Beyond the Horizon

Copyright Slide Rule

2008-07-23T14:58:00.002-04:00

Miguel Guhlin recently had a blog entry about a new Web site that helps everyone understand about the rules of copyright. It's called the Digital Slider. I think everyone should check this out!

American Midge

2008-07-03T13:05:00.001-04:00

American Midge
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

No, this is not altered to make me look thinner and younger, I AM thinner and younger since it is 1986! I was looking for a photo to add the special effect shapes of Picnik to a photo.

Enjoy the 4th!

Google's Advanced Search Page

2008-05-19T14:10:00.002-04:00

For my Tappedin.org session of Frazel Features on May 20th, 2008, I'm planning to promote learning and discussion about the Advanced Search Page of Google. As part of a chapter on searching in my upcoming book, I present information on why searching using this page yields better and faster results to finding information. The advanced search page has been recently redesigned to help users better understand searching.

These are links you will find helpful for the session!

Google's Advanced Search page

Google Help Search Features

Google Guide "Making Searching Even Easier"

Rockwell Schrock's Excellent Boolean Machine

Western Digital Portable Hard Drive

2008-05-13T12:40:00.001-04:00

Western Digital Portable Hard Drive
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

A week ago Monday, there was a power outage in my area that only lasted for 35 minutes. I have a UPS on my desktop computer which allows me to save my work, and shut down the computer. But, things are not perfect when electricity fails. When I turned on my computer again, my router was malfunctioning and Windows was acting up.

The next day, I bought this shiny USB based portable hard drive which is 350 GB. After getting my computer to stay booted, I copied the entire contents of the MY Documents folder to this drive. It took many hours as my desktop computer is only USB 1.0. But, it was successful.

I did have to reformat my drive and use another router but, I haven't lost any data. It is a lifesaver. (See the candy?) It is hard to photograph, being shiny black but I wanted you to see the friendly glowing light.

Yes, I need a new computer. Sigh.

Mousing Around

2008-04-22T12:54:00.001-04:00

Mousing Around
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

Today I was determined to learn to dub video from VHS videotapes to DVD using our new DVD/VHS player/recorder. It went pretty well considering I still think that DVD formats need better explanation!

After "moving" the video to the DVD, it must be finalized but before I did that I wanted to see if it played in my computer. No, it did not so I brought it back to the DVD player/recorder and followed the procedure to finalize it. Now it will play in all my computers using Windows Media player.

I used an older version of Adobe Premier Elements to see if I could get it off the DVD to create a "real" movie of it that I could play on my iPod or post to a video hosting site. I have still not conquered that but I will get to it.

A fun part in capturing a still frame to make a single photo. Check out my hand. Camera people sure like to get close up! That's why you are not seeing my face.

Dylan Out for a Walk

2008-04-18T14:44:00.001-04:00

Dylan Out for a Walk
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

This is the first, unedited video taken with my new Flip camcorder. Dylan was kind enough to be a good subject. Of course, he's only 5 months old but what a cutie.

Flip Video Camcorder

2008-04-17T18:30:00.002-04:00

Flip Video Camcorder
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

I'd heard so much about this great lightweight Flip video camcorder that I just had to SEE it for myself. It's the ultra version that takes 60 minutes of video and stores it until you send it to your computer via the USB connector.

I can't wait to try it out and make some cool videos. Don't you SEE how great this is going to be?

Higher Education and Web 2.0 Investigations

2008-04-03T10:07:00.003-04:00

Today, a pre-service teacher, named Meg, who is taking an online course at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, left a comment on my recent blog post, "Phone Books Dead?". In the blog she is writing as an assignment for her course, she writes about her experience of noticing that this course she is taking online is proving to be more work than the other courses she has taken previously.

This is interesting since as I have recently observed that the majority of attendees at my "Frazel Features" at Tappedin.org have been students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate classes where part of the assignment is to participate in an "online chat". As technology as been a large part of my professional life for the last 25 years, I do wonder how long it will be before higher education, promotes the new tools of technology and requires (gasp!) that students be competent and ready to use them in the classroom.

