In fact, he said something this week that was so funny, Patrick made a meme using Preston’s likeness. Here is a sample of that meme:

I invited Preston and some others to watch the premier of Star Trek: Into Darkness.  The premier was in 3D, and so Preston said, “I hate 3D. I am not going.” Even though he likes Star Trek, he refuses to watch 3D. He feels, and rightly so, it is over used. Apparently he has had one too many bad 3D experiences in the last few years.

Yes, we can blame James Cameron for this, he did bring back 3D from the dead with Avatar, but, that is not really true. He did not bring back 3D, he literally reinvented it. He had his teams building hardware, software, and special computers to create a movie that was designed from storyboards to be 3D. That is why it is a great movie, 3D was the planned medium.

The Star Trek film was also designed for 3D. As I predicted, the 3D was not distracting, it was just part of the film. A film designed to be in 3D.

Then there are films such as the much overhyped and widely loved Harry Potter series. I watched one of the films in 3D. It was awful.  Obviously, they converted it to 3D in post production. Researching this topic, I found this was attempted on another Harry Potter, but the results were so bad they canceled the plan. Unplanned technology, creates a bad experience. Misused technology creates a bad experience.

In grad school we looked at some research, and this was ages ago back in 2001-2002, but it has stuck with me. The stats read that people had the same neophobia with technology that they did with food. If someone has a bad experience, it could take up to seven, and sometimes as many as ten, more exposures to get them to move past their first initial bad experience. As I have been working in educational technology, I have found that this theory is very accurate.

Preston had a bad experience with 3D. More than one. He kept attending movies that he was genuinely interested in, but still left those movies feeling annoyed because of unplanned and misused technology. He was motivated by the content, yet, he still had an adverse reaction.

Preston is not alone, because 3D technology being misused and abused is just a small percentage of technology that is often injected without a plan into educational technology. Obsession with QR codes, time-consuming presentation technology, apps that do not allow for any creation only consumption, wikis, Twitter for backchannel chats, expensive analog response systems, and of course the Coomber potable audio recorder (which looked like it was made in 1975 when sold to schools in 2009).

All of these technologies have legitimate uses in education. Even the Coomber would be useful in a school based in the Arctic or in one of those towns that prohibits wifi technology.  However, most of the time, the uses for these technologies would be considered niche. They would plug-in to enhance a larger plan or project, if that project was designed for plug-ins.

Keeping people of all ages interested in learning can be challenging. Impacting learning negatively with extraneous unplanned technology is only going to stifle educational technology initiatives. The curriculum and the educational goals should naturally lead people down a path to appropriate technology.  It is true that technology can create new insights and new directions, but that is only true if those things exist in unity with educational process.

Wrapping this up, a word to Preston. The use of 3D in “Star Trek: Into Darkness” is appropriate. In the first scene, the entire theater shifted to the right to dodge a spear moving at high velocity. Wait, and watch it in 2D. Then, watch it in 3D if you liked the story. Avoid all 3D TVs and other 3D technologies until you have done this. 

And remember, when planned appropriately 3D abides.

Tony DePrato

www.tonydeprato.com

GeoGuessr.com is a website that has one and only one goal. To get you to observe closely and figure out where you are. Of course most people know where you are but what GeoGuessr does is give you a location and using Google Street View you must look around, explore the area and then on the map on the right hand side take a guess of where that actually is. The closer you are determines how many points you get.

There is no log in, there are no real rules, you just explore, observe, research and then guess. You have 5 rounds to get the highest total amount of points and then it automatically starts over. Going through all five rounds (for me) took about 7-10 minutes. Of course, the more you play, the better you will become. This seems like a great activity to start a class. Go ahead and give it a whirl. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

http://geoguessr.com

What can I say, I forgot to post espiode 64, so I thought I’d bundle 64 & 65 together! They are both fantastic shows. In 64 we talk about cursing (otherwise known as naughty words), the world’s smallest movie electronic assessments and Omar does some Yoodling.

In 65 we talk about the New Normal, sleep deprivation, cannibalism (don’t worry no one was eaten during this recording) and Subtext for iPad.

