Chris selected as K12OnlineConference keynote speaker Each year the K12OnlineConference provides tremendous professional development for free, and entirely online. This year, they have selected me as one of their keynote speakers. I am thrilled to have been chosen and look forward to participating in the conversation. Read the full post announcing all the keynote speakers here.
Two quick links on Cognitive Load Theory I've been fielding lots of questions lately about Cognitive Load Theory. Here are two quick links that may be useful. First is an article talking about the practical implications of CLT on the design of learning. The second are some "recent" (as of 2003) developments regarding CLT. Happy reading! Update: I clarified the second...
Practical advice on kids and Android app development After hearing about my students' success developing an Android app, I've gotten several emails asking for more details as to how I practically worked with my kids. Here are some pointers that I offered to the first person that emailed me, perhaps they are of some use to you. Please note that your mileage may vary. It's ok to not be...
Publishing an App Inventor app to the Android Market As I mentioned earlier, my students and I published an Android app to the Android Market. See those links for more information on the background. This post is decidedly technical. First, once we finished the coding process, we packaged the app for to download to the computer. This is an option in App Inventor. This downloaded an .apk file....
Designing and publishing an Android app with kids This post is designed to provide some context around how/why we decided to build this app. The more technical details of the code and how we published it will come in a future post. My students and I recently completed and published an Android app, and here's how we did it. First, the genesis for this goes back to a question I asked...
Jan
31
Thanks so much to the A. Vare Elementary folks in Philadelphia! They sent us THREE postcards about Philadelphia! I’ll take these to my daughter’s class tomorrow morning! They will be so excited!
Here are scans, the front of one and the front and back of the second two (the first one had teacher’s names on it and I didn’t want to publically broadcast it without permission…)
Aren’t they awesome! Thanks so much!!
Jan
29
Category : General
The postcards for my daughter’s kindergarten class have begun to arrive!
Exactly a week ago today I posted a request to the network asking for postcards. I also sent it out via Twitter and immediately I got a few responses.
Well, the fruits of that request are flowing in, as I received two postcards today!
One is from the incomparable Chrissy H from New Zealand…
The other is from the wonderful Kat Saton from Virginia!
Thank you to both these wonderful folks for sending my little girl’s class these postcards! I’ll deliver them this afternoon to the school.
Jan
29
Category : General
Here is the winning story from Qatar Academy in Doha, Qatar.
See all the rest of the stories here.
The winners are Hamdan Javeed and Harris Nazri.
Here is their story…
Jan
28
Here is the winner from Chehalem Valley Middle School…
Chase and Marissa
See the rest of the stories from CVMS here.
Here is the winning story:
Jan
28
Category : Feeds
Jan
27
It’s been an exciting week for me playing with edublogosphere.com!
First, I happened to see a tweet by Bud Hunt asking if edublogosphere.com was broken.
It turns out it was! When I first built the site, I really just made a fancy login for the now defunct ircatwork.com CGI IRC installation. It seems as though the ircatwork.com folks have been taken over by Mibbit. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it defeats my login script.
So, I went in search of a new solution. I can’t install CGI IRC myself because my host (affiliate link) won’t allow it. I can’t say as though I blame them, as IRC takes a bunch of server load, especially on shared hosting like I am.
From the main page for CGI IRC, I found a link to blitzed.org. I dug around a bit and found their #help channel. I dove in and found some very helpful folks. In no time flat, I created a new #edublogosphere, registered it to myself, and scored ChanOps privileges. As I began to ask around, I actually ended up in a conversation with dg, the author of CGI IRC! That was a treat for me, as I respect anyone who can write software, which I certainly cannot do.
Not only did all that work out, but they’ve said that I can request an exception for the limits imposed on the web-based interface for any time we need it (i.e. NECC, etc). Thanks, blitzed!
So I rang bluehost and changed the CNAME implementation so irc.edublogosphere.com now points to irc.blitzed.org.
Then, I used their script generator to generate a nice login script that works like a charm. Try it out, will you?
Here is a shot of the new home page.
Jan
24
Here is the winner from the International School in Tianjin, China. Congratulations go to Jenna & Carin!
See all their stories here.
Here is the winning story:
Jan
23
The winner from CrossRoads Middle School was Ariel.
See all the stories here.
Here is the winning story:
Jan
23
Category : General
It’s been a LONG time in coming, and due to some really odd circumstances the judging process took much longer than expected.
That said, I am going to begin announcing one winner per day, with his or her story embedded below. I would love it if a group of folks would watch and comment on the story.
Of course, you can see all the projects from all the schools by visiting the Life Round Here wiki and looking for the link to completed projects (or follow those links!).
Keep a watch out here for the winners!
Jan
22
Category : General
Would you be willing to send me a postcard?
My daughter’s kindergarten class started a little project where they made a gingerbread man and were asked to send it to someone far away and ask that person to send back a postcard.
That got me to thinking, what if I digitally “sent” the gingerbread man and asked folks in my network to send a postcard my way? That could be interesting…
So, here is my 5 year-old daughter’s gingerbread man!
Would you consider sending us a postcard? Yes, it needs to be received through US mail…
It’s funny because they were only intending for folks in the USA to respond, and that is evidenced from the fact that their wall map is only of the US! Interesting how US-centric our classrooms are, isn’t it?!
So, anyone willing to send my little girl a postcard for her class? Here are the only requirements..
1. It needs to be a photo postcard reflecting where you live.
2. It needs to be sent through the mail.
That’s it! These kindergartners would love to hear from you all! Will you help? Leave a comment with a valid email address and I will send you the address…
