vdebolt, Author at Web Teacher

Useful Links: Flipped Classroom, Digital Talent, #mencallmethings, Treehouse, gamification

Progress report on my flipped classroom. Here’s what Suze is taking about:

The flipped classroom turns this model on its head; lecture materials are provided via video and other multimedia, and assigned as homework. Students complete the video lessons on their own time, at their own pace. Then, classroom time is devoted to assignments and projects, and applying the concepts learned in an open, creative environment. The teacher’s role is flipped as well, from instructor and lecturer to facilitator and coach.

What do you think about this article? Why Digital Talent Doesn’t Want to Work At Your Company from Fast Company.

Speaking out about harassment made its way to Twitter as Geek Feminism reports. Here’s the Twitter tag: #mencallmethings

Think Vitamin launched a new learning site called Treehouse. Videos, quizzes, badges and more.

The gamification of everyday life. Good explanation of the issues with an excellent resources list at the end.

CSS 3 Presentation and Resources

Great resources for each of the 10 Advanced CSS Techniques (You Wish You Knew More About) are listed in the slide deck that Emily Lewis and Jason Nakai used in a talk in a recent Webuquerque presentation. Work with each sites listed in their resources and you will become a complete expert.

Keep an eye on the Webuquerque site for additional materials from the presentation, including a recap, video, photos and more.

Guest Post: 7 Cameras That May Change the Face of Photography

Photography has undergone many changes in its relatively short history. For the first 150 years it was a purely analog art form in which latent images were exposed on to film. The technology advanced but the general principle remained the same.

During the 1990’s the digital camera started to take shape. Although this has made photography much more accessible to people (the most common digital cameras are the ones built into mobile phones) the principles have remained the same. Photographic technology has changed but the resultant work is very similar to that which can be created using analog equipment.

Image by cogdogblog on Flickr

However, we are now seeing some exciting new changes in the world of photography. You may already be familiar with one technology that has literally changed the way we see the world. It is the technology used by Google to create its Streetview images. 360 degree panoramic images from a moving vehicle that has now traveled along almost every single lane, road, street and motorway in the developed world and has also covered many areas of the developing world. However, this is not the only advancement in photography in recent years. Let us take a look at a few, starting with the “Streetview camera”.

Spherical Video Camera

This is the technological used by Google Street View. It is a camera that consists of 11 lens on a soccer ball sized sphere. The main camera used by Google is Immersive’s Dodeca (PDF) 2360 (PDF). It can record at 30 frames per second. The images are joined together to make the infinite and navigable image as seen on Google Streetview. This technology is not cheap though, camera retail at around $45,000 each. The mount and computer to process the images costs an additional $45,000 and you spend around $400 per mile of filming.

Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera

This new camera is based on the same principle as the Dodeca 2360. The main differences are that it is designed to be thrown in the air to take panoramic shots and it is also priced for the mass market. The camera is designed to capture an image when it is at the highest point in its flight. The ball has 36 fixed-focus cameras to capture the image. It utilizes an array of modern technology including an accelerometer so that it can predict the exact point that it will reach its apex and the casing is constructed with a revolutionary 3D printer. The biggest downside is that these cameras are very bulky. For more information on the Throwable Ball Camera see http ://jonaspfeil .de /ballcamera.

Photojojo’s Double Exposure Digi Cam

Photojolo’s new photography concept consists of a 3.2 MP sensor. The key feature of the camera is that it allows you to take a double exposure, i.e., take two photographs on the same image. It is a way to layer photos to create a more artistic image. It is a little gimmicky and the same process can be done in good photo editing software. It is a very compact camera though and currently retails at $130. If you are looking for something a little different that you can carry with you at all times it is certainly worth a further look.

Panasonic HDC-Z10000 3D camcorder

This is the a candidate to be the first commercially available 3D camcorder. It is currently a concept camera with a twin-lens that can film in 3D and take 3D photographs. The camcorder records in 1080p / 1080i AVCHD video. It can also take 3D macro images. The camera was announced by Panasonic in August 2011 and started to appear in shops at the end of October. It is retailing at around $3500, so you can now make your own HD movies in 3D.

Prosthetic eye digital camera

This is the ultimate tool for one-eyed spies – the Prosthetic eye digital camera. This is no joke though. Tanya Marie Vlach may be the first person to have a digital eye installed. She lost one eye in a car accident and is currently raising funds to Grow a New Eye. The idea is the create a digital eye that will use Bluetooth wireless technology to transmit data to a computer. You can find out more about Tanya Vlach on her website http ://tanyavlach .wordpress .com /

Phantom v1610: One Million FPS

The new Phantom c1610 range video camera by Vision Research can take one million frames per second. What can you do with a million frames per second? Well, not a lot. To actually manage a million frames per second the images are so small that they can hardly be viewed with the naked eye. However, with fewer frames per second it can produce some stunning stop motion photography. The camera can be equipped with up to 96GB of high-speed memory to store the thousands of HD images required to create a stop motion film. You can see what the camera is capable of producing on Vision Research’s gallery, http ://www .visionresearch .com /Gallery /. Poetry in Motion is certainly worth a viewing.

