Josh Burker's Blog of Musings

nBlog working again?

2012-01-17T15:46:00.002-05:00

The wonderful My Apple Newton blog suggests that nBlog works with Blogger again. Here is my test from my eMate. Will it work?

It did!

Scratch in the Browser

2011-12-20T20:43:00.003-05:00

Mitch Resnik hinted at this during NYC Scratch Day. Today I found a test server. Scratch running inside a browser. No saving, but you can build!

LED Light Box

2011-12-19T13:55:00.010-05:00

My mom bought my 4 month old son a MurphLab LED Art Kit from the MakerShed. I put it together for him. I built a temporary container for it from a tie box I received for Christmas. I hope my father-in-law will help me by building a wooden case for the device.

The kit comes with a piece of cut matte board and a "lens," a piece of plastic through which the light shines.

There are three LEDs. You connect the positive terminals and the negative terminals and use a pair of pliers to crimp down a little metal tube around the LED terminals.

It is a good idea to label the terminals as you build the LED array. Here is the negative terminal.

Next, the LEDs are connected to the power supply.

Next, my attention turned to the temporary case for this project. I received a tie for Christmas that came in this handy box. I cut off one side and repurposed the stock to make an open area in the box for the power supply switch.

I built a shelf for the LED array to sit on and hot-glued it in place.

I followed the direction's suggestion to put a dab of hot glue on each of the LEDs to distort the light. It produced a great effect when the box was closed up and the lens was in place.

The Genesis of Apple's Design Philosophy

2011-12-13T21:12:00.002-05:00

If you use an Apple product you should watch this video of Steve Jobs from 1980. Apple's philosophy and direction was forged at this computer user meeting. Think about how the Apple II that Steve Jobs promotes at the beginning progresses to the way the iPhone integrates well-made software into hardware. Seemless user experience from the beginning.

NYC Scratch Day

2011-12-12T10:11:00.008-05:00

I had the good fortune of facilitating a session at the NYC Scratch Day, graciously hosted by Packer Intercollegiate Institute. I taught people how to use PicoBoards with their Scratch projects.

My friend Rob showed up and brought his son along.

They developed a great Scratch PicoBoard project that used the alligator clips to create a closed circuit. Using the slider, T could make Scratch play a series of four piano chords. Here it is in action.

They demonstrated the project for Jaymes, who also facilitated a session on PicoBoards.

My success story for the day was working with a fifth grade girl to create her first PicoBoard project. She had previous experience using Scratch but had never before used a PicoBoard. She watched me demonstrate a few different projects that used the different sensors on the PicoBoard. She decided she wanted to make a project that used the slider, to control left and right movement of her sprite, and the button, to fire a projectile at another sprite.

An hour and a half after starting, she had her project working the way she wanted it! She could move her character with the slider, and the button fired a projectile sprite that we borrowed from another Scratch project. She was going to add a PicoBoard to her Christmas list!

This was perhaps one of the best educational technology conferences I attended or at which I facilitated a project because there were more students there than adults! The students were all very excited to be there on a Sunday to learn more about Scratch! What a fun day!

LEGO WeDo Whiteboard Bot Rev 04

2011-11-11T19:58:00.007-05:00

I finished off the week with the fourth revision of the art bot. I have struggled with vertical reach of the pen in revisions 01-03. I even had a version 03b that did not get photographed. It returned to the design of Rev 01 but was too erratic and abandoned. Rev 04 changed the design completely and returned to the design of the Balancing Robot. I hope with more of a vertical reach the robot might draw a larger picture.

Here are some detailed photos of the gearing and design.

Those are two big LEGO weights at the bottom of the robot, between the wheels. Speaking of wheels, I am also challenged by the design of the pen tray at the bottom of the whiteboard. It is scalloped. This makes the wheels wander. I am thinking I should use my LEGO railroad parts and build a rail line for it to go up and down on. This would help focus all the power into the tasks of moving and drawing; I see a lot of energy expended as the robot wanders slightly off course and bumps into the board or drags some part of itself against the board. Rails would ensure proper placement of the pen against the board, too, another frequent challenge. The original Senseless Art Bot ran on sheets of particle board, so this accommodation to the robot's locomotion would be acceptable.

Here is some footage of the robot being tested.

Rev 04 also marks the start of using Scratch as the programming environment! Right now the program would just draw a line on a whiteboard. Soon the robot will have many procedures!

LEGO WeDo Whiteboard Bot Rev 03

2011-11-09T20:06:00.003-05:00

LEGO provides a great rapid prototyping environment! I completely changed the design of the Whiteboard Bot after thinking it over last night. I decided to try the pendulum design from the original Senseless Art Robot.

Here is another example of its artistic talent.

The pendulum produces some good random designs but the range is smaller than the Rev 01 design. The robot moves and marks but the marks are too concise.

I am going back to the idea of a free-swinging arm that is governed by a cam. I want to include a smarter "return system" that gets the randomly swinging arm back into position and making art.

One design issue I have not yet tackled is how the pens are connected to the bots and the shape of the pen's nub.

LEGO WeDo Whiteboard Bot Rev 02

2011-11-08T21:05:00.007-05:00

More advances on the whiteboard random art bot. I built a much stronger drawing arm, based on a design by LEGO master Yoshihito Isagawa.

It took some time to figure out exactly how I was going to connect the gears. I ended up using the chain: a student in LEGO Club built an impressive gravity powered car: it drops a weight that spins an axle connected by a chain to a a gear that is connected to another axle with wheels. The chains work very well.

I used the design in the bottom of the photo above. It is solid. Here's a look at it in action.

I swapped on a red pen as well. Rubber bands hooked around the pen and held by pegs make it fairly easy to swap pens.

I want to built cartridges like I did at CMK10 that are even easier to snap on and off the robot.

The problem with this revision is that the pen has a limited range of motion with this design. It does not make the beautiful mountains that the barely-in-control Rev 01 model exhibited.

My mind shifts to a trebuchet that a student built in LEGO Club.

Put a pen at the end of a pendulum. The motors randomly running back and forth will get the pendulum swinging: I could write an opening "routine" that was not random but rather got the pendulum swinging. Once it had a rhythm, the motor could run randomly back and forth to disrupt the rhythm. Onwards to Rev 03!

LEGO WeDo Whiteboard Bot Rev 01

2011-11-07T21:40:00.004-05:00

I saw a video about a robot that creates senseless art.

http://thisisnotagraffiti.tumblr.com/

http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/tablog/entries.en/2011/10/senseless-drawing-bot-the-robotic-artist.html

The hardware purposefully makes the paint sloppy.

I want to create one using LEGO. I am using LEGO WeDo as the programming hardware. I started using LEGO WeDo software for Rev 01. Rev 02 will use Scratch.

I am interested in exploring random art.

A few of my students are interested in exploring programmed art.

- Can it write your name?
- Can it draw a tree?

This robot could handle both, with different Scratch programs and perhaps different arm designs.

Stay tuned.

GarageBand on the iPhone: A Prophesy Come True

2011-11-02T20:13:00.008-04:00

In 2007 for a Pepperdine Online Masters in Educational Technology project I created a podcast that talked about a technology from a future perspective. I pretended it was 2010, and I was reflecting on 2007. Rumors were flying that Apple was going to release some type of mobile phone, probably called an iPhone. I chose to talk about the "killer app" that was released concurrently, GarageBand, which put a mobile podcasting studio in your hands. In reality GarageBand was not released for the iPhone in 2007, but this made for an interesting story. Here is the podcast.

mp3

Today I learned Apple updated their GarageBand iOS app to work with any iOS device: iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad. Of course I had to buy it! Finally, four years after I envisioned a complete mobile podcasting solution (and they threw in a great musical creation tool as well!). Projects can be shared to the iPhone user's iTunes account or emailed. From there they can be imported into the Mac GarageBand and added to.

I teach Kindergarten students how to use GarageBand on Macs. This year I have access to iPads and want to use them to help create tracks. Previously I had them use loops. It will be interesting to have the students using their fingers to create beats, play guitars or pianos on the iPad, and combine that with loops from the Mac to create songs.

Exploring littleBits

2011-11-01T07:55:00.007-04:00

I got my hands on a littleBits starter kit! I wrote about littleBits previously and posted their intro video. The finished pieces work well and are a fun way to explore electronics.

My friends' third grader came over and we explored the littleBits pieces.

Because the parts are magnetized it is impossible to put them together "incorrectly." His first attempt, above, did not produce the results he was looking for, and he was able to rapidly modify the design of his circuit and make the buzzer buzz.

I love how he immediately thought of how he could integrate littleBits into his LEGO creations.

Learning the Ukulele

2011-08-10T14:30:00.010-04:00

I've been learning to play the ukulele. I used to play the trumpet in elementary school and junior high, and I can still read music. I've never played a string instrument before.

I started by finding a tuning app for the iPhone. Ukulele Tune is free and does the trick by showing you where your string is tuned relative to the proper G C E A tunings.

I bought a Hilo ukulele from Amazon. I bundled it with a copy of Mel Bay's _Fun with the Ukulele_. It has good chord studies and covers all the chords, it would seem. It also has sheet music that you can sing and play along with, if you were born sometime in the early 20th century. I knew a few of the tunes: "Darling, Clementine," "The Marines Corps Hymn," and "Blue Tailed Fly." But after playing the incredibly dated and racist "Blue Tailed Fly" 1000 times I knew I would drive myself or my wife crazy and had to expand my repertoire.

Fortunately, a friend from my old school who is the music teacher put together a summer ukulele song book and accompanying CD! Now I'm strumming along to the Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning," playing Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind," and looking forward to tackling some David Bowie!

It's been great using my mind to learn a completely new skill and to be rewarded with music for my efforts.

Revising Josh's LEGO WeDo Experiment

2011-07-12T08:42:00.014-04:00

I decided to revisit the Balancing Robot experiment after deciding that the robot in the original video had too tall of a center of gravity. I used Technics pieces, which allowed me to use pegs to attach the motor, axles, and the distance sensor to the robot's body. I kept the gearing low and slow.

Using the Technics pieces also kept the robot lightweight, so it would not be throwing too much weight around when it ran.

After experimenting with the Scratch project, Balancing-04, I concluded that it was very capable and my previous failed efforts had been in the original robot design.

Hooking up the robot to the computer with a USB extension cable that came with a card reader gave the WeDo tether longer length. Here is the result.

As you can see, the cable plays a part in keeping the robot balanced. But the Scratch project keeps the motor running and the robot balanced quite nicely!

Scratch Submarine Rescue Game

2011-06-20T12:26:00.008-04:00

During the LEGO WeDo camp I ran after school let out I tried to entice the students, particularly the fourth and fifth graders, to explore using Scratch with the WeDo parts. I told them I was throwing them in the deep end of the pool, with no previous experience using Scratch. However, I provided them with six great starter projects that would get them up and going with the motor and sensors that by then they had figured out how to use in various models. However, they grew accustomed to having the LEGO models build instructions in front of them to give them a model to build and a purpose to the software. By this point we had exhausted what we could do with the basic WeDo set, spending 15 hours playing and working with it. I am excited that LEGO has developed and is accepting pre-orders for a supplemental WeDo Resource Kit, one that specifically provides parts for vehicles and four more models that students can build and adapt. I was a little disappointed at how camp was petering out but I did some research and found an awesome, compelling and hard fun project for the last day of camp.

Sub Rescue

After watching the video the students were reinvigorated to build LEGO and incorporate the motor and distance sensor. I showed them a way to mount the distance sensor vertically using a minimal number of LEGO.

The students used the pre-built Scratch project to power their LEGO submarines, each of which was different in shape and build but each of which worked with the game. Of all the builds of the week, this was the one I was most excited about, and most proud of each of the students who chose to build their own submarine, the S.S. Papert, in order to rescue Scratch the cat.

The only thing I would change about the Scratch project is the "make noise" component at the end, as it led to seeing how loud each student could scream. Again, the 15 hours and tiredness factor of WeDo camp. I would like to adapt the Scratch project to use the addition of the tilt sensor and have Scratch (the cat) tell the player a randomly generated key combination. The player would tilt the sub in the correct sequence of the key combination, the generated combination of left, right, back, and forward. The Scratch program would track the tilt sensor and would release the Scratch sprite should the player properly repeat the sequence.

I particularly enjoy this project and hope to use it in another classroom setting because of the intersection between the digital, in this case the Scratch game, and the physical: the LEGO, the sensors, the player holding and manipulating the model that he or she constructs. It's a great means of digital storytelling using software and hardware, and one I hope to explore in depth with fourth grade students next school year.

Josh's LEGO WeDo Experiment

2011-06-17T20:28:00.003-04:00

Josh's LEGO WeDo Experiment from Josh Burker on Vimeo.

I ran a LEGO WeDo camp for elementary students this week. I got my hands on a kit for 20 minutes, then went home and recreated a balancing robot. I wanted to test to see if it works. It isn't working for me yet. I'm adding some training wheels to help me fine-tune the software and not have to manage the hardware. It's an awesome project!

Apple IIe Card Saga

2011-05-21T21:42:00.013-04:00

Recently I was looking through the frustratingly rebranded and redesigned Apple Support Discussions, now known as Communities, specifically the Older Hardware area, when I came across an interesting plea.

