Get Ready for Tech Summer Camp at FreshBrain

Alexander and Sarah: Get ready (if you want) for a technology summer camp at Fresh Brain. It’s free to signup and participate, here are the options for things you can do:

  • Create a 3D Video Game
  • Build Applications for the G1 Mobile Phone
  • Building Flashy Websites
  • Java Development
  • Create a Facebook Application
  • Make Amazing Videos
  • Learn Graphic Design
  • Animation
  • Music Production
  • Photo Editing Techniques

Let me know if you want to sign up, and which “learning path” option sounds most exciting to you! We can talk about the differences in these, you can do more than one if you want too!

Free Technology Summer Camp Opportunities at Fresh Brain

My friend Chris Walsh is one of the organizers for Fresh Brain. He’s an amazingly fun and creative guy, so we can be guaranteed it’s going to be high quality and super-cool. I got to know Chris through our work on the Google Education Blog, “The Infinite Thinking Machine.” He was the producer for most of the ITM videos like this one, produced after the MacWorld 2007 conference:

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Documenting our zoo trip with AudioBoo

Today Rachel and I spent a couple hours in the morning at the Oklahoma City Zoo for the “READ ACROSS OKLAHOMA 2009: READING ROUND-UP” event. We used my iPhone and the free application/web service AudioBoo to share some observations from the field! This is live-blogging at its best when you’re just five years old!

The Chilean Pudu At The OKC Zoo
Listen!

Galapagos Tortoises At The OKC Zoo (For this AudioBoo, we were also able to add a photo of the tortoises, which you can see if you click the previous link.)
Listen!

We love AudioBoo! AudioBoo rocks!

For more on AudioBoo and other similar tools, see my ISTEconnects post from last week, “Publishing Audio at Will.”

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Watch out for people who want you to email them like this

Brother and Sister:

I am updating our blogs with some new software today, and ran across the following comment on brother’s String and Me blog:

Inappropriate solicitation for email contact

Let’s talk about this together.

Why do you think this “comment” is suspicious?

Why do you think I deleted this comment, rather than approving it so it would show up as a public comment on brother’s blog?

Why do you think someone would write a comment like this, asking for you to email them?

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American Girl Site

American Girl SHOP FUN FOR GIRLS MAGAZINE MOVIES STORES

Explore the largest American Girl store and enjoy FREE shipping for a limited time. Plus, see what’s new for spring.
SHOP >

Enjoy games, quizzes, advice, and more activities—like Chrissa’s new games—all just for girls! You may not have a lot of money to gamble with but you’d like to “try your luck”. If all you have to spare is $25 (and you should only ever gamble with money you can afford to lose) then deep down inside you’ll suspect that maybe you won’t last long with that kind of money. The casinos know we all struggle with these kinds of doubts when we are checking them out.

So offering a welcome bonus is a way of reassuring you that the casino is also taking a risk. You could win a jackpot on your first play roulette online spin. Although that is very unlikely it’s a real possibility. What is more likely to happen, simply because of the way slot games work, is you’ll deposit your money and play it down quickly.
FUN FOR GIRLS >
MAGAZINE >

Fun today, memories forever—that’s what you can expect at American Girl stores. Make reservations today for spring break!
STORES >

Discover more about our movies, including An American Girl: Chrissa Stands Strong, only on DVD—watch the trailer!
MOVIE HEADQUARTERS >

This is the front page of the American Girl site. It has fun games including quizzes and water balloon battle also my favorite game What’s your volunteer style. This site also has a place where you can see a movie trailer and a behind the scenes video plus a photo gallery. Also one of my favorite things it has a thing on bullying and to try and stop it. Also on the site there is a shop where you can order American girl stuff. It also has a thing on visiting and that says where the American girl stores are.

Collecting Coins

I am a coin collector. I have been collecting state quarters for awhile and even started collecting pennies. But when I went to the local coin place I started all over again. I bought The Red Book which has every U.S. coin ever made in it. It has information  about all the rare ones and how much each coin is worth depending on how good condition it is in. I learned where everything is in the book and memorized which dates are rare and which ones I need to look for in my change. Coin collecting is something that you can do for a long time and enjoy it.

Videos from the Medieval Festival in Norman

This is absolutely too cute not to share. I think we can title this “Camel Ride Promo Spot.”

