Here's my first screencast. My only real complaint is the size. I'm trying to decide if it's too much of a problem to be useful. Your thoughts?
Check it out: 2008-08-15_1046
Friday, August 15, 2008
Jing Screencasts
I wish I could remember how I found out about this, but there is a free online tool that allows you to create your own screencasts. It's called the Jing Project. It's likely it'll cost money sometime soon, so try it out while you still can! I'm using it to create some professional development videos for my staff...quick little reminder movies to refresh returning staff's memories about how to move their curriculum maps to the current year, how to add items to their pages on our parent portal, etc.
The downside: You do have to download something. It's not all online. As soon as I can get one uploaded, I'll save it here, as well.
The downside: You do have to download something. It's not all online. As soon as I can get one uploaded, I'll save it here, as well.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Avatars and Self Esteem
Over at Technology on a Shoestring, he recently blogged about an NPR podcast about Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab. To save you the time of listening to the entire podcast, I'll quote the part that I think is relevant:
"One of the more interesting findings they observed was that when a person picks a better looking avatar from a set of possible avatars, the student will take on some of the attributes of the avatar. For example, subjects were asked to fill out an online dating form in which they picked people they thought they could reasonably date. The subjects who had selected a good looking avatar filled out an online dating form where they projected better possible matches. I should mention that the dating service form was filled out an hour later and that the avatar was not used or associated with the dating system."
Though these students are a lot older than the ones whose "self identity" is in the beginning stages of development, a la Erikson, it still indicates a positive influence from using an online avatar. As many reservations as I have expressed about this phenomenon, the evidence for it seems to be gently edging towards significant.
"One of the more interesting findings they observed was that when a person picks a better looking avatar from a set of possible avatars, the student will take on some of the attributes of the avatar. For example, subjects were asked to fill out an online dating form in which they picked people they thought they could reasonably date. The subjects who had selected a good looking avatar filled out an online dating form where they projected better possible matches. I should mention that the dating service form was filled out an hour later and that the avatar was not used or associated with the dating system."
Though these students are a lot older than the ones whose "self identity" is in the beginning stages of development, a la Erikson, it still indicates a positive influence from using an online avatar. As many reservations as I have expressed about this phenomenon, the evidence for it seems to be gently edging towards significant.
BitStrips
Today marked the first time in about a month and a half that I read through my feeds. I'm amazed that so many folks continue to post all summer. But then, maybe they are not blessed to have the summer off, like myself. There were a few neat things, but the most interesting to me was the "Teaching With Technology" post about how he's teaching a summer technology bootcamp. I'm doing the same thing on August 21 and 22nd with 17 teachers at my school. I've got the whole thing already planned out and a wiki underway. However, he made this cool comic strip at Bistrips. I'm a sucker for self-made comic strips, as I feel they are a superlative way to teach concision in writing. I have my third graders make their own strips using comic creator. This is a pretty neat alternative, though. Here's his: 
