Motivation and Accelerated ReaderI

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Posted on 21st April 2010 by cmcraft in Educational Technology |Web Resources

There is a wonderful discussion going on over at Bud the Teacher’s blog regarding Accelerated Reader. The discussion piqued my interest because of the mention of motivation. Here is my comment, and I encourage you to participate.

If you are interested in the motivational theory I often espouse, please visit this link for a great resource. Stay away from the wikipedia article on it, it stinks.

Comment here if you like, but I’d rather hear your voice on Bud’s blog.

Hi Bud,

Thanks for pinging me on this. While I am not terribly certain what I think about AR, I do have some thoughts about motivation.

However, I will keep them brief since your post is more about AR than about motivation. For what it’s worth, my school recently quit the formal AR program and has implemented something very similar. I am not sufficiently familiar with it to comment on its success or failure, nor am I qualified in that arena.

I want to hone in on what you said here..

“I know that motivation that springs from external sources isn’t terribly motivating when the external motivator is gone.  In fact, I know that such external motivation can decrease one’s intrinsic motivation for the thing that being fiddled with.”

This can be true, but depends entirely on the context. You brought about Deci’s work, he and a second author named Ryan went rounds about this very topic in a series of journal articles.

Suffice it to say, I’d argue motivation is more complex than simply a series of external or internal motivators. I’d posit that motivation is more related to the anticipated value of an activity. When I was growing up I can recall asking teachers when I’d need a particular math skill later in life. Subconsciously I was trying to justift the effort I was going to have to exert to understand/learn/demonstrate the skill.

When one expects little value from a task, one will likely exert little effort. This is precisely why many students abandon school or do only the bare minimum. They see no value in school. But that’s another comment, I suppose.

What I am positing is based on the Expectency-Value theory of motivation, made popular by Eccles and Wigfield.  I’d avoid the wikipedia article, it needs help.

EV theory boils down to two questions..

1. Can I do the task?
2. Do I want to do the task?

When it comes to AR, it may be that students anticipate recieving value from the prizes, etc they recieve for reading. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

I doubt it is creating in them an expectency of value for reading itself.

Perhaps the incentives will help them realize they like reading? No clue.

Either way, EVT forms a nice framework for motivation and deserves a higher place in our discussion.

For more information on EVT, stay away from Wikipedia. Visit this link instead.

http://edurls.org/evt

Yours,

Chris Craft

Schedule Google Voice calls in Google Calendar with GVCallScheduler

16 comments

Posted on 27th March 2010 by Chris in Web Resources

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I often find myself wishing I could schedule phone calls using my Google Voice account. If this were possible, I would not have to worry about being at the particular phone that has the Caller ID my caller anticipates. For example, let’s say I want to schedule a call with my dissertation advisor/mentor. In his phone, the number that is saved for me is my Google Voice number. This is partly so that I can easily record calls with him since there is so much dense information being discussed. He has agreed to allow me to do that any time, and Google Voice has a pleasant warning that call recording has begun.

Since he is a busy professor, we often schedule calls around his flexibility. Let’s say we wanted to schedule a call for a certain time one afternoon. This means that I have to remember, usually with some sort of calendar reminder. This is easily accomplished by using the reminders in Google Calendar. But what if Google Calendar could dial the number for me, too? That would make things a bit easier and my life a bit more productive.

Enter GVCallScheduler. GVCallScheduler allows you to do just that. You enter a certain code with the number to be called, and it initiates the Google Voice call for you at the scheduled time. So now instead of me having to manually dial my professor’s number at the designated time, the call happens automatically. Easy!

Here is how to install GVCallScheduler:

(NB: All links open in a new window to make it easier to work on it while not losing this page)

1. Sign up for an account with Google App Engine. This should be as easy as entering your existing Google account password.

2. Create a new application by clicking create an application.

3. Name your application something memorable, and write down the name.

4. Download the Google App Engine SDK (Software Developer Kit) for Python. Make sure you download the Python one, not Java. Download whichever one works for your computer, be it Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux. The rest of this post uses Mac OS X as an example but the instructions do not differ for either other OS. You need to install the software also. You’ll need this later on.

5. Download the latest GVCallScheduler code.

6. Unzip the zip file. I unzipped it into a folder on my desktop to make it easy.

7. Open the folder and edit the file called config. The file will appear not to have a file extension. That’s ok, we need it that way. On Mac OS X I used Textedit to edit it. On Windows, I used Notepad or Notepad ++. Any of the above are fine, just make sure it does not append a file extension when you finish editing. Here are two screenshots to help you see a better explanation and an exemplar. (click to make them larger)

8. Edit the file app.yaml making sure to enter the exact name of your new app. This is what I told you to write down in step 3. Enter only the name, not the rest (i.e. if you named it coolcalls, enter just that. DO NOT ENTER coolcalls.appspot.com).

