May be the end, but its just the beginning!

This has been a year of awakening for me, one in which I will look at fondly. Looking back I am not quite sure where the year went. This year I was accepted as a Keystone Technology Integrator, went to the Keystone summit, received my masters in Instructional Technology, started a professional blog, started Morpheus' wiki and blog, joined a great educational network (Thank you Twitter!), and began to create a professional identity.

Now the work begins, I have started all these things, but how do I maintain and keep up with everything else going on in my world? I have mentioned this before, and for starters, Google calendar look out! I am going to plan out my weeks and days, so I can be more efficient. One of the key things is feeling good about myself, I feel as if sometimes I am in over my head, so I need to build my confidence and empower myself to feel as if I can do anything I put my mind to!

Goals for this year:
1. Read more! Stay on top of RSS feeds and some old fashioned books. I caught myself reading online and not siting down with a good book.
2. Blog more! I need to set a schedule to blog and create some podcasts! I actually would like to podcast my blogs at some point.
3. Puxatany Bill/Phil? A new stuffed animal to go abroad...stay tuned!

Most importantly as the 2007 year ends and 2008 begins, I wanted to thank everyone who has inspired me this year, and helped me grow. Without the "Network"; professional, personal or family, none of what any of us does would be possible. I have learned to not let the "tech" part of my life overrun and overwhelm. Family and friends matter most and I'm thankful for the time spent with everyone this year and every year.

Have a great 2008!

Wii Remote - Simply Amazing

Through twitter the link below was passed on and I found it to be amazing. Not much I need to say the links say it all, I will be trying this with my students and I will report back once we attempt to make the interactive board!

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/

http://blog.loaz.com/timwang/index.php/2007/12/11/multi_touch_whiteboard_under_100_dollars

Cutting the Fat!

I feel like in the last three weeks I have fallen off the social network cliff. I have not been on twitter as much and just feel overwhelmed with everything I am doing. I feel as if I am spread too thin, and I don't know where to start or how to maintain all the sites I have created in the last 3-4 months. So I have decided to cut the Fat! I am getting rid of my myspace page and some other pages that I just don't have time for. I want to concentrate on a few sites that I can stay on top of, including this blog and do well on them. This still leaves me with a lot of sites to keep track of, but I need to prioritize and not get so hung up on all the new sites. I have split my sites up into three categories, (1) Personal: Sites I maintain with little outside help, (2) Collaborative: Sites I have created that others help with or ones I help with, (3) Student Centered: where students are the primary users and contributors of the site and I just tweak a little here or there. I listed the sites I have and still want to keep maintaining on google docs. The question is do you include sites like operator11, ustream, podomatic or just use them as tools to help maintain these sites. I have to make sure I understand tools, and use them to make these sites the best they can be. Thanks fir listening to my rant, I look for a renewed Brandon Lutz, who is getting back to the basics and cutting that Fat!

The Sites I am staying with!

Brandon

Morpheus TV

Paper Thin TV's...What's Next?

I had a conversation with my Professor about the idea of a computer being on a piece of plastic paper. So I did some research and found a technology called OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes). This technology is quite expensive but Sony and Kodak are already using it in digital cameras. The TV companies already have prototypes for very thin TVs and cell phones. Can you imagine a 1/4 inch thick 80in TV, it would be a lot easier to move around and steal.

My question, is how can this change education? What if students were given a small 8x10 OLED that they could view their textbooks and Internet via a wireless network? Think of all the money that is spent on textbooks and paper in any given school, this could revolutionize education! When ever I talk about students using online text books, I always get resistance stating its hard to read on a computer screen. Students read online (digital natives) all the time, maybe its the adults (digital immigrants) that have the problems with it. When I think about it, I do most of my reading online, I would love to have a sheet 1/4in thick with me to read different blogs and surf the web. Oh, the possibilities!

Check out OLED link to see about the technology.

Sources:
Freudenrich, Ph.d., Craig. "How OLEDs Work." How Stuff Works. 21 Sept. 2007 .

Morpheus is off!!!!!!

I am so excited about the fact that the furry little guy is on his way to another school! It's weird, all the power of his success is now out of my hands and in the hands of all the great teachers that have signed up. I did not get to do as much as I expected with him. My students pretty much met him and now he is off. I found that the beginning of the school year was a tough time to introduce him, but you live and learn, below is a picture of me with Morpheus before he left us.

So what's next? It will be interesting to see the ideas that everyone comes up with to utilize Morpheus in classrooms and schools. I can't wait to see all the content that will be created on the wiki and the blog posts. I am hoping that Morpheus will be used to integrate technology and children will come to understand Web 2.0 and its various uses through Morpheus' visits. In addition I am hopeful Morpheus will be able to travel abroad. I have a contact in Africa and I know Morpheus would love to visit. Keep checking Morpheus' site to see where he is going. I would also like to set up some Skype video conferences between myself and Morpheus' host school to keep tabs on him.

On another note, I looked at all my comments and I wanted to say thank you to everyone that gave me your insight. The key thing I have come to realize is that I need to do what I do and not worry about trying to compete with everyone else out there creating and doing great things. I just need to embrace their ideas and take all your insights to shape my journey through all the great technologies! My niche will come. Morpheus may be my mark on the world for now and I can handle that!

E-mail: morpheus.fortuna@gmail.com
Wiki: http://morpheusfortuna.wikispaces.com/
Blog: http://followmorpheusfortuna.blogspot.com/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10955037@N08

My Classroom Wiki

Today was the first day with students and I started out showing them my classroom wiki. I plan on using this wiki as the main focus of all my lessons this year. I enjoyed being able to write my classroom rules with all my class's input. My main focus was to let them know, they are going to help me to create the content on this wiki. For my kick off class, I pretty much had a list of things we wanted to talk about, class rules, grading policy, Internet Safety, Morpheus to name a few and then I had links to different pages on the site. lot of the pages were blank, and as the classes saw the site we changed it and added the content they wanted.

I tried to explain to them how a wiki works, and the only way I could explain it was by having them draw a picture together. I started with one person and told the class they could only draw one line. Which ended up being a line equals not taking the pencil off the paper. Some of the pictures came out pretty well. Here are the three best ones...you might have to click on them to see them a little better.

These pictures were drawn by 30 students...I found it pretty interesting. I asked them how they could have made it better and they stated that they should have decided what to draw before they started. I explained that most wikis have a topic, like ours that it is about technology.

So one of my main issues is how to get my students to access the wiki and ass content on their own. The majority of my students are not 13, so with out parent permission they can not create their own wikispaces user name and password. I had the idea to create a generic ID the students can use in class to add content. Or I thought they can create content and then e-mail it to me and I will post it. I am still sorting that one out, but I feel like the site is going to become a pretty powerful teaching tool and a resource for students outside my classroom.