Live Blogging the Inauguration

JAN 20, 2009, 09:25PM - Ryan: Srry my messages could not get through today was the day before the day. Im so excited. We had a long dress rehersal and had a

JAN 20, 2009, 05:19PM - Emma: It was so amazing did u get the pic alot of my texts arent going through

JAN 20, 2009, 12:28PM - Jacob (in the Mac Lab): i completly agree with you julia. this is a very special day! :)

JAN 20, 2009, 11:18PM - via KRON-4: The San Francisco Boys and Girls Choruses video clips:
- "Hymn to Freedom"
- "An American Hymn"
- "America the Beautiful"

JAN 20, 2009, 10:43AM - Emma: Hey Im @ the inauguration its around 12 there r 4 mill people here there is so much energy many cant see the speakers but we hear obamas voice and hes prez now a

JAN 20, 2009, 09:52AM - Julia (in Meadows): what struck me most was the power in his voice, the conviction he spoke with. he believed in what he was saying, which made me believe too. he addressed Americas issues as well as the worlds problems. i hope that when i look back on this day, i will remember all the emotions that i have now, all the appreciation for barack obama.

JAN 20, 2009, 09:42AM - Sean (in Meadows): I thought that the reverend's speech was quite touching because he had been with Martin Luther King Jr. in the marches, and that he had been through the times where blacks and whites good sit together in a restaurant. I also liked the rhyming.

JAN 20, 2009, 07:37AM - Mr. Calhoun: My Flight to DC
I left SFO for DC Monday at 12:30 AM. As I walked to the gate for my connecting flight at Houston, I felt really excited. As I passed a statue of George H. Bush in the Houston Airport, I could see my gate and folks waiting to fly to DC. People were feeling good. There was an incredible amount of Obama gear and a more police officers than I have ever seen to watch people board a plane. Folks were friendly as we prepared to go witness an historic event.

Monday Lunch
We had lunch yesteday with friends we have not seen in a while including an old friend who is now working for the State Department. She was over with her fiancee, how is a captain in the army. They met while they were both stationed in the Sudan, and they will both be headed to Afghanistan soon. I told the Army captain about the good work being done to support the Lost Boys of the Sudan at Bentley. He was impressed by the committment made by students. He added that the work to support individuals is important, but we need to pressure congress to effect long term change.

The DC Gala
Last night, I attended the DC Gala Ball. There was no Obama present, but I did get to see the O'Jays. It was fun to be part of the DC contingent. They really know how to celebrate. On the license plates in Washington DC, there is a famous quote "No Taxation Without Representation." In between the speeches congratulating Obama, several DC politicians past and present (including the infamous Marion Berry) commented on how DC needs statehood. I am interested to here what our Bentley History teachers think about this.

Tuesday Morning
Oh boy, I really want to be out on the mall. My wife's family are member of St. John's Church, which where the President will attend. She is on her way back from a service this morning. Her text from church (and she usually would not text from church) stated that the Biden and Obama families were in attendance. As soon as she gets back, we're headed out to the mall.

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JAN 19, 2009, 07:18PM - Ms. Hedrick: Here are links to the clips from today on The Early Show:
- SF Boys Chorus Practices For Obama Inaugural
- SF Boys Chorus To Sing At Obama Inauguration

JAN 19, 2009, 02:34PM - San Francisco Boys Chorus Inauguration rehersal and sound check at the US Capitol Building

JAN 19, 2009, 08:23AM - Alex: We are having a great time here in DC! it was a long flight to get here and when we arrived it was 12 degrees F! The next day we went to the zoo but didnt get to see every thing. and on sunday my aunt brought friends with when she arrived. And also that was the day we went to the concert. today is the day that we are going tto the national mall (its snowing!) and maybe the African Art Museum and eat dinner later with everybody. tommorow is the big day and i just cant wait.

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JAN 18, 2009, 06:03PM - Ms. Hedrick: San Francisco Boys Chorus blog. Thought you may enjoy.

JAN 18, 2009, 09:10AM - Ryan: capitol building

JAN 18, 2009, 06:35AM - Ryan: Today we have our first breakfast in the base. Its sunday and were having our free day. My group is goimg to an air and space mus

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JAN 17, 2009, 03:32PM - Ryan: Hello. Right now in d.c. Its 6:30 pm and im thirty minutes im going to sing for diane feinstein with a select group of boys and g

JAN 17, 2009, 10:12AM - Ryan: To cold for snow. And tonight im singimg for diane feinstein.

JAN 17, 2009, 09:25AM - Ryan: Today we went to a small patch pf green grass in front of the capitol. There we recorded for the channel pbs. Now i am in the lib

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JAN 16, 2009, 10:14AM - Ryan: Thx everybody i just landed, and im not tired anymore. Here im my connection from chicago to d.c. It is 12:12. The rest of my day

JAN 16, 2009, 05:28AM - Ryan: Day one, woke up at 2:45 for a call time of 4:00 and a flight of 6:00. Right now its 5:30, and i can barley feel my eyes.

