Our Mothers’ Day tradition is to participate in the Susan Komen breast cancer walk in Minneapolis. Cindy is a two-time survivor. This is a mammoth event starting at the Mall of America.
One of my favorite parts of the event is near the start when the route dips under a major highway and you get a sense for just how many participants there are.
Another year and another finish. Hope there are many more.
This is kind of “neat”.
Clay Shirky notes that someone has taken “Here comes everybody” and created a set of links that annotate concepts/examples he discusses (see my previous post on this resource). The list is complete and the links I checked (e.g., a nice summary of the Tragedy of the Commons) were appear to be carefully selected. What a great way to illustrate the theme of the book and organizing without an organization (at least here comes someone).
I would like to think that one factor giving our writing some credibility is that we prepare teachers, but are also directly involved with classroom activities. I have written before about Cindy’s unique employment with both the university and the Grand Forks Schools.
The school in which Cindy does most of her work is located on an air force base. This situation presents some unique challenges. One and sometimes both parents may be deployed and as a consequence miss their son or daughter’s school activities. This reality became part of the school’s interest in streaming today’s end of year band and orchestra concert (actually the full concerts are this evening, but performances during the day allow the students to perform for peers).
The project was accomplished using UStream, a wireless connected laptop, and the type of camcorder you probably own. This is what the video looks like. I selected a frame with the intent of not revealing too much. The content was not recorded (although an option) because of copyright issues. I listened from my office. I have a pretty nice AV setup (Klipsch speakers, large monitors) and the sound quality was great (reminded me of the concerts I used to attend when my kids were the same age). The concert drew 33 online viewers.
There were a few glitches. Cindy had to operate the camcorder in record mode so that a signal could be sent to the computer. At one point, the tape had to be rewound so the camera would continue to function. The camera was plugged in, but the connection was bad so the battery ran down.
Cindy and I are chatting during the concert. I was attempting to let her know the first time I lost the signal. Mysterious things always seem to happen when technology is involved. Cindy seems to find the unexpected problems an interesting challenge. She decided she would go back this evening just in case.
The UStreamTv technology is very easy to implement. My previous experience was in viewing the distribution of conference presentations, but there would seem to be many school applications. The equipment requirements are minimal and getting started requires little preparation or background. Information is available online if you want to explore.
I have commented previously that our son works as an editor for a television program called Dragonfly TV. It is middle-school science program based in Minneapolis and sponsored by PBS. If you listen to podcasts, download a few episodes from the Dragonfly site.
Todd called today to let us know Dragonfly was being considered for an Emmy. It took me a long time to locate the announcement online because all of the press for the day time competitions seem focused on the “soaps” and Google had the announcement a few pages of links into the page rank. I did manage to locate the complete list of categories.
Way to go son. This technology stuff your mom told you about may work out yet.