9. Minimize your web browser. Open the Google App Engine SDK. You installed this in step 4. Your screen will look something like this.

10. Click File -> New Application. Name the app the same name you called it earlier when you created it online. Click Choose to navigate to the folder you unzipped in step 6.

11. Click Deploy on the Google App Engine SDK main screen. You should see a terminal window (or cmd window) running commands. This takes a minute or so. Be patient.

12. Visit your app page by typing in http://YOURAPPNAME.appspot.com – you will need to authorize it once.

13. Refresh your app page (YOURAPPNAME.appspot.com) and it should say “GVScheduler is up and running – OK…”

Making it work

Now that you have it set up, we need to walk through how to schedule calls.

Simply add a calendar event at whatever time you want the call to originate. Add this phrase to either the title or description.

GVCall=phonenumber

In this format GVCall=18035551212

You will notice my screenshot doesn’t use that, but it’s a good idea.

So that’s how to schedule calls with GVCallScheduler! Good luck. If something doesn’t work, read the directions again. If it does work, let me know in the comments.


Phone booth image credit Mike Cattrell.

Testing out how to easily post Twitter replies

2 comments

Posted on 5th February 2010 by Chris in Web Resources

If this works, I’ll explain how I did it. If it didn’t, disregard this post.

Thanks..

No replies found for status 8677044427.

Update 2: Trying it out again. It works!

Download Vimeo videos using a shell script

5 comments

Posted on 4th January 2010 by Chris in Web Resources

On Christmas Eve, I went to NewSpring for a service that blew my mind. One of the components that I most enjoyed was the opener they used, which immediately followed praise and worship. If you are not a NewSpringer, I encourage you to watch it. Even if you don’t consider yourself Christian, or even religious, the production values alone make it worth watching.

The vocal talent is Jesse Fisher.

But that’s not the point of this post. This post is about how I got his video to show a few folks where Vimeo is blocked.

On the Vimeo page for the video above, Jesse points folks back to Kadence.tv to download the video. However, it is not there. So I began to research how to download videos from Vimeo.

On a side note, I seriously heart Vimeo.I love how they welcome me home when I stop by.

vimeo home page

I think Vimeo has the most polished video sharing site without much of the drivel found at other sites. And yes, I know that it is possible to make a video available for download. Ethical discussions aside, here’s how I saved this video for offline viewing. Of course, I wouldn’t sell it or make a profit in any way, I simply wanted to view it offline.

Enter Vimeo Downloader script.

Through a quick search on the Google I found this script, which allows one to download Vimeo videos. I am not certain if this is the easiest way, but I tried Zamzar to no avail, and this worked. Here are the steps for making this work on Mac OS X Snow Leopard. I am not sure how well it works on Windows.

1. Download the script to the Desktop.

2. Open a terminal window and enter this command: chmod u+x ~/Desktop/vimeo_downloader.sh

3. Run the following command: ~/Desktop/vimeo_downloader.sh VIDEOID

(Replace VIDEOID with the numeric code from a video URL. For example if the URL is http://www.vimeo.com/6674062 you would replace VIDEOID with 6674062).

4. Look for the downloaded video to be named VIDEOID.flv on your Desktop.

UPDATE: The author of the original post mentions this in the comments that I thought worth mentioning here:

For an easier method, try the Free Youtube user script, which places a Download link under each video (supports YouTube, Vimeo, blip.tv, and more):

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/34765

To use it with Firefox, first install the Greasemonkey extension:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748

The trouble is that user script totally changes how flash videos function in your browser. So yes, it does work to allow one to download a video, but it makes the user experience quite different. I will leave the script installed, but disabled. I’ll enable it as needed.

Interestingly, when I downloaded the file from Vimeo using the shell script, it downloaded as an .flv whereas using this Greasemonkey script it downloads as .mp4.

Converting Flip Mino HD video files to edit them on a PC

22 comments

Posted on 1st May 2009 by Chris in Web Resources |my life / my world

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I am dearly love my Flip Mino HD. It is convenient, easy to use, and well designed. So much so, that most all of the videos on my newest project – SpanTube – have been recorded on the Flip Mino HD. Typically, I just import them directly into iMovie on my Mac and edit with no problems.

Recently, however, I decided I might like to try a little green screen fun. I do have a copy of Final Cut Express which I suspect does chroma keying, but I was already familiar with how to do it in Pinnacle Studio 10, which I have installed on my Windows XP machine at work. I also have Adobe Premiere 1.5 that I could use for the same purpose.

