Can Twitter replace blogging?

I am still trying to figure out how best to send information to support my Personal Learning Network. There are a few hundred people subscribed via RSS to this blog (although that is no real indication of how many others are reading it). On the other hand, I have almost 5000 people following me on Twitter. Even if only 10% of my followers use Twitter on a regular basis, it means that my Twitter posts are getting out to many more educators than the blog posts.

Can Twitter, the micro-blogging tool, replace blogging? I don't think so. Since it is hard to say much in the 140 characters Twitter allows, some people's tweets wind up just being links to their longer blog posts. And Twitter will not replace email, either. If someone asks me a 140 character question in Twitter, I don't even try to fit my response into 140 characters. I just send them a note and tell them to email me so I can share some good information with them.

However, is Twitter convenient for both posting items of interest and asking questions to tap my own Personal Learning Network? Absolutely! It is all about choosing the right tool for the job. For me, I think about it this way...

-- Blogging: I have not used blogging much to express my opinions. I use it as a place to publish information that I feel other educators might benefit from. I often ask users to contribute their thoughts, ideas, and to add to the conversation, which enriches the blog posts. However, when a reader has a follow-up question, I wind up commenting along with the readers in the comments area of my own blog. I am not sure how useful that is when someone is trying to re-construct the information in the blog post.

-- Email: I receive lots of questions from teachers who would like my help, opinion, and/or pearls of wisdom. These lengthy discussions do, and should, take place via email. The conversation is often personalized to the sender. At times, if I get the same question from lots of educators, I wind up creating a blog post about it so I can easily point others to the information.

-- Twitter: I use Twitter every day, all day. I follow about 125 very smart and tech-savvy educators, and the power of this group to find super resources to support teaching and learning is unmatched. I am a big believer in "pay it forward", so I try to do my part and post items that I feel my followers would find interesting. In the past few days, I have posted about my first foray with Google Wave, Aviary's new audio-editing tool, a well-done Time article about Google Wave, the fact my son won a programming contest, the new version of Tweetie for iPhone, Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, and the Hotmail phishing scam. I follow a lot of blogs, and, in the US, I am in the time zone that gets up first and I get up early, so I am often able to "announce" things before most educators are out of bed.

-- Web pages: I continue to update Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators daily. I add new sites, send out a site of the week to tens of thousands of educators, and add content that supports my presentations and workshops. I check all 3000+ links by hand each month to make sure they are still working and valid. Is this "old skool"? In this time of collaborative tools, it seems like it might be. However, I truly believe there will continue to be a place for experts to offer information that is useful without the comments, critiques, and collaboration of others. That place would be the Web page. The great thing about some of the new online tools is the creation and housing of Web pages has become a non-issue for teachers. With Google Docs and Sites, all educators can easily create an online resource to share with their students and colleagues.

-- Facebook: I would be remiss if I did not include this social networking tool. I have lots of friends in Facebook, and it is really where I get to learn more about them. Educators are careful to include enough information to interest you, but not too much information, so it is fun to both share in personal events (like weddings and such) and also share their successes in the classroom. I don't really like getting reference questions via Facebook, since I then have to log-in and answer the question there. My email address is prominently on my profile, and I hope that most people just email me vs. me having to go to yet another place to answer questions. However, the use of a social networking tool is a powerful thing for schools, and I see the use of similar platforms, such as Ning.com, becoming more and more used in schools by teachers and their students.

This blog post started out to explain why I tweet more than I blog, but has turned into more of an explanation as to how I use the Web-based information-sharing tools. I am sure many of you have quite different opinions, so feel free to share!

Credit: Phone image courtesy of Dan Brady.

Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet Review

Based on a post last Thursday by a user who was able to find the new Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet (Model: CTT-460) at his local Best Buy, I took a chance and visited my local store. There was no sign of it with the other Wacom tablets, but I asked a friendly salesperson who looked it up on the computer, and said they seemed to have one in stock. He went to the storeroom, but came out and said it was on the "new items" end-cap, which, in my store, was kind of out of the way. In any case, the one was there, and I scored! (I guess I might have given him the only hug he will get all day!) It is not yet on the Wacom site or the Best Buy site, but it is really out!

The Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet is a USB tablet that can act as a mouse, a multitouch trackpad, and a small drawing tablet. I installed it on both a Macintosh (Snow Leopard on an iMac) and a Windows machine (Toshiba laptop with Vista Home Basic).


The Bamboo touch is 8" x 5.5" in size and the input area is 5.5" x 3.25", with the four "ExpressKey" buttons located outside of the input area. These ExpressKeys are configurable for various functions as most input device buttons are.

You simply start the software install, pick right- or left-hand orientation, and then plug in the Bamboo Touch to complete the installation. It shows up, after the install, in the System Preferences and Control Panel panes as "Bamboo" and you can set the pointer speed, double-tap speed, etc.

There is a nice tutorial on the CD which illustrates and explains all the multi-touch features. The full user guide is also downloaded to your computer in PDF format.

Here are a few screenshots from the manual, illustrating the capabilities of the Bamboo. (Click on the thumbnail to enlarge it.































































How well does it work?

Let me start out by saying I am not a mouse user-- I use a trackball on my desktops and the built-in trackpad on the laptops. I also do not take advantage of all the whiz-bang features of the MacbookPro multitouch trackpad on a regular basis.

However, I did put the Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet through its paces on both the Apple and the Windows machines, and all of the multitouch features worked great! I also opened Adobe Photoshop and used the Bamboo touch both as a mouse and as a drawing tool. I could navigate and "fingerpaint" with no problem, but I would still choose to use my Wacom Graphire for serious drawing. My finger is not half as steady as my hand with a drawing pen is.

I am going to replace my trackball on my iMac at work with the Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet, locate it in front of the keyboard, and use it as my mouse. As well as adhering to the sound ergonomic principle of having the input device as close as possible to the middle of your body, so there is no stretching going on, I now also will have the multitouch features available on the Mac and Windows side of my desktop! I plan to take advantage of those swiping, panning, rotating, and the other whiz-bang features!

Results from Twitter goals survey

I am preparing an introductory Twitter presentation and am using information from a blog post by Charlene Kingston dealing with setting goals for your own use of Twitter.

I asked my Twitter PLN to answer a short survey on this topic. I sent the tweet out to my 4625 followers, and some of my followers re-tweeted the request to 4019 of their followers (who may or may not overlap with my followers.) I received 196 responses, many in the first few hours of posting the request on Twitter.

The yes/no questions were as follows:

1. I am a K-16 educator or pre-service educator.
2. I use Twitter to talk to friends and family
3. I use Twitter to find business customers.
4. I use Twitter to form a professional network
5. I use Twitter to send out and share information.
6. I use Twitter to receive information.
7. I have more than one Twitter account so I can keep my personal and professional tweets separate.

Results:

7% of the respondents were not K-16 educators

93% of the respondents were K-16 educators

8% of the non-K16 educators had separate Twitter accounts for personal and professional use.

24% of the K16 educators had separate Twitter accounts for personal and professional use

The goals for the use of Twitter by the non-K16 educators are illustrated in the graph below.

The goals for the use of Twitter by the K-16 educators are illustrated in the graph below.

The graphs were created using the NCES Create-A- Graph site.

A big thank-you to all who responded!

Wordle

Blog URL: http://kathyschrock.net/blog/


I decided to run a Wordle query on this blog to get a sense for what I am really writing about. If you have never tried Wordle, the site defines Wordle as "a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text."

I feel it is much more than a toy. Imagine students running Wordle queries on blogs they follow to see the author's most written about topics? Or creating a Wordle from the text in their own essay to see what topics they cover in depth?

Tom Barrett has a great slide show with many suggestions for using Wordle in the classroom.

The Wordle from this blog is below. It provides me with useful information and reminds me that I should probably branch out a bit in my areas of discussion!



Give Wordle a try for yourself!