Hi All,

I have been using a Mac LCIII with an Apple IIe card for 18 years. Recently, my hard drive died. I was able to buy a replacement hard drive and put it in my old LCIII. When I tried to partition my new hard drive so that I could use my Apple IIe card, the computer gave a message stating that I needed a newer version of the installer cards. My installer cards are labeled "Version 2.2." I understand that there ARE later versions labeled "Version 2.2.1" and "Version 2.2.x." I need to get my hands on one of these later sets of disks so that I can get my Apple IIe card up and running again. Can anyone out there help me? I am in dire need of these so that I can get back to using some important Applesoft database programs I created. Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Regards,

Dr. James E. Williamson
Dubuque, IA

I logged in and posted a reply. The software for the Apple IIe card is luckily still available from Apple's download site. Unfortunately, Jim didn't have a means of creating Mac floppies from his Internet connected PC, so I offered to make him disks. In return, I asked Jim to explain his setup and use of this cool Mac/Apple IIe rig for this blog and to send me a few photos. Here is what Jim explained about his setup.

My first taste of computing came in 1968. My wife had a computer project for her Masters Degree. Neither of us had a clue what we were doing, but between us we got the correct programming lines. In 1969, I went to Western Michigan University to work on my Ph.D. in Mathematics. In 1970, I was asked to serve on a committee to select a new computer to be dedicated to academic computing. We selected a state-of-the-art Control Data Corp. PDP-10 for $875,000. The computer filled a large room and needed to be air-conditioned. Programming access was by batch cards or hard-wired Teletype terminals. The computer operated in a time-sharing environment. When the machine was installed, I took two courses in Fortran, which I immediately put to use on mathematical research. One of my programs used 22K of core memory. The tech people politely asked me to run the program only at night because it slowed down the system too much during the day. I earned my Ph.D. in 1973. I then went to teach at Southern Illinois University for a year and a half.

In February, 1975, I secured a position at the University of Dubuque, a small Presbyterian college of 650 students and 45 faculty. In 1981, we hired our first computer science professor and launched a Computer Science major housed together with the Math Dept. The next year I found myself as the Chair of a combined Mathematics and Computer Science Department. We now had 3 mathematicians and 3 computer scientists, although most of us taught some courses in both majors. Enrollment grew to 107 Computer Science majors, and 35 Math majors by 1984. Along the way we set up a lab filled with Apple IIe computers. We also had a mainframe computer that we had to share with the administration. I felt I needed to know more about Computer Science, since I was the Chair, so I took Systems Analysis, 2 courses in Cobol, 2 courses in RPG 2, Pascal, and Data Structures. I also learned Applesoft and Integer Basic on my own. I was hooked on programming.

At about the same time I developed an interest in Postal History. Postal Historians are interested in all aspects of the workings of the U.S. Postal Service, mostly from a historical perspective. This is a very active hobby with many people doing research, publishing books, and contributing articles to journals and newsletters. Postal History can be very data intensive with so many facts and dates pertaining to the myriad of post offices and postal stations in the country. I decided to specialize in the postal stations of my birth city of Chicago, and in particular, to the various canceling machines and handstamps that had been used at the more than 200 facilities. I also got interested, in a similar fashion, in the post offices of the state of Iowa. Before I knew what hit me, I was wallowing in data piles with 20,000-30,000 records. I definitely needed assistance from some database computer programs. In the mid-80s, there was a dearth of useful canned programs, so I set about writing my own in Applesoft on an Apple IIe. As my data grew and my need to work with it and present it in various formats also grew, my programs became much more compact and efficient. When I started bumping into the limits of memory capacity on the Apple IIe, I was forced to use all the programming skills I had absorbed from more structured languages. My programs became modularized, and data was stored in both random access and sequential files, to be pulled in as needed.

In 1985, the Computer Science major was split off from the Math Department. From that time on, it was all down hill for both programs. The University enrolled an ever dwindling cadre of students willing to put forth the effort to master “hard” majors like Math, Computer Science, Chemistry, and Physics. In 1990, the greatly diminished computer major elected to dispense with instruction on Apple IIes, and work strictly in a mainframe environment. I was able to purchase one of these castoff rigs, complete with monitor, two floppy disk drives, and a pin-feed paper printer for $50, so that I could continue my work at home. I still have the setup and I believe it would all still work today although I haven't used it in 15 years. In 1993, the university's tech support person contacted me and said that I should seriously consider purchasing one of Apple's newly announced Macintosh LCIII computers. He said I could get it fitted with an Apple IIe card that would allow me to continue working with my Applesoft programs, plus it would have all the best of the current Apple Macintosh capabilities. He didn't have to twist my arm very hard. I bought an LCIII, the Apple IIe card, a disk drive for reading 5.25” floppy disks, a disk drive for reading CDs, and an Apple Color Stylewriter 2400 printer. This was the perfect computer for my needs.

In 2000, I moved to a new teaching post at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville and was immediately introduced to the modern world of the internet and e-mail. I retired (for the first time) in December, 2007. Since I had become addicted to the internet and all the many things we all can do with our modern computers, I purchased an HP Pavilion notebook so that I could stay connected to internet at home. My LCIII, still purring along, was incapable of establishing any meaningful internet services, so I had to have a new machine. Until one fateful day in early April, 2011, I used both my computers for their own special purposes. I had been using my LCIII for most of the day and then turned it off for the evening. Late that night I attempted to turn it back on, but it wouldn't boot up. After 18 years of faithful service, the hard drive had died. I believe the cause of death is called “sticktion.”

After 25 years of perfecting and using all my homemade postal history database programs, I was not about to let a little thing like a dead hard drive turn me in a different direction. Local computer repair shops could do nothing for me, so I fairly easily found another LCIII for sale on eBay and bought it. When this computer arrived I discovered that it would be easier to switch the hard drives than to move my Apple IIe card to the new LCIII. It took only a couple minutes to do this. Everything appeared to be moving along smoothly until I attempted to partition the new hard drive so that I could store all my postal history data and programs on the hard drive. Disaster! The LCIII monitor said that my Apple IIe card installer disk was too old to work on this system. Evidently the new hard drive had a newer operating system than my original hard drive.

I spent days searching the internet for a newer version of the installer disk and its companion Apple IIe startup disk, but to no avail. None were for purchase that I could find. I spent more time off the internet trying to find a person who might have the disks. Along the way I learned that there was a free library of old Apple programs that could be downloaded off the internet. Unfortunately, my HP notebook is the computer attached to the internet, and not my Macintosh LCIII. Even if I could use my PC to download some Apple programs, I could not get them onto a floppy disk that my LCIII could read. Fortunately, in one of my browsing sessions, I stumbled across the Apple Support Community. I registered to join the community and put my sad tale out there with the hope that someone could solve my problem. My solution came in less than 24 hours, when Joshua Burker responded to me concerning the Apple library downloads. I put up another message that I would need help getting the programs on disks my LCIII could use. Once again, Josh came to my rescue and volunteered to make up the disks for me, nice fellow that he is. Is my problem finally solved? I will know when I get the disks. Don't ask me what I will do when my LCIII dies a second time. As you can probably tell, I would be lost without my LCIII. If I have to start over with a database program on a modern computer, it would probably take 6 months of steady work to reload all the data. At my age, that's too big of a price to pay. Thank You Apple Support, and Josh!

I downloaded the disk images to my MacBook, but for some unfathomable reason in OS X 10.6 they turned off floppy write access. So I had to use my wife's 10.5.8 PowerBook to move the disk image to a floppy disk, which I then used with my Quadra 610 to create a set of physical disks. When I tried to boot the Quadra with the disks, it complained about needing a newer set of disks for the system, which sounded exactly like the issue Jim was experiencing. I made him a System Tools 7.1 disk with the proper System Enabler for his LCIII and wrote directions on how to partition the disk with the System Tools floppy and install the Apple IIe Card software.

Jim returned from a trip to Peru anxious to get his system running again, but ran into a few issues. However, rested and relaxed, he got the system going again!

I also told you that I had some difficulty establishing the partition, so I wasted a lot of time and got mentally exhausted. Today, my brain was finally free of other distractions (and rested), and I figured out what was wrong. I had focused so long and hard on getting the partition to work that i had neglected to reestablish my Macintosh files on the Mac part of the hard drive. Once I did that, and rediscovered how to run Apple files, everything worked like a charm! I still have to reload everything from my backup files and discover whether I had remembered to back everything up after my last major revisions of data. If not, I will be able to use my notes to get back up to speed, so I am now very happy. This happy camper will be going camping (and fishing) before I get around to that, so I probably have some considerable amount of work to do yet I know I did lose a lot of Microsoft Word files from the Mac HD because I hadn't backed that stuff up in a long time. This, at least, is not a major problem. Not getting back my Apple files, or the capacity to run them, would have been. Hopefully, my new hard drive will keep on ticking for a few more years.

The Apple II community, as well as the Vintage Mac community, does a great job of looking out for its' members. I've thrown some obscure questions to the crowd and been rewarded with answers. It was great to get Jim back on his computer!

littleBits and Learning Electronics

2011-05-15T20:02:00.002-04:00

I'm really intrigued by the simple powerfulness of littleBits. It's a snap and go way to learn electronics.

littleBits coffeemaker from ayah bdeir on Vimeo.

Magnets help reinforce the concept of electricity flow. Modules allow rapid prototyping. I've signed up for the starter kit and will hopefully get my hands on one.

Rhapsody DR2 Multimedia Demonstration

2011-05-02T13:38:00.010-04:00

I decided to dust off the PowerBook 3400c that has Rhapsody DR2, the precursor to Mac OS X, installed on it and give a multimedia demonstration.

The Workspace Manager, called the Finder on the Mac, should look familiar to anyone who has used NeXTSTEP or Mac OS X in columns view.

You can access the Terminal.app from the Apple Menu.

Previously, I moved a QuickTime LEGO stop-motion movie that I created on a Mac over to the Rhapsody PowerBook. Here is a demonstration of me playing that movie full-screen in QuickTime Rhapsody DR2. Note that on the PowerBook 3400c I could not get QuickTime audio to work.

Rhapsody DR2 was definitely a beta, and that spinning rainbow of death does make an occasional appearance.

All in all Rhapsody is a pretty powerful multimedia operating system and an interesting glimpse at what would develop into Mac OS X.

Apple Logo //

2011-05-01T14:40:00.014-04:00

I have been using TurtleArt with my third grade students and decided to give Apple Logo // a try on my Apple IIgs.

To make physical floppies I network boot the Apple IIgs to a Quadra 610 running AppleShare Server 3.

I download the .dsk file I need from the Internet and copy it to a HFS formatted floppy disk. Then I copy the .dsk file to a partition on my CFFA card in the Apple IIgs while booted to the AppleShare Server. I then reboot the Apple IIgs into ProDOS to run Dsk2File and write a physical floppy from the .dsk file.

I used the LCSI manual for Logo II on my MacBook to get me through a few tutorials and to draw some shapes.

I ended up working with Dr. Gary Stager's Dreamtime Designs for the afternoon. This project helped me better understand the role math can play in generating recursive patterns.

Animal Watch: Wolves!

2011-03-14T16:44:00.022-04:00

A few years back I got my hands on the Explore-a-Science Animal Watch: Wolves software for the Apple II series of computers. It was published in 1988 and distributed by D.C. Heath & Co. The Boston Museum of Science also contributed to the project.

The software comes with a teacher's guide that details the workings of the software. Additionally, there are five copies of the student book that accompany the software.

The story follows Lobo, a wolf, and the pack that he lives with. The idea is that the teacher or students would read through the text, which contextualizes what the student sees on the screen. In the gray text shown above there are suggestions for how the student might interact with the software. For example, in the first scene the book suggests that you try to find the other members of the wolf pack, find some water for the wolves, as well as some food.

Students can use a mouse, a joystick, or the keyboard to move the cursor and to click and drag different parts of the scene to reveal characters, like the wolves and rabbit, or to expose more of the scene. For example, in the second scene students can move earth around to expose the inside of the wolves' den and see the pups inside.

I couldn't get the mouse or joystick to work, though the keyboard did. The keyboard was awkward to use.

Students could add additional characters to the scene or even add different backgrounds. For example, one of the gray text areas suggests the student pick a pup from the character palette (accessible from the black box in the upper left corner of each screen) and add it to the scene. The adult wolf reacts to the pup being introduced, and the animated pup character goes into a submissive pose.

I liked how the software attempted to give a pretty accurate portrait of a wolf's life, its social interactions, and how the pack hunts to get food. Check out the deer the pack caught!

I like the idea of this software. While the story explains to the students how the wolves hunt, communicate, and reproduce, the software allows the students to explore the wolves' world. Students can add characters and watch them interact with other characters on the screen. They can pursue the tangents about wolves that interest them. Students can even save the scenes they create on the Student disk that the software uses to load the story.

The ability to modify the scenes opens up the possibility of students creating their own scenes and stories. The scenes can be printed in black and white, color, or as outlines that students can color in. Pretty cool!

This software was an interesting trip down educational technology memory lane. I liked the interactivity as well as the cool graphics. I feel pretty lucky to have saved this software and manuals from the dumpster.

