Google Teams Up with Leading Artists to Create New Themes for iGoogle

Announcement
April 30, 2008

Today, we launched a collection of new themes created by leading artists for iGoogle, Google’s personalized homepage. With iGoogle, users can access and arrange the content they want on their homepage to personalize their web experience.

We’ve collaborated with almost 70 artists from around the world, inviting them to use iGoogle as their canvas by creating unique, dynamic themes for our users to personalize their pages. In honor of this, celebrated pop artist Jeff Koons created a special Google doodle, which appears on Google’s homepage today.

Participating artists in this collection include:

• Yann Arthus-Bertrand
• Tory Burch
• Dale Chihuly
• Coldplay
• Oscar de la Renta
• Dolce & Gabbana
• Mark Ecko
• Anne Geddes
• Michael Graves
• Rolf Harris
• Akira Isogawa
• Kwon Ki-Soo
• Jeff Koons
• Robert Mankoff
• Mark Morris
• Nigo ®
• Philippe Starck
• Diane von Furstenberg

To see the entire list of participating artists and their themes, please see: www.google.com/artistthemes. For those who can’t stand to pick just one theme for their page, we’ve created a sampler theme that rotates through all our participating artists’ themes.

All themes are dynamic, changing throughout the day, and are as diverse as the personalities who created them. This new collection provides users with a diverse selection of themes to reflect their personal style on their homepage.

To see a video of the artist themes, please see www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1UJF4aK1s0. Broadcast quality video is available at www.thenewsmarket.com/google.

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DoubleClick Mobile Integrates with Mobile Ad Networks

Integration Enables both Direct and Indirect Revenue Streams for Mobile Publishers

NEW YORK, NY – April 30, 2008 – DoubleClick, a premier provider of digital marketing technology and services, today announced that DoubleClick Mobile, the company’s advertising delivery system for mobile devices, is integrating with mobile ad networks including AdMob, Google’s AdSense™ for mobile content, and Millennial Media’s premium MBrand network as well as its Decktrade™ performance network. This upgrade helps mobile publishers fill more of their available inventory and ultimately earn more revenue.

"This integration is a great example of how DoubleClick is working with key industry players to bring value to publishers by enhancing the liquidity of mobile display inventory," said Ari Paparo, group product manager for DoubleClick products. "We believe that the ability to sell mobile inventory directly and indirectly will provide mobile advertisers with more options, ultimately leading to better monetization for publishers."

Now, publishers using DoubleClick Mobile can sell mobile display inventory indirectly, through automated access to one or more networks of mobile advertisers. Publishers, of course, can continue to sell directly as they have always done. DoubleClick Mobile provides an accurate view of what inventory is available to sell, what has been sold directly and what has been filled by ad networks. By managing inventory across direct and indirect channels, DoubleClick Mobile helps publishers better monetize their mobile web content.

DoubleClick Mobile is part of the DoubleClick Revenue Center, which enables media sellers to manage their display campaigns in tandem with emerging platforms, such as mobile advertising, in a single location.

"Both brand and performance advertisers are using our MBrand and Decktrade networks to reach their mobile advertising goals," said Paul Palmieri, president and CEO of Millennial Media. "Our integration with DoubleClick Mobile makes it possible for publishers to accept ads from Millennial Media’s deep roster of leading advertisers while preserving their ability to sell directly."

"AdMob is always eager to extend our engineering investments in mobile advertising relevance and optimization to new platforms," said Omar Hamoui, AdMob’s founder and CEO. "We are excited that DoubleClick’s clients will now be able to join over 4000 existing AdMob publishers in leveraging AdMob’s ad liquidity and mobile specific ad serving technologies."

About the DoubleClick Revenue Center

The DoubleClick Revenue Center is a comprehensive suite of solutions for media sellers designed to maximize revenue and minimize operational friction throughout the digital ad sales process. Today’s DoubleClick Revenue Center starts with DoubleClick’s DART ad serving platform, and can be expanded to include automated optimization technology, support for rich media and emerging platforms like video and mobile, sales and financial workflow tools, and an advertising exchange. Leading publishers are adopting these solutions to maximize yield on their inventory and increase the efficiency and visibility of their sales process.

About DoubleClick Inc.

DoubleClick is a premier provider of digital marketing technology and services. The world’s top marketers, publishers and agencies utilize DoubleClick’s expertise in ad serving, rich media, video, mobile, search and affiliate marketing to help them make the most of the digital medium. From its position at the nerve center of digital marketing, DoubleClick provides superior insights and insider knowledge to its customers. Learn more at www.doubleclick.com.

Media Contacts:

Brandon McCormick
Google
bmccormick@google.com
650-253-0674

Lynn Tornabene
ltornabene@google.com
212.381.5596

###

Google and AdSense are trademarks of Google Inc. DoubleClick is a trademark of DoubleClick Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.

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Sites that Caught My Eye Today 04/30/2008

• horizonproject2008 » Video Specifications

  This page outlines how we are sharing video on the Horizon project this year. After literally hours of testing to overcome the "youtube barrier" we have worked out how to use Ning as our video sharing and embedding platform.
  
  Using tools like a firefox plug in that allows downloading of any video AND zamzar, these 7 videos literally show you how you may "snag" and edit any video. Just remember to follow copyright laws when you do this.
  
  This innovation was quite an epiphany for us and the videos were our effort to make it easy and take the video sharing aspect of the project out of the teacher's hands.

  tags: education, video, hz08, edu_newapp, technology, techintegrator, professionaldevelopment

• foobar2000

  This handy music player converts between ALL formats of music. I needed to take a song to put into a movie and converted it here. There are some robust tweaks that let you make your music sound better that I haven't even gotten into. (Hint, convert your mp3 to .wav to put in a movie.)
  

  tags: education, edu_newapp, audio, geeks4, brightideas

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Upcoming Events & PD w/ Me (and others)

Here are some upcoming events (some free and some not) I'd like to share with you. All of them have live elements that you may want to join!

Sounding Board Informational Meeting
Kim Cofino
Wed April 30th at 11:00 am UTC (see local times here). You can access the session via the link on the Sounding Board page. There is still time to sign up your classroom to be a peer review classroom for the horizon project.