File Magic review

Okay...this is pretty cool. Using Splash Data's File Magic desktop and iPhone app, I am typing this blog post in the email component of the File Magic desktop app. Once I am done, since I have no data connection from my laptop, I simply hit "send" and the email moves over to the open File Magic app on the iPhone, and then I can simply use the iPhone's cellular data connection to send this post! (Now, I know I could have typed this message directly on the iPhone, but it is quite long, and it is easier to use the full-size keyboard for this purpose!)

However, that email component is secondary to the main strengths of File Magic. This app allows you to easily move files, with both the iPhone/Touch app and the desktop app (Mac/Windows) open, from your desktop to your iPhone, or just via the iPhone app from iPhone to iPhone. These both work as long as both devices are on the same wireless network or accessing a WAP on the same network. You could just use the File Magic app on the iPhone/Touch as a data transfer-and-storage app if you wanted to.

But, the File Magic app on the iPhone/Touch also allows you view several different file types, some of which are not native to the iPhone or iPod Touch. If you move a Word doc, a MS Powerpoint presentation, an Excel spreadsheet, or an Adobe PDF file to the iPhone/Touch, you can view it through the File Magic app on the device. Pretty sweet!

You can find out more about the $4.99 app here if you are interested:
http://www.splashdata.com/filemagic/ or in the App Store in iTunes.

Interesting phenomenon

I have been noticing something more and more lately. When I chaperoned the recent 8th grade trip to New York City, I observed that students in every pair of seats were sharing a single set of earbuds attached to one music or DVD player; one student was using the left one and one was using the right. I wondered how it sounded, since one student was listening to the right channel and one to the left. Was one hearing just the melody and one hearing just the bass line?

I also noticed this was not happening because every other student did not have some type of a device. Every student on the bus seemed to have a music player of some sort.

I would never think of sharing music this way. I guess this has become a common practice because, first, many of the popular audio players do not have a speaker, so the use of a headphone is the only way to listen to the music, and, second, the dramatic rise in the use of the earbud style of headphone lends itself well to this practice.

Interestingly enough, I noticed a few laptops at the local computer store that now have two audio-out jacks built-in. Well, at least if students are sharing a movie on this brand of computer, they will each have access to the full stereo experience via their own set of earbuds!

Have you noticed any other "interesting" cultural practices lately due to technology advances?

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Photo attribution:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rogpool/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

NECC 2009 Interview

After my presentation on Tuesday, ISTE asked to interview me about a few things for the home audience who were watching via Ustream. That video is below. After watching it, I have adopted a couple of new rules for myself.

1. Don't give an interview directly after presenting to 1500 people. The adrenalin is still flowing and I seem a tad frenetic!
2. Don't give an interview in a referee's uniform (or any costume for that matter!)
3. Learn to control my hand movements, thought this will probably be unlikely.
4. I know I slow down my speech when I present, but, boy, I was whipping through this interview!
5. Go get lunch first, then do the interview...

However, I don't think I did too bad with the content, so I am happy with that, anyhow!

Google Apps for Education overview

I receive lots of questions and see lots of posts about the effective use of Google Apps for Education in the K-12 environment. Following are some of my thoughts.

• We used a separate domain for the staff and students since staff mail had to be archived (as per the eDiscovery regulations) and student email does not. We purchased staff email archiving from Gaggle who have a Gmail API that makes it simple. We do not use Gaggle for email accounts, however.

• Google Apps for Education works the same way as Google Apps Premier, with a tad less online storage space per user. The wonderful things about it is that any user can limit any publication to just those who are on the domain, if they wish. We use this when we are publishing something for only district staff. In addition, users can always selectively choose outside users (like our students on the other domain) to see their Docs, Calendars, Sites, etc.

• When you administer Google Apps for Education, you can chose to allow access (or dis-allow access) to the suite of tools -- Email, Calendar, Docs, Talk, Sites, Video, and Web Pages -- for all users. Google Groups and Blogger are not in the suite, but, of course may be easily used.

• We received explicit permission from our parents in grades 6-8 to give their students email accounts. Here is the permission slip we used for this special purpose. If I were to set this up again, I might simply create three domains-- one for staff, one for the middle and high school students with email turned on, and one for the younger students with email turned off, but with log-in access to Docs and Sites, to allow collaborative work to take place in a closed environment. You do not need to have email turned on to use these tools.