Lytro Light Field Camera

Lytro has developed a camera that literally takes photos in a new and revolutionary way. Rather than focusing at a fixed distance the Lytro captures the image across the entire light field. An image is made up of multiple layers which can then be individually manipulated. You can take a photo with everything in perfect focus and then chose which parts to blur later. Learn more on their website, www .lytro .com.

3D and dynamic panoramic photos are changing the face of photography. This change is driven entirely by advancements in technology. Digital storage is possibly still the biggest hurdle as HD cameras capable of taking hundreds of frames per second require a huge amount of storage space. Also processing demands a lot of computing power. As memory expands and computer chips get faster we are set to experience many new advancements in photography in the coming years.

Gary Dean is a full time photographer and part of the writing team on a popular free photo prints website. When not working with cameras he collects them and has a particular love of old folder cameras.

When first I “got it” about white privilege

Have you read the long and extremely well-done post by Adria Richards called Arrington, CNN and Diversity? It speaks to issues of white male privilege from folks like Michael Arrington; it speaks to issues of diversity in tech startups—particularly people of color in tech startups. It speaks to the issue of black entrepreneurs pitching startups at TechCrunch Disrupt. It talks about race-baiting at CNN in the Arrington interview that set this off. Many thoughtful people are quoted on these issues.

This talk about white male privilege reminds me of the first time I sort of “got it” myself. I’m not male, but I am white, and was blithely unaware of what that meant for a good part of my life.

At one point in my life I was consulting the Texas state department of education doing teacher training workshops in cooperative learning. (See my cooperative learning books for an explanation as to why I was doing this.) The two women within the state department of education leading this training were both African American. They set up a training session in a small Texas town for the three of us, plus another trainer who was a high school principal–also African American.

I don’t want to name this Texas town, but I will say they grow some nice peaches down there and they are pretty sure that German immigrants created Texas.

The four of us women drove down together and stayed in a very nice bed and breakfast for the weekend. I remember suggesting we talk a morning walk before the sessions began. I was told that a black woman would have to be crazy to go walking in the street. That sort of set me back and made me think. At lunch, we were to eat in a local restaurant and brew pub. To get to the dining rooms, you had to walk through a bar area. We drove there (no walking) even though it was only about 4 blocks away. Then we made a beeline straight from the front door toward the dining area in the back. A man stepped away from the bar and blocked the progress of one of the women from the state department, asking her what she was doing there.

She told him, rather nicely I thought considering what a jerk he was, and he moved out of the way. I got a glimpse of an idea about attitude among black women and what might generate it.

Our efforts to find an evening meal went well with no trouble from anyone, waitresses included. Then we drove back to the B&B after dark. I wandered across the street to look at a yard full of ceramic frogs that were for sale. All three of the women started yelling at me to get out of there. I asked why–stupidly–and they frantically herded me back into the car talking about fears that the owner would come out with a shotgun to shoot me. They sped off, without even going inside the B&B. It took a while and a stern lecture to me about wandering around after dark before we went back. A lesson learned about the dangers of window shopping while brown.

When we were throwing our luggage in the trunk to go home, a rattle-trap of a pickup rolled by. It backfired. I looked at it, thinking, “Oh, backfire.” All three of the African American women ducked. The instinct to duck was bred from a lot of years of treatment that I had never experienced because of my white skin. Here we were, four equally professional, hard-working women hired to help train the local educators, but three of us were hyper-vigilant and attuned to the possibility of fatal attack. One of us was just beginning to understand what white privilege means.

I wish I could give a weekend like that to a lot of white people I know. There are quite a few men in tech who would benefit from a weekend where they were the only man in a group of women in tech at a conference. I can’t make either of those things happen, but they would be beneficial experiences.

However, I can urge you to read Adria’s entire post and watch her videos and give it some open-minded thought.

Wow. I got an award!

Wow. I got a recognition award at the New Mexico Technology Council’s Women in Technology awards celebration.

It was an exciting honor to get an award in the same ceremony as 9 other women who are doing things with technology like saving lives, creating clean energy, desalinating water, and managing tech companies. Yeah, PhDs and MDs all over the place. And me. It was surreal.

Now I even have a label. I’m a ‘web evangelist.’ I may be the first of the breed, but it feels like a good description of what I’ve been doing for the last 15 years.

The WIT group also gave 10 scholarships to high school senior girls from all over the state who are interested in technology.

Wow.

Here’s a local news report about the event: New Mexico Business Journal.

Resources for using Media Queries in Dreamweaver 5.5

If you have Dreamweaver 5.5 and are wanting to use the new features for using Media Queries included, here are some resources to get to going.

Useful Links: Project Management, kid’s apps, students and IT

Manymoon vs. Basecamp. The Throwdown! at Social Media Marketing Management compares the features of Manymoon, Basecamp and TeamworkPM.

If you’re looking for educational apps for kids from K to middle school, check out Mind Leap. They recommend apps they consider educational and engaging.

Study of Undergrad Students and IT. A report from EduCause that includes an interesting infographic.