Dangerously Irrelevant

I head to Denver tomorrow, eager and excited for the ISTE conference. I’ve got a plan this year; there are some things I want to learn and some conversations I want to have…

Things for which I’m scheduled

• Saturday, June 26 – Are your policies getting in the way of your progress? (at the TIE+ISTE Leadership Bootcamp)
• Sunday, June 27 – ISTE Leadership Symposium
• Monday, June 28 – 1–2–3, CASTLE PD! (at ISTE Unplugged)
• Monday, June 28 – CoSN CTO Leadership Forum

Things I hope will happen (if you can help with any of these, please come say hi!)

• Have my usual rockin’ awesome time at Edubloggercon. Some of my best conversations and learning each year are here.
• Faciliate our proposed discussion at Edubloggercon. Sylvia Martinez and I are proposing a conversation about the challenges of being an outside speaker/consultant. I don’t know if we’ll make the final agenda but I hope so!
• Learn more about Google Voice. I need someone to help me get the most out of my new phone service.
• Learn more about Google Apps for Education. I’m interested in talking with educators who are using this well with students in their school organization.
• Learn more about the School of One. I’d love to talk with someone who’s seen it in action!
• Learn more about robust learning software that does a good job of working with students at higher cognitive levels. These may be more like simulations or video games than traditional computer-based learning programs? Can I find software that’s doing performance assessment, not just fact assessment?
• Learn more about essay grading software. I’d like to see how this software class has changed since last time I looked at it.
• Maybe find funding for some CASTLE projects? This may be what draws me into the vendor area. I need to talk to some larger companies about some potential project sponsorship opportunities.
• Learn new things that aren’t even on my radar. This usually happens a great deal for me, so I’m not too worried. Maybe I’ll pick up some tricks/tips for my new iPad!

Other thoughts

I’m deliberately leaving much of the conference open. I want to reserve space for spur-of-the-moment conversations and serendipitous interactions. If you want to chat – even if we’ve never met before - please come introduce yourself!

Trying to reach me at the conference? Try @mcleod on Twitter or call/text me at 707–722–7853. I’ll also be hanging out a lot in the Bloggers’ Café.

What’s your plan for the ISTE conference? Hope to see you there!

[Warning: this is a long post. Cross-posted at LeaderTalk.]

I’ve been playing around with digital document annotation on various portable computing devices. Here is an overview of where I am right now…

The old way!

First of all, just as a reminder, the image below is the way that we’ve traditionally annotated ink on paper. Some of you like to use pencils or pens to underline, write notes in the margins, etc. In my life I’ve spent a small fortune on yellow highlighters.

Kindle App for the iPad

Will Richardson got me thinking with his post on using the Kindle app, his iPhone, and Evernote together for document annotation and sharing. So I decided to try it myself with the Kindle app. I don’t have an iPhone, but I do have an iPad and two iPod Touches.

Here is what it looks like when you press and hold on a word to begin your highlight (or note) in the Kindle app for the iPad:

Once the word is selected, you can push and drag on either of the dots to resize the selection and cover more text. Note that the magnifying box helps you see where you are.

Once you’ve got your text selected, you click on Highlight or Note and it gets saved with your document. Repeat as desired.

Kindle App for the iPod Touch (or iPhone)

The process is the same for the Kindle App for the iPod Touch (or iPhone). Here are two images that show you what it looks like on the smaller screen. Again, note the draggable dots as well as the magnifying box.

Kindle App for the PC

The Kindle App for the PC essentially works the same way. Use your mouse to click and drag, selecting the text you want in a highlight or note. When you’re done, select the option you want from the popup box. The gray text background then turns to yellow. See in the image below that the Notes & Marks button is selected at the top right, allowing me to see all of my notes and highlights in a scrollable list on the right.

Note: The text you select in the Kindle App for the PC is NOT copyable for future pasting into another document.

Your notes online: Why this is better than marking up ink on paper

So far, so good. The process basically works like a traditional highlighter. Every time I sync the Kindle app with Amazon’s server, my notes and highlights show up on all of my other devices too. I don’t have to lug multiple, heavy books around. I can just carry my ultralight laptop, my svelte iPad, or my pocket-size iPod Touch and have access to my reading and the accompanying highlights / notes.

As Will noted in his post, the beauty of all of this, however, is that Amazon also makes available a web site where you can see all of your Kindle notes and highlights. I can even see an aggregation of others’ highlights if I wish (which is pretty cool).

The text on the web site is selectable, which means you can copy and paste it into other applications. For example, you could put all of your highlights into a Word document, a blog post, or a note in Evernote. Will did the latter, and I’ll walk you through that process…

Using Evernote to publicly share your notes

Here’s what it looks like in Evernote if you just copy-and-paste directly into a new note:

If you clean it up first – using some judicious search-and-replace – then it can look more like this:

You can share your notes and highlights with others by making a public notebook (or tag) in Evernote. In the image below, I’ve right-clicked on the notebook I want to share and then selected Properties.

