Started Teaching Again

A new semester has begun. Last week I began yet another semester of ED 422. I look forward to the class: There's always something to share, to teach, to learn! Each semester can be a very enriching experience. And away we go doing the geeky-ed-techy thingy!!!

Photos and PDFs

A couple online applications for you today:

Snipshot is a website that will allow you to do some simple photo editing. It's online and allows you to save your edited work to your desktop. Cool!

PDF Online allows you to create PDFs from various file formats.

-MS Word (DOC | RTF)
-MS PowerPoint (PPT)
-MS Publisher (PUB)
-MS Excel (XLS)
-HTML (MHT)
-Text (TXT)

JPG , GIF,
TIFF, BMP
PNG, EMF,
WMF

Cool!

Zoho

I recently found out about a new online resource at zoho.com. It's a site that has a lot of online apps, most of them for FREE! I've been searching for something that helps students and teachers collaborate online in various ways. The suite of apps on Google Docs is not bad, but I've had trouble signing people up to them. This may be another cool alternative.

Goo Gone

I love it when someone comes to me with a problem that I can help them with. Must be the "wanna fixit" part of my personality. You know, the one that gets you into trouble when people just want you to listen ... but that's another story.

Last week my secretary made a "grr" sound while her head was buried in the supply cabinet. Knowing that "grr" usually indicated a respectable level of frustration, I inquired "wassup?"

Apparently there was a fair amount of unruly sticky goop in the cabinet that was refusing to be removed. I said "Ahh! I have just what you need! I'll bring some Goo Gone from home. It removes sticky stuff. Works like a charm!"

Today I brought a bottle of Goo Gone to the office and a little while later I heard a "Wow, this stuff is like a miracle!" coming from the area that "grr" came from last week. I quietly and smugly smiled.

I wish technology were more often as dependable. Here's a scene that happens all too often: Someone comes to me with a problem, I propose a technology based solution (Ah! Try this calendar, or wiki, or mail list, or document creator, etc.) and even go so far to demonstrate it ... and then it fails in some way. Instead of feeling like the Techno Saviour replete with flowing red cape, I feel more like a door to door used vacuum cleaner salesman trying to hock his wares.

People "tsk tsk", smile politely and dismiss my strategy as "too complicated" or "not something they are interested in ... Not sure why tech stuff so often fails at precisely the moment that I place high hopes of getting that "Wow, this stuff is like a miracle" response. Gremlins, unreasonable expectations?

Grrr ...

Does anyone know of some Tech Gremlin Goo Gone?

MediaMax

Although there are some restrictions for the FREE account, 25GB of online storage is pretty cool! Check it out here:

http://www.mediamax.com

What should we be teaching?

There exists a plethora of opinions and theories on what we should be teaching in school. What should we teach our kids? These students will someday grow up and need to fend for themselves and run the country! Most people agree on the need to teach 'em math, reading, science, history, and now even some technology skills.

This article discusses some areas that are not often considered in the "formal" education realm. Personal Finance. Communication. Social Skills. Sales. Time Management.

Take a read at the article, come back here and let me know what you think.

I'm Back!

Actually I've been back from our Europe trip for quite sometime, but simply didn't post. It's one of "those" things y'know? Something you know that you "ought" to be doing, but kept skipping for one reason or another ... again and again. Like exercising, eating right, flossing, changing your oil, or pulling the weeds out of your yard. It you skip doing them only a little, no biggy. But if you skip it chronically, people notice and things can go ... bad.

So I'm back. I'll do my best to keep current. Just like exercising and flossing, it's easy to stop, but just as easy to get back going again.

So with no further delay, my current post:

What in the World of Education, Technology or General Geekiness has caught my attention at this time?

PDFs

Portable Document Format documents are a double edged sword. They are great because any computer can read them. Mac or PC. You only need to download FREE software (Adobe Reader) to read a PDF. The bad thing about PDFs is that, unless you have specialized ($) software you can't make one or edit one.

What I found:

Here is a link to a bunch of software that will help you with your PDF creation woes.

Here's another option PrimoPDF. Basically it acts like a printer. You choose it like a printer from your computer. When you "print" however, it doesn't come out of your printer, but instead creates a PDF. Most Mac applications have been doing this, built in, for years.

Another solution is PDFOnline. The concept here is to upload a document (Word, etc.) and they will email you the PDF version. Pretty cool!

