The face of our students

I know that this video has been circulating for awhile - I just haven't had a chance to really comment about it. My first reaction is - How cool! To get students in a college classroom to not only gain some insight about themselves, to use the Read/Write Web (Google Docs) to do it, and then use video to share it with the world. This is a powerful and engaging message that as teachers, we need to recognize where our students are coming and growing from - otherwise we will lose them.

MEGA

I am presenting a workshop on Podcasting for MEGA with Joselyn Todd (from Cary Academy) at the Friday Institute tomorrow. We have over 40 PEOPLE signed up!!!!!! I have had a great time prepping for this with Joselyn via Skype, Google Docs, and PB Wiki. We have truly modeled how teaching in the 21st Century can and needs to happen!

Our Wiki is set-up at http://megapodcast.pbwiki.com/ I can't wait to see how it grows!

Second Life in Education

Google Presentation on Second Life in Education at:
http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=df7pqsvm_0ckp38s

Google Reader

I am addicted to my RSS feed, and in the past I have sung the praises of Net News Wire, but in this age of the Read/Write Web and for the sake of trying new things, I looked into Google Reader.

I was worried at first that I would need to start my subscriptions from scratch, and with 80+ RSS feeds I peruse - this was not an exciting idea. However, I discovered an Import/Export feature. I was able to Export form NetNews Wire a .opml file. I was then able to upload that into Google Reader. Now, I did have to reorganize my subscriptions and tag them, but that wasn't too painful.

The advantages of Google Reader include:
-Being able to get my feeds from any computer
-Changing the way I look at my feeds
-Sharing items with others
You can view my favorites here.
You can subscribe to my best of the best feed here.

Google - Presentations

Google is starting to become the new OS for most of us in this Web 2.0 world. Not only is Google one of the best search engines in the world (and I don't just say that because it is from my home state of Washington - or because the guy I grew up next door to works there or anything), but they also offer some very powerful tools. Some of my favorites are:
G-mail (I mean who doesn't love free e-mail that has unlimited space)
Google Calendar (it takes uploads from iCal on a Mac - how cool is that?)
Google Earth (which now includes maps of the sky)
Google Reader (which acts as an RSS aggregator - basically a reader of all of your feeds - I still am attached to NetNewsWire, but this is tempting)

and Google Docs, which has just added Presentations. Although SlideShare is awesome in its ability to post PP presentation. The power of Google Presentations is being able to work collaboratively on a document. It takes a page out of a wikis book and takes it a step further, so instead of a webpage at the end - you get a presentation!

I hope to do my presentations for NCETC this year in it and demo how it works! Come to think of it, maybe I should have a Google Session? Or is that Patrick Crispin's territory?