Alvin's Educational Technology Blog

Last month, our ten year old participated in a summer school program which required her to have a digital camera. It had been a few years since we had purchased her $25 "Mickey Mouse" camera (it actually had ears) for our trip to Disneyland. It was time for a real camera, so we picked up a Canon SD1200IS on sale.

After the workshop ended (and she took some great pictures), I asked everyone if we could have an extended theme-based photo project.  I have been listening to a lot of photography podcasts this summer, and one of the main ideas I have heard repeatedly is themed-based shooting.  If you shoot random pictures, you never get better at taking pictures.  Any photo excursion should have a goal: door knobs, head lights, flowers.  The constraint of a theme will force you to frame a good picture when it may be difficult.  That will make you a better photographer.

We wanted to do this over the course of a month and started making a list of topics.  After the third item, good themes started to get difficult.  I offered a more flexible idea.  What if the first day we take pictures of things starting with the letter “A”?  The second day would be “B” and so on.  That would give us 26 days of pictures.  We were off and running.

We did come up with some general rules.

1 – Whoever takes a picture of something first “gets” that object.  No duplicates.

2 – One point is scored for each picture taken on a given day.  If the item has multiple instances of the letter (canned chunk chicken), the points are doubled.

3 – The first two rules were repealed on the third day of the contest when the dad had ten times more points than any one else.  We decided a contest was not the best way to learn to shoot good pictures.  The best picture of an apple was more valuable than the first picture of an apple.

4 – Nouns and proper nouns are OK.  Verbs can only be used with approval of the group.  Adjectives are usually not permitted.  A dog can be photographed on “D” day, “C” day if she is a Corgi and “T” day if she is named Taffy.  She cannot be fluffy on “F” day.  On that day, a picture of her fur can be taken.

5 – A picture must be taken of the item on the day its letter is up.  On “Q” day we realized no one took a picture of the piano on “P” day.  Too late.  I was surprised at the number of things we missed every day.  We could do this whole thing again taking only pictures of things we missed the first time.

Some letters are much more difficult than others.  Today is “U” and there is not a lot of low hanging fruit.  We expect “V”, “X”, “Y” and “Z” to be similar.

We are still organizing the pictures so they can be uploaded to Flickr.  We will get that done eventually.  We have learned that everyone in the house has his/her own archival process and everything is not being reliably backed up.  I am setting up a “community” picture deposit area on the server.  Everyone will have their own folder and the whole thing will be archived nightly as part of the normal backup routine.

We did use the letters to direct some of our non-picture taking activities.  On “M” day we had manicotti. On “P” day we were in Columbus and I (quite easily) talked everyone into eating at P.F.Chang.  We used lots of potsticker sauce, drank tea from a pot, and saw the horses on the pedestals outside the restaurant.  Later we stopped by Potterybarn and saw some pillows and photo frames.  You get the idea.

Next Monday is “Z” day and also a holiday.  We are planning a trip to the zoo to photograph a zebra.  We’re not sure what will happen on Tuesday.  My guess is that we will not stop taking pictures.

In case you are getting an Android phone this weekend, here is a list of apps I use. All of these apps are FREE.  None of these apps require rooting.

1 – Barcode Scanner

I’m putting this application first because you can use it to easily get the rest of the apps I have listed.  Barcode Scanner is an app that will read barcodes.  It will also read QR codes.  You can download almost any Android app without searching through the app store, if you have a QR code which will take you directly to the application page.  Start Barcode Scanner.  Point your camera at the QR code that’s on the screen.  Take a picture.  Magic.

Use Barcode Scanner and point at the QR code for Gesture Search.  It’s that easy.

2 – Gesture Search

This application will let you scribble search information on the screen.  Want to call Buzz?  Use your finger to draw a “B”.  Follow that with a “U” if there are too many B’s in your list.  It will search names, apps and media on your device, if you decide to turn all of that on.