A popup box appears. Click on Sharing and collaboration options:

The Web version of Evernote launches and you get to choose if you want to share with individuals or the world at large:

If you start sharing with the world, you get a personalized URL to which you can send others (e.g., www.evernote.com/pub/scottmcleod/shared). They can click on the appropriate note and see everything you’ve put in the now-public notebook. Pretty nifty!

Another alternative: iAnnotate PDF

In addition to doing what Will did, I’ve also been experimenting with the iAnnotate PDF app for the iPad. I wanted a way to edit dissertation drafts, online reports and white papers, and other documents in PDF format. Although the GoodReader app (and, maybe soon, the iBooks app?) works great for viewing PDF files, you can’t edit them within the app. I read good things about iAnnotate and decided to try it.

I had some initial trouble getting documents into iAnnotate. I finally figured out, however, that the best way to do it is to synchronize it with a DropBox folder. That works pretty well (for GoodReader too!). Once you open a PDF file within iAnnotate, you have a number of tools at your disposal, including the ability to highlight, underline, strike out text, draw freehand, and leave yourself a pop-up note:

Although iAnnotate doesn’t give you the option of synchronizing to a web page like the Kindle app does, it does let you e-mail your annotations (with or without the document). When the annotation summary is received as an e-mail, it looks like this:

That text is then selectable, which means you can cut and paste it into other applications. Managing documents within iAnnotate is very easy, just as it is for the Kindle apps.

Reflections and implications

Here are a few thoughts:

• The possibilities of all of this for academic work are endless. I will use the Kindle app to read nonfiction books like Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus and capture the quotes and notes that I think are important. I’ll use iAnnotate PDF to do the same for those documents and research reports that I’m always digging up online. When my students send me their writing, I’ll quickly convert those documents to PDF and then be able to comfortably annotate anywhere on my iPad, without being tethered to my laptop or desktop computers. And so on…
• I love having all of the text from a book or report that I think is important – and ONLY that text – in one place. It’s searchable, it’s editable, it’s MINE. No more flipping through pages trying to find something. No more using multiple bookmarks and Post-It flags. A quick search and the text I want is there.
• It would be nice if you could cut and paste from the Kindle App (particularly the one for the PC) into other applications.
• The Pogo Sketchup Stylus - a special stylus for the iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch - is worth every penny when it comes to annotation. Highlighting text – particularly on the iPad - is a breeze compared to using my (apparently too fat) finger because the stylus has a smaller surface area and thus is more precise.

• As digital annotation and sharing tools continue to become more robust, it becomes much more feasible to use iPads and other mobile computing devices as replacements for books and textbooks.
• Like Will, I may never buy a nonfiction book on paper again (unless I have to).
• I like Will’s idea of getting notes off of the Amazon web page and into Evernote. If iAnnote or the iBooks app or other e-book readers and annotation tools also make available online or e-mail versions of highlights and notes, I’ll do the same for those too. That way I won’t have to worry about particular proprietary formats becoming obsolete. Now, if Evernote ever goes out of style, I’m in big trouble!

So this is where I am right now with all of this. Although digital annotation using these tools is not yet as smooth as I would like, I’m deriving a lot of benefit from the new capabilities that I do have.

How about you? How are you annotating digital documents on portable computing devices? Got any tips or suggestions?

This is a must-watch video by Hans Mundahl, Director of Experiental Learning and Technology Coordinator at the New Hampton School in New Hampshire. Not only does Hans have a cool title (how awesome would it be if every school had a ‘director of experiential learning?’), he makes a mean video.

Check out Hans’ 3–minute clip below, where he tries to explain the value of social media to his school leadership team. Then check out the wiki page that resulted from his efforts. Nice work, Hans!

[hat tip to Jesse Moyer at The Future of Education blog for leading me to this]

Yesterday was the TEDxNYED event in New York City. Many of us watched the LiveStream online.

Last week was the TEDxASB event in Mumbai, India. I had the pleasure of both attending and speaking.

Both events had some great speakers (I’ll let you decide if I was one of them!). Other TEDx events do also, and many of the videos will be uploaded to the TEDxTalks YouTube channel for others to see after the fact.

I wanted to get the TedxTalks YouTube channel into iTunes, but didn’t want to download each video individually. Could I get the YouTube RSS feed into iTunes? Yes, with RSSHandler! [click on image for larger version]

Simply put the URL of the YouTube feed into the box, change the format to MP4, and click on the Generate button. Voila! A feed that you can put into iTunes as a podcast subscription. You can do this for any YouTube user’s video channel. Awesome!

Hope this is helpful. Happy viewing!

