Ramblings on Shelf-life and FB in the Afterlife

I have the attention span of a gnat until a thing grabs me and pulls me along with the gravitational force of the sun. Things capture my attention and I follow them like Alice through the rabbit hole until I realize I am lost in time and must escape before I become a permanent part of the matrix. On one such excursion I was following the growth of online freely available courses. I attended a webinar on the subject, browsed and clicked my way though the MIT open courseware offerings and something struck me. No, I wasn’t hit up the backside of the head by my dear neglected husband! It occurred to me that lectures have a shelf life as do videos or moments captured in any venue. Food for the brain may grow stale over time and we may become ill if we imbibe that rancid milk and honey. So what is the solution? I propose expiration dates for lectures. Just as with food or aspirin we all know the expiration day is vigilantly in favor of the short term usage but may still be good for a length of time thereafter. So too, information.

My other fleeting thought was just the pie-in-the-sky hope for the future when science(or religion establishes that our very existence is just like a nonlinear graphic organizer and that time is ever-present and not on a linear continuum. Non-the-less, I would like to suggest that social networking span the afterlife. It’s silly, really, to keep out our friends and family members simply because they no longer reside in physical form on the planet. Now that would truly make technology ubiquitous, although contact lists might become a bit unwieldy. Writing prompt: What are the pros and cons of expanding social networking to people in other dimensions?

What do you think about on rainy days?

This is just a portion of the twists and turns in my thought process. (Let’s not call it procrastination) It all started with a search to establish the best possible was to introduce division to 3rd graders. Still looking!

Must Read: Twitter Experiment Results

Twitter Cures Hiccups
Jenny Gilbert, thank you for making me laugh first thing in the morning! jenny posted the above link in my Diigo educators group and if you have ever wondered how many different ways there are to cure hiccups, you will be nothing short of amazed by the responses David Pogue, NYT technology Reporter received in hi Twitter experiment.

and this is how I get rid of them.

Twitter is for people who need to have their finger on the pulse of the world, at all times. It’s the crack cocaine of instant feedback. I briefly engaged in twittering but found myself overly absorbed in the online dynamics and pulled away to catch my breath. Since then I find myself reconsidering the value of Twitter and wondering, how I could join the collective consciousness of Twitter without getting sucked into the Matrix? Just this week I heard Greta Van Susteren ask viewers to Twitter! Only a few months back in September of 2008, she was steering clear of Twitter due to her already overly connected life. Much as Oprah made Skype a household word/application. It’s possible Greta and other news hounds will find Twitter invaluable in providing leads and making connections with the help of limitless numbers of voices available instantly online.

Short Post

Several weeks ago during center time I discovered my kindergarten students had access to Youtube.  They were searching for Disney movies, cartoons and apparently a recently posted video of someone’s brother. At first I was simply shocked that our school firewall didn’t catch this since it keeps me from even accessing BubbleShare or any other file sharing site. I informed the students calmly that Youtube is not permitted in school and that they should only use it at home when they are sitting with their parents who can help guide them to make good choices. I got a lot of “why, my parents let me use it at home?” I haven’t taken a poll just yet but I have a hunch that they may not be exaggerating the extent of the freedom they have online in the home.

So I ask you.  How do you feel about free exploration of the internet by children of all ages?  Would you encourage your child to search for funny movies on Youtube?  I need a little perspective and I’m afraid that since my own children are in their late teens, I can’t fully understand the point of you of the young parent. Maybe some of you can help me in this regard.

Geocaching is News to Me

Today I experienced an Alphasmart training session prepared and facilitated by a recent PhD in Edtech and Curriculum. Her name, Diana Freeman and she works part time for Alphasmart developing and delivering training. Her other job is sizable. She is the  Media & Instructional Technology Director for Johnston County schools in North Carolina. It sounds like they have a very unified vision for technology in their school system. I will write more about this later. In her spare time she is a philanthropist and a Geocacher. She is the quintessential teacher completely engaged in living, giving and learning.

Diana managed to introduce us to the wide ranging capabilities of Neos, let us play and practice and interspersed activities with vignettes about her passion, Geocaching. I am familiar with this hobby, activity or ‘cult’ but I had never encountered an active participant. She is so active in fact that she left our training session and headed for a Geocache in Alabama! A mother and grandmother, she has the entire family involved. She lives her discovery learning philosophy. She has peaked my interest in technology-based treasure hunting. Has anyone been using this in kindergarten? How’s it going? If like me, you are wondering how Geocaching might enhance your curriculum then read this August post by Silvia Tolisano in her Langwitches blog. Here is The Official Geocaching website. (photo from Bob and Renee on Flickr.com)

It’s About Time

I typically pride myself on being on time but in this case I’m 6 years behind! In my unrelenting quest for inventive, inspiring web content I somehow overlooked The Human Clock! This is a feel good website because it is purely whimsical in it’s approach to time. The good new is that after 6 years of producing the human clock Craig Giffen has started The Human Calendar and here it is in its infancy.