Intelligent Agents and Mobile Devices

2011-02-19T16:25:00.025-05:00

Reading a recent Wired Article about TRON: Legacy I was struck by a part of the article recounting Alan Kay's involvement in the original TRON screenplay. He and Bonnie MacBird, who wrote the TRON screenplay, started a discussion in 1979 about the potential of technology to create digital identities that might connect humankind.

“We didn’t have the word avatar yet. We talked about agents,” MacBird says. “Alan had the notion of an intelligent agent that learns you, learns your preferences and needs and can function in a realm of endless encyclopedic information.”

This concept of a digital agent immediately made me think of the Newton Assistant, part of the NewtonOS on MessagePad 2000/2100 as well as the eMate 300.

Apple's Tech Archive document spells out how the Newton Assistant works. Conceived of as a Personal Digital Assistant, the Newton stored your contacts, your calendar, your phone calls and faxes, as well as your email. The NewtonOS allowed each of these applications to access one another's databases, or soups. A Calendar event could be associated with a Contact, for example, and one program could make use of the data from another program, such as email addresses, phone numbers, or birthdays. Bringing access to all of this data together in an approachable manner was the Newton Assistant. Apple's document describes it this way:

The Newton Assistant is the intuitive part of Newton. You may ask it to do things for you using various key request words. These words may or may not be capitalized, and each has several acceptable synonyms.

The Newton user can write in the Notes application, Meet Josh for lunch, highlight the text, tap on the Assist icon, and a new Calendar event with Josh and his contact information will be created at noon on the next Tuesday in the calendar month. Impressive and useful, this artificial intelligence marked the beginnings of something like Alan Kay's digital agent that learned the user's preferences and provided the user with needed information.

The NewtonOS was a social OS before we had Facebook. As a Personal Digital Assistant, the Newton MessagePad tracked the user's business and social calendar and managed his or her digital filofax, maintaining a familiar Rolodex-style card for individual or business contacts that included phone numbers, email addresses, and web pages. Once a meeting was arranged, the Contact's information would appear in subsequent Calendar slips, facilitating the creation of new appointments. The NewtonOS social applications, Calendar, Contacts, Phone, facilitated subsequent meetings and interactions because the NewtonOS drew on a shared database of contacts.

Nowadays my master list of contacts still resides on my Newton MessagePad, family friends' addresses, friends' birthdays (of which I am reminded of by the wonderful Avi's Backdrop, which accesses the Contacts database) but increasingly my contact information is migrating to an iOS device.

One failing of iOS in my use is that information from the Contacts app doesn't tie in with the Calendar on the phone. There's no Calendar event field in which a Contact can be tied to the event. I would find it useful to tie a Contact to an Event because it could bring the Contact's data into the Event. My phone could be configured to text a reminder to the Contact prior to the Event, or send email relevant to a scheduled Event. However, in iOS the Contact and Calendar apps exist monolithically, not tying data together in a way that would meaningfully connect people's data across social networks.

Kay believed that a universe made of connected computers was akin to a living organism, a vast network with nodes and branches to infinity, all serving some artistic, humanitarian vision of a utopian future.

The feature that most excited me about iOS devices is its potential for augmented reality. Apps such as Google Googles or Yelp's Monocle feature excite me. It would be interesting to me, as a Yelp user, to have suggestions based on business check-ins, for example, highlighted in the view. Likewise, Google Maps could be improved for me as a Google User, if Street View or Maps highlighted businesses or locations based on reviews I've written or past searches. It seems that the web services that have us as their userbase and have access to our data aren't best using that data to customize our experience with the real world. Augmented reality still hasn't entered the popular imagination yet: few people I've run into use Google Goggles or Yelp's Monocle feature yet, though one uses Google Goggles to take photos of restaurant facades to get user reviews. Awesome!

Geocaching!

2010-12-22T09:03:00.009-05:00

Last August Karin took me, Meg, and Juniper geocaching in the University of Washington Arboretum.

View Larger Map

Karin purchased the Geocaching app. An Intro version is also available.

We chose a shorter adventure. You use your iPhone to guide you via a map that uses the phone's GPS. There are also written clues to help you along your way. The app got us pretty close to where we needed to find the cache but in the end we resorted to using a handheld GPS device that was far more accurate than the iPhone's.

Eventually we located the cache, which we all signed and returned to its hiding place.

One of the tenets of geocaching is to leave nature in good condition and to carry out any trash you might find along the way. I found this nasty piece of trash to haul out.

Our introduction to geocaching by Karin, who had previously done a few other adventures, was a great time in the outdoors. I would recommend checking out the Intro version of the software, which explains how geocaching works and helps you (try to) locate geocaches in your area might pique your interest, which could justify the $9.99 price tag for the full version. I do think for more difficult geocaching you need a dedicated GPS unit that is more accurate; we used an iPhone 3GS to get us most of the way before using a Garamin device. I tried the free version in my neighborhood and found where the cache had once been hidden. Geocaching!

Getting the Gears Turning at CMK10

2010-11-09T11:59:00.011-05:00

I had the pleasure of attending Constructing Modern Knowledge 2010 this past summer. It was a transformative experience for me that got me thinking in new directions about how I use technology in the classroom.

While there I had the pleasure of working with John Stetson, who is pictured below with his "Bullying Machine."

The Bullying Machine is a fun demonstration of how gears work. One person tries to keep his her her side from rotating. The bully, on the other end of the device, can turn it effortlessly, while the person at the other end is absolutely unable to stop the device, all because of the magic of gears. John built a number of different machines that demonstrated how gears work and how they could be put to use.

The second project I worked on at CMK, a Lego turntable, could have benefited from me better understanding how gears worked. Granted, I built and programmed it on the last morning of CMK, but I believed that the speed of the turntable could be controlled completely via software, in my case Microworlds EX, since there is a motor speed setting. However, over time it became obvious that software was not the solution but rather hardware, in the guise of gears, might have got the turntable spinning at the right speed.

I took the lessons I learned about gears back to school this fall and started an after school Lego Club. First, I built one of John's Bullying Machines. I was happy that a first grade student saw how it worked and requested to build his own.

Next, I rebuilt my Lego turntable. This also proved to be an interesting project for some of the students. Three of them set about building their own turntables, and one student saw the build through to the end and was able to scratchily play a record.

I continue to learn more about gears and how they can be incorporated into my builds. My latest construction is part of a Lego orrery. It is by no means realistic but it got me thinking in new directions.

The power of Constructing Modern Knowledge was the exposure it offered participants to new ideas, people, and directions that one might take educational technology. If you have the means sign up for CMK 2011 today!

My Facebook Friend Experiment

2010-05-30T22:29:00.005-04:00

I've decided to start posting on the Facebook walls of friends who show up in the list, presented six at a time, on my profile page, shown above. I am visiting their profile pages, looking at recent posts and photos if available, and trying to leave a personalized greeting and welcoming to the summer on their wall.

The only obstacle to this grand social experiment is that with many friends, who may or may not be tuned into Facebook, how meaningful is the social connection that Facebook is supposed to foster to all its participants? I use Facebook daily, but many of the people I have friended do not. I conceived this summer experiment to see if reaching out to the people with whom I have reconnected through Facebook might be interested in fostering this reconnection. Facebook has put me back in touch with many people from junior high and high school, as well as college. By reaching out to those who participate peripherally can I build and enrich my social network?

The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine

2010-05-18T09:48:00.003-04:00

The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine

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Since I purchased an iPhone I've mostly used it, in place of my 4 megapixel digital camera, to take the majority of my photos. The iPhone is always on me and it requires fewer steps to get the images off the device and onto the Internet. The image quality is not as good as the digital camera's, but it's "Good Enough" for me.

I read this Wired Magazine article, linked above, a while back, and it really got me thinking about how in many instances the "best" technology is overkill and Keeping it Simple is the rule of the day.

Apple2 Twitter Display

2010-04-26T18:28:00.001-04:00

Make sure you read the maker's blog where he goes into the crazy hardware and software hacks he put together to dream up this awesome project.

iPrompts: Notecard Prompts on the iPhone for Autistic Kids

2010-03-07T13:21:00.005-05:00

Dan and Carey Tedesco, from Shelton, just north of where I live, created an iPhone app to aid their autistic son. iPrompts is a $49.99 app that "uses the iPhone's GPS capability and the application's bank of images and features to create a multimedia 'snapshot of a disabled person's current scenerio.'" Parents and caregivers can easily construct visual prompts to guide autistic children through their day.

Less cumbersome than carrying a stack of physical notecards, iPrompts is a great use of technology that allows for communication and makes it easier for autistic children to navigate their worlds.

Thinking in Pictures: Temple Grandin at TED

2010-02-25T12:23:00.003-05:00

This is a great talk at TED by Temple Grandin, who has made a name for herself redesigning cattle lots, slaughterhouses, and speaking about autism. She declares that we need to account for the way autistic people think visually, to show them interesting things that get them hooked on learning, and to mentor them to be successful. This is very inspiring.

NPR Piece on Teaching Kids Web Search Strategies

2010-01-28T15:06:00.001-05:00

This segment has interesting ideas about how search engines might better present search results so kids can better use the Internet to find information. Of particular interest is how girls and boys differ in their tenacity to track down the information they seek.

Finder Labels

2010-01-12T07:33:00.004-05:00

I've been making use of the OS X Finder's labels, or ability to color code icons, as shown above, particularly with the younger students. The Kindergarteners and first grade students oftentimes have a difficult time reading the file names. I tend to pre-stage the students' work in their folders on the server. This simplifies saving the students' work because the document is already in their folder on the server and the student (or I) do not need to drill down through the file system to get the work saved to the correct location.

Now when I go into a class I can have the students use their paper laptops to follow along as I explain that we are going to go into the Kindergarten Group folder, then their class folder, then their folder. Instead of telling them that we will be opening a file by its name, I just tell them the color of the file. This increases the students' independence and makes instruction easier, too.

YAZI on the Newton

2010-01-05T15:29:00.004-05:00

I was looking for something new to do with my Newton MessagePad 2100 during my December break from work. My mind drifted back to Scrawlsoft's YAZI, a Z-machine interpreter for the Newton. Infocom used the Z-machine to program such hits as the Zork series, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and many others that I used to play on my Apple II+. I had played with YAZI back when I first got my MessagePad but I never purchased a copy. Scrawlsoft's site has disappeared from the Internet and while there was some talk on the NewtonTalk mailing list about how to contact them, I didn't have much hope of being able to purchase this program in 2009.

So imagine my surprise when, not half an hour after emailing one of the owners, he responded. I asked him if I could still use Kagi to purchase YAZI. He replied that I could send him my Newton ID and as a holiday present he would send me the serial number at no cost!! Unbelievable!

I loaded YAZI onto a 20 MB card I have for the Newton. I found a site with Z-machine files for a number of Infocom games, but I chose Leather Goddesses of Phobos. I created a Newton package on my PowerBook 3400c, loaded it onto the Newton along with YAZI, and I was ready to play. I also found a good walkthrough in case I got completely stumped. I loaded that page in Newtscape and turned it into a package so I would have it on hand, too. Fun times on the Newton!

Mad Max on the Newton

2009-11-29T18:21:00.005-05:00

After reading the CNET UK Apple Newton vs Apple iPhone article, in which the Newton's capabilities were compared to those of the iPhone, I decided I was up to a new technical challenge and installed Mad Max, an MP3 player for the Newton MessagePad 2100. I have a 20MB flash card for my Newton but I wasn't interested in storing MP3s on my Newton: I have a 2nd generation iPod and an iPhone 3G from which I can play music. What intrigued me about Mad Max was its ability to stream MP3s through the Newton.

After installing Mad Max I also installed Victor Rehorst's LaunchPLS, a plug-in for Steve Weyer's Newtscape web browser. This allows you to open the URL in Newtscape and have it hand off to Mad Max, which doesn't have an easy way to manually write out the URLs for the site.

After everything was installed I opened Newtscape. I made life easier on myself and emailed myself the URL for a Camper Van Beethoven show on archive.org. I copied and pasted the link into Newtscape and opened it.

Once Newtscape loaded the URL it handed off to Mad Max.

And there I had it: streaming MP3s on the Newton!

Google Teacher Academy 2009 Application Video

2009-11-08T09:10:00.005-05:00

I applied to the 2009 Google Teacher Academy this year. I decided to make my "Classroom Innovation" video about the success I have had with the Construct a Laptop project I devised and have been using with the Kindergarten and First grade students this year in an effort to increase student independence during computer lessons. The responses so far have been very positive. With any luck I will be headed to Washington DC in December to take part in this exciting workshop.

I <3 Apple Remote Desktop

2009-10-30T10:23:00.003-04:00

This morning I was reminded of how much I love Apple's Remote Desktop because of the way it simplifies managing a large group of Macs.

I run a Self-Cleaning Oven Model on the student Macs at work. Basically, when the user logs out the contents of her or his /Users directory is copied to /tmp and a new copy of the template is copied into place. If a student leaves folders all over the desktop or otherwise modifies the configuration everything is put back into place. This ensures consistency for each user of the computer.

