Notes from Millie D

Alan November decided that he wanted to have an influencial girl he met at NECC present instead. She is an elevn year old from Hong Kong, to protect her I will not provide her name.

She is definitely a 21st Century kid. She has a homepage that engaging. She is an informaiton prosumer. She collects podcasts, writes blog entires, creates slideshows, interacts with people from around the world.

She is motivated to write outside of her schoolwork. She feels that she is not outside of the norm compared to classmates, which got a chuckle form the crowd. The crowd was asked to answer a questions that goes something like…if she were to enroll in our school next year would you be able to engage her to the extent that she is use to. Answer went from we can catch her up to not a chance. The response the from crowd was slightly less or no way. Which is scary to think that she would have to repreat a year to make up for the time in the US.

She can control the level of viewership of her page. She has facebook and connects through facebook and CLC (her school toolset).

I got what I deserved.  I recently tagged Alice Barr and tonight she returned the favor.  This I Believe was started by Barry Bachenheimer.  So here is my list

• I believe we get so caught up in a routine we forget how exciting it is to discover something new.
• I believe we need to be reminded of what is best for children and not ourselves when it comes to teaching.
• I believe that technology can enhance not replace many aspects of what we do daily.
• I believe the operating system has little to do with the quality of the tool.
• I believe students can be empowered to do more than we give them credit for each day.
• I believe professionals need to be treated like professionals.
• I believe people need to follow their passions and dreams and not settle.

To pay it forward…

Dan and Jeff at Wicked Decent Learning
Cathy Wolinsky
Sharon Betts

The Scribd Blog

Have you ever sent an attachment to someone and realized they don’t have the necessary program to open it? I’m guilty. Part of my job as a troubleshooter is to help staff open documents that are in unique formats. Most of the time my Macintosh helps out XP users (no this is not a platform bashing entry) but there are time s that I I can’t seem to opn it. Lately I’ve been using Zamzar but so are many others and the service has slowed down to a crawl. Tonight I realized that Scribd’s ipaper can help out.

From their blog…

Simply add ipaper@scribd.com to the cc: field of your email along with one or more attachments, and send it off. Scribd will automatically convert your document attachments to iPaper, and then forward you and your email’s recipients a link to the document on Scribd. Your iPaper attachment will be marked private, so only you and your recipients will be able to view it.

Here is a video to help show off the feature.

I envision using this when someone sends me let’s say a Word 2007 file. I would simply email myself and use the ipaper cc to convert it. This could come in handy with assignments done in M$Works or WordPerfect (yes some people still use these programs).

Last night Jott made my life easier and tonight Scribd has become a lifeline. What will tomorrow bring? I can’t wait to find out.

Jott Feeds

I’ve haven’t tried this (yet but it is on my to do list for the AM).  Maybe I need to Jott myself for the reminder. 

Seriously, if this works as well as advertised Jott may be my new best friend. 

According to the Jott Feeds site you login to their web site and add feeds to your account.

then…

Given the advances in how RSS can be used to keep track of sites and documents this can have an impact in the classroom.  The potential usage of RSS just grew thanks to Jott.

If you haven’t tried Jott I highly recommend you give it a try this summer.

If this worked properly. You should see a book called “Last Day Blues” from a service called LookyBook.