Post-its and Ponderings
A middle school teacher's thoughts on science, technology and learning

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Twittering Your Life Away...

I don't get the fascination with Twitter. Yet. I just don't think people would care what I am doing or thinking in 140 characters or less. I have enough trouble deciding if anyone cares about my infrequent status updates on Facebook. And between Facebook, email, SMS, and life, I have enough chatter in my existence... do I need to "follow" more?

I had to laugh when I watched the following clip, part of an animated sketch series called "SuperNews" on current.com. (Fair warning: there is a cartoon compound fracture/blood at the end... you'd think I'm over-reacting, but I've had a number of students faint from Discovery Channel's computer animated bleeding.)




According to its website, Supernews is "seen by millions spares neither the topical nor the timely. From atheism and gay marriage, to Obama’s presidential cabinet and the massive pressure to be witty in Evite replies, SuperNews takes on the best (and worst) of politics, pop culture and technology."

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Saturday, March 21, 2009

RIP: iMovie 06 download is no longer available

So, I'll admit it, I haven't been keeping up on my Mac news. I heard about Steve Job's health issues, the new iPod Shuffle and the contract-free iPhone, but somehow I missed this - Apple pulled their iMovie 06 download?!

I was horrified by the new iMovie 08. However, I was mollified by Apple graciously providing a free download of iMovie HD 6 to all registered users of iLife ’08. This afternoon, a young filmaker asked me how to "get that version of iMovie that's cool" because she doesn't like "the one with the star." So, I head over to my trusty link and... gasp!... page not found! Apparently, on Jan 27, 2009, blogs started to report that Apple had removed the download page for iMovie HD 6 in preparation for their iMovie 09 release.

Oh, how I wished I had archived that dmg....

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Saturday, March 14, 2009

Wonderful Website: Learn.Genetics

It's been too long since I have blogged, however, I am inspired by a number of excellent websites I have been using. My goal is to highlight one each week. Here is one of my all-time favorites:


Learn.Genetics

About the organization: The Genetic Science Learning Center is a science and health education that is part of the University of Utah. Their mission is "making science easy for everyone to understand." Learn.Genetics delivers educational materials on genetics, bioscience and health topics. Another site, Teach.Genetics, provides resources for K-12 teachers, higher education faculty, and public educators.

About the site: There is a wealth of user-friendly reference material on stem cells, cloning and more. There is a collection of Virtual Labs and a wonderful Tour of the Basics.

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