MLK, YouTube, Google Video

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Lots of folks are pointing to the 18 minute video of Dr. King's speech during the 1963 March on Washington. It is available on places such as YouTube and Google Video. It is great that it is available. The unfortunate thing is that every idiot with a keyboard has left a hateful or racist comment on the video pages. Luckily Google allows you to download the video file. I plan to share it with my students off of one of our internal pages, without the comments. Both YouTube and Google Video have policies on offensive materials. I wish it extended to comments on their pages.

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Today in the States we celebrate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In that spirt I share with you a web page that was created about 10 years ago. It is a timeline created by kindergarten and first grades students at Buckman Elementary in Portland. The site highlights the major events in the life of Dr. King and is based on a timeline from the book, My Dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, by Faith Ringgold. Since the time we published this on the web, I have received email and letters addressed to the students expressing appreciation for their work. Even 10 years after first being published, I still get emails this time of year asking about the work. It was something that my students and i did that first showed me the power of giving students an audience for their work.
Below are a few images from the timeline.

Schools-C Pages Buckman Timeline Maggie-1 Schools-C Pages Buckman Timeline Remi-1 Schools-C Pages Buckman Timeline March65 Schools-C Pages Buckman Timeline Jackson Schools-C Pages Buckman Timeline Ted

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World Map at Lewis

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I finally got around to ordering a large world wall map and today I got a couple of Lewis parents to put it up in the hallway near the cafeteria. The dimensions are 13' x 9' and we had to trim it up a bit on the top to make it fit. Thanks go to Pamela Kennedy and Gregory MacNaughton for their help today and again to Pamela for suggesting we do so.

Lewis Map

Lewis Map

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SmartSetr SmartSetr

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SmartSetr -

"SmartSets are sets on Flickr that are updated for you in an automated way. For example, if you have a SmartSet based on the tag "flower", anytime you add photos to flickr tagged with "flower" they will automatically be added to your flower set for you (after you click refresh on SmartSetr)."

This is pretty nice. Kind of works like Smart Folders in Mac OS X.
200701081418

By way of LifeHacker...

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Horse is Out of the Barn...

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Lots of folks (will, tom, danah) today are talking about mobile phones and use by students. I don't have a whole lot to add to his except to note that besides the Wii, the most sought after and received gift of upper elementary students at Lewis Elementary this holiday season was a mobile phone. Parents see them as a necessary tool in an age of latch key kids going home alone. Also I'm finding an increasing number of families that are going through domestic issues, where one parents buys a phone for their child as a way to keep in contact because of the domestic situation such as where the parents have split up.

One more story... Today a 5th grade student and her younger brother were out in front of the school after dismissal. I asked her if she was waiting for her mom. She said yes but that her mom had just sent her a text message saying she would be a few minutes late. One of my teachers observed this exchange and said she bet that I liked that, and I said yes I did.

I already have teachers using cell phones to call parents and or have students call parents regarding homework of forgotten band instruments. (This in a school where we have only 3 outside lines and none of them available from a teacher's classroom...) I think it is only a short time before my teachers realize that by using some pretty unobtrusive (email to SMS gateways...) tools they will be able to connect with their students/families to remind them of assignments or inform them of events related to class work. I must say I'm very proud of my staff. They embrace the change because many are parents themselves, and they see the benefit of this type of communication. Of course there will be issues and concerns, but there are with just about anything. Teach responsible use and deal with those that are irresponsible just as you would do with any other rule or procedural violation. I'm also proud of my students. To date we have not had any issues with inappropriate mobile phone use.

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Flickr Plugins for WordPress

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I've been playing around with a couple of Flickr centric plugins for Wordpress. Falbum and Flickr Photo Album both allow you to pull in images from your Flickr account and display them on your site. When I say display, it is not just a little badge, but rather individual photos along with associated tags, comments and in the case of Flickr Photo Album, even notes.

For example on my site in the I have added links to my images using both tools. The Recent Flickr Images link pulls up my Flickr photostream using Falbum. The Photo Albums link pulls my Flickr photostream using Flickr Photo Album. Both do a nice job of pulling in your images and displaying them. The images are cached on your site and the initial look is from your site, not Flickr's. This may be of use to teachers who want to utilize Flickr for storage and sharing purposes, but worry about letting kids loose on Flickr, or if Flickr is blocked. Flickr Photo Album, while only pulling your albums, does do more incorporating Flickr ID images into their comment display, also bringing in photo notes.

You can see a few examples below:

  • Left: Falbum screenshot
  • Right: Flickr Photo Album

200612270740 . 200612270747

One other nice feather of Flickr Photo Album is that it allows you to easily add images from Flickr to your blog posts. Clicking on an image allows you to choose a size and then the necessary html is added to your post. You can also search for images by tag from within the posting interface.

200612270756

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Wii

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Wii John Blake points to a very cool hack of the Wii gaming system. This hack involves using the Wiimote (that's Wii remote) to control a Roomba. Speaking of the Wii, my kids got a Wii for Christmas from their uncle and I'm pretty impressed. This morning I played nine holes of golf, then took in a bit of batting practice. Maybe tonight I'll go bowling. I downloaded the DarwiinRemote software and will mess around with that later.