Innovative Uses of Technology in the Classroom
Friday, May 2nd 10:30 am - Noon EDT
Free Ustream of Panel Discussion
This Friday, May 2nd, I'm very excited to be at Princeton this Friday at "Students and Electronic Media: Teaching in the Technological Age"on a panel with Kevin Jarrett (about Second Life) and Daniel McVeigh (Ocean of Know). I'll be ustreaming our panel and we'll have a backchannel chat (check my blog Friday morning for instructions)

If you're near Princeton, this is free and registration is still open. (I think.) See the agenda here. (Kathy Schrock and some other amazing people will be there too!)

Planning Meetings for Online Course for Digital Citizenship
Wednesday, April 30 12:30 pm CST (1:30 EDT)
Thursday, May 1 7:30 pm CST (8:30 EDT)
Kate Olson is hosting two "planning" / idea meetings about the opportunity to create a free course for parents, students, and anyone interested in learning more about digital citizenship, safety, and success. Elluminate links are posted at the Ad4dcss blog.

The First In-Person Flat Classroom "Course" with Julie Lindsay and me
Tuesday, July 8 - Wednesday, July 9th
See full schedule.
Yes, we will ustream some of this (probably the opening and closing) but the rest of the time, I hope you can understand, Julie and I will be focusing on those who are attending.

We've talked for two and a half years now about truly sharing and teaching what it takes to "do" a true Flat Classroom/ Horizon Project collaboration. Honestly, if the movement is going to grow (as it is), it will require many more teachers and schools understanding how it works and doing it themselves. Truly sustainable, culture altering movements such as we believe flat classroom should be, cannot be monopolized by anyone. The shifting world-view that we see in our students needs to be shared with others.

This arose out of a discussion I had with Steve Hargadon at IL-TCE about how Julie and I wanted to do this but didn't have the time to plan it... so Steve, who always does things up to the standards that Julie and I also aspire to, is planning this event for us.

And Elizabeth Helfant in St. Louis has Julie and I spending some special time with her school and selected schools in her association on Monday and is letting us continue on in her amazing facilities through Tuesday and Wednesday. We've created a wiki and will be sharing what we do for this on an ongoing basis. (If you're interested, registration information is available on the wiki. Who knows if we will do this again, but this time will be very, very special.)

NECC Presentations

Edubloggercon
Saturday, June 28th
I wouldn't miss it for the world. This is my favorite PD event FOR ME! Listen and learn from many amazing people. I'll never forget last year as Julie and I were talking, having met for the first time and Jeff Utecht from China plops down in the seat between us. Talk about amazing moments!

Wikispaces
Monday, June 30 8:30 am - 9:30 am at NECC
Adam Frey, cofounder of wikispaces and I will share updated information on wikispaces and I'll talk about how we use the site in projects.

Exploring Classroom 2.0 Panel
with Steve Hargadon
Monday, June 30 12:30 - 1:30 pm, NECC

Flat Classroom "Birds of a Feather"
Monday, June 30 2:00 - 3:00 pm NECC
Join Julie and I as we facilitate discussions between people interested in creating "flat classroom" style projects. We will be grouping you in ways to facilitate meaningful connections.

Flat Classroom "Mini" 3 hour workshop
Wednesday, July 2, 8:30 am - 12:30 pm
For those going to NECC, Julie and I are doing a workshop on Wednesday Morning sponsored by SIGTel. There are some slots still open, I think. We will work to include external participants in some of the work as well via ustream and wiki. Stay tuned.

Panel Discussion on Viral Professional Development
Wednesday, July 2, 1:30 - 2:30 pm (San Antonio Time)
We've been planning this for some time and will be putting the finishing touches on this exciting panel discussion over the next several weeks. This WILL be ustreamed AND backchanneled.

Please say "hi"
The toughest thing about these conferences is in finding the sufficient time to give a decent "hello." I hope if you say "hi" that you'll have your business card in hand a note on the back about anything you'd like to discuss in the future. I try to make these notes myself but am notoriously without a pen (perhaps why I type everything.) We may then be in touch via e-mail later.

Take time to say "hi" and know that I'll do my best to take a minute. I do so love meeting other people just like me. I look forward to these events like edubloggercon and the Flat Classroom workshop where we'll be able to kick back and spend a little more time in conversation.

tag: edubloggercon, edubloggercon08, flatclassroom, Julie Lindsay, wikispaces, Adam Frey, Steve Hargadon, princeton, Kevin Jarrett, Oceans of Know, Daniel McVeigh, events, education, innovation, learning, workshop, ustream, ad4dcss

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Google Maps Street View now available in driving directions

Announcement
April 29, 2008

Starting today, finding your way around town will be easier than ever: Street View is now integrated into Google Maps driving directions. In the regions across the country where Google Maps Street View imagery is available, users will see camera icons next to each step of their directions, which will open a Street View image of the location, along with an arrow showing the action to be taken. Users can click through their entire route through Street View, and when the journey is complete a green marker will indicate arrival at their destination.

By viewing Street View images alongside directions, drivers have visual context for intersections and action points along their route, enabling them to be aware of landmarks and other factors such as tolls, speed limits, size of the road, and the availability of parking at their destination.

Street View, originally launched in May of 2007 in 5 cities, now provides interactive 360-degree street-level imagery in 44 regions across the country. Integrating Street View with driving directions provides those living in or traveling to these regions with another powerful, useful tool to help them easily navigate their surroundings. Street View was also recently made available through the Google Maps API, allowing developers to utilize Street View functionality to enhance their services.

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Google Announces Availability of Additional Proxy Materials

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – April 28, 2008 – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced that additional proxy materials are available for its stockholders in connection with the 2008 Annual Meeting of Stockholders to be held on Thursday, May 8, 2008.

The additional proxy materials are available at the following websites: www.sec.gov, investor.google.com/proxy.html, www.proxyvote.com/ (beneficial stockholders) and www.envisionreports.com/goog (registered stockholders).

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Contacts:

Maria Shim
Investor Relations
650.253.7663
marias@google.com

Matt Furman
Corporate Communications
650.214.5304
mfurman@google.com

Jon Murchinson
Corporate Communications
650.253.4437
jonm@google.com

###

Google is a registered trademark of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

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Sites that Caught My Eye Today 04/26/2008

• techLEARNING.com | Technology & Learning - The Resource for Education Technology Leaders

  This webinar is Monday about Web 2.0 and I'm co-presenting. If you attend, you'll receive a 3 month free trial subscription to Atomic Learning. Preregister here.
  
  This will give you access to the series I did on Web 2.0 and how to set up an RSS reader, etc. Also, the new one I've done on Flattening your classroom will be available as well.

  tags: education, brightideas, professionaldevelopment, edu_news, techintegrator, technology

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38 Birthday presents from CoolCatTeacher to you!