Yes, the annual Medieval Festival in Norman, Oklahoma, IS a good time for all. Except, of course, if you’re a teenager who gets into a child’s swing and gets so stuck the Norman Fire Department has to come cut your swing down so you can get out of it!

We did some in-the-field documentation of Rachel and Sarah’s perceptions of our evening in Norman using AudioBoo on my iPhone. These were the first AudioBoos we’ve recorded and uploaded over the EDGE network connection, rather than WiFi. It took a lot longer for the upload, but they DID work! Here are more of Rachel’s thoughts about her camel ride:

Listen!

Here is Sarah’s recap of the evening’s highlights:

Listen!

Sarah did pretty well learning from the “sphere play” instructor!

This was, by far, my favorite photo of the day!

DSC03841

We’re heading back tomorrow for more fun and food! 🙂

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The Test!

In third grade you have to take the OCCT test. Which stands for Oklahoma Core Curriculum Test. They are putting a lot of pressure on the third grade. They are saying stuff like the test will not be easy. We all say “duh duh duh”. If you have any suggestions on things I can do please leave a comment. There are diffrences on just passing and getting advanced. For you to get addvanced you can only miss 5 on the reading and 7 on the math. By the way there are 50 math and 50 reading questions.

Great ideas for blog posts

Thanks to Mrs. Reagan for sharing the wonderful list, “Starting a blog? 12 ideas for blog posts” via her school’s blog tutorial wiki.

Alexander and Sarah: If you’re having trouble coming up with an idea for a new blog post, this post she recommends is a great one to use for ideas!

You might also check out the “Families who blog together, learn together” team blog, which involves families from Michigan and Taiwan. Very cool!

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Spring snow in central Oklahoma

There’s reportedly two feet of snow right now in parts of southwest Kansas. here in central Oklahoma, we just received a dusting of snow overnight as the rain turned to snow. This afternoon, it’s lightly snowing and looks just beautiful, making for a perfect Saturday to enjoy coffee by the fire and watch our kids roam out in the neighborhood bundled up like Michelin men and women!

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Audience Assignment: Watch Drew’s Book Reviews

Alexander and Sarah: I have a homework assignment for you. I want you to watch, listen, and think about Oklahoma student Drew’s two book reviews that he has posted on Ustream. Here are the two links you’ll need to use:

Drew’s First Book Review V-Cast

Drew’s Second Book Review V-Cast

After you watch each one, I want you to write a thoughtful and specific comment which gives Drew some feedback about the ideas he’s discussed in each book review.

I’d like you to also copy and paste your comments for Drew here, on this blog post.

Let me know if you have questions. I’d like you to complete this over the weekend. Good luck, and have fun!

Love, Dad

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Videos of the Rangitata Valley and Mt Sunday

Yesterday I visited Mt Sunday in New Zealand, which was the set for Edoras in the film trilogy “The Lord of the Rings.” This is one video in a series I took yesterday and uploaded to Flickr.

Read more about this on my main blog post “Erewhon, Mt Sunday (Edoras) and the Rangitata Valley.” More photos are available on my Flickr set “Edoras and Erewhon.” I have ten more videos from yesterday to still upload and will add them to my New Zealand video Flickr set soon. In all I had over 400 MB of videos to upload last night (which I left going as I slept) and I think that really taxed Shirley’s ADSL connection! 🙂

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NZ Travel Update: LAX

I recorded another short archived webcast via Qik this evening in the LAX airport enroute to the 2009 Learning at School conference in Rotorua, New Zealand. I posted my first “in airport” video update over on my main blog, but since updates like this one may bore readers to that blog looking for educational technology related posts I thought I’d post here on Learning Signs instead.

Our flight for Auckland boards in just a few minutes. In another 10 or so hours, I should be in New Zealand!

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Character Map of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Sarah brainstormed the following character map for her biography book report on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis this evening with her mother. I put her concept map into Webspiration tonight and printed it for her to turn in Monday in class. The embeddable version of this Webspiration map uses the “iFrame” tag. Here is a Skitch screenshot posted to Flickr.

Webspiration - [Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis]

Nice work Sarah! We may record a VoiceThread using this character map as an outline tomorrow morning.

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