Thanks from us Diigo and MySpace users. Thank you for clariying about the extensions. I am so happy that Firefox extensions work with Flock. I love them both but now am a very content Flock devotée.

Thank you so much for commenting and being on top of your game at Flock!

Thanks for the great post about Flock! It’s immensely satisfying to see our product exciting other people as much as it does us.

Some responses to your wants:

1. I’ll log your vote for Diigo. As for MySpace, we’ve been working with their new developer platform since the start of the year, and integration should hopefully land later this year.

2. Any specific iGoogle-like features you’re seeking? Obviously more customization is key, but I’d love to hear specifics!

3. I think our message may not have been clear. Firefox addons may slow down Flock…AND Firefox. This is actually one of the largest issues with Firefox performance, and so we wanted to make it clear to folks that they shouldn’t install 30 extensions. That said, almost all Firefox extensions should perform in Flock just like they do in Firefox.

Thanks again for the Flock love. Keep spreading the word and we’ll keep making it better!

Flock’n'roll,

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

Flock on!

In my home Canadian province of Alberta, our government has implemented a high-speed network which connects all schools, hospitals, libraries, and government institutions. With this has also come a large implementation of videoconferencing hardware, and we now have over 800 school sites in our province who connect to thousands of others for class-to-class collaborations, content experts, full course delivery, and special events (e.g. VC for Hope, a social awareness and fundraising project to build a school in Nicaragua - http://www.vcrln.ca/joomla/ in case you want to see video clips or more information).

While the equipment involved to do IP videoconferencing is more expensive than a webcam and Skype solution is, to me the investment is a very valuable one. Videoconferencing hardware has high quality cameras which can pan and zoom, and the audio quality from the microphones is outstanding. What results - and this is the key - is a transparent technology experience with kids being able to see each other clearly and up close, being able to quickly pan to different people, and just as importantly having the audio quality necessary for seamless communication. Though Skype is a good solution for a person-to-person realtime audio/video experience, to me it’s not nearly adequate for a full classroom experience.

I used to be in the camp of webcam videoconferencing for the cost savings, but after being immersed myself in hardware-based IP videoconferencing for the past two years I’d never go back to webcams. Just my opinion

Keep up the great posts!

For example, teachers who are big believers in collaborative learning with students might have students work in collaborative math problem solving groups and then have each group share their solution to a big ‘problem’ on the document camera. A more traditional teacher may see the document camera as an enhanced chalk board where he/she demonstrates a problem with manipulatives on the document camera and spends the remainder of the math class doing sample arithmetic operations to students using the doc cam. Very different uses of the technology, all based on beliefs about how students learn and therefore how teachers teach.

Example 2 - Teacher A, a strong believer in constructivist learning, may have a student represent a solution to a math problem with base 10 blocks, and then have the student take a picture of his/her solution. That student later writes a blog post describing their understanding of the concept and uses the picture as a visual reference, allowing other students to benchmark their own understanding of the concept by viewing and posting comments on fellow classmates’ blog postings. Teacher B may walk around the classroom taking pictures of the students working on math problems, and then print those pictures off to give to a student to put in a learning portfolio to share with parents at the next parent teacher conference.

In summary, my strong suggestion in working with this teacher is to meet with him, discuss his beliefs about learning and teaching, and build off that to see what the capabilities of each available technology and where they might fit.

As for specific ideas, I’ve listed a couple here, but others that come to mind are using Excel for a graphing exercise or the creation of a time line, the use of Word and the grid and shapes capabilities to teach area and perimeter, and the use of an interactive whiteboard to access online math activities to work through as a whole class. Specific ideas for this teacher may be a band-aid solution however, whereas building off his current and emerging beliefs about student learning may help him develop the ‘lens’ with which to see the potential with any technology. My lenses are clearly rose-colored, but that’s another story

Great post!
Danny

Great job,
Danny Maas

PS - In your ‘About’ page, it would be great to see your name. Wanting to address you by your name in my comment, I needed to click your Google Calendar link to find it