ET-725 final project

As an ADE, I thought I'd devote the majority of the work for my final project towards the great content available on iTunes U. The following Prezi has some videos and links to great collections.

ET-725 final project on Prezi

Voki - ET-730

Here's my first animation video... I decided to try out Voki for my maiden voyage.

iTunes U

For this Discovery Project, I decided to dabble in iTunes U a bit. I've been doing it some for another project, and I think it has some real potential for schools and entities using iOS devices. It was my plan to show everything in a single video, but as I started, it became a bit long so I decided to break it up a bit. Here is part 1 of a series of 4 or so videos to get started.

iCabMobile Screencast

Here's a screencast of one my favorite apps for the iPad: iCabMobile. This app allows users to download media, from virtually any website, directly to the iPad that can then be used in other programs (Keynote, etc).

For this screencast, I used a program called "Reflection" which allows the iPad to wirelessly project to a desktop (in this case, a Mac) computer. It has a built in recording feature that automatically records the  screen of the iPad. I had to bring this video into another program to do the voiceover. Ironically, as I was completing this project, I had some friends on Twitter share that Display Recorder is now available that will record the screen AND the audio, thus allowing for a seamless screencast. Reflection is a $9.99 app, and the Display Recorder app is also $9.99.

Library of Congress - Teacher Section

I decided for this project to do a screencast of the Teachers page of the project. Cheryl Davis, a fellow ADE & GCT showed this to me a few months back, and I was blow away by the amount of information available.   Here's the screencast, with some spotlighting features present in Camtasia as well as the notes/annotation feature available in YouTube!

Library of Congress... the world (almost) at our fingertips!

Whenever I watch stuff like this, it amazes me that regardless of the amount of technology at our disposal, we still have so far to get "everything" at a state that is accessible by all. The numbers in these two videos were staggering:

• 700 TB of data
• 200 TB available to the public on the web due to copyright issues
• 120 Million Books
• 36,000 feature films
• 100,000 + music sheets and recordings (they also keep a lot of information on Vinyl too!)
• 1% of all the Library of Congress information digitized and made available on the web.

Although they didn't go too far in depth with how they are storing it, yet the capacity and the individual technologies involved for the various "forms" of artifacts were amazing. From simple pictures, to lateral scanning, to the (apparent) painstaking process of the copy process where each picture had to be physical placed on the scanner. The amount of time and effort put into this process seems like a never ending task. But keeping "America's Memory" intact is a big job!

What I found to be the most interesting was the collections from other countries that the LOC stores. I don't think I realized that there was as much information from other countries in our national library. I foolishly expected it to be solely American, but I guess if you're trying to maintain the worlds largest library, you have to get information from all over.

As I explored the LOC's website, I came across the educator section of the site which I found to be quite interesting. With a blog, information on using Primary sources and links to their partners, it's encouraging to see the amount of development that is going into sharing this information with educators from all over. 

Questions that made me go, "hmmm"

As I watched, it made me wonder how long ago the movies were made? I found out they were published to YouTube in 2009. This isn't too shocking actually, I expected them to be older (probably because of them not being HD.

How much more information is being gathered due to the digital age we live in?  With the amount of information we're already behind on (and I don't mean that negatively), at what rate is the capacity of the LOC growing? WIth all of the people working on the old stuff, what type of technology and manpower is being using to capture current and up-to-date information?

How has the storage technology changed since this time? I know most organizations have morphed to a Storage Area Network over the past few years, for power saving and redundancy?  How many backups does the Library of Congress have? 

eBooks

The following is a presentation I did on eBooks for my Masters program. Very interesting numbers and concepts behind what still appears to be a "late-adopter" platform for many.