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JAN 15, 2009, 12:52PM: Next Tuesday we've planned a "Web 2.0" experiment for the kids in which a few of them go off to Washington and send their their experiences back to Oakland; and then we all share our experiences watching the Inauguration "live" on the web. We are gathering grades 5-8 in the auditorium, and we'll project the live broadcast of the Presidential Inauguration on the big screen, and be able to time shift video and show everybody text comments and pictures sent by their friend who are attending the events in DC. We have the amazing fortune of having several student bloggers in some unique places; here are the folks that we know are in attendance:

- Ryan: is on stage and singing with the SF Boys Chorus
- Matthew: is in the VIP seating area
- Emma: is attending with a youth leadership group
- Alex: is attending with his parents (has a camera)
- Upper School: Mr. Calhoun, Shawn, Woody

Let's hope the large crowd does not overwhelm the cellular network, and we can get some real-time feedback from the east coast.

The Live Blog will go up Tuesday, January 20, at 6:30AM or so, on the Bentley School home page.

Hiller Campus Model Fly-over

The kids from "Tech Projects" each made a separate part of the our campus in Google SketchUp and exported their models to Google Earth. This is a screen capture of a "tour", flying over, around and thru the campus ...

Halloween Parade 2008

Video Class Final Projects ...

Flag Football Movie

Another series of student movies ...

Minute Documentaries

The first clean "directors' cuts" from my digital Video Production class. These are one-minute documentaries from the 8th period electives:

SketchUp Houses Fly-over

I have a new class this year which is a kind of buffet style course encompassing all my other courses: programming, robotics, and digital video. They just finished a three-day project building houses in Google SketchUp and then "visiting" each other in Google Earth.

I love the way these simple and intuitive tools allow kids to make immersive experiences really quickly. It's a real hook, and there's a lasting "pay-off" value when kids can build their own models and share them - kids come back and build stuff during open lab times just for fun.

Robot Sumo Tournament

[ click here to view Sumo movie - music by The Flaming Lips ]

A Trip to the Redwoods

[ click to play QuickTime movie - music by R. E. M. ]
Took the eighth graders on a trip to Prairie Creek. My earlier, snarky post about the trip has been removed, with continued apologies to the innocent.

Maker Faire - Boy Meets Robot

click for slide show

Went to the Maker Faire in San Mateo this weekend with my brother and my nephew. The event was exactly as organized as you would expect from a bunch of beatniks and nerds - it was horrible. But now that I know the deal, I think I can prepare for next year and make a better run thru.

Bringing a 5-year old boy has its plusses and minuses. We waited nearly 40 minutes and held some primo seats to the RoboGames event. We saw one fantastic battle between a battle-bot with a big spinning device and a really fast flipper-bot (the flipper bot won after taking some serious punishment!). The boy, however, was scared to death and could not handle a second bout. Then, once we got home, he couldn't stop talking about the robot battle; everything became a robot battle (playing with matchbox cars, playing with stuffed animals, playing with food, etc). Oh well. Next year, we load him up on robot YouTube videos and get some foam ear plugs, and maybe he'll make it thru a few more matches. That was cool!

We tried to get on some of the funky rides, but by the time we got out "liability waiver bracelets", some strange stage show was underway, and all the rides appeared to be closed. What's that about?

Then we watched some model rocket launches. My nephew was interested enough that we tried to go make our own rocket so we could launch, but they had just run out of kits, and we could only watch. Note that we had gotten there about mid-day, and they had run out of kits already. Rats.

The event was really big, but still really crowded. The big hall was crammed full of smaller stalls, and that may have been the most fun, especially since my nephew seemed to find enough to do there. He liked the homemade robot displays, the musical devices were also really fun. There were a few commercial booths (like Radio Shack), but most of it seemed to be in that homebrew spirit that we had hoped to see. And, of course, we got to meet Russell the Giraffe.

A Robotics Course - Finally

Was finally able to get a robotics class going. Sorry - it's been too long since my last post, but its been so busy.

click here to play

My computer class has been having a blast (I think) building Google Sketchup models. Here's a little bit of that too - the Mac Lab on the HIller Campus:



Compare to:

Tribute to MLK

I was asked to put together an presentation for MLK Day in January and thought it might be a great chance to use the new iMovie 08. But, I was given little time to complete the project, since the administration wanted to review the product before the December Break. I tried using iMovie 08, I really did, but the new UI just frustrated me. I spent about twenty minutes trying to figure out how to import still images as slides and assemble them with pans and transisitons, then bailed and went back to the old iMovie HD.