I posted a comment on this student's blog and read her postings and enjoyed her photo (she's blonde, too!) and profile. I wonder how many other students in her class had a response from the person they posted their comments to?

If not, why are we doing this?

By the way, ironically, the phone books are being delivered to my town this week, proving that the phone book is not dead; just obsolete!

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Phone Books Dead?

2008-03-27T13:00:00.003-04:00

In the cross-culture life I am leading, spending my days writing about educational technology and my weekends working on family history and genealogy, I find some spots where there is overlap. I call this space, "Beyond the Horizon" and that space is filled with technology, of course. I guess this is a form of social history.

Today, I was amused, and annoyed to hear that Adobe has decided to feel the pressure of some of the online photo editing tools will provide one of their own. After being forced to use Adobe PhotoShop in one of my graduate classes, I am comforted by the fact that they at least concede that there are other applications in our known universe. I am NOT giving up my love of Picnik. Period.

I also read, on a genealogy blog, about the death of the phone book. Yes, I know genealogy is all about life and death but this notice is of great interest to me. What am I going to use for a footrest if there are no phone books? Ah, the joys of being short.

Later...btw, my phone books came today (4/16/08) tossed out the window of a car onto my driveway!

Same Location Different Era

2008-03-11T12:58:00.003-04:00

205 Wentworth Ave.
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

This is the same house many years before the next blog entry. In fact, this photograph was taken many years before I was born about 1938 or so. It is probably the photograph that the real estate agent used to show my grandparents this lovely English Tudor house.

While learning to use "Street View" at Google Maps recently to research my grandfather's business, which was nearby, to this street, I discovered that I could actually look at the house as it probably looks today. Google Maps are not dated and are probably a few years behind today's date. But, it is exciting to use this new feature and think of it's application to learning about neighborhoods and cities in reference to learning about maps.

Go to the next blog entry to see this house in modern day.

Google Maps and Street View

2008-03-11T12:45:00.003-04:00

Using Google Maps and the new "street view", I learned to copy and paste HTML code into this blog entry to show you the house where my grandparents lived when I was a little girl. I don't know who lives there now and wasn't sure if the house was still standing. I guess this means you can go home again!

Street View is not available for all areas. The photos are "gathered by vehicles equipped with advanced imaging technology, driving on public streets." Here's a video from Google to help you understand Street View.

For a look at the world in vitual reality, check out the Web site, 360 Cities.

View Larger Map

Geography Headaches

2008-03-04T13:02:00.002-05:00

I admit to everyone that I did not learn enough geography. My father could put together the wooden puzzle of the United States at breakneck speed! He often said that I was learning nothing in school.

Google Earth is more amazing to me than Second Life! (It does seem as foreign to me and sort of virtual reality in nature.) With each update, I forget what I learned before and become frustrated easily. Writing this section in my upcoming book has taken days of re-learning and searching for help.

I was doing fine, reviewing what I learned before until I decided to move a placemark. The Help files say I should be able to do it like I did with version 3 but that is NOT the case. (Isn't Help supposed to be well, help?)

In steps the UK Web site and its associated blog called Juicy Geography. In the blog, under Guides are two important documents for Google Earth version 4 that are lifesavers. They are in Word format, so you can just print them out and use them. One is about navigation and the other is about making a placemark and moving a placemark. You MUST get these.

The folks at Juicy also shared this link named "What is GPS?" Some people think GPS is the name of the devices in cars and that the directions are somewhat magical.

OK, so I'm not that bad. But, where the heck is Nebraska?

escrapbooking

2008-02-24T15:03:00.002-05:00

For my monthly session at Tappedin, I chose to cover the topic of escrapbooking.

What's that, you ask? Well, it's a form of digital storytelling in which the old art of creating a scrapbook plays a part. Creating online scrapbooks at Scrapblog is one way to do this and making an escrapbook with an offline piece of software is another.

To learn more about this visit Dr. Annette Lamb's resource pages on this topic.

