Image by luc legay via Flickr

I saw a post on Mashable about Everloop and decided to check it out.  The site is intended for students ages 8-13 but your 14-15 year olds and children under 8 can use the site as well, provided they comply to the terms of service.  I decided to register as a student to see what the process looks like.  And that’s where things started to get weird.

When a child registers, they choose a name and input their birthdate and a parent’s email.  Of course, I entered in my own email address and clicked continue.  With that, I was able to get into the site and begin establishing myself.  Communication is disabled though, until the parent confirms the email address and registers.  After checking my email and clicking on the link, I was asked to register as the parent.  I loved that I was able to see what information my ‘child’ provided and even make changes (if they lied about their age for example).  It’s the next step that began to trouble me.  After putting in my name and basic info, I was asked to put in my billing information.  Huh?  This is a free site.  Why should I enter in my billing information?  Well, it turns out they have a virtual economy, which can be bought into with US dollars.  No worries there, but there’s also a second reason. In order to confirm that you really are an adult, you have two choices: Pay them $1 via credit card or put in the last four digits of your social security number.  This gave me pause.  To be honest, I think this step right there is going to be a stumbling block for many parents.  Would you want to put in your credit card information for a site that your child will be using?  Or your social, even if it is just the last four?

And right there lies a big part of the problem with alts like Everloop.  Why do you join a social network?  Some people may join just to explore, but most join because their friends, family and colleagues are there.  The same thing goes for students.  They might join a site like Edmodo.com if their teachers are using it, or for a class project…  but otherwise they’re going to go where their friends are.  And that’s Facebook.  And Twitter.  And YouTube.

Believe me, I’m all for alts.  In many schools, sites like Facebook are blocked.  And it’s important for us to be teaching about social networking, both from a safety perspective as well as a ‘setting our students up to succeed’ perspective.  But there’s little impetus for a student to jump into a moderated community that their friends aren’t on, even more so if their parents need to jump through a good number of hoops to get signed up.

It’s discouraging.  I’m a fan of alternatives to social sites, but for the most part, I think they’re always going to be relegated to niche communities.  The lure of the major players is just too strong to pretend that students won’t still flock to them.

Related articles

• Everloop Social Media Site For Tweens, But Will They Use It? (blogworld.com)
• Everloop and i-Safe bring “tween” social networking into schools (venturebeat.com)

Image by Bright Meadow via Flickr

Saw a new site recommended on Twitter today called Pen.io. The description? “Create beautiful text based pages in seconds and share them with the world.”

That’s it. And that’s really all it does. No registration, no email required. Just put in what you want the link to be and a password of your choice. It takes you over to a page where you can enter in a title and your text. Click save.

Done.

End result is a link to a nice looking web page that has all of your text on it. No ads, no other links, no distractions, just the text. There’s a couple of other features, like the ability to drag in an image or video, but really the beauty of the site is in its simplicity.

I don’t think this site will raise test scores. I don’t think it will encourage the acquisition of 21st century skills. But sometimes you just want to publish something and share it. You don’t want to create a blog, you don’t want to go through a huge amount of registration. You don’t need comments or want a “Share this via Twitter” link. You just want your text in a nice, clean, elegant format. And that’s where sites like Pen.io fit in.

Are the days of the bloated mega software over (looking at you Microsoft and Adobe)? Of course not. But for most people, the vast majority of their tasks are simple, targeted and don’t require a huge number of features. That’s one thing Apple has understood. It isn’t a race to get the most features in, it’s about providing the most satisfying experience. And that’s why I love the world of Web 2.0 and am constantly amazed by the things people cobble together.

Image via CrunchBase

Mike Bryant dropped me an email last night recommending that I check out Tripline, and boy am I glad he did!  It’s another one of those sites that allows you to create custom Google Maps, but the interface and features make it stand head and shoulders above many others.  It has the social features that I always look for, allowing you to connect directly to Facebook, Twitter, Tripit, FourSquare, Gowalla and others.  And with just a few clicks, you can create ‘trips’ based on them.  So for example, if you use Tripit to organize your trips, you can import in all the locations from a single trip and lay it out on a map. Or if you use the locations feature in Twitter, you can lay out your tweets based on where you tweeted them from.

However, that’s just the starting point.  When the final product is not only an interactive map, but it’s animated.  It’s very similar to trips in Google Earth, where you push Play and it just zips you from location to location.  It draws a a red line between locations, very reminiscent of the map animation in the Indiana Jones series.  The comparison to Google Earth goes even deeper though, because you can take your final trip and save it as a KMZ file, allowing you to open it right up in Google Earth.  Even better though, it takes advantage of browser plugins to let you actually view the trip in Google Earth right there in your browser window!  That’s right, in the browser, without even opening up Google Earth.  Neat trick, eh?

