Here’s what I’m up to and doing:
1) Our new MakerBot Replicator2 has been up and running for a few weeks now, and we’re beginning to understand what it will and won’t do. In the last week, we’ve gotten in 20-odd hours of print time, and the quality and usefulness of the prints continues to improve. We’re currently learning to deal with PLA warping issues, as well as a print bed that seems not to be a dead level plane. Working on both of those those things.
2) iCon2013 (which, by the way, is the continuation of last year’s New England 1:1 Summit) is coming soon. The school visits on Friday the 22nd are all sold out. Actually, they’re wildly over-sold, which is a whole ‘nother problem. That said, there are still spaces open for the conference itself on Saturday. Sign up soon, though, as we’ve had some alarming jumps in ticket
sales. I’m presenting at this with Andy Marcinek, on the topic of open educational resources. I’m excited, and it should be a good time, with loads of learning.
3) My Advanced Media Production students have started turning in some excellent work. I’ll cross post some of it here soon (with their permission, of course).
4) Burlington High School’s Apple profile in education finally (!) went live this week. Their team did an awesome job- they really got the nature of the town, and seemed to understand and represent what we’re trying to do. I’m in it a bunch. I only look that good because of the talents of the production team (the makeup lady was very nice, btw), and I managed to include a joke/hat tip to some of my former students. I won’t give it away, but those that have spotted it think it’s pretty funny.
5) I’m still doing some consulting work (if you’re interested, drop a line), and my summer is starting to fill in pretty quickly. We’re looking at another couple hundred iPads being deployed in my district, so there’s a bunch of work already starting with that.
6) I’m working to get a live G+ broadcast with some of my students up and running in the near future. As a result of my production experience, I get mildly obsessive about making this thing look good- and sadly, it’s been holding things up. As it turns out, Google Plus doesn’t play nice with FireWire- and tha
t’s the standard for all the pro-gear I have. Working around this is proving to be problematic. Actually, the 3D printer is helping with some of this. I’ve used it to print adapters for web cams to work on tripods. Neat, right?