The time-lapse video above gives some indication of the frenetic pace I’ve been hitting this week. Several months ago I agree to once again do my Google Earth workshops for the SCETV Technology Conference. Had I known how hectic these past two weeks were going to be even without the conference, I might have reconsidered. However, despite PASS testing, 135th day counts, and other pressing needs in Spartanburg Five, I headed on down for the Wednesday – Friday sessions.

As I had done last year, I’m presenting two different sessions. The first is a basic introduction to Google Earth. The teachers get some time just to become familiar with the program’s controls and navigation, and I give them some suggestions for using it in their classrooms. The second session is more in-depth. I cover ways that Google Earth can be used to create highly interactive lessons buy using embedded media. I tend to get lots of oohs and ahs with that session because there is some really cool stuff you can do.

Wednesday we had a luncheon and were joined by several representatives from Discovery Education. Phillipe Cousteau, grandson of Jaques Cousteau, was our keynote speaker. In the evening the Discovery Educators Network (DEN) STAR members had a dinner at the SCETV studios, and we were again joined by Phillipe Cousteau. He spoke about some of his current environmental education endeavors.

(more…)

The citizens of South Carolina really have some wonderful online resources available to them.  For ten years now the State Library has made available a wealth of research and reference materials through the DISCUS project.  This is available in all schools, libraries, and colleges, and available at home if you obtain a free password from one of those sources.  Then there’s KnowItAll.org and all of the other amazing resources from SCETV.  One of the best of these is the Discovery Education video clips available from StreamlineSC.  Like DISCUS, this is available free to all schools in the state through a special licensing arrangement with Discovery.  At the SCETV conference this week I learned about a new feature that Discovery is promoting called MediaShare.  This new service looks really cool, and looks like it will be another great resource for teachers.

As the name suggests, MediaShare allows users to share files of various types – PowerPoint slide shows, Smart and Promethean files, podcasts, and video clips.  The idea is that these types of files often take up more space on servers than some districts allow, so Discovery has created this place to host the files.  MediaShare is monitored for appropriateness of content, and districts can also set approval levels for files uploaded by their users.

(more…)

This week SCETV is holding its summer technology workshops. Normally I’m so busy building new schools and putting in computers that I can’t take part in the summer workshops. This summer, however, I decided I would try to make it. I figured that during summer there would be better participation than there might during the school year.

Last spring I did three sessions each day, which meant that I had no down time nor opportunity to visit any other sessions. This time I cut one of my presentations, so I would only be doing two workshops each day – Basic Google Earth and Creating Interactive Lessons with Google Earth. I had also been asked to conduct a geocaching activity one of the afternoons. (more…)

For the past three days I’ve been in Columbia doing workshops SCETV.  As I’ve done for the past three years, I’ve offered training at various levels in Google Earth.  It was a busy three days, and I didn’t have much time to blog during that time.  Still, it was a good experience.  SCETV always puts on a good training session.

The first day I got up at 4:30 and drove on down so I would be ready for my first session at 8:30, which was an Introduction to Google Earth.  The room they had me in was absolutely fantastic – open with views out toward the Columbia skyline.  There was a central screen flanked by four large LCD TV’s, and seating was very comfortable Herman Miller Aeleron chairs.  The IFRA Newsplex is used by the USC School of Journalism for training, and it’s quite a room.

The sessions went well. As mentioned, the first one was an introduction, and the second was on creating interactive lessons with Google Earth. The third one was on geotagging, and it was held in a very dark conference room in another building. Not only were the attendees about to fall asleep, but so was I.

After the sessions on the first day I went to the Columbia Riverside Park and took lots of photos (post and photos to follow), then to Riverside New Orleans Grill for dinner, then I collapsed at the hotel.

On Wednesday I had been asked to fill in for someone who was doing a session on creating virtual field trips in Google Earth. It turns out that the person who was originally scheduled to do the workshop had downloaded one of my handouts, and was planning to use that. I tried to wing it, but I’m not so sure I did it justice. The other two workshops went very well, though.

Second day dinner was with my friend Dwight and family, then another collapse.

Day three, more of the same. For the final session on geotagging I had 13 people signed up, but only 3 showed up. We did a nice little self-guided study, and it worked out OK. They got lots of individual attention.

I’m thinking that the geotagging workshop may be a bit esoteric, and I’ll probably drop it from my repertoire. The other two got lots of positive feedback. As I had anticipated, the participants were astounded with the ability to embed multimedia components into Google Earth placemarks. There were lots of oohs and aahs.

That was followed by the long drive back up I-26, with a brief diversion to see if the Tip Top Lookout Tower was still standing, which it wasn’t.

Today I attended a workshop in Columbia on the state’s new IP video retrieval system.  Our district has been using the system for over a year now, so I was held up as an example multiple times during the workshop.  That was a bit uncomfortable, but it also meant that I didn’t get as much out of the workshop as some of the participants.

Most of the audience were “librarians”, not “media specialists”, who were approaching retirement.  The idea of video on demand seemed to be beyond them, and they were vocal about it.  Computers were just something with which they were not comfortable, so putting television on computers was the last thing they wanted.  At the very least, it needed to be very, very easy.

Which brings us to the demonstration portion of the workshop.  As part of this system each district receives a video encoder for doing live broadcasts acorss the district’s network.  The vendor demonstrated that the encoder could even be carried on field trips.  Since the encoder had a hard drive, it could capture the video camera output, then be uploaded to the video server on a laptop via FTP.

This is where I had to pose a question…

“OK, you want us to carry a camcorder, this large video encoder with a hard drive, AND a laptop to record a field trip, right?  Why don’t we just use the camcorder and encode everything when we get back?”

The presentation stalled at that point.