10 years from now? I think it will be very interesting. For the conveniences of convening with our friends, we sacrifice time we had before not devoted to concerns about our own privacy. Mr. Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO) has said that the norms of privacy are changing. We’re becoming a more open society when we play online.

That’s not a bad thing, per se. But the balance of authenticity does not always play in our favor. And faking who you are can take its toll, too.

Our lives, as recorded in digital bits, will be more difficult to forget, from our best days to our worst. Those who care are those who either love us or despise us.

I find this stuff fascinating; especially after recently doing a workshop on the affects of using digital imagery in instruction.

That rocked!

Author Seth Godin, however, says something about this.

You don’t rock all the time. No one does. No one is a rock star, superstar, world-changing artist all the time. In fact, it’s a self-defeating goal. You can’t do it.

His point? Try “rocking” at something for just 5 minutes. A day. Don’t aim to be doing profound things all the time, but instead, baby-step those things you can do an extraordinary job at.

I think the advice also fits in line with something else Godin said earlier this month:

Very few people wake up in the morning and feel like taking big risks or feel like digging deep for something that has eluded them. People don’t usually feel like pushing themselves harder than they’ve pushed before or having conversations that might be uncomfortable.

You might not feel like climbing the big mountains all the time. What’s important is mounting small hills, each one in stride, not conquering everything, just little things that you can do that make a difference.

The Complete Guide to Google Wave is both a book you can buy, and a wiki you can use online. Furthermore, they want the book to stay current, which (don’t they know?) could be a full time job! But they aren’t necessarily dumb: they’ve invited the “users”/readers of their book to contribute to the wiki.

It’s an experiment of sorts for sure, but I think it looks great and we need examples like this to build off in the educational sphere. Don’t you agree?

Of course, this says nothing of the cool tool that Wave is emerging to be. But that’s for another post down the road.

With the device in an arcade-style enclosure, I was able to read in excess of 600 words per minute.

What I often wonder, in this age of Kindles and Nooks, is why these devices don’t yet make use of the reading technology developed and then marketed by Xerox in their XFR project…

If you have a SL avatar, please join us on VSTE Island tonight (Monday, November 23, 2009) as I talk about what I’ll be doing at this year’s conference, and you can ask questions!

I find the history of the word interesting. I’ve linked there to a picture of the precursor to Mac OS X: OpenStep which was originally called NeXTStep, the OS for Steve Job’s earlier computer, the NeXTStation/NeXTCube, etc.

As you can see here, the applications (i.e. programs, executables) are followed the extension .app. In fact, on a modern Mac, your applications are also labeled the same way, although you may have chosen to keep the default setting which hides this extension.

So, this is where the extension or label or name comes from: NeXTStep executables. Then the full name got dropped (perhaps because they’re small?) on the iPhone. And now more smart phone manufacturers are talking about apps.

“I think sometimes that being overly type-sensitive is like an allergy,” said Michael Bierut, a partner in the Pentagram design group in New York.

An interesting article comes today from the NY Times about “mistakes” in typography.

I’m a detail-oriented person, but not a perfectionist as many say. “Oh, you’d notice something like that,” someone said just this past week about wording not being centered appropriately, “because you’re a perfectionist.”

Perhaps I’m allergic to detail. Among the things that bother me and are just wrong:

• the use of straight “prime” quotes and apostrophes
• the misuse of hyphens, dashes, and em-dashes
• use of commas in lists (this, that, and the other (my preference) vs. this, that and the other (chills)

Of course, nothing stings more than when colleagues point out my own gaffes because I was too much in a hurry. Curious for more? Check out Typedia, a new website that definitely is about the details.

I’ve said to some folks, and I’ll say it here: I’m not actively facebooking. While at times I admit I’m missing out on the “fun” of socializing online with my acquaintances, I’m also enough of an introvert that I don’t think it’s a travesty.

The real reason I don’t participate is because of some of the tactics used by Facebook to monetize my experiences, communication, and experiences. With what I read here, I’m not confident about what may happen to my information going forward. Do I control what I put in?

Staying in control of your data may be what we end up paying for in the end, in terms of free services.

I’ve been reading Free by Chris Anderson, and this week my class is going to be listening to one of the chapters. We’re going to consider freedom and free in its different contexts. What value is placed on free information?

A great example cited in the book is with something that’s almost free: inexpensive razors. You can buy a razor “for free” with a 3- or 4-pack of razor blades. Mr. Gilette invented the whole operation: sell low or give away the handle, sell the blades. People keep coming back for more because the upkeep of a good-quality razor is too time consuming.

But Anderson also cites examples of things that really are free, without strings. It’s a new shift of thinking for business and consumers alike. Instead of atoms, we’re spending money on bits. And since bits are free…

I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing both Dr. Pam Moran of Albemarle County Public Schools (VA) and also Kathy Schrock of Nauset Public Schools (MA) on behalf of the Virginia Society for Technology in Education.

