So I’ve had some discussion with a number of teachers using a variety of mothods to share files with others, both within and outside of the school district. Some are using email, some traditional file sharing, some using online service and others still posting to web server space. I really don’t do a lot of file sharing, but when I do I always have access to web server space for ftp or http download, but the average educator doesn’t have that luzury. So I’ve had my eyes open for a decent free service that would be one I’d recommend for this purpose and I’m finally settled on MediaFire.

MediaFire offers UNLIMITED storage, allows file sharing, is completely free and doesn’t even require a login. If you do create an account its easier (obviously) to manage your documents, but if you are in a situation where you need to quickly share a file with someone and would rather not attach it to an email (let’s say its a big file) simply visit MediaFire and upload the file - it’ll give you a link code and even an embed code to slap it on your webpage or wiki or blog. Now just create an account by providing an email and password and viola - your document is archived for future easy access. The only limitation to this excellent resouce is the 100MB upload limit. That means you can’t upload files larger than 100MB, but come on…not many of your documents (at least at this point) are going to be larger than 100MB unless its an entire album or a long video.

But wait…there’s more. MediaFire allows you not only to share individual files with other people by emailing a link or embedding within a webpage, but you can also create folders for your files and share the entire folder contents the same way. Very cool.

Picked up this little gem via Wes Fryer over at Speed of Creativity, via Lee Ann at The Eight Floor in Tulsa, OK, via Nelson Central School in New Zealand. And here’s a link to the original post.

Attending the annual One-to-One computing conference at Penn State this week. This morning’s keynote was un-notable and the first breakout session that I attended (on Web2.0 tools) was basically the same old stuff that we’ve seen again and again and again. So now I’m sitting on the couch in the lobby feeling a little less than thrilled. Reflecting on some things and figured that I might start working out some thoughts here…

I’m beginning to think we are just spinning our wheels for all our talk about the undeniable wealth of valuable teaching tools that are now available to us with nothing more than an internet connection. We give professional development after professional development, attend conference after conference, hold discussion after discussion, and still the migration of new teaching tools into the classroom and the foundational shift in instrucational practice to an energized collaborative authentic learning environment is just soooo painfully slow. Why?

If you ask the general educational audience..it seems to come back to one thing - TIME. But to me that just reaks of lame excuse. We always cry “we don’t have the time” (the time to learn new things, to try new ideas, to experiment, to change), and I think we do that because its such an easy justification for inaction. I know a good number of teachers that seem to have found all the time they need to do such wonderful things in their classroom - integrating new ideas and technologies into every aspect of thier lesson plans. So I think it just comes down to the failure to properly motivate and provide the appropriate incentives to instill these practices, ideas, strategies, paradigms. Its an issue not of time, but of leadership. We need strong leaders to make the delicate and hard and firm and strategic decisions that will ensure our priorities are more substantial than conference-babble. Its a management issue now. We’ve lobbed the grenade into the crowd and the good ideas have stuck to those who are willing. From here on out it comes down to the management wizardry (and the same basic motivational techniques we practiced in our own classrooms) to find out how to reach the reluctant, the scared, the lazy, and the disinterested.

Well…that’s just some random thoughts.

I just recieved my spiffy little Edublogger membership badge from Patricia Donaghy who manages things at the International Edubloggers Directory. I’m proud to be a member, albiet a small fish in a big sea.

Anyhow, in checking out Patricia’s blog, I noticed this interesting post about a facinating online tool called Visuwords. I tell you what, even if you aren’t a word geek this tool will still be interesting to you. Makes more sense if you check it out but the basic premise is this - provide a word, any word….then a beautiful graphic reporesentation of the relationship of that word to other words and phrases dynamically generates within the browser. You can dig into deeper associations by double clicking on subsequent words and word combinations.

At least you’ll learn what a hyponym, hypernym, meronym, and holonym are. Trust me, its much cooler than it sounds.

VISUWORDS

Here’s a couple blog posts I found interesting this week…

Actively Opposing Creativity Fatigue
Six Degrees of Separation in Instant Messaging
Shopping for a Wiki Tool?
Audio Transcript from “The Evolving Federal Role in Education”