Zamzar is SOOOOO easy… as the image below shows

The only way I have been able to stump it so far is with a very well ‘hack-proofed’ flash file from an Australian TV station that had an interview I was wanting to copy a portion from for a workshop.
I ended up using Audiohijack to record the audio as an MP3 instead and editing in Garageband to find the bit I needed. Audiohijack is fantastic for capturing audio from lots of sources - including from within your browser, skype, etc. Basically if you can get the sound to come out of your speakers on your computer you can capture the audio. Up to 10min in the free version.

Have fun!!

I like this from the Edutopia:

An Inconvenient Truth . . . About Education
By Milton Chen

What climate change and school change share.

Watching the Oscar-winning global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, I was struck by the similarities between climate change and education change. These seemingly unrelated crises on our planet and in our schools are, in fact, connected.

Both have taken many decades to develop and, at least in the United States, both originated in an industrial economy built on manufacturing. The effects of global warming and school decline are difficult to detect year to year, but over several generations, their impacts accumulate — and are now converging to limit the future health of our economy and our society.

To reverse these declines, similar fundamental shifts in thinking and behavior will be required at the individual, institutional, and societal levels. Consuming less, recycling more, and the ethic of caring for the environment should begin with our youngest children, as modeled by their parents, teachers, and caregivers. It’s the same with literacy, curiosity, and a love of learning. Just as green technologies can make energy consumption more efficient, learning technologies can play a key role in modernizing the learning process.

Many nations are moving to combat global climate change and toward changing their own educational climate. Though we don’t have the educational equivalent of the Kyoto Protocol, the need to redesign educational systems is reaching a consensus among ministers of education around the world.

Odd, but perhaps familiar, is our own government’s lack of urgency to effect fundamental changes despite widespread recognition that we are mortgaging our future. John Gage, director of the science office at Sun Microsystems and a former member of GLEF’s National Advisory Board, has spoken with education leaders from many nations. “Other nations view spending on education as an investment,” he says. “We view it as a cost.”

Our complacency about the scale of the problem could prove costly indeed. Last week, I had a chance to hear Al Gore speak in San Francisco with John McCosker, the eminent marine biologist at the California Academy of Sciences. McCosker asked Gore how long we have to make the fundamental changes needed to reverse carbon emissions. Gore quoted some scientists’ estimates of about ten years. We may be facing the same time frame to make radical changes in our school systems. Can we afford to let today’s eight-year-olds go through ten more years of schooling without giving them the skills they need to make a life and a living in the twenty-first century?

In the same talk, Gore called for a new educational model that recognizes the unique digital era our children are growing up in and, especially, the potential of the Internet for their learning. He worried, though, that our nation seems distracted from the serious issues of our time, as citizens spend an average of four and a half hours each day watching television and being more obsessed with, as Gore puts it, “the embalming of Anna Nicole Smith.”

Gore framed our inability to base our thinking and decision making on reason and evidence, rather than power, as a key issue. When a sixth grader submitted the question “What can we do?” Gore responded that students like that child “should learn as much as you can” about environmental issues and not be deterred by adults who may be in denial.

Sir Ken Robinson, the noted arts educator and the author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative, has also connected Gore’s ideas to the future of schools. Gore and Robinson both spoke at the 2005 TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Conference, in Monterey, California, and in a marvelous presentation on valuing the arts as ways of knowing and learning, Robinson said, “Al Gore spoke the other night about ecology and the revolution that was triggered by Rachel Carson. I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity.

“Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the Earth for a particular commodity and for the future,” he added. “It won’t serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we are educating our children.”

In order to save the planet, we first need to save our children’s minds. That truth is more than inconvenient. It’s incontrovertible.

Please share your comments with me at mchen@edutopia.org.

Milton Chen is executive director of The George Lucas Educational Foundation.

The following Web sites appeared in this article:

* Sir Ken Robinson: www.sirkenrobinson.com
* TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Conference: www.ted.com
* marvelous presentation: tedtalks.podzinger.com/results.jsp?col=en-all-pod-ep&s=PZSID_videopods_videopod0_8_5_0008&sname=TED+Talks&q=robinson
* mchen@edutopia.org: maito:mchen@edutopia.org

Published: 4/18/2007

Jane has tagged me because Miguel would like to know …

List the top 5 to 10 things that you do almost every day that help you to be successful. They can be anything at all, but they have to be things that you do at least 4 or 5 times every week. Anything less than that may be a hobby that helps you out, but we are after the real day in and day out habits that help you to be successful.
Source: Around the Corner v2 - MGuhlin.net, Ed Tech Journeys’ Guest Blogger, Sylvia Martinez (GenYES Blog) writing on this meme by Thea Westra, Simply Successful Secrets

I am never sure if this sort of thing is the blogging equivalent of a chain letter or something interesting to reflect upon. I do find interesting things in what other people respond though so here goes.
What do I do to manage my day successfully? In no particular order ….

