Emergent Technology 3 - Kindle (Digital Books)

I choose to do my final emergent technology project on Amazon.com's device Kindle. 

Kindle very simply put is a digital book.  But instead of just being 1 book, you can have many books on the same device.  From the product description; "Holds up to 1,500 books."  Not to mention download directly from the "book store" which contains "Over 500,000 books and the largest selection of the most popular books people want to read, including 105 of 112 New York Times® Best Sellers, plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines, and blogs."  This is a technology I feel very strongly schools should be looking into.  What I imagine this device being used for is to replace text books.  As more and more schools adopt no backpack rule following the events in Columbine, there is typical a struggle at least once a day for the students to get to their lockers and back to class in the allocated time.  By replacing the tradition system where each class has it's own book, switching to the Kindle would solve the need for students to carry around a lot of books there by eliminating the need for a backpack.  Think about it, all the students would have just one digital book, and they just download the text book for your subject and they're good to go.  This would be a great tool for English or Literature classes, as you assign books to students to read, they can download the book right to their device.  This could also be a Green initiative, you don't need to print all those text books, and as we all know text books, especially history or social studies where information changes so quickly.  For example I remember my 3rd grade social studies book went out of date while I was still in school because the Berlin Wall came down.  With digital books they can be updated faster without the need for printing all that paper just to have to throw it away the next year.  Another potential benefit is cost; the Kindle retails for $259 + tax and shipping.  Where as the average High School text book costs can range from $500-$600 per year.


There are several things I can think of that would create a challenge in implantation.  First you have to consider the students who would be using it.  Because it would be more fragile it would probably be a bad idea to allow younger students to be responsible for it, especially if you want them to take it home to do homework.  Another and probably the biggest issue to resolve is making sure that there are textbooks available for the device.  Now I'm not going to limit the ideal of a "digital book" to just the kindle because this would be an issue with any similar device, are the resources available?  As a teacher you would need to make sure the books are there, and how much they would cost.  Would textbook manufacturers be willing to lower the cost of the book if it's a digital version?  Would the printers even allow their books to be sold digitally because they wouldn't make as much money?  It's the sad truth that would greatly limit the use of this type of device.



Now that I've pointed out the downside, I offer one other way to implement the device.  Going back to the English or Literature classes, if you could get your school board to approve the budget for it, you could buy classroom sized amounts of a digital book, and have all the reading assignments be read on those instead of having to purchase enough copies of a book for you're entire class.  You may just find a way to lower your schools budget and that always makes Administration happy.

OMG New Futurama!!!!

Thank you whatever mighty deity has granted us with new episodes of Furturama on Comedy Central starting June 2010!!!!!  I know that I lot of exclamation marks, but I really am that happy about it.

Futurama	Weeknights, 9p/8c
New Episodes on Comedy Central
www.comedycentral.com
Futurama New Episodes Joke of the Day Stand-Up Comedy

Update For picasa

So I know I've already turned the assignment in and thanks to the wonderful world of the internet the latest update (3/11/2010) for picasa will now allow for collaborations.  Which means the key feature that I was looking for applying to a classroom setting is now available freely through Picasa.  And another feature just added is what's called "geotaging" where you can put in the location you took the picture and then see where you have pictures from.  Which gave me another idea have students upload pictures of places they've been and keep a tally over the year and see where people have been and make lesson plans out of some of the historic places that they've inevitably been to.  Thank you Google.

Emergent Technology 2 - photo share

Yup, that's right it's homework time again. I currently use Picasa and pay for storage space, Picasa is free unlike most of the other photo sharing sites that only offer trials and comes with 1GB of online storage space free as well.  There are two parts to Picasa, there is the web storage, I invite you to look at my gallery http://picasaweb.google.com/weeezel and there is a free program that you can download that lets you edit the photographs or images.  I also found that with Blogger, you can add a photo slideshow to your blog, very easily, you can choose from a variety of picture hosts, and then pick the gallery you want to show off.  The modular nature of Blogger, allows you to put the slides at the top, bottom, or where ever.  I'm pretty proud of some of my photographs so I put my slide show at the top so anyone viewing my blog can see.  In addition to editing Picasa also has a face recognition system, in other words if you want to find the funny picture of your friend, instead of looking through the galleries you can browse by facial recognition.  The two thoughts I have on that are, a) that's cool and efficient and b) it's kind of scary to think that the computer can distinguish a human face in pictures, well maybe not scary, I probably just watched the Terminator too many times. 