I ran into an issue where TextEdit, which I use with the third grade, was configured for plain text rather than Rich Text Format and I needed to change this preference. Since the self-cleaning oven is launched with a logout hook it is a pain to turn off the hook, make the changes, copy the new template to /var/root and repeat this many times. Enter Remote Desktop: in twenty minutes I copied the TextEdit preference into five User directories as well as the "golden master" templates in /var/root and had TextEdit configured.

Next I needed to deal with an issue with the LaunchServices and quarantine feature in OS X 10.5.x. When an application is downloaded from the Internet the system flags it. When the user opens the application for the first time she or he is warned it came from the Internet and is she or he certain she or he wants to open it. Again, the self-cleaning oven resets the user's directory after every use, so it is a pain to affect this change. It is also a pain for Kindergarteners to click through two separate dialog boxes to get a webpage open. I found a one-line UNIX command that would remove the quarantine from all the applications. I put it in a three line shell script, copied it to the clients, and ran it. In the end I had no more dialog boxes to click through before the web page opened.

I finished up my Remote Desktop adventure this morning by updating Flash. Between the shell script and the Flash update I put in half an hour of work. If I had to touch each computer it certainly would have taken much longer to do this manually. Here's to saving time!

Construct a Laptop Project

2009-10-07T08:37:00.000-04:00

Last school year I had Kindergarten and first grade students still asking me what the password was for their computer accounts, despite it being the end of the school year and their passwords being "k" or "1," respectively. Inspired by Amy Tiemann's Laptop Club for elementary students, I conceived a lesson that I worked on with the Kindergarten and first grade students the first two computer lessons of the school year. I hoped this lesson would encourage more independence during computer time.

I started with photos of a MacBook keyboard from Apple's web site and took screenshots of the class and individual folders where the students save their work and inserted them into a photo of the MacBook's screen bezel.

For the first lesson I used the SmartBoard and a NoteBook file that also had a picture of the keyboard. Students took turns dragging the appropriate label (power button, Return key, volume buttons, K) to the proper place on the keyboard. Then I had the students return to their desks. I gave them each a copy of the MacBook keyboard photo. I then asked them to use a different color crayon for each key, and as I colored them in on the SmartBoard the students also colored in the important keys that they needed to know to operate the computer.

The next lesson concentrated on the important folders these students needed to know. The grade level folder is automounted for the students when they login. We colored in the folder, which lives in the Dock next to the Trash can. Then the students found their class folder and colored it, too. Finally, they found the folder with their name on it and colored it in.

With a colored keyboard and screen, I provided each student with a manila folder. They used their glue sticks to paste the two pieces of paper into the folder, like the example from a Kindergarten student pictured above.

As a group we decided we would call these laptops our "maps." They will help the students remember the location of the important keys. I bring these laptops along to the Kindergarten and first grade classes, along with a cart of real MacBooks. Before every lesson I hand out the laptop maps and we review the important keys we will be using: the "K" or "1" key for their password, the Return key, the volume keys. I have them put their finger on the appropriate key or item in the Dock. As we encounter new important keys we can highlight them on our paper laptop keyboards. For example, when quitting Childsplay, which I use with the Kindergarten students, one must press the "Y" key to confirm that one wants to quit the program. In this week's lesson we drew an outline around the "Y" key on their keyboards to remind them of the location of that key and the importance of the key.

Already this map laptop had proven very valuable in my efforts to increase the independence of the students during computer lessons. When students shout out, "What's my password?" I can direct them to their map laptops to find the answer to their question. The flexibility of being able to "update" the images as we encounter new important keys makes this a powerful teaching tool.

Keyboarding

2009-09-29T15:32:00.000-04:00

As part of the Responsive Classroom approach I started the school year asking the students what their hope for computer class was this year. I got many responses from the third, fourth, and fifth grades that they wanted to get better at keyboarding or become better typers. At first I thought they were paying me lip service: I mentioned to the students Type to Learn 4, the keyboarding program we use, and I thought that they were just humoring me by saying they wanted to be better at keyboarding.

However, as the number of students who wanted to become better at keyboarding increased, I realized that the student might truly have this hope. Reflecting on the issue, I realized that many of these students are already using computers at home. They are writing emails and instant messaging each other. Especially with IM, being able to keyboard fast and accurately is a skill that is truly important to these students. They really want to become better keyboarders because the skill is meaningful to them.

I look forward to helping instruct the students in proper keyboarding techniques and to provide them with additional opportunities to keyboard. Besides Type to Learn 4, I like using Dance Mat Typing, FingerJig and Type Racer

RemoteCam on the Newton

2009-08-13T16:54:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I was looking through the Flickr Newton Pool when I came across an interesting image of a Connectix QuickCam hooked to an eMate 300, part of an imaginary security system a creative child assembled. This brought back memories of a combination Mac application and Newton package called RemoteCam. There is precious little information about this program; I did find some information about it at Newton AtMark, a Japanese site, but the link to the RemoteCam software was dead. I happened to have downloaded RemoteCam years ago after I first got my MessagePad 2100. Today I decided to give it a whirl.

First, I dusted off my PowerBook 3400c, which has the serial and ADB ports I needed to run the camera. Normally I run Rhapsody DR2 on this PowerBook, but it also has Mac OS 8.1 installed on it.

I set up a temporary network to get the RemoteCam application and the QuickCam installer from my PowerBook G4 to the 3400c. I already had an AirPort wireless network with one of the base stations acting as a WDS remote. I hooked a switch to that AirPort and was able to connect to the Public folder on my PowerBook G4 running OS X 10.5.8.

It took some googling, but I eventually tracked down the drivers needed for the QuickCam. I chose to install the slightly older 2.1.2 version as the site where I downloaded it mentioned that this version corrected issues with the PowerBook 3400.

Once I had all the software installed, I went about getting the camera working. I could not get it to focus, and after a while I just got a scrambled image. I found a helpful page that taught me how to disassemble the QuickCam. When I opened it up out fell the SMD transistor mentioned on the page. Since I can't solder, I tried rubber banding the transistor back on the board. Success! I was able to get a good image, I freed up the lens and was able to focus the camera, and I was in business!

I opened the RemoteCam application on the 3400c.

I changed the window size to 320 X 240 and aimed the camera at myself.

Finally, I configured both the Mac and Newton to look to the appropriate IP addresses so I could connect the Newton to the Mac. With the application running on the Mac, I opened RemoteCam on the Newton and initiated a connection. Success! I was streaming video wirelessly from the Mac to the Newton!

Unfortunately, Jolon Faichney's web site where he hosted RemoteCam is no longer online. RemoteCam is not on UNNA. If people are interested in trying this out for themselves, I can try to arrange to get this interesting program included on UNNA.

Autism Breakthrough: Girl's Writings Explain Her Behavior and Feelings - ABC News

2009-08-12T12:01:00.001-04:00

Autism Breakthrough: Girl's Writings Explain Her Behavior and Feelings - ABC News

My friend Carol shared this inspiring video with me about how a 13 year old autistic girl learned to communicate through the use of technology.

When I worked with an Autism Spectrum program I also found technologies could help similar students to communicate.

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SBM Utilities for Newton Released to Community

2009-07-27T11:37:00.001-04:00

Big news on the NewtonTalk Network: a registration code generator for SBM Utilities for the Newton OS is now available! Frank Gruendel, Newton hardware guru, posted this to the list:

I wish there was a way to purchase SBM utilities which was never released and is now not supported.

Thanks to the efforts of Martin Hahn the author of SBM Utilities (and a lot of other useful Newton software) has released the program he used for creating registration codes for SBM Utilities. True to form, it is a Newton program. As of a moment ago you can find it here:

http://www.pda-soft.de/common/download/SBM_Utils_Reg_Code_Creation.zip

To quote the author: "This program is a gift to the Newton fans."

SBM Utilities can be found here:

http://www.softwarebueromueller.de/englisch/newton/sbmutils/

It seems that this page hasn't been updated for some time, but it seems that after this generous gift there's no longer any need to click on the Kagi link...

Although to the best of my knowledge Holger Mueller hasn't explicitly said so, I think it goes without saying that we can't expect him to spend time and money anymore on supporting this useful application.

Please keep in mind that there's no need to thank me. All I did to make this happen was exchange a couple of mails with Martin Hahn and upload the zip file to my site. If you feel inclined to thank anybody, you had better direct this to Martin and Holger.

Have fun. I am proud of being a member of a community whose members can make things like this happen.

I used Simon Bell's Newton Connection for Mac OS X to load both SBM Utilities and the RegCode package onto my MessagePad 2100. When you open the RegCode package you can either enter your name as shown on the Newton's Owner Card, or you can enter the serial number that SBM Utilities generates when you open that package. Either way the package generates a registration code that serializes SBM Utilities.

Once loaded I opened SBM Utilities and ran the Doctor component, shown in the top image at the lower right corner. The package scanned both the internal store and my PCMCIA linear flash code and checked the integrity of the soups. Everything checked out alright.

It is very nice to finally have a serialized, working copy of this wonderful utility for the Newton MessagePad. While I have not run into any significant issues so far on any of my Newtons, it is reassuring to have such a great tool available should the need arise.

eMate 300 System Patch 73J186

2009-07-26T18:18:00.000-04:00

Hot on the heels of his Y2010 Patch for the Newton MessagePad 2100, Eckhart Köppen released the 73J186 patch for the eMate 300. This patch fixes the Newton's Year 2010 problem and keeps this platform viable more than ten years after it was canceled by Apple.

I used Simon Bell's Newton Connection for Mac OS X to install the patch from my PowerBook onto my eMate via a wireless PCMCIA card and Hiroshi's wireless driver, generously donated to the Newton Community. The installation went without any trouble, I rebooted the eMate and confirmed that I had version 73J186 installed.

Eckhart is to be commended for creating this patch with no assistance from Apple. Without this patch our Newtons would not work properly next year. Thanks again Eckhart!

College Textbook Rental

2009-07-07T11:07:00.001-04:00

Chegg.com is pioneering a Netflix-inspired college textbook rental service. I have been out of college for a while, but even back then textbooks were expensive.

Originally modeling itself around a Craigslist-type service where students could sell all manner of items as the school year started or finished, this business model did not take off. Chegg's founders realized, however, that textbooks were one item that students used the site to buy and sell.

It will be interesting to see if Amazon's large-format Kindle DX, which is being seeded to a number of universities this fall, will supplant the need for paper textbooks. However, Chegg, whose name derives from the Chicken or Egg puzzle, seems to have established a niche for itself.

Technology Terms

2009-06-03T13:40:00.000-04:00

At the Lower School retreat today we took some time to list the terms that we used in different curriculum fields, such as reading, math, science, art, and technology. Here is the list that I came up with (in green) along with some terms the teachers added to the list. (You can click on the image to get a larger, easier to read version).

The most interesting part of the exercise is the commonality of terms across the curriculum. The Head of the Lower School also complimented me on the sophistication of the vocabulary that I was using even with the younger students. I felt it important to use a sophisticated vocabulary because these are the terms they are going to be encountering as they use technology both in school and in the "bigger world," so it is best to expose them early so they incorporate the proper terms into their vocabulary.

The Case for Working With Your Hands

2009-05-24T16:13:00.001-04:00

Lopez August 2007 - 38.jpg
Originally uploaded by Camera Wences

The NYTimes Magazine has a great article about the value, especially in today's world, of manual skills. The author recounts his own journey from cubicle farms to owning his own motorcycle repair shop and the sense of accomplishment, the passion about his work, and the satisfaction he receives from the problem solving involved in repair that such a manual trade gives a person.

Working on the house at Lopez was my own excursion into a project requiring construction skills. It was great to watch my brothers Adam and Noah and our friend Joe work on the house and see the skills that they developed through their carpentry work. I was in awe of how they could literally rebuild and remodel a house using pencils, saws, nail guns, and their imaginations.

Likewise, it is fun to watch Noah work on his motorcyle.

Matthew B. Crawford, the author of the article, discusses how America's rush to drop shop classes in order to prepare tomorrow's workers for the information economy actually made workers with manual skills in a more enviable position:

The Princeton economist Alan Blinder argues that the crucial distinction in the emerging labor market is not between those with more or less education, but between those whose services can be delivered over a wire and those who must do their work in person or on site. The latter will find their livelihoods more secure against outsourcing to distant countries. As Blinder puts it, “You can’t hammer a nail over the Internet.” Nor can the Indians fix your car. Because they are in India.

Y2010 Patch for Newton MessagePad 2100s

2009-05-24T16:05:00.001-04:00

10-29-2006
Originally uploaded by Camera Wences

Eckhart Köppen successfully patched the Newton OS against the Year 2010 problem, saving this hardware from a nasty bug.

Eckhart describes the problem this way:

The NewtonOS has a bug in handling years past 18:48:31 on January 5, 2010. The bug is located in the NewtonScript interface of certain time functions, and it is caused by an overflow of a NewtonScript integer value. This bug seems to only occur in NewtonOS 2.1 devices.

The overflow happens in all NewtonScript functions which use seconds as the resolution. In contrast to the 32 bit unsigned integer used by the C++ functions, NewtonScript integers are only 30 bit wide. While the C++ functions can handle times from 1904 until 2040 without an overflow, the NewtonScript functions had to be designed with a smaller range of applicable times due to the limited precision.

