iPhone App

One of my students has created a Mathtrain app for the iPhone. I hope it really works out. I saw it installed on an iPhone, and it is still being sorted out. But how exciting!

Easily Installed Memory

OK, I know this isn't a big deal. But being a Windows guy and only recently an iMac owner too, I am happy to report I successfully installed an extra gb of RAM all by my lonesome self.

I eventually will order 4 GB from Crucial or someplace cheaper than the ridiculous Apple Store prices. I mean 1GB of RAM is only about $16 on-line and $75 at Apple? Rip-off!

Next, I plan on installing Vista and Parallels onto my iMac. Yikes, now that is the scary segment. Wish me luck.

I Love Australia!

Today, I presented from my classroom in Santa Monica, CA at the MAV Math Conference in Melbourne, Australia. It was 3:45pm my time and 10:45am the next day in Australia.

Student, "Bob", co-presented. It was unique in that we were broadcast via Skype and Adobe ConnectNow. Tomorrow, we get to do it again! Meanwhile, some students were participating and/or watching the presentation in my classroom in front of me. They were impressed that we were talking and viewing live a live feed to Aultralia. Thanks to the wonderful Tony Richards, of itmadesimple and edtechcrew.net for running the show locally in Australia. And thanks to Darren, who hooked us up with his smooth Skype connection!

Seismometer App

Pretty cool iPhone app called, Seismometer. I did my high school
science fair projects with seismometers, so I'm psyched to own my very
own finally!

Decibels

I'm trying out the Decibels app on my iPhone. I like the idea of it.
Maybe I can use it in class to measure how loud the students are? (jk)

Google Earth on iPhone

Finally, it is here! I am currently downloading the Google Earth app for my iPhone. I am excited to try it out. I have used Earthscape on my iPhone and it seemed to work pretty well. But Google Earth is the mother of them all and it is free too.

Mathtrain Podcast on iTunes

This week, I was browsing podcasts on iTunes and saw that our Mathtrain Podcast had reached #4 in the Education:K12 category. Very cool. My students were very excited!

Funding Conferences

It still angers me that our school pays for teachers to *attend* conferences, but yet do not pay when a teacher is actually PRESENTING at a conference! My school does not seem to understand the value of having one of their staff members presenting at an international conference. Yes, it is great publicity for our school. But it is also inspiring to our students who benefit from an increasing global audience.

Forget all this focus on "teacher quality" and credential upgrades... we need to focus on re-vamping what our "Administrators" learn in Administration School! As I have mentioned before, administrators need to understand PR. They need to be savvy publicity agents. Sadly, many I have worked with do not seem to grasp the concept of proactive PR. They DO understand negative publicity, though.

Well, I am presenting at the ILC Conference in San Jose, CA this Thursday, October 16th. It will cost me over $500 out of my own pocket for flight and hotel. In the big picture, I don't mind... it's worth it. However, I am not wealthy and I will have a challenge paying for the other upcoming conferences.

But what is maddening is how difficult it is to get my own school to sponsor our project or help with any funding. Ugh!

Last year, as I struggled for funding, there was a staff e-mail sent out inviting 3 teachers to go to a conference in Northern California. The school offered to "...take care of the hotel, the registration, and the airfare..." for the 3 individuals, but they were short in finding teachers who wanted to attend. They sent out a mass e-mail looking for someone-anyone to attend so they could spend the money. What a waste, especially as I was burning a hole in my pocket as I tried to pay for a conference I was presenting at around the same time period.

Please Lincoln, help fund our project.

Suspension for a Mohawk

I understand dress codes as important sometimes. I taught in East Boston, and the color red was forbidden. That is because it was associated with a gang and students would go to all lengths to find creative ways to wear a piece of red to show their allegiance.

But a haircut? A student got suspension for a mohawk. That's so old-school that it isn't even a rebel thing to do anymore. C'mon, that is pathetic.

Old One was Better

I had the original 4GB iPhone for over a year. I liked it and the only real bummer was that it was such a small amount of storage for all my podcasts, music and videos.

So this week, I bought the new 3G 16GB iPhone. Now I have plenty of storage! However, the newer device is disappointing.

Of course, the casing is not as good as the first one. But there are other issues. For example, the 3G doesn't kick-in very often. And when it does, I am underwhelmed. Also, my old iPhone paired well with my car stereo for hands free conversations. But the newer iPhone sounds like tin, it echoes and even feeds back while in the car. This never happened with the older version.