• We used the last two digits of YOG-last name-first initial for the student accounts. In addition, so their real name did not show up in the header of mail they sent, when setting up the accounts, I used the YOG-last name for the last name of the student and their first initial for their first name.

The use of these Google Apps has moved technology ahead rapidly in our district. Between shared calendars for school-based meetings to internal Google Sites acting as mini-Moodle packages, both teachers and students have made good use of the apps for communication, collaboration, and creation.

Here are some links to Nauset Google pages:

• Superintendent's Newsletter : this is coded to look like one of our Web pages, but is a Google Doc that the Superintendent's assistant updates each month. This is an easy way to distribute some of the updating of Web page info to others. She simply overwrites the content in the Google Doc each month and republishes, thus the hyperlink on the Web page remains the same.

• Cache the Wave: this is a summer professional development announcement and sign-up Google Site with embedded Google forms

• Google Goodies: this is a Google site with three parts-- a round-up of a weekly tip I sent to all staff and students, embedded screencasts for the basic Google Apps usage, and an RSS workshop I created for our adminstrators.

• Middle School Newsletter: although dated, this can give you some idea on how to distribute the work involved in your school-produced newsletter since each user can update their own pages of the shared Site. There is one thing different about Sites than Docs, though. When you make a change to a Google Sites page, it automatically goes live and with Docs you can choose to do it that same way or manually publish it when you are ready.

Updated information 10/11/09

• We continue to use Google sites inside the domain for teacher/student sharing.
• Many teachers have begun to create resource pages for their students using Google docs.
• We make extensive use of the calendaring functionality in Google Apps for Ed for staff purposes. IEP meetings, vacation schedules, literacy meetings, couselors' student meetings, etc. are scheduled with invitations to staff on non-public calendars.
• With the addition of Google video, which provides internal-only storage and access to videos, we have been able to post some school-wide items that we would not have wanted outside.
• Students are beginning to use Google Sites as a personal portfolio, attaching their work to the file cabinet page and embedding those items that are embeddable.
• We are using Google Forms for all types of data collection-- everything from registering for workshops to survey data of parents and community members, and much more.
• We have changed the student naming convention to start with the entire 4 digits of the year of graduation. The administrative sort and search is easier that way.
• We have made use of the offline capabilities of Google Calendar in a school that was having Internet-connection problems. Although the calendars are static on the machine, at least they are accessible.

Wolfram Alpha thoughts

I have spent quite a bit of time with Wolfram Alpha today. It is going to be interesting to introduce this to teachers and students. The user really needs to think about the appropriate time to choose this tool for information.

I suggest you spend a bit of time on the examples page. As you click through the examples, there is a description of the type of search that can be conducted in the search box based on the topic you have chosen. This is a great way to help users to learn the most appropriate use of the tool and the proper syntax for searches.

I have discovered a couple of really cool features about Wolfram Alpha. First, at least on the Mac side, in both Firefox and Safari, a student can simply drag any of the information boxes off of the WA site and the item winds up as a GIF on their computer desktop. It can easily be inserted in a project. (Even all the tables wind up being GIFS!) The student can then add the citation information needed for the GIF they are using.

Secondly, all of the source information (both Web-based and print) consulted for that topic is included as a link at the bottom of the results page to both allow for further research and for determining the reliability and credibility of the results. I so love this!!!

Images source:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=icosahedron

Twitter is not for email

During the past month or so, I have realized people are beginning to use Twitter as their main form of communication. I am a regular Twitter user and follower, but do not keep it open on my desktop all day. I use it how it is intended to be used-- to post quick items of interest or respond with a short message to someone seeking help on a topic. And I think carefully before I answer, to determine whether the response is only useful for the questioner (and DM the answer) or if others might also benefit from the answer (and reply with the @questioner). I try not to clutter up the list with responses that are meaningless to most others. That is part of the Twetiquette (Twitter etiquette).

(Addendum: I was not implying above that people should not post "meaningless" (read "fun") items to Twitter. What I was referring to is the practice of replying to a post via an @username on the list when the actual answer only makes sense to the person who asked the question. It often does not make sense when one sees only an answer.)