Happy Birthday to Me! Wow! Your twitters, skypes, little e-mail notes and more have really made today special. In addition, my family was wonderful and my amazing husband sent me flowers. Although I still have a stack of grading from here to Qatar - I had a good day.

So, I thought that today, I'd give 38 presents to you for you to open and enjoy. One for each year of this amazing blessed life the good Lord has seen fit to give me.

All of these are free and so so cool! I challenge you to pick a present today, open it in my honor, and let me know what you think!

1. Songbird - This is THE cool opensource alternative to iTunes and it is connected with Skreemr, the music search engine.
   
   
2. Timebridge - This scheduling system plugs into google calendar or outlook and lets you invite people to a meeting, select four time alternatives, and then it books the meeting time that everyone can attend and puts it on your calendar. It reminds them and it rocks!!
   
   
3. Get Atomic Learning Free for 3 months -- I'm copresenting in a webinar with Atomic Learning and Technology & Learning on Monday. If you register AND attend at 4 pm EDT, you will get 3 months FREE from Atomic. This will give you not only the seminar I did for them on Web 2.0 but also, the one that is coming out soon about how to flatten your classroom.
   
   
4. Diigo - This cool tool has transformed my bookmarking, blogging, sharing, and twittering. Install it, set it up to send to your delicious account. Join the educators group (getting close to 400 members) and ad4dcss groups -- when you send things to the group, make sure you select at least one of the tags that "pops up" (these are from our tag dictionary.) Also, go to tools and set up a nice little daily autoblog based upon a tag you specify. (Some just put the tag "blog" for everything they want to go to their blog that day!)
   
   To get the most out of it, you definitely should use firefox and install the cute little bookmarklets. This is a definite tool for those writing papers!
   
   
5. Zoho Notebook -- This notebooking service completely and utterly rocks! Zohonotebook gives you the ability to EMBED video and web pages as well as snag notes from many places. It is an amazing tool! (Check out some of the pages I demoed in a workshop a while back.)
   
   
6. Google Forms - Google spreadsheets has a cute little tool hidden in the Share tab, the ability to create a form. We're using this for the Horizon Project managers to submit their weekly reports. It is so fast and easy and a great way to pull information into a spreadsheet. I even have my national honor society students entering their service time for me into the spreadsheet.
   
   
7. Firefox - If you're still stuck in Internet Explorer, you simply must try firefox. Give yourself a present! The plug ins are incredible. My favorites are: the diigo plug in, technorati tag plug in,
   
   
8. If you're in Princeton come to a free Conference next Friday, May 2nd - Can you tell, I love free? I like to do work with people who provide their services to the general public and openly share information. This conference on Friday is chock full of amazing speakers and I'm going to enjoy being on a panel with some of them to talk about Flat Classroom.
   
   
9. Twitter - Again, try this one. Some say they don't "have time for twitter" or don't "get it." Just sign up, add me as a friend, and then go in and see whose talking to me, add some who sound interesting and then reply to their messages by saying @theirID -- so to reply to me, you'd say @coolcatteacher -- You may just find yourself conversing daily with some of your heroes.
   
   
10. Hulu.com - I've been beta testing this beauty which lets you watch all kinds of TV shows. Now, you can watch too!
    
    
11. Mogulus - Do you want your own 24/7 TV station? You can do it here. Schedule things to play. Merge videos from other places on the Net. Very cool.
    
    
12. AFI Screen Nation - The Amazing American Film Institute has a new site where your students may upload video and be evaluated by REAL producers, actors, and directors in Hollywood. Their curriculum is totally amazing and I use the videos that come with my united streaming account to teach digital film & movie making. I love the AFI digital storytelling curriculum and highly recommend it.
    
    
13. Toondoo - Make cartoons. This continues to be one of my perennial favorites for cartoons.
    
    
14. Ning (for VIDEO sharing) - I LOVE Ning in the classroom and just found a super cool new feature. If you upload video to ning, it automatically converts it to the most compressed, appropriate version for the web. You may then embed the video anywhere else. This is solving a lot of our access problems for the horizon project b/c schools just unblock the Ning and have access to all of the movies!
    
    
15. Intel Mashmaker - This lets you mash together all different types of websites and I am enjoying working with it. There will be some things I share soon. This is supposed to be a lot like Microsoft PopFly, which I've not tested yet.
    
    
16. Skype - This is another MUST have APP. If you haven't tried it yet, get over there and take a look.
    
    
17. Classtools.net - Embeddable graphic organizers of every kind for your wiki or blog. I Adore this site and use it all the time in my classroom.
    
    
18. Wikispaces -- This is my stable, well supported, wiki darling. One look at the horizon project wiki will tell you why.
    
    
19. Gmail - With the most robust spam filter anywhere, the ability to filter like a fiend, make folders, and import all accounts into one place, this account is a dream come true. Even if you use another service, you can enable pop on that account, set up a gmail and pull all of your accounts into one. And if you use firefox, they have a better gmail firefox extension from lifehacker that is a must install!.
    
    
20. Gcast - I'm really enjoying podcasting from my cell phone -- just a lot of fun!
    
    
21. FriendFeed - A cool little service that I'm really beginning to enjoy to help me follow just a few people.
    
    
22. Technorati Watchlist - A must use for bloggers watching those responding to their work and just to follow the things you want to know more about. The RSS from the search for your blog belongs in your RSS reader.
    
    
23. PhotoBucket - THE place I put my private photos. I like Flickr, but somtimes I just want to make a really cool flash page for my website or do something neat with photos, and photobucket has more robust tools for my photos than I've found other places.
    
    
24. Big Huge Labs for Flickr -- This has some amazingly hilarious Motivational Poster makers and just about everything you can imagine for your photos. Make monster posters, make labels, make anything. If you have photos, this is THE place to PLAY!
    
    
25. Feedburner is a must use for any serious blogger or school Webmaster. You can burn the feed to feedburner, which will let you move your feed from place to place without losing readers! You may also use Feedblitz to e-mail your blog posts to anyone who is "afraid" of RSS. Feedburner has so many other features that serious bloggers will appreciate.
    
    
26. Statcounter - This is my favorite place to track links, traffic, and more. Just a very reliable, accurate site.
    
    
27. Google Reader -- My RSS reader of choice for linear, sequential RSS reading (down the page aggregation), Google Reader now lets you download google Gears and read your RSS offline!!!!
    
