Classroom III

While working out at the gym, I listened to a podcast. Steve Dembo, a wizard of educational technology and most things digital, mentioned Pipes. Now, when he said the word, I was standing in front of the water cooler. Pipes? I mumbled. Whatever!

When I got home, and typed in pipes and yahoo into Google, and pulled up the site, well, I am hooked. Not sure how it does it, but it works like magic. It reminds me of one of my favorite TV shows- Pimp My Ride. Pipes of the ‘parts’ and merges them into a ‘pimped out new ride’.

This could be a great learning task for computer science students in high school. I am thinking about setting up a Pipe that would search of environmental issues in new sources. In the fall, we have a class called North Carolina Wildlife. In an effort to expose my students to all the controversy generated by topics like landfills, live stock farming, waste disposal, global warming, beach erosion, and much more, the do current events each week. Teaching students to efficiently searching the Internet for current event topics is a challenge. Most students find one source and turn in the same type current event each time. Maybe it would be interesting to set up a Pipe and let them find their own feeds and customize them.

Ok, so check it out, dawg…here’s an example of what you can do with the new “My Maps” feature from Google. Go on…go look.

Now, if your head ain’t swimmin’ with ideas like mine is… My children don’t know it yet, but they just became the map makers for all travel related to the Richardson family. (And we just figured out that the whole clan is going to Australia this summer.) I can’t wait to show them this.

I know this isn’t news, but this is the kind of stuff that still gives me butterflies. Stupid, I know. It’s also the kind of stuff that I want to go running into schools with, shouting “Look what our kids can create! Look what they can contribute!”

It’s a great time to be a learner, isn’t it? Very cool…  Check out Step #19 in the directions

By Will Richardson.

If any of my students go out of town during vacation, I hope to challenge them make their own map. 

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Newbie’s guide to Twitter | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone

What is Twitter?

Twitter is an online service that enables you to broadcast short messages to your friends or “followers.” It also lets you specify which Twitter users you want to follow so you can read their messages in one place.

A popular Twitterer
(Credit: CNET Networks)

Twitter is designed to work on a mobile phone as well as on a computer. All Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters, so each message can be sent as a single SMS alert. You can’t say much in 140 characters. That’s part of Twitter’s charm.

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Twittervision

Now
that Twitter is taking the web by storm, here is a mash - up of Google
maps and Twitter allowing you to see all of the Twitterers (Twits?)
posts in real time posted on a world map.

Twittervision

Thanks to Gaping Void.

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