The TWAIN blog

Today I had the honor and privilege to present some ideas to the Hill Country Computer Club here in Kerrville. I was given information before the presentation that the audience was mostly senior citizens and that I should prepare to share about resources on our district website. Having the recent transition to our new website, I was thrilled to not only show them the new site but also explain the concept of “cloud” computing and Web 2.0.

I shared with them my vision for migrating resources to the web and the justification for why. I explained the differences of office tools, operating systems, and the push for online assessments. I also shared various resources found in social bookmarking and sharing collaborative spaces in Google documents. I kept my eyes on them to make sure I wasn’t going overboard or extending beyond what they were understanding; but they were all on board. I went for 90 minutes and even answered questions.

I left that group today with some great responses! They want to learn more and that is the best response!

They also would like to get more youthful representation in the HCCC. I may get together with my computer teachers at the middle through high school to see if there is some shared interest.

And they would like to help with a project I have in mind to get older computers out to the community. We have a huge recycling problem in this world when it comes to our computers. Instead of thrusting them out to third world dumping grounds, we could strip them down and put Ubuntu on them for Internet access in our community. The HCCC is interested in helping with this project and I welcome their help!

Anyway, it was a great time today to share with another group in this great community. I feel so blessed to be able to go out and share within our community about our ideas and to hear feedback on what we can do to improve our vision. I don’t know of many technology directors who are so willing to go out and connect to their community resources! I wish more of my colleagues would do this. Step out of your offices and into the community that may or may not be your “target” audience. Share. Collaborate. Learn.

And HCCC – I already have some ideas for your new website! Let’s keep talking!

So tonight I visited my local bookstore to pick up a book I was wanting to read and I found a treasure!! In the computer magazines, there was a full size UK mag with “Google Special” as the header. Without even flipping through it, I decided to pony up the $16 for it and take it home.

I haven’t even made it past the Table of Contents yet because it is bursting with so many goodies on just the back cover. A giant cartoon cloud on white with the word “Cloud” in it and a new logo that simply says “g OS”. And this website – http://www.thinkgos.com as its message.

The magazine is actually Linux Pro (direct link to the Special Edition on Google Tools) and it has a boot-able CD in the front jacket that allows me to run the Google Toolset without installing the entire OS on my computer. The instructions say that this new OS is “based on Ubuntu Linux 8.04″.

So is Google releasing an operating system??

Why not?! Well, I don’t think it is an operating system like what most would consider an OS. An operating system in its purest sense is one that allows the user to interact with the operations on the computer. But for Google, their operating system is housed online! The cloud is the OS! So the device doesn’t matter.

We saw this coming when they released their own browser! Chrome was the first generation of their own operating system. They extended their resources beyond a web page to the frontier of the browser itself. Now they supply the tools needed to access resources online without the limitation of the hard drive.

And yet we keep buying machines with keyboards, mice, and monitors….

The rest of the magazine contains articles on all the great Google tools out there: Documents, Calendar, Groups, Reader, Chart, Earth, Sky, Sketchup, Picasa, Purchasing, Sites, Blogger, Maps, and some of their desktop gadgets as well. It is BURSTING with resources for Cloud computing!

I highly recommend it. I don’t think this Google-thing is going away any time soon! And while the rain clouds in Kerrville turned out to be false hopes today, the Cloud remains a possibility for many applications we use day to day.

Check out the magazine. Darn! That book I purchased is now under a pile of magazine must-reads.

*Note: After reading the info on the G-OS website, I discovered that it isn’t a Google OS nor is it created by Google. The G stands for “Good” and it is a Linux-based OS that uses Google tools. Still….it is pretty cool to think about.

Today marked the first day of open sessions and the exhibit hall at TCEA. I had a full schedule laid out on my cheat-sheet (which keeps me from pulling out the booklet), and I completely disregarded it. I ended up visiting the Exhibit Hall and then going to the Blogger Cafe.

But this morning was incredibly awesome! I was really blown away to hear my blog post from a few days ago read out loud to the audience. How incredible was that?!?! I thought it was really cool and my row of Kerrvillites seemed to enjoy it as well. What an honor.

I did attend the TEC-SIG luncheon later and heard the speaker share about how the mood we project reflects the mood of our environment. It wasn’t a technology training talk as we usually get; but it was about how we can serve our stakeholders better. It was that component of learning more about how we can serve than just providing more tools and resources for us to gawk at. I really appreciated this presentation for just that reason.