Also, the screen should blacken while near my ear and light back up when removed from my ear. Well, this newer iPhone does the opposite. It blackens the screen when I remove it from my ear and then it is a challenge trying to hang up. OK, so maybe I need to visit the Apple store. But, I just wish my older iPhone was a wee bit larger than 4GB so I could go back to that one.

PR in the School

School administrators should be trained in PR. They MUST be savvy about publicity, and sadly they are more reactive than proactive when it comes to publicity.

Accepted to present at CLMS/CLHS & CUE Tech Conference!

The other day, I got a letter in the mail and it was thin. It had CLMS/CLHS on it and I thought "uh oh". But I was excited when I opened it and read that I had actually just been accepted to present at the California League of Middle Schools/California League of High Schools & CUE Technology Conference, "Learning to Network, Networking to Learn" in Monterey, CA on December 7th, 2008! Cool, this is a Sunday, so no missed school!

I will be presenting "Kids Teaching Kids: Collaboration through Screencasting" (the Mathtrain Project I do with our Lincoln Middle School students ). Monterey, here I come!

Checking in

It's just a few hours from my birthday.  I haven't stopped to think about it until now.  The school year began a few weeks ago, and the students seem great.  I have been slowly pulling in the technology.  I plan on getting my clickers in full use by next week.

And, I am having a student act as the official scriber each day via the tablet pc.  After each school day, all the handwritten student notes from each class will be available for all the students to view.

Meanwhile, Mathtrain.TV is taking off.  The students seem to like it.  Oh, and just a few weeks ago, we were excited because Harvard Ed Magazine did a story on my class site, Mathtrain.com.  Two of my students are featured in the article!

iPods Need Not Apply

School begins in a few days. Recently, we had a staff meeting and reviewed a school policy of "No iPods are allowed on campus". Some teachers stated that iPods have "no role on campus".

Well, they are wrong. OK, I'll rephrase that... they are VERY... hold on, I'll be fair... how about I disagree. Yes, yes, yes I know they can put intrusive (I guess), but are kids really rocking out during class with their little white earbud headphones hanging out? The most common "problem" is students texting during class. But we allow cellphones on campus as long as they are off.

Don't get me wrong! Personally, I myself am not ready to go full-speed ahead with integrating iPods and/or cellphones into my classroom. I am interested in it, but far from ready. But I am clearly not in agreement with the statement that these items have "no role" in education.

So why the emotional vigor in the teacher's voices? The iPhones are, well, phones AND iPods. So according to our school policy, it would seem that the "phone" part of the iPhone is allowed on campus if turned off but the "iPod" part of it is not. Hm. Of course it sounds silly of me to write this, but actually it is a conundrum indeed.

We need Alan November to come back to our district. And maybe let's get David Warlick too. I think the staff would walk out on Marc Prensky. They wouldn't want to hear anything about games in education. I bet Tony, the itmadesimple guy (also of the edtechcrew.net fame) would go over well. He was one of the more recent advocates getting me to think seriously about the possibilities of using cellphones in class. The staff would melt over his accent!

Well, I hope I am not alone at my school in thinking that iPods are not evil... and in thinking that iPods actually CAN have a role in education. (There are schools elsewhere already using them!)

When I heard the negative talk at the staff meeting about iPod devices, I wanted to throw up. Some of my students put educational podcasts such as Mathtrain.com's Podcast from iTunes onto their devices. (And now it is even easier for them to add math content to their iPods - - they can now download student-created math video tutorials directly from Mathtrain.TV.)

We will see how this policy plays out. I'm just not afraid of iPods like some apparently are.

Harvard Ed. Article Features My Students & Mathtrain

What a great day today! My students and Mathtrain (and me, too) are featured in a Harvard Ed. article.

Presenting at FETC in January 2009 (Orlando)

This morning, I found out that I got accepted to present at the FETC 2009 Conference in Orlando, FL (January 2009)! I will be discussing "kids teaching kids" screencasting and creating a culture of classroom collaboration. I'm very excited!

iPhone, iCrash

For the second time this week, my iPhone crashed hard. This morning, I was in the middle of a call when the iPhone suddenly went black and crashed.

I could not even turn the device on for several minutes! (Yes, the battery was charged.) I thought it was completely dead, since it was unresponsive. Finally, it decided to reboot. But on top of that catastrophic event, the entire phone has become sluggish overall. I'm bummed, because I've loved my iPhone and now after only one year, it is wheezing and keeling over.

The small black-screen-of-death... Apple products don't crash? Yeah, right. And by the way, the recent 2.0.2 software update did not fix this problem.

Happy Annniversary Mathtrain iTunes Podcast!

