Dreaming of a Macbook

I told my daughter Miranda that as soon as I get a new computer she can have my old G3 Powerbook to play on. Every couple of days or so she asks me if I have gotten my new computer yet. She cracks me up.
My dream laptop is the new black Macbook with 2 gigs of RAM and a 100 gig harddrive. My plan is to buy one for myself at graduation time next April. I want to be getting myself organized on it before I start teaching next Fall. I can't wait to see the speed improvement over what I am currently using. Sometimes I am surprised at how much and how often I use my laptop. I take it literally everywhere with me. When I first got it I had the mistaken perception that if I didn't have Microsoft Word on it, it would be pretty much worthless. As if word processing is the purpose for which computers were created and are being improved. Apple's text editor takes care of me just fine in that area. Let me list a few of my indispensable applications: Mail, iCal, TextWrangler, Eclipse, MacJournal, iTunes. I love having my whole life on my laptop. Less paper means more organization in my life. My addiction to podcasts is also greatly facilitated by the iTunes application.
When I start teaching it is my goal to get the school that hires me to buy me a 250 gig external hard drive so I can back up all my data frequently and also an external monitor so that at school I have more screen real estate to use. I can't wait!!
Patience Miranda you'll have your G3 Powerbook before you know it.

Podcamp

I listened to the Teaching for the Future podcast by Dave LaMorte this morning. He spoke about an upcoming event in the Boston area called Podcamp. It is an unconference for podcasters and podcast listeners. It sounds really interesting, and I really wish I could go to it. This idea is one that I think I will use in my classroom and community when I start teaching.
I want to teach students how to get their creativity out there. I think young people could come up with really fun and interesting content to listen to. I can't wait to help my students have a great time while at the same time learning valuable skills.

New Podcast/ Website Ideas

I am excited to start producing podcasts when I finally get a laptop that is fast enough to do it. This morning I had 2 ideas for podcasts I might do. The first is the BYU Alumni Podcast. I would use it as a way to talk to BYU alumni who are leaders in their respective fields or are just really cool people. There is already a site where BYU students can network with alumni. I think it would be really cool to hear alumni talk about what they are doing, and what they majored in, maybe even the road they took to their current job. A showcase of sorts for alumni. I would listen to it if it existed.
The second idea I had the other day was for a website for my virtual insect collection. I have a fondness for insects. They are cool and fun to catch and observe. I have a collection with dead bugs, but I have recently renounced the killing of bugs for my collection (I kill spiders on command of my wife). So instead of keeping dead bugs in a box, I would like to capture digital photos of cool bugs I catch, along with all the same data of date, place, and habitat that I would keep with my dead bugs. With a good digital camera I think it would be great. While out with my kids yesterday, I caught 2 insect families that I have never caught before (both aquatic). It was a lot of fun, and my son caught one of them repeatedly after letting it go briefly. Capturing those memories would be awesome.
Along with a website, I think an entomology podcast would be a lot of fun. I could talk about the different insect families, where to find them, equipment used to catch them, and other information related to bugs. I could record myself out in the field actually catching bugs. Nothing technical, just fun and interesting. Again, I would listen to a podcast like this if it existed.
Well, there's another one of my ideas out there that may or may not come to fruition someday.

Rotary Cellphone

Ever since Make Magazine posted a how-to on an analog rotary cell phone, I have been dying to have one. This is a big step for me seeing as how I am not a huge fan or cell phones in general. My wife has one, but I simply don't want people to have access to me anytime, anywhere. But the thought of carrying around a clunky, retro, rotary phone, and having it work like a cell phone is very appealing to me. I want to have it sitting on my desk when I am teaching high school, and have it ring during class. I am highly motivated to learn whatever I need to know to make it happen. I would love to teach my students how to do it, so that they could buy their own rotary phone and be able to build it.
So I have been looking for a rotary phone at yard sales in our area on Saturdays. No luck so far. This morning as I was listening to this week's episode of Twit, it reminded me that I haven't done any searching on eBay for a phone. I looked, and I found tons. Most were going to cost $20 including shipping to get. I went ahead and bid on a white phone whose auction ends in about an hour. It is only going to cost $11. Actually having a phone in my possession will get me on the ball as far as getting the other necessary components. I'm excited to make this happen, and to stretch my geekiness to new bounds.

