I’m back.  Back home again after more than 11,000 km on the road with my wife Lynn.  It’s been a most excellent, refreshing, and fulfilling adventure on many levels.  I even discovered a very practical and helpful free resource.  Les Schwab fixes flat tires for free.  In over 240,000 km, our nine year old Toyota Echo had never had a flat.  On this trip, Les cheerfully repaired flats for us in Olympia, Washington, and again in Modesto, California!

Our extended road trip began with my class’s 40th reunion.  The reunion was in Eugene, Oregon; but we’d attended Woodstock School in India together in the 1950’s and 60’s.  Twenty-nine class members attended, and 20 of us at the reunion were together at Woodstock from the third grade or before.  The quality of personal sharing was remarkable.  It went far deeper than the recounting of old stories.  There was also plenty of wonderful fun.  Check out the fun we had spinning tops–just as we’d done together as children nearly 50 years ago.

Reunion Tops from Paul Hamilton on Vimeo.

From Eugene, we drove south to Phoenix, where we enjoyed the warm hospitality of our friends Birdie, Steve, Kai and Maryn.  The temperature outside was more than warm–up to 114 (45 C)!

Then we drove down into Mexico, where we added another 4,000 km to the odometer before returning to the US via Nogales.  We traveled as far south as Puerto Vallarta for a delightful week in a most luxurious time share.  Along the way, there were wonderful stops and side trips–Culiacan, Mazatlan, Guaymas, Mascota, Telpa, San Sebastian, Sayulita, and more.

We enjoyed almost everything about our first visit to Mexico, especially her hospitable people.  Neither Lynn nor I know more than a few words of Spanish, but the people we encountered everywhere could not have been more friendly or helpful.  This helpful friendliness is symbolized well by the couple in a Culiacan shop, neither of whom spoke any English, who hopped into their car to guide us to the place we were looking for because they thought we might find it a bit ‘complicado’.

I’ve uploaded a few of my Mexico photos to Animoto and I’m sharing the result below via Vimeo.  I love Animoto, and  the free educational version offers plenty of uses for learners at all levels.  In this case,  I succumbed to the available option of paying for an HD version.

Mexican Summer from Paul Hamilton on Vimeo.

Last week I co-taught a course on assistive technology to 43 teachers.   Packing a full-semester course into 5 days made for an intense but rewarding experience.  We introduced Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as the pedagogical framework for understanding and implementing assistive technology. Then, using Ira Socol’s “toolbelt theory“, we encouraged the teachers to think in terms of helping to equip all learners with  a “toolbelt” of digital tools to serve as effective life solutions.  Class members were impressed by the range of free tools that are readily available to anyone.

I want to share a video put together by one of the teachers who was enrolled in our course.  Myriah relates her personal journey in overcoming some of her learning challenges.  I find the arrogant ignorance of some of Myriah’s college teachers appalling.  How do you respond?

Celebrating Diversity from myriahmichaux on Vimeