Is it spring break yet??  Joking!  Welcome back everyone, below is the schedule for this week’s Daytime:

WG Exchange – Day 6, Wednesday 1:30 –  2:30

Cherokee Carpenter Gallery – Day 7, Thursday 10:00 – 11:00

A few hours ago I tweeted (please follow me if you haven’t already @VincentDay) that I had this surprising feeling this morning when I walked into school..that I was actually glad to be back.  Who would’ve thought that I’d be happy to be out of “vacation mode.”  While I’ll miss sleeping until 10AM, catching up on TV shows (BTW, if you haven’t watched Homeland or Boardwalk Empire you’re missing out!  Please watch and let’s discuss!), and basically eating non-stop, it will be good to get back into my routines and jump back into some of the cool projects our team has been working on.  With the  the start of 2012, I say goodbye to the disappointing Philadelphia Eagles (hopefully Andy Reid as well), my heart is beginning to mend from the frustrating Philadelphia Phillies early playoff exit, and I’m looking forward to what I anticipate will be a great few months of hockey.  I think we have a basketball team in Philly too, we just haven’t heard from them in a while…..

Can you tell that I’m a sports fan?  That I need to get a life?

So on to what I hope will be the portion of this blog that will have some sort of educational value.  Prior to the holiday break I found myself rather buried with various exciting projects, so it’s been a few weeks since I’ve written a blog.  To those of you that noticed and must have been extremely depressed with my lack of posts, I’ve returned to get you through the upcoming months of cold and misery with humor, nerd talk, and of course a few sports notes!  To those of you deleting my emails that include links to the blog, I’ll get ya following sooner or later!!

Along with the new year will come many new exciting technology products that will hopefully enhance education in one way or another. Included in Dan Pink’s 10 Predictions for 2012 is the Lytro camera which appears to provide increased capabilities by capturing complete light field data.  I’m not quite sure I agree for the general population given the camera’s dimensions, but I certainly see the possibilities in an educational environment.  Furthermore, once the technology is available as a part of future smart devices (my prediction), we’ll see many more of these cameras. Watch this video from Engadget for details: Lytro Camera

During the break I was reading about the upcoming Digital Media and Learning Conference  in March in San Fran (San Fran sounds nice in March doesn’t it!) and I stumbled upon an interesting blog post written by Whitney Burke on the @DMLCentral blog, Are they Students or are they Innovators?  Included in the blog is an interview with Lisa Schwartz, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  Lisa has recently completed her dissertation “Forming a Collaborative Model for Appropriating Youth and Digital Practices for New Literacies Development with Teachers and Latino Students.” Meanwhile, she has also focused much of her time on finding ways to change schools by using various digital tools and practices that students use outside of school.  Check out this video clip where Lisa discusses the emphasis of “youth as creators” to change schools.  Lisa predicts that results will include much different products then we’re currently used to seeing, much more innovation.  Her point is not that current schools are horrible places, but that we provide an environment where many of the creative tools are not allowed, which in turn prevents innovation from flourishing. She points to the fact that student are not supposed to bring the digital tools (smart phones), or their interests or relationships to school (social networks).  I’m in agreement with Lisa that this needs to change.  Enough from me, here’s the video: (you may not be able to hear the first 10-15 seconds, but hang tight as this is a good clip).

Digital Tools:

projectqt – A new presentation tool (think Prezi), that allows the user to move away from antiquated tools such as Powerpoint…blah, or Keynote (better than PP in my opinion, but still not as cool as some of the newer tools).  projectqt is an innovative way to tell a story through the art of an interactive presentation.  http://projeqt.com/

Book Boon – As many schools are transitioning to ebooks and digital reading devices, Book Boon provides a repository of over 1,000 free quality ebooks for university students, professional development and more.  The currently library is expanding every day and is likely to include HS & MS texts very soon.  The books can be directly downloaded into PDF format and currently available in five languages.  Keep an eye on this site as we join the ebook revolution!  http://bookboon.com/

With that I conclude my first blog of 2010.  Welcome back and I look forward to a great year for SCH!