For every pushpin, you can add text and images.  Images can be imported in from Facebook, Flickr, Picassa or uploaded directly into the site.  You can also choose if you want it to be a location that you just fly through, to pause at (letting people read the text before it goes on) or to actually play a slideshow of the images for that pushpin.

Net results?  It’s a simple online way to create interactive maps, trips and even Google Lit Trips without the hassle of dealing with Google Earth itself.  I love that it doesn’t try to pigeon hole the site as simply a travelogue either.  When you go to create something new, you have the option of creating a trip, a story, a hike, a holiday card, an adventure, or even a quest.  You can make yourself be a ‘traveler’ on the trip, add other people that are on the site, or create fictional characters to be participants.  Want to add Tom Sawyer to your Lit Trip of Huckleberry Finn?  Go ahead and create him, and somebody else can then use the same character in their own retelling of Tom’s own story!  When that character is clicked on, people will see ALL stories associated with that ‘person’.

It’s one of the more impressive sites I’ve seen lately and has immediate implications for educators.  It’s one of those sites that a variety of teachers will be able to jump right into and make use of.    It took me about 20 minutes to create the trip below, which takes people on a journey to every US state capital, from East to West, complete with pictures of each capitol building.  And as you can see, the embeds look pretty darn good.

Check it out and let me know what you think.  How do you see Tripline being used in the classroom?

Related articles

• Tripline releases a new app for social media savvy travelers (thenextweb.com)
• Plan, Tag, Attach & Share Your Travels With Tripline (makeuseof.com)
• Google Lit Trips by Jerome Burg: Microsoft Education Award Laureate #gct (speedofcreativity.org)

Ever see a new site that wows you, not just because it has good content, but because of the way it presents it?  That’s where I file Qwiki.  So far as I can tell, it basically takes text from a variety of locations, adds a great text-to-speech translater to it, and then blends in images and videos from a bunch of other sources. The end result is a video encyclopedia mashup of content from around the web.  It sounds pretty darn decent, it looks incredibly polished, and everything is hyperlinked.  Videos, images, related content, all just a click away.  Interestingly, they claim that it has over 2 million ‘articles’ posted already.  If that’s true, it’s pretty astonishing for a site that’s still in alpha.  You can even contribute in a limited way by submitting in links to related photos and videos.  A very nice touch, that.  The best way to understand what it’s doing is to experience it for yourself.  I’ve embedded one here, but I’d drop by the site and register.  Looks like this definitely has some interesting potential.

Working on an iPad presentation and in my research, came across an interesting interview with Warren Buckleitner, editor of Children’s Technology Review ( childrenstech.com).  I’m enamored with the iPad right now, and even though I don’t have one, I think the current iPod Touch is an amazing device.  Aiden isn’t even 4 yet and I keep considering getting him his own iTouch.  The main reason is that I see it becoming an integral part of the formation of his digital identity.  And Buckleitner’s comments in the interview hit right on the ideas that are playing around in my mind.

Two favorite parts.  The first:

Think of devices like the iPad, and its little brother, the new camera-equipped iPod Touch, as the bicycle of the digital age. These devices are at the center of a modern child’s play. They capture and manage information.

Followed closely by this, when asked whether Montessori would approve of the iPad:

Buckleitner’s view is this: “Remember that Montessori was a physician prior to being an educator. In her speeches and writings, it was obvious that she wasn’t afraid of new technology.”

Montessori would “use iPads, but she’d be choosy about the apps,” Buckeitner said. “She’d look for experiences that empower a child, promote active learning; and that have smart features, such as the ability to self-correct and auto level.”

He adds that she’d use it to supplement, not replace, traditional experiences.

I think one of my biggest issues with many iOS articles and presentations is that they devolve into a ‘favorite apps’ conversation.  That’s like starting off with a solution and trying to find a problem to fit it.  We need to reverse the discussion.  The better question is, what do we need to teach our students and how can technology support it?

There are apps that I absolutely love and rely on daily.  But they’ve all become indispensable because I had a need first, and then the app fulfilled that need.  The apps that I bought because I thought they looked or sounded cool?  More often than not, they haven’t been launched since the day I bought them.  And in the classroom, we shouldn’t be changing our content based on the availability of an app that keys in on it.  If we have a need and the right app is there, that’s fantastic.  If the right app hasn’t been written, then you need to look elsewhere.

