David Warlick was describing how he uses this tool to publish his books:
Send them the book as a pdf
Send them the cover
Decide on your profit margin
PUBLISH

Then people can buy your book on-line and it is printed on demand for each purchaser. Some books are also available for downlaod as pdf.

ANYONE can be a published author!!

Having a look through the childrens section there are a huge number of very good sounding books. Lots of specialist topics too.

Another gem from the Cool Cat Teacher Blog”

Change Principle #8 Every person needs to be his or her own change agent

This is back to my overriding paradigm: You can employ a person’s body, but they employ their own soul!
Change is up to me in my classroom. Everyone has excuses. All of us have reason to whine!
If it is to be, it is up to me!

I have transformed my classroom with six year old Pentium III processors and 128 MB of RAM and Office XP and an Internet connection. We used new Internet tools. I’ve been blogging. I’ve been reading blogs, papers, and books and implementing suggestions of those that know. I’ve been brainstorming and leaping off the shoulders of giants as I take my own twist on their suggestions.

There is no excuse for you not having a good classroom where kids learn.

The whole entry is here …

The DRAFT of the new NZ Curriculum went live this afternoon on this website:
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/nzcurriculum/

It can be downloaded as a pdf.

This article from the e-school news makes interesting reading!
While it is a small study and generalising the results may be a bit of a leap this sort of research does have implications for things like Prenksys argument for ‘digital natives’ being able to multitask and still do things well.
As I have said before I believe we need to be teaching kids to concentrate on one thing at a time - a skill they DON’T necessarily have - in order to do their best at the task they are doing.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=6453

This screenshot from my iTunes shows the topics from this Video series. Short, concise and simply put in kid language. They use graphics etc to get the concepts across.
Subscribe through iTunes - I just searched for “ask an astronomer” from the iTunes store.
Thaks to Jocelyn MacKay from Blenheim for this one!

Another interesting piece of information from the “cool cat teacher” blog I subscribe to. With the DOPA act in the US there is a lot of interest in what is going on in these sort of sites.

Myspace doesn’t provide an RSS feed for its pages so many parents have it on their to do list to check their child’s page daily. This can be frustrating. As I am researching my book about the New Internet, I came across a great way for parents to monitor their child on myspace. This only lets you subscribe to their blog, but, its a start!

1) Make sure you have the address of your child’s myspace page. (I’d just ask them to show you. Most will, unless they have something to hide. Write down the URL or address that shows in the address box at the top of the web browser.
2) Go to their web page on your computer. On the blog click “View all blog entries.”
3) Right click on the address (URL) shown in the box at the top and click copy.
4) Go to http://makedatamakesense.com/myspace/, right click and paste in the URL.
5) Click “Create RSS”
6) You will go to a page with a lot of gibberish, do not worry. Right click in the address at the top of the page and copy it.
7) Go to your feed reader (Bloglines, NetVibes, etc.) and add it to the feeds you monitor. You are now a subscriber to your child’s myspace blog.

Remember as you monitor them, they can go back and edit their entries. You should scour their page for anything that makes them personally identifiable. I was looking through myspace at some of the teens I teach that had posted their full name, address, birthdate, and calendar for the week. Although it is summer time, I think I have some parents to talk to.

You will still need to go to your child’s page and check what they are doing and who they are talking to. Some parents set up their own myspace so that they can comment just enough for their child to know that they are there. Most youth ministers and youth pastors I know have a myspace account so that they can minister where the kids are. I personally think it is important that they do because that is where kids communicate and live. Sometimes I’ve thought about going on there to communicate with the kids but am personally worried about being misunderstood. More to think on!

Check out this blog entry for a neat example of a group of teachers using blogging to monitor and assess, as well as support!, their maths classes.
cool cat teacher blog

this quote is interesting:

“….in 1983 Richard E. Clark published his landmark review and analysis of the influence of media [read technology!] in learning up to that date in an article entitled, ???Reconsidering Research on Learning from Media.??? In that article, he stated his findings that media “??are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in our nutrition.”

Those were inflammatory words to instructional technology advocates then and still are now. Much discussion was provoked in a series of discussion panels held at academic gatherings and articles published in academic journals. However, the findings have not been effectively refuted to this day.”

source

so it is all about effective teaching then …. ??

I have just been listening to a interesting podcast from the NECC conference about securing wireless networks. Sad but true!!
This stuff is for your tecs mainly …..

The key messages:
1. Use WEP if nothing else - knowing it is VERY easy to hack, but …… NEVER have an open network!!!
2. WPA encryption is much more secure, especially if you use a good password (long and using symbols and/or numbers). WPA is currently deemed unhackable so use it if you have it as a option.
3. Firmware - make sure that the firmware on your wireless points is up-to-date. Most vendors issue updates at least every 6 months or so.
4. Use MAC filtering - allows only specific laptops (or whatever) to access the wireless data point.
5. Turn off SSID (this is the ’stuff’ that broadcasts the name of your network and shows people it is there)
6. Have policies in place - who has access, how you manage ‘guests’, what you do if your network is hacked, etc.
7. Change default settings - passwords and id’s are often defaults, leaving you potentially very vulnerable. He gave the example of Linksys routers who have the password of …. you guessed it …. linksys.

Bandwidth Issues:
* Wireless DOES slow down bandwidth significantly. Wireless is about 25% the speed of a wired connection!
* Downloading files, viewing streamed video, etc are not ideal over wireless.
* Have different wireless points on different channels because they do interfere with each other. Use channels 1, 6, and 11 together if they overlap. (1,4,8,11 if you need to)
* control subnets so people can move between access points - stops people from loosing connections.

http://www.speakwisdom.com/ - is the website of the guy who did this 1hr talk. You can get the podcast from there ( I have subscribed to the NECC feed in iTunes but he said it is on his site too - but I haven’t checked where) and he has resources etc as well. (podcast is 26.2mb).

This Web2.0 service allows you to do a multitude of things with images and photos - from sharing, to adding captions and speech bubbles, to collaborative work, to making slideshows, the list goes on. You can even add you voice as a commentary.
Have a look - lots of classroom applications ….
http://www.bubbleshare.com/upload/mmflash