I am starting to receive some of the reference questions I receive regularly from educators via Twitter. The direct messages from Twitter show up in my email inbox, and I then have to go open my Twitter client, locate the DM, and respond to the questioner.

It is easy to ask a question in 140 characters, but not so easy to answer with anything meaningful in that number of characters. So, I wind up DM'ing three or four separate messages to the questioner, including having to shorten a URL or two in the Twitter messages.

Twitter is not the place for that kind of communication, in my opinion. If you have a question that you want answered which you know will require me to search the Web and do some research, please don't send it via Twitter.

I am easy enough to find on the Web, and, if you don't have it, here is my email address: kathy@kathyschrock.net

I am always glad to help, but not always in 140-character bursts!

My two favorite things-- shopping and the iPhone

I just download a new application from the iPhone app store called Coupon Sherpa which defines itself as an "in-store coupon application for the iPhone."

You simply browse for a store or restaurant by category or check the alphabetical list for your favorites. Most coupons show up with barcodes that can be scanned in at the register when checking out. (Others lead you to the offer on the vendor's Web site.) As of this posting, there are 178 coupons in 111 stores in Coupon Sherpa, including many major retailers.

The app is only $1.99, but, in celebration of Earth Day, and to highlight one of Coupon Sherpa's goals "to reduce the amount of paper that is wasted by printing coupons", the application is free until this Friday, April 29. (But well-worth the cost of the app anytime!)

I cannot wait to try it out later today when I go shopping. It will be interesting to see how handing the iPhone to the cashier will go over, but I think they had better get used to it!

YouTube is great!

I can (seemingly) find anything I want to on YouTube! I find myself searching YouTube for things that come up in general conversation the same way I do with the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).

Having "primary source" information when having a discussion about old television shows, segments on Sesame Street that one remembers, or old footage of a favorite rock band is great! (And this is in addition to the huge number of educational videos to be found there, too.)

Here is today's sequence of events that led to YouTube and continued to amaze me as to its breadth....

1. Talking about the NCAA Final Four championship game with two colleagues.

2. Continued the discussion about the women's Final Four game tonight.

(My son is a UConn student and a rabid fan and is in St. Louis for the game.)

3. He had told me, if UConn men had made the Final Four, that Dale, the "blue and white" guy, was going to try to get back and forth between the women's and the men's games.

4. My colleagues and I then moved on to conversations about other famous "painted" people, most notably the Tin Man and Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz.

5. We discussed how scared we were when Margaret Hamilton would come out as the witch, and one colleague remembered watching an interview with her on Mr. Rogers. She remembered how kind and gentle Ms. Hamilton was during the interview, and how she tried to humanize the witch to make the character less scary for children.

6. One quick search, and I had the clip to show her.

YouTube rocks! (And why is it blocked in so many schools?)

April Fools' Day or not?

In the "old" days, I used to love the creative things Web page creators came up with on April 1st. The items were always clever and easily understood to be spoofs.

However, with the changes in technology moving so fast in the last few years, I found myself, while doing real work on April 1, trying to decide if the information I was viewing was true or not! It was kinda scary that I could not tell. Are the spoofs getting better? Or is technology changing so fast that I will believe anything?

However, people still continue to amaze me with their creativity on April 1. Here are a few of my favorites from the day.


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Live Tweeting

Last week, I set Twitter to follow Rebecca Lobo as she tweeted from the sidelines of one of the UConn Big East games. She kept up a constant conversation, and it was too much to take in, so I quickly "unfollowed".

Today, I was so excited about the new iPhone OS3, that I decided to share the keynote via Twitter. I was not there in person but refreshing a few tech blogs as they posted quotes and photos, most notably Engadget, and summarizing what I saw and read.

The keynote was 90 minutes long, and I tweeted a lot. I tried to stick to the important points, but did interject some personal comments at times. After about 30 minutes, even though I was receiving direct messages from some of my followers who were interested and grateful I was summarizing for them, I became worried. I have over 2600 followers in Twitter and perhaps only a small group of them would be interested in the iPhone information.