1. Laugh!
I laugh a lot. Some people find this disconcerting, but I can usually find the lighter side of most things. I have read somewhere that children laugh many, many times each day. Most adults need to re-find this skill. Life is too short to be serious all the time.
I also think that laughter is infectious and is certainly part of any place I want to work or learn in. I laugh at home a lot and rather wicked senses of humour is something both our children have inherited from their parents.

2. Having a good Diary ….
I use iCal on my laptop and have a Palm Treo 650 that I sync every couple of days with my computer. I could never remember all the things I need to be doing without this electronic support system. I also have a notebook for all the notes, ideas, etc that I need to keep. I stick in business cards, notes, and other things as well and find one spiral bound book does me a year.
I also use voice recording software on my phone to ‘jot down’ the things that flash through the grey matter (soon to be forgotten!) as I am heading to or from school in the car.

3. Listen more than I talk
Some people who know me may debate this one …. more of a goal than a strategy? (lol)
One of the things from PLOT PD that really resonates with me is the difference between listening to listen and listening to talk. I hope I am doing a lot more listening to listen ….
This is especially important for me at the moment as I am relatively new to my school and need to find out how things REALLY work. I like to ask lots of questions and probe peoples thinking ….

4. Family and Friends
… after all these people are the reason it is all worthwhile. I try hard not to make principalship a lifestyle choice and keep it as my job. But I suppose the reason any of us are good at what we do is commitment and passion for the role.
Having said that I do make sure I spend time with Jane and our children each day. They keep me grounded and Jane always is able to provide me insights or ideas about things I may be mulling over from a completely different perspective.
There is nothing better than family, good friends, good wine and good food!

5. A big whiteboard in my Office
I have to have the big picture and am a ‘model’ person. I like to figure out how the pieces look all together before I pull them apart for planning etc. I use a whiteboard in my Office to draw diagrams etc and write notes to help this.

6. Listening to music
I always have music playing in my office and use it to match what I am doing …. To keep focused, motivate, etc. My tastes are pretty eclectic so i can usually find something in the nearly 30GB I have on my laptop.

7. Connecting with people
My bloglines is my homepage on my laptop, we have a wireless network at home, Skype and iChat are login items …. there are numerous ways I connect with people virtually.
I also like to bounce ideas around with people face-to-face and value opportunities to find what others think and why about any particular issue. Collective wisdom is greater than mine alone.

So … tag - Jedd Bartlett, Derek Wenmoth, Graeme Wegner, Paul Wilkinson

It has been an interesting week or two…
I was approached by the Otago Daily Times the other day to comment on the speech made by John Key (National Party leader) recently about the need for a renewed focus on the long tail of children in our system who are failing at basic literacy skills; and how there is a need for ‘national standards’ for schools to assess and report children’s progress against.

I spent about 20minutes talking with the reporter about the things we already have in place in our schools like:
* NEMP - to assess the ‘health’ and achievement of the system as a whole
* Exemplars - how we already have a clear idea of what achievement looks like and where we can expect children to be at any given stage of their schooling.
* ASTTLE - norm referenced, and highly researched tool for comparing individuals and groups to national expectations.
* PAT’s - another valid and reliable norm referenced test series

I explained how I am not sure how adding another level of compliance is going to add anything remotely helpful to our understanding of children and their learning. In the primary system we teach, assess and report to individual needs and abilities. Sure achievement information is aggregated to give bigger pictures for many different reasons but I have a real problem with lumping children together to give pictures of ‘above’, ‘at’, and ‘below’ expectation information. What does it really tell us? What about the child who is well above but is cruising and learning nothing? What about the child who is well ‘below’ but making great progress. Is the degree of above and below-ness not important? It is important we don’t loose individual achievement when we aggregate information. Achievement with respect to so called targets is only ONE piece of the information teachers need.

I also have real concerns about setting mandated expectations of achievement that schools are required to report against (NCLB anyone?). The UK and USA education systems are currently being strangled by centrally imposed expectations of achievement and all that (can) come with them. I would hate to see us follow their lead and loose the freedom and individual creativity that is a feature of our system. Teachers and educators from these countries comment on how we are so lucky to still have the freedom to be creative and cater to individual needs as opposed to ‘teaching to the test’. This very quickly becomes the bottom line in systems dictated by achievement targets mandated by central government. It is also rather unrealistic to expect that this sort of data will not lead to league tables, or even (heaven forbid!) things like performance pay.
We have good statements of expectations at the national level already. They are there to inform our practice, not to dictate it.