The trouble came when I tried to import the .mp4 files directly into either program, as the programs did not support the file format, or so they said.

Now bear in mind that yes, I did install the 3ivx codec on this machine. I even reinstalled it, to no avail. After a series of tweets looking for help, most folks responded thinking I had the regular Flip camera, which saves videos as .AVI files. The high definition Flip Mino does not, it saves files as .mp4.

Well, finally, I have figured out a system to convert these files to a format friendly to the two programs I have on this machine (Pinnacle Studio 10 and Adobe Premiere 1.5). And it’s using freeware software, which is even better.

Some time ago, I had downloaded the Quick Media Converter program that Lifehacker mentioned. I didn’t realize it was as good as it is.

First, go download it and install it. I am using version 3.6.5.

Then, export a clip using the FlipShare software.

flipshareexport

Then, drag and drop your exported clip onto the Quick Media Converter screen.

flip2

Then, choose AVI DivX Custom Resize from the top menu.

flip3

Change the dimensions of the file to 1280×720, which are the same dimensions the Flip Mino HD records in.

flip41

Press the convert button.

flip51

After conversion, the file appears on your desktop with an appended file name.

flip6

I hope this helps. I haven’t seen this answered to this degree anywhere else, so I am hoping this serves the larger community well.

When I exported the video from Pinnacle Studio 10, I used the following settings.

Size: 1280×720

30 FPS

I figured out that the native settings when recording with the Flip Mino HD records audio as 64kbps AAC/AAC+. I didn’t know that. It does sample at 44100, though.

Good luck, and enjoy your HD video editing on a Windows machine!

I’ve only tried this on XP, so keep that in mind.

Comparing video hosting services when displaying HD video

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Posted on 21st December 2008 by Chris in Educational Technology |Web Resources

A few days ago I got my new Flip Mino HD in the mail. I charged it overnight and then began to play. Last night, I shot a quick bit of footage in low light situations. First I recorded my Christmas tree and then my Christmas lights outside. I uploaded it to YouTube using the included FlipShare software.

@thekyleguy mentioned via Twitter that YouTube does not do well with HD footage, despite being newly HD and widescreen capable. He recommended blip.tv as a viable alternative.

I decided to compare them head to head, well, to head. I added Vimeo to the mix, as it is my sharing service of choice when publishing work for public display. My little less than one minute video was roughly 70 megs when copied right from the Flip.

Here are the three videos. Keep in mind I uploaded this without any changes at all. This is raw footage, compressed using the Flip’s internal H.264 compression and then the sites do with it what they please to display it. I also did not change the default embed code in any way, despite Vimeo’s delicious method to change the size, color, etc of embedded videos.
I had to change all the embed code to the same size. Since YouTube’s embed code used the size I liked the best (560×345) I stuck with that all around. This post looked awful with three videos of all different sizes. In hindsight this should have been three posts.

The first thing to notice is that the blip.tv player borks my theme because of the width. It plays HD video in the native resolution of 1280×750. I could change that in the code relatively easily, but in keeping with a direct head to head to head comparison, to heck with my theme.

YouTube

Vimeo

So the Vimeo embed wasn’t HD. You have to go to the Vimeo site to watch it in HD. Odd.

Blip.tv

Wikispaces responded and I missed it

2 comments

Posted on 20th February 2008 by Chris in Software |Web Resources

I feel silly. I’m not sure how I missed it but it turns out Wikispaces did respond to my initial post. I guess I didn’t recognize the name and didn’t see the signature as I was reading the comments. I’m sorry about that..

Here is what they said:

Hi Chris,

We’re sorry to hear we contributed to what sounds like a very rough day. Here are a few things we’ve got in store at Wikispaces we think will help a lot:

1. Allowing guest page creations. This makes good sense. We’ll add it as an option in the manage space section, defaulting to “off”. The reason we haven’t had this in the past is that it’s something spammers pounce on — but with active space organizers and our spam protection systems, we think it will be useful for many wikis.

2. Account creation for schools. Every week, we create thousands of accounts on behalf of teachers for students who don’t have email addresses. Right now, we do this based on requests sent to us, but we’ve got plans to streamline this process for organizers. We want you to be able to create 20 accounts for your wiki in a heartbeat — ideally, in the time it takes to go from Plan A to Plan B while your students are in the room. :)

3. Our editor. We’ve got some frequently-requested formatting features we’re testing right now. We think you’ll love them, and find they fill some gaps without making the editor overly complicated (or slow!).