In case you missed the news, Google’s latest service, Buzz, is now available to most users of Gmail. Here are three Google Buzz conversations from which I’m learning a lot:

• Bud Hunt
• Will Richardson
• Ben Wilkoff

I love how dynamic and helpful the conversations are about this new tool. It makes me feel sorry for folks who aren’t tapped into these types of channels for learning.

Here is Google’s video explaining Buzz. More information is available at the Google Buzz web site.

On January 28, several students in the Van Meter Community School District demonstrated to Iowa legislators the work that they are now able to do as a result of the district’s 1:1 laptop initiative. Sandra Dop, the Department of Education’s 21st Century Skills Coordinator, wrote about the encounter:

When the legislators asked, “So what can we do to get out of your way and let you go?”, I nearly cried.

I will forever be proud to have witnessed it!

Will the legislators follow up their words with action? I can be hopeful, can’t I?

This is the message that I just sent my Education Law and Ethics students (the two cohorts are in Des Moines and Mason City, Iowa). Thought I’d share here too…

———

Time to set up Google Reader!

1. Watch this video:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU

2. Go to www.google.com/reader. Sign in with your new Gmail account info if need be. Once you’re in, click on the gray ‘Add a subscription box’ (top left). Paste in the first URL below. Repeat for each of the remaining links on the list. When you’re done, you should have 11 ‘feeds’ in your subscription list (bottom left). Click on a specific feed name to see items from just that one. Click on ‘All items’ (top left) to see all 11 feeds mixed together.

• http://www.nsba.org/RSS/MainMenu/SchoolLaw/LegalClips.aspx
• http://www.edjurist.com/blog/ (a CASTLE blog)
• http://educationlaw.foxrothschild.com/
• http://www.schoolsecurityblog.com/
• http://miketully.net/blog/
• http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/school_law/
• http://specialeducationlawblog.blogspot.com/
• http://jeffmarcus-specialedlaw.blogspot.com/
• http://www.detentionslip.org
• http://englishteachersandthelaw.blogspot.com
• http://twitter.com/ELAOffice
• http://twitter.com/aimeebissonette

3. My goodness, what have we done? Well, we’ve just saved you time by putting ten school law-related feeds into one place. Now you’ll be up to date on all of the latest school law news and you’ll only have to go to one location (www.google.com/reader) rather than ten! Try to visit Google Reader at least once or twice per week just to stay current.

4. Note that you can add other feeds to Google Reader too! For example…

• http://feeds.feedburner.com/dangerouslyirrelevant (my blog)
• http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/LeaderTalk/ (another CASTLE blog)
• http://www.desmoinesregister.com/rss (click on an orange button, then add that URL to your Reader)
• http://www.globegazette.com/news/ (click on an orange button, then add that URL to your Reader)
• http://www.cnn.com/services/rss/
• http://content.usatoday.com/marketing/rss/index.aspx
• http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/index.html
• http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/rss/index
• http://www.news.iastate.edu/rss/
• http://www.weather.com/weather/today/Des+Moines+IA+USIA0231?lswe=des%20moines,%20ia&from=searchbox_localwx
• http://www.weather.com/weather/today/Mason+City+IA+USIA0541?lswe=mason%20city,%20ia&from=searchbox_localwx

5. Start looking for the letters ‘RSS’ and/or the little orange RSS symbol on web sites. Those tell you that you can add that site’s content to Google Reader, meaning one less place you have to visit separately on the Web. Use Google Reader to ease your personal, professional, and academic lives. See the attached file for ways you can supercharge your Google Reader experience!

6. Get in touch if you have questions / difficulty!

Google Reader Tips (click on image for larger version)

We all have technologies that are absolutely essential to our day-to-day lives. Here is a baker’s dozen of mine…