Sharing Pins

So I had this idea the other day about how to involve a whole class in a robotics project using just one Basic Stamp (or other microprocessor). First I would come up with a really cool scenario around which we would build our project. Something like "you are going to send a robot to Mars. You will need to collect data to send home, and be mobile to get a look at your surroundings. Design a robot that will best accomplish these goals." Then, based on that initial scenario, determine the different tasks the robot will need to accomplish and divide the class up into groups for each task. These tasks might include, navigation, video transmission, temperature collection, and terrain measurement. Once these groups have been defined, divide up the pins on the basic stamp between the teams so that they know what they have to work with. Those allotments can be adjusted to best fit the class' overall needs. Then working together as a whole class, you fit together all of the groups into a single functioning robot. I think this would be a lot of fun. The whole class would have an invested interest in the success of the robot. I think it is something that I will try out when I begin teaching next year.

Don't focus on "learning"

As I contemplate what my over-arching objective will be in my classroom as a teacher, many things come to mind. A typical response to a question about this may be, "I want my students to learn." I believe that kind of answer is too generic and too meaningless. I think we should be thinking more abstractly about what will get our students to achieve meaningful learning. I want my students to be able to solve problems. I want my students to be able to make dreams or visions reality. I want my students to serve. I believe that by focusing on these kinds of objectives students will be much better served than if I just think in terms of "learning." I don't believe in rote memorization, I believe in application of principles.
I don't believe in forcing all students to do one assignment one way. In a classroom of 30 students, I believe there will be 30 different ways of doing that assignment.
Learning is a very individual, personal activity. For it to actually occur, I believe the status quo must change and that as teachers we must look in new directions without being chained to the past.

Looking for Hosting

I have been dying to run a website or two since I learned how to write html back in March, and have since learned the finer points of xhtml, css, and some javascript. I want to write a blog under my own domain and post pictures and other fun stuff. I have also had some fun business ideas along with my wife that we have wanted to explore. However, as I have noted in previous posts, my financial resources are severely limited at this time of my life. I am finishing up my last year of college and we are expecting our 4th child.
I listen to a podcast called Matt's Today in History. In some of his recent episodes, he has had a promo at the end for a hosting service called bobohost.com. It sounded promising, so I started looking in to it this morning. It appears to be very reasonably priced and would be suitable for what I am looking for. I will for sure be talking to my wife about the possibility of doing something very soon.
I also wanted to mention another hosting service I ran into a few weeks ago after visiting the website of Bre Pettis. I really enjoy the video podcasts he has done for Make magazine. The hosting service he was promoting was called dreamhost.com . The main thing I found compelling about their hosting was that for one fee of $8/month you could host unlimited domains. I'll probably just start out with one website and see how it goes from there. Then if I get into multiple domains, I'll go with dreamhost.
I am excited about what's going on with the web right now and want to make a contribution to the conversation. Hopefully it will happen sooner rather than later.

New Podcast to listen to

Yesterday I was doing a little research on Adam Curry for a speech I have to give this week on podcasting. In the process I discovered a great podcast called Adam Green's Software Stories. He had a great podcast with Adam Curry and Dave Winer about the birth of podcasting which was very interesting. I recommend you listen to it.
I find the whole recent history of the internet very interesting and look forward more and more to taking a more active part in new developments as I teach high school technology. I don't want to be just a passive observer, I want to be a participant. I want my students to be participants! There is just so much going on out there that anything is possible.
I think that knowing the history about subjects you are interested in is very important. You learn why things are the way they are. You learn about who the major contributors were and are. There is so much cool stuff out there, I feel like I'll never be able to catch up on it all.
For now, I'll just keep listening to my podcasts and enjoying what's out there.

FIRST Robotics Competition website

I forgot to include in my last blog the link to the FIRST Robotics Competition website. To find out more information visit them.