Duke University holds a great definition of scrapbooking and Tulane University has a timeline of scrapbooks.

Teaching K-8 magazine tells us "How to produce Digital Scrapbooks".

Thanks, ISTE

2008-02-14T15:45:00.002-05:00

Thanks, ISTE
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

At 2 PM EST, ISTE gave its members a free Webinar, hosted by my friend Bard Williams. The presenter was Susan Brooks-Young who informed us about the Web 2.0 tools that have instructional value for students and teachers. I enjoyed it. (You do belong to ISTE don't you?)

She created a wiki for us to experience. It is called Web Tools For Educators and it is hosted at PBWiki.

Thanks, ISTE for the Valentine's Day present and for Member Appreciation Month.

BTW, I made this with Picnik one of my favorite Web 2.0 apps.

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Black History Month

2008-02-09T13:08:00.001-05:00

This week PBS TV premiered African American Lives 2, a four part (two 2 hours shows) series that is a followup to a two part series previously shown. It was an excellent program that all people can watch to learn about how family history is significant to the lives of all of us. There is an excellent teachers page on this at PBS.org for teachers to use in the classroom.

There is more than one freed slave buried in the cemeteries where my ancestors are resting. Some have very simple grave markers and some may be just buried with a fieldstone (which is an uncarved rock) as was the custom of the day. Families often buried members of their households (black and white) in their family cemeteries, especially children of servants or family members who worked the farms. You can imagine that it is hard to identify and research these people.

But, there is one gravestone that is so amazing that everyone should see it. Quash Williams, his wife Hannah and a married daughter are buried in the Whitehall Cemetery in Mystic, CT.

The local newpaper has researched his life and written about it for the school children to learn about. Quash was indeed, quite a character and should be remembered for his accomplishments.
"Old Quash was truly an example, and by it, yet being dead, he speaketh.”

Web Sites Worth Clicking

2008-01-21T12:41:00.000-05:00

What makes a Web site worth clicking?

The answer to that is multi-part and depends on your perspective as a teacher. Are you a teacher-creator of information or are you a teacher-user of information?

Many teachers have left behind “the old Web” which experts call Web 1.0. That Web is static. The information is out there for teacher-users to find, print and go… but it is not something that you have any control over as the teacher-creators have full control. The information is unchanging and can disappear in a flash. These Web resources are time-consuming for the creator and very quick for the teacher-user. Web sites that technology-infused teacher-creators were producing are being “left-behind”. [I’m sure you’ve heard that phrase somewhere before?]

Enter the new Web: Web 2.0. It’s new, exciting, confusing and less defined. The definition of this, for us, is part of the idea of “what’s worth clicking”. Teachers are creating ways for teachers to connect with each other. You read the information and then you write about it. This makes it less time-consuming at the teacher-creator end and more time-consuming for the teacher-user.

So where do we stand? Teachers still love the Web 1.0 Web sites and are beginning to rely up them instead of textbooks, workbooks and printable. They love the scavenger hunts, the virtual field-trips and the multimedia rich, glorious full color photographs.

Web 2.0 is for teachers who want students to be producers of information. They want their students to do the 3R’s but they want them to read in print, read online and listen to audio books and then present what they’ve learned in a podcast or a blog. They want them to write. They want them to do research and them to contribute what they learned in a blog or a wiki. They want them to do math by producing videos explaining higher-order math concepts and blend them with science experiments done live on camera. It changes the job of the teacher to mentor and collaborator instead of information giver.

So are you ready? We are Web 1.5, I guess, because teachers are just learning about these Web 2.0 things. But, just to give you stress; let me tell you Web 3.0 is coming up fast and you’d better be ready. Why? Because the kids are ready and they are racing ahead far beyond us, tagging, texting, and contributing (think: MySpace and Facebook) while we read, print and teach the same way we have always taught. No wonder they are bored.

