Wednesday, August 23, 2006

I Saw It

I just saw my oldest son off to college this morning. He'll drive across Nevada to the Bay Area for his senior year. My daughter just started her first year in college and is living away from home for the first time. At first I was in a bit of a funk; I admit it, I'm sad about it all, especially when I run across old snapshots of them or their baby blankets. But then there's the part of me that recognizes the inevitable and celebrates the fact that despite their parents they turned out reasonably well-adjusted. It's a heartache that brings joy. Here's a song that my band Cicada just recorded about what's left when we all move on.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Google Mashups

I've been working with some Google mashups lately -- Quikmaps and Wikimapia. Soon I'll try MapBuilder. Here's a Quikmaps collaboration with some teachers from EducationBridges.



Here's an example of a wikimapia addition I made. I labeled Gilgal Garden in Salt Lake, which is definitely a one-of-a-kind.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

I'll never be too old for this

The start of school is just around the corner, and there's a lot I need to do before then. Still, that doesn't stop me from recording a new song this morning while everyone else in the house is at work. I wrote this one after I got home for Chico, CA. I had a lot on my mind. Ultimately Too Old? is a song about never losing the passion for living and loving.

Recorded on my PowerBook G4 laptop with a inexpensive Logitech USB microphone using GarageBand's helium voice for the background vocal effect. The quality will be better when I record this with Ben and Zack on better equipment. But for now at least, I've entertained myself (something I can do pretty easily).

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Podcast examples

Postscript: The Communiqué from the 2013 Future of Education Summit identified five wicked problems facing education. One of those was how to preserve the digital expressions of our culture and knowledge. I've seen that first hand as the server no longer exists that hosted some of the earliest podcasts my students had done in 2005. That's too bad because they were excellent audio pieces. To remedy that I'll start collecting some recent ones from my students.

Communiqué from the 2013 Future of Education Summit

Original post (the server that hosted these files crashed, so they no longer exist. Sorry)
Here are some examples of podcasts the students did this year in my 9th grade Journalistic Writing class. They represent a wide variety of writing modes. The students were highly engaged in the process of composing for online audio.