In the News: New Media and Podcasting

Education’s Next Wave? Duke Augments Its Embrace of iPods With Beta Trial of Apple’s iTunes U outlines ways that the university is using podcasts in the classroom to share media files. There’s so much potential here: giving students copies of things rather than relying solely on one-time projection, for instance. And the possibilities for professional development are also great—imagine conference sessions where you could copy the presentation media to your own MP3 player. As these things happen, teachers will need to rethink the presentations that they give. Not only do they need to think about what students can see and hear, but how to get those files on their MP3 players, and how to deal with split attention (What are they looking at? The presenter or the MP3 player?)

In the News: E-mail and Teaching

“To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It’s All About Me” from the New York Times has caused a stir on all the teaching listservs that I’m on. It just seems like another one of those articles that really ought to focus on audience and purpose in writing—along with a dose of understanding writing environments and situations (for students AND teachers). Overall, the folks in the article seem to lack any real understanding of the media they choose for their messages. Until they understand that important piece, e-mail is never going to work for them.

Daily Work: Accomplishments!

Today we found that one of my lesson plans is mentioned in IRA’s Reading Today—and I’m offically named. Fun to look down and find my name in a publication :)

I spent most of the day reworking a lesson plan which is going to be used in a forthcoming MarcoGram (a free e-mail newsletter that highlights lesson plans and resources on specific topics). The lesson was okay, but there were broken links and it needed an interactive.

Tonight was the Math Summit for BlogShares, and my appointment to the GIC was announced. I was a little surprised. I thought it was going to be announced after the summit, not during it. I began work on a personal GIC blog, but I’m having a horrible time getting it to FTP to the server. There’s not much content anyway, so I’ve given up for tonight.

In the News: Tagging and Teaching

eSchool News online – For some educators, tagging is ‘it’ explores how del.icio.us and other tagging systems can be used to manage resources for classes, workshops, and other educational settings.

Daily Work: Being Lazy II

The best thing about the Presidents of the United States is that they have a day and I get it off. Yes, I lazed about in bed today too.

Did some preliminary work on Inbox, searching for articles, and created another IRC tutorial: Forgotten Passwords.

In the News: Moleskine for Writers

Putting Pen to Paper Anew sings the praises of my cute little notebook :) I got a Moleskine Pocket Diary for Christmas, and I love it. It’s helped me keep track of the various projects, which really helps when I’m doing content reports and trying to catch up on entries that I haven’t written. Beyond all of that, I love the feel of my words on a page. There’s something about handwritten words that never compares to typed or printed words.

Daily Work: Being Lazy

Not an overly exciting day, but I did make a lovely Monte Cristo in the toaster oven and installed the new pink toilet seat (not at the same time). Surely that is enough for one day. Okay, I did more than that. I watched Poirot on TV and worked on IRC tutorials for logging in and partipating in the Math Summit:

• First-Time in IRC
• Returning to IRC
• Gaining Voice to Ask a Question