In my 61st podcast I’m starting my end-of-year inventory and talking about the difference between message boards and blogs.
Not much in the way of show notes for this one, I was just talking while I worked on organizing the things in my office.
Looks like my favorite photo sharing website has made some recent changes, replacing the “beta” in their logo with “gamma” to show just how far they’ve come.
The first thing I said to myself when loading up Flickr this morning was “Holy cow, I’ve got a LOT of photos on each page here!” Yep, by abandoning the Yahoo! ads (Which I never paid attention to, anyway) and doing some other adjustments, they’ve managed to give me two columns of photos on the first page of my photostream. (So now it looks like all of the other pages in my photostream.)
I’m curious as to why they abandoned the ads altogether, though. I mean, sure, I didn’t use them … but Yahoo! isn’t exactly making money off of Flickr as it is.
In any case, they’re also posting more TOS notices, in particular the reminder I see after clicking on “all sizes.” You’re not supposed to put Flickr hosted images on your website/blog/etc. unless they link back to that image’s Flickr page. This could mean trouble for a lot of Google Earth enthusiasts, including myself, who like to embed images in their maps.
I’ll be renting server space from a 3rd party soon, so hopefully it won’t bother me so much.
Soon.
Did you know Baltimore has its own World Trade Center? Well it does, and here it is.
Learn what Wikipedia has to say about this building.
Do you?
Seriously though, I was hoping to record a podcast tonight but my voice just isn’t into it right now. Instead, how about you listen to Steve’s latest endeavor? He even has his PowerPoint online for you.
During his presentation he makes a good point about starting off with a strictly controlled environment, then opening it up slowly as the students become more responsible. I’ve been thinking for a while now about moving this blog to a server capable of handling WordPress this summer, and depending on the server space I rent I could probably host just such an environment for my students using Moodle or another fun tool.
If not, there’s still Class Blogmeister, Gaggle.net, and Think.com. Anyone out there have good/bad experiences with those last two?
Blogs in education are endagered. Why? Read what Weblogg-ed has to say about it. Then get ahold of your representatives in Congress and tell them how you feel.
Yes, I know they’re mainly targeting MySpace. Unfortunately, the bill is so broadly written that most if not all blogs will have to be banned at school.
I’ll have more to say about this later, when I’ve had time to collect my thoughts.
EDIT: A wiki has been set up to create a collaborative letter to our congresspeople. I’ve already added my (minor) contributions and sent one to my Representative. A link is included near the top to allow you to contact your Representative quickly and easily.
“I don’t like it when people read what I write.”
That’s a direct quote from one of my Art Club kids. I’ve met many students (and adults) who had that same opinion, but this particular student had just finished posting to her Art Club blog.
And she was very surprised when she walked over to me and saw her words on my screen. (I was in the process of approving it for publication on the web.)
We had a nice little conversation about how we should always assume everything we write will be read by somebody, and I think it’s finally sinking in that her actions on a web site make her part of a larger community. Not only that, but now she also knows things she wants to be private should not be placed in a public forum. (No, she didn’t put private stuff in her blog.)
At least, it’s a start.
The “Power Plant” was once just that, but now it has the best looking storefronts in the Inner Harbor.
Learn more here.
Watch this video to learn about this floating classroom that used to be a Buy Boat.
This is more footage from the Discovery Educator Network’s “Capture the Inner Harbor” event. I’m slowly going through everything and placing it online.
My 60th podcast is a recording of my session at MICCA. (I talked about blogging, as you can see in the title.) I promised to have it up on the same day, so here you go.
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Links:
discoveryeducatornetwork.com
Blogging 101 (My Wiki about blogging)
Room132.com (The class blog maintained by Bre Pettis)
Weblogg-ed (The website of Will Richardson, a pioneer in edu-blogging)
Technorati.com (Google for blogs)
OpenOffice.org (Just like Microsoft Office … but FREE)
Blogger.com (My blog host)
Bloglines.com (The site I use to check other blogs)
Think.com, Class Blogmeister, & Gaggle.net (These three are all free services that offer a “closed” blogging environment.)
Wondering who else has been mentioning MICCA in their blogs? A quick search on Technorati.com brought up the following results:
If you attended MICCA as well, I encourage you to write up your opinions on the conference. What do you think?