Thanks Dean Shareski for this video clip.

So close but yet so far, but as close as almost being there. Hats off to all of you that are sharing your learning and expertise and wanderings with the world.

Related Reading (opposing view):
A Bit More Education Techno-Twaddle; Why I Avoid NECC, 2008 Edition

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• Curriculum Ideas

  How do I integrate the Internet into my classroom curriculum?

  tags: curriculum, internet, classroom, technology, web2.0, blogpost

• Wild Apricot Blog : Top 5 Web Tools to Create Your Own Online Quiz

  tags: quiz, generator, assessment, web2.0, blogpost

• Comiqs | Create & Share your Comic Stories

  tags: cartoon, web2.0, comic, tools, generator, digitalstorytelling, blogpost

• 21st Century Information Fluency

  Digital Information Fluency (DIF) is the ability to find, evaluate and use digital information effectively, efficiently and ethically.

  tags: digital, information, fluency, blogpost

• Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators - Critical Evaluation Surveys and Resources

  tags: website evaluation, schrock, blogpost

• Free Online Courses from Great Universities | Open Culture

  Your guide to smart media.

  tags: education, podcasts, podcast, universities, courses, blogpost

• edtechpost » PLE Diagrams (Personal Learning Environment)

  A Collection of PLE diagram. As preparation for a workshop I am giving this fall I thought it would be interesting to collect together all the diagrams of PLEs I could find, as a compare and contrast sort of exercise. If you have others, I’d love to know about them. (edtechpost)

  tags: edtechpost, wiki, ple, pln, connectivism, tools, web2.0, blogpost

• Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary and thesaurus

  tags: visualization, reference, english, language, tools, blogpost

• Twitturly - Real-time Link Tracking on Twitter

  Twitt(url)y is a service for tracking what URLs people are talking about as they talk about them on twitter

  tags: twitter, tracking, twitturly, mashup, aggregator, blogpost

• Free Online PDF Creator - Convert files to PDF on the Web - PrimoOnline

  PrimoOnline provides a super-fast way to create PDF files online, without the need to install any PDF software.

  tags: primoonline, pdf, blogpost

• Web 2.0 Tools - Web 2.0 That Works: Marzano & Web 2.0

  Classroom Instruction That Works is a collection of effective strategies culled from a meta-analysis of decades of research on what works in classrooms to improve student learning and increase student achievement.

  tags: web2.0, marzano, wiki, tools, blogpost

• eduflickr - Miguel guhlin on Diigo

  Lots of resources on using Flickr in a constructivist project-based classroom.

  tags: flickr, ICT, project, eduflickr, display, ideas, blogpost

• The Teachers’ Podcast — The New Generation of Ed Tech PD

  A New Generation of Ed Tech Professional Development for Educators is Here! News, views, research and resources you can use are featured in every episode of The Teachers’ Podcast. The popular podcasting team of Mark Gura and Dr. Kathy King are teachers, ed tech experts, authors and professors.

  tags: podcasts, technology, teacher, tools, podcast, pd, training, development, blogpost

Send messages to twitter using voice!

Not available here in Mexico …. DRATS!

Related Resources:

• Want to make  your very own voicethread with your students or for professional development? Then see this helpful online Voicethread guide from Silvia of Langwitches fame.
• Looking for great resources on digital storytelling?
• EFL Voicethread forum community, Voicethreads for Learning English.

(Note: I have installed FF3 into a separate directory so that I may continue to use FF2, as many of the FF add-ons are not yet updated for this new release.)

Update: Mozilla is claiming a download record for the release of Firefox 3.0. In the first 24 hours the web browser was available the software was downloaded more than eight million times, says its creator Mozilla.

Firefox 3 available today at 17:00 UTC (10am PDT)

From the fine Mozilla developer people:

“This morning at 10:00am UTC we began the process of sending the final version of Firefox 3 to our mirror network to prepare for Download Day. We’re just as excited as you are for our upcoming release, but we’re still putting the finishing touches on Firefox 3: preparing the new mozilla.com website, getting our severs ready for downloads, and doing our final pre-launch checks. We expect to be done at 17:00 UTC - find out what time that is where you are. You can even follow our progress if you’d like!

The files in the FTP directories of our mirrors are - for now - only meant to be used by our testers. We would appreciate it if our fans didn’t follow direct links there that they might see on sites like Digg, Reddit, or Neowin. Downloading them directly can harm our ability to distribute Firefox efficiently, and will also not be counted as part of our attempt to set a Guiness World Record for the most software downloads in a day.

If you’d like to be notifed the minute that we launch, please go to sign up for Download Day. Or just head over to getfirefox.com on Tuesday, June 17th at 17:00 UTC.”