Would I lose valuable members of my PLN because I tweeted every 30 seconds for 90 minutes? Would people find it too much to take in, just as I had with Rebecca Lobo's sideline updates? What if someone was receiving their tweets via SMS and they incurred charges for an overage of text messages? Would people be upset, when they opened Twitter or their Twitter client, when tons of messages from me clogged up their screen?

So, what should I have done? Should I have used CoverItLive or some other backchannel tool and just posted the URL to Twitter? Should I have only followed the blogs and put a link in Twitter to the most comprehensive coverage page based on what I had read?

I will have to give it more thought, but I don't think Twitter is the right place to "live blog". Your thoughts?

Old browsers never die...

I receive monthly statistics about my personal Web site that gives me a lot of data. I can see that the most popular pages at http://kathyschrock.net/ are my blog, Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch, my Unofficial Guide to American Graffiti, and Rockwell Schrock's Boolean Machine, an interactive demonstration of Boolean search strategies usable on an interactive whiteboard.

However, the statistic I also find interesting is the one that tells me which Web browsers the visitors are using who come to my site. This past month, Netscape 4 led the way with Firefox and IE6 not too far behind. Those three covered about 66% of the visitors.


The surprise comes when I look at the bottom of the list. About 10% of the visitors to my site use browsers such as WebTV 1.x and WebTV 2.x, Netscape 2 and 3, Internet Explorer 2, 3, and 5, Safari 1, Firefox 0 and 1, and AOL 3 and 4.

The users of these older Web browsers can probably get to my site, and navigate it, since it does not deploy the use of too many new technologies. I can just imagine the frustration these users feel when they try to visit some cool new sites or employ the use of some new Web 2.0 tools. Granted, their computers may not be able to handle the plug-ins or add-ons that some of these new technologies require, and they will continue to be frustrated until they can get a newer commputer.

Some of your teachers may not realize there are updates available to their Internet browsers that will run on older machines. Or that there are some additional browsers, such as Avant and Opera, that may work for their particular situation.

A short mention of something like this at a PD session or a faculty meeting could provide one of your teachers with the information he or she needs to be able to effectively use their older computer to navigate the Web sites of today.

(And while we are on the subject, perhaps talking about upgrading their Adobe Acrobat Reader to the highest version possible for their machine might make sense, too! You can still find the a download of Acrobat Reader 5 for Windows 95 and 98 if you look around!)

Photo courtesy of OiMax as per the Creative Commons licensing.

Amazon Kindle 2 Thoughts

Having been an avid Kindle user since it came out, I immediately upgraded to the Kindle 2 when it became available. It arrived today.

There are plenty of unboxing videos and reviews already on the Web, so I am not going to do an in-depth review. I am just going to share some thoughts.

- The new five way control button. It is slower than the previous scroll wheel for moving up and down within menus and books, but definitely useful for moving sideways in the browser, in some of the pop-up boxes, and for use with the updated highlighting feature which actually works like true highlighting!

- The expanded support for conversion of personal document types including Microsoft Word, PDF, HTML, TXT, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PRC and MOBI documents is a welcome addition.

- The text-to-speech option which is "interesting" to listen to. I found the female voice, slowed down one notch, was the most pleasant to listen to. I can see using this function while hooked into the aux jack in the car or on the deck after sunset in the summer.

- The new experimental Web browser is great! It is more like a real browser in how it functions, and the 16 shades of gray make the images much, much clearer. Using the mobile versions of Facebook and Twitter, I was able to read and post, so my PLN is available to me while I am reading on the Kindle, too!

- The note-taking feature is easier to get to and the new keyboard works just fine, although I liked the tilted keys on the thumb board of the previous version a bit better. There is also no @ key on the keyboard, and it takes an extra step to get to it on the symbol button.

- Audible books can be loaded in the top two qualities (4 and enhanced) only, which means they take up more of the internal storage space than the lesser quality spoken word files. (This info is from Amazon's site. Audible seems to allow one to download formats 2, 3, 4 and enhanced, but I have not tried it.)