Related articles

• iPad’s Approach to Montessori for Free (themactrack.com)
• Kid Education Expert Calls iPad the Bicycle of the Digital Age (cultofmac.com)

Matt “Geekybird” Monjan told me he had a site that he thought I’d love, but I’ll be honest, I was skeptical.  It isn’t often that I find a Web 2.0 site that totally rocks me.  uJam does.  Big time.  I’ve shared it in three presentations in the last week alone, and every time I do, there’s an audible buzz amongst audience members.  I’m still not exactly sure how it fits into education besides a few obvious ways, but without a doubt it’s something teachers and students alike are going to love.

You get started by speaking/humming/whisteling/rhyming/rapping into the microphone.  It’ll tap out a beat to ensure that you keep it steady, but other than that you just do it freestyle.  Then it takes you into something that looks a little like a garageband/audacity style interface… but far simpler.

You’ll see your recording along the main line, and if you want you can use a tool to nudge it around a bit to ensure it’s right on the beat.  The really interesting thing is that if you look just below the voice pattern, you’ll see chords.  Chords?  Yeah, chords!  It analyzes your voice, figures out what key you’re speaking/singing in, and aligns chords to match up with your voice!  Through a drop down box at the bottom, you can add a music style to the project, and all of a sudden you’ve got instruments and percussion playing along with you in the style of your choice.  What’s your personal favorite?  Disco, reggae, hard rock, lullaby, funk, orchestral, they’re all in there!  You can choose a complete style or pick your instruments a la carte.

One thing that really surprised me was that you could customize the chords.  If you know your music, you can tweak it as much as you like, down to the very notes.  But if you’re just a hack, you can select your chord progression to be happy, said, blues, Bach, or any of about 10 other styles.

The end result is that you have a drop dead easy way to take any voice recording and turn it into a piece of music.  And I have to tell you, it really is amazing how well it works.  If you can speak on beat, the results are going to astound you.  And even if you can’t, the results are still pretty impressive.

The site is still in private alpha right now, so you can’t just register and get right in.  But sign up for the pre-reg list, as I understand it they’ll be opening things up before the end of the year.  But until then, put this one on your watch list.  It’s one of the most exciting developments I’ve seen in quite a while.

I’m giving one Lenovo ThinkCentre M90z through the Fit42 Challenge, but if you want some other ways, you have a whole bunch of chances to do so.  Each of the people below are doing giveaways on their own site, just click through on the dates listed to see how you can be entered to win one for yourself.

However, that’s not the only way to win.  They’re also giving away several packs of 5 computers to non-profits that fit the following conditions:

• Organization is located in US or Canada
• Medical, education or similar community focus
• Preference given to non-profits or orgs dedicated to social good
• Must have concrete application for 5 touch-enabled M90z’s

If you’d like to be entered for one of these 5-packs, just leave a comment here with the name of your organization (school/district) or non-profit group, and I’ll forward your names on to Lenovo!

Sound simple?  It is.  Leave your comments here and you’ll have a couple of chances to win!  And don’t forget, go visit the other blogs listed about to try to win one for yourself.

Good luck!

I’m fat. There I said it. I’m not thrilled about it, and I’ve made some strides, but I’m definitely a yo-yo dieter. Lost 33 pounds, gained back almost 10. Feh.

So what should I do about it? Some might just recommit. Some might seek out the support of friends. Me? I create a fitness challenge to convince dozens of others to suffer alongside me

Introducing… the Fit42 Health and Fitness Challenge! It will begin on 1/1/11, and run through the end of February. 60ish days. You set your goals, you decide your plan of attack. At the end a team of judges will pick five finalists based on how well you met your goals AND how much you supported your fellow challengers. The primary goal of this is to get healthy in 2011. The secondary goal is to win the grand prize for the challenge… which just happens to be a brand new Lenovo M90z ThinkCentre.

Yeah, that’s right. Grand prize is a new desktop computer. I have one just like it. It rocks big time. Huge all in one multitouch screen. You know how everybody says the iPad is fantastic, but it’s no computer? Well, this has the multitouch screen like an iPad, but it IS a computer, and a powerful beast at that.

So how do you win?  Simple.  Go to Fit42.net and register.  The edit your profile, click on the Challenge page and fill in your history, goals and plan.  That gets you entered into the contest.  Then once 1/1/11 comes around, document your progress on the site and support your fellow challengers.  Update frequently and often, and you just may be picked by our judges to be one of the finalists.  They’ll narrow it down to five, and then the community will vote to see who wins the grand prize.