As always, we’re here to help and listen to any suggestions you might have: help@wikispaces.com. We’ve gotten to where we are thanks to thousands of passionate people like you — a huge percentage of them teachers — who tell us where we’ve gone wrong and what we can do better.

Best,
James
jbyers@wikispaces.com

Thanks guys! I’m glad to see that these changes are under way!

Chris

PbWiki Responds to my nightmare of a day with wikis

3 comments

Posted on 19th February 2008 by Chris in Software |Web Resources

On the official Get Satisfaction page, the founder and CEO of PbWiki responded to my inquiry.

Hi! This is a tough issue. We’ve had a lot of teachers emailing us asking for us to make sure an address gets entered before proceeding so they know which students are making which changes, so several months ago we started asking that *some* address be provided. It sounds like you’ve just discovered that that solution doesn’t work well for you. Can you help us think of a setup that would work better?

What do you think? I can understand the need for some teachers to record at least a name, but I think requiring an email address is too much.

My suggestion to him will be, require a first name (and I think it’s important to note first name only needed) and make the email address not required. I think if kids are not doing this appropriately then it’s more of a classroom management issue and one not necessarily designed to be handled by software.

Or, make it where the user can decide? In some setting somewhere, make it where I can say, “I do not want my contributors to have to share their email address”, etc.

My thoughts, what are yours?

Chris

Nightmare of a day (an open letter to Pbwiki and Wikispaces)

6 comments

Posted on 19th February 2008 by Chris in Software |Web Resources

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Oh boy has this been a heck of a day.

I had an amazing day planned for my kids, with two days of the computer lab blocked off for our use. I was planning for us to spend our time exploring Ancient Rome in Google Earth and making placemarks, adding descriptions, reading the included Wikipedia articles. Notice I said I was planning…

I got to the computer lab to find out that Google Earth was not available to students. My workaround to that had been “fixed” so now I had no workaround.

And 20 students with nothing to do.

I scrambled and put together a project where they research in Wikipedia (rebellious, eh?) and then put their information into a PowerPoint presentation.

Not much else they can access.

I made sure to talk about the basics of good PowerPoint design, I ruled out clip art use and cheesy backgrounds, and ended up teaching a good design lesson.

It’s still not Google Earth.

I then switched gears after lunch and decided to pilot a wiki-based research project and created a new pbwiki. It used to be that as long as I gave the kids the wiki password they could edit until their hearts were content.

No more.

The recent changes in PbWiki’s login procedures have made it where they have to have a wiki invite key and then enter a name and email address.

Sigh.

Even when I told them the wiki invite key and told them to make up a name and email address I was frought with problems with the software not allowing kids through. A lot of the kids simply didn’t know the basic syntax of an email address. Of course, you can’t not include a name and email address.

I asked for help in pbwiki’s Get Satisfaction page, but as of yet there’s been no answer.

So I switched to Wikispaces. I threw together a new wiki that didn’t have ads and had them go to work. I created new pages for each group and had them edit their own pages. Naturally, there’s a chance someone could edit someone else’s, but hey, it’s a reasonable risk.

Except that I wanted them to create a new page for each of the places I asked them to research.

They can’t create pages. Drat!

So back to the drawing board, they can’t create pages and I don’t have the brain power amidst answering a slew of questions to create five pages for each group (and there are roughly ten groups per block). That would be counterproductive.

They progressed nicely once we got up and running, although I had loads of trouble with them typing in the wiki address.

exploringancientrome.wikispaces.com

How hard is that? Most of them typed exploring ancient rome wiki spaces into the address bar.

This tells me more and more than they know how to play but basic operations are beyond them, at times.

So, I implore you, pbwiki, let my kids edit with only an invite key. Let that happen on the free version.

As for you, wikispaces, please let my kids create new pages. Or let that be something I decide in the manage space section.

And for goodness sake, Wikispaces, it’s time for a more robust WYSIWYG editor. One of the reasons I love pbwiki is due to their integration of FCKEditor. My kids prefer it, too, since it lets you control your text so much more nicely and more fine-grained.

Ok there’s my rant. Am I missing something here?

Chris

Edublogosphere.com, a future centralized back channel?

3 comments

Posted on 22nd September 2007 by Chris in Web Resources

I got this idea from some tweets last night, specifically from watching budtheteacher backchannel a workshop. It got interesting, especially when D’Arcy Norman backed away due to the high volume of tweets.

What if we had a space to always use as a central back channel? What would this space look like?

What if we collectively create it on a space at www.edublogosphere.com?

I would say it needs a…

1. Chat room that archives chats and makes them searchable

2. Twitter feed so that folks can announce that they’re planning a backchannel.

That’s all I’ve got. Does this seem worthwhile? What else should be added?