- Being able to load MP3 files directly into the internal storage is much easier than having to put them on an SD card and re-insert it each time in the back of the previous version. (Update: You can also move from MP3 file to MP3 file on the Kindle 2, whereas on the first version you had to just play them all without any control other than on and off.)

- The 3G network connection is speedy. And the page turns seem speedier.

- The smaller buttons make it easier to hold without turning pages, especially since I do not use the leather cover and hold the coverless Kindle while reading, opting for a zippered Belkin case to keep the Kindle clean and protected.

- There is still a "flash to black" as the electronic ink refreshes between pages. That's how electronic ink works, but after reading about 10 pages on a Kindle, you'll never notice that again.

- Oh, by the way, the Kindle 2, as with the previous version, does a super job of letting you carry lots of books with you and easily reading them! The electronic ink is never tiring to my eyes and the ability to use the Kindle in bright sunlight and other natural light is great!

Update March 3, 2009

Amazon releases the Kindle Reader for the iPhone and Touch!

The free Kindle app for the iPhone/Touch works great! With adjustable type sizes and some navigation options, it allows non-Kindle users to purchase books (via their computer or the browser on the device) from the Kindle bookstore and download them to their iPhone/Touch. This works both over 3G and the 802.11x connections.

For Kindle owners, it also does another cool thing-- it syncs your place in the book so, when you open the book on either device, it asks you if you want to move ahead to the place where you left off reading on the other device.

There is no widescreen support for the Kindle app (yet!), magazines and newspapers are not supported, you can add bookmarks, and you are able to read the notes you entered via your Kindle, but you cannot add new notes via the Kindle app.

I have read ebooks for years on small devices via Palm's Reader and with Windows CE/Mobile devices. The clarity of the iPhone/Touch screen makes the experience much more pleasant, but I do have to turn down the backlight so the reading is easier on my eyes. (At least this might extend the rather poor battery life of the iPhone!)

I would rather read an entire novel on the Kindle 2, but having the same books with me all the time for reference or relaxation is great!

Added: 4/19/09

One commenter asked about the number of Audible recordings the Kindle 2 would hold if he had no books on the device. (The original Kindle had an SSD card slot, so you were only limited by the size of the SD card.) The answer to that question needs some explanation as to how Audible works. Audible offers its audiobook recordings in different quality formats. The Kindle 2 can play formats 2, 3, or 4, with format-4 being the best quality.

I chose a title, Bill Bryson's "In a Sunburned Country", to use for determining the answer to this question. Bryson's print book is 352 pages in length. Audible's format-2 of his book is 46mb in file size, format-3 is 86mb, and format 4 is 172mb. That seems to indicate that, on the Kindle's 2GB storage drive, you could have forty-five format-2 Audible recordings, twenty-four format-3 recordings, or twelve format-4 recordings. (And of course, various numbers of the combination of the formats.)

According to these figures, each page of this print book takes up .13mb for format-2, .24mb for format-3, and .5mb for format-4. Does this hold true for all Audible recordings? I am not sure, but at least this gives the commenter some broad idea of how many Audible recordings would fit on the Kindle 2.

Geek Alert: Netbooks & the Airport Extreme

I know that many of us attend and run conferences and professional development sessions, and with more educators getting netbooks, I wanted to share a problem that I experienced, and the solution, in case you are ever encounter it.

I just purchased my fourth netbook, the MSI Wind, with b/g/n network ability and it worked like a dream on the wireless network at home (Apple Airport Express) and out and about at public WiFi hotspots.

However, in my office, with the Apple Airport Extreme Base Station, the minute I connected to the wireless, the netbook would lock up my Airport Extreme. I thought I was imagining it the first couple of times and reset the base station and the cable router, only to have it happen each and every time.

I did some Internet research and found the combination of the MSI Wind (and a few models of the Asus eeePC) and the Airport Extreme Base Station can cause a problem. However, I also found the solution below. It is an easy fix on the netbook.