Here's a beta "rough cut". It's part of the "mountaintop speech" that MLK gave the day before he was killed in 1968. In it, he talks about an incident from 1958, in which a "deranged woman" stabs him during a Harlem book signing and nearly kills him. In the hospital, he is recuperating and reading letters from well wishers:



Let me know what you think!

PC Autopsy the Movie

The three Autopsy Teams (Proton, Neutron, Electrons) disassembled their computers, calatoged the parts, and the re-assembled the computers, hoping that the machines would survive the process and reboot:



Music by Fatboy Slim.

Computer Autopsy Day 1

So the kids in class have started to take apart their "cadaver PCs". It was a good day -- very noisy and active, but lots of good questions. They are documenting the dis-assembly with digital cameras and in their blogs; they are also identifying each part in a PC Parts Catalog database. All their data is being uploaded to a class space in Moodle.

I've really enjoyed using Moodle. It's as linear and structured as any courseware I've used, which can make it difficult to set-up and teach to the kids. But there are enough options that you can make the kinds of spaces and tools that you need; and it's free. The Forums and blogs do not seem to handle EMBED tags quite right, which is really frustrating a couple of the kids who want to play with Flash and QuickTime. I guess if you're a 12-year old kid who wants to learn how to embed media objects in HTML, you really don't have a big problem -- if you know what I mean.

Anway I'll see if I can Google-up a solution to that problem.

[ click images for larger view ]

Bob the Egg - Lives!

Today, after the Convocation at Bentley's Lafayette Campus, the Middle School did a little engineering exercise of sorts. Each Advisory got an egg. The egg was to be dropped and we needed to protect it with a given "kit of parts". I made a little movie of the event:



[ click to view the slide show ]

The Lab in Action

Here is an "action shot" from the new Computer Lab on August 31st:

Getting the New Lab Ready

Wow. It's been a busy summer, but I got a lot done. First, I moved to California. Then I set about making a new Computer Lab and designing a new Computer Studio course which I hope will start to test some of the ideas I've been blogging.



The couse will move kids from a hardware overview (autopsy), to some basic media work, some HTML, and some blogging of their own. Once they have a handle on how to report on their work, we'll start on a few projects. As I've said, this course will approach computers with an artist's curiousity: what are they? how do they work? what can I make with them?

First we'll try podcasting and video work -- really an extension of the media work that they started with, but adding some XML and RSS to the mix. Then I want them to try making a non-linear experience within a web browser, maybe like a museum of science interactive that explains something. They'll incorporate audio and video media, as well as other programming skills.

Next I want them to try their hand with Google Earth, wikis, and media. We'll see if they might also be able to do something with Google SketchUp.

Then we'll dig into some "starter" IDE's like Scratch. And finish with Lego Mindstorms.

Also, all the tools I'm using are free, and almost all are cross-platform -- so the kids can download and use them at home:

- Audacity
- Firefox
- Google Earth
- Google SketchUp
- LEGO Digital Designer
- Scratch
- TextWrangler

Rivers Campus in Full 3D

A couple of Rivers Seniors have built Rivers in 3D. Try as I might, I could not get my copy of Google SketchUp to render a proper .kmz file for Google Earth, but this is a big, detailed model:





They added all kinds of landscaping details (signs, benches, garbage cans, etc) and could not add colors and textures without slowing the animations to a crawl. But this was a tremendously fun thing to watch happen.

Google SketchUp Model Update

I finally did the promised update. This was done with the new version of SketchUp, and I lost the edge lines in the model -- for the life of me I could not figure out how to get them back. Maybe cause I added all these colors and textures to the model (?). Note that the base of the flagpole has a nice aqua patina (you gotta look really close!).



The revised SketchUp .kmz file for the Rivers Site is here.

PlayStation Portable Is History

Well, of course, I knew this was coming. I'm rather surprised it hasn't happened earlier. A school in Birmingham, UK, is rolling out a pilot project with PSPs -- they are going to use them to teach history:


School that will teach history on a PlayStation

"Pupils are being handed gaming consoles to help with their studies.

Teachers believe the Sony PlayStations will motivate youngsters studying French, history and geography.

The hand-held devices can carry educational video and audio clips as well as notes and pictures."

It sounds like the PSP is going to be used as a media device and a browser. Obviously they can author and hear podcasts, Flash video clips, and other Web 2.0 consumables. Something I'll try to watch closely.

Other links:
Monsters and Critics
BBC News
Gamer Squad
Next Generation

Rivers Updated in Google Earth

This had to have happened in just the last couple of weeks -- Google has updated the satellite maps for the The Rivers School campus, and it now includes the Athletics Center:



We're pretty sure this is a Saturday in Spring 2005 since the baseball field is not yet been moved beind behind Maintenance. It looks like the site has shifted a bit under my model (see the roof edges sticking out from under the walls?), so I'll have to try to snap-shot and export the model again, see if I can get it to line up better.

It's interesting that there was about two years from the time of the satellite photo to its incorporation into Google Earth.