The seconds-based functions are implemented by taking the value of the real-time clock, subtracting the offset to January 1st 1993, and converting the results to a NewtonScript integer. This limited range causes an overflow on Tuesday, January 5, 2010 at 6:48:31 PM.

This is the list of affected functions:

SetSysAlarm
TimeInSeconds
TimeToTimeInSeconds
TimeInSecondsToTime

Eckhart's patch includes a diagnostic package to scan your Newton's Dates and make sure there are no repeating alarms that could trigger the bug. The patch itself updates the NewtonOS System to 71J059. Not since Paul Guyot's 710031 patch has anyone outside of Apple successfully patched the operating system. Way to go Eckhart, and thanks for keeping our Newtons running!

Aurdino Stuffed Animals!

2009-05-12T09:49:00.000-04:00

The enthusiasm these girls have for creating interactive stuffed animals is contagious! It is great to see them plan out how they want their plush friends to react to different stimuli in their surroundings. I also find it interesting how the girls feel comfortable hypothesizing and planning what they want the technology to do for the toys. I only wish there was a little background on the project and perhaps how they did the coding to combine the electronics with the stuffed animals. This was a very fun project!

Time-lapse Pollock Paintings

2009-05-04T13:58:00.000-04:00

I worked on a fun project with the Lower School art teacher. The fifth grade students studied Jackson Pollock and his drip technique of painting. Afterward, they were to collaborate to create their own Pollock-inspired pieces.

Nicole wanted to capture the students painting using time-lapse photography. I knew of an application from a previous project at my old job and downloaded it onto my work Mac: Gawker would take time-lapse photographs using an iSight camera. Gawker is particularly nice because you can schedule when you want the Mac to start taking photos and when you want it to stop shooting. This way I did not need to be connected to the laptop to get it to start filming.

I happened to have an old iBook with no display or keyboard that worked perfectly for this project. I climbed a ladder and zip-tied the laptop and an iSight camera to the fire extinguisher pipe.

In order to "control" the computer I connected to it from my MacBook using Screen Sharing, which comes with OS X. Here you can see what the cameras is seeing from the ceiling, in this case the blank canvas waiting for the students' paint.

Nicole decided we should shoot the footage at 4 frames per second. The results, shown above, are pretty interesting and cool: you can watch the painting come to life before your very eyes!

Project Spectrum

2009-04-24T13:45:00.000-04:00

Google produced this video to highlight the skills autistic students have built using SketchUp. Personally, I worked with an autistic student who loved using SketchUp. While he typically did not save his work, he really enjoyed "building" using this fun tool.

Revisiting the Juice Box

2009-03-14T13:13:00.000-04:00

During my Action Research project for graduate school I got my hands on a lot of six Mattel Juice Box media players. I used these handy little devices, which run an embedded version of uClinux, with the Tech Club I worked with. I loaded photos they took using digital cameras onto them. I also loaded the podcasts they created onto them: students could plug in headphones and listen to each of the episodes they produced or use the built-in speakers and share it with a group.

A sizable hacker collective has managed to get custom code to boot from the thing and are experimenting with connecting it to a Canon CueCat to make a homebrew bar code reader. I'm a nerd but I cannot yet solder, so I haven't taken that path. However, back when I first got the device I became a bit obsessed with being able to create an OS X Folder Action so the laptops I used with Tech Club could automagically convert the jpegs the students exported from iPhoto into the proprietary, 12-bit .jbp graphic file, 240 X 160. There exists a PC version of software that came with the "mp3 Kit" to convert jpegs into .jbp format, but that doesn't do anything for those of us with Macs. Fortunately, ImageMagick can convert the jpegs to rgb format, and a perl script exists to convert the 24-bit rgb file to a 12-bit pixel file.

I finally got the AppleScript put together to perform all these conversions and to make it as simple for the students as dropping their images onto a folder in the Dock and copying the files from the "Converted" folder onto an SD memory card. I felt the automation minimized the technical steps of the process so the students would have an easier time seeing their images on the Juice Box, which they enjoyed because they could hand it around to their friends and share the images they created.

This week I saw an Instructables where somebody took apart a Juice Box and assembled it into a digital picture frame, another project I used with the Tech Club to display their digital work. I got to thinking about the Folder Action and decided to get it going on my PowerBook again, since I had upgraded to Tiger. It turns out the script did not work!

First, I found out you need to store Folder Actions in /Library/Scripts/Folder Actions Scripts or ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Actions Scripts if you want the system to run them. Once I figured that out and successfully attached the Folder Action Script to my conversion folder, I got an error about an ImageMagick library not being loaded. I was finally able to find a page that helped me solve this issue.

It turns out that in OS X 10.5.6 in order for the AppleScript to successfully use the "do shell script" to export a variable to define the location of the library you need to make that the first command in the script. Here is my corrected script:

-- OS X AppleScript Folder Action
-- Converts various graphic formats to the .jbp format for use with Mattel's Juice Box
-- 2006, 2009 Josh Burker

property done_foldername : "Converted"
property originals_foldername : "Original Images"
property newimage_extension : "gif"
-- the list of file types which will be processed
-- eg: {"PICT", "JPEG", "TIFF", "GIFf"}
property type_list : {"JPEG", "GIFf", "PNGf", "PICT"}
-- since file types are optional in Mac OS X,
-- check the name extension if there is no file type
-- NOTE: do not use periods (.) with the items in the name extensions list
-- eg: {"txt", "text", "jpg", "jpeg"}, NOT: {".txt", ".text", ".jpg", ".jpeg"}
property extension_list : {"jpg", "jpeg", "GIF", "png", "pict", "pct", "rgb", "jbp"}

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
tell application "Finder"
if not (exists folder done_foldername of this_folder) then
make new folder at this_folder with properties {name:done_foldername}
end if
set the results_folder to (folder done_foldername of this_folder) as alias
if not (exists folder originals_foldername of this_folder) then
make new folder at this_folder with properties {name:originals_foldername}
set current view of container window of this_folder to list view
end if
set the originals_folder to folder originals_foldername of this_folder
end tell
try
repeat with i from 1 to number of items in these_items
set this_item to item i of these_items
set the item_info to the info for this_item
if (alias of the item_info is false and the file type of the item_info is in the type_list) or (the name extension of the item_info is in the extension_list) then
tell application "Finder"
my resolve_conflicts(this_item, originals_folder, "")
set the new_name to my resolve_conflicts(this_item, results_folder, newimage_extension)
set the source_file to (move this_item to the originals_folder with replacing) as alias
end tell
process_item(source_file, new_name, results_folder)
end if
end repeat
on error error_message number error_number
if the error_number is not -128 then
tell application "Finder"
activate
display dialog error_message buttons {"Cancel"} default button 1 giving up after 120
end tell
end if
end try
end adding folder items to

on resolve_conflicts(this_item, target_folder, new_extension)
tell application "Finder"
set the file_name to the name of this_item
set file_extension to the name extension of this_item
if the file_extension is "" then
set the trimmed_name to the file_name
else
set the trimmed_name to text 1 thru -((length of file_extension) + 2) of the file_name
end if
if the new_extension is "" then
set target_name to file_name
set target_extension to file_extension
else
set target_extension to new_extension
set target_name to (the trimmed_name & "." & target_extension) as string
end if
if (exists document file target_name of target_folder) then
set the name_increment to 1
repeat
set the new_name to (the trimmed_name & "." & (name_increment as string) & "." & target_extension) as string
if not (exists document file new_name of the target_folder) then
-- rename to conflicting file
set the name of document file target_name of the target_folder to the new_name
exit repeat
else
set the name_increment to the name_increment + 1
end if
end repeat
end if
end tell
return the target_name
end resolve_conflicts

-- this sub-routine processes files
on process_item(source_file, new_name, results_folder)
-- NOTE that the variable this_item is a file reference in alias format
-- FILE PROCESSING STATEMENTS GOES HERE
try
-- the target path is the destination folder and the new file name
set the target_path to ((results_folder as string) & new_name) as string
with timeout of 900 seconds
tell application "Image Events"
launch -- always use with Folder Actions
set this_image to open file (source_file as string)
scale this_image to size 240
-- scale the image
crop this_image to dimensions {240, 160}
-- save the image
save this_image as GIF in file target_path with icon
close this_image
end tell
end timeout

set target_path to POSIX path of target_path

-- display dialog POSIX path of target_path

-- load the DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH first

do shell script "export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH='/Applications/ImageMagick-6.5.0/lib'; export MAGICK_HOME='/Applications/ImageMagick-6.5.0'; /Applications/ImageMagick-6.5.0/bin/convert '" & target_path & "' 'rgb:" & target_path & ".rgb'"

do shell script "/usr/local/bin/24to12.pl '" & target_path & ".rgb' '" & target_path & ".jbp'"

on error error_message
tell application "Finder"
activate
display dialog error_message buttons {"Cancel"} default button 1 giving up after 120
end tell
end try

end process_item

Now I have it working again I loaded up an SD card with different images than I already had loaded and watched the Juice Box for a bit. It got to be a little frustrating troubleshooting the AppleScript and the ImageMagic shell script contained within. I wasn't sure if it were all the apostrophes and quotation marks that the parent helped me figure out or if it had to do with my installation of the ImageMagick binaries. I added the exports to my bash profile but that did not help, either. Finally, I decided to load the library first in the shell script and it all worked again. Whew!

Pranav Mistry's Sixth Sense

2009-03-10T15:36:00.000-04:00

TED has posted Pattie Maes' presentation of her student Pranav Mistry's so-called "sixth sense" device. The cobbled together camera/projector/mobile phone augments the user's world with information that he or she might find useful: product reviews, biographical information, images captured as he or she goes through the physical world. Ms. Maes likens it to the technology in "Minority Report," but I found it to be much less threatening. The current device was built for $350; if it were mass-produced the price would certainly drop.

The technology is similar in a sense to the Chris Dede's augmented reality experiments and work, as well as the ubiquitous barcodes that Japanese mobile phone users can snap with their mobile phone cameras to gain additional information. The presentation demonstrated practical uses of a device like this and earned Mr. Mistry a well-deserved standing ovation.

Playing with the Fire Organ

2009-03-03T17:27:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a snow day at school and what better way to spend it in the darkness of the basement playing in my computer lab? A while back, after a discussion on comp.sys.apple2 about the 1980s computer movie Electric Dreams, Michael Mahon pointed out the old application Fire Organ. I downloaded it at the time but never got around to looking at it. Well, this weekend I stumbled upon the program and did some googling.

Richard Bramante has an excellent description of Fire Organ so I will direct you that way if you are interested in the program. I ended up downloading the version linked from his site as it contained the "liner notes" for the program.

It had been a while since I netbooted my Apple IIgs and turned a .dsk image into a 5 1/4" floppy disk.

I don't know if is the netbooting but disks I made using Dsk2File sometimes don't work. I ended up using Asimov to make the disk and it worked perfectly.

Once I had a disk I was ready to start playing with the Fire Organ. I followed the liner notes that Brooke Boering, the author of Fire Organ, provided about recommended songs to listen to while watching the Fire Organ. When I noticed that he suggested Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention's "Help I'm a Rock" as one of the songs I knew that this would be a fun experience. Here's the graphics for that song, S Box:

Next I moved on to Key-Q CWA and The Grateful Dead's "The Eleven." This was a great one:

I liked Key-X MSX and Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar" because the graphics were broken into four quadrants:

For Key-N A Led Zeppelin Explosion I selected "The Ocean" from their live "How the West Was Won" disc:

I wrapped it all up with Key-6 Visions of Pink Floyd and listened to "Astronomy Domine:"

While Fire Organ might pale in comparison to the visualizer in iTunes, for example, it was amazing to experience the fluidity and creativity of the visuals. Of course any music would have been fun to listen to while watching the visuals, but I thought it a fun exercise to try out some of Mr. Boering's suggestions. The Fire Organ reminded me a bit of Aldous Huxley's "Finest Scent and Colour Organ" from _Brave New World_ but was decidedly less sinister.

Siftables

2009-02-13T14:04:00.000-05:00

I really liked David Merrill's demonstration of his Siftables concept at TED 2009. It is a new way of interacting with data in a way that is very natural and kinesthetic. The Siftables act like the blocks we all grew up with but they are aware of one another and can display myriad types of data.

Cuba Goes For Linux

2009-02-12T09:21:00.000-05:00

Reuters reports Cuba has adopted a home-grown Linux distribution, dubbed Nova, and intends to replace Windows on the island's computers. With personal computers available for sale only since last year, most computers in Cuba are located in government offices and universities.

While the Cuban government claims that the bogeymen of backdoors and the threat of espionage from U.S. spy agencies drive the adoption of Linux as a platform, it is interesting nevertheless to consider the nation's move to an open-source platform. By adopting an open-source operating system the Cuban computer users have the freedom to tinker with the operating system and make it meaningful to their particular needs. Furthermore, as Hector Rodriguez, dean of the School of Free Software at Cuba's University of Information Sciences,states, "The free software movement is closer to the ideology of the Cuban people, above all for the independence and sovereignty."

FETC Notes

2009-02-10T07:29:00.001-05:00

My FETC session went very well. Attendance was good considering I was the second to last session. As my graduate advisor, Margaret Riel, pointed out, everyone who was there was there because they wanted to be. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and was comfortable presenting. The audience applauded at the end of Steven's film, which was most gratifying. Afterward I had a nice conversation was an audience member whose son has Asperger's Syndrome and who felt her son would really enjoy a similar project.