• DailyLit: Public Reading via Twitter

  It’s a great new way to read books with DailyLit. We are creating a group experience for reading. In these public subscriptions everyone will receive installments on the same schedule. The initial set of subscriptions will start on June 16, 2008.

  tags: dailylit, twitter, reading, blogpost

• Myplick - share PowerPoint and Google presentations online, slideshows, slide show

  tags: powerpoint, slideshow, web2.0, presentations, digitalstorytelling, blogpost

• ALA | Great Web Sites for Kids

  tags: education, reference, kids, websites, learning, ala, technology, blogpost

• How to Make Profound and Lasting Change | ThinkSimpleNow.com

  I like inspirational and reflection-based sites. Is there an area of your life that you would like to change? Is there an area of your life you’ve tried changing, made some progress but somehow ended up in the same spot you started in?

  tags: thinksimplenow.com, change, blogpost, inspirational, reflection

• freesound :: home page

  The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. Freesound focusses only on sound, not songs. This is what sets freesound apart from other splendid libraries like ccMixter. New to this site? Read the What is Freesound page to learn more!

  tags: freesound, sound, blogpost

• 100 Helpful Web Tools for Every Kind of Learner | College@Home - Annotated

  Here are some great tools that you can use to cater to your individual learning style, no matter what that is.

  tags: web2.0, learning_styles, learning, college@home, blogpost, styles, learning styles, multipleintelligences

• The Education Podcast Network | A Landmark Project

  tags: landmark, podcasts, blogpost

• Thinkfinity for Educators

  Register with MyThinkfinity to organize your favorite lesson plans, and for access to the newest and most relevant materials.

  tags: thinkfinity, blogpost, lessonplans, resources, verizon

• 21st Century Connections

  Students will need 21st century competencies to survive and thrive in the future. This Web site is dedicated to delivering technology solutions that will help students to learn 21st century skills.

  tags: 21stcenturyskills, technology, 21stcentury, education, 21stcenturylearning, 21st, resources, edtech, blogpost

• Best Practices of Technology Integration

  The lesson plans that you will find here have been written by practicing teachers and have been “kid tested” to work in the classroom.

  tags: integration, technology, education, lessonplans, EdTech, bestpractices, blogpost

• Young Minds, Fast Times: The Twenty-First-Century Digital Learner | Edutopia

  How tech-obsessed iKids would improve our schools.

  tags: blogpost, edutopia, Learning, twentyfirstcentury, digital_literacy, digital_citizenship, digital_media, ad4dcss

• 50 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do | Marc and Angel Hack Life

  Self-reliance is a vital key to living a healthy, productive life. To be self-reliant one must master a basic set of skills, more or less making them a jack of all trades. Contrary to what you may have learned in school, a jack of all trades is far more equipped to deal with life than a specialized master of only one.

  tags: lifeskills, skills, health, life, self-reliant, self-reliancy, blogpost

• 50 of the Most Dependable Web Resources for University Students | Educhoices.org

  Knowing where to turn for facts, handy web apps and other types of resources can make student life a lot easier. Read on for a list of 50 of the most useful and dependable online resources for college and university students.

  tags: blogpost, education, library, web, resources

• SaluteToSeuss » home

  This project was open to all PreK to Sixth Grade Classrooms

  tags: wiki, collaboration, drseuss, blogpost

I have been wanting to “right” this post for a while now. Well, today the time just seems “write.” Time to start the dialog, with myself anyway. Hopefully, others will dance the dance with me.

OK, I’m just going to come right out and say this. The 1st item on the agenda of any 12-step program worth its salt is to self-acknowledge and confess, to give name to something. So, here it is: I AM A RIGHT-BRAINER. OK, it’s out. I admit that I have felt powerless over a left-brain driven, promoted and protected society —that my life has reached a turning point. No longer will I hide in the shadows of left-brainers (LBers), nor wholesalelingly take their oppressive and controlling “crap.” Sorry, sometimes you just have to use the best word. Plus, I need to stimulate a bit of controversy to bring on the commenting (or so I have witnessed with other bloggers). Oh yeah, we right-brainers (RBers) love analogies and metaphors; but, they drive LBers to madness. So, I use them a lot. Somehow it helps to level the playing field a bit. You know for sure that you’ve brushed upon a heavy LBer when they respond, “but a person is not a rose, so I don’t get your point; and it doesn’t make any sense,” while scrunching up their face and squinting the eyes a bit. It’s the telltale look of dismissal and disdain for your creativity and breach of sticking to the logical “facts.” A rose IS a rose after all, isn’t it? BINGO! You’ve hooked one.

