Where the buffalo roam...

Just got back from a week at the Teton Science School with ten middle school kids. Can't say enough about the place; they were so knowledgeable and professional. I recommend it highly. My only disappointment was they had few activities to explicitly nourish the soul, although just being there made me feel peaceful.

Car(e) Free

I sold my car last monday. Got no landline. Got no TV. Sure am not watching the Academy Awards right now. That's a picture of my dining room. Not much furniture. I spy a Buddha in the back right corner...

By all means, Ms. Moneypenny...

Another email I just sent to my colleagues:
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Ladies, you may want to click the "next" button...

Gentleman, there's good news. On Sunday, I definitely ordered a new tuxedo at www.buy4lesstuxedo.com. To my astonishment, it arrived today. Tie, cummerbund, shirt, pants, jacket, the whole enchilada (sans shoes), $160 with 2nd day air delivery. 100% polyester. So sweet. Also to my astonishment, it fits like a glove (although I still need to get the pants hemmed). Photograph is attached.

Yup, Chicken Pox

What follows is a thank you note that I sent to colleagues earlier today. Yup, that's a photo of me.....

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Thank you everyone for the warm thoughts and the thoughtful get well card. How I managed to contract chicken pox in my mid-thirties is baffling. It turned out to be four rough days stuck in bed; last night I turned the corner and today I feel really good. I should be fine to return on Monday, but my face may still be broken out, so feel free to load up on Clearasil jokes right about now :-)

For what it's worth, here were some lessons learned:

...the hero for me was the nurse at the Carefirst 24 hour helpline (the phone number is on the back of the insurance card). I was confused at 7am on Monday. I knew I felt a little sick, but I definitely felt well enough to go in to work. I called the helpline, told them I was "a little weak, with several bumps on my scalp and three dots on my chest" and she nailed the diagnosis first try. She told me definitely not to go to work, and that the doctor's office may not want to make an appointment because I was contagious.

...the goat was definitely the internal medicine center at Georgetown Hospital. I called them at 8:30am on Monday and was on hold til 9:15. I realize it's the busiest time of the week, but still..... I had to figure out if I needed to go in for an appointment. I spoke to two staff members who were well-intentioned but had marginal English and after much, much trying, I didn't feel a lot of meaningful dialog happened. All my knowledge came from the Carefirst nurse or from the internet research I did while on hold with Georgetown. In children they say calamine lotion and tylenol is enough, but there is an anti-viral drug (aciclovir). I think the Georgetown staff member was trying to tell me that I had to go in for an appointment if I wanted a prescription, but the communication gap was so frustrating that I just gave up and decided to sweat it out the old-fashioned way. I'm a wussy when it comes to being sick, and four days in bed was no picnic, so the prescription meds look like a good option in retrospect. I definitely need to explore other options for primary care physicians.

What I learned this summer

What follows is a summary of my experience at the July 2006 Building Learning Communities conference sponsored by Alan November. I can’t recommend this conference highly enough for any educational technologist to attend (students may want to attend as well; I saw at least two there). For details see www.novemberlearning.com. Please know that I attended only a small fraction of the sessions and missed a lot of good stuff.

Marco Torres

Marco Torres blew me away. He was the keynote speaker on the first day. While he is officially a social studies teacher, he is also the manager of a multimedia production studio run by and for students at San Fernando High School. Marco reframed for me what it means to be a technology teacher. Here I am walking into this conference thinking, “I’m a hotshot, I teach Flash, I teach iMovie, I’m empowering students with tools for the 21st century.” Then I see this movie:

http://www.edutopia.org/php/article.php?id=Art_980#

(this website is a little tricky to navigate… click on the photo of the girl carrying the camera, and then answer the questions in the window that pops up)

What Rafe Esquith is to Shakespeare, Marco is to digital media. My 3 to 5 year goal is to be the manager of a multimedia production studio at my new school (I’m now at The Lab School of Washington; my first three weeks have exceeded all expectations. Fortunately, knowing the tradition of artistic innovation at Lab, I’m confident that the goal is achievable.)

This video should be seen by every student and educator in the world:
http://web.mac.com/cinedelagente/iWeb/Site/%5B%20PODCASTS%20%5D/FAEC16C7-6A4A-4F03-944E-1E49D18CCFEA.html

If you would like to attend the virtual film school created by Marco’s students, go here:
www.flickschool.com
(click on “podcasts” at the top of the page)


MabryOnline

I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Tim Tyson, principal (and webmaster) at Mabry Middle School in Marietta, Georgia. A year ago, Tim redesigned his school website during the last two weeks of his summer vacation. See the fruits of his labor here:

http://mabryonline.org/

This is my most favorite K12 school website. I love it because it is a dynamic website, with contributions by students and teachers, from which parents can extract the most relevant information via an RSS feed. And yes, the principal created it. In two weeks. During his vacation.


MIT Media Lab

I was fortunate to see the MIT Media Lab and two of its newest products: Scratch and Cricket.