I posted my Notes and Presentation online if you missed the session and want to know what I talked about.

Learning to Read Online

2009-02-05T10:13:00.001-05:00

Virginia Heffernan's article about literacy in the age of the Internet was quite interesting. Her three-year-old son does not consider Starfall, pictured above, to be reading. Ms. Heffernan explores the relation between literacy, reading, and the printed word and how reading from a laptop or monitor fails to reproduce the reading experience with the tangible book being held by the reader.

I decided to give Starfall a try this week with two classes of Kindergarten students, to whom Starfall is geared. These students typically want to do nothing more than play Marble Blast during their weekly computer time, so I was expecting a bit of a fight to interest them in the site. We started by doing a few activities in Kidspiration: letter patterns, recognizing upper-case and lower-case letters, and identifying words that start with "b" or "m." As the students finished those projects I transitioned them to Starfall. I asked them to start with "b," "d," "p," and "q" as these letters are frequently confused and substituted by these students. I was pleasantly surprised by the students' reactions to Starfall.

The web site was engaging to these students for the reasons Ms. Heffernan had a problem with it: there is much animation to hold the attention, songs, and an emphasis on graphics rather than a screen full of words. For each letter there are several examples of words that start with the letter and some animation to hold the students' attention. These students have pretty short attention spans, so the lessons are fast-paced and do not overwhelm the students with too much information.

For these students raised as digital natives, I think tools like Starfall prove to be great resources for pre-literate children. Anything that can hold their attention and teach them about the sounds letters make and how letters, when properly combined, create words, is an effective tool, in my opinion. It may not be the type of literacy lessons that Ms. Heffernan or I recognize from our youth, but for these students it is the type of lesson that seems to work best for them.

Posting to Blogger via eMate

2009-01-28T15:38:00.000-05:00

When you have to open a browser to initiate a connection to a wifi network, try this order of operations.

With Newtscape running in background:
Create note
Open Newtscape with Notes still open
Load a simple page, like google
Close loaded page window, leaving Netwscape running in background
Open NBlog and post & publish or update & publish
Close NBlog
Close Newtscape to disconnect ethernet

Improving how we use wikis for better student learning: Harry Tuttle

2009-01-27T17:18:00.000-05:00

- Organizing the wiki
= put the newest information on top: makes it easiest for students to access the information
= any resource used in class is posted to the wiki
= label what the resource is: graphic, video, document
= tends not to embed in the wiki
- Arrange by class learning topic
= sidebar as table of contents
= by chapter
= by project, with projects listed on the main page
= by semester
= by themes that are revisited through the semester/year
= by sectors
- students have permission to change anything on the page
= students will correct spelling mistakes, etc
= gives them a sense of ownership
- avoid common web topics
= if the topic has been done many times, or by experts, it doesn't make sense to have the students try to replicate the information
= localize the topic: how does the topic affect your community
- make learning "collective wisdom"
= different students learn different things and are not good at combining the wisdom
* the report ends up being student A, student B and not how the pieces fit together
= a wiki is a good resource to collect the wisdom and to bring it all together
= do not have students delete previous information: build upon the information so you can go back if the students make a logical mistake
* also provides students with a measure of growth
- exemplary work
= provide links to work that students have done in the past that are great examples of the work
= if you establish the quality you are looking for the quality of the students work improves
= also use real-world examples that are applicable
= provide examples that have concepts, not content, that they can copy
- contrasting work
- have the students do a variety of thinking in the wiki work
- checklist of response you have used in the class wiki
= challenge ideas
= ask probing questions
= give another perspective
= show connections
= provide alternative explainations
= explain how to do it
- building on/adding more to what others have done
= 1st student: chapter summary
= 2nd: real life example
= 3rd: web resource
= 4th more questions
= 5th web resource
- growing on previous work allows you to create an excyclopedic collection of knowledge
= raises the base of learning for subsequent years of learning
- group work
= wonder, amazement, and curse of education
= each group:
* lists its major goal and each student's role
* lists its daily learning successes and future plans
* has a common work repository: no losing the work
* each member's work is easy to see
= literature circles work well on wikis
- notification of changes
= makes everyone aware of the work each team member is doing
- students can help each other with problems
= make it a section on the wiki
- outside classes and outside experts
= need to be clear on goal of the project and its purpose
= wonderful way to exchange information
= make sure the outside expert is student-friendly
- co-create
= moving towards more student-created work
= affording students more rights to do things on the wiki
- explore new topic together as equals
- students will use a wiki

The Digital Age: Mark Benno

2009-01-27T17:06:00.000-05:00

- rolling out new technology requires staf development
- effective prof development is the key to success
- using the teachers to drive professional development
- Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow
= evolution of thought and practice
* entry -> adoption -> adaptation -> appropriation -> innovation
= when you look at moving through the 5 stages of the evolution of thought and practice, if they don't have professional development and support they will never make the transition
= if they do get there without support it takes an average of 7 years to transition
= with appropriate prof development it goes down to 2.5 years
- students come with different lives, needs, and expectations
= students are natives to cyberspace, adults are the immigrants
= anecdote about his 4 year old using the mobile phone and how natural it was
- Pre-1980s students: digital immigrants
= books, tv, magazines, radio, pen & paper, records, phone
- as we have evolved with technology, the people who were the film strip advancer people have gone into ed tech
- Post-1980 students are digital natives
- what do we do when the district blocks the tech that students use?
= when the tech is proven, it is time to rethink the policies
- 12th graders views of the meaningfulness, interestingness, and importance of education has fallen
- Who are these students?
- Boomers
= learned with media by listening to music
= Johnny Horton, frustrated history teacher, put the facts to music
- Gen X
= watching a video
= Schoolhouse Rock
- Millenials
= producers of media
= not consuming professional media: producing their own or interacting with media their friends have created
= Rock Our World
* collaboratively producing media with students around the world
= students creating podcasts
* works well with young students
- Rethink
= iPod: shifting from music to podcasts
* which ear? students with 2 iPods, one with music the other with a lecture
= mathematics instruction: can demonstrate visually a concept
* can supplement class material
- Student achievement in a digital school
= sense of self/productive future
= 21st Century skills
= technology fluency
= basic skills
- Technology fluency
= if you have a problem do you know what technologies to use to solve it?
- 21st Century skills
= how do you know whether your data is good or bad?
- sense of self
= 50% of students using technology believe that they will someday own their own business
- how young professionals learn
= collaborative tools, wikis, editable, searchable
= cooperation, online, networking, sharing skills
- students want to collaborate
- adults are moving quickly into Facebook
- ACOT 2 project
= http://edcommunity.apple.com/acot2
= new way to reach HS students
= Mythbusters: choose a topic, identify a problem, research the problem, form a hypothesis, test, evaluate: scientific method
- ACOT2
= articulation: what are the design principals of 21st century learning environments?
* 6 design principals
- relevant and applied curriculum
- informative assessments
- culture of creativity and innovation
- social and emotional connection
- 24/7 access to tools and resources
- 21st century skill outcomes
* a teacher is one of the most important components of student success
= communication: research, voices, commentary, data
* built a web site
= application: "for example" curriculum project
* challenge based learning
* blurs the line between formal and informal learning
* scalable
- ACOT2 will have 4 challenge based learning opportunities for people to start with
= people will be able to post their own challenges
- How it works
= big idea
= essential question
= the challenge
* guiding questions, guiding activities, guiding resources
= solution - action
= assessment
- let the verbs drive the nouns
- try to leave a conference with 3 new ideas
- "...if we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow." Dewey
- podcasting: every single kid and classroom can have their own broadcasting system
= easy to learn, easy to produce, easy to make a difference
- always include an open option that affords students an opportunity to incorporate their own interests and strengths into an assignment
- iPhone/iPod Touch: Braintuner
= surveys
- Twitter: markbenno
- benno@apple.com
- collecting stories about the technology that changes our lives

Web 2.0 Tools: Margaret Riel and OMET

2009-01-27T17:05:00.000-05:00

- VoiceThreads

= HS, professional; MS; elementary
- Blogging
= HS/pro
* reflective
* communicating with the community and world
* communicating what works and doesn't work so everybody can learn what you are doing
* classroom blog: reflect on questions that the teacher poses
- turning in their work to a global audience, peers, teacher
- allows them to get comments on their work
- gives reluctant students a voice
= http://mindmaps.wikispaces.com/Blogs
= Personal Learning Network entries
= their comments make them producers of information
= middle school blogs
* blogging can be scary to parents: new to them
* password protected: every student needs their own password
* can moderate comments
* once its up and going and parents are more comfortable, can losen restrictions
* http://perrydale6th.blogspot.com
* http://missspencersclass.blogspot.com
- blog about the teacher's experience in FL
- ties into a lesson about FL for the students
- includes a Voicethread
= Elementary
* students respond to questions posed by the teacher
* uses iWeb to put together the blog through the MobileMe Apple site
- Voicethread
= Images, documents
= poetry
* poetry comes alive when the students are able to share their work
* scan their poems and share them
* makes it hard to lose their work
- http://mindmaps.wikispaces.com/Collaborative+Tools
- empowerment through networking

FETC Blogging

2009-01-26T09:50:00.000-05:00

So, live blogging at FETC didn't work out. While they had free wifi, you had to open your browser and let it redirect to an ego-stroking message from the sponsor before the wireless connection would work. Unfortunately, as I have the eMate configured I couldn't fit NetHopper on it, which would have handled a re-direct. I got my MessagePad working with a re-direct when I took it to a conference, so I know it would have worked. I have to figure out what to remove from my eMate so I can shoehorn NetHopper onto it.

However, I did use the eMate to take my notes for the day. There were some good, informative presentations I attended. I will get them posted as soon as I have a chance to spell check them.

I also managed to find the "grocery market" across from the Convention Center that Allen and I found in 2005, when we were at FETC with our OMET cadre. I knew they had a good lamb gyro, and since I hadn't had one since moving to Connecticut I was pretty excited. I refreshed myself after my presentation.

Update: I ended up removing a couple of packages from my eMate that weren't needed, like the Newton Internet Enabler Modem and Serial support, since I use a wifi card to connect to NCX and the Internet. However, even after removing packages I still had only 460K available, and NetHopper 3.2 takes about 440K of storage space. Exasperated, I looked at the Storage soups on the eMate and found that the Courier cache was 335K! I set the Courier cache preference to be 10% of the store size, hence the huge cache. I cranked that way down, to its lowest setting. I now have nearly 800K of space, enough for NetHopper with plenty of space to spare.

I'm Headed to FETC 2009!

2009-01-23T09:16:00.000-05:00

I'm going to the Florida Educational Technology Conference this afternoon for my presentation tomorrow, Lego Stop-Motion and Autism: Collaborate, Create, Have Fun! I will be live-blogging the sessions I attend with my trusty eMate, whose battery life makes it the perfect companion for a days worth of note-taking and posting to my blog via its wireless card. Here's the sessions I plan to attend.

Saturday:
7:45 - 9:00 Chris Dede
Emerging Interactive Media: What to Use, When, and How?
Room: North 320EF

9:15 - 10:10 Margaret Riel with Graduate Students from Pepperdine University
Teaching Online in a Web 2.0 Context: Free Tools and Ideas

11:10 - 12:05 Mark Benno
The Digital Age: Teaching and Learning for Tomorrow Today
Room: North 320BC

12:30 - 1:25 Josh Burker
Lego Stop-Motion and Autism: Collaborate, Create, Have Fun!

1:50 - 2:45 Harry Tuttle
Improving How We Use Wikis for Better Student Learning

3:00 - 3:45 Dr. Frances Haithcock
Closing Session
Room: Hall NA1

"A laptop the Jetsons would have used"

2009-01-08T12:04:00.001-05:00

Dylan Tweney wrote a nice lament about the early death of the eMate 300 back in 1998.

It's interesting to read about the role the eMate served in schools and what it might have become had it been given a chance to mature.

I worked at a middle school that had a cart of eMates and while I was there I got them all updated and loaded with packages that supported the curriculum. There were some cool astronomy programs that a science teacher used, the yearbook teacher used them with her students to write copy using the built-in word processor, and the Multimedia Club I ran liked to play chess and rock, paper, scissors on them.

I bought an eMate a couple of years ago, a real nice one with the NewerTech memory upgrade. Outfitted with a wireless card, it makes a great blogging device because of its long battery life. I am taking mine along to FETC in a couple of weeks to live blog the sessions I attend.

Avego Shared Transport

2008-12-21T11:04:00.000-05:00

Via a NYTimes article, a cool new service called Avego Shared Transport (tm) that uses an iPhone client, a web client, GPS, GIS, SMS and micropayments to connect people who need a ride with people who have extra space in their cars.

When I commuted in Seattle I did it alone, along with many other drivers. While rideshares are a great idea, sometimes they are not practical, especially if you plan on running errands during your commute. A system like Avego, the Times notes, is that Avego's approach does not require the commitment to a ride share or carpool. Instead, commuters can make available seat space to riders as the driver sees fit.

