Life 40 Years From Now

Kurt Dowdle tipped me off to this fascinating article from Mechanics Illustrated magazine in 1968. It predicts what life will be like in 40 years. Read it and see if it accurately describes what your life is like now. This should give anyone pause who is making predictions today on how technology is going to alter our lives in the future.

Information Revolution

Another great video from Mike Wesch of Kansas State University. This one is on the nature of information in a digital age. Enjoy!

Artificial Intelligence in Second Life

There is a very interesting article about an avatar in Second Life that is not controlled by a human, but by software (thanks to Ted Leath for sending it to me). As the article points out, the future possibilities for this kind of system are endless - I think particularly in education.

Keep an Eye on This

Robert Scoble is a technology blogger who I read on a regular basis. He wrote a post about some new technology that Microsoft previewed recently that actually made him cry. It's called World Wide Telescope and it sounds very exciting. It appears to be similar to Google Earth Sky View, but sounds like it is even better. This could be a great tool for teaching science and astronomy classes, and hopefully they'll make it available to the public soon. You can read more about it on their web site.

Expressing Ideas Through Images

Christian Long, on his think:lab blog, directed me to see an amazing set of images produced by a photographer/artist named Chris Jordan. He transforms statistics into stunning images that are both beautiful and disturbing at the same time. He makes some fairly powerful statements about our consumer culture.

Check out Christian's article and then be sure and click on the link to the images themselves. It's worth your time.

ACCCA Conference

Today I spoke at the ACCCA conference on the iPod Generation. My energy level was pretty low since I just got back from Mexico yesterday (see post below), but it was a very engaged audience so I got motivated pretty quickly and we had a great conversation. There were some really good questions and one person talked about how in her classes she has her students listen to her lectures prior to her class and then she uses all the class time for interactive activities. What an awesome idea! (If you are that person, please email me because I would love to ask you some more questions).

Mexico 2008

Yesterday I returned from our youth group's annual house building trip to Mexico. I have written on this topic the last few years, so I won't go into all of the details (in the hopes that you will search the archives and read more). This year it was even more special because my son is now in high school so I had both my kids with me for the first time.

As in the past, it was an amazing and inspiring experience. I can't adequately describe how fulfilling it is to see young people so committed to changing the lives of people they have never met, and will never see again. They experienced 6 days of camping with no hot water, electricity, flush toilets or showers and experienced frigid temperatures at night. On top of that, they had to rise shortly after dawn, and work until dark to build a house in 4 days using only hand tools.

What an amazing group of young people! I'm honored to be associated with them.

India

I returned two weeks ago from one of the most fascinating places I have ever visited. I spent a week in India along with three people from Neudesic - the company we are partnering with to create our new student system. Neudesic has an India branch and they are going to start developing parts of our new system. I was asked to join a team going there to bring the India team up to speed on the project. I jumped at the chance and it was a fascinating week.

India is such a study in contrasts. It has an intriguing mix of cultures - Hindu and Muslim, poor and rich, eastern and western. We drove every day from our nice hotel to a brand new office building, yet in-between we saw temporary shacks housing construction workers and cows wandering the streets. We spent most of our time in Hyderabad where the Neudesic India office is located, and it is a city that is rapidly growing. There was a high level of energy and everyone seemed to be on the move. Words cannot adequately describe the traffic and what it's like to ride in it. We had a local driver because driving in India is not for the faint of heart!

In the picture you can see the Neudesic India/SOCCCD team. I was really impressed with them and I look forward to seeing them contribute high quality work to our project.

Lifehacker on Jott

Yesterday in my faculty in-service sessions I demonstrated a great service called Jott. Lifehacker has an article today that provides a really nice overview of Jott.

I discovered by reading this article, and checking the Jott web site, that this service uses a combination of software and humans to transcribe voice messages into text. I didn't know that any human intervention was involved. It does explain how amazingly accurate it is, but also makes me think back to some of the messages I have sent myself while testing it. Oops! I think I'll be a little more careful from now on. It is possible to set your account settings so no humans are involved. I may try that and see if the performance or accuracy changes.

In any case, it's a great service and I use it all the time when I think of something I need to remember and I'm not in a place where I can record it in my to-do list.

Using Technology to Get Things Done

Today I'm doing a faculty in-service at each of our colleges on the Getting Things Done (GTD) productivity system by David Allen. I'm going to talk a little bit about the GTD principles and then demonstrate some technology tools that can be use to get yourself more organized and keep email from dominating your life. Links to all of the systems I mention are in the right column on this blog under "GTD Links".