ET - 725: eBooks on Prezi

Google Scholar Breakdown

As a part of my Masters In Education Technology, I had to choose an information technology resource and do a presentation on it. Encouragingly, we had to choose a presentation method we haven't done yet this semester, so I decided to jump in and try my hand at using Camtasia. I've had a copy of this program for a while, and thought it time I actually give it a shot. I really like the interface.

iPad Adoption Article Review

The Article I found from the ERIC database deals with an early iPad adoption program ran by a group of librarians at Ryerson University in Toronto. I've been doing a lot with iPads and plan to possibly make something of a thesis and/or project out of it, so the more research the better. The article is titled "Project iPad: Investigating Tablet Integration in Learning an Libraries at Ryerson University." The article is well thought out and is outlined to discuss the research and background that went into this technology adoption. The project idea was to purchase a small amount of iPads, select up to four students that would use them throughout the academic year. Each student was asked to blog weekly about their experiences about using this relatively new technology (the article was published in September 2011, but began in late 2010 after the iPad was first introduced). The librarians opted for the 16GB Wi-FI model and purchased $300 of apps for the iPads and granted some gift cards to each student later in the program as more apps began to flood the market. The article describes the impact the iPad had on organizing and completing academic work to conducting research with the iPad. All in all, "Each of the students agreed that the iPad altered their academic workflows, making them practically paperless" (p. 18). The summary of the article concludes with lessons learned and recommendations which would be beneficial for anyone thinking of making the leap to this platform. As the project developed and concluded, the librarians discovered that more professors were beginning to adopt the iPad and their efforts needed to be focused on helping the staff with iPads, not so much the students. The librarins developed "iPad Literacy" drop-in sessions for the faculty to helping with the growing population of tablets. ~~ Eichenlaub, N., Gabel, L., Jakubek, D., McCarthy, G., & Wang, W. (2011). Project iPad: Investigating Tablet Integration in Learning and Libraries at Ryerson University. Computers In Libraries, 31(7), 17-21.

Wireless Mirroring with Apple TV

Ok, I have to say that I'm a bit excited about the new "toy" we got in our office. We've had a lot of success with the iPad... through workshops and productivity for things we do in our office. I just got approval to get an Apple TV so that we can wirelessly walk around the room and still project content from our iPad. This is going to help with our meetings, workshops, and hopefully present a low cost "whiteboard" alternative for many teachers throughout Fresno County. I'm very anxious to set it up... all I have to do is take the HDMI output and convert it to VGA so that it can work with our existing projector. When's all said and done, we should have an interactive whiteboard (with no wires) for less than $700 dollars.

iPad2 = $530
Apple TV = $109.00
HDMI to VGA Converter = $45

Here's a video.

Wirelessly Mirroring iPads through Apple TV from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

Google Sketchup

I think that Google Sketchup has unlimited potential for the classroom across multiple grade levels. Here's a brief video on some of it's power.

Video for Class

Here's the video I produced for a module in my Educational Technology 705 class at Fresno Pacific. I'm passionate about using Apple Technology for teaching and thought I'd showcase one of my favorite apps.



I'd love to hear what you think!

Ditractions while doing homework...

Well, I need to confess that I get distracted easy. As I was doing my homework last night (it was my reading night), my daughter came up onto the couch and asked what I was doing. I told her I was doing homework, and she wanted to help. She proceeded to show me all of her sight words on the piece of research I was reading... both daddy and daughter were doing homework, and I couldn't help but assist her in finding new words. It's truly amazing to watch her learn how to read.

The other distraction was from a fellow ADE, Kelly Croy. He did this amazing video tribute to Steve Jobs, and I couldn't help (yet again) to stop and watch the whole thing. This is truly inspiring.

The next phase

It's been a little bit since I posted, and I thought I'd quickly reflect on things over the past few weeks. First off, I thought I'd include a picture from a presentation (not my best work) that I did a few weeks back. The title of the presentation was "Finding the nerd in us all" and I felt really good about it before I started, but going on at the very end of the day of a LONG conference is tough for anyone.