I also looked at what other options, as it stands Picasa is free and has lots of features, but there is another site that I feel would be better for a classroom setting. The application I looked at is called Pictoma.  I think this one really demonstrates what the Web 2.0 is about.  Pictoma allows for multiple people to upload to the same place.  A classroom activity I could think of is to have the students do a project where they say, take a picture of your local court house, and then compare.  The idea being looking at different ways they took pictures, different angles, and then tie it into a say a Government class.  The downside is the cost,  while it is only $24 a year unless you're going to use it to have different people upload photos to the same location, like say a wedding, all the guests could post their pictures they took for you at no cost to them.  For Picasa, 20GB of storage space was only $5 and also ties in to other Google services such as email and document storage, for my current needs Google's the place.  

Homework time! RSS feeds ...

Wow... I've known about RSS feeds for some time but have never really tried to use them.  RSS feeds translated to normal speak; basically means instead of having to go look at 10 different websites you can check the content updated through your RSS Reader.  Clearly this seems like a good idea, instead of going to page after page, you have a central location to check all the updates. You can then browse through articles based  on where they came from or just look at all of them.  Again my old school internet bias has prevented me from trying out this technology, but I've been impressed so far.  I use Google Reader, most websites that provide RSS feeds support it, but there are a variety of different programs.  I started by adding the sites that I frequently check, I have a whole section of bookmarks that I check on a multiple times daily.  I used it through out most of the day, check it as each time I noticed a new Feed pop up.  After using it for about a week now I've come to several conclusions.  First, it can be a bit overwhelming, for example, on a regular morning my reader has about 300+ articles.  That's a lot to go through, but which the tools in Google reader, I can get around that by just checking the sites I'm really interested in, then marking the others as read.  Secondly, this is a great tool for keeping yourself updated on multiple things.  You are notified in your reader as soon as something new happens, meaning you can keep yourself updated on new changes.  I can see this a a benefit to the class room (i.e. create a "homework" blog and have all your student's parents subscribe, that way they could see what their child is supposed to be doing and if you make a change to the assignment, they're notified).  My advice is to not let yourself get overwhelmed, subscribing to news sites will keep you up-to-the minute updated, but can easily overwhelm you.  Use the tools the RSS Reader has to offer, check individual sites,  instead of trying to read your whole "new articles" section all at once.  Google Reader also makes it easy to share the article with your friends through Google Buzz if you use Google email, or email the article to someone.  It also gives you the ability to comment on the article when you share. 

Chatroulette ... the internets new low...

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/02/22/chatroulette.random.chat/

" On Chatroulette, a new and controversial Web site, every click lands you in a face-to-face video conversation with a random stranger.


The setup is simple: Activate your webcam and click "play." Then, as people from all over the world pop up one at a time in a box on your screen, you decide whether or not to chat with them. If you don't like the looks of things, click "next" and the site shuffles you to someone new.

The people you meet could be friendly. During a recent CNN test of the site, a man from France popped up on the screen wearing a jester's hat and telling jokes in French. Two men dressed as skeletons were having a dance party to techno music and flashing lights. A slouched-over man in Tunisia said he was tired because he'd been on the site for four hours.

But the stranger Chatroulette sends you could just as easily be naked -- or even masturbating in front of the camera, which is the case rather frequently..."

Wow... Just wow... why would you subject yourself to something that invasive ... Penny Arcade even touched on it with this comic and related story.  Personally I think it's scary.

I am this cat...

Home Work time... Social Bookmarking

So we're doing a project in class this week on social bookmarking. I have to say I was very wary going into this project, the idea of sharing your bookmarks (or favorites if you are using IE or whatever you mac people have) scared me. It's not that I don't have anything to hide, but it's the idea that there is no privacy the bothers me. So anxiously as instructed I created a delicious account. To use delicious you have to sign up for yahoo. Be wary I warn you... yahoo likes to install all kinds of extra features and sign you up for every mailer they have ... hey they gotta make money, I understand, I just don't really like Yahoo! that much. So back to social bookmarking. Once I got through the challenges of creating an account I found that during the process it offers to install add-ons for most web browsers including the one I use Firefox. So I installed the add-on. *If you're using firefox and the addon I found it much easier to use when i switched it to the "classic view" (Top of your tool bar, look for the "delicious" button, click then down towards the bottom you'll see the option.) What this does is separate your bookmarks from delicious bookmarks. Which comforted me in knowing I was still able to maintain privacy.

