Browsing articles tagged with " program"

I won’t buy anything that only does one thing

May 3, 2009   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  1 Comment

I have been thinking a lot about this recently: I don’t want anything to do with a device that only does what it was advertised to do. It is something that I have slowly realized as over he last few years as I went through the experience of using a Smart Board, CPS clicker system, an iPod touch and an Apple TV. The two former products are meant to do one thing well. They are advertised specifically for educational purposes, and they work. But the two latter products are meant to do anything that the community makes them do, and they are not specifically marketed as educational components.
 
The latter products I keep on coming back to because they can do more and more as the community supports future development, and I guess that this is the difference between products I want to use and ones I don’t. The ones I care to use for education, are the ones with built in communities. They are the ones that get pushed to their full potential.
 
So I guess what I am saying is that if I am ever put in change of large purchasing decisions for a district or school, I will be choosing to purchase and support products that connect together and have a community surrouning them.
 
For example: I am right now using my iPod touch with an open source program called boxee (remote on the touch and the full program on the Apple TV) that is a full fledged media center in order to watch powerful TED talks in high definition on my TV using WiFi to stream the content. It is all connected.
 
Shouldn’t it always be this way?
 
(As an aside, I realize that this example is filled with apple products. I don’t believe that apple has a monopoly on connectedness or hackability, it happens that this is the community that I associate with most easily. I would actually love to hear about other devices that you keep on coming back to because they increase in value over time.)
 
Sent from my iPod

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Truth in advertising…

Apr 19, 2009   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  1 Comment

I have had quite a few people follow me on twitter recently that weren’t exactly people. They were organizations and schools. They were large groups of people that all somehow are tweeting with the same account. This, is a little unsettling to me and I’m not sure why.
 
I guess it is partially because I believe it is a little less than genuine to have a single voice represent an entire entity. I also believe that many groups are joining twitter simply to advertise that they are on twitter. This is even less genuine.
 
To me, an organization should encourage all of it’s members to become a part of a learning network. It should ask all of it’s employees to have heir own voices and then stream them all into a single place. The school should aggregate the conversation about learning in their space, not merely give updates as to the merits of their latest program changes.
 
You raise the level or discourse about any topic by giving that discourse an official channel. By asking all participants in an organization to tweet on behalf of that organization, you can actually find the pulse of what is going on. Which is, after all, the major goal of Twitter.
 
Sent from my iPod

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New Responsibility

Apr 12, 2009   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  1 Comment

I was thinking about waiting until I got a little further into the
project to start blogging about it, but since I made the choice to
start blogging daily, I have really found that this forum let’s me
think through all of the things that I need to.
 
So the new responsibility is this: I have been put in charge of
administrating multiple moodle installations in our district. The
reason why this new charge I have been given is so strange to me is
that up until 2 months ago, the only “official” moodle installation in
our district was at a high school in parker, which I had little to do
with.
 
 The reason for the shift is nothing short of an economic and
pedagogical perfect storm. Our district had slowly been building the
capacity for more and more teachers to start asking for a way of
teaching and engaging with their students online, and with the failure
of our bond election, the only choice for an LMS was to have someone
who was already working in open source to implement and support a
solution like moodle.
 
The best part is, however, that no one I have talked to thinks that we
are settling for something. From all of the initial conversations, all
stakeholders believe that professional development, online learning,
and blended learning fit well within a vision of moodle that includes
outside assessments and google apps for communication.
 
I guess the only reason for this post is to ask for advice. If you
were asked to design and implement learning environments for an online
school, a professional development program, and a blended model
(online and in centers/schools) using moodle, what would you make sure
to do (or not do)?
 
While I have a definite vision for the way forward, I am not the
smartest person in the room (considering that I have no idea how big
this room is). I want to know more… Always more.

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What is it now?

Mar 25, 2009   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  2 Comments

There is a syndrome that I see from many of the people that I work
with, and at many times, it I can be guilty as well. It happens when
someone asks a question or has a request of you. They have a simple
thought that they would like to discuss with you, but instead of
answering, you put it off or say that you don’t have time for their
tangent. You talk about all of the other things that you have to do
and you just don’t have time for their little project.
 
