Crucial Thought

I just tried logging into my Gcast account and it doesn’t work. It has recognized me for the last year or so and now asks me to register. When I try to register I get a nasty database error.

This is really bad news for me, I have LOTS of podcasts, student work, etc in those archives. I could re-create it but that would be a pain.

Can you try your Gcast account and see if it’s just me? I sent an email to support, not sure if they’ll respond.

Did I put too many eggs in a free basket?

Update: I got to school this morning and it works fine. I know it’s not just a login error because it even failed to recognize the phone number when I called. Yesterday I called the number and it asked for the number with which I registered, which it had never done before. Today it answered me like an old friend.

Definitely an issue on their end, but glad everything is back to normal. In that short time I realized how much I depened on Gcast and love the service! Gcast, are you listening?

So I’ve been thinking about doing some presenting. I’ve done a bit on the local level, and I’ll be presenting at NECC in the Open Source lab. I’ve applied for the SC Ed Tech conference, and am looking at FETC for January of 2008.

I should pause and thank Cathy for continually sending me the links, she’s the reason I am applying at so many places!

Back to the topic at hand, I’ve been thinking about what folks need when they go to a conference, and what I might be able to talk about. The temptation is to present about blogging/podcasting/wikis but those have been done to death, and there are lots of folks who are perfectly competent to talk about those subjects.

I want a niche.

Here are my thoughts about what I could present on, I’d love to hear what you all think! Do you think there’s a need for these types of presentations? Naturally, I could always propose and let the conference folks decide, but I’d rather think it through ahead of time. Here are my possible titles with a little description…

• MUVE Along: Multi-User Virtual Environments in Secondary Education
  • This is a paper presentation resulting from an entire semester’s researh on Second Life, Whyville, River City, Quest Atlantis, Kaneva, and other virtual worlds. Do they really have any place in secondary education? Are they the wave of the future? What does the research say?

• Open source student blogging solutions
  • This is a presentation focusing on self-hosted WordPress, WordPress MU, DrupalEd, Moodle, and other possible open source packages suitable for use when blogging with students. How do you protect student privacy, to comment or not to comment, etc. This is my NECC session and is essentially a quick overview of the merits and disadvantages of each.

• Google Earth, a Beginner’s Guide
  • This is obvious, for folks maybe considering implementing Google Earth into the classroom. This will be a session regarding the basics, like using the keyhole community, included layers, placemarks, overlays, and best practices. This is designed to be done in a computer lab.

• Don’t Read to Me: Best practices using PowerPoint
  • This is a session to help teachers stop reading slides. I use lots of research in the cognitive arena (Sweller, et al) to help educators develop a good strategy when designing presentations for instruction. This is designed for teachers who are currently reading slides, or those who maybe just got a projector and laptop and are going to be integrating that new technology. Don’t just reproduce your transparencies in PowerPoint!

So there they are. I think they are well rounded and kind of fun. What do you think? Are these needed topics? Are they beneficial to conference attendees? Should I propose these or what?

Please notice I stayed away from the theoretical flat world stuff. I wanted something practical, something that has immediate takeaway, and is backed up by research.

Scoble said I couldn’t look at this without crying.

He was right.

2007 Pulitzer Prizes-FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY

I’ve been tagged by Jeff Utecht and now Lisa Durff.

Here are my thoughts on the topic…

First, I don’t consider myself terribly successful. Truth is, I have no idea how to define success. I am not sure I would even try.

Honestly, do you really even know me?

To be honest, my definition of success does not revolve around “a ha” moments, the “light bulb”, or anything else directly related to my students, technology, or my job.

It’s all about God’s glory.

I learned a long time ago that if I live my life focused on glorifying God, life is infinitely more satisfying because it holds purpose and destiny. Only in the context of a Creator is this possible.

I realize this is not quite the list most folks have put forth, but I simply cannot. I never can get past number 1.

1. Glorify God.

2. Be satisfied in Him.

3. Everything else is gravy.

John Piper once said that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him”.

I do a pretty bad job at glorifying Him, to be frank. I fall on grace, He lifts me up, and I try again.

So if my students are taught a particularly engaging, motivating, enriching, or any other buzzword lesson, it is because I quit talking and listened. Listened to the still, small voice.

There are certainly tips and tricks I could share to how I keep organized, but I don’t do terribly well with that either. My desk is usually a mess.

Like Jeff, I did marry an unbelievably good woman. She is Proverbs 31 all over the place. I have two amazing daughters. My wife and I speak primarily Spanish so that my girls will grow up bilingual, that’s a big deal.

So that’s my life, I walk around and make every effort to love folks, to edify them, and to never let a day pass by when I neglect to tell my students, my wife, and my kids how wonderful they are.

Success is nothing more than blessing, and it comes from the Lord. The glory has to go back to Him. Hope this doesn’t offend, just hear my heart here.

Chris

I am going to self-mount my projector next year, and I am thinking about the logistics. It has a HDMI proprietary breakout cable that takes it from HDMI + USB M1 into both VGA and USB, which means I will need extensions for both of those cables. If I purchase a thirty to thirty-five foot extension cable, will there be any signal loss?

I know they say to use an active extension for USB, but the signal transmitted over that usb cable is so minimal that I am going to try it without one. It’s certainly not mission critical.

Any experience here? Let me know in the comments…

Update: Fixed my errors.