Month: September 2005

I find the trend to digitize the collections of libaries, museums and other organizations which accumulate “stuff” truly amazing (e.g., National Archives). At one point, early in this process, a curator explained that you can see many things online that you cannot see at the museum. I did not truly understand this until I had the opportunities to interact with the staff of the ND State Historical Society because of grants and wonder about a bit in the storage areas. (See People of the Upper Missouri – a recent project developed as part of the Teaching American History grant awarded to the Grand Forks Schools).

I was reminded of this again today when I read a post promoting access to the digital resources of the University of Wisconsin. There is some really cool stuff in the back rooms.

Google offers another new service – Google Blog Search. Unlike services such as Bloglines which function by alerting you to new posts on blogs you have designated, Google searches for entries on any of the blogs it scans. I would suggest you go to the “advanced” search page and experiment. Educators might want to note the box for avoiding inappropriate blog content. Try searching for the following phrase – powerful techniques for searching blog content. If this search service works as I expect, you should end up back here.

BBC description

Google ventures into new territory with the Google Desktop. This application appears to sit on top of Windows XP and to offer what Google must see as an improved set of services relative to the Windows-only operating system. So, in addition to accessing Google online services, you can launch your own programs.

What about Mac users? The “Desktop” is similar to the Google Home page I described previously (without the capacity to launch local documents).

Mac users can take some solace in the fact that when I installed Google Desktop on my XP machine I made the mistake of updating Internet security (Norton and Windows). By the time I was done, I had somehow created a conflict between the Norton firewall and the Windows firewall that prevented Firefox from connecting to the Internet. After several hours of playing around, I removed Firefox so that when I find a reason to use the windows machine again (in a month or so), I will not have to try to remember why Firefox no longer works. I don’t know who to blame – Microsoft, Norton, Mozilla or me.

The Washington Post provides an overview of Google Desktop.

I came across a research study that contains a lot of information about blogs, trends in blogging, who blogs, etc. The focus of the study appears to be on age and gender differences (although there is lots of interesting data on other topics). As I understand the conclusion, males tend to attract more attention as bloggers because they are more likely to engage in “filter blogs.” A filter blog attempts to focus readers on a subset of content (perhaps web content, things to read). I suppose this specific entry would be an example – I am attempting to alert you to a specific finding and online resource. Some of the issues of potential causality are interesting? Are the opinions of males more highly regarded (hence they receive more attention for their filter blogs and they persist)? Are women and younger bloggers more interested in posts that are personal experessions? How important is the size of the audience to those focused on personal expression?

An issue any teacher wanting to make use of student multimedia authoring must consider is the visibility such academic work may bring. I would argue this visibility is a big part of the motivation generated by such activities (an audience – real or imagined – brings an increased level of effort out of all of us), but visibility also brings risks. It is difficult to evaluate the actual dangers that are there from anecdotal evidence, but clearly cases in which predators have used the Internet to identify victims exist.

If you are not familiar with what exposure is considered to constitute a risk, consider the legislation described by the New Jersey Department of Education. Read the list of items that are to be considered. Note in this description that student names and photos of students are considered a risk. A parental consent form related to these potential risks is available as a link from this site. I liked the way the consent form differentiated the information sources. I would assume most parents would not want phone numbers, addresses, etc. of their children released to the general public. I would argue there is much less risk involved in the use of a photo.

What I wonder about is how teachers keep track of this information – Sam and Jerry can use their names on a web page, Sally can have her picture included, no mention can be made of Mark. I can imagine a complex grid (students by information sources) that a teacher must carefully consult before approving a project for posting. At what point do teachers throw up their hands and say “this is just not worth it”?

Perhaps the best strategy is to limit student creativity in order to reduce the possibility of errors. I do not know what else to suggest. Simple rules (no names) and project templates (field trip image focused on inanimate objects, e.g., trees, buildings, in this box and a related description in this box) reduce the amount of information the teacher must consider before releasing a student project to the web. We need a range of practical strategies or a great number of teachers will shy away or use the complexity of this situation as an excuse.

I signed up for a Flikr account some time ago, but thought it was now time to explore the service in greater detail. This log entry was created within Flikr – the service integrates easily with WordPress (the blog software I use) and with several other types of blog software and services. To be more precise, you can author a blog entry associated with an image in Flickr and once your Flikr account has been properly configured the post will automatically be sent to be included in your blog. You will also note a “badge” in the right “sidebar” (the column on the right side of this web page). You can click on this badge to view more images from my personal collection. If you have a little HTML experience, it is relatively easy to add Flikr resources to your web pages.

I now have a handle on the technology and must explore what educational utility access to personal (or public) collections of images might offer. If nothing else, I have learned I must do a better job of annotating the images I collect.

Flikr is a free service (a Pro version is available – unlimited uploads and no restrictions on image quality) and guarantees permanent storage of images you upload. The user has the option of specifying public or private access to individual images. Images can be viewed in various formats (e.g., slideshow), tagged for internal and external searches (by you if private and by anyone if public), and annotated. The level of detail is very interesting. I knew that a great deal of information was stored with the image when the image was generated with my Canon Rebel XT. I did not know a similar level of detail existed for images I collected with less expensive equipment. I invite you to explore the public information by selecting the “badge” in the right-hand sidebar and exploring the small collection of images I have uploaded.

Blogs, podcasts! What next? My bet is on video – this would seem a natural progression. Here is my example of what you might consider as a prototype – check out Digital Life TV.

Call For Help, one of my favorites, is back on G4TV and offers online video viewing.

Teachers Improving Learning With Technology (TILT) This is a blog with links to TILT TV – programs are interesting. Be forwarned – the programs download first and then play.