This past week was very busy for me on the prepartion front as well. This summer, ISTE is coming to California and I submitted four proposals for the event. I hope I get 1 to be honest... I just thought I'd load as much as I could into the event to see what stuck. We'll see... I wasn't as prepared as I'd like to be for the submission process. I submitted four (or more) to the annual CUE conference as well. Hoping for another great year!

This coming week, I have some BTSA training to help with as well as interviews for a VAPA consultant for our office. Looking forward to an exciting week.

Thanks...

Today is a weird day for me. Having come into technology as a PC lover, I was inspired a few years back to change my life for the better and surround myself around an experience that could harness my creativity and allow me to show my true potential and inspire others to do the same. Today, Steve Jobs, passed away. He seemed like a distant uncle to me. His leadership inspired me to do something that only 1700 other educators in the world have accomplished. This past year, I became an Apple Distinguished Educator and I couldn't be MORE proud now than the moment I found out. His visionary leadership has inspired me to try new things with technology, particularly in Educational Technology, that I couldn't have imagined doing before.

This commercial sums up my feelings for how I've approached technology in Education.

Inspiration is the best word I can sum up what this person has done for me personally and professionally!


Today I sat in on another podcast to pay tribute to the man. Although it won't be published for a few days, here's a "before" snapshot about how one mans vision has affected educators from around the world.

When the new episode gets posted, I'll link to it here!

Thanks Steve!

Talking... and a lot of it.

Yesterday was a very productive day for me. I started out attending a conference about the upcoming Common Core Standards that will be rolled out in the coming year. Lots of changes are in the works for teachers and students, but I think it's a good thing. One of the great things about the upcoming standards is that there is technology built right into them. This can be good because it takes a lot of the guessing game out of it for reluctant teachers since it explicitly states "Students will create digital media to..." right in there. The dialogue around our table was great... unfortunately, I had to leave early.

It then came time for me to talk, at the end of a long day for a group of 180+ CTE teachers. I don't know why I went on at the end, but they made me. I approached this talk a little different than I normally do. Since I'm labeled as "the tech guy", I didn't want to go up there and try to overwhelm them with a bunch of stuff... it was the end of the day and they'd heard enough. My talk was basically about teachers trying to find their inner nerd and harness that same level of passion in their students. The passion I'm referring to is when you get so involved in that ONE thing, that it's hard to turn your mind off of it. It appeared to be well received.

To cap off my day, I had the pleasure of being a guest speaker on a very popular podcast called MacReach. This was my first BIG TIME podcast, so I was a little nervous and wasn't sure how best to read the others on the Skype call. It was a lot of fun to talk with Meg Wilson & Kelly Dumont about all things Mac & iOS. These two are a couple of great educators I was able to meet at the ADE Institute this summer! Hopefully I'll get the chance to get on there again.

Yea... I'm a nerd! So what?!?

I have to give credit where credit is due here. The title from this blog actually came from my brother about 25 years ago. He was a clever little guy in his youth and wrote a paper for his 5th grade class, and it's something I've always wanted to use. So thanks Scott for the inspiration.

This came to me once again as I prepare to speak in front of 200+ CTE teachers next week about technology. I've talked to this crowd before, but in smaller chunks about something specific in regards to technology. What I decided to do is to TRY and encourage each of these teachers to find their inner nerd. Not glasses and pocket-protectors, but in the sense of finding something that they are passionate about and embrace it. They might already do that, who knows. But the real question is, do their kids do it? What's their hook for wanting to learn more? Most of them are in CTE classes because they want to be there and they find it enlightening and encouraging. At once you get a kid that is nerded out, what better barometer for success is there. THEY WANT TO LEARN MORE!!!!

I'll write (and share slides) after my session next week, but I thought I'd start with sharing my thoughts in a blog. Thanks to Merlin Mann for his talk at Deconstruct that has helped with framing some of my talking points. Thanks to all my ADE family for your inspiration. And of course, thanks to Fresno ROP for the honor.... I have goosebumps!