Soft Crack

Tech Talk 4 Teachers It’s Monday May 31st, 2010 and welcome to episode 108 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. Today in the United States it is Memorial Day where Americans pause to recognize and honor those that have made the ultimate sacrifice in serving our country and protecting our freedom. Memorial Day also marks the beginning of summer time activities as schools are wrapping up the school year. Many schools in our local area held graduation ceremonies this past weekend and have dismissed students for the summer. Right Click Here to Download MP3 (9 minutes 20 seconds) Today is also Quit Facebook Day where some users of the Facebook service have pledged to delete their Facebook accounts today to protest privacy concerns and other recent changes of policies at Facebook. We will see how many actually follow-through and delete their Facebook account after today. I have provided a link in the show notes to the Quit Facebook Day website and as of the time of this posting only 31,99...

Tech Talk 4 Teachers In this episode the month of April has witnessed some huge announcements that will directly impact Internet users. Apple releases the iPad, Facebook hosts the F8 Conference and Microsoft enters the cloud with docs.com The ITC serves over 12,000 visitors for the month of April! Right Click Here to Download MP3 (5 minutes 25 seconds) Facebook Privacy Changes http://www.macworld.com/article/150822/2010/04/facebook_privacy.html?lsrc=nl_mwweek_h_crawl Facebooks Ambition http://scobleizer.com/2010/04/22/facebook-ambition/ Docs.com http://docs.com Technology Pick of the Week My technology pick of the week this week is a blog posting from Kapp Notes blog on interesting Random Web 2.0 Statistics Kapp Notes More Random Web 2.0 Statistics http://karlkapp.blogspot.com/2010/04/more-random-web-20-statistics.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter Who owns the most servers? http://geekpedia.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/googles-1-million-servers/ Episode 107 – TechTalk4Tea...

Tech Talk 4 Teachers In this episode we speak with Terry Hyder who is retiring from 14 years of service to the Instructional Technology Center. Terry discusses some of the changes that have occurred over the past few years. Happy Retirement Terry!!! Right Click Here to Download MP3 (8 minutes 38 seconds) Technology Pick of the Week My technology pick of the week this week is a word cloud service called ABCya, a link is available in the show notes. ABCya Word Clouds http://abcya.com/word_clouds.htm ABCya is a lot like Wordle, a previous TechTalk4Teachers pick of the week, in that you can copy and paste text into a text box and then have it converted into a word cloud. One nice feature is the ability to right-click on a word and then delete the word if you do not want to have that particular word in your word cloud. That wraps it up for episode 106 of TechTalk4Teachers. Show notes for this episode and archived episodes are available on the web at the EIU Instructional Technology Center ...

Welcome to Episode 105 of TechTalk4Teachers, I'm Tom Grissom. In this episode I share some of the research findings regarding a college-level student technology use survey. Right Click Here to Download MP3 (7 minutes 30 seconds) Technology Pick of the Week My technology pick of the week this week is a visual presentation tool called Prezi, a link is available in the show notes. Prezi http://prezi.com I have also included a link to my first Prezi with information about some of the research findings I shared earlier in this podcast in a visual form. Be sure to check it out at: Student Technology Use (College-Level) Prezi Presentation http://prezi.com/hmqyr-j_zju3/ That wraps it up for episode 105 of TechTalk4Teachers. Show notes for this episode and archived episodes are available on the web at the EIU Instructional Technology Center website at http://www.eiu.edu/itc To leave a comment or suggestion please send an email to techtalk@eiu.edu or leave a comment on the TechTalk4Teachers...

Welcome to Episode 105 of TechTalk4Teachers, I'm Tom Grissom. In this episode I talk with my graduate assistant, Tehseen, about her recent trip back to India. Right Click Here to Download MP3 (15 minutes 31 seconds) Tehseen discusses her experiences with technology and how it has helped her stay in contact with friends and family back home while attending school here at Eastern Illinois University. Drop us a note and tell us where you are from, you may send an email to techtalk@eiu.edu WolframAlpha Query comparing Charleston, Illinois and Mumbai, India http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+far+is+it+from+Charleston%2C+Illinois+to+Mumbai%2C+India Technology Pick of the Week My technology pick of the week this week is a report that is hot off the presses and I always assign this report to my preservice teachers as required reading. The name of this report is the Horizon Report 2010 and a link is available in the show notes. Horizon Report 2010 http://www.nmc.org/publications/2010...

It’s Friday December 18th, 2009 and welcome to episode 103 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom and I’m Judy Barford. That’s right we have a guest in the studio, welcome Judy. Judy Barford discusses the value of project-based learning and shares the lessons learned from Project WOW that she has led over the past 12 years here at Eastern Illinois University in partnership with 3rd grade classes at the Carl Sandburg School in Charleston, Illinois. Right Click Here to Download MP3 (26 minutes 14 seconds) Be sure to listen to this weeks podcast as Project WOW is one of the most effective learning environments developed with Carl Sandburg 3rd grade teachers and students, EIU pre-service teachers and Mrs. Barford that incorporates theory-based research into practical learning experiences for all involved. Project WOW National Parks Website: Be sure to checkout the dozen projects about our National Parks created by Project WOW 3rd graders. http://www.eiu.edu/~wow/classes/fa09/ Technology Pi...

