Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out

The title of my blog, Ed Tech Axis, came from the struggle I feel it is to help students & teachers integrate their personal use of technology with their educational uses. Students who have no idea how to format a Word document might have the most pimped-out My Space page on the planet, complete with CSS editing. Teachers who can't live without their Blackberry can't figure out how to use a wiki. So, it is with much excitement that I post about a book that has just been published. I read about it on Dana Boyd's "Apophenia" blog:

"Conventional wisdom about young people's use of digital technology often equates generational identity with technology identity: today's teens seem constantly plugged in to video games, social networks sites, and text messaging. Yet there is little actual research that investigates the intricate dynamics of youth's social and recreational use of digital media. "Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out" fills this gap, reporting on an ambitious three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings—at home, in after school programs, and in online spaces."

You can even get it in downloadable PDF. Review to follow.

DVolver

This evening, my husband and are going to see a play, but I had about 20 minutes to spend playing around before we leave. He's making Glog (Swedish Spiced Wine) for a holiday party. I thought I'd play with some of the tools that Russell Stannard at the University of Newcastle in the UK lists on his site. I found out about his site thanks to Kathy Schrock's Educator's Guide. One of the tools he links to is Dvolver. Here is the lamest video ever made with the "Movie Maker" tool below. Hollywood might not come knocking, but I can think of some great uses for it:

1. Language learning via dialogue composition.

2. Sequence of events writing for younger students.

3. Illustration of a scientific principle (explaining how photosynthesis happens, etc.)

What else?

Cloud Computing

Every now and then I recognize a pattern. In the information feed that is my mind-space, I'll notice that I've heard more than one conversation or more than one reference to a concept and then the interest is piqued enough to warrant research. I'm sure we're all like that. This week the pattern called my attention to Cloud Computing.

If you don't know, cloud computing "relies on applications and file storage that reside on a network--either a local area network, a district intranet, or the Internet itself." Nothing resides on a hard drive, it's all accessed and saved virtually. It's not like this is a new concept. I've heard it bandied about by techie-types for the last 5 years or so. When a CIO on my school's board mentioned it at a technology meeting the other day, I let it pass because, well, I'd expect something like that out of him. It wasn't until my boss at World Leadership School mentioned it that I perked up. My boss is certainly not a Luddite by any stretch. However, he's not exactly on the cusp of new technologies. He was excited by the idea that cloud computing might be the great equalizer for the developing nations with which we work. Not 3 days later, the most recent Learning and Leading with Technology comes out and "lo and behold" there's a cloud computing article in there. Okay, ETHER, I get it. I always knew that it was coming. I just didn't know it was HERE until just now.Creative Commons Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cloud_computing.jpg#file