As always you can find all our episodes on iTunes.

And you can find episode 64 and episode 65 by following these links.

If you want to listen from the confort of your own page just listen below.

Episode 64

Episode 65

So I decided to warm-up, and get a feel for the content and the delivery. I thought, “who is the toughest audience to win over?”. I decided if I could impress and win over a really tough audience or individual participant, then I could declare my training strategy a success.

So, I conducted the beta-training, and then asked the single participant to give me some feedback on some of the key concepts and themes. Here is what he said:

Obviously, there is some fine-tuning to do. I am confident I can workout the problems before this project is out of beta and into the classroom. Grumpy Cat is a “tough crowd”,
I actually thought it would be worse.

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy   :)

Tony DePrato
tonydeprato.com

Howdy folks! Long time users of Scratch (the intro to computing program from MIT) has been stuck on version 1.4 for a long time now. Scratch is easy enough for elementary students (third maybe even second grade) can use it, but it is powerful enough that high school students and people in higher education can find uses as well.

Lately, there has been quite a bit of news concerning the latest version of Scratch scheduled to become available this Thursday, May 9th, but there are some things that you need to know about it before you dive in.

The biggest thing I am excited about is the fact that it is now browser based. which means no need for people at schools to download and install. They can just go to website, log in and get programming.

Here are some cool features that you can find in Scratch 2.0. It looks very exciting.

I have a good idea of what is happening here. The timezone on the teacher’s Edmodo account and the timezone on the student’s Edmodo account is different. Changing these timezones is easy. It’s the same for the teacher’s account as it is for the student’s account. Read on past the break to see how easy it is to do this.

Why do I need to do this?

Setting the timezone in Edmodo may not seem like the most important thing to do but it can cause confusion if it’s not done.

For example, if you have a timezone that is different than your students assignments and posts can show up and time stamped completely different than what you have. This can be particularly confusing when one student has a due date for Friday and his friend has the same assignment due on a Saturday.

Step 1 – Access your settings

In the top right hand corner you can click on the Account link (right next to your Profile) and then select Settings.

Step 2 – Change your Timezone

Change your timezone and then click on Save Personal Info.

Then make sure your students are all on the same timezone as you. This will make sure that all your assignment due dates are the same throughout the class.

That’s it!

Happy Edmodo-ing!

This is pretty damn cool. The good people at IBM work with individual atoms to find new and more efficient ways of storing our data. They decided to show off a little and made a short stop motion movie using individual atoms. To make it even better they have a slightly longer movie talking to the team that actually made the movie. They talk about how it is done, why it was done and most importantly it highlights their love of science. Check out that movie below and prepare to smile some more.

The concept is simple. You stock just enough stuff to make products barely above your quota. When the needed parts are at a certain level, a signal or communication is sent to a supplier who then makes and ships more parts. The supplier also uses the same concept, asking for raw materials only when current materials are at a certain level.

There is no overstocking. There is minimal space for storage. There is virtually no waste.

In Japan, you can even see this at popular eateries. I use to frequent a place close to my office in Japan that would run out of food every night. I asked the owned about this once and he said, “I buy my food fresh everyday. I predict how much I need. I run out and then wait until the next day. I never serve old food, and I never waste any food.”

His space was small, but optimized for people and not storage. Cheaper rent, no waste, and a higher quality of food. Basically the opposite of Sams Club, Cosco, and those crazy people on EXTREME COUPONERS.

In my current position, I often have to provide training or support. Normally I develop videos and materials for topics that I am certain people will struggle with. However, I do not put these online for people until I know they are ready.

I wait for signals. I wait for a few people to ask me the same question in a short time-frame. Sometimes I watch for trends in tech-support tickets. Then when I feel like enough people are ready, the content becomes live. I do this because I have found:

• Sending too much information is a waste. People tend to only want to learn in small doses when not enrolled in a program of some sort.
• The needs that were predicted could shift, and the online content could become redundant.
• Necessity is the mother of invention and motivation. The desire needs to be there before they will actually go through the full learning experience.

