Farewell Full Sail - At Least for Now

I just wanted to take a moment to let all of my Full Sail colleagues know that I am in the process of withdrawing from the EMDT-MS program - at least for now.  I have enjoyed getting to know many of you and learning from you over the past four months of this journey.  If you would like to know more about the motivation behind my decision, please visit my personal blog for more information.

I'd also like to thank Tom Lucas and Camaal Moten for their support, encouragement and commitment to helping all of us become better teachers.  I wish you much success in the program and hope you are successful in fulfilling your dreams.  Take care.


Dr. Jude

Comment on Tom Turner's Blog

Follow this link to view my comments on Tom Turner's review of Animoto.com http://tomturner19.blogspot.com/2010/10/bp4.html

After reading Tom's post on Animoto I decided to create my own 30 second video capturing highlights of my recent visit to Growing Power, an urban farm in Milwaukee, WI that has been getting some national attention lately.  It was really easy to do and I think the video turned out great - check it out and let me know what you think -

Slatebox

Slatebox is a Web 2.0 tool that was created to replicate a practice in the olden days in which children brought small slate chalkboards with them to school and used them to communicate ideas, learn new concepts and share information with each other.  Within the Slatebox tool, a slate is a draggable, virtual canvas that can be used to create mindmaps, diagrams, flowcharts and other visual images.  Users can collaborate with others and receive live updates to the shared canvas or slate.  Slates use open source coding and can be enmeshed easily into a users website.  Users can also change background images and colors and customize the look and feel of each slate in a variety of ways.

Slatebox uses comet technology to push edits from a central server to all client computers that are connected as collaborators.  The server knows when any edits or updates are made on the slate and pushes the changes to all users at the same time.  There is no limit to the number of collaborators that can be working on a particular slate at the same time, however in the free version of Slatebox, all slates are open to the public by default.  The only way to have control over who is included as a collaborator is to purchase the PRO version and grant individual access to other Slatebox users.  Unfortunately, since Slatebox is currently in beta form, the only version available is the free public version, but according to the website the ORG, PRO and BASIC subscription accounts are being released sometime in the near future.

While I can see the potential for educators to use this tool to create minmaps, concept maps and other examples of visual thinking in action – the tool itself is rather clunky and difficult to use, especially compared to the ease of use offered by Dabbleboard.  There are only a few example slates available on the site, so it was a bit hard for me to imagine how I might use this tool to guide brainstorming or other kinds of collaborative idea generation.  It is also hard to figure out how to change the color of backgrounds, shapes and fonts.  I would probably elect to use Inspiration or the free Cmap tool before adopting Slatebox.