Heading Out To Europe

It's been awhile since my last post. Things have been extemely BUSY. I've had SO many problems with technology (both personal, at work and at school) in the last few months. It's been frustrating and draining. I've found myself feeling exhausted daily. My concentration is poor, my left eye has been twitching for weeks and I often have headaches.

Time to get away.

Sandy and I are flying out tomorrow for a LONG overdue trip. We'll be traveling around France and Spain for the next 2 weeks. We're going on a LIGHT travel trip. We're taking small travel rolly luggage that converts to backpacks. No need to check luggage. We're taking minimal clothing and will be doing laundry along the way.

We'll be in Paris for a few days, then travel to the Loire Valley. Visit Normandy and Mont St. Michel. After a week in France we'll fly to Madrid. We'll travel to Toledo and Sevilla. The heaviest luxury item I'm brining and refuse to leave home is ... anyone care to guess? My SLR digital camera. Other than that, no palm, no computer, no cell phones, and no USB thumb drives! Ahh! We will be brining our GPS (of course!)

This will be a chance for me to unplug and get off the grid. I really need to get away for a bit and recharge.

We'll be doing "some" recording and have already set it up so that we'll still be delivering 2 Monday podcacher shows (thanks to my bro-in-law Steve).

I'll be bringing my harmonica to brush up on my skills.

Although there'll be LOTS to do when I get back (there always is), for now it's time to say ciao!

In and out of whack ...

There are times when I absolutely HATE technology. I get so frustrated with it sometimes, that it's the best word to describe how I feel about it.

Many people who know me personally know that I'm a self confessed geek.

Monday night I went to my old church to rehearse with the old band to play for this Sunday. The audio equipment there is in bad shape. A loud, LOUD static hiss shows up intermittently. One of the amps is completely broken and no one has replaced it. Bummer. Sandy brought a camera to take pictures of our rehearsal, but the battery was dead. Bummer.

I teach an Educational Technology course at Cal State University, San Marcos. The other night when I was teaching:
Couldn't see a web page correctly.
Couldn't download files. Attempted over a half dozen strategies.
Could not hear audio on a movie file on my laptop when it has worked fine in the past. Later that night, after class, when I got home, I tried the same movie and it worked fine.
Word locked up, had to re-boot.
Video wouldn't show in class at the time I needed it. Later the same system showed video just fine.

Part of my frustration while teaching (and have technology fail) is the feeling that I'm trying to impress upon my students the importance and power that technology can have in education. Instead, I get the sense that some of my students are making a mental note ... "Reminder: don't use technology in a classroom, it fails, you can't get the lesson done and you look like an idiot."

My work computer is, to sum up, out of whack. My Palm is out of whack. Sometimes, but fortunately not too often, my Macs get out of whack. Weird things that I can't explain. Gremlins, someone with a voodoo doll of my electronic equipment sticking pins in it. Who knows.

Now I'm back from a short vaction. My computer has been re-imaged and other things are now out of whack. I just tried to use a simple USB flash drive to read a Word document. My computer (Windows XP) would not recognize the flash drive. I was told by my tech that I should re-boot the computer to see the drive. How absurd is that? To open a file that would take 20 seconds I have to do through a 5 minute reboot? I hate when my tech stuff is out of whack. Why can't they get in whack? What will it take to get them back in whack so I can get to work?

Just had a new car alarm installed and the proximity sensor is out of whack. I'll have to take it in again to have it adjusted / fixed.

Sniffles and Coughs

Sick at work today with a cold. I took yesterday off (EUHSD) work, but got myself bolstered enough to teach (CSUSM) last night. My students this semester are great. I enjoy working with them.

At work today, I'm also bolstered with "comfort" meds. I know that colds just need to work themselves out, but having luxuries like Dayquil is a nice, nice help.

The Tech Use Plan is pretty solid, stable and mostly complete. I'm waiting on some material from the director of staff development and the entire document will be ready to be shipped to the State for approval. Wahoo!

As of last night's teaching, I have a little break on certain obligations for a bit. As you've read in a previoius post, my week can get pretty full, pretty fast. CSUSM will be on spring break for a week and we are not hosting / leading our growth group for 2 weeks. This frees up quite a bit of time. Nice. I haven't had that in a while. Time for some reading, watching TV with Sandy, playing the guitar or didge, playing xbox (the new game at the moment is Burnout Revenge, a driving game). Things will come into full swing at full steam soon enough.