I would not say this is radical or controversial, but people do disagree with the approach. I have been told it seems unprofessional, and that I am not prepared (even though the materials are done weeks and sometimes months in advance). I think it is practical, and addresses the true nature of how busy people learn.

Additionally, I want people to be hungry for more and not overwhelmed by a lengthy list of pre-programmed topics.

Recently, I was part of a huge professional development day at my school. I was only doing tech support, the event was managed by someone else. He has ten very deep topics to explore. I mean really deep, things you need to ponder for a few days.

He had all the materials for all ten topics completed months ago. He has a website setup with all the topics organized. However, the week before the session, the only thing that was live was one topic only. That topic stayed live for a week, and then was used for the professional development.

The feedback collected from the participants was overwhelming positive. They stated clearly that they felt prepared and focused.

I did not influence this person at all. I did not give them a speech about doing things just in time. However, I when I realized that they had the option to be overwhelming and chose to be focused, and to use a week to build-up interest- I decided to write this post.

Maybe this will be my new soapbox.

Tony DePrato
tonydeprato.com

Howdy once again, friendly Internet visitor. Last time I talked about what copyright is and what fair use is and provided a handy-dandy chart to help you determine if you’ve violated copyright or not. This time we will talk about where to find royalty free images, sounds and videos that you and your students can freely use without the guilt of breaking the law.

To get the whole list click past the break below.

Fair use and Public domain
Before we get too far let’s talk about these types of material you will run into.

• Copyright material – You may be able to use it with permission from the owner/organization
• Royalty free – These images are there to use but the owner has the right to ask you to pay to use the image/or you must give credit to the owner
• Public domain – Go nuts! No need for any citation whatsoever

Images
A lot of people (not just us educators and our students) will search through Google’s image search and then simply copy and paste. You see it all the time, but this is not the best method. You could be using copyright material and not even know it! Just because it’s on Google and using Google is free, doesn’t mean that image is free to use.

While there are quite a few royalty free and public domain image sites out there these are some of the better one’s I’ve found.

All the images on this site are completely free to use, but they do ask that you give credit to the owner of the image as it is written on their About page.

The images here are pretty good and Morgue files will also search other websites with royalty free images, but all of these other sites do require you to pay to use their image.

When you find an image you like and click on it, you get this handy window where it gives you the detail about attribution and you can even crop the image right here too!

Another good website is www.veezzle.com

Where Morgue File hosts the images, Veezzle simply scours the Internet looking for free royalty free images. When you find an image you want (in this case of an adorable puppy) it will take you to a new page.

Here it will tell you where it comes from, information about the license, how to use, etc. Rest assured though, if it is on Veezzle, then it is free.

There are plenty of others out there and you can check out my Delicious list of them here.

Music/Sound effects
This is a little easier to do because music and sound effects aren’t as ubiquitous as images.

Jamendo

This site offers free full length music files that you can download and use for free. Most of the music is free to download and use but there are some that do charge. Sorry there is no Psy, One Direction, Tupac or any major recording artist here on Jamenod, but you will still find lots to chose from.

Simply search for something you’re looking. You can preview the song, then if you want to download it, simply click on the download button.

Once you have the file do as you please. Just don’t re-upload it as your own work. That is very uncool.

Maybe you’re not looking for music. Maybe you need a sound effect for a video project? Well SoundBible has got you covered.

They have sound effects and music as well, but these audio files are completely free and also copyright free. It is a virtual treasure trove here of sounds that you and your students can feel free to use as much and as often as you like with no fear of copyright infringement.

Videos
This is an easy one.

You see, almost everything on YouTube is royalty free. Obviously professional music videos and the like are not but that leaves more than 99% of its content free for you to use. Now, you can’t download it and redistribute it-that’s illegal, but you can link to it, embed into a website, share it on Edmodo as much as you like and not lose any sleep at night.

Another great website to find wonderful videos is Vimeo.

Like youTube nearly everything here is royalty free and you can embed it wherever you like!

There are also www.teachertube.com and www.schooltube.com but I find that these sites are very limited in their offerings and it can sometimes be tough to find good quality videos. I would stick with YouTube and Vimeo.

So there you have it. If there are any resources you’d like to share be sure to leave them in the comments!