The iPhone app is in beta. It will be interesting to see if the iPhone-toting commuters pick up on the app and build the critical mass to make this a powerful social networking app that helps cut down the number of cars on the road.

Snake Wrangling

2008-12-18T07:37:00.000-05:00

I've been learning Python with the help of Jason R. Briggs' Snake Wrangling for Kids, a free, online book that is targeted at younger students but which I find perfectly engaging, too. Mr. Briggs does a great job introducing students to the concept of programming with good examples, snippets of code, and a very logical, studied approach to learning to program.

OS X 10.5.x has Python included, though it is a slightly older version than the current 3.x release. However, for the exercises there is a slightly older version of the book available so you can follow along and get the code examples working just fine.

I've shell scripted in the past and learned a little Perl, so I'm pretty comfortable with the syntax and approach to programming using Python. If you are looking for a way to teach younger students how to program, Snake Wrangling for Kids might be a great starting point.

Wordle Fun

2008-11-24T10:29:00.001-05:00

Justine hipped me to Wordle, an online tool that helps you to create word clouds. You can enter text into a form or point it at a site, like I did in the example above (I pointed it at my blog). There are different layouts and color schemes you can choose from. I think the results are awesome.

Inspiration: Eating My Own Dogfood

2008-11-13T15:39:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I get the distinct feeling that the students who I teach think I'm just blowing hot air at them when I teach them to use new technologies or programs. For instance, at the beginning of the year I taught them how to use Inspiration to graphically organize their writing. I have yet to see any of them actually independently use the program to organize their own writing.

So it was a great lesson today when I went into the fifth grade classroom and shared with them how I "ate my own dogfood" and used Inspiration to organize a ten page paper I am writing for Dr. Margaret Riel, my advisor from Pepperdine's Online Master's in Educational Technology program. I am writing about my Action Research Project where I transformed the Tech Club I ran into a more inclusive educational environment. You can see part of my outline above. The students were impressed (I think) that I use the same tools I teach them to use. I hope they realize the benefits of a graphical organizer and see that adults, too, can benefit from tools like this when they write.

Annoying Windows Dialog Box

2008-11-04T10:14:00.000-05:00

I had the displeasure of working on three carts of Windows PCs last week, installing Type to Learn 4 on them for keyboarding instruction.

Every time I logged into Windows I was greeted by the dialog box above, with an opportunity to let the Windows "wizard" help me remove the "unused" icons from my Desktop. Here is what I had "littering" the Desktop:

So, Windows wants only "My Documents," "My Computer," and "Recycling Bin" icons on the Desktop, and anything else a user places there must be of no importance. Way to think inside the box....

Autism Linked to Rainfall

2008-11-04T10:06:00.001-05:00

A new study published by the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine links precipitation rates in California, Oregon, and Washington counties to an increased prevalence of cases of Autism. You can read the abstract of the article at the link above, or a summary at other news outlets.

Essentially, the authors claim that the abundance of precipitation might cause younger children to spend more time indoors, where they are more exposed to various environmental factors such as exposure to household chemicals and pollutants, lack of vitamin D from exposure to the sun, or increased television viewing.

ILC 2008 Reflections

2008-10-27T18:08:00.001-04:00

I am tardy in my report and reflections about the Innovative Learning Conference 2008, the first educational technology conference where I presented. I posted my Presentation and Notes so if you missed my presentation you can still get the content! My presentation was well-attended, with about thirty people learning how to use Scratch, a multimedia programming environment that teaches you how to program. I received some good follow-up email from people who attended my session, and Alice Mercer was even kind enough to blog about her positive experience at my presenation: thanks Alice!

Next I attended Marcia Fay's "Take a Trip with Technology!" presentation, geared at the elementary school classroom. Using a variety of tools like wireless Apple laptops,MapQuest, Weather.com, Google Earth, Manythings.com, and classroom books, students plan and take virtual fieldtrips. They use Apple's KeyNote to build multimedia presentations of what they would visit in Washington D.C., for example, narrating orally the history or purpose of the attractions. Parents were invited into the classroom for an evening presentation, which looked to be well-attended in the photos Marcia shared. It was a fun presentation and a good way to integrate technology into elementary curriculum.

I took myself out for lunch at Chacho's Mexican Restaurant for lunch. I was excited to eat Mexican food when in San Jose, and Chacho's was within walking distance of the Convention Center and very tasty as well.

View Larger Map

I made it back to the Convention Center sated and ready for former Pepperdine classmate Colette Casinelli's VoiceThread presentation. This presentation was packed with interested educators who were excited to put VoiceThread to work in their classrooms. I've used VoiceThread for a bit now and still find myself recommending it to other educators as a particularly fun and effective use of technology to better communicate, whether it be an art critique or a means of teaching Spanish. Colette posted her handouts on her amazing VoiceThread wiki, which she started and which has subsequently taken off and grown to be a definitive source for showcasing VoiceThread in K-12 education. She also ran a back channel chat session through Google Docs during her presentation so people could post questions through a moderator. Colette continues to impress me as _the_ person who put her Pepperdine Online Masters in Educational Technology degree to best use.

Joe Wood put on an energetic and engaging presentation about how he uses Google Maps and Google Earth in his classroom. He had many practical explanations of how to use these powerful tools, such as exporting from Google Maps to Google Earth, one of my favorite tricks. He also showed the audience how to set a particular perspective in a Google Earth fly-over, so you can create dramatic effects for the viewer as your swoop around the world. Joe's blog is well worth checking out. He also pointed us to the Google Earth blog, where all sorts of fun uses of Google Earth are documented. Google Lit Trips, of which Joe demonstrated a Google Earth version of _Grapes of Wrath_, was a great use of this interactive technology, and I was glad he included We Tell Stories, which I had previously interacted with, a Penguin Books-launched site that uses Google Maps to tell stories that are location-aware, as it were.

The last session I attended was Gayle Berthiaume's Literacy in a Digital Classroom workshop. This was an excellent brain-dump as Gayle showed us many, many great projects to encourage literacy in elementary school students. Her Del.icio.us site is a great place to start looking for projects that you, too, can replicate in your classroom. The session was not well attended as it was the last of the day, but I have to say it was one of the best sessions in terms of practical advice and good examples. Gayle is also a teacher mentor and technology tutor for the Scholastic web site and she showed off some great tools available there, too.

It would have been great to see better attendance at ILC 2008 but it was great presenting there and to see Colette again.

Don't Forget the Pets

2008-10-18T22:02:00.000-04:00

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

In these tough economic times, pets are going unfed and being given to shelters. Please do not forget to support your local animal shelters through donations, volunteering, and adoption.

Visiting Ire-land with The Peter & Ians

2008-10-07T18:54:00.001-04:00

My friend Peter sent me a copy of The Peter & Ians latest release "The Peter & Ians Visit Ire-land" shortly after I arrived in Connecticut, but with life as busy as it is and my second generation iPod filled to its capacity, I had not yet had a chance to listen to this album on my headphones and to pay close attention to the production values I loved so much on their first release, The Peter & Ians Sing! Acoustic Renditions of the Lost Songs of Die Klammern. I listened to the CD a bunch of times in Meg's car but that is hardly the optimum listening environment. That all changed this morning when I removed some music from the iPod, loaded the Peter & Ians oeuvre onto the iPod and walked my way to the Stratford train station.

Much like the first album, there are themes of loss, anger, and love in their second release. I continue to be reminded of Ween in some of their sound, which is a great thing. "Hot Noon-Day Sun" conjures memories of Ween's "The Blarney Stone," appropriate as Peter and Ian explore one of my favorite emotions, ire. The production on the first few listens seems not as "expansive" as their first release; I really loved how wide the sound was on "Sing!," with the banging cookie sheets, claps, and whiskey bottle taps surrounding my head. The "found" instrumentation does make an appearance on some tracks, however, and by the time you get to "You're a Bum" the familiar bangs, finger-snaps, and pots and pans are back in place. In terms of a thematic album "Visit Ire-land" definitely does a great job of picking up where the last album left off and exploring the anger and emotions surrounding what must have been a doozy of a break-up.

As I mentioned in the interview Meg and I conducted with the band, they holed up with a bottle of Inventing Whiskey in a studio apartment in Portland and churned out another EP. This time the "instrumentation" is a bit more sparse than their first release, though the title track, "Ire-land," has a great laugh-out-loud crash of dishes, glasses, claps and empty bottles in the track and "Carpet Floor Drunk" has some great ambient discussions I wish I could catch in the background. They also seem to have gotten their hands on a violin and give us some great sounds very reminiscent of John Cage's work with Velvet Underground on the tracks "You're a Bum" and particularly "Our Evening." I know that VU was a big influence for the brothers, so it's cool to hear that come out a bit.

I like this album because we get a more unified narrative; their first album has many different characters on it, but this album seems to have a more singular narrator who is lamenting his lost love, the anger surrounding the breakup, and the booze that keeps the demons at bay.

As always, Peter's artwork is awesome, with Ian swinging the shelalagh while Peter lays passed out under the hot noon-day sun. The liner notes contain all the lyrics, hand-lettered. The songs are as catchy as those on "Sing!" I appreciate that they keep their unique sound intact yet do not remain tied to a particular sound. This album has some great Irish-sounding jig guitar runs on it. It's harsher and more brash than their first, as if they gained confidence in their sound and their message. I would have loved to have been present at the recording of this one, and to perhaps have taken a pull from the whiskey bottle and added a couple claps and crashes of my own to the sounds.

Going Green in Benin

2008-09-24T20:33:00.000-04:00

I have a vested interested in Benin, having traveled there in 1998. Someday I will write my autobiographical piece about my experiences there: I already have a title, "I am George."

BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin did a great little piece, a little light on the technical details unfortunately, about the Songhai Center in Benin, embedded above.

It was such a pleasure "being back" in Benin and seeing the sights and hearing the sounds of the people I grew to know, love, and at times hate. I am very pleased that the resourceful people of Benin are getting on the Green tip and creating substainable futures for the nation.

PicoBoard with Scratch

2008-09-22T21:01:00.000-04:00

In anticipation of my Scratch Presentation at the Innovative Learning Conference I purchased a PicoBoard, which used to be called a ScratchBoard. This device allows your Scratch Project to interact with the real world. For instance, there is a light sensor built in, so you can program your Scratch Projects to react as the light increases or decreases in the room.

To that end, I built a Scratch Project called Make the Sun Rise. This Project uses the light sensor on the PicoBoard to animate a sun sprite and the background. When you open the Project, if the light is dim the sun stays in place. As you gradually increase the amount of light the PicoBoard is exposed to, the sun will rise and the backdrop will turn from black to blue. Conversely, once the sun has risen if you cover the light sensor the sun will set and the background will fade to black.

It took me a while to get my head around how to program this Project. After giving it a shot yesterday I came back to it today and got it working the way I wanted it to work. You will have to download the Project and have a ScratchBoard or PicoBoard to make it work. As I say in the Project notes, the effect works best if you gradually expose the light sensor to light, just like how the real sun rises.

I have been hard at work at my presentation for ILC and very much look forward to the experience. To tide you over, here is my JumpBall game, my Scratch port of a Japanese game for the Newton MessagePad. Avoid the ball! Have fun! Click on the image to play!

NY Times: Traveling with Autism

2008-09-14T16:49:00.000-04:00

photo by Michael Nagel for the New York Times

The New York Times has an interesting multimedia feature produced by Miki Meek about a family's travels with their 16-year-old autistic son.

While travel can be tricky for families grappling with autistic children, Gina Delgiudice-Asch refuses to let that keep her 16-year-old son, Andrew, at home.

Mrs. Delgiudice-Asch emphasizes the need to prepare a routine, leave early in the morning for the airport and the other challenges faced when parents travel with their autistic children. She also equates travel with preparation for life, a powerful lesson. This is an inspiring and educational segment.

Interactive WhiteBoard Presentation at GFA

2008-09-14T16:11:00.001-04:00

Last Thursday was Lower School Parent's Night at Greens Farms Academy and I gave a twenty minute presentation about the SmartBoards installed over the summer. I built in part of my Meet Mr. Burker lesson I did with the students to introduce the parents to me, my educational technology philosophy, and how we are going to use the SmartBoards this year.

I invited the parents up to draw on and interact with the board. They helped me locate Seattle and Connecticut on the map and learned to write my name in cursive. Additionally, they helped me identify some shapes and learned how the SmartBoard essentially becomes the computer, as the computer can be manipulated from the board itself.

The parents were very receptive to the presentation and excited to see the technology in action. Their students are excited, too, and the SmartBoards might prove to be a very effective technology for the K-5 group.

My First Lesson at GFA

2008-09-03T18:40:00.000-04:00

Today was the first day of school for Lower School students at Greens Farms Academy and my first day in the classroom with the students! Today I taught two first grade classes and a second grade class.

I wanted to showcase the new interactive SmartBoards that were installed over the summer. I also wanted to introduce myself to the students. To that end, I created a Notebook document that the students and I could interact with. The students learned about my drive across country, the people and places we saw and my wife and our dog. Additionally, they each got a chance to use the SmartBoard and experience the myriad technologies that can be used with an interactive white board, such as the Notebook software, Google Earth, and web pages. The students loved the photos of Zoë, Cadillac Ranch, and a scorpion under a blacklight.