After this, I was asked to be interviewed for a segment on SchoolTube. I asked for Kari Rhame to interview me and she did. I was hoping to embed the video here tonight but it hasn’t been uploaded to SchoolTube.com yet.

All in all, a great day. I hope to get to my sessions tomorrow and to have a good workshop. Tomorrow I am presenting a workshop for three hours on Web 2.0 Tools and I am about to assemble the presentation right now.

Also – great seeing everyone. Thanks for the handshakes and hellos!

Someone recently asked me what I would show a group of tech-savvy teachers if I had 15 minutes with them?

I started spinning out ideas and thought I would share mine. Then ask the collective what they think they would show?

1) I would show Wordle.net which has some interesting things to show with the Obama Inauguration Speech. Visual themes in written word. A teacher at the high school today had her kids finish out their poetry theme by posting their poems in Wordle and getting an instant peek at the most repetitive words. A quick peek at visual themes and then generating their own.

I think as an addition to this I would add oneword.com – which challenges visitors to type in a box on screen based on a one-word prompt. The site even times down on the screen so you only have 60 seconds to type on the topic. I would combine the two by typing a 60 second prompt, copy and paste into Wordle to see it play out.

2) Wikipedia – The Discussion Tab – Show the back-end of how the discussions between the authors of information collaborate to post accurately. This is the history of the collaborative process of creating the world’s largest and most current encyclopedia. Pick a few research topics and lead a discussion with the teachers to find out how this could be used in their classrooms. What are some ways this could be used? Also see if they can cross-collaborate with these tools. How could you combine this tool in an English class? Math class? Science? etc.

3) Google News Feed – Go to Google News and search a topic. Then you can sort by year, by blogs that are on that topic, and you can even subscribe to RSS/Atom feeds for receiving the most up-to-date information on the topic. If not ready to get into RSS/Atom? Click on Google News Alert and put in your email address. You can receive email alerts when a new story breaks on the topic. Instant news!

For research topics, students can not only research archived data but they can receive the most current information as well. And with cell phones in the classroom…..updates to their topics could be filling up their phones (while they are turned off or silent in their backpacks). Click on Mobile Updates and put in your cell number. Instant text updates.

15 Minutes to shine. What do you show to a group of tech-savvy teachers? Tech-savvy Administrators? Counselors? Librarians?

I am quite disappointed in the lack of comments to my blog. I get more response on my old Myspace page that I haven’t touched in years, than this place.

I thought blogging was two-way communication. I post something and then people respond.

But lately, I post something and no one responds. Lately?? Who am I kidding? This has been ongoing for about 4 months now! No response! No comments!

It is bruising my delicate ego, to say the least.

Another nail in the coffin: I tried Plurk again recently, only to find that I have no fans there. So whatever I post, no one is reading. I wondered why no one responds to my comments there. The news was broken to me when I had to read the help page to learn that I have no fans. I can post a response to others on the timeline but they choose not to follow me.

I use Plurk to post all my confessions now. It is quite liberating to throw them out to the world. I also post vulgar tirades there. I mean, why not?!?! A timeline of tirades that no one is watching meshed in with other ed. tech leaders sharing about what they eat, how they exercise, and what they think of Plurk vs. Twitter. It is like an explosion of vulgarity between their conversations that only I am enjoying.

I get good responses to Twitter, but that’s the only place where my Web 2.0 interactive conversations take place. The problem is that the response has to be less than 140 characters.

Maybe blogging is dead and I didn’t get that memo! I read blogs daily on all sorts of topics in and outside of education.  I have noticed that several educational blogs/podcasts I used to access haven’t updated in a while (see previous post). Maybe it isn’t just me! Maybe our entire blogosphere has shifted. Have people stopped blogging? I bet they have until February 10 when we all finish the state conference and blogging is cool again!

Ahh.. I dunno what I am saying here. I don’t understand this at all and am really starting to take it personally. I reach out and post on other blogs, Twitter posts, Plurks, message boards, etc. in hopes that the link will draw them to read my opinions here. But…..that isn’t working.

Am I giving up? Nope. This is a nice venting place. People can reply or not. I use it to track my own progress on things.
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Hmmmmm

I don’t think anyone is even reading this post,  so I will end by saying “ppppplllllllbbbbbbppppp!!!!” (phonetic raspberry sound)