1. Google Reader. It took me a while, but I’ve now organized all of my feeds into category folders in Google Reader. I now can simply click on a folder name, scan the post titles for anything that grabs me (I keep Google Reader in List view, not Expanded view), star anything that I want to read and/or blog later, and then click on Mark All as Read to clear the list. I’m currently staying on top of 434 feeds and it takes no more than 30 to 45 minutes per day. If I get behind, no worries. I just clear it all out and figure that topics will come back around if they’re really important.
2. Google Chrome. Chrome is quite simply the fastest Internet browser out there, both in terms of page loading and initial startup. Google Chrome feeds my need for speed. Firefox seems to drag in comparison. Chrome’s new ability to handle extensions is rapidly eroding Firefox’s plugin advantage.
3. MiFi. I replaced my wireless broadband USB modem with a Verizon MiFi wireless hotspot. Now, rather than only one computer having Internet access through Verizon’s cell phone network, my family can connect up to five devices, including laptops, cameras, iPod Touches, etc. The coolness of this struck me when we were driving East this winter as my wife checked her e-mail on her laptop, one of my sons played an Internet game on my laptop, and my daughter downloaded new apps for the iPod Touch, all at the same time. Nice!
4. BlogJet. I don’t always have Internet connectivity when I want to work on a blog post. BlogJet is a powerful desktop blogging client that allows me to work on posts whenever I want. I like that it allows me to post to multiple blogs and it is much easier to use than TypePad, WordPress, or Movable Type. I also use BlogJet occasionally as a HTML editor.
5. iPod Touch. We have two iPod Touches in our family. When I can pry one of them out of my kids’ hands, I’m increasingly using the Touch instead of my laptop. My two favorite apps are MobileRSS (an awesome RSS reader) and Kindle for iPhone. Although I’m still buying nonfiction books, I’m purchasing and reading more fiction on the Touch rather than buying paperbacks. I don’t have an iPhone because AT&T’s coverage in Iowa is abysmal; I often pair the Touch with the MiFi if I need Web access.
6. SnagIt. There are lots of different screen capture programs out there, many of which are free. I have yet to find one with the functionality of SnagIt. I use it to capture images from the Web, Adobe Acrobat, PowerPoint, Excel, Visio, and so on.
7. PhraseExpress. If you haven’t yet used text-expanding software, I promise it will make your life easier. Once you have it set up, you simply type in an abbreviation or short phrase and - presto! - an entire sentence or paragraph appears! I use PhraseExpress for all sorts of things, including customizing my e-mail signature and replying to all of the Did You Know? (Shift Happens) inquiries that Karl Fisch and I get.
8. EverNote. I’m using EverNote more and more to take notes, capture snippets from the Web, etc. I’m sure that I’m only using a small portion of its functionality. I like that I can access my content from my laptop, the Web, and/or my Blackberry.
9. LastPass. This is a password manager and form-filler for my Internet browser. I like that LastPass keeps its files on the Web, meaning that my wife and I no longer need separate files on our respective hard drives.
10. Readability. If you haven’t yet tried the Readability bookmarklet for your Internet browser, give it a shot. I use it far more than I expected to. It’s been a godsend to one of my older relatives whose vision is not what it used to be.
11. Notepad++. Notepad++ is my favorite Notepad replacement software. I use it to get rid of unwanted text formatting, do basic HTML editing, etc.
12. Readtwit. I stumbled upon Readtwit because of a tweet from Will Richardson. Readtwit turns your Twitter stream into a clean RSS feed. If there’s a hyperlink in the tweet, it also shows you the first 2000 characters of the target web page; this is incredibly useful. Try Readtwit for a week in your favorite RSS reader. You’ll be hooked too.
13. Launchy. I’m much faster on the keyboard than on the mouse. Launchy allows me to launch programs, files, etc. with a few keystrokes. My wife: “How did you open that program so fast?” Me: “I can’t tell you all my computer secrets. Then you won’t need me any more!”

I use every one of these technologies nearly every day. They make my life easier, more efficient, and more effective. What are you using that improves your day-to-day productivity and well-being?

Related posts

• 8 indispensable items for presenters
• My computer setup

Back in July I said that

I was concerned that we never seem to hold folks accountable for being self-learners.

I also noted that

In many job sectors, employees are expected to keep up with relevant technologies or risk job loss. When do we require that of K-12 and postsecondary educators? At what point do we say to them “No, we’re not training you how to use this. It’s easy enough for you to learn on your own. And if you don’t, we’ll find someone else who can.”

Many of you chimed in and shared your own thoughts on this topic. Apparently, now Dilbert has too:

When will we, as educational systems, redefine the job descriptions and expectations of educators to include their regular and effective incorporation of relevant digital technologies?

Related posts

• If you took away technology
• Slide – Should teachers get to choose?
• Conditions of employment

WHO TV (Des Moines) aired a special report, Are we too connected?, on last night’s news broadcast. Among others, they interviewed me and Dr. Michael Bugeja, Professor and Director of Iowa State University’s Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication.

I have interacted with Michael a couple of times. He’s a very good guy and a fun guy to talk with, but he’s also a nationally-visible technology critic who is interviewed often by the media. His technology skepticism is probably understandable given that his entire profession is struggling to reinvent itself because of the impacts of these new digital tools, but it’s also at least a little ironic given that he utilizes multiple web sites to publicize his work. He and I often fall on opposite sides of technology issues. I really need to read his book, Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age.

Here are a few quotes from the special report:

All this really does is send a message that someone somewhere else is more important than the place we are and the person we're with. [Bugeja]

That's not a loss of connection, that's a gain of connection compared to where we were before the technologies existed. [McLeod]

There's a time and a place in society for all manner of communication. Former platforms define those areas with real boundaries. But this has no boundaries. It blurs the boundary between home and work, between school and home, between church, temple, mosque and school. It blurs everything. Why? Because it's programmed for revenue generation. ‘We want to make money off you at any time of the day.’ [Bugeja]

Happy reading!