Another example of Read/Write Culture?

In a previous post, I reflected on Larry's Lessig's talk at TED on Read/Write culture. He gave three examples of what people are creating. The second one being a very disturbing video of a Jesus character.

Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, challenged readers to come up with nonsense lyrics according to some rules in a recent post. Readers responded. Then a band created the song. Then it was posted to a popular video sharing site with images added. Much of this is likely illegal, but I do think it is illustrative of what Lessig was trying to get across. Think about the various literacies involved in the production of the work and the collaboration that was involved and the fun that the various players had.

Linkages, Sketchpad and YouTube

Nick Jackiw has a very interesting Geometer's Sketchpad sketch on linkages, which intrigued me. The whole collection is worth having a look at.

Today, I happened upon the video below. If you thought modeling the Fibonacci gauge was a challenge...

Fibonacci Gauge

I originally saw this at the magazine's site. I loved it and so did Ron Lancaster. Try making a Geometer's Sketchpad sketch of the gauge.

My blog's readability

I just used the Blog Readability Test on this blog.

The result?



Now, is that good or bad? The OAME site's reading level is Genius....

Music and the XO

Well, I was sitting around playing Barbu and Friends with a Wizard deck the other night with some Math friends and had my XO handy. Having just seen the news about last.fm, I thought I would give it a try. I wasn't expecting much since I have been having troubles playing videos - getting no video, choppy sound etc. Anyway, the site played beautifully through Firefox with Flash installed and we enjoyed some music on the Colin James' Similar Artists channel. Too bad that Pandora is still unable to have Canadian users.

Then, on my trip home, I realized that I had not charged my iPod. I whipped the XO out and had it running on the passenger seat, with its solid state drive, and it charged the iPod nicely before "As it happens" was done.

I just found out about feh. It sounds like it can make the XO act like a digital picture frame. I am going to try it out.

Does anyone have any suggestions about a good .mp3 player application for the XO that will play music off a USB drive - with playlists, shuffle, continuous play etc?

The XO Laptop - An Education Project

So far, I haven't spent much time with the XO applications that ship on the device. My children have been dabbling with TamTam and some of the others.

I have been fussing with getting Firefox, Flash, Skype and OpenOffice.org running. In the meantime, I have been learning a lot and experiencing a fair degree of frustration. This frustration is probably similar to the frustration/crankiness/feeling-dumbness that novice computer users experience at one of my workshops about Sketchpad or Fathom or some other application. When they are unfamiliar with the keyboard, don't understand the file system and can't find the sample files they are supposed to load and it feels like the experience is flashing by them, it is no wonder that they might think the whole thing is stoopid.

I think it is often useful to put ourselves back in that learning mode to regenerate empathy. It is like when Math teachers try to get a CAS to do what they are very comfortable doing on the blackboard. They have trouble and it should generate empathy for their students who will have trouble with whatever approach to algebra is employed since they are new to it.

OLPC has an insightful response to the rather lousy review that the Guardian gave to the device (it's for the kids - stupid!). The reviewer sounds like he was trying to do a lot of the same things as I am. We talk about paper-trained teachers. Well I am paper-trained and Windows-trained!

Like the Possum Lodgers, I can pray "I'm a man, but I can change. If I have to. I guess." But it is not so bad yet that I have to invoke their motto "Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati", "When all else fails, play dead".

It's the conversation, stupid

Sometimes I get so interested in the neat Web 2.0 tools that I forget what is important about teacher learning. That is why I found Tim Hawes' comment on Joan-Vinall-Cox's blog so germane.

In general, I'm less concerned about what medium teachers use than I am about that they may not have the conversation at all. Do we all as educators:

1. maintain an social active professional networking page;
2. Use 'live communication tools' like Twitter; participate in meaningful, timely professional development
3. have received or sent a text message; connect regularly with peers, parents, students
4. know what a wiki is; have a collaborative approach with our peers, and more importantly with our students
5. can tell you what RSS is all about... share our knowledge and best practices

Of course, those of us who have tapped into what the 'net can do to enhance all these actions hope that our peers will take advantage of them as well...

Thanks, Tim!