If you are using the standard Windows wireless configuration utility

1. Right click on the wireless connection in the taskbar and select STATUS
2. Click on PROPERTIES
3. You should be on the GENERAL tab
   
4. Choose CONFIGURE next to the wireless adapter box
5. Choose the ADVANCED tab
6. Scroll down the list and click on POWER SAVING MODE
7. Change the value to CAM (Constantly Awake Mode)
8. Click OK

or

1. Go to START, SETTINGS, CONTROL PANEL
2. Choose the SYSTEM option
3. Choose the HARDWARE tab
4. Choose the DEVICE MANAGER button
5. Expand the NETWORK ADAPTERS entry on the list
6. Double-click on your wireless adapter
7. Choose the ADVANCED tab
8. Scroll down the list and click on POWER SAVING MODE
9. Change the value to CAM (Constantly Awake Mode)
10. Click OK

If you are using the Ralink wireless configuration utility
(I am not, so cannot verify these instructions)

1. Uncheck POWER SAVING MODE
2. Enable CAM (Constantly Awake Mode)

I only post this for those of you that might run into this either at a conference you are attending or running, or at a WiFi hotspot using the Airport Extreme base station. Hope it helps!

Digital Pioneer: The Movie

A digital version of a blog post I made earlier this year and my (non-successful) ADE application video.


Digital Pioneer: The Movie on Vimeo.

Maiden name in Facebook

A little known fact in Facebook is that you do not have to put your maiden name as part of your full profile name for others to find you by your "former" name.

Instructions to make your maiden name searchable (for those that knew you "when") are as follows, quoted from Facebook's help file:

"There is a section for users to list their maiden name or alternate name. Please note that this name will not show up in your profile, and is only used to find you in search. To submit your alternate name, navigate to the Account Settings page, and click on "change" in the "Name" section. In the "Former Name" box, please be sure to include your full former name. You will now be found in search by your current name (as listed in your profile) and this alternate name."

This would also be useful if you use some variant of your first name (i.e. Elizabeth vs. Beth), too.

Tools for Schools: Live Online Conferencing

As an Adobe Education Leader, I am lucky enough to have access to a full version of Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro, a full-featured video conferencing and synchronous collaboration tool. (If anyone ever wants to see how it works, please let me know and we can set up a time for a meeting demo!)

Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro is not free, and I have yet to find a no-cost option for schools that comes close to its capabilities. However, here are a few free options that provide more than just video-calling (like Skype and ooVoo). The sites listed below will allow you to experiment with a more full-featured toolset and, perhaps, provide enough justification in your school or district for the purchase of a full-fledged system!

These are just brief overviews of the capabilities of each of these systems. Each system often adds new features, so take the time to give each of them a try and re-visit them regularly.

Adobe ConnectNow
http://www.adobe.com/acom/connectnow/
...includes many of the features of Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro, such as video and VOIP for all, screen sharing, whiteboards, etc., but only allows three users to participate in the conference; I would strongly suggest this one for small synchronous sessions

Vyew
http://vyew.com
...this tool is very full-featured, and the free version allows only 5 users and the site is ad-supported; there is an easy-screenshot feature, lots of plug-ins such as a YouTube Player, a graphing calculator, desktop sharing, and much more

DimDim
http://dimdim.com/
...the no-cost version of this tool only allows for the presenter's video feed, and four users with voice, but does allow 20 users in the room, and includes a whiteboard, a chat area, and some screensharing

Yugma
http://www.yugma.com
...the free version of Yugma requires registration by each of the (up to 20) attendees you host for a meeting. There is a download of Java required as well as a small client. The free version basically allows screen-sharing and chat. There is a Skype version of the client that utilizes the audio and chat within Skype as well.

WizIQ
http://www.wiziq.com
...WizIQ is intended to allow users to teach within their system. It allows uploads of presentations, audio for all participants, sharing of a whiteboard, and video for the instructor

Addition (4/30/09)
Zorap
http://zorap.com/
...synchronous audio and the ability to share photos, files, and videos makes this tool very cool; you need to install a local client to use it, but you do not have to have an account to join a room

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Photo located in a Creative Commons search in Flickr.
http://flickr.com/photos/mrkimmi/2922784425/
"Video Conferencing" by mrkimmi