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.