Technology I Can Use Now

I believe the most useful technology that I can use right now is the podcast. I think downloading game film, or snippets of game film, and practice film could be very useful to our kids. Our kids ask for film all the time. They love to watch. We could do a real service to them if we had the capacity to have the film as a podcast that they could download. I need to further research how to upload a podcast every week, but I think it could be done. Now if it meets with our IT departments blessing is another matter. I also don't know if it is possible to do at my school. I may have to start small and work my way up.

Someday, I see film exchange as easy as downloading a podcast. No more driving to a remote location early in the morning. You'd have the game film ready to go when you were ready to get to work.

There are some questions to consider. How can you keep your opponent from seeing practice film? Is every team you play going to have the same technology you have?

I also believe podcast would help in my teaching job. I would like to start out with a rules and regulations podcast that could be downloaded by students and parents. It is funny how kids forget some rules during the school year. Having a podcast that would be available for a reminder would be helpful. A podcast for the beginning of each unit would be helpful as well.

Web 2.0

The site I searched was Farecast powered by Bing. It was a great web site. One in which I will be returning soon. I first checked for hotels in Las Vegas. Farecast would show you the rates it could get, and it even let you pull up the competitors prices for comparison. The Farecast hotels also had a rating system that told you if you were getting a deal, an average rate, or not a deal. You could also click on a button and the page would pull up a graph so you could see what the prices have been for a 2 month period. I searched for a room during Super Bowl weekend. I was very surprised by what I found. There were many deals out there, and a few places were not a deal. I also searched the flight section. Its rating system indicated if the price of the flight was going up, staying steady, or the price was falling. Another neat feature was you could book the room or the flight right on the Farecast site. Farecast would take you to orbitz, or another type of site to book. Farecast is a very cool site and everyone should check it out.

Google Docs

Google Documents was a very interesting site, and I am interested to view it further. If the quality is good, I could see this being an end to software. All one needs is Internet access. I like that there were templates for the different type of document you might need. Would be very good with resumes. I also think a person could use Google Docs on an iPhone or Blackberry for some small projects. I think it is a very powerful tool to be able to share your documents. What a great thing for collaboration. I'm sure I'm just seeing the tip of the iceberg with this. I can see sharing a scouting report with other coaches using this technology. Heck, you might also be able to send it to players through e-mail. I can see sharing fitness scores on a spreadsheet to colleagues via the computer. Very interesting stuff.

RSS Exercise

I like how the RSS feeds can save you time when you are searching for information from your favorite sites. I now can go to the bloglines account to see what new information is being presented. I also look forward to finding new feeds that interst me. I look forward to keeping track of my classmate's blogs and keeping up to date.

Finish your homework, Mr. Tech Support - Bakersfield.com

Finish your homework, Mr. Tech Support - Bakersfield.com

Good article on Technology and Teens.

New Technology

I'm interested in how podcasts are going to change how classes are taught in the future. It is not hard to imagine that students may not always have to sit in a classroom to get their information. A perfect example is the Kinesiology Master's program I'm taking at Fresno Pacific. I never set foot on the campus, but I can gain information from my instructors through podcasts. Also, I can see how podcasts could help my football players watch game film or practice film on their own time if those films were in a podcast format. That would make the players so much more knowledgeable if they could do that.

How the education world decides to handle technology is going to be very interesting. Kids at our school get their iPods taken from them if they are caught with them at school. Is it that hard to imagine that in the coming years, all kids will need an iPod to download lectures they missed, a broadcast of school announcements, high school exit exam tutorial information, standard benchmark test remediation, etc. The list could be endless.

IMG_0599

IMG_0599, originally uploaded by bdurkan.

This is the view of the sunset from our back patio. We have beautiful sunsets out here in Taft, Ca. It is nice to sit out on our patio with a glass of wine or beer, look out at the sunset, and unwind. We live on a golf course, so we should always have this view.

Lake Bellagio

Lake Bellagio, originally uploaded by Sutanto.

The fountain at the Bellagio is awesome. My wife, Jana, and I went to Las Vegas for New Years and it was a blast. Saw the Black Eyed Peas. Just an awesome time.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

My Interesting Items From Week 2 Articles

In the article, "Social Networking" I was interested to find out that more than 1 billion people have become connected to the World Wide Web, and more than half of American teens use social networking sites. Facebook and like formats can be good sources for people to connect, but only with certain rules and etiquette.

The Neomillennial User article was hard to read at the start, but had some good information in the middle. First of all, I had to really focus on what the heck neomillennial meant. The basic idea is that the newer generation is "always on" with interactive media. Learning experiences will have to adapt technology into lessons such as RSS Feeds, Weblogs, iPods, Social Networking Sites, etc. These technologies will help develop learning communities.

The Social Software article was interesting in the fact that the article tried to show that Social Networking sites can have positive and negative aspects to using it in education. A positive is the collaboration that can happen. Students can feel like they are really working together. Unfortunately, people can be rude, vulgar, and mean on these sites. There are many examples of cyber-bullying.

Here I Go!

This is my first blog and it is pretty cool. I think this could be a good way to spread news and get feedback. Technology is a very powerful tool that has changed many things. Take College for example. 17 years ago when I was finishing my BS, e-mail was just being introduced to us, but it was a Intranet based system. Now I'm blogging! Who would have thought. It is going to be interesting what the next decade and beyond has in store.