Here’s a new tool for opening those hard-to-open plastic retail packages that so many consumer electronic gadgets come in.

Best wishes to you and your family for a happy holidays and a wonderful new year!

If you haven’t heard, we are moving!

As of Jan. 1, 2009, our new contact information will be:

K12 Handhelds
8627 E. Sunrise Road
Portal, AZ 85632

Phone: 520-558-0180
Toll free: 800-679-2226 (same as previously)
Fax: 520-558-0181

You can still reach us on the web at www.k12handhelds.com or by email at
info@k12handhelds.com.

I have finally switched over my last major blog from Blogger to WordPress. (Thanks, Brad.) If you subscribe via an RSS feed, I am hoping you won’t see a disruption, but if so, we apologize.

For those of you unfamiliar with WordPress, it is a great blogging tool that is free and open source. You can have WordPress host your blog for you or you can host it yourself. It is also a great tool for hosting a podcast.

I think that WordPress is superior to Blogger for many reasons, but here are my top 5:

1. It is free AND open.
2. You own and control your own data.
3. You can host it yourself (and if you’re doing blogging with teachers or students, check out the MU version).
4. It is well-supported.
5. You can do a lot of customization, including loading various themes, creating web pages (in addition to blog posts), and even modifying the code yourself if you’re inclined.

(And one more….It isn’t blocked by school filters.)

I’m starting a new series of mini-movies on tips for using the eeePC mini-laptops. Here’s the first one. Let me know what ideas you have for others that might be helpful.

Pure Digital Technologies just announced a new video camera, the Mino HD. The resolution is 1280 x 720, and the price is just $229.

Based on the performance of the other Flip cameras, this one should be great. (I’m making my holiday gift list.:)

By the way, I’m facilitating the workshop “Become a Mini-Movie Producer ** CAMERA INCLUDED” (which includes the Flip Ultra) at NCETC in Greensboro, NC on Dec. 1 and at NCCE in Portland, OR on Feb. 17 and 18. I’d love to see you at either of these conferences or at your school or district.

After writing earlier this week (and thinking a lot about this over the last year) about teaching kids to learn, I’m thinking now about how we provide professional development to teachers and wondering if the whole approach is flawed.

There is so much emphasis on the importance of professional development (and this is how I make my own living). Most of that time is spent teaching discrete applications (e.g. Google Docs) or at best, integration strategies using general types of tools (e.g. using wikis for collaborative analysis). Some of what is taught sticks and makes it into the classroom; most probably doesn’t.

In a typical group of 20 or so teachers, there are usually one or two who grok technology as a tool for learning. More importantly, those same teachers seem to take control of their own learning and figure out what they need to know to use the tools. Most would probably do this with or without formal professional development (though they might benefit from some quicker, big picture exposure to different ideas or more in-depth in-classroom mentoring). I don’t necessarily find these teachers to be more technically adept than others; they just take the initiative to figure it out.

The majority of teachers though can’t or don’t embrace technology. They don’t have time. They don’t use technology tools in their own personal lives. They don’t see the benefits to students. They have anxiety. They don’t see it as a part of their job as educators. They can’t look at a new tool and just “figure it out.” With all those barriers, their already limited time is spent on other things.

So we talk about teaching kids 21st century skills focused on learning to learn, and yet we don’t apply this to our own learning.

Maybe we should throw out the existing PD model and start over. (I know there are a million reasons this would be difficult to implement, but I’ll save those for another post.) What do you think?

Yesterday, I wrote a post about thinking about the right tool for the job. I wrote it because after working with teachers on a variety of tools like wikis, blogs, document sharing, etc., I am often asked “How do I know which one to use?”

The real answer is not a formulaic pros-and-cons chart, but a deeper understanding of the tools and what they do. Think about other tools we use. When you’re getting ready to write something, you inherently know whether the best tool is a pencil, a cheap stick pen, a fancy fountain pen, or a word processor. Why? Because you’ve used these tools all your life, and you really understand at a deep level which is best for what kind of job.

The conclusion I keep coming to is that we have to use these tools ourselves, both for professional and personal use, to gain a deep appreciation for how they can best be used.

In having these conversations with folks, I often conclude by saying that if we could get kids to grok the tools to the point that they could choose the best tool for the job, then we’d really be doing our job as educators.

I feel this way not only about tech tools, but about other tools as well. I do a lot of work with writing and different tools for prewriting and writing based of the form, genre, and audience of the piece of writing. Often, though, kids are unable to decide for themselves what tool (or approach) will work best for the task at hand. They rely instead on the teacher telling them what tool to use (or what genre or tone to adopt) or failing that, they use whatever tool or format was last assigned in class.

So I’m thinking about all this in the context of teaching real 21st Century skills and then I read Vicki Davis’s post on Google docs this morning. In it, she says:

“When do my students and I wiki and when do we Google Doc?
When we want to collaborate and edit, we use the wiki. But, when we’re under a tight deadline and need to “crank out a document” or “hash things out quickly” we move over to Google Docs. It just makes sense.

But then again, when we do projects, I don’t really TELL students which tool to use. If it is a project, they are to pull from all of their previous tools or find new ones. We focus on getting the project done, not on the tool used.”

That gets right to the heart of it. This line of thinking also implies some potentially uncomfortable things to consider:

• Everyone doesn’t have to use the same tool for the same task. (differentiation; choice)
• The teacher doesn’t have to have mastered (or even be knowledgeable) about all the tools students choose to use.
• We probably need to rethink how and what we are teaching. Knowing how to evaluate and choose the best tool for a job, being able to learn new tools as they go (without pedantic step-by-step instruction), and learning how to learn independently are skills that will bring students future success.

There are so many great technology tools…wikis, blogs, Google docs, podcasts, Moodle sites, VoiceThread, and on and on. Sometimes it’s difficult to know which tool to use for a given project or activity.

The best way to approach this problem is to always start with the question “What are the instructional goals?” and then to think about how to accomplish those goals. Sometimes the answer will be technology; other times it may be paper-and-pencil, f2f group discussion, or something else.

Here is a grid that outlines the main differences between things like wikis, blogs, document sharing, etc. with some thoughts on which are best suited to different classroom activities.

If you have your own tips to share about how you choose which tool to use for different activities, post your thoughts here to share with others.

I’m still working on some kind of grid of all the new low-cost mini-laptops coming out, but I have to say that it’s a little difficult to keep up!

In particular, Asus seems to be coming out with new models all the time. Many are listed on their web site, though many don’t seem to be shipping yet, and a few are already being discontinued. Here are a few highlights of what I see in their product line:

* The 7″ models appear to be being phased out in favor of the new 9″ and 10″ models. (A possible exception to this is the 7″ 701SD.)
* The low end pricing seems to be hovering a little under $349, while the upper end models are going as high as $699. (There are rumors of a new $249 device in 2009.)
* Some new longer life batteries are coming out, addressing one of the criticisms of this device.

As it relates to school purchases, I worry about how much this product line is changing. It is difficult to start a one-to-one project with one model and then have to change models repeatedly as the program grows. On the other hand, this is the nature of mobile technology (especially when it’s geared toward the consumer market, which is almost always). More features, lower costs, more change … it’s a blessing and a curse.

It is will be interesting to see how stable Dell’s Inspiron Mini line is. (They don’t even seem to be shipping yet. Anyone used one?) Right now, the limited number of options and the general stability of Dell’s product line seems pretty appealing.