Take a listen to hear what they had to say!

I like it. I can scan the barcodes of every product, look up the information on the product, and then price-compare with a number of sources. And as the review said, half the fun is simply doing the scanning.

We trust you with the children but not the Internet.

Yours truly,

THE ADMINISTRATION

Neat slide from Scott McLeod. Filters exist in so many organizations for many reasons. I often can cite both the ones for and against the filter.

In America, in order to qualify for federal funding, you have to provide a barrier to harmful material from children. In America, we often ban everyone from this same material.

I’m glad I work in a district that allows employees an override. Because honestly, if you are trusting your children to these folks, you ought to be able to trust them online.

How do we know what to put in the search box?

I wanted to know what was going on in my (or your) mind when we chose our words for a Google search. It led to my conclusion that to better your search criteria, you’d need practice summarizing what you found using keyword tags. My theory was that by practicing meta-summary, you’d improve your ability to come up with the keywords you’d expect to find (next time) in your online search.

Google has now taken the initiative to provide a curriculum on searching, here presented by Russell, Gray, and Davis.

“You’re being flooded with too much information and you can’t selectively filter out quickly which is important and which is not important,” says Goodman. “It only takes a fraction of a second for you to take your eyes off the road and miss the guy making a right-hand turn into your lane.”

CNN ran a story recently on the possibility of danger from trying to multitask. I found the embedded ads for “health.com” to be ridiculous and a bad experiment. But the article should be of some interest to those of us who carry smart phones, have 10 windows open on our laptops, and sometimes sit staring at our desks wondering what’s next.

Aston-Jones says that it’s unclear if some people are drawn to multitasking because that’s the way their brain works, or if multitasking itself causes changes in the brain. And it’s not clear if the brain changes caused by switching attention from YouTube to Google to Twitter and then back to your iPhone — if that is what is occurring — are easily reversed.

It’s an interesting look into some sites I’d never visited before. But after you view a few, you realize…

Hey, big names like Arianna or Paul Krugman, or… Mark Bittman have the same access I do to some of the same websites.

Yeah, trendsetters are using some of the same sources (and tools) for their line of work that we may decide to use (for work or pleasure). And for the tech folks, you don’t need to even be that accomplished to make it big.

Back in the late 1990s, I followed a lot of web designers through their blogs… I emulated them as a blogger myself. We all watched Blogger start up. Some of them knew Evan Williams and the Blogger employees; I was just a lurker. Almost everyday I go to read Jason Kottke’s blog. He’s about the same age as I, and he’s interested in a variety of things. He’s questioned more than once whether he’ll keep blogging… but it’s become a part of who he is. I’ve never met him, and although I’ve left comments on his blog, I’ve never e-mailed him. Yet, I’ve been reading him now for over 10 years. I feel I know the guy–and this is my point–he feels like a regular guy. But he’s read by thousands of folks every week. He obviously does the part well; I’d say the appeal isn’t so much his writing as his diverse choice of interesting topics to link to, ponder over, or argue with.

It’d be fun if Google would entertain a Power Readers for educators. Not just the vocal edubloggers, but what does Arne Duncan read? What’s in your superintendent’s aggregator (does he or she have one?)? What’s in Reader box of the CEO of one of your biggest educational technology vendors?

Do the sites folks read or follow influence your opinion of the personalities? Why?

• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Illustrator

To a lesser extent, I also use Adobe InDesign when I’m called to create something print-based. As a general rule, I don’t use Adobe Acrobat Pro, unless I’m sitting down to create a PDF-based form.

Someone once asked me “How did you get so proficient at Photoshop?” Well, the types of work I do require me to use it every day. For web-based work, I know it well. As a photography retouching, not nearly as much. It’s a huge tool that has so many uses. But you get better at almost anything by practice and experience.

Since the first “CS” came out, I was not happy with the direction the icons for these applications was going. I still use CS3 (CS4 is the most current version), and with that version came new icons that are represented by letters. I have a big blue square in my OS X dock with the letters ‘Ps’ on them. That’s “Photoshop.” (Why some folks still insist on writing PhotoShop is beyond me, as Adobe has answered the question quite nicely right in the icon, small s.)

So, a very enterprising guy named Mike Hopkins has created his own icon set. People have been making icons for ages it seems, but to me, this is yet another example of the benefits behind the Web, mashup, and collaboration. No one told him to do this. He wasn’t hired by Adobe. He just did it and his solution is (in my opinion) beautiful.

Botticelli’s Venus had become an icon for Adobe Illustrator since its very early versions, and she is beautiful. He has restored her to the iconography for Illustrator. The other thing he did for all the icons was to maintain their signature colors from the CS3 set: green for Dreamweaver, red for Flash, blue for Photoshop. Kudos!