    
28. Netvibes - For single page aggregation, I use netvibes as my RSS reader although my home page starts up with iGoogle, I go to netvibes. Their new Ginger version allows you to publish your pages and share with others. I teach my students this handy RSS reader for their Personal Learning Networks.
    
    
29. EdTechTalk - Although I co-host a show here, I always get pumped when I listen to these shows. Do yourself a favor and take a listen.
    
    
30. Creative Commons Searching - This is THE place to look for images, graphics, and audio. It is a must use for students!
    
    
31. 4Info.net - I get the weather texted to my phone each morning. Every time a Georgia Tech football or basketball game ends, I'm texted the score. You can have stock tickers, rss reminders and more texted to your phone. It is amazingly cool.
    
    When I shared this in Maine, one guy jumped up and yelled, "I LOVE YOU!!!" It is that useful!
    
    
32. Newsmap - When I want to take time to read the news, this is what I use. I adore NewsMap. I teach my students to use it to get abreast of what is happening in the world. If you have 1 minute to read the news, go here.
    
    
33. Classroom 2.0 Live Conversations - Steve Hargadon is hosting these amazing sessions. Simply excellent. Another place to "get pumped" and have some great ideas.
    
    
34. My year long PD IS the K12 online conference -- Go back and watch some videos (I love Silvia Tolisano's presentation). I believe that you should consider requiring teachers to view at least one of these presentations and "report back" to the group.
    
    
35. Cool Cat Teacher Wiki - All my presentations, handouts, archives, and STUFF are there. I love to get out sometimes and when I do, I want to capture it.
    
    
36. Slideshare - I LOVE this slidesharing site. It is very useful.
    
    
37. VoiceThread - If I could pick ONE tool for elementary ed, this is it, hands down.
    
    
38. My blog - OK, I know this is ME and you're already here. However, really, I don't know which is more the gift, your gifts to me in the form of comments, links, twitters, and e-mails or my being able to share with you what I'm doing. If you're able to live life a little better, make it through when you're at your wits end, and learn something that improves your life, then I've done something.
    
    

And although this post took me three days to write, I'm still leaving the date for this past Friday.

And for those of you who've sent me e-mails. I will get caught up, I promise. Something has happened because I had my e-mail down to zero a week and a half a go and now have over 600 emails! I'm trying not to drown!

Thank you all for the kind tweets and messages and I hope you enjoy these presents!

tag: Songbird, itunes, Skreemr, Timebridge, Google Calendar, Atomic Learning, Technology and Learning, education, free, Diigo, ad4dcss, firefox, add ons, zoho notebook, Google spreadsheets, Google docs, hz08, Princeton, twitter, hulu, mogulus, afi screen nation, american film institute, toondoo, ning, intel mashmaker, skype, classtools.net, wikispaces, gmail, gcast, lifehacker, friendfeed, technorati, photobucket, flickr, big huge labs, feedburner, rss, statcounter, google reader, netvibes, edtechtalk, creative commons, 4info.net, newsmap, classroom 2.0, steve hargadon, k12 online, silvia tolisano, Coolcatteacher, slideshare, voicethread,

Read more »

Sites that Caught My Eye Today 04/25/2008

• Home - Microsoft Popfly

  Microsoft Popfly lets you make mashups and build web pages without knowing code. I am to the point I don't teach the detailed web site creation coding I used to. I teach RSS, embedding, creating wikis, uploading media of all kinds, but I just don't know how important coding is any more at the basic level.
  
  I want to spend some time tinkering with this.

  tags: mashup, microsoft, education, ad4dcss, geeks4, edu_newapp, technology, techintegrator, hz08, hzmeta, govt_business

• Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson : Popfly Coin Flip Mashup Tutorial

  This is a fascinating blog post about how Alfred Thompson used PopFly to create a mashup activity for a classroom demo for teachers. He also took this document from word into Live writer to make a blog post.
  
  It is important to look at many ways to do things. I found this information very insightful and cool.

  tags: computerscience_teacher, education, edu_newapp, lesson_plans, techintegrator

• Listening to the Audience (Twitter) at Web 2.0 Expo: The Balance of Value vs Entertainment - Annotated

  Excellent overview from Jeremiah about the use of twiter to backchannel at a conference. Backchanneling is something I think that is very important, but there is very definitely a best practice.
  
  Here were my comments to Jeremiah:
  
  "I am a classroom teacher and LOVE the backchannel (they are great for test reviews -- like group notes and more) and won't do a conference presentation without one, that being said, I wouldn't use twitter for it.
  
  Like you said, many people don't use twitter or get it.
  
  I like to create a "backchannel room" so that it is archived and recruit ahead of time at least two people:
  
  1) A backchannel "moderator" - they answer questions and I call on them several times to ask for their summary of what is going on in the backchannel (this is when I'm the main presenter)
  
  2) A google jockey -- they drop the links I'm talking about in the backchannel chat.
  
  I also like to ask the people in the backchannel to share best practice and what they are doing. I've had people comment that the one hour with a backchannel and me presenting was more meaningful than a whole day at a conference. (More compliments to the backchannel, I'm sure.)
  
  I've seen backchannels handled very poorly and it was TERRIBLE. It was chaos. And actually downright rude to the speaker. (More like backstabbing than backchanneling.)
  
  I've also seen it used well and it was incredible!
  
  The archiving of the backchannel gave me rich links as a presenter and participant AND also feedback on the session which I referred to later as the presenter.
  
  The backchannel is great -- I just like to use a backchannel ROOM especially for the session (inviting "friends" from around the world who are also watching on ustream) -- and then creating an archived copy of it.
  
  I think backchannels are very important and you've hit on the core of what is happening in the evolution of professional development and conferences. "

  tags: backchannel, education, professionaldevelopment, hz08, connectingpeople, hzmeta, ubiquitousplatform, virtualcollab, govt_business

• MA21stCenturyLearning » home

  I spent the day with Emily Vickery, the teacher/administrator at Montgomery Academy in AL, responsible for their PD. This is her wiki, where she shares with others at the school what they are doing. We talked about using RSS and diigo to give links. She is doing great work and will be presenting at NECC on July 2nd -- her students are going with her!

  tags: education, professionaldevelopment, bestpractices

• SurfTheChannel - Home

  This is a website where tv enthusiasts are sharing videos and collaborating. This is an example of how television and all of our entertainment is evolving to become more customized.
  