The whole idea behind social bookmarking is that you can 1) access your resources (web links) from anywhere, 2) Tag the marked page making it easier for you to find what your looking for as well as allow you to add notes to the content beyond just the URL, and 3) it connects your publicly marked bookmarks with everyone else using the system. Allowing you to search tags and find what other people are using are resources and then adding it to your collection if it turns out it's useful to you. Beyond the privacy issues I was first concerned with this seems like a great idea. Once I added a few of the pages I had bookmarked on my own for class research, I added them to delicious, gave them some notes and some tags. It exploded from there, I just did a brief search of some commonly used tags and instantly found several resources that are excellent. You can view my bookmarks at: http://delicious.com/billinghamiv

Weekly Rant... Snow

Okay I've had enough of it. Time to stop and move on to spring. Wouldn't that be a hoot. But no gotta wait another 30 odd some days more for the first day of spring... and not to mention the fact that here in Indiana that doesn't mean Jack. It'll probably still be colder than a well diggers behind until mid to late April. Seriously? Seriously. I've lived here 99% of my life, the only time I've lived outside Indiana is when I was in the military and at Ft. Benning, GA. And that was in the winter too... and let me clue you folks in on something... In the middle of winter, it's still cold as crap in Georgia. I'm talking wearing sweatpants on under my regular pants to stay warm enough. But enough about Georgia.

So basically I'm an Indiana boy so I should be used to this right? I mean I grew up in the north part of the state and we had lake effect snow on top of the regular stuff. I remember 1 year where a snow plow slid off the road we lived on so the school bus driver just stopped coming down our road for a few days until it was safe again. THAT was snow. What we have here in the middle regions is just that pathetic miserable snow. And the cold. Over rated. For all that's in me I can't think of why I didn't go running to Hawaii or Cali. Or heck! Anywhere near the equator... The whole "changing of the seasons" is nice and all, but cold is over rated and there's a lot of it going on now.

Now I know I'm just ranting to myself mostly. But to be honest, I'm happy with that. Because if I get a big following I will have fully become a Blogger, something I've been trying to put off as long as possible...

Most over rated holiday?

Being that today is Valentines Day, I can't help but think it's the most ridiculous holiday ever. Stupid Hallmark... Ooooh we need to boost early spring sales, we're dipping between Xmas and Easter ... lets invit a day where the soul purpose is to buy our junky cards and candy, then market it as "a day of love." Now it's almost a prerequisite that if you're married or dated you're spending about $150 for the sake of this day. Call me scrooge ... but I think it's crazy it's called a 'holiday.'

There I had my rant. And my just desserts... tomorrow instead of today at least.

Just what's on my mind

Well now with this new Google "Buzz" feature in gmail and dozens of other applications they own I think it can be safe to say we may very well be looking for the first time since the 1980's that we may have a choice in computers again. I know what most of you will say... but there's Mac ... well, apart from making phones and an OS that's designed to work on videos/photos, it's not really that much better than a PC and not as compatible with namely video games. In addition in order to use their software, it has to be on their hardware. Where with PCs you can switch, swap, integrate, upgrade, and everything else. Their two different species. The only real other competition to M$ are the various Linux platforms. They make up a small majority, but the ideas behind a Linx is that it allows for fine tuning... it's a hobbyist platform, it's not for the masses. A Google operating system could bridge that gap. I'm not saying that it will be good or bad, I have no idea. I'm just excited at the prospect to try something new. M$ has had it's grip on the mass users for so long they forget they used to have choices. And maybe Google will be powerful enough to make that happen. Like I said... "just what's on my mind."

Emergent Technology - Vodcast (Video casting)

For my first emergent technology project I choose to explore Vodcasting, or video-casting. A Vodcast is similar to a podcast, only you get both video and audio, with a podcast you only get audio. A Vodcast is a technology that allows you to record a video clip, created by you, and then share it online. I will be sharing my video on my blog. The first real challange is to find a place to "host" or upload your video to I choose to use YouTube because I already had storage there.

I can see lots of positive applications for this type of technology, my biggest vision is for this type of technology to be used a classroom environment, which would be to record classroom lessons and then upload them so that students who are unsure about something from the class can review the lecture. In addition it can allow students who are unable to be in the classroom (due to illness or emergency) to still be able to get the same class lessons even though they can't be there. If someone is sick they should not be forced to watch the video, but it does give them the opportunity to review what they missed. I think this would be a great way to give all students an equal chance in doing well with the class they are taking.

The biggest downside to vodcasting is that it requires a fast internet connection, which is why I want to briefly mention podcasting. A podcast is simply an audio recording that you can upload to the internet, your website, or blog. While you don't get to see the action happening, with a podcast you still get to hear the lesson, so I think it is important to consider your target audience first before deciding what to implement in the classroom. People with slower internet connections will find a Podcast is more efficient than a Vodcast.

The biggest snag I ran into when trying to setup a Vodcast was that the majority of the resources require you to pay for service for uploading and sharing your videos. I guess the old adage is true "Nothing's free in life." Since I already have storage on YouTube, to host my videos, I chose that as my host. To do this you open your video on YouTube, and then choose the "embed" option, down at the bottom right. (note in the picture)




Copy the embedded text field from YouTube, and if you are using Blogger as your choice of Blog, click the tab in the top left of your New Post that says "Edit Html." Then paste in the text you copied from YouTube where you want it to show up. Here is an example video I created.



