Tennessee DEN

I use a del.icio.us agreggator to collect and view new hot-listed websites on my laptop’s homepage. Every once in a while, I stumble over something truly interesting. Today it was Kwout (pronounced “quote”).

Kwout is a cute little app that allows you to capture, or quote, parts of a webpage as an image map. “So what?” you say. Well, all the interactive links on the webpage are still active in the image map. Then, you can use the embed code to place the image map on your website…like the one below.

Discovery Educator Network via kwout

 It is a quick, drag-and-drop feature for Firefox (will work in IE also).  It took me about six seconds to create and embed the image map above.  I think that is pretty incredible.  What about you?  Give it a try and leave me a comment.

Elaine Plybon, blog coordinator for the Texas DEN Leadership Council, needs YOU! The Irving Independent School District in Irving, Texas, for which she works, has an annual Technology Media Fair. This year, the district has opened up several categories for online judging. The hope, above all, is that this will help keep district students excited about technology and about sharing their work with a global audience. This is where you come in. The contest is in need of judges. Anyone who has an interest in technology in education is qualified to be a judge. All the projects can be judged from now until January 7, 2008. There are six categories and levels from K through 12th grade. Anyone who chooses to judge can judge as many or as few entries as they would like. Would you consider helping with this cause? You can do so by judging, obviously, but also by sharing the word with other education professionals through your own blogs, twitters, feeds, and other social networking venues. The district would love to see judging from all over the world, so let?s get this DEN machine rolling!

To judge the projects, go to here and click on the judging link. When judging, please include your name and email address. Your email address will not be published. It will be used for security only. Please expect an email from our administrative staff confirming that the address listed next to your name is a valid email address.

Daniel Pink, bestselling author of A WHOLE NEW MIND, will describe how three powerful economic forces are putting a premium on right-brain abilities in the workforce. He?ll describe the six artistic, empathic abilities that now matter most ? and discuss how educators are beginning to surface and sharpen those abilities in students.

Daniel is a contributing editor at Wired, where he has written about topics ranging from grassroots solar power to the rise of Wikipedia to the economics of creativity. His articles on business, technology, and economic transformation have also appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and other publications.

A popular speaker, Dan lectures to corporations, associations, and universities around the world. He?s provided analysis on dozens of television and radio broadcasts -including CNBC?s ?Power Lunch,? ABC?s ?World News Tonight,? NPR?s ?Morning Edition,? and American Public Media?s ?Marketplace.? And as an independent business consultant, he?s advised start-up ventures and Fortune 100 companies on recruiting, business trends, and work practices.

RSVP at http://tinyurl.com/2y6f9c

I read recently that “silence is noise” to this generation of students. I’ve given up trying to make them be totally quiet to work in my classes. Instead, I’m trying to give them something to listen to. Because I teach in a computer lab, it is pretty easy to get music to the kids.

My first choice was Pandora. I love this site and the ease with which you can build your own playlists (radio stations). The downside is that you have no control over which song comes up next. I hesitated using it this year because they started adding ads to the site, and displaying beer ads to my middle schoolers just seemed wrong somehow.

Next, we tried Musicovery. This is a really cool site for music. It looks like an iPod player on screen. You choose from a number of genres and then choose a mood. A spiderweb of songs comes up on screen. Again, the choices are totally random, but with muiscovery you can see the songs in the playlist and choose to skip some or move in a different direction. Now the problem for my middle schoolers is that the songs are not censored, so there a lot of rap songs (and others) with explicit lyrics. I could just imagine the phone calls from parents.

Steve Dembo turned me on to 2 other sites. The first one I tried was Orb. With Orb you download a file that allows you to stream the music on your computer to the Internet. In essence, you have your playlist with you anywhere you are. You can listen to some of the music I put up (mostly Christmas music for my trial). I really like this site. You have to set up your playlists in Orb (you can’t just use the ones you set up in your media player). Again, I encountered problems. One or two people streaming from my home is not a problem. 90 students streaming at one time overloaded the weak wireless connection on my desktop and the music stopped. Back to the drawing board.

The second site Steve mentioned was FineTune. FineTune streams over the Internet. You create playlists from thousands of songs available online. You must have at least 45 songs in a playlist, and you can only have 3 songs from any single artist in that playlist. Finding music was not difficult, but narrowing my choices down to 3 per artist was frustrating. I’ve set up a few playlists for you to look at over here. I’m not sure yet how this would work in the classroom. We’ll be trying it out this week.

One last site I’ll mention here is one I think may do the trick for our situation. I’m talking about AnywhereFM. With AnywhereFM, you upload mp3 files from your computer to the web. Then, using your own files you can create playlists. It is also a social site, so you can add “friends” and their playlists to your site. The interface is extremely easy to understand. I must say, however, it took me a little bit to figure out how to put songs in a playlist. It uses a drag-and-drop feature that isn’t immediately obvious, but once you figure it out it goes without a hitch. The biggest drawback is that Windows Meda Player rips CDs to wma files. AnywhereFM only uses mp3, so some conversion is necessary. Oh yeah, you can catch my playlists over here. If you set up your own, please add me as a friend!

UPDATE (12/10/07): The Anywhere.FM site is probably my favorite of the ones listed above.  However, within 3 clicks students were able to access music that references the “N” word and a lot of 4-letter words that are just not appropriate for 6th graders.  I’m going to leave the site up, but I’ve taken the link down from my website for now. - Tim

What streaming site you do you like? Leave your ideas in our comments area.

The TN Leadership Council, and all the STAR DEN members of TN, would like to welcome our newest STAR DEN member.  Becky Leifert from Greenville, TN, has made it through the ranks to STAR status.  Congratulations Becky!

Would you like to take the next step and become a STAR DEN member? Follow this link.  It is so easy and the rewards are terrific!  If you have questions about the process, please feel free to leave a comment and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.   Don’t delay!