  In addition to creating personal learning networks, we will also be creating personal entertainment networks (PEN's) -- all via this amazing thing we call RSS. Understanding RSS is not only important for learning but just living your life.
  
  User created content is here to stay.

  tags: hz08, connectingpeople, usercontent, video, arts_entertainment, education, digital_access, ad4dcss

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Sites that Caught My Eye Today 04/23/2008

• Intel® Mash Maker

  Intel Mashmaker is a tool that you download and "mashup" sites together. It is supposed to allow average everyday people to be able to mashup google sites, flickr, almost anything with what programmers call an api.

  tags: hzmeta, mashup, education, techintegrator

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Sites that Caught My Eye Today 04/22/2008

• You got the love? My week at Suffern Middle School | Welcome to NCS-Tech!

  Kevin Jarrett talks about his week at one of the leaders in innovative technology, suffern Middle School. An excellent read to see what this digital revolution is all about. Wow!

  tags: education, bestpractice, digital_access, digital_literacy, ad4dcss, blocked_blogs, bestpractices, edu_trends, techintegrator

• Wikinomics » Blog Archive » How mass collaboration changes education

  Just found this citation from Anthony D. Williams about flat classroom project and how "mass collaboration changes education." It is an older article, but makes a lot of sense.

  tags: inthenews, education, flat_classroom_attributions, flat_classroom

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Google Launches Developer Sandbox for iGoogle

Announcement
April 21, 2008

Today, Google opened a sandbox for developers to help them build richer gadgets for iGoogle, which will offer users more powerful and interactive features. To ensure developers get the most out of their gadgets, we’ve also launched an updated developer website which guides developers through building and distributing gadgets to iGoogle’s growing audience.

iGoogle’s new features will include left navigation, a maximized or "canvas view" option for gadgets, and social features for gadgets using the OpenSocial APIs. These social features for gadgets will include a friends list and activities displayed through a special updates gadget. The features and functionalities as they appear in the sandbox are meant for development purposes only, and may not reflect the end consumer experience.

Developers are an important part of Google’s innovation ecosystem and we’re always striving to provide tools to help them innovate in new directions that will ultimately make the web richer for all users. By building more powerful and interactive gadgets for iGoogle, developers will have an opportunity to share their gadgets with the tens of millions of iGoogle users.

To see the video for developers on the iGoogle sandbox, please see:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6KVwATfCdM

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Let me Fall! Inspirational Song & Performance by Cirque du Soleil

In this, I see so much of what happens when I work with students. Sometimes, we do our best to warn students and yet, they make mistakes and fall. But we love them anyway.

The classroom should be a place where mistakes (of the non life-threatening kind) are allowed and welcomed. If they already know it all, then why are we teaching it?

I needed to hear this song this week. It is just beautiful and I see what happens in my classroom and life in this beautiful performance by Cirque du Soleil.

Oh, and the singer, Josh Groban is only 27!

What does this moving song and performance mean to you?

tag: Cirque du Soleil, inspiration, teaching, learning, mistakes, perfection, imperfection

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Sites that Caught My Eye Today 04/21/2008

• Reaching Out With Your Conference | 2¢ Worth

  Excellent article for conference organizers from David Warlick. He has some great recommendations and links to the works from a conference in California this week.
  
  Conferences are setting up social networks as a best practice. As these handy sites go mainstream, effective use of such networks seems to be increasingly an important understanding for students as behavior on these sites is very different from the "social" social networks in their personal lives.

  tags: bestpractice, digital_communication, education, professionaldevelopment, edu_trends, curriculum

• ad4dcss » Video

  We're starting a video contest -- nominate the videos that you think best advocate digital citizenship, safety or success in schools. We plan to have some surveys in the future to let you vote.

  tags: ad4dcss, education, video

• britannicanet.com » Registration

  Link to the page for bloggers to get Brittanica for free from Brittanica webshare.

  tags: edublog, education, edublogger, edu_news

• Encyclopedia Britannica Now Free For Bloggers

  Encyclopedia Britannica is now free for bloggers from an article on 4/18/08 -- yet another reason for our students to blog. (I have students blogging publicly under pseudonyms.)
  
  This is fascinating, but also interesting to see how Britannica is playing catch up to Wikipedia in the market it once owned. I wonder, which would be more authoriative to you, a wikipedia quote updated daily, or Brittanica updated less often that doesn't display the authors of its content?

  tags: digital_access, blocked_blogs, education, ad4dcss, edublogger, edublog, digitalcitizenship

• MinyanLand - Launch Pad

  A new free website for kids to learn about money. Has anyone used this -- I'd love to find a review from an educator. It looks cool.

  tags: math, edu_newapp, education

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Free Conference May 2nd at Princeton: I'll be there

I'm very excited about the upcoming "Students and Electronic Media: Teaching in the Technological Age" at Princeton on May 2nd on May 2nd. I will be presenting along with some other amazing speakers.

Also, I plan to make an appearance at the free Parent Seminar the night before (May 1 from 7 - 9 pm,) although I have no formal part, I want to see how they handle this and discuss it with parents.

The conference on May 2nd has the following purpose:

" Electronic media has become an integral part of students’ lives and a major point of interest for educators. Questions about the impact of electronic media on student learning and wellbeing have led many school districts to question how and why they should be using technology.

The purpose of this conference is to showcase innovative uses of technology in the classroom and provide school district with ways that they can enhance their classroom curriculums and professional development programs. An overview of the research regarding electronic media and its links to achievement and social development will be provided as well.

This conference is designed in conjunction with the latest journal issue of the Future of Children "Children and Electronic Media". This issue, due to be released in April 2008 shines a spotlight on Electronic Media, focusing mainly on its impact on childhood wellbeing and policy implications."

The agenda includes my friends Kevin Jarrett, and Rob Mancabelli -- and some new friends, I'm sure.

Watch for a Backchannel and ustream between 10:30 and 12:00 EDT on May 2nd -- we're putting together some cool things.

If you are able to get to the area, please register now! (Make sure you say, "hi" -- I love to meet the "real" readers out there.)

Meanwhile, grades are due tomorrow and I've been off all weekend w/ my husband celebrating my b-day coming up this week.

tag: Princeton, Rob Mancabelli, Kevin Jarrett, conference, free conference, education, innovation, learning

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What are the 10 best videos for promoting educational change?

We are working to add the 10 BEST videos on educational change to the wiki. What are they? Where should they go (looking for the best on each topic.)

When we give people these videos, we're giving them something that helps them "sell" what they are doing . I suggest showing these videos for professional development, school boards, and anyone who cares about education.