While this may be strictly true, you are shutting any opportunity to
advance your relationships with those people who ask or your skills
with the tools that are required for the request.
 
I know this sounds that I am advocating for dropping everything you
are working on to fix other’s problems, and I guess I kind of am.
 
If we have programs in schools that are called drop everything and
read for kids, I think we may as well have programs in schools called
drop everything and help for adults. I believe that if the culture
within a school or online space is based upon helping others to be
better or to know more, it is the only way to truly institutionalize
life-long learning.
 
When I shut people and their unique requests for help out (or put them
off indefinitely) I find that I stagnate. It take some going out to
help someone else in order to truly lean something new about what I
need to work upon.
 
I guess that I learn more and more that all learning is connected.
Even if I am not researching online schools when I am helping someone
to forward their email, it doesn’t mean that it won’t eventually end
up helping in the long run.
 
I guess all of the things in my brain really do have a long tail, and
it isn’t until it wraps around something important that I notice.

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Waiting on something big.

Dec 3, 2008   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments

I have to say that as I am preparing to write and create my presentation for Educon 2.1 (http://educon21.wikispaces.com), I am struck by the need to do something very big. I really would like to have all of my efforts to instill an attitude of change in those around me come to a significant point. I would like to have a moment to sit back and reflect, which is what this blog is supposed to be all about. In fact,I have been doing far too little of that recently. Perhaps the doing is getting in the way of the thinking.
 
I had a meeting earlier with the head of the Digital Educator program in our district, and we spent probably about 2 hours meandering through tools and never pinning down what is truly important to pursue with teachers. Is it really important that teachers be able to know how feeds work? Is it really valuable to create a social network for this particular project? Or, is it vitally important that we help everyone create their own networks? Why is it so hard for me to solidify my ideas of what is truly mastering the art of conecting and collaborating with others?
 
So, as I go forward with this presentation, I will be pursuing the big reflection, but not at the expense of the small reflection. I would say watch this space, but until I say something of value, odds are that it is pointless to say something like that. We are only as valuable as our most recent idea, right?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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Create your own MobileMe (Sync Everything, at all times).

Nov 12, 2008   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  3 Comments

An aside: it is too bad that every post I write seems like an attempt to get back into the habit of posting, but I suppose until I start blogging consistently again, that is just how it is going to have to be. I have missed way too many things that I have been thinking about to ever fully catch up, but perhaps I can start anew. Anyway, here are my latest thoughts.

Before I go into the details of how to sync yourself completely, I want to tell you why I even undertook this idea. Well, our school system uses an extremely proprietary e-mail and calendaring system called firstclass. Every person that uses firstclass in our schools is locked in to using the firstclass calendar for appointments and things of that nature. But, because I have seen the light of using Google Calendar (open API, shared calendars, embedding, etc), I refuse. In fact, I was so obsessed with the idea of converging the two that I speant an entire weekend (when I wasn’t having fun with my family) on getting Firstclass to sync with Google Calendar, and then eventually my new blackberry that the school district provided for me.

So, this is how you sync everything:

Calendars:


Contacts:

Now, for the details…

(Update: I didn’t put this in the initial post, but I think it is worth mentioning that Firstclass does have a way to sync with both Palm Desktop Software and SyncML directly, but since my district hasn’t set either of these up, I thought it was important to try and find a better way of doing things… there are also third party services that do some of this, but I want a FREE workflow)

In order to get your first class calendar to talk to anything else, you will need to export it as a iCal file:

Now, you may look at this picture and ask, why I wouldn’t just export it as a blackberry file and skip all of the steps in the middle. Well, there are a few reasons. One, if I did this, all of the events would be duplicated every time I exported and imported. Two, because I am on a Mac I do not have any blackberry desktop software to make this sync work.

So, onward we go to iCal. First, you will need to set up your Google Calendar to sync with iCal, using this handy dandy tutorial from Life Hacker.

