The MAME conference was held last Thursday and Friday in Traverse City (beautiful fall colors along with the rain and the dark). Sessions, keynotes, round tables and networking ensued! Some of the presentation materials from sessions and round tables are already up on the MAME website. Please check them out – you will find some great information.
If you read blogs to keep up with new websites and resources then you have probably heard of Wolfram|Alpha. This Web resource is brought to you by the folks who created Mathematica.
Wolfram|Alpha is a computational knowledge engine designed to make “all systematic knowledge computable and accessible.” Try it out. I entered my birthday and saw not only my age in years but with the added attraction of months, days and weeks. Click on “More Formats/Calendars” for additional information.
Enter a city and state and Wolfram|Alpha offers the population size, time, weather, etc. This computational knowledge engine is suitable for K-adult. In the FAQ it is indicated that “On the elementary end, Wolfram|Alpha can do arithmetic showing steps, make clocks, work with colors, and so on.”
Try this site out if you are datavore. Excellent site for student use too. Check it out and see how it can be used with your students. Wolfram|Alpha includes a FAQ, blog and downloads if you would like to add it to your website.
Joyce Valenza reports in her Never Ending Search blog that the Code of Fair Use Project at Stanford University has created a video, Remix Culture: Fair Use is Your Friend, on producing online video and how fair use applies.
The acronym Diigo stands for “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff.” No matter what the letters stand for, Diigo is a popular and powerful social bookmarking site that gives you access to websites you save from any browser and any computer. After registering for an account you can save and tag websites as well as add a description. You can organize your bookmarks even further with the lists feature and share them with your students or workshop participants via a slideshow. Additionally, Diigo allows you to highlight any part of a webpage as well as attach sticky notes with comments to your highlights or to a whole web page. You can keep your comments private or share them with your Diigo groups.
Diigo now has educator accounts with some very nice features for teachers and their students. Teachers can create student accounts for an entire class with just a few clicks (and student email addresses are optional for account creation). Students in the same class are automatically set up as a Diigo group so they can start using all the benefits that a Diigo group provides, such as group bookmarks and comments. Privacy settings of student accounts are pre-set so that only teachers and classmates can communicate with them.
You can get started with Diigo here: http://www.diigo.com/index
You can view video tutorials about Diigo’s features here: http://help.diigo.com/Getting_Started/Videos_Tutorials
If you sign up for an account and you’d like to collaborate with me, please let me know. I have lots of websites bookmarked and ready to share! I’m “cummingsl” on Diigo.
This morning’s New York Times has very good overview of Google tools and services, Geniuses at Play, On the Job, as well as a good review of the latest electronic book readers, A Walk Through a Crop of Readers.
Saw this article in the NYT this morning about the value of school libraries and school librarians. The article mentions the trend of cutting school librarians to save money. Not many people would try to argue that the skills that can be taught so well by good school librarians are increasingly valuable life skills–so, why the cuts?
In Web Age, Library Job Gets Update
Thank you to Karen Becknell, retired media specialist from the Lamphere School District for passing along this information.
The Library of Congress has rich documents and artifacts from every state, the U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia on the Learning Page for teachers. You can browse some of the best primary sources by state in the Features and Activities section of the Learning Page. Also included on each state resource page are tools to help teachers use these items in the classroom and links to the American Memory collection home page and Prints and Photographs online catalog for those looking for more primary sources.
Today the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) released the 2009 Horizon Report. The annual Horizon Report outlines and identifies emerging technologies that impact teaching, learning and creative expression in higher education. Although the report is focused on higher education it still impacts K-12 education and is a very interesting document to read. Check out the 2009 Horizon Report to see what technologies are discussed and you may see new resources for teaching and learning in your school.
As much as education is rooted in and tied to the past, it’s really all about the future: What’s next? What will the next generations need to know? How will they know it? And what will “knowing” mean?
Nicholas Carr’s book, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, is a valuable read for educators using and making decisions about technology, as well as for technical people working in education. One way to read it, is as one might read a novel—allow yourself to be immersed in the world of the book—then step back at the end and consider the ideas of the book in relation to the world in which you exist at this moment. (BTW, it’s available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle.)
If you would like to peruse some of the MAME Annual Conference presenter materials please go to the MAME conference wiki and scroll down to Presentation Materials/Handouts. Next year we will be in beautiful Traverse City, October 21-23.