We've started a page for your nominations for the best videos. If we get too many, we may have some sort of voting thing (which would be great to have that much interest!)

tag: ad4dcss, education, change, reform, innovation, learning

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Sites that Caught My Eye Today 04/18/2008

• wikisinEFL » Wikis in EFL

  A website with examples of best practices of wikis used in EFL (english as a foreign language) classes. Excellent.
  
  Kudos to this!

  tags: education, ad4dcss, digital_communication, bestpractice, case_studies

• frontierlict » home

  This is a wiki being built for a digital literacy program for teachers within a school division. This approach is a great one for districts and is a way to reach everyone with current information. I also wish they had a blog to compliment it, but sharing these sorts of websites are great.
  
  It would be nice if we had a template of information that people could copy to get started.

  tags: professionaldevelopment, education, curriculum, techintegrator, digital_literacy, ad4dcss

• openpd » home

  Open professional development by Darren Draper and Friends. These opportunities will let you open up your classroom and join in with others to learn collaboratively about blogs, wikis, and more. Take a look at it.

  tags: ad4dcss, digital_literacy, bestpractice, ideas, online_course, hz08, connectingpeople, virtualcollab, education, professionaldevelopment, techintegrator

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Amazing deep learning on a sick day! This floors me!

Just got home late from a track meet and came in to check the Digiteen and Horizon Project nings. I found this amusing blog entry from Nyomi L at the Baccalaureate School for Global Education (NYC - USA) entitled "Sick Day."

"Alright well, today I missed school to go to the doctor to deal with some breathing problems that I've been troubled with and after that, I happened to see a copy of Wikinomics staring at me from behind a Barnes and Nobles window. It wasn't actually on display but someone had left a copy near the window.

Anyway, I took it as a sign that I should take it upon myself to buy and read the book. After all, if I really didn't like it, I could always return it after I finished. Well, I started where I had left off in ITGS and found myself surprising interested. I read it all the way home and for the next couple of hours and found myself interested, inspired and far more excited about the Horizon Project than I've ever been. It's quite an interesting read and I recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it yet, especially people involved in this project."

How is that for a sick day? This student was SICK and yet was so engrossed and curious about this project that her SICK day became a day of very deep learning and change for her.

It is an exciting world and I get to be a part of one that helps excite and inspire teenagers from all over the world like this!

It is not without its stresses. I got a twitter from a good friend today about how someone said there was an inappropriate picture on one of the sites. I stressed at the track meet and all the way back.

I got back, ready for the worst. What I found was very mild, if anything. I deleted the pictures that I thought might be offensive, but it was simply one girl kissing another on the cheek as is often done in teenage pictures. Not appropriate for public display and yet the teenager may not realize that.

There are those, however, that may not like the exuberance of kids who are excited about the tools they are using. But, I'm seeing that my students are getting excited and really learning about things.

I feel like that for Horizon that the vehicle is cresting the hill and about to take off. I'm becoming reminded of why this sort of thing is important. It has been very very hard work getting here, though!

tag: hz08, Don Tapscott, Wikinomics, Digiteen, digital citizenship, global collaboration, learning

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Google Announces First Quarter 2008 Results*

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Sites that Caught My Eye Today 04/17/2008

• Blogdimension - The Web 2.0 search engine!

  A search engine that just aggregates web 2.0 stuff. I found this interesting.

  tags: brightideas, education, edu_newapp, tools

• Artsonia Kids Art Museum — The Largest Student Art Gallery on the Web!

  This site claims to be the largest student arts gallery on the web! Looks fascinating. Not sure how they use first names and locations and get away with it. I'd like to know what those who have used it think about it.

  tags: art, education, arts_entertainment, hz08, hzmeta, usercontent, connectingpeople, curriculum, edu_newapp, digital_access, ideas

• Iditarod-Collaborative-Project » home - Annotated

  Elementary classrooms connecting about the Iditarod. From USA, Canada, and Lebanon. They will be re-running this project again next year.

  tags: hz08, connectingpeople, education, virtualcollab, edu_news, technology, curriculum, digital_access, case_studies

• princecaspianproject wiki - Annotated

  An excellent project for 4th - 6th grade sudents from Jennifer Wagner called the Prince Caspian project which will allow teachers to collaborate with other teachers around the world about the book and the upcoming movie "Prince caspian."

  tags: bestpractice, digital_access, literature, edu_news, education, ad4dcss, hz08, connectingpeople, virtualcollab, hzmeta, arts_entertainment

• Susan Silverman's Lucky Ladybugs project going on for elementary - Annotated

  A great way to get started with technology is to join in an exciting project. this project by Susan Silverman was designed using the principles of Universal Design for Learning. I've heard her present and she is a pro. (Along with my friend Jennifer Wagner.)

  tags: hz08, connectingpeople, education, virtualcollab, hzmeta, bestpractices, curriculum, digital_access, bestpractice

• Global Kids - Annotated

  Online program that has second life presence and many other things for promoting global awareness.

  tags: bestpractice, digital_literacy, hz08, connectingpeople, hzmeta, virtualcollab, education, technology, bestpractices, digitalcitizenship

• Think.com - Safety & Netiquette Lesson - Annotated

  Think.com's safety lesson with nets standards. Think.com is excellent to use with younger students and is very walled and has an excellent profanity filter. I highly recommend it and have personally used it for a summer blogging project. Excellent site. It also requires an extensive verification process by the participating schools.

  tags: lesson_plans, hz08, connectingpeople, education, edublogger, digitalcitizenship, bestpractices, online_course, digital_safety, netiquette, bestpractice, ad4dcss

• Who is eligible for Google Earth Pro grants, and how do I apply for a grant? - Annotated

  How to apply for Google Earth Pro grants -- who is eligible. And information on how to apply.

  tags: grants, history, education

• Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech » Blog Archive » My ECMP 355 Comprehensive Assessment

  Dean Shareski has done an outstanding job at creating a college level distance-learning course including many people around the world. See his honest reflections and statements about what his take on the class was. I applaud Dean for transparency and was very impressed with his set up and work.

  tags: education, professionaldevelopment, edu_news

• MASSP News Center » Can You Hear Me Now? - Annotated

  Confiscating and looking at information on cell phones by school officials is still not clear. This is a very interesting case study for those working with digital citizenship issues at their school.

  tags: case_studies, digital_law, ad4dcss, education, mobile, hzmeta

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Take a look at what has happened in 72 hours.

a cross post at the Advocates for Digital Citizenship, Safety, and Success blog

Since this project is now 72 hours old, I thought we'd give a few stats for what is happening!

