Drape's Takes

So here's my take on a few things I've seen lately (items all published within the last seven hours). Kind of a hodge-podge of ideas, so sue me.

Fail

First, it appears that some schools are simply too crowded:


Naughty Adsense

Moving on, it seems that Vicki Davis is sick of the inappropriate use of Google's Adsense. Here's a classic line from her recent post:

Seems that "seat of the pants" causes Google Adsense to think I'm needing some sort of medicinal improvement to my husbands and my love life! (It scans keywords in your email to determine what ads you want to see.)

I echo her sentiments:

Although I can deal with this, I think of the students I've recommended to use Gmail. I would like Google Adsense to allow people to OPT OUT of adult advertising.

Period. I don't want to see it and I don't want it in my inbox. I don't want it in my 13 year olds inbox nor my 11 year olds inbox. (Of course, you're not supposed to be able to sign up for Google until you're 18, but honestly that is not happening and everyone knows it.)

Widespread Cell Phone Use

To continue, Patrick Higgins' cell phone survey is the kind of survey I would love to see taken on a global level. Intriguingly enough, over 80% of the 6th and 7th graders (ages 11-13) he polled reported owning a cell phone. Such high numbers correspond with the results I received for high school students last year in a similar survey I attempted to conduct.


I wonder now if the increase in number is best explained by the population of students polled or the tremendous increase in cell phone ubiquity over the course of 15 months. Likely both.

Why Teachers Drink


Even though I don't drink, I'd love to meet Jessica Hagy. She's one of those math-types that actually makes sense to me.

And Today's Guest Speaker Is...

It looks like David Jakes has been spending more time in Canada, from the comfortable confines of his school in Chicago (or maybe he was at Ditka's, doesn't matter). Clarence Fisher explains:

Then today, we opened another live collaboration. This time, David Jakes in Chicago skyped into both my classroom in Snow Lake and Lucy Martin's at St. Elisabeth to talk to both our classes at once about digital storytelling. A planned event, David sent us several videos he wanted to use as examples in advance, and when he reached that point in his discussion, we simply held the call and the students in each classroom took several minutes to watch the videos.

David was a master as he talked to the students about weaving together the elements of video, still pictures, audio files (speech) and music files into a coherent whole.

How cool is that? A guest speaker, talking with two different classes at the same time, separated by over 1,400 miles. Apparently, it would take 19 days, 5 hours to walk that distance.

Technorati Tags: fail google skype education technology cellphones canada sosueme