Now that you have your Google Calendar set up to sync, simply import into iCal your latest and greatest export from Firstclass:

Now, if this isn’t your first time doing this, you will end up with a lot of duplicates. If that is the case, just use the iCal Dupe Deleter. This is also a good tool for deleting duplicates from Google Calendar if you have ever found yourself with too many of one item.

Now, you have synced completely to your Google Calendar and you are ready to sync to your blackberry. Simply point your device to this address and download your over-the-air sync application.

You can now enter an event in Firstclass, iCal, Google Calendar, or on your blackberry and they will sync with one another. Pretty cool, right. But, we are not done. If you would like to have your calendar in an even more universal Format, you can put it on a SyncML server, like Funambol.

All you have to do is download their blackberry application and you can sync to your heart’s content there.

For Contacts:

If you are also looking to sync your contacts, you can simply use your Blackberry or iPod touch to talk to Funambol using their built in programs (search for funambol in the App store, or use the above link to download the blackberry funambol application).

Then you can sync your contacts with the funambol server.

As for your Mac, you can use the Preference Pane sync.

This will let you put your contacts on your mac, on the funambol server, or on your blackberry and they will all sync.

I understand that MobileMe does a lot more than this, but I believe that if we can create a FREE workflow for each one of our teachers, students, and administrators that syncs information to the place that they need it, we will be able to have the conversations that truly matter. We will no longer be stuck trying to find information, it will always be ours. Although you may not geek out at all that I am proposing, I think there are some pretty heavy implications for continuity in the systems that we are creating. If you have figured out any more syncing tricks, please leave a comment and add to the value of our collective research.

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The Social Networks of Tragedies

Dec 18, 2007   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments
The Social Networks of Tragedies Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (198)

July 05, 2007 07:52PM

 

This podcast is pretty heavy:
I was in Osawatomie, KS for the 4th of July. It flooded earlier in the week, and my sister-in-law lost her car and her apartment due to this natural disaster. This event really got me thinking about how we can use the technology that our schools provide (especially in 1:1 programs) in order to create social networks for a community. I hope that we can start putting together ideas like Steve Hargadon’s Public Web Stations (link below) in non-crisis times. If you have any ideas about how to do this, please shoot me an e-mail at benwilkoff@gmail.com
I am also interested in knowing if you would rather I don’t include links and pictures with my podcast, but rather simply upload the mp3 file. If you have an opinion either way, please post a comment on this podcast.
Show Notes:

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links for 2007-11-28

Nov 28, 2007   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Delicious Links  //  No Comments
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The Social Networks of Tragedies

Jul 6, 2007   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments

itunes pic
This podcast is pretty heavy:

I was in Osawatomie, KS for the 4th of July. It flooded earlier in the week, and my sister-in-law lost her car and her apartment due to this natural disaster. This event really got me thinking about how we can use the technology that our schools provide (especially in 1:1 programs) in order to create social networks for a community. I hope that we can start putting together ideas like Steve Hargadon’s Public Web Stations (link below) in non-crisis times. If you have any ideas about how to do this, please shoot me an e-mail at benwilkoff@gmail.com

I am also interested in knowing if you would rather I don’t include links and pictures with my podcast, but rather simply upload the mp3 file. If you have an opinion either way, please post a comment on this podcast.

Show Notes:

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The 1.0 to 2.0 Transformation

Jun 20, 2007   //   by Ben Wilkoff   //   Uncategorized  //  No Comments

itunes pic
Well, there are two main elements to this podcast.

1. This is my first blog post/podcast about being named the 2006 Totally Wired Teacher by Edutopia and Yahoo Teachers. I am honored, but I hope that the one thing that comes out of flying to San Fransisco is that I meet as many would-be advocates for School 2.0 as I can. I really would love to be a larger instrument for change than merely by blogging and podcasting.
2. I am challenging everyone to come up with a description for Teacher/Classroom 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, and 2.0. I would really like to know what it should look like at all of these levels. What should we be striving for in our classrooms? What should a stranger be able to come in and observe?

Show Notes:

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