It’s Friday November 13th, 2009 and welcome to episode 102 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. This week we have a special guest, Dr. James Harden, talks about the recent Diversity Conference held here at Eastern Illinois University. Right Click Here to Download MP3 (19 minutes 35 seconds) In the world of ed tech this week Amazon released the Kindle for the PC Beta ebook software. I have downloaded and installed Kindle for PC on a laptop computer. The whole process took less than two minutes and once I logged in to my Amazon account I was able to see all the books I had purchased in the Archive section of the software and was able to download them locally to the laptop. The Kindle for the PC interface is very simple and clean. This is beta software so there will be additional changes in the future but it is currently very functional and gives me another option of reading previously purchased content. I really do believe this event is a tipping point for ebook readers because now an...

It’s Friday, October 30th, 2009 and welcome to episode 101 of TechTalk4Teachers! In this episode: Podcasting with 3rd Graders, an interview with Mrs. Judy Barford, Early Childhood, Elementary, and Middle Level Education Department at Eastern Illinois University Right Click Here to Download MP3 Show notes for Episode 101: In this episode: Podcasting with 3rd Graders, an interview with Mrs. Judy Barford, Early Childhood, Elementary, and Middle Level Education Department at Eastern Illinois University Project WOW http://www.eiu.edu/~wow/ Technology Pick of the Week My Technology Pick of the Week this week is the Audacity software for recording and editing podcasts and other audio files. Below are some links to get you started quickly with podcasting using the FREE Audacity software. Audacity Software Download Site (Source Forge) http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/ LAME MP3 Encoder - (required to save files to the MP3 format) http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&it...

It’s Friday, October 30th, 2009 and welcome to episode 101 of TechTalk4Teachers! In this episode: Podcasting with 3rd Graders, an interview with Mrs. Judy Barford, Early Childhood, Elementary, and Middle Level Education Department at Eastern Illinois University Right Click Here to Download MP3 Show notes for Episode 100: Leo LaPorte’s Comment – Podcasting is Dead http://onlinedesignbureau.com/blog/116-social-media-marketing/498-leo-laporte-declares-podcasting-dead You can fast forward in the video embedded at this website to the 16 minute and 30 second mark to go directly to the “Podcasting is Dead” comments Leo made at the Online Media Association conference on October 4, 2009. No More Podcast in The New Media Expo – 2007 Podcasting is Dead Comment http://mwgblog.com/archives/2007/10/01/no-more-podcast-in-the-new-media-expo/ Also in this episode are the comments from three grad students regarding a recent podcasting assignment where the students gave their thoughts about listening t...

Right Click Here to Download MP3 It’s Friday, September 25th, 2009 and welcome to episode 99 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. We have finally made it to 99 episodes and with only one more show go to reach triple digits. Reaching 100 shows was one my goals when I first started this podcast and if feels good to be so close. Back in the day when podcasting was THE “hot topic” for educators it was rare for a podcast series to last 20 episodes, many shows started and then quickly “podfaded” as time went on. Podcasting has succumbed to the cycle of technological innovation from being the next big thing to just another tool in the quiver of learning technologies available for teachers and students. It remains however an important tool that has much potential for teachers and students as an instructional tool and to also share their stories with the world. Reaching 99 episodes of course could not have happened without your support and I would like to thank each and everyone of you wh...

Right Click Here to Download MP3 It’s Sunday, September 20th, 2009 and welcome to episode 98 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. This past week was our annual technology fair here at EIU and the Instructional Technology Center had a booth at this years event to share some of the many innovations that we have been working on in the College of Education and Professional Studies. There was a lot of interest in our netbook project and also in what we call our eeeasaurus classroom presentation system. The netbook project is going very well in our college and we shared what we have been doing with these very affordable alternatives to traditional laptops. Netbooks are miniature laptops that typically cost between three and four-hundred dollars that offer a viable solution for use by our students in the classroom when lessons require technology integration. Last year we needed to replace one of our mobile laptop carts and after much research and testing we elected to replace them with a ...

It’s Friday, September 11th, 2009 and welcome to episode 97 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. On the last episode of TechTalk4Teachers I discussed how we are increasingly seeing stories in the news related to the warning signs regarding Web 2.0 services. Over the past couple of weeks there have been a couple more high-profile cases that give some credence to the dangers of relying solely upon Web 2.0 services in the cloud. To listen click on the Play button > Download MP3 Cloud computing is the general term used where companies host their services on servers connected to the Internet and customers use the Internet to gain access to them. Many Web 2.0 services are free and therefore appeal to educators. As long as the servers are in good working condition and as long as customers have a good connection to the Internet everything works fine. The problems typically come when you do not have access to the Internet and therefore cannot use any Web 2.0 service. Another common proble...

It’s Friday, August 28th, 2009 and welcome to episode 96 of TechTalk4Teachers, I’m Tom Grissom. It is now officially the first week of fall semester classes and we have met all the deadlines for having the technology infrastructure in place for a successful start to the school year. This summer has been particularly busy with a large number of new faculty and staff computers as well as the new netbook project we are implementing this fall. To listen click on the Play button > Download MP3 It is always interesting getting ready for the first day of school as there is literally a tidal wave of faculty, staff, and students that show up all at once ready to hit the ground running. We survived the first week of school and can breathe a sigh of relief as all the hard work over the summer has paid off with a smooth launch to the school year. We are still in orientation mode as there have been many meetings this week and I will be meeting with several departments to give updates and provid...