The world lost an incredible photograper, and we lost a friend

(This is an incredibly personal post)
I met my husband in college at the Agromeck (our yearbook at NC State), working on the third floor of Witherspoon Student Center with the rest of Student Media. What I didn't realize at the time was that I was joining a fraternity, not a real one, but one that just happens because you all share the same passion and dreams. I became part of a group of friends that I have known and loved for over 15 years. We've been to each others weddings, been there for the births of our children, and supported each other when no one else could. We may not always be as close as we once were, but are always there for each other when we need to be.

Source: Getty Images

This week we lost one of our own. Chris Hondros died in Libya this week. He was a war photographer, and one of my husband's best friends. Chris always had adventures wherever he went, from New York City or Athens GA, and if you were lucky you could go along with him. His adventures took him all over the world. He reported on war in a way I didn't think was possible, without judgment. He wanted to show the horrors of conflict, but never blamed the military, or the troops he was stationed with. He told their stories honestly and openly. He knew what he was getting into, but that doesn't make this any easier. I didn't know him as well as some, and even less than others, but Chris had a huge impact on my life and my group of friends. I was proud to know him and call him my friend.

Show your students his pictures and discuss what happens in war. That it is never neat or easy. That just because a war doesn't happen in your backyard doesn't mean it doesn't effect you. That a picture can say a thousand more words than I ever could. Thank you for the indulgence of this post. 

So have a vodka martini, listen to some Mahler and think of Chris Hondros for me.

iPads vs. Laptops - NCTIES presentation

This week I had the honor of presenting at NCTIES about iPads in education. One of the questions I always get when talking to educators about iPads (and disclaimer - I love mine) is if they will replace laptops in a 1:1 environment. I wanted my presentation to not be about how awesome the iPad is, but a critical assessment of the pros and cons of implementing iPads in a school environment. My goal was to not give a definitive answer about which was better, because every school has different needs, but more to highlight what IT needs to look at in implementing iPads and how they are different from a laptop environment. I felt the presentation went well overall, although I did feel that some people in the audience really wanted me to just say one way or another which one is better.

Will iPads Replace Laptops?

View more presentations from Bethany Smith.

Will iPads Replace Laptops?

I'm giving a presentation next week at NCTIES on "Will iPads Replace Laptops?" What do you think?

Tech Tuesdays

I love conducting workshops and in the past I have had great attendance from our faculty. I typically do a few workshops throughout the year and also conduct a bi-weekly brownbag tech session called either Tech Tuesday or Wired Wednesday. We try to stream and record those sessions using Ustream. However, over the past year we've had a significant decrease in attendance. I've been brainstorming with my colleagues about why this could be happening; are the topics not interesting? is the time bad? do my faculty just not have time to come? is it a combination of them all? I don't want to give up on my sessions, but I can't devote time and effort to something that no one shows up for.



So this semester I will be trying something different.  All of our Tech Tuesday sessions will be streamed live from my office. Instead of having a hybrid model of in person and online we will be completely online. I hope this will allow me to give the online participants more attention as well as create a better product to be viewed later. I'm worried how some of my session topics will lend themselves to this online format, but I'm sure we will find a way. I also hope that this will give others outside the college the opportunity to join us on a regular basis. Here is our Tech Tuesday schedule:

February 1st Web 2.0 Tools and how they fit within the Digital Blooms Taxonomy
February 15th Creating Screencasts to share with your students
March 1st Keeping up to date with news and information using RSS and Google Reader
March 15th Using Smartboards in the classroom
March 29th Integrating Turning Point Clickers in your classroom
April 12th iPads for Teaching & Learning

Our Ustream channel is at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tech-tuesdays

View one of our older sessions to ensure you can see the video and hear the audio.  In order to watch the live stream you will not need a Ustream account. However, if you would like to participate in the chat you will need to sign-in. You can sign-in with a Facebook account, a Google account, a Yahoo account, an OpenID account, OR you can create a Ustream account. If you would like to create a UStream account, please do so before the session.

I hope to see you all on Tuesday!