• We have 27 people signed up on the Advocates public list.
• 16 Readers for our Blog (Feed set up 24 hours a go.)
  
• Over 1200 views of the wiki, with 70 edits, and visits from 9 countries and more than 300 unique visitors and 64 members.
• 74 bookmarks sent to the diigo group with 40 members.
• 52 members of the Google Group with 24 discussions being tossed around
• Slowly percolating in the blogosphere with 7 posts so far. We can do better than this, maybe some people are waiting a bit.
• Lots of tweets beginning to share although I must admit a few of us are hogging the tweets.
• A logo design and another on the way for us to share and discuss.
• A set of tags for sharing and facilitating exchange of data and links
• An aggregation page for all of this (it is my personal launch page to start this.)
  

Two projects that are gaining steam and volunteers:

1. I Read Blocked Blogs Awareness Day/Week - as part of the digital access aspect.
2. A Professional Development Class to train people on the 9 digital citizenship topics -- Still forming. The hosting for the Moodle has been facilitated by the great people at Professional Learning Board.
   

What I'm seeing is that people are just joining in with what fits best with their daily tasks and vision.

I'd really like to see some people begin talking about creating a flyer or handout on Digital Access, which is the first of the 9 aspects of Digital Citizenship as we have outlined on the wiki.

What can you do?
Well, we're really trying to compile things now. I need a little help on the wiki for someone who understands RSS and also, we need some people to start putting thumbs up on the links coming through diigo so they'll start having more meaning. (Our way of "vetting" the sources.)

Will you take 5 minutes and go through some of the links and add your thumbs up -- if you see an important link missing, please send it to the group AND use the tagging standard we've set up, in addition to any other tags you wish to add!

Thank you for caring. This will probably be my last full cross-post on Cool Cat Teacher, if you want to follow this effort closely, please subscribe to the Ad4dcss group blog.

Beware of numbers
I'd rather have 1 committed person than 100 people just putting their names down, and that is what we've got. We've got some amazing, hard working, very BUSY people who don't have a lot of time, just bookmarking a little smarter and tweeting and talking towards a common purpose.

The Cat on the Hot Stove
Some, I think have the cat on the hot stove syndrome.

If a cat sits on a hot stove, he jumps up. The only problem is that he will not ever sit on the stove again... not even a cold one.

I think that so many of us have gotten involved in something just to see it peter out. Just to see it go "poof." So, we don't want to get all involved and invested in another "poof project." We just won't sit on the stove!

Well, if I'm trying again, so can you. I've jumped headlong into thing that went "poof" before too, however, I will say this... every time I have, I've come away with more learning and meeting new people. Even the "poof" projects haven't been to waste.

However, I'm going to predict something. I believe that there are going to be some newcomers on this project who are going to become well known very fast because of their amazing efforts. I'm already seeing it.

If you're a beginner and you don't know where to start... our virtual volunteerism and cooperative efforts as educators are just now getting started. Join in where you see fit. And if you really want to be "in the know" sign up for the Google group and get our daily digest.

On my to do list is to e-mail some amazing bloggers that I know. I've really been waiting until we have all of our wiki edited, feeds coming in and people's names on the list and going so that when we approach the disillusioned who've been doing this a lot longer than I, that they'll know that there is something here.

Teaching is a noble calling and this is a noble cause. This is a connecting point. A facilitation and linking in a common cause to help us. This is grassroots organizing. We want to see you as a part of it!

tag: ad4dcss, digital citizenship, education, learning, safety, cybersafety, cyberbullying, teacher, online volunteerism

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Check Out the Latest Version of Google Earth

Announcement
April 16, 2008

Today we’re introducing a new version of the Google Earth desktop client. The new release, Google Earth version 4.3, greatly advances our vision of offering a realistic, 3D model of the world in Google Earth by giving users a higher quality, more immersive experience. Google Earth 4.3 also adds more realistic, real-world data so users have more ways to discover and explore all the interesting features the world has to offer.

Here are the highlights:

• New navigation – We’ve created a new navigational experience so users can better take advantage of the 3D environment in Google Earth. The navigation takes the traditional pan-and-zoom approach associated with mapping programs and incorporates a first-person, ground-level perspective commonly used in video games.
• More, faster 3D buildings – Version 4.3 also includes dozens of photo-textured cities and towns, as well as thousands of user-contributed buildings around the world. We’ve significantly enhanced our approach to rendering 3D data to greatly improve performance and realism of 3D data.
• Street View – The well-known Google Maps feature gets added to Google Earth with version 4.3. Street View is a popular, engaging feature that allows people to easily find, discover, and plan activities relevant to a location.
• Sunlight feature – This new addition is a playful way to control the sun’s location relative to the Earth. When zoomed out to a view of the Earth, you can control a time-lapse view of sunlight moving across the Earth. While zoomed into a given city, you can watch the sunrise and sunset.
• Image acquisition date – One of our most requested features, 4.3 now includes an image acquisition date, which shows you on what date a given area of imagery was taken.
• New languages – Version 4.3 includes twelve new languages, including Danish, English (UK), Spanish (Latin American), Finnish, Hebrew, Indonesian, Norwegian, Portuguese (PT), Romanian, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.

Keep an eye on the Google LatLong (google-latlong.blogspot.com) blog for more details on Google Earth version 4.3 over the course of the week.

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Google’s Website Optimizer gains independence and blog, offering value "beyond the click"

Announcement
April 16, 2008

Today at the ad:tech conference in San Francisco, Google Website Optimizer™ launched out of beta as an independent product. Formerly a feature within the Google AdWords™ advertising service only, this free website-testing tool is now accessible through its own website (www.google.com/websiteoptimizer) as well. In addition, Google’s Website Optimizer has introduced its own blog (websiteoptimizer.blogspot.com).

Google Website Optimizer helps improve user experience on the Web by showing its users what their visitors want to see. Rather than debating or guessing how a webpage might look best, users can continually test different combinations of website content, such as images and text, to see which one yields the most sales, sign-ups, leads or other goals.

Google Website Optimizer provides value "beyond the click" as part of Google’s suite of advertising tools offering heightened precision, accountability and scale. Together with Google AdWords, which drives traffic to your website, and Google Analytics™, which measures that traffic, Google Website Optimizer further helps you convert your traffic into customers.