A few days ago I had the "itch" to shoot (photography). Has that ever happened to you? You just want to create? You want to produce and be creative, to stretch your imagination in search of inspiration? Well I had the bug. It was too cold and rainy to go drive somewhere to fill my photo-shooting needs, so I went out to our backyard and shot pics there. The whole "set" is here:

http://tinyurl.com/znaf2


.

Connections

One of the great things about the Internet is how small it makes the world. It is because of this virtual global community that we hear from our listeners from Denmark, South Africa, the UK, Australia and all over the US. It's because of these electronic connections that we are able to establish human connections with real people in real places.

I have been in contact with a geocacher in Washington (Glenn). He's also happens to be an educator (Principal and Director of Tech). He's a Christian and a geek. Sound familiar. I will have the pleasure of meeting him face to face this summer since he and I (and many other people) are organizing a geocaching extravanganza for a national education conference (NECC).

No suprise that he has a blog. http://peptechtalk.blogspot.com/ I've been reading his blog for awhile and today I mined a nugget. He pointed me to a website called ProtoPage. You've got to check this out. It's a "start" page. I think I'll be converting this to my default home page soon. Very cool. Give yourself some time to explore.

Disappointment at PS

Blogging from Palm Springs. I'm sitting here on a wireless network that is VERY slow. Painfully slow. Sometimes you hit a hyperlink, or "submit" button and just wait. And wait. Then you might get a screen that says that your request has "timed out".

Yesterday Sandy spent a good deal of time taking down coordinates for about a dozen "conference" specific caches. Last night after dinner we went back to our hotel room and worked for quite a while to set up for the next day. We took the coordinates, changed the names and input them into the computer. We then downloaded all the coordinates (about a dozen) into over 20 GPS units that Garmin had loaned us. Sandy prepared the handouts and some "signs" for the classroom. I prepared all the containers with disclaimers and logbooks. This morning we got up extra early (VERY difficult) to get a "to go" breakfast and then hide the cache containers all around the convention center. As we hid the last cache ... it began to rain. It then started to come down pretty hard. I went to the presentation room and began to plan for a modified version of the session: Plan B. I started the session, but there were less that a dozen people there. 8:00am on a rainy Saturday is a tough time to teach. I found out that they had originally printed my start time at 1:00pm so I think that some people may have not caught the change in start time. I was disappointed in my delivery. I question how effective I was. I was disappointed that it rained and we couldn't go out and find the caches that we had work SO hard to set up. I was disappointed that more people didn't show up and that my session was poorly attended.

Later, I was filmed for WestEd for a live webcast that will also be archived.

CUE 2006

Sandy and I are headed out this Weds night to Palm Springs for a few days for the CUE conference (www.cue.org). I always look forward to this conference each year, partially because of the new things I learn, but partially because of the people I meet. I get to meet some new contacts as well as catch up with old friends.

This year I'll be presenting a short session on geocaching in education. Sandy and I will be hiding some "conference specific" caches for teachers to find. My hope is to introduce teacher to the concept of geocaching and discuss the potential applications in education.

Sandy and I will be bringing our bikes this time in hopes of doing a some bike-seeing on our time off. We may get a chance to visit Moorten Gardens a VERY small, but pretty cool private cactus garden in PS.

Speaking of friends, I just got more emails and pictures from one of my good friends (Pancho) from his vacation. He an his wife just got back from a trip to the UK. There are times that the wonders of technology are just pretty darned cool. Panch' had a PocketPC and someway (I'm assuming wireless) of connecting to the Internet while out on the road and writing email. He would write me from various places including a train. One memorable point was when Panch' was riding on a train and watching the snowy landscape fly by. He described that he was listening to "Bohemian Rhaspsody" (they had just seen a Broadway play called "We Will Rock You"). On my side of the world I went over to the office iMac and started playing the same song. I wrote him back that after over 20 years of time from High School so long ago, there was still a connection. Cool.

I took Saldy out for his birthday dinner the other night. We went to a place called Rodo Viva in Temecula. It's a Brazilian barbecue restaurant. The unique feature of this place is that the waiters will bring you these "swords" (skewers) with barbecued (nicely seasoned) meat. There is also a small cylindrical object (wood) about the size of a salt shaker that is painted with red on one end, green on the other, and yellow in the middle. They tell you to turn the thing with green on to if you want more meat, red on top if you want to stop, and set it on it's side if you're done. Dinner is one price ($25) and all you can eat. The meat is SO good, but after awhile you feel like you're going to pop. Whooo! I got a chance to chat with Saldy for a bit (unfortunately not something I'm able to do often anymore) and found out what was going on with him.