As you can tell I switched from Hipcast to YouTube once I found out about the purchase requirements. I found YouTube to be much simpler for setting up a Vodcast.

Look away... (By Nick Demayo ... it's a song)

Two angels are plucked from the heavenly sky
In an instant they're gone
In the blink of an eye
If you listen close you'll here cherubs cry
Ohhh..look away
My head is heavy
Their bodies bruised
Our spirits shattered when we heard the news
The chorus is singin its final tune
Ooooh...look away
We ran to the mountains
We shouted on high
We pled to the gods and an answer replied
What was once is now lost yet could never die
Ooooh...look away
Look away
Whoa oh oh look away
Look awayeyay

R.I.P 2009 colts team

Blogs...

So I have to admit, I've been working with computer, in IT jobs for the last 10 years and I've refused to join any type of internet "trend". I don't have a facebook/myspace, I've never had a blog until now. I always thought it as a self centered idea, the concept of telling people what your doing up to the minute. Maybe it's just a weird pet-peeve of mine. But as you can tell from my page I've dove into the rabbit hole, and while I'm getting into this more than I would have thought and dirtied my little white fluffy tail a little, I have emerged none the less more enlightened. I can see practical applications as my class instructor pointed out you can have your student's parents subscribe to your blog (assuming you don't work in the inner city where the families are poor enough not to have computers) and then you can instantly update the parent on homework changes or assignments, so that the parent can help the child complete his/her assignments on time and correctly. And that's just one of the examples of good things this can be used for, so I have widened my gaze. The process of setting up the blog wasn't too terrible, I love Google, so I was already familiar with some of the menu settings and how to get to places. Being able to edit and move the "modules" around was another setting a I really like, it makes it easy to arrange the site to fit you better. I also now use Picasa to host my picture gallery and found it was very easy to add a slide show from my account as a module. So I admit, biased as I was coming into this project I've got a new perspective on it and have to say I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

For those of you who are truly into blogging and have a smart phone, you can blog from the go. I have an iPhone and have just installed "BlogPressLite(free)" it's the free version of "BlogPress ($2.99)." with this application you can make posts from virtually anywhere and it gives you the ability to import pictures from various sources (Picasa of course being one of them). It's interface is smooth and easy and I'd highly recommend it. Here's there website if you want to read more about the app or you can go to the iTunes store and check it out there.

Woohoo Photo's back online

I really enjoy photography, it's a big hobby of mine. I've been all over from Alaska to Holland, these are my photo's since I've gone digital. I would consider myself more of a natural or landscape photographer than a person photographer. The host I used to have my pictures shared has been up and down over the last 2 years, so I've decided to move them to a new Host. So I'll be trying out Picasa now, I was some was upset about the installation forcing the program to search for photos when installing, but that's probably more of a personal preference. So... without further adieu I present Bob's Photo Gallery: http://picasaweb.google.com/weeezel

Video Games And Violence By Bob Billingham

Here was my PowerPoint Project. It gave me a new perspective towards video games and violence, and I'm an avid computer gamer who would claim "that the violence in the games has no affect on me at all." So check it out and get the whole story.

Video Games And Violence By Bob Billingham

View more presentations from guest73e182.

What's the deal with the groundhog?

Ok seriously... The myth is that if the fat furry little rodent crawls out of it's burrow and see's it's shadow we will have 6 more weeks of winter, if he doesn't then it's meant that spring will come early.
First off... why the woodchuck? That poor dumb rodent has been underground the last 5 months... how could it possibly have any clue what the weather is going to be like 6 weeks from now... it can because IT'S BEEN UNDERGROUND. geesh

Secondly.... isn't it awfully convenient that Groundhog Day is February 2nd? Which happens to be EXACTLY 6 weeks away from the "Official first day of spring" typically between March 20th and 22nd. It's a guarantee that whatever the groundhog decides that spring will be 6 weeks away. What a hoax.

Third... where did this crazy myth come from? I mean was there a woodchuck cult or something that came up with this idea? Of course it came from America. Pennsylvania to be exact. According to my research a group of would be badger lovers came to America decided to use the ground hog, probably because badgers are mean coots and someone would have probably lost a hand by now, and started the tradition of dragging a poor giant rat out of a hole and then "speaking with it" to decide if there would be spring soon or not. For a state known for it's anti witchcraft policy back in the 1800s this sounds an a lot like hocus-pocus to me.


Oh, by the way this year's forecast: 6 more weeks of winter. Well no duh, the spring equinox is March 20th this year. Way to go...