Yesterday marked the One Year Anniversary of our Mathtrain.com with Mr. Marcos Podcast, on iTunes. It was a great year for our student math video lessons.

And now, with the launch of Mathtrain.TV, the name of the podcast will have to change. I'll drop the ".com" since we use the ".tv" site more for the video content and the ".com" site is mainly our class web site.

Happy Anniversary to our Podcast!

New Principal is Named for Lincoln

My school, Lincoln Middle School, has a new Principal.

At a special meeting on August 13, 2008, the Santa Monica-Malibu Board of Education appointed Ms. Suzanne Webb as the new Principal at Lincoln Middle School in Santa Monica.

Ms. Webb was most recently Assistant Principal at Malibu High School, and previously taught at Lincoln as a math teacher.

Welcome and congratulations to Ms. Webb!

Google Translator for iPhone

Google Translator got a little makeover for the iPhone and I like it!
Sleek, new look. While playing around with it, I felt like I was
IM'ing myself but in other languages.

While on the iPhone, go to google.com, click "More" and then you'll
see the Translator icon. Divertirse!

[via iphone]

Media Roll from Screencast.com

Here, I am trying out a cool feature from screencast.com (from the Jing, Camtasia Studio people at TechSmith). It's a Media Roll.

Administration Defect

My school and school district have funny ways of dealing with implementing technology and technological support. But I'm not laughing and neither should the taxpayers. It pains me to see how much money and resources our school and district has wasted.

Although we have great tech coordinators and district-level tech people, our school continues to lack in providing support and follow-up with recipients of new technology. This is not the tech coordinator's fault. It is an Administration defect where I am starting to think they are happier bragging about how much tech they have plugged into our classrooms, as opposed to how effective it has been. And I almost never hear anyone mention the students.

In fairness, maybe they are trying their best, but just a bit clueless. If so, there needs to be a wake up call for the Administration to drop their tech-decision powers and let the tech department lead the way with implementing technology properly.

Oh and it's not just for the teachers... the students deserve better.

BLC08

I am too excited to even write. My students, "Bob" and "Billy Billy" were amazing co-presenters.
We have an interview with Harvard Ed Magazine in a few days. I'll update and reflect more later. What a great conference.

Yummy

Not handmade, but fingermade with my iPhone.

Download to NetSketch on my iPod

[via iphone]

Free Camtasia Studio from EdTechCrew

Hey Educators,
The guys at Edtechcrew.net Episode 52 are giving away 2 free licenses of Camtasia Studio. I was a guest on that episode, Interviews form the floor at NECC08, w/Dave (TechSmith) and Darren Murphy and this is for real. We like free. Free is good. More info at the podcast site edtechcrew.net.

Iphone Apps

I got the 2.0 upgrade to my first-gen iPhone today. I added the free Jott app, (because Jott rules), the VoiceNotes. I purchased Sketches, which is neat and "Band".

But, unfortunately the "Moo-Cow Band" crashes. I'll need that fixed or a refund. Too bad, I was looking forward to that one.
UPDATE: July 12, 2008 it works. Maybe I needed to tune my instruments?

New Google Talk for the iPhone

Very, very cool! Google just released a version of "Google Talk" for the iPhone!

Tony from EdTechCrew.net

Google Certified Teacher: Purposeful Technology

So I am now a "Google Certified Teacher". (That's me, Eric Marcos, on the left and Brian Mull, of November Learning on the right.) I can use this logo:

But what does this actually mean? Well, it means several things as listed here. But to me, it means something even extra - -someone noticed! I am excited that my use of technology in the classroom has been recognized by someone. And that someone, being Google, is pretty cool.

Having participated in the recent 4th Google Teacher Academy, or GTA4 (which is funny if you play video games), will help me to bring more relevant technology into the classroom. Now I have a network of other ed-tech geeks and non-geeks! Yes, relevant technology. Not technology just because it's technology or the latest shiny toys. Not gadgets and gizmos just for show (although that could be fun at times), but technology which serves a a true purpose.

I have fought long and hard at trying to get my school on board or just understand why our Mathtrain Project is beneficial to the school, district, community, global audience and most importantly, our students. Resistance to change is a major obstacle in schools today, and Lincoln Middle School is no different.

