Screencasting in a jiffy

In need of a way to create quick and easy screencasts of your computer to share with your students, staff, or colleagues?

Try Screener...

Create an account, click record, and you're off...

ISTE 2011

The ISTE Conference is, by far and away, the biggest educational technology conference in the country, maybe the world. Formerly called NECC (the National Educational Computing Conference), ISTE brings 15,000+ educators from across the globe together for a week to discuss best practices in instructional technology. There are strands for IT professionals, Instructional Technology Specialists, Media Specialists, classroom teachers, administrators, and more. Core components of the event transcend any one area of study and meet the needs of a wide variety of stakeholders.

In addition to quality keynotes, workshops, breakout sessions, and exhibitions, ISTE is the place for birds of a feather conversations and networking.

The highlight of the conference for me has always been the vendor floor, where hundreds of exhibitors show their wares. It's thousands upon thousands of square feet of "school technology goodness."

If you are anywhere near Philly this week, you have to check out the ISTE Conference.

More info here.

You have the iPads... now, how do you get the apps?

The logistics behind deploying iPads within any organziations is the single biggest hurdle to overcome once you find the funding. iPads are, by their nature, designed to be individualized, customized tools. They weren't necessarily designed with 'the enterprise' in mind.

A school system that deploys them needs to factor in many decisions about who can buy apps, with what funds, through what means, and according to what standard?

Many districts do not feel comfortable with reimbursing employees for their expenses, distributing gift cards, or using organizational credit cards.

Many districts did not know how to facilitate the app approval and purchase process.

If you find yourself in either or both camps, fear not. Apple has an app volume licensing program that solves these issues.

Find more about the program and how your district can leverage the processes Apple has put into place to assist districts struggling with the logistics of deploying iOS devices.

A Kid Who Gets It

Vi Hart has one of the best student blogs... ever!

I like her simple way of explaining complicated mathemticals concepts.

Watch enough of her videos and you'll grow to enjoy her snarky humor and criticisms of teachers.

How many kids like Vi are there in your school bored to tears?

First Amendment Rights Extend to Facebook Parody Sites

In an interesting turn, it looks like students who create fake facebook pages of their teachers and administrators have first amendment rights to do so within limitations now being defined through case law.

Read a great summary from Ed Week on the recent court decisions this past week from Federal Court in Philadelphia.

Happy Days and the Multiple Intelligences

They don't make TV shows like they used to...

Who knew the writers of Happy Days were the pioneers of the Multiple Intelligences.



This clip is from well after Happy Days had 'jumped the shark' but is entertaining none the less.

How to peel a banana

Have you ever learned that you've been doing something "the wrong way" your whole life? It's an impressive feeling when it happens.

Never happened to you?

Think you know how to peel a banana? Think you do it the way nature intended?

Think again...

How Millennial Are you?

The Pew Center has a quiz to help you rate your "Millennial-ness"

It's only 14 questions and will take you 2 minutes...

http://pewresearch.org/millennials/quiz/index.php

The new iPad is Magical...

Check out the features of the newest iPad... Don't blink.

Blogging 101

Still unsure about what a blog is?

I really enjoy the CommonCraft videos that explain complicated concepts 'In Plain English.'

Learn more about blogs here...



Then hop on over to Google Blogger to sign up for your own.

It's a Jungle Out There...

Jeff Bezos on Charlie Rose from July of last year…

One of the most interesting and useful interviews I have seen in a long time.

In addition to an interesting discussion on tablet and eReader technology, it's a great breakdown of how Amazon makes its business decisions, etc.

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11138

Sure, it's a bit of an informercial... but, still well worth the time spent watching to gain insights from one of the most successful businessmen in the world.

Following this blog

There are lots of ways to subscribe to or follow any blog, mine included.

You can do it the old fashioned way by bookmarking this site and visiting it when you think of it or have time.

You could also make it easier on yourself and use the RSS functionality built in to the blog to let it tell you when new posts are made... this takes the guess work of whether there's anything new to read out of your hands.

Not sure what RSS is? Watch this short video:
http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

If you have a blog reader, here's the RSS feed to subscribe:
http://thedigitalhoff.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

If you are new to reading blogs, I recommend you try Google Reader. It's the best, IMHO. If you have an exisiting gmail or google account, you can set it up in no time here:
www.google.com/reader

Here's a great one-minute video all about Google Reader 'In Plain English'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSPZ2Uu_X3Y&feature=player_embedded

My first post

Greetings, classmates --

Thank you for visiting my brand new blog.

I've been avid blog reader for the last 6 years and have an impressive collection of RSS feeds coming into my Google Reader account everyday.

However, I've never been on this side of the blog before...

Here goes nothing!

Mark