Now you must decide to either throw them back into the murky waters or reel them in. For friendships, I tend to cut the line (for extreme LBers, even if I lose an expensive lure in the process) and steer my boat full-throttle ahead. On the other hand, we need diversity of thought, style and approach for most business, organizational and community situations, so coexisting and supporting others is holistically beneficial. We really do need each other, don’t we? RBers are responsible for cultivating groupness, so I guess we have to find a way to include, nurture and honor all people, like it or not. Besides, iterating back and forth between the two sides yields practical solutions to real problems or opportunities. (EDIT: If the truth be told, I DO have a lot of friends leaning left, just not far left).

My secret fantasy shared with you today is that Dan Pink is 120% right (there I go again trying to short-circuit my left-brain readership); that Right-brainers will rule the future. Just take a look at the picture above. Would you rather be stuck isolated in a cubicle gathering facts, analyzing and writing logical reports? Or would you rather be romping with others through the flowers and flying a kite across green lushness, creating new things and exploring the unknown with no walls to confine you or your vision? According to Pink, outsourcing is making LBers less in demand, as logical and analytical features can be easily replicated by both humans (in other economically developing countries) and computers (rules, routines, instruction, typical LB strengths). And that the real need during a Conceptual Age is for creative powers that can make connections in ways that meet new needs and reach emerging markets. However, is the choice really yours or mine to make? Or are you predestined to a disposed brain pull, with occasional visits to the other side? Maybe you move freely and balanced between the two? Maybe not. Are you happy or frustrated? Perhaps, just as a transgendered feels physically trapped in the wrong body, can we be unfittingly captive on one side of the brain, while longing to be on the other?

So where am I going with this blog post? I don’t really know. I am opening and inviting dialog, meandering, searching, exploring, hovering above and looking down and up and from side to side, and creating a new understanding of all of this for myself. I don’t need all the answers right now. Abundance and the fruits of ambiguity await.

So where are you? Left, right, perfectly balanced in the middle, or decidedly leaning one way or the other? What’s better? Where are we (you) going? Why? Need to take self-inventory? Below in normal-weight font are LB attributes; and in bold/italic font are the RB ones. Be honest with yourself. Look back upon your actual past actions and NOT your self perception (they are often hugely disconnected). Better yet, let someone else do the initial placement for you. Ready to talk? Let’s go then!

TAKE INVENTORY

Left brain, Right brain

Information Age (Drucker), Conceptual Age (Pink/Friedman)

control, explore
linear, holistic
scarcity models, abundance models
safe, risk-taking
practical, impetuous
forms strategies, presents possibilities
reality based, fantasy based
self-oriented, community oriented
uses logic, uses feeling
detail oriented, big picture oriented
facts rule, imagination rules
words and language, symbols & images
present and past, present & future
math and science, philosophy and religion
can comprehend, can “get it” meaning
knowing, believes
acknowledges, appreciates
order-pattern perception, spatial perception
knows objects name, knows objects function

better at closing sale, better at opening sale

logical, analytical, quantitative, rational, verbal / innovative conceptual, holistic, intuitive, non-verbal, imaginative, creative

pursuer, preserver

knows peoples names, remembers peoples faces

competitor, organizer, fine print expert, writing, lists, analyzer, doer, phonics, language, talk-talk-talk, splitter: distinction important / emotional expression, context, welcoming of change, synthesizing, creator, flexibility, consistent, versatile, kinesthetic, curiosity, visionary, searcher, synergy, playfulness, metaphoric thinking, group-oriented, music, artistry, problem solving, sensing, color sensitivity, believer, people-focused, visualization capability

learn phonetic analytical method, learn sight method

right-brainers like: role play, metaphors, analogies, visuals, movement, background music

The yearend activity for me has been immense. You haven’t seen me much on my beloved twitter or blog posting either. My Google Reader RSS aggregator is backing up; and del.icio.us/diigo are on hold. With over 1,000 students to make, give and grade tests; there simply has been no available time. Life is this way at times. I hope to be back into my Web activities within 3 weeks after completing all program reports.

I do poke into twitter from time to time for a quick fix, but I must admit that I miss getting a drink when thirsty. I am a little parched right now; but I know that the river is flowing and will be there when I am ready. Such is the glory of the PLN, Personal Learning Network.

This newest Twitter search tool is cool and pretty … and it delivers the goods. It is complete with RSS, twittable results, popular searches, twhirl-style picture/picture graphics, multiple pages of search results, and a cool converstion “drill down” capability to follow threads.

Related Resources:
Quotably.com - Follow the Conversation. Powered by Summize.
Tweetscan.com - Real-time twitter search with search clouds.