A Great Deal

Everything I know about the Internet, I must now admit, is due to Gabe and Max. Enjoy.

It's a Wonderful Internet

Check out this clever site that illustrates how much life has changed with the Internet:

http://www.itsawonderfulinternet.com

CCCSFAAA Conference

I spoke today at the CCCSFAAA Conference in San Francisco on the topic of Multi-Generational Learning. It was a great audience - very attentive, interested and engaged. If you are reading this blog because you were there and I (once again) shamelessly plugged it to artificially inflate my pathetic hit count - welcome! The links I mentioned are in the right column under the header "iPod Generation Links". You can find an older version of my slides by clicking on "Recent Presentations" in the "Other Links" section. I'll post my latest set of slides soon.

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Ralph Gaston

I’m an orphan now. My Dad passed away on November 8th. It was not entirely unexpected - he was 84 and in declining health, but it was, and still is, a major blow to me. I’ve wanted to write about him for over a week, but am only now able to do so.

My Dad never did anything to make himself famous. He didn’t run for public office or break any world records or record music or act in movies. He was a pharmaceutical salesman. He was as solid as a rock. He worked for the same company for over 30 years, lived in the house I grew up in for 34 years and was married to my Mom for 51 years until her death in January 2002. He was a World War II veteran. He loved to hike and backpack and fish in the Sierras. He had a jeep that he used to take us on adventures out in the desert. He had a great sense of humor and loved to laugh and to make others laugh.

My Dad loved the holidays – Christmas most of all. Our house was always the most decorated one on the street with a life size nativity scene and Santa and elves off to the side. All of them lit up by floodlights. He loved “A Christmas Carol” and when my brothers and I were little we would turn out all the lights in the house except the ones on the Christmas tree. We would lay on the floor and fall asleep to his deep voice reading us that classic tale.

My Dad was a family man. We never once doubted that we were the most important part of his life. He would be the first to tell you his greatest accomplishment was raising his four boys. We were his life and his career never came before us.

I remember my Dad as a somewhat stoic Mid-Westerner - he wasn’t one to wear his emotions on his sleeve. I saw a deeper side of him later in life as we grew closer and as he came to need us for help and assistance, but it turns out that he was a far more emotional man than I ever knew. My brother Mike was going through some boxes to find pictures for his memorial service and came across a small notebook labeled “Tender Moments”. Today we would call it a journal. My Dad recorded times in his life that were particularly poignant, virtually all of them having to do with my brothers and me. It turns out that my Dad was a man of deep emotion and some of his writings border on poetry. It was a wonderful gift to find and it’s difficult to read without getting choked up.

My brother Mike read one of the notations at my Dad’s memorial service. It noted that my Mom asked my two older brothers what they would remember about their Dad if he died. Steve responded quickly, “Well, that he loved us”. My Dad wrote the following over 40 years ago, “How else could I possibly ask to be remembered by my sons”.

Rest in peace, Dad. It is exactly how we remember you.

Modern Education

Another great video that presents the challenges facing us in education - and done in a very compelling style. Enjoy.

RSM/Coto Rotary

This morning I gave my iPod Generation presentation to the Rancho Santa Margarita/Coto de Caza Rotary Club. It was really interesting to me to hear their reaction to it since I primarily give this presentation to educators. One audience member was a part-time professor, but the rest worked in the private sector yet they face all of the same challenges we do in education. We want to make our message relevant to a generation of students who think differently than we do.

I appreciated the chance to speak to a different group of people (and appreciated the great breakfast also).

Virtual World Interoperability

More interesting news about virtual worlds in this CNET article. A very impressive group of companies are meeting and discussing the ability to transfer identities from one virtual world to another. This could be a very interesting development, particularly for students. It could wind up being similar in concept to an ePortfolio. A student's virtual identity could transfer across virtual worlds used by different educational institutions.

Virtual Worlds via Google

Some very exciting news from an article on CNET today. Google is working with a virtual world developer called Multiverse Network to integrate Google tools with their environment. People will be able to use the Sketchup 3D modeling tool and imagery from Google Earth when they create locations in the Multiverse virtual world.

This could open up all kinds of great opportunities for educators. There is a very steep learning curve to create spaces in areas like Second Life. If Google can put some of their engineering expertise into the creation of tools that are easy to use then it will lower the threshold considerably and open virtual worlds to a much larger group of educators. Unleashing the creativity of teachers into amazing new technology like virtual worlds has enormous potential.

Did You Know 2.0

Great video - a sequel to the original "Did You Know" video and well worth watching.