Try doing a Google search for “Email is for old people”. Some teachers may be shocked that kids have been thinking this way since the early 1990s and they can’t imagine bothering with regular mail (snail-mail) anymore. Bills and shopping are done online, to find a movie, museum, vacation spot or restaurant, they use the Web or their Web based cell phone. Use a map? Think again. They have GPS in their car or print out maps with directions from the Web. They don’t read newspapers or watch TV to learn about the upcoming elections; they discuss and debate the issue in a blog. Do they live on the same planet as you?

So what makes a Web site worth clicking? We should use Web 1.0 page that have solid curriculum based information to help us with teaching and learning plus use Web 1.0 pages that can show us the way to Web 2.0 by listing sites to explore and work with for our own professional development.

What belongs on this page? Should I even bother to update this page anymore?

Flickr and LOC

2008-01-18T14:35:00.000-05:00

The blogosphere is a buzz with the addition of images from the Library of Congress into Flickr's collections! As a big fan of the educator's section of the Library of Congress, I am pleased to see this exciting collaboration.

Photographs are "with no known copyright restrictions" and this is great news for educators who would like to be able to use "reality" photographs within their school projects.

The announcement of this project called, "My friend Flickr" explains that without Web 2.0 this would not have been possible. Flickr, my favorite photo-sharing site, is holding most of the digital photos that I have taken since 1999 when I bought my first digital camera. It was a Sony Mavica and saved the photo onto floppy disks. I still have photos on floppies and I am slowly moving them from these to CD's and then to Flickr. Of course, scanning old photos, comes next and as I have inherited several generations of photos and slides, this is even more time consuming.

I can't wait to see all the photos that hold no copyright restrictions so that I can write about them. There's a photo of a house on my street as it is in the National Register of Historic Houses but I don't know why. The Commons is what the project entails and it is interesting to read about how this is going to change how we look a historic photo collections.

Wow.

Staying Home

2007-12-27T11:51:00.001-05:00

Yule Log
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

This holiday season I discovered that Comcast OnDemand had a hi-def Yule Log.

Because she's a busy person (but loves Christmas), I immediately emailed my buddy Kathy Schrock to take a look at it. It is a rare even that I can find out something "technology" that she doesn't already know about.

TV Guide must read Kathy's blog, because there's a mention of this Yule log in this week's magazine!

I took this photo of my Sony Bravia TV Screen while waiting for Santa to arrive. Looks real, doesn't it?

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Take a Break

2007-12-22T11:58:00.001-05:00

Christmas 1958
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

It used to be that I went to my grandparent's house for the whole week of Christmas vacation. That's me drinking out of my Santa mug (yes, I still have it) in a wonderful room called the "Breakfast Nook" which was part of the kitchen. This I miss and I guess Christmas is always gone when you are the only person left who remembers things like this. The next year my grandmother, a widow, moved to a large apartment.

I have been lucky this year to get two book contracts and to have people respond to sharing ideas, photos and stories. Thanks to them for making my holidays bright.

Time to sit and listen to a book. It's not as good as being at grandma's but it's something...

Reaching a Goal

2007-12-19T11:37:00.001-05:00

500th Curves Day
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

I exercise to maintain my sanity (yes, yes, I know it's not working) and today I became an elite member having worked out for the 500th tim since I joined. I remembered to take this photo with my cell phone as I logged in this morning. In the early days, this Curves had no computer but I had kept track of my visits previously so they added them in for me at that point.

A Walgreen's is being built near the building where my Curves is located and there's much construction to try to get by in the next months so I may have to join a different one just to be able to safely park. Living in Bridgewater is getting to be hazardous in many ways!

Picnik Egg Crate Snow

2007-12-14T11:26:00.001-05:00

Picnik Egg Crate Snow
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

It's a digital camera dream...unblemished snow in New England. Stormy one day and sunny the next, that's our weather! I took this photo this morning and enhanced it with the tools at Picnik.

I love the tint feature that comes with the premium (paid) version of this excellent online tool. But, many of the regular, free, features rival many of the image editing software packages.

I created a Picasa Web Album with the few photos I took. This is the only time I really like snow ; after today it will just be an annoyance.