Some have asked what kinds of goals are eligible…  That’s entirely up to you.  Here are just a few ideas:

• Lose weight.  It could be 10 pounds, it could be 3 pounds.  Everyone has different needs.
• Get in better shape.  You might want to try to run a 5K, or maybe just get out and walk 3 times a week.
• Quit smoking.  There’s no time like the present to cut down on the habit or kick it entirely.
• Cut out caffeine
• Count calories
• Keep track of steps per day and get more active
• Anything else that will get you healthy and fit for the new year!

So that’s the 411.  I hope you’ll join me and challenge yourself to be just a little healthier and more fit in 2011.  And let’s do what we can to support each other in those endeavors!

If you’re even remotely considering using iPads at your school, you should be following Fraser Speirs.  But he recently put up a post that has me raising my eyebrows just a bit.  I’d love to comment on his site, but comments are turned off right now.

In his  Run What Ya Brung post, he rails against the idea that, “In the future, we will teach using the mobile phones the kids bring to school with them.” The post itself is well worth the read, and he makes some excellent points.  As a former Tech Director, I’ll be the first to admit that the idea sounds sexier in theory than it would be to implement.  However, I do think there are some merits to the idea that get glossed over the way it is described.

I agree with him that there are ‘digital divide’ issues, related to both hardware and services/plans.  And there are also hurdles to overcome with respects to network infrastructure and teacher training.  However,  I think my main issue is that the post seems to be based around the assumption that the school would require every student to have and use a cell in the classroom.  There’s a lot of space in between the ‘cell phones are forbidden’ phase and the ‘cell phones are required for all students’ phase.  If the students have an iPhone, or Android phone, or tablet available to them, are we really going to say that students are unable to make use of them because the teacher doesn’t know what to do with them?  Or because the network admin hasn’t figured out how to keep the network secure?  Or because some kids in the classroom may not have them?

Let’s start with equity.  If we refuse to allow students to use their own technology because of equity, then all we’re doing is restricting them to the lowest common denominator.  Should we hold back students that are ready to move forward because one student in the room doesn’t understand the topic yet?  Of course not.  I’m not saying we want to leave any kids behind.  We can and should find ways to make sure everyone can be involved in very experience in the classroom.  But to refuse to allow a student to use technology they already own just because another student doesn’t have it is ridiculous.  It’s an issue, yes.  And that is definitely going to play a factor in how lessons are structured.  But there’s a big gap between letting students use what they have, and teaching lessons that require everyone to have a device like that.

Regarding network security, there’s ways to restrict access and traffic in any number of ways.  A simple radius server can restrict access to a WiFi network to just approved devices.  So perhaps the easiest solution is to have sensitive data available only through approved devices on a separate network.  Want to enter in  your report cards?  Do it from an approved computer.  Want to upload a photo or create a blog post?  Use the public network.  That’s just one potential solution, with dozens of other variations possible.  As a former Tech Dir, I realized that I often did more harm than good in the name of uptime and security.  Can you pat yourself on the back that all the computers are up and running, if teachers are unable to use them effectively due to overbearing security measures?  It’s a real problem.  Security is an issue, but at the same time, it has to be done in a way that supports teachers and students, not preventing them from moving forward.

As the hardware and services themselves, once again I think the issue is expectations.  Can we assume that every cell phone has the internet?  Of course not.  But should we restrict the ones that do have that ability from using it because others don’t?  That would be like saying some people can’t use graphing calculators because others don’t graph.  Or students can’t use a three button mouse if the other mice have two buttons.   Once again, it’s one thing to require it, but quite another to allow them to use it if they have it available.

When all is said and done, here’s what I keep coming back to.   My son is almost 4.  He has his own blog where he saves things he wants to remember.  When he finds something he likes, or has something he wants to preserve, he has us take a picture of it and upload it.  We’re seriously considering getting him an iPod Touch.  Then he’ll be able to take pictures himself whenever he wants.  It won’t take much to teach him to upload them as well.  And that’s how he will document his life and learning.  When he gets into schools, are we really going to take that away from him?  Of course there will be issues and he’ll have to learn what is appropriate and what isn’t.  When it’s ok to use, when to switch it off.  But that’s no different than the rest of growing up.

There will be a day when 99% of our students have a smartphone type device in their pockets.  As educators, I think we would be foolish not to be leveraging them.  That day is not today, but it’s coming.  So when do we make the switch?  When 30% of them have such a device?  50%?  80%?  In my mind, the sooner the better.  Because all we’re doing is letting students make use of the technology they know better than any other.  And helping them learn how to use it safely and appropriately.  No, I don’t see us getting rid of computers or laptops at school.  But I do think we’ll be a whole lot less dependent on them.

