Week 9, #21

I have been looking for and listening to podcasts for a couple of years now.  Some that I listen to regularly are: Cranky Geeks, Geek Brief TV, and Jumping Monkeys (I also like TWIT but have been focusing on Jumping Monkeys because it is more relevant to elementary aged children).  I also like Tekzilla.  David Warlick has a podcast but he does not produce shows on a regular basis.  His last episode was #103 and was posted in mid  December.  My new favorite podcast to recommend to teachers is CultureGrams Training.  Our district purchased CultureGrams but there has been limited training.  The podcast helps learn to use the program and offers curriculum guides.  Booktalks Quick and Simple is Nancy Keane’s daily booktalk for books for grades K-12.  I listen to podcast through iTunes but sometimes I like to go directly to the websites because often there are show notes with clickable links.  I have blogged about  Jumping Monkeys before when they did a show on the Baby Name Wizard.

My future of Professional Development

It’s been a long time since I blogged. I have been busy working with my students on podcasting. And I have been taking two graduate classes, so very little time to write but, my instructor in my “Distance Communications” class asked me how I would sustain professional development in the next 10 years. It prompted me to wonder what professional development will look like in the future… and it hit me… USTREAM.tv. Actually, it didn’t hit me as much as it twittered me. I follow the father of WebQuest, Bernie Dodge on twitter. He posted a tweet on Friday that he was broadcasting live on USTREAM.TV. Of course, I read his tweet a few hours too late for the live version but the fun thing about USTREAM is that you can watch the video later if you miss it live. The first post Bernie did was about using this new streaming media. He says there are other versions out there like Mogulus and Flashmeeting and the good thing is that they are all free right now (that doesn’t mean they won’t start charging later but for now they are free). But my thinking is that if Bernie Dodge and his college (San Diego State University) are getting into video streaming seminars, professional development events, and classes over the Internet can other educators and other educational institutes be very far behind? This is going beyond podcasting. Check out Bernie’s live seminar link and embedded here:



Bonus, Cali Lewis of Geek Brief TV live streams on USTREAM.TV too.





Oh, and Cali Lewis recommends twitter in this video stream. I have been using twitter (which can be addictive) for about 3 or 4 months. If you can keep up with it, twitter can be a great place for professional development, whether its following CoolCatTeacher’s blogposts via twitter, or finding Bernie Dodge’s USTREAM video… but then we are back to the beginning of this post because Bernie and USTREAM prompted these ponderings.

Big Twitter Push...

Wow... I just finished watching both Mahalo Daily and Geek Brief TV for today and both had a bit about twitter. Why all the publicity for twitter? Not sure but I enjoyed the CommonCraft Show piece that Cali Lewis used on Geek Brief. It was nice to see Lee LeFever on her podcast (I am now following him on twitter!). It is nice to put a face to those wonderful CommonCraft vignettes. Here is twitter explained in plain English. I don't know about you but I spend way too much time on twitter!

Recharging my Digital Batteries...

So, I am finally getting to blog about this thanks to a two hour delayed school opening. I took a personal day on Monday and paid to go to one day of my state’s technology conference. Why you ask. Well, simply because the best technology journalist in the country was the keynote speaker on Monday and I got to meet him. Am I gushing? Come on, he's from the NY Times! I used to be a reporter and now I am a librarian. I know how tough it can be out there establishing contacts to get the best stories. And, this guys has the contacts, gets the best stories, and gets them right. I could not wait for my fellow educators to hear his view of technology.

I have been a big fan of David Pogue for a while and now thanks to Pogue’s inspiring keynote so is the technology coordinator in my school. In fact, my tech coordinator took this picture of me with David. I am such a technology geek. But you know how it is, you read someone’s blog, read their column, and listen to him or her on various podcasts for so long and you feel you know them. (Sounds like what used to be said about television.) And, David Pogue gets it. He knows people know him from the web and he’s OK with that. He is friendly and besides, he appeared on Cali Lewis’ podcast, he actually met Cali! And, if Cali gets her mobile home and travels around the country like she and Neil are planning, she may get somewhere close enough for me to meet her too, podcasting from the road, it doesn’t get much better than that! Anyway, back to David Pogue’s keynote… it was enlightening as well as entertaining. He changed the words of “My Way” and sang about the iPhone and really nailed it about the cool factor. It is cool to have an iPhone! But more than that, he told this group of educators what the future looks like.

He called his presentation, “The Digital Generation Grows Up.” The first two things he says will mark the future are Internet phones and wireless everywhere. First, he sees landline telephones going away as more and more people use voice over IP or the Internet as a phone. T-Mobile was the first to introduce wireless cell plans that include free calling when in a wireless Internet hot spot. This goes hand in hand with his second biggie, he foresees wireless Internet everywhere and more collaboration on a worldwide stage because of it. And, of course all-wireless Internet phones like the much hyped currently vapor-ware Google Phone. He pointed out that just those using VOIP now have driven down the cost of landline calls by 30 percent.

The next thing he anticipates is a greater expansion of Web 2.0 but not without challenges, as more and more people supply content to the Web. He wanted teachers to tell their students that once things are online, they are there forever and they don’t stay where you put them. He also put a plug in for copyright because a college survey showed him students think everything on the Web is free and out there just for them to download. He realizes the question of legitimate sources is a real one and he’d like to see a code of ethics for bloggers. So, David Pogue gets it, he knows what librarians are saying is true. Our new library standards include ethics and bias. So maybe the best thing we can teach our students is to judge for themselves (Is that not what we are doing when we give them an Internet evaluation form?) what is worth reading and a little discernment.