Working with Audio Stories

2007-12-10T09:09:00.000-05:00

Since I switched from the Macintosh to Windows in 1996, the biggest problems I have had are with "all things sound". (Yes, I know most people struggle with file management, but I guess being concrete-sequential helps me with that. )

Through my "multimedia" graduate classes at Lesley University, the applications for Windows that I used were difficult and had many time-consuming steps to accomplish a task. Teachers don't need technology that takes up too much time. Audacity is the best tool I have seen so far.

I have owned several digital music players. The first one was so old, it connected to my computer via the serial port. That was awful. I quickly moved to a Rio and used that for a long time until I bought an iPod shuffle. My husband didn't like the iPod shuffle and so I bought him a iPod Nano and several months ago I moved forward to a 5G video iPod which I adore (except for the weight). I have used iPodder and iTunes for my audio content management.

My friend Tony Vincent has a great Web page about using iPods and it is a big help. Bard Williams book, Educator's Podcast Guide does wonders to get started with podcasting and to locate podcasts of interest to educators.

But, what if you have another MP3 player and want to put content on it? I have been investigating several Web sites that have content (music, audiobooks, and curriculum content) for classrooms that are free or low cost.

Storynory (which you can subscribe to via iTunes if you are an iPod owner) also has a Web site where you can download stories for young children. I found The Gingerbread Man folktale today and as my "Gingerbread Page" is gaining in popularity, I thought I would put it on a MP3 player that I am reviewing.

Classic fairy and folktales are part of most early childhood curriculum and are difficult for many teachers as they were not read to them by their parents when they, themselves, were young.

The New York Times posted an article, For Toddlers, Toy of Choice is Tech Device, which I read with great interest as it reinforces an article I wrote for LMC called Tech for Tinies! I spent a long time researching devices for young children and was amazed at the number of choices that were available that resembled laptop computers and cell phones. Because of article space, I didn't include music players but there were so many it made me dizzy. I am glad to be a "tech" person as it must be hard for grandparents to cope with these techno-toys on birthday or holiday lists.

Audio content for students is important with so many students struggling with a language barrier. Certainly, listening skills are important to comprehension in any topic. Colleges and universities are offering lectures and presentations in audio and video for students to review.

I'd be interested in what teachers listen to on their digital content players....

Still Wild @ Sixty

2007-12-05T18:30:00.001-05:00

Birthday Greetings!
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

Just in time for my birthday yesterday, you can edit photos posted to Flickr with the excellent editing and ehancement tools of Picnik. Thank you for the birthday gift.

Guess I am still a wild woman... but then if you read my blog, you already knew this.

Sixty has been a part of my life for a while as the digits 6 and zero have been part of the street number where I grew up and the house I live in now. Now that I think about it, the street number of the college I went to also, I think. Wait, I can look that up on the Web, can't I?

Isn't it wonderful?

Images of Plymouth

2007-11-07T12:51:00.000-05:00

I created a slideshow from some of my photos of Plymouth which I have posted at Flickr for anyone to use (just give me credit) but I don't the slide show works quite right so I have removed it.

Here's the photo set at Flickr that I call Pilgrims.

Giving Thanks

2007-11-06T14:31:00.001-05:00

Centerpiece
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

Since 1999, I have been providing some curriculum appropriate materials for those educators whose lessons include the voyage of the Mayflower, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag culture.

I have updated the pages and remvoved some that were purely for fun in hopes that I can provide some new ideas for teachers who do not live in New England and may not be aware that many of the topics and themes about the colonial days were not accurate.

Most people object to the "picture" of the Pilgrim Forefather's looking like the ones in this photo. But, it is still a good critical thinking question for the K-2 grades as to why we have no photos of these people and how can we best imagine what they looked like.

I am building a new resource of photos I have taken on the waterfront in Plymouth, MA.

On Cole's Hill

I invite comment on this topic. Most readers, I suspect, are teachers from elementary school but perhaps some teachers of later grades or disciplines may have some good curriculum related ideas to share that are beyond the coloring pages so frequently used.