The morning after the article appeared in the newspaper I had a call from Katherine Rich (National Party Education spokesperson) urging me to read John Keys full speech and correcting what she saw as misinterpretations in my understanding of their policy. We had quite a discussion about the points he raised. I reiterated to her the need to focus on the schools and children with the needs not to remediate the whole system because some are ‘not achieving’ according to particular measures.
Todays ODT also had an article from John Key himself reiterating his points.

I have just finished reading his speech again. Some interesting points and we certainly agree about expecting the best from all children, (and teachers). I do believe however that education should not be such a political football and it is sad that the focus is on the ‘failures’ …. it is great media fodder though isn’t it!

The so called ‘long tail’ has become a real political target recently. It is interesting though to note that ALL countries that speak english as their ‘educational language’ have a tail of achievement. A tail is a function of speaking english! The issue in NZ is the composition of the tail, not that we have one. This is a subtle but important distinction.

My year in the ICT PD programme showed me many instances of the tremendous skills and dedication of teachers in NZ. Our new curriculum document also focuses on the individual and is soundly based in best practice and research. The focus is on enabling children to grow in their skills AS LEARNERS. Learning is NOT all about testable outcomes. It is as much about developing attitudes and values like perseverance and creativity. How on earth do we test them? Who is going to describe what Level 2 creativity looks like …. good luck!

Lets not get sucked into teaching to what is assessed! Teaching should focus on what is IMPORTANT for learning, and for life. What you can put numbers on is NOT all that is valuable in learning!

Lets engage with this debate, be informed, and make sure the educators have more say than the political grandstanders about what is important in education. Don’t accept our children’s learning becoming a political football - John Key IS right when he says children only get one go at schooling! They deserve our best.

Your thoughts ….?….

Backups are on my mind at the moment …. my powerbook is in ‘hospital’ after having been dropped (before I received it!) and having finally found a gap in the traffic to be able to send it off to be repaired. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will be written off and be replaced with a MacBook!

So …. I have done a backup with Superdupr (which I love) on an partition on my external firewire drive and then by holding down the option key as I start another computer the drive is connected to I can choose the image to boot from. This then means I am working on another computer but it is exactly the same as my other one.
I have just found a reference to BackityMac - which sounds very cool too. It backs up all essential files but having had a crash last year with not all my stuff fully covered by my ‘backup’ I am fully convinced of the merits of a full bootable image of my HD as a backup. The thing that was missing from my ‘backup’ was my applications - and it took hours to find and download all the free applications, extensions, etc that I use and re-customise Office and so-on.

Backups are VITAL for anyone who keeps their (professional/personal) life in electronic form - as I do. It is also something I need to get sorted for the TELA laptops at school.

I like the concepts in here:

Asking the Good Questions Is Key

Dylan Wiliam Some kinds of assessment raise achievement, and some merely measure it, [my emphasis - cos I love this quote!] Dylan Wiliam told the educators at his session, titled “Classroom Assessment: Minute by Minute and Day by Day.”

The assessments that researchers have found most effective at raising achievement are those that teachers make minute by minute and day by day in the classroom and then use almost immediately to adjust their lessons. For example, teachers who walk the aisles to check on what the class needs to work on next are gathering more helpful data than they would if they used the same time to help two or three individuals with specific problems, he said. [ not sure if I agree with this - OK if you are teaching to the masses rather than individualising instruction]

Asking diagnostic questions is another way to find out what students do and don’t know. A simple technique like an exit question (a question every student answers before leaving class) can help the teacher know how many students have grasped a basic concept or skill and whether to reteach the concept the next day.

Asking every student to choose one of several answers is another way to make sure students are engaged throughout the lesson. Teachers should not allow students to choose not to participate. [me again!] Research shows that the more students think and talk in class, the more they learn. But questioning should not be scary, Wiliam reminded the group. If the student answers “I don’t know,” a good reply might be, “I know, but if you did know, what would you think?” The point is that no student should be able to “choose not to think.”

To demonstrate some of his strategies with the audience, Wiliam had the group predict which of several answers were correct and then explain why they chose the answers they did. Such reflection and analysis are part of learning, he said.

Wiliam’s final message: Classroom instruction matters most in boosting achievement, and improving questioning and feedback techniques will improve the effectiveness of teachers.

For more information about specific strategies, see Dylan Wiliam’s Web site and “Classroom Assessment: Minute by Minute, Day by Day,” an article Wiliam coauthored for the November 2005 issue of Educational Leadership.

Submitted by Marge Scherer, editor-in-chief of ASCD’s Educational Leadership magazine.

May seem basic stuff to us here in NZ in some ways but nicely put I thought.
SOURCE

We are looking for a class learning Spanish to join with for skype conferencing to put the language learning to a real use. The children who would be involved from our end would be Year 6/7/8 children (10-12yr olds) and have been learning Spanish for a year or two.
Please contact me at gregc@outram.school.nz if you are interested or know of someone we could contact.
Thanks!