FIRST Robotics Competition

I listened to a podcast this morning with the founder of the FIRST Robotics Competition. This is a competition for both Jr. high and high school students in which they compete in a variety of robotics events. I have heard a little about this competition before, but there is still a lot I want to learn about it. The mission of FIRST is to get students interested in and excited about science and engineering. As an up-and-coming technology teacher I am very interested in this also. I want to show students how cool robotics can be.
Listening to this podcast got me excited about teaching. I totally want to be able to put a team of students together to participate in this event. I think the founder they were talking to said that they had over 10,000 high school teams involved in the competition this past year. That's an amazing amount of students. As I thought about how to introduce the idea of this competition to my future students, I decided I want to begin talking about it very early in the school year. I will then tailor my curriculum to preparing my students for the events. I think students will get excited about this and work hard to do well in it.
I also think it would be great if I were able to build up an electronics and robotics program at a school that did not previously have one. There are great teachers out there who are already doing amazing things at various schools, I don't want to just get put into one of the many programs they have already set up, I think it would be much more rewarding to allow those students who may never have the chance to learn about robotics to do it. I'm sure it's a lot harder, but at the end of the day, a school will be a better learning environment because of it.

Money Limitations

Too often I find that I am limited in what I am able to do in technology because I don't have sufficient resources in the form of money. I have ideas for websites that I want to start and run, but I don't have the extra cash to pay for hosting. Although hosting is fairly cheap, when you are really poor, that doesn't matter. I have ideas for electronics projects that I want to build and play around with that also have yet to be built because of funding issues. Some days it really bugs me because I feel my own growth and learning are being limited.
Then yesterday I had a talk with the director of the international student teaching program here. I want to do my student teaching in Juarez, Mexico, but I don't think I will be able to because of my financial situation. It totally sounds like I can get into the program and it would be an awesome experience.
Why does money have to be the limiting factor? Why can't I pursue my dreams? I have even had some great ideas that could possibly make money for my family, but just getting those proposals started takes money, which I don't have.
So if anyone out there reading this has extra money on hand that they would like to donate to a future high school technology teacher who would greatly benefit from it, feel free to contact me. In the meantime, I'll keep writing my ideas down until the funds are available to turn those dreams into reality.

Gaming in the classroom

This morning I was listening to The World's technology podcast, produced by Clark Boyd. It was very interesting. It's topic was 'persuasive gaming', and the role that video games can play in bringing about social change. He spoke extensively about a new game that was created called "Darfur is Dying". The game allows the player to be a Darfur refugee, and go through what the refugees have to go through just to survive. It is a free online game with the goal of informing people about the conflict in Sudan and hopefully motivate them to participate in the discussion about what the international community should be doing about it.
As I listened to this podcast I began thinking about creating games, and specifically how high school students could create games that deal with issues that are important to them. I hope that in my technology classes, my students aren't solely focused on how to find the resistence at a certain point in a circuit, but rather how they can create something that will solve a problem and benefit others. I could teach students how to write game programs that would address an important issue within our school. Through the medium of a game, they could engage the school in a meaningful conversation. I think that is an exciting prospect.
I want my students to work on projects that will be meaningful to them and will leave them wanting to learn more on their own. I want them to see the value in learning. Maybe I'll even play this podcast for my students when I start teaching next fall.

Problem solving with Java

One of my first lab assignments in my Intro to Computer Programming class involved writing a program that prompted the user to input a temperature in Fahrenheit. From that temp., the program would them give back the temp that was input in Fahrenheit, in Celsius, and then would tell you how many degrees above or below freezing in Fahrenheit it was. I was able to write this program on my own without any outside help. I am pretty proud of that. The thing that struck me the most about writing this program was the capacity it gave me to do all kinds of different calculations. To do calculations by hand is possible, but it slows me down significantly. Especially if I am needing the answer to a calculation before being able to move on to something else. So I have begun to think about how I could write programs in Java to solve problems for myself, especially dealing with calculations. For example, in my beginning electronics class we learned how to calculate the size of resistors based on the color code. Now I can do those calculations, but it takes me a while, especially if I am just doing it in my head. But what if I could write a program that prompted me to input the colors present on the resistor, and the program would tell me what size resistor it was?? That would be cool!! As I thought about doing this, my mind began reeling with the possibilities of all kinds of electronic calculations I could have a program figure for me which would free up my time to do the funner part of electronics. I don't want to spend my time doing math, I want to build things. Java will help me solve some of my real-world problems.