Funding has been another constant battle. Over the past two years, I had to fight for the smallest dollars even up until today. I host, maintain and pay for the Lincolnmath.com web site out of my own pocket. I even spent my own money to purchase the domain name. Supposedly, I will be reimbursed next week for the domain name fees (from August 2007), one of the Mathtrain sites' fees, as well as the Camtasia Studio screen capturing software I paid for almost two years ago. I'm holding my breath. Of course, my tablet pc will not be reimbursed, even as the entire math department has been awarded a tablet this upcoming school year as part of a local grant. Being first on the block surely has its downsides. But I never did any of this for the money. In fact, I will gladly spend more of my own salary if it will benefit my students. On the positive side, how cool that the math department wants and is getting tablet pcs! This is thanks to our math chairperson, Eric Moe, for realizing the benefits of our Mathtrain Project and having the foresight to bring it to the department level. That's progress, so maybe there is hope after all.

I believe in purposeful technology. I spend an extraordinary amount of time mining the web looking for useful tools, software and devices which can serve a meaningful purpose in my classroom or for my students in general. Many of these items are free, like Google Docs, but some do cost money. I understand schools would not want to jump in and pay for every cutting-edged idea. That makes sense. (By the way, one might be shocked at some of the things schools DO gladly pay people for.) However, it is alarming at how slow schools can be to realize progress and positive affects. Schools like the status quo. They don't like new and they don't like change. This is disappointing for an entity designed to educate and help open minds to endless possibilities.

As our student-created math videos on Mathtrain.TV received local and international press, my school was not slow, but asleep when it came to acknowledging it. How can an administration not be trained or skilled in public relations? I sent countless e-mails to the staff and jumped up and down whenever our students received a mention in the newspaper, an overseas blog, or even an e-mail from another continent. This was exciting! Our students' work had a new, global audience! And the name "Lincoln Middle School" was almost always right there in the articles. But no one cared. OK, a few at my school cared. But most didn't and most of the top administrators couldn't bother to congratulate the students' success.

So as I reflect, I realize the long hard road ahead will be just as rocky, if not worse. My job, in addition to teaching math as I have done all along, will need to be not just to "innovate", but to educate my staff and administrators too. That's a much more difficult task. I hope my future administrators will be trained in basic PR and be able to realize and seize positive opportunities as they see them. It sure would make my life and the students' lives much easier and better. But the real benefit would be that purposeful technology, as in the positive projects like Mathtrain, could be properly supported and further developed to enhance the classroom experience of our students.

And thanks to Google for the recognition, support and awesome tools. I will use the tools and knowledge from the GTA to assist colleagues and the community with technological solutions. I will also use them to not just enable my students to do well in math, but to strive to make them "lifelong lovers of math".

The Googleplex

Google Teacher Academy, Mountain View, CA.

Felt Like Making This

It was hazy this morning in Mountain View, CA. I walked to Sunnyvale (about a block away) and ate lunch. I know, that's not too exciting. But when I got back to the hotel, I did create this "mathtrain wordle". OK, I think it is nap time already.

Packing: Destination Googleplex

I managed to wait until the last minute to pack (as usual). I fly out tomorrow morning to San Jose, CA. I'm very excited about the Google Teacher Academy day on Wednesday! Not only will I get to meet Vicki Davis (Ed Tech Talk's WOW2 show, The Cool Cat Teacher Blog), who gave me a great weekend when she mentioned our Mathtrain Project, but I look forward to meeting the other Google Academy participants.

It will be great to listen and to watch what these other educators are doing in and out of the classroom. And to visit the Googleplex should be quite an experience in itself. As I wrote in my Google Teacher application, "I'm a GoogleHead". So much of my daily life is run or organized by Google software/apps/programs. I wonder if we will get to see a demo of Android?

Accepted into the Google Teacher Academy!

On June 5th, 2008, I got to start my day off with the great news that I had been accepted into the Google Teacher Academy! I get to go to the Googleplex on June 25th! I'm so excited!

Cinder Cone

From our Geology Field Trip.

92 degrees in Santa Monica 4/13/08

Santa Monica Pier parking lot full with beachgoers today, April 13th,
2008.

Move to WordPress?

I may move this blog to WordPress. It's easier for me to embed it into my moodle site. The only thing slowing me down, is it's more of a chore to upload photos directly from my iPhone to WordPress.

I also like the WordPress themes/templates a bit better. I would prefer to stay using Blogger, since I use so many Google items like calendar, docs, gmail, and notebook. Well, stand by.

In the meantime, I am currently working on a new video web site to host our student-created math video lessons (also called screencasts or mathcasts). You can view the WIP at http://www.mathtrain.tv.

Still working on this

I run a moodle-powered web site and it has blogging on it. I am still trying to see how I will use this. I like that I can upload photos directly to the site from my phone! That's a plus!

Testing iPhone Photo to Blog

Test2

Second test.

[via iphone]

First entry

First blog entry.