Finding my Purpose

I have found myself wondering aimlessly in the past few months. So much of last semester was wrapped up in my trip to China, that everything else has been reactionary. I have found myself barely trying to keep above water and my life a series of questions and answers. I haven't blogged, I haven't tweeted and I have barely facebooked. I have cut myself off from the one community that could have supported me, and I'm not really sure why. One of the blogs that I read recommended everyone chose a word for the year, and have that word as a theme direct your plans and vision for the year. So my word for the year is purposeful. I will be purposeful with how I use and organize my time. I will find the time to do the things that matter to me and I will work on continually finding my purpose in life.

Closed Captioning

One of the aspects of online learning that I struggle with is ADA compliance. Not the concept of ADA compliance, I completely agree that universal web design is better for everyone, but how do I implement ADA compliant web resources.  In the past this has been done by checking my website periodically to make sure that my websites are compliant by tools such as SortSite or designing with standards from W3C in mind. But in my mind, those are the easy things. Basic website design is easy to make compliant, what I have found more and more difficult is multimedia.

Technically, every time we post information to a website for our students to use in a class it should be compliant. This means that audio files have transcripts, video files are captioned, PDFs are accessible etc. Most of my faculty don't even think about making their content accessible until they have a student they have to make accommodations for and redo their entire class.

For my part I have tried to support faculty in these endeavors as much as possible and be an example of compliance with our college website. Yet, I have found that even I have forgotten to be compliant. So this semester I have been working with my graduate student to close caption our official college videos. This may come as a shock, but I have never captioned a video before.  My GA worked on it for about a month and could not get it to work. This week I was able to spend a couple hours tackling it. Finally after a few updates, the right versions of the right software, and a bit of luck I was able to add captions to a 2 minute video. Now, this was the first time I tried, and I'm sure after this it will be much easier for me, but I was surprised at how much work it took to make these videos compliant. To add insult to injury, I couldn't actually host this video on our Clipshare video server and had to directly upload it to our website.  What I was not aware of is that the close captioning process actually creates a text file linked to specific time codes in the video. These two files are linked, but seperate. As long as they can find one another, everything works fine.

So there is a happy ending, I have my captioned video and I have played by the rules, but would a teacher or professor have the amount of time to make this effort?  What gives me hope is how easy Youtube has made it to add captions to their videos. I can only hope that it gets easier for all of us to make our multimedia accessible, and for us all to value the effort it takes.

Privacy and Social Media

I am honored to be asked by Phil Tietjen of Penn State University to answer a question for his class on Social Media. The question is: How do you see the role of privacy in relation to Web 2.0 or social media? Does it deserve more attention among educators?

I believe that privacy, or the lack thereof, is one of the larger issues surrounding education technology. How do we protect our students in an online environment and at the same time take advantage of all of the benefits that Web 2.0 tools have to offer? It is a difficult question to answer. I am torn between my role as a teacher to "protect" my students and my role to promote them and the work that they do everyday. There is such a balance to be struck between those that are afraid to try any Web 2.0 tool because of privacy concerns, and those that post pictures of their students online with full names.

But I think the rubber meets the road when we think about how would you actually implement a Web 2.0 product in your classroom and what concerns would you take into account.  Now that varies by product and by grade level in my mind. There are tools such as Voicethread and PB Works that allow for controlled user creation as well as for student use under the age of 13. Students don't need e-mail addresses to have accounts and their full name is not displayed. They make it easy for me to feel comfortable inside the constraints of COPA and CIPA and are well suited to elementary and middle school students. I encourage the use of "Avatars" by younger students, this way they can display their work on the internet for their fellow classmates and parents to see can still be met, but in a way that strangers cannot identify them.

However, once students reach high school and are over the age of 13, how does our use of social media change or should it? Seth Godin says it best with “Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record.  The best plan is to overload Google with good stuff and to always act as if you’re on candid camera, because you are!” The Wall Street Journal reported back in 2008 that College Admissions officers are using the Internet to research prospective applicants. Why not help our students create a positive Digital Footprint of their work and emphasize how important it is to their future.

In the end it comes down to what it best for your class and your students. Parents and students have the right to be informed about the privacy implications of Web 2.0 tools as well as the great learning opportunities that these tools can provide.