Scratch is in beta testing right now and will be released later this year. It’s a ground floor programming environment. If you are familiar with Microworlds/Logo, it’s kind of like that. Did I mention that Scratch will be totally free? More info at:
http://weblogs.media.mit.edu/llk/scratch/

Cricket is meant to be “Lego Mindstorms for Everyone.” As wonderful as Mindstorms is, students who have spent years playing with Lego bricks have an unfair advantage. Cricket really levels the playing field, since the emphasis is on programming and creativity rather than on Lego building. Cricket sets are about $250 each (same as Mindstorms). More info at:
www.picocricket.com/


Whiplash

I saw a great session by Darren Kuropatwa from The Great White North. He gave a quick overview of the following technologies:

• Social bookmarking (posting your browser’s bookmarks on the internet to share with the whole world)
• RSS (having newsfeeds come to you rather than you having to hunt down news on the web)
• Wikis (collaborative webpage creation)
• Podcasting (using RSS to distribute audio and video over the internet).

I’ve tinkered with all of the tools and they were hard to wrap my head around. RSS was a good place to start for me. I opened a Bloglines account (www.bloglines.com/blog/mattfratt) and subscribed to some newsfeeds, so now my most favorite websites (BBC, Digg Technology, Democracy Now, Yes! Magazine, etc) all now are available to me in a single location. I have cancelled my lifelong Washington Post subscription; I think the Post does a great job, but they don’t cover all of the important news. While RSS has a pretty steep learning curve, I think it offers a clearer picture of reality.

Darren maintains a wiki webpage that explains these tools in depth:
http://whiplash.pbwiki.com


Wiki

At the conference I attended a session given by an Englishman named John Bidder who co-created the website www.wikiville.org.uk. Wikiville is meant to be “run by young people, whose mission it is to paint a picture of life for them in their part of town.”

(speaking of wikis, I am a Wikipedia freak now. I know it is not always accurate, but it’s a great way to get a quick snapshot of anything. I see it as an avenue toward “collective consciousness.”

I had some problems with Cingular Wireless after they took over my AT&T wireless phone contract. So I posted the “controversy” section under “Cingular” entry in Wikipedia. You can see it at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cingular#Controversy

It’s a small thing, but I felt very empowered)

I am an eBay freak!

I spent the last week of summer selling on eBay. It felt so empowering. I had some valuable stuff in the closet that I no longer wanted, but I didn't want to give it away or have a garage sale. I thought about taking it to a professional eBay seller to have them sell it, but I'm glad I did it myself because I learned an invaluable lesson on ecommerce from the seller's perspective.

I recommend that you try it! Don't take a class or buy the book, "Ebay for Dummies", just try this:

1) Sign up for an eBay account (I recommend using the Paypal credit card service) and buy some cheap items. The goal is to learn the buyer's perspective and the buying process.

2) Go to your closet and find some $5 items to sell. The goal is not to make money, but to learn the seller's perspective and the selling process with very little to risk.

3) Now get the more valuable items out of the closet to sell, and make some money!

4) If you need help, the eBay help files are outstanding, as is their email support. I don't think they have phone support, but call me or anyone else with eBay experience.

What I did this summer

Following is an instructive adaptation of an email I sent to my summer job bosses at Centronia, a community center where I worked this summer (www.centronia.org):

What really stands out to me was the genuine warmth of everyone in the building.

Kidpix worked reasonably well. I learned a little late that it works better with sound because the audio feedback is much stronger than the video feedback (when you click on a tool, it doesn't really change visually, but it makes a big sound).

Mavis Beacon is a lot like Sudafed... it doesn't taste real good going down but it's good for them. :) Some students even enjoy it.

We spent one day doing WISWEB. It's free, and it's the best educational website I know on the web. It's a Dutch site, and it's not very user-friendly, but it's fantastic even for the littlest students:
http://www.fi.uu.nl/wisweb/en/

I think my most favorite activity was a fantastic the idea from the teachers of Conference Room C. For two days at 4pm we brought up some little guys to the computer lab. We paired up one little guy with one big guy from Conference Room C. At first we didn't have enough little guys, and it was a problem because the big guys who didn't have partners were jealous and disruptive. But after we brought in more little guys, everyone was engaged. It was very cute and educational. The big guys generally did a great idea teaching the little guys. The most important rule is the big guys cannot touch the mouse; the little guys control the mouse. I recommend that you repeat the activity with other students in the building. The activity worked best when we used a piece of free software called Sebran. It is installed on all the computers in the lab (click on the red heart on the desktop). It teaches the basics (abc's, counting, hangman etc). After about 30 minutes the students get restless, and at that point I rewarded the big kids and let them take control of the mouse. The big kids then spent about 15 minutes showing the little kids a favorite (filtered) website such at miniclip .com. More copies of Sebran can be downloaded at:
http://www.wartoft.nu/software/sebran/