Why Technology? Why YouTube?

I am always delighted when I find YouTube creations that I believe are a mix of great music, images, and eloquently express the view point of their creators. Why debate the use of technology in education with anyone? Just send this video, Why We Need To Teach Technology In School, and ask them to watch the images, read the text, listen to some good music and who knows, maybe they will change their mind. Very much enjoyed this creation by anderscj (Carl Anderson) and while looking around at some of the other videos posted on YouTube by anderscj found some tutorials:

-Finding a Place to Build in Active Worlds
-Virtual World WebQuest Tour
-File.Extensions
-Waterless Lithography

They are all worth a look.The author of these good works appears to be a student of both art and technology.

Explaining the Differences Between Wikis and Blogs

Clever, clever stuff here for anyone interested in using blogs and wikis in education. Well done, fun to read, and creative site to explain the difference between the two mediums. If you are looking for some good things to use in the classroom go to www.wikiblogedu.org and get some! Kudos to Greg, Alan, and Rob on the parody of the Kennedy (wiki) versus Nixon (blog) debate.

Have You Seen Education Today and Tommorow?

Fun music to listen to, effective images, and illustrates how education and students have changed.Information about this video from YouTube: Created by Tom Woodward of Henrico County schools in Virginia. Tom used the work of Karl Fisch from Colorado who created a PPT using various quotes and statistics from "flat world" thinking.

Web Conferencing Software: Why I Like WebEx

Over the course of last 18 or so months I have spent some time learning how to use web conferencing technologies. Have experienced BREEZE, elluminate, Microsoft Office Meeting, and WebEx. Just wish I had known about the research that Network Computing: For IT By IT, provided for users and those thinking about using web conferencing technology in April 2006.
The research review titled, Tech U: The World is Our Campus provides an overview of detailed overview of nine products and information on which two web conferencing technologies were selected for an Editor's Award. Details 40 products were weeded down to 14 for review are provided. The information on this review would be extremely helpful to colleges and businesses looking for resources to help guide local t decisions on which web conferencing technology they might want to use. It also provides report cards and information on products that received grades of A, B or C in an interactive report card .

In the review and testing process three common applications used by most people in education or business were used in the web conferencing product demonstrations. Powerpoint files, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets were tested for " ease and speed of loading these files into the application" and how well the content displayed. They also tested working in real-time on a blank PowerPoint, how easy it was to record a session and the quality of playback for voice, video and stability (Cogburn & Kurup, 2006). This review is well worth a look and provides a process for people to use to make decisions about these technologies that are similar to process that has been used to make decisions about Instructional Management Systems.

Oh, here is my list of reasons why I like WebEx:

1. Simple process to set up meetings.

2. Easy to edit and make corrections to meetings as you set them up.

3. Deceptively simple interface that allows you to learn how to:

-share applications, desktop, whiteboard, and a host of meeting tools

4. Nice meeting lay-out that is easy to move around in and I don't get lost when I host a meeting.

5. Real time training opportunities, good tutorials, and self-help documents.

6. We have an in-house super-user that helps me troubleshoot.

7. I have become familiar with it and have "meeting confidence" when I host.

8. Easy to allow others to present.

9. I have my own personal meeting room.

10. Received an Editor's Award for use in this study validating my good taste and good experiences using this web conferencing tool.

Webheadsinaction.org; Global Webcastathon

Just received an email invitation to this happening. It's free, easy to register, great venue, and looks like it will be fun as well as educational. I registered to attend and will take in as much as I can when I can at the WIAOC 2007 WORLDBRIDGES WEBCASTATHON - MAY 17-MAY 20. The information below is copy/paste from my invitation.

Posts that contain Webcastathon per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

"Begins at 2200 GMT and wraps up at EdTechTalk 75 hours later.In between, there are 47 planned sessions, including keynote presentations by Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Etienne Wenger, Robin Good, Barbara Ganley, Teemu Leinonen, & Leigh Blackall. This is also likely to be an unprecedented unconferency very global gathering of educators and technologists who like to play with collaborative social media tools ... shouldbe fun. So, stop by when you can to check out some sessions and/or hang out in the virtual hallways. You can tune in from any Worldbridges site, but the real action will be at [http://webheadsinaction.org/].
A presentation schedule is at:
[http://www.webheadsinaction.org/wiaoc2007/Presentations]We will also try to bridge to a teleconference when possible. 1-712-451-6100, Access Code: 999374#"

The conference hasn't started yet, but there are lots of places to poke around, things to read, links to resources, and tutorials. This looks like a winning combination of people, places, and things!

Arts, music, language and information literacy resources

Have you heard about Karen Ellis and the Educational Cyber Playground? Well, neither had I until just a few days ago. Developed to improve literacy through arts education the site provides numerous web base resources to promote art, music, language, and information literacy. Educational Cyber Playground received a lot of media attention and awards during the late 90s and early 00s and provides a lot of free instructional content and information about online resources to educators, parents, and web surfers.

According to the information on the site, Ellis has been online since 1991 and her site has been used and visited by people all over the world. While the site looks like it could use some updating and has broken links there are many good resources to support educators and home schoolers. Why am I blogging about this? Well, the point of this blog is to find, write about, and link to women who are leaders in education technology.

Karen Ellis' site indicated that she is one. A self proclaimed "webmistress, site architect, curriculum content developer and RingLeader for the Educational CyberPlayGround" she has helped "over 2 million people a year" through her website. She has collected several "Hot Site" awards, USA today, MSNBC, The New York Times Learning Network on the Web: Parent Connections, and several Grammys . More recently, she created the National Children's Repository of Folksongs in 2003.

Making my way through blog lit

While wandering, reading, and reflecting on blogging am working to ground myself in what is known about blogs. Worked my way this evening through the PEW’s (2006) Bloggers: A portrait of the internet's new storytellers and some eye-opening statistics. Some of the blogging statistics I found of interest in the survey (n=7, 012) included

1.Majority of bloggers are well educated, 37% of the respondents had college degrees compared with the 27% of the Americans with college degrees
2. Well over a third, 38% of bloggers are American knowledge based professionals compared with 13% of the American knowledge based professionals in the workplace
3.Bloggers are overwhelming young, 84% of the respondents were under 50
4.Rather even in gender, 54% of bloggers Male and 46% are female
5.57 million people read blogs and 12 million keep them
6.Older bloggers are a minority, only 16% of respondents over 50 blog
7.51% of bloggers have less than a year’s experience

Could the lack of women bloggers on topics such as; education technology, higher education, and leadership be linked to numbers of women with college degrees and considered knowledge based professional in the workplace? Maybe there just are not that many of us to begin with, let alone enough of us in numbers to make a dent on the Technorati’s biggest blogs in the blogosphere.

More pondering on women bloggers

So, here I was thinking I had noticed something about blogging that others hadn't and decided to start looking around to find out why there weren't more women bloggers. Since beginning my search around the blogspere and my first baby steps at blogging have found that I am not the only person wondering why there aren't more women doing this. AND, of course have found out that I am about two years or more behind other folks who have pondered on the same. Steve Levy, blogged about this on MSNBC, Chris Nolan asked the question and then listed 10 reasons why she thinks women don't blog. She also listed some reasons why she believes women are behind the curve on all this. Nolan's #1 on the list is that more men are techies and her #2 is that "men prefer to link to and to read men like them".

I like to read and will link to others writing about education technology, higher education, and leadership. Although, I'll look for both men and women have expertise in these areas and are articulate, but mostly will look for women bloggers who have the same interests. I suspect that as a woman I too will prefer to link to and read women like me.