The SmartBoards are pretty awesome educational tools. It will be exciting to break down the barriers of the classroom and redefine the space as the students use the interactive white boards to demonstrate to their peers and to interact with technology in a tactile, kinesthetic manner.

FETC 2009 Presentation: Lego, Stop-Motion, and Autism

2008-08-27T21:32:00.000-04:00

I am very pleased to announce that I have been accepted to present at the Florida Educational Technology Conference in January, 2009. My presentation is "Lego, Stop-Motion Film and Autism: Collaborate, Create, Have Fun!" and will discuss and demonstrate the work that Steven, Tech Club members, and I did last year as we produced Steven's "Mission to Earth 2: Tom Helps Me" film.

Mission to Earth 2: Tom Helps Me

Mission to Earth 2: Behind the Scenes

This should be a very exciting presentation as I hope to instruct other educators working with Autistic students about the successes we had in this project. It is my hope that Steven's and my work will be replicated in other schools.

Day 11: Harrisburg to Sandy Hook, CT

2008-08-03T11:30:00.001-04:00

Here we are on the last map of our 11 day journey. Our drive from Harrisburg to Sandy Hook, where our friends Kimberly, Charles and Elijah live, was one of the shortest of the road trip, which was a relief. Zoe's expression sums up our general ennui at this stage of the journey.

We pressed through some beautiful landscape until we reached Middletown, New York and got off the freeway. Meg and I were nearly ready to compromise our standards and eat fast food, but we decided to drive to the historic district and walk around. Again, another East Coast city that had seen better times, but there was some real effort going on to revitalize the city: concerts at the park downtown and some new businesses, including Cheryl's Fried Fish, a wonderful Soul Food joint.

After driving 11 days cross country, I would count Cheryl's Fried Fish as one of the top two meals I ate in my journey. I had bacalao with rice and beans and my wife had chicken tenders and fries. Bacalao is salted cod fish, and I had not had the opportunity to eat bacalao outside of Spain. My dish had the salt cod, potatoes, red and green bell peppers, and onions, plus all sorts of tasty spices and seasonings. Meg's chicken fingers weren't greasy at all, lightly battered, and seasoned to perfection. Road food redemption!

Besides the great food, Cheryl and her son are proud of their food and their restaurant. The community likes the place too: when I was there there were many repeat customers who were coming by for their helpings of delicious soul food. Give it a taste: you'll love it!

Sated, we hit the road again for the final push. Meg and I reflected on the way how much ground we covered and how the dog did not seem to have been permanently affected by the relocation. At last we made it to Connecticut!

We got great gas mileage on the final tank of gas: 38.5453 mpg over 301 miles.

We used 14 tanks of gas. The most gas we ever put in in a single tank was 8.624 gallons. We averaged 37.1924 miles per gallon over the course of the trip. Our worst mileage on a tank was 33.0473 mpg over 285 miles. The best mileage was 41.3415 mpg over 196 miles.

Day 10: Grove City to Harrisburg, PA

2008-08-03T11:18:00.000-04:00

Argh: it's finally come to this. The worst possible construction of a Subway tuna sub and veggie sub imaginable. Is it me, or does the mustard "traditionally" go on the inside of the sandwich?

Conversely, in our walk about the depressed part of old downtown I stumbled across a hot dog shop. Curious, I popped in. The place was lined with booths, packed. A hot dog cost $1.65. I had mine with mustard and onions. The grill cook was kind and friendly. I should have had more hot dogs instead of wandering on and compromising for Subway, which I have now officially sworn off.

It did not get better when we got to our hotel in Harrisburg. The first room had not been really cleaned and lacked the smoke detector, which was in the bedside table. We got moved to a better room. Oh, and the wifi didn't work properly, so I didn't get this posted at the end of the day.

After 10 days out on the road, the trip is no longer much fun.

GeekGas says we got got 33.0473 mpg over 285 miles. The second tank of the day we got 38.716 mpg over 316 miles.

Day 9: St. Louis to Grove City, OH

2008-07-31T22:00:00.001-04:00

This morning we crossed the Mississippi River, a milestone in our road trip that is losing its charm as the days wear on. The dog must think she has been adopted by a couple of nomads and seems to have consigned herself to the possibility that this will be her reality for the rest of her life: traveling from hotel to hotel at 7 hour chunks of drive time a day. Depressing to say the least. But the end is in sight.

We listened to Stufjan Stevens' Come On Feel the Illinoise, a gift from Garrett from a few Christmases ago. It was great to see some of the town names mentioned in the songs along the highway and on the map. Great album.

Pulling off the road in Haute Terre, Indiana, we drove up and down the strip looking for some place authentic and local to eat. Defeated, we ended up at a Quiznos. Part of the fun of having a dog is the exclusion from restaurants and other establishments, so you get to improvise and find someplace, preferably shady, where you and your hound can sit down for a spell, have some lunch and a bowl of water, and get off the road for a bit.

I drove a couple blocks back from the main road then cut right for six or seven blocks. Just as I was about to give up I spotted Fairbanks Park. What a perfect place for a picnic, with a nice river flowing lazily next to it, plenty of covered picnic spots, and some public art.

Additionally, the Chauncey Rose Memorial Plaza was at the park, too, opposite an amphitheater.

Chauncey Rose was an all-around good guy and local hero. He left money to build an orphanage and a hospital for the poor. Meg thinks he looks a bit like Zoe.

GeekGas reports cruddy gas mileage today, probably attributable to high speeds coming into St. Louis before the heavy rains hit. 33.0473 mpg over 285 miles. I think the second tank we worked on today should get better mileage; we'll find out when we fuel up tomorrow.

Day 8: Yukon to St. Louis, MO

2008-07-30T23:41:00.000-04:00

There was so little so see on this leg of the journey that we did not really take any photos. No cool roadside attractions, no historical markers, nothing. To keep the miles moving Meg and I read to each other from Short Bus, getting through four chapters. We also saw the sign above on a semi truck, "This company was built on the vision of a blind man," which I found to be pretty inspiring and fitting with Mr. Mooney's tale. So I think this post is going to be a little discussion on the powerful message of this book.

It seems that every time Meg or I read to one another from this book that either one or both of us end up in tears by the end of the chapter. It is that touching of a book. The tears come from the cruel way society treats individuals with learning differences or different physical abilities, but they also come from the stories of how the individuals Jonathan Mooney meets overcome or transcend what society sees as limitations.

Yesterday's readings made me think about the Autistic young woman with whom I had a conversation at the Grand Canyon. She was very inquisitive and asked me many questions related to geography. I was happy to oblige her questioning. I have found that after working with students on the Autism Spectrum that I can pretty quickly pick up when an individual is Autistic and have an appropriate conversation with her or him. In this case I was more than happy to talk about Maine, the Atlantic Ocean, New Hampshire, and our respective experiences in these places. However, as the conversation continued I could sense her parents' discomfort: they said, "Oh, she's the question woman," to me as a way to explain the incessant questioning. I said I did not mind, but the parents were clearly a little exasperated (there are a lot of people to talk to at the Grand Canyon, after all) and perhaps even a little embarrassed.

Talking with Meg about the experience, we compared it to some of Jonathan Mooney's experiences on the short bus. Typical people might not have treated the young woman as well, recognizing that she was different and fixating on her differences, rather than the similarities. They might have thought her questions about Maine, being asked from Arizona, were "off topic" or such non sequiturs as to not warrant a response. However, I enjoy these seemingly random conversations because they help reveal the interests of the Autistic individual, the "thing" that they are "really into" and the topic with which you can easily engage the individual. Oftentimes when I first meet an Autistic person I will ask her or his parents, or the student her- or himself, "What are you into? What's your thing?" Making this connection show you value the person as an individual, not as a curiosity.

So next time a person comes up to you asking questions about your Maine shirt, oblige her or him: you might just learn something new about the world and yourself.

Geek Gas reports 35.4655 mpg over 280 miles, then later in the day 39.9167 mpg over 345 miles. As things flatten out I hope to see good high gas mileage like this. By the way, for those keeping score at home, the average mpg thus far is 37.3508 miles per gallon.

Day 7: Albuquerque to Yukon, OK

2008-07-30T00:17:00.000-04:00

This was the beginning of the leg of the road trip that our mover Mike warned would be boring and without much visual distraction. He was right. Leaving Albuquerque we continued to climb in altitude for a while. Finally we leveled off and moved into the flat, flat, flatness of eastern New Mexico and western Oklahoma.

There was very little to break the monotony of the voyage. When lunch finally came around we had to find a place to eat since we had not bought groceries on the way out of Albuquerque as we stayed by the airport, where there weren't any grocery stores that we could see. We were ready to settle for Subway, which has reached a near ubiquitousness (and which, in the grand scheme of food on the go, is probably a good thing), when we noticed a local enterprise that looked promising: Texas 2 Step Gourmet.

Intrigued, I went in and got us two "John Wayne" sandwiches: beef brisket on a bun, cheese and onions optional. Delicious. The shop was chock-o-block full of hot sauces, Texas memorabilia and other cooking goods. It's a hard draw, but being in the middle of nowhere has its advantages: it is something to see where there is little to see.

Right off I-40 is a great piece of outsider art, the Cadillac Ranch, situated in a corn field. There are no brown signs to announce its presence: you had better pay attention.

You can get off I-40 and double back to reach the field. A sign warns not to paint anything on the road side of the fence, as it is Texas property. The cars are covered in unbelievably thick coats of paint: they seem to be more paint than steel at this point.

Somebody handed Meg a Sharpie, explaining somebody else had passed it to her and Meg was to pass it on. Meg added our names to the monument.

As we raced from a big lightning storm in western Oklahoma, swarms of dragon flies hovered above the highway. It was crazy to see so many in one place.

We ended up at Henry Hudson's, a local where Meg got a weird vibe but where I enjoyed the sights and the food. It was a good end to a long day.

Geek gas says 38.4521 mpg over 312 miles: gotta love the flatlands.

Day 6: Chandler to Albuquerque, New Mexico

2008-07-29T01:15:00.001-04:00

We said goodbye to Adam, Jody, and Tyler, who was upset to see Zoe go.

While Meg bought some groceries, Zoe learned to pilot a helicopter and also drove the Bat Mobile.

Are all the adopt a highway signs along the highways of Arizona places where people wiped themselves out, or is it a tradition around there to adopt a stretch in memory of somebody? Because if it is the former people are killing themselves about every five miles or so through here....

We passed through a bunch of high mountain passes. The altitude was a killer: we both got good headaches. However, the sights were beautiful.

As we moved into the high desert we saw some of the Big Puffy Clouds that Ricky Lee Jones and The Orb spoke so highly of.

Along the way we stopped at Petrified National Forest. There were petroglyphs here that we wanted to see, along with Pueblo Puerco, a settlement that was inhabited from 1100-1200 and again from 1300-1400. It was harsh, windy, and hot, and it was hard to image eking out an existence in such a place. The ruins were impressive and the petroglyphs were a glimpse at an unknown people and narrative.

There was also a little monument to the old Route 66, now replaced by I-40 on which we were traveling. My friend Allen recently completed a project with the president of Pepperdine, so it was cool to make that connection with his work.

We also crossed the Continental Divide, a milestone in our journey east.

We went out to an awesome dinner at 9:30 pm at Cervantes, which had the best northern New Mexican food Meg or I had ever had and an awesome waiter, Victor, to boot. We were the only people in the restaurant, since it was supposed to close at 10:00, but a family showed up shortly thereafter and we ended up striking up some good conversation. The father explained that the cuisine at Cervantes was authentic North New Mexican, and that one was unlikely to find such food outside of this region. This was the best culinary treat so far!

When we checked into our hotel, we were very pleased to find that we were booked into the Nixon Presidential Suite.

Tricky Dick himself visited me in my dreams and helped me slumber peacefully all night long.

Geek Gas says 35.8566 mpg over 216 miles: this part of the trip was through some pretty steep passes in Arizona that were absolutely beautiful. 39.4095 mpg over 307 miles: the flatlands of western New Mexico paid off with better gas mileage.

Day Five: Hangin' with the Burkers in Chandler

2008-07-27T21:49:00.001-04:00

We headed over to Maricopa, AZ, to the build-site where Adam, Jody, and Tyler's new home is being built. We took a look at the slab and Adam and Jody walked us around to explain what was going where. Afterwards we toured a couple of model homes for the development to see all the various configuration options.

Afterwards we went over to Jody's parents' home to take a dip in their nicely cool pool. We even got in a game of Marco Polo.

They have two dogs, a pug and a shitzu, who Zoe got along with and played with.

After swimming Tyler and Tim entertained us with Tim's organ, which made all sorts of cool sounds. Tyler liked the train sound and the reindeer bells.

When we got home we were pretty worn out from playing in the pool and being out in the sun. While I worked on the blog Meg and Tyler played with Play-Do.

It wouldn't be a trip to Arizona without a little scorpion hunting! We went over to Jody's brother Dave's place. He has a LED blacklight flashlight and when you shine it around, the scorpions phosphoresce.

It was great to be off the road for a day, to get to spend some time with the Arizona contingent of the Burker clan, and to splash around in the pool. Tomorrow we get back on the road to head to Albuquerque, New Mexico.