In addition to the new website, the Google Website Optimizer blog is now live. The blog will feature up-to-date product news, industry insights, testing strategies, and other educational information from the Google Website Optimizer team and our partners.

The product is available in 27 languages worldwide: Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (Australia, UK & U.S.), Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil & Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai and Turkish.

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Sites that Caught My Eye Today 04/16/2008

• Technology Integration Matrix - Annotated

  Technology integration matrix from Florida. This amazing resource was picked up from Lucy Gray. Really amazing.

  tags: education, techintegrator, technology, curriculum, digital_literacy, bestpractice, ad4dcss

• Welcome to the Webby Awards

  Webby awards voting is open now. Very cool. Voting closes May 1st and some cool things are there. How about having students vote (but check the sites in a category first!)

  tags: education, brightideas, edu_news, technology

• Remember The Milk for Gmail Screencast

  Remember the milk -- an add in for gmail and google calendar that has come highly recommended from Sharon Peters.

  tags: edu_newapp, education, brightideas

• Do You Read Blocked Blogs? at Change Agency - Annotated

  Bud the Teacher and Stephanie Sandifer are planning an I read blocked blogs day. This is going to be an event for educators advocating access. It would also be a great time to talk about ways to monitor when you provide access.
  
  This also happens to be the first aspect of ad4dcss and we've listed it on the wiki. They have shirts that people can get and buttons for your blog.

  tags: digital_access, ideas, ad4dcss, education, blocked_blogs

• educational-origami » home

  Phenomenal page about integrating ICT into the classroom witha wide variety of rubrics based upon Bloom's taxonomy. You'll see blog journaling, wiki editing, threaded discussion, bookmarking rubrics, search rubrics, podcasting rubrics, audio conferencing, data analysis, and collaborative rubrics. I haven't been through all of these but would love it if we could go through them and work on them.
  
  They are in PDF format, but it would be great to share and edit them collaboratively. Very nice website.

  tags: education, curriculum, all_teachers, digital_literacy, ad4dcss

• List of keyboard shortcuts for Word 2002, Word 2003, and Word 2007 - Annotated

  Cool page with a lot of neat hotlinks in Microsoft Word. I've highlighted some that I really like.

  tags: education, techintegrator, technology

• "Unprecedented Force for Change"-Dan Tapscott's Keynote - Horizon Project 2008 - Annotated

  tags: education, technology, edu_trends

• The Web2.0 Prophecy: An Adventure | Pair-a-dimes for Your Thoughts

  This is an excellent article that has been reposted. It includes a lot of the information that outlines WHAT web 2.0 is. This includes videos and many important hyperlinks. Excellent article for newcomers to web 2.0 to pick up on.

  tags: hz08, connectingpeople, hzmeta, usercontent, virtualcollab, education, edu_trends, all_teachers, professionaldevelopment, ad4dcss, digital_communication

• Free Logo Design – Logo Maker

  Website that lets you make logos. I could picture students using this to design logos for their projects. I often have my team design a logo like a crest to represent things about the team. It forces them to think deeply about what they want their team to do.

  tags: edu_newapp, education

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Advocate Action is Heating Up

simulpost with Advocates 4 Digital Citizenship, Safety, and Success blog

Just a quick update on this. I'll still keep my focus over here, but we're starting a group blog that I think will end up being much bigger than I. We're looking for a few passionate bloggers to join the group over there with me. Drop me a line!

We've created one page to monitor all of the activities for this project - http://www.netvibes.com/coolcatteacher#Ad4dcss

Where we're sharing

• We've also got a wiki started at http://ad4dcss.wikispaces.com
• The wiki uses the links we create in diigo and feeds the resources to the 9 major categories of digital citizenship that we're addressing. (See wiki for those.)
• We have a diigo group for bookmarking. at http://groups.diigo.com/groups/Ad4dcss
  
• This blog is where we'll list major announcements AND resource links, so it will be a good place to follow the activities.

Where YOU can volunteer

• We have a donated Moodle space and Kate Olson is organizing an online course done BY educators for people wanting to know more about Digital Citizenship, Safety, and Success. We are planning a preliminary meeting within the next 7 days, however, we're discussing using the 9 areas of digital citizenship as posted on the wiki to serve as our starting point.
  
  
• We're working on a logo and have a volunteer who is working on this.
  
  
• Wiki Work - We're working on pulling in the diigo links RSS to the wiki page so that the diigo group will automatically feed the bookmarks to the appropriate category. We could use some help putting those RSS's on the page. (Much of this is being done w/ people giving 30 minutes here and there.)
  
  I would personally love to see the wiki have some basic information, but remember, we're working to create things to go offline so it is about resources, handouts, and useful things.
  
  
• THE BIG THING YOU CAN DO NOW! - Besides telling people about this (include ad4dcss in the twitter or blog post and it will aggregate on our netvibes page so we'll know you're there.)
  
  We NEED people to join the Diigo group and USE THE STANDARD TAG DICTIONARY. We also need people to go through the bookmarks and thumbs up or thumbs down the best resources so that we may start using that feature. This will sort of be our way of "vetting" the sources.
  
  If you could spend just 10 minutes going through your bookmarks on digital citizenship and tagging them.

We're also talking about several action days a year about different points and I know a lot of you have already broached this subject. Access, digital safety, blogging, so many different things we could do.

Is this some sort of political thing?
Well, honestly, we don't know what this is yet. Any organization of people that becomes effective ends up having a political impact, however, we're not starting off that way.

We're starting off to create useful things to help YOU take the discussion of these tools offline. Handouts for boards of directors. An online class for anyone to take who wants to become educated.

When we have large numbers of people, then we'll have more clout on the political end.

But for now, we have a growing list of charter members who are going to tweet, bookmark, do a little wiki work, and share their ideas.

How do "we" decide where to move?
I think that some fresh faces no one has ever heard of will emerge to lead the charge on some things that we'll sit back and say "now why didn't we do that before."

So, what my role is that when there is a group of people who says to me "we want to do this," I'm using the reach and network of mine to help facilitate and give them the resources to make it happen (and a little geeky programming stuff in the background.)

Power of Newcomers!
Newcomers are perfect for this effort because they more clearly see the obstacles that are holding newcomers from joining in and learning more. They clearly see the other side of the fence because they can remember the other side of the fence.

I wish I had more time to tell you more.

We are looking for a few more group bloggers. So, join in. Speak up. Share.

tag: ad4dcss, Kate Olson, digital citizenship, education, safety, educators

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