Stress Management

Not sure if this actually occurred, but it made me feel good.

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, "How heavy is this glass of water?" Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g. The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. "If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. "In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."
He continued, "And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on. As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden. So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can. Relax; pick them up later after you've rested. Life is short, enjoy it!” And then he shared some ways of dealing with the burdens of life:

* Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue.
* Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.
* Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
* Drive carefully. It's not only cars that can be recalled by their maker.
* If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.
* If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
* It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
* Never buy a car you can't push.
* Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won't have a leg to stand on.
* Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
* Since it's the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late.
* The second mouse gets the cheese.
* When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
* Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.
* You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person.
* Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.
* We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names, and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.
"A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour."

LED Throwies

Science and art combined again.

Link

Things are busy

Things are pretty busy right now. It feels like I haven't had any time off, that's probably because I haven't. For the last several weeks, it's been work, work, work. Sandy and I try to get up early to run / excercise. We know it's good for us, so we try to discipline ourselves to do it. It's tough though. Neither of us are morning people (we are very compatible here!) and at this time of year, it's COLD! I know we shouldn't complain, there are other parts of the world that are actually freezing, but being a California guy, having to run all bundled up feel unnatural.

After we get home, I shower and dress and head off to work. Right now I'm not enjoying my job. There is a major project looming over my head, and I'm finding it difficult to get motivated about it.

When I get home from work, there is usually more work to do. I'll usually have a brisk dinner with Sandy and then hit the work. Monday nights I prep to lead the Growth Group that actually happens on Weds night. Prepping can (and usually does) take several hours. I not only prep on facilitating the discussion of the sermon, but I also prep to lead worship. I'll choose 3 songs, and make sure that I've got them "wired". This usually take about an hour (for the worship prep part) and is usually the only hour I really get to "practice" on the guitar. One hour a week ... The whole prep take me to about 9:30 or 10:00, and it's time to go to sleep.

Tuesday: Workout, work, go to CSUSM to teach. This take me to about 9:00. Go home, eat dinner, sleep.

Weds: Workout, work, go home, eat, lead Growth Group. Our guests usually leave around 9:30 to 10:00. Sleep.

Thurs: Prep for CSUSM. This takes at least 4 hours. Last night, I spent about 5 hours prepping and still didn't get done. More to do tonight.

Fri: Get home from work, eat, work, sleep.

The last several weekends, have been: work all day, sleep, work church, record pocacher, sleep.

Then the week starts all over again ...

Ug

Why?

This is ultra retro, but I'm still not sure why you'd want to do this ...

Article

Pessimism

"(some) Men (people) are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult." - Samuel Johnson

I met someone the other day who embodied this quote. I was sitting with a group of people and almost everything that came out of this person's mouth was negative. I didn't hear a positve comment once, not once. This person was a teacher and had negative things to say about the school, the district, the government, admistration, fellow teachers, and students. I thought, whose left? Some other people made an attempt to suggest positive alternatives and strategies, but this teacher's negative perception perevented them from seeing anything but obstacles. This teacher didn't really want to DO anything about it, they must've felt some level of comfot wallowing in despair and sharing it with others. The sad thing was that this person was SO young, maybe just a few years in the classroom, not the typical burned out teacher who was ready to retire. I can only the imagine the infection this teacher might spread at a faculty lunchroom. Why is this person teaching?

The next Aibo?:

Sony's out of the robot business, but Ugobe is ready to take over. Pleo, its robotic Camarasaurus dinosaur, is loaded with 38 touch, light and sound sensors that let him find his way around and respond to his human masters (he can also understand speech). Like Aibo, Pleo learns as he goes. When Pleo's creator picked him up, he said of the poodle-size creature: "It's the first time he's been picked up, so he's scared. The next time he'll be used to it."

And like a real baby, Pleo starts life stupid and cranky. He takes a long time figuring out how to move around, and if you don't play with him, he sulks and looks depressed. I'm not sure I have the time and patience to raise my own Pleo. But maybe if a friend gets one, I can be his uncle. Pleo will be cheap, selling for about $200 when he comes out for Christmas. And while Sony prosecuted fans who tried to hack Aibo, Ugobe invites customers to mod its bot.

The iPod Nano drops to 1 gig

An article at Engadget announced that Apple has quietly created a smaller, less expensive version of the popular MP3 player.

<><