New Kodax Zi8 Camcorder

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I am thinking of setting up some kind of digital journal for myself and my staff using a private site (am thinking of WordPress or Posterous..) I want to be able to capture moments throughout the school day/week, interviews with students, staff and parents, samples of student work and so on... (I'll see how this goes... :-) ) and create a digital reflection that I might share with staff to highlight best practices I see around the building, and also to pose questions about our practice. As part of this process I have been looking for a pocketable HD camcorder and last week I picked up a Kodak Zi8 HD camcorder.

 I have been looking for something that I can walk around with at school and use quickly. While we also have a few Flip's at school, the Kodak feature set is a bit stronger including recording in multiple HD formats, SD card support, built in HDMI support with included cable, the ability to capture stills,  and the option of using an external mic.

I haven't played around with it that much yet, but as I play with it more, and get my journal site up, I'll share some more results.
Yesterday I took it on my ride and shot a little bit of video and took some stills. Below is the playground at Buckman Elementary. I worked at Buckman for 10 years and ride by it quite a bit...

Download now or watch on posterous

105_6737.MOV (23896 KB)

Posted via email from Tim Lauer

217/365

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This past year I attempted to shoot a photography every day. I started out pretty well, but in the end only ended up with 217 days where I shot some kind of photograph. I spent some time today reviewing those images and adding them to this set. The process was insightful and looking back on the year I was taken with how many of these images were shot with my iPhone. As it as been noted, the best camera, is the camera you have with you. Promise to take more next year... Happy New Year...

Posted via web from Tim Lauer

Using Instapaper to send suggested reading...

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My son received an iPod Touch for Christmas and has been busy the last few days doing the normal things that a 12 year old does with such a device, mainly playing games, browsing web sites, and communicating with family and friends via things such as Skype, SMS and email. I also helped him download a few reading applications such as the Kindle Reader, and Stanza. 

We have also installed Instapaper, an application at allows you to reposition web content for easy reading on devices such as the iPhone/iPod Touch. Basically you just install the Instapaper bookmarklet on your browser and then when you find content that you want to read on your device, you just save it with the bookmarklet and it is then synced to your Instapaper account and accessible through your iPhone/iPod Touch. We have started our mornings with me finding articles of interest and him sitting next to me reading off the iPod Touch.

Posted via web from Tim Lauer

Slauerhoffbrug: Flying drawbridge

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via blog.makezine.com


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I've always found bridges interesting. This one is called "Slauerhoffbrug," and it is located in Leeuwarden in the Netherlands. It actually lifts the section of road up and out of the way of the river traffic. This got me thinking, wonder if I can find it on Google Maps? After a quick search I easily found it, complete with Street View. I find myself learning about a place and quickly turning to Google Maps Street View to learn more about that place.

Posted via web from Tim Lauer

How Much Information Was Consumed By Americans In 2008?

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However, the study notes that, "computers have had major effects on some aspects of information consumption. In the past, information consumption was overwhelmingly passive, with telephone being the only interactive medium. Thanks to computers, a full third of words and more than half of bytes are now received interactively. Reading, which was in decline due to the growth of television, tripled from 1980 to 2008, because it is the overwhelmingly preferred way to receive words on the Internet."

via spectrum.ieee.org

Saw this study mentioned by several folks tonight on Twitter. Interesting to think about the amount of information we now read compared to before 2000. Also the post notes that in the past information consumption was passive (television, radio...) but now it more interactive...

Posted via web from Tim Lauer