Related articles

• Cell Phones in School (socyberty.com)
• In High School Chem Labs, Every Camera Phone Can Be A Spectrometer (wired.com)
• SMS Education: Poll Everywhere is Making the Mobile Pop-Quiz More Affordable (fastcompany.com)
• Can you analyze me now? Cell phones bring spectroscopy to the classroom (eurekalert.org)
• Local teachers experiment with texting answers in the classroom (thegazette.com)

I’ve been waiting a long time for this.  The very first day I unwrapped the iPad, I went over to Discovery Education to test it out.  And while it worked surprisingly well, it wasn’t the experience that users deserved.  That was rectified yesterday.  We launched a brand new site that has been optimized specifically for the iPad.  You can find it over at http://mobile.discoveryeducation.com As of right now, it’s video only…  but there’s 33,000+ videos there for educators and students to view on demand.  And yes, they’ve all been optimized specifically for the iPad’s screen.   The interface is smooth and easy to navigate.  It’s pretty easy to find the videos you want and they look amazing.

You can read the marketing material over here but there ARE a few little easter eggs in there.  For example, I’m sure you know that there’s a button you can click to view the videos in full screen.  And that they look great in portrait or landscape mode.  But did you know that if you’re on a video page and have clicked play, you can use the two finger pinch to make it full screen or shrink it back down again?  Try it!  Works just like it does for photos.

One other little easter egg for you.  Since it’s web based and you access it through Safari, just like all videos viewable in Safari it they can be displayed on a projector!  While the website itself won’t show up on the projector, plug it in and start playing a video and it’ll show up there for all to see!  It’s a little touch, but you’ll definitely want to keep that in mind if you use it in the classroom.

I couldn’t be more thrilled, but the best part is that it’s step one.  In a few weeks, we’ll be adding more.  Images, speeches, songs are all slated to be added in.  And beyond that, we’ll be integrating in the student center, so your students can take quizzes, do writing prompts and complete assignments… all from the iPad.  It’s an exciting new arena for us, and I can’t wait to see how far we take it!

If you have a Discovery Education username and password, just go to http://mobile.discoveryeducation.com and check it out.  It’s available to you right now!

If you’ve given it a shot already, let me know what you think.  Are you as excited about it as we are?

Related articles

• Discovery Education Launches New iPad Platform (huffingtonpost.com)
• Discovery Education launches iPad-optimized Web app (reviews.cnet.com)

And yes, that is a serious question.  I really enjoyed doing the last podcast and had a few thoughts bouncing around the ol’ noggin yesterday afternoon.  So I said, “What the heck, let’s let it roll…”  Recorded another podcast during the drive home.  Two in one week, will wonders never cease?

What prompted it was that I created a page for Aiden to record his own memories, things that are important to him and things he thinks are worth noting and preserving.  It’s on Posterous right now, and the idea is that whenever he sees something he likes or wants to remember, he tells Jess and I and we’ll take a picture of it or give him the camera and let him do it.  Then we send it over to Posterous and it’s preserved on his own page.  We put a link to that page on the Lenovo in his bedroom, so he can pull it up at any time and scroll through it.  Photos, Videos, and once he begins writing, he can send text there too.  And of course, if he wants to create his own video blog entries and talk to the camera… well, we’d be happy to accommodate.

I created that yesterday.  But it got me thinking… if he’s actively recording and publishing at age three, what does that mean for when he gets into kindergarten??  Let’s face it, he’ll be doing it independently before long.  And once he can, how long will it be before he earns his own iPod Touch, with camera and microphone and video and all?  And once he has that, how long before he’s actively documenting his own life and learning?

Not long at all.

Now take that idea, and follow it through a few more steps. . . . . . .   You thinking what I am?  Listen to the show to find out.  And then let me know what you think.  In particular, answer me this:

Is three years old too young for an account on YouTube?

Click here to download the podcast.

I guess I was feeling reflective yesterday, got the bug to create a podcast.  Not a big deal, I know, people do it all the time.  I think this was the first one I’ve done in about a year, so it felt like a big deal to me.  I talk about that a bit in the show, the mental barriers, that we create for ourselves that sometimes prevent us from plowing forward.

But the bulk of the show explores my thoughts about the Twitter experience, and while we ALL have a memory of Twitter ‘back in the day’…  even if you just signed up a week ago.  I also delve into some musings on what the future of social media may need to evolve to.

It’s been a while, far too long.  Curious to know how many people will actually take the time to listen to this.  Are podcasts even in your daily routine anymore?  Is it still relevant?  Share a thought, I’d be curious to know your ideas on the topic.

Enjoy.

Download the podcast