A tad geeky, but then again, who am I kidding I’m not a geek?

The fine? 1.92 million dollars.

She hasn’t got it, but I can’t be so sure they won’t go after colleges and universities, not to mention private or public K-12 schools. The amount awarded seems nearly insane, but it’s within the letter of the law and if it doesn’t scare you, well, think of the reasons to acquire your media legally.

The quantity of what we can obtain today online is staggering. Between blogs, wikis, and sites like YouTube, just about anything goes. Funny nonsense, short talks by talented smart people (TED Talks), and breaking, fresh news.

It would be interesting for us to rate what we actually use or value based on the item’s quality.

Finding an abundance of quality content online is in jeopardy with pirating. But I think it needs to be done fairly. A standard business model, this isn’t.

Take for instance the idea that I could sell 500,000 CD recordings. “Put your stuff online, and you could sell maybe 2 million.” So can I expect to sell 4 times the content online and consequently make 4 times the money? I’m saying you shouldn’t be thinking like that.

I’ve been buying a lot of online music. I wish it was better quality (in a lossless format). But the price difference for me is in a sweet spot. It’s still fair to the musicians (let’s say at $10 an album) but it’s cheaper for me. Distribution costs still exist, but they’ve got to be cheaper.

The article I cited says she may just end up paying a settlement in a few thousand dollars instead of over $1 million. I only wonder if she got to keep those 24 tracks?

As it turns out, I thought it was an excellent film. Both for technical achievement as well as the story telling.

A little girl in California wanted to see the film pretty badly. Because she had terminal cancer, she couldn’t see a screening in a theater. Pixar worked with the family’s request, and sent an employee to view the film at the girl’s home.

In case you need one.

One professor is quoted as saying that “self control” may be more important than “intelligence” as a prescription for success in life.

The kids who hadn’t been able to wait sixty seconds could now wait fifteen minutes. “All I’ve done is given them some tips from their mental user manual,” Mischel says. “Once you realize that will power is just a matter of learning how to control your attention and thoughts, you can really begin to increase it.”

The experiments would position kids in rooms alone with tempting treats, such as candy. Those who could wait would be rewarded with more; those who couldn’t got a single piece. The main researcher, Dr. Mischel, thinks the ability for self-control can be developed into habits with the right cues.

According to Mischel, even the most mundane routines of childhood—such as not snacking before dinner, or saving up your allowance, or holding out until Christmas morning—are really sly exercises in cognitive training: we’re teaching ourselves how to think so that we can outsmart our desires.

(via Bea Cantor.)

I believe as a child I would have faired well with this test. Seemingly as I grow older, I become more impatient. Today? I might just grab the candy and run…

Watch the video to see how they work. Wow.

An app for iPhone/iPod Touch called Brushes lets you paint with light. The $5 program was used to paint the latest edition of the New Yorker cover .

See the process in action via You Tube:

Today, we use information to make the world a better place…

I had a lot of fun leading a workshop last summer in San Antonio on SketchUp at NECC. This coming year, one of our teachers is offering two sections of a class devoted to designing in SketchUp.

(For the record, yes, I have noticed those Detex key holders on walls and have wondered for years what they were. Now I know. Blessed be the Web.)

Educators are designing instruction all the time that aims to incite the appropriate behavior at the right time: hopefully on the upcoming test, Johnny marks “C” for the answer regarding the question on reading a clock.

What’s even harder is the design of instruction where there isn’t one correct answer (and perhaps likewise not one specific behavior), but where creativity plays a variable in coming up with a variety of appropriate answers. Perhaps in light of this Detex example, the “watchman” i.e., student, inscribes interesting lines on his paper slip inside the clock, by going to each station at his (or her) own prescribed time, and in his (or her) own prescribed order. While the old watchman’s slip looks like a circle (I am only guessing), the other design looks like a flower.

I think it’s a palpable, almost universal urge we have, if I posed the question, as to whether we want our kids creating perfect circles (stick to the same plan, every night) or a different design each night (the flowers, shapes, and perhaps even animal shapes) through kids inventing (e.g. constructing) their own solutions.

As I studied ethnomusicology, I learned that this might not be true: while I enjoyed some of the music of other cultures (say, Gamelan music of Indonesia), I can’t say it’s something that held for me the same appeal of my Bach or Beethoven.

This study is interesting. It suggests that the emotional qualities we attach to music may be universal. So, the important part wasn’t if the “foreign” folks liked or disliked the music, but what they associated with the music: happiness, sadness, or scared.

This makes sense when we think about a “typical” movie score where we’re supposed to be “scared.” Despite the wide gamut of music, all of that scared music turns pretty stereotypically to the same types of textures and effects.