3 – Twidroid

It’s Twitter for Android. I plan to use this until Twitter’s official app is available on Android.

4 – PdaNet

With Android, tethering is free. Until Android 2.2 comes out (where it’s part of the OS), use this app to connect your computer to the Internet using either a USB or Bluetooth connection to your Android phone.

5 – Google Goggles

Got a picture you can’t identify? Start Google Goggles and point your camera at it. Chances are good that Google can figure out who or what it is.

6 – Shazam

This does for audio what Google Goggles does for pictures.

7 – Ringdroid

Turn any song on your phone into a ring tone.

8 – Wifi Analyzer

See the names of signal strength of the wifi access points around you.

9 – Shop Savvy

I think this one also reads QR codes, but that’s not what I use it for. Use this app when you’re in a store and wonder if the sale price is comparable to what you can find online or at other stores close to your location. From Best Buy it told me I could drive one mile down the road to Staples and save ten dollars.

10 – Where

Find food, gas, entertainment… just about anything in your general location. Application also shows prices.

11 – Bible

Use this app to get almost any version of the Bible: KJV, NKJV, NIV, ASV, ESV, etc. I used the same app on my iPod Touch (my church has wifi). Now it’s on my phone even if I don’t have wifi.

12 – RealCalc

Best calculator I’ve found. Has all the scientific functions and it’s laid out logically… as long as you don’t think RPN is logical.

This should keep you busy for a bit. I also use Google Voice and Evernote on my Droid. I have one game: Air Control. Now that I have an iPad, I don’t use the Droid for games very often. The size of the iPad makes it a killer game platform.

Above is my keynote presentation from eTech’s first Technology Spring Institute.  There’s no audio in the Slideboom deck.  They did video tape the presentation and will have it on iTunes with the audio.  If you saw the presentation, the concepts should come back to you quickly as you go through the slides. 

Delicious tag: http://delicious.com/atrusty/2010tsi

Technical notes: This was the first presentation I did using the beta of PowerPoint 2010.  For the first time my videos worked without any special tricks when I uploaded the PPTX file to Slideboom.  A great new feature in PPT2010 is video cropping.  I did this on all the videos, but Slideboom didn’t know how to handle it.  So you’ll see each video in its entirety.  The JFK video at the end also plays twice.  In my original deck, only the second one played.

For Discussion

I started this presentation with an attention grabbing video.  At first I was afraid of upsetting some of the attendees by the graphic nature of the video, but I thought the overall idea would add good perspective to the whole presentation.  You may have heard the story of a community who rescued three orphaned seals.  The community raised these seals from pups, nurtured them and sheltered them from the dangers of the outside world.  When the seals were old enough, the whole community celebrated their return to the wild by going down to the beach and having a “graduation party” of sorts.  That should help you understand the first video.

I wanted to establish a little perspective concerning social networking as it relates to other dangers faced by students.  You’ll see some news articles about teens killed in Facebook linked activities.  A few students were killed last year because they became too involved with the wrong people while using social networking.  This was trumpeted as a national tragedy and the responsible social networking sites were blamed.  Yet, when twenty students die in school bus related accidents in one year (that’s the national average), the NTSB proclaims school buses as one of the safest ways to travel.  800 teens died last year while driving to or from school.  EIGHT-HUNDRED!  That’s more than four for ever day of school.  Do we see a national push to get our high school students from behind the wheel and back on the bus?

We waste a lot of effort trying to keep our students off social networking sites instead of educating them on the proper use of these sites.  Take a look at the 21st century skills listed on slide number 121.  Many of these critical skills can only be mastered by using social networking tools.

In the end, I offered several, free tools which could be used to begin to educate our students about social networking without exposing them to the outside world.  These open source applications can be added to any school server and give students a chance to use services similar to Facebook, Delicious, Twitter and Flickr.  Using these resources in a “walled garden”, students could be introduced to social networking without the worry of unknown dangers lurking just off the shore.