In episode 5 I show how to fold a polyhedron.
iPod version 44.2 MB, 6 min 36 sec
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In episode 5 I show how to fold a polyhedron.
low bandwidth 3.6 MB, 6 min 36 sec
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Egg on my face
Why does this image embarrass me? It’s pretty simple, really.
You see, I recently posted about my trials and tribulations when attempting to get unitedstreaming video onto my iPod.
Turns out that it wasn’t MoviesForMyPod that wasn’t working, it was me. As you can see in the illustration (click for a better view if you can’t see it) there’s an option to select Windows Media or Quicktime as a playback option.
I had switched this to Quicktime, but never refreshed the page so it was still full of .asf files. That didn’t even matter, since I spent most of my time trying various freeware programs on an .asf file I had downloaded last week.
While revisiting unitedstreaming yesterday I noticed that suddenly all the files were using quicktime suffixes because by now Firefox had refreshed.
So unitedstreaming works better than I ever thought it did. I feel silly for not noticing this before, but at least now I can put a lot more video on my iPod to show my students.
(Oh, and if you’ve been thinking of doing the same thing don’t you dare go out and buy the cable from Apple that lets you hook your iPod up to the TV. There’s a cheaper way to do it.)
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Idea Hunting
I just caught up on all of my blog feeds yesterday and today I’m trying to catch up on all the podcasts I’ve got on my hard drive. (This will not be finished today, as I’ve now only gotten it down to just over 23 hours of podcasts and I will be taking a 3 hour break when Leo Laporte’s radio show comes on.)
Listening to the likes of David Warlick and Bob Sprankle has gotten me itching to record another podcast, but I won’t be doing that just yet. You see, I’m temporarily out of ideas.
Oh, I’ve got plenty of ideas, but I’ve already mentioned them in writing and in my podcasts. I don’t want to just rehash the same old concepts over again for the sake of building up the number of podcasts I’ve recorded.
So for now you won’t be getting any podcasts from me. I need to be inspired to ramble on about something first.
Maybe tomorrow, as I still have a ton of EdTechTalk podcasts to work through.
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Altered Book Ideas
I’m still on my cleaning spree, and while most old school things I find are totally irrelevant today (including a list of 20 art links that were all dead except for two museum sites) every now and then I find a gem.
One nice thing I found was a list of ideas for altered books, which is great since my Art Club kids each have one. I wish I knew who wrote the original list, but here’s the new improved version with a few of my own ideas included.
- Use crayons and watercolors to create a wax resist. Use a white crayon or rubber cement to make “invisible” lines.
- Glue two pages together (to make them more sturdy) and cover them with watered down gesso
, with or without a tint of color. Sand the pages and draw on them with a pen.
- Copy a picture of your own onto a transparency
- Create a 50/50 glue/water mix and use it to stick colored tissue paper to a page.
- Cut shapes from thin cardboard and place them under a page. Rub over the page with a spoon to emboss it.
- Cut apart two images (your own, pages from magazines, photocopies, or any combination) and weave them together.
- Outline an image with liquid glue and let it dry, then color it with watercolors and/or colored pencils.
- Cut out pictures of arms, legs, torsos, and heads and glue them together to create collages of new people or monsters.
- Circle words on a page to create a “found word” free verse poetry. Color over the selected words with white crayon, then use markers to cover the rest of the page with an illustration that describes the poem.
- Cut three pages into thirds horizontally, and draw a person (or house, car, machine, etc.) on each page. Try to get the body parts of each person to line up so you can flip through the top, middle, and bottom separately to create new artworks.
- Save postcards, receipts, and other flat souvenirs from your next vacation. Use them to create a collage.
- Cut apart a page with nothing but words on it and glue those words together to tell a new story. illustrate it on the next page.
Additional ideas are more than welcome.
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unitedstreaming for iPod
iPod fanatics unite!
Discovery Education offers a great service called unitedstreaming. It’s a commercial product, but lucky for me my county purchased licenses for all of it’s schools. This gives me access to all kinds of videos (and clips), pictures, lesson ideas, and more, but I do have a problem.
The movies are saved as .asf files, which means I can’t put them on my new iPod with video. A workaround has been found using Quicktime Pro, but after paying for an iPod I don’t really feel like shelling out another $30 or so to make it work. (Especially when a Quicktime Pro license only lasts until the next update.)
So I embarked on a search for a free solution. I’ve had Digigami’s MoviesForMyPod on my hard drive for a while, so I knew when that was suggested as a solution it wouldn’t work – it didn’t have the right codec to decode .asf files.
Then suddenly Flip4Mac came on the scene, due to Microsoft’s decision to discontinue updates for the OS X version of their Media Player. I actually saw references to this nifty app on a cartoonist’s website first, although Mr. Dembo is already hyping it.
So I downloaded it last night and did a restart.
Turns out on my Mac running 10.3.9 it’s only half successful – I can listen to the audio just fine but the pictures are just a wash of pixelated colors. I’m open to the idea that I did something wrong or skipped a step somewhere, but after uninstalling and reinstalling I still can’t figure it out.
Does anyone have a free solution for me to translate .asf files into .mp4 so I can use them in my classrooms?
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Blogging 101
My 45th podcast is another presentation – this time it’s an introduction to blogging. I can’t say it was my best example of public speaking, but I said I’d record it and put it on the site so that’s exactly what I’m doing.
Last time I included all of my presentation slides embedded in the mp3 file and I decided to do the same thing this time as well. Be careful, though – at 9.8 MB and over 28 minutes this podcast is much longer than my usual ramblings.
Show Notes:
bloglines.com (to read blogs)
blogger.com (to write blogs)
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Tech Integration Checklist
I was doing some very late (or very early) spring cleaning, and came across some papers from seminars and conferences I attended years ago.
Most of the stuff wasn’t worth keeping, but I did find a list that I think I acquired at a MICCA conference. I wish I knew who wrote this (a Google search came up empty), but I think it’s worth a reprint here.
UPDATE: I just got an email from Rachel. It turns out that Sarah Stiles (A freind of Rachel’s from Anne Arundel County Public Schools) was the author of this wonderful list. My guess is that it was her presentation I saw at MICCA.
8 Ways to Test for Effective Technology Integration
1. An outsider would view the use of technology as a seamless part of daily instruction.
2. Students are genuinely interested & excited about learning.
3. You’d have trouble accomplishing your learning goals if the technology were removed. (In other words the technology is truly the “best media,” or the “right tool for the right job.”)
4. You can explain how the technology is enhancing instruction in 2-3 sentences.
5. Students work towards one or more content-related outcomes.
6. The technology activity is a logical extension of the lesson.
7. A real problem is being solved through the use of technology.
8. All students are able to participate & you can describe how a particular student is benefiting from the technology.
The idea behind this list is not to do all 8 at once, but to hit two or three of them every time you strive for technology integration. Thoughts? Comments? Does anyone know who wrote this?
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Happy Smith Day!!
I’m going to take an unusual detour away from my normal art, ed, and tech ramblings to wish all the Smiths out there a happy Smith Day.
What, you don’t think it’s a real holiday? Well the Seattle Times disagrees!
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Dembo and my Open Interview
I was checking the long list of blogs I read regularly and was pleased to see that Steve Dembo responded to my “open interview.” (As if I didn’t have enough reasons to inflate my own ego…) You should go check it out, and since I’m sure some of you just listen to my podcasts rather than read what I write here’s a direct link to Steve’s podcast. His answers are at the end, so just sit back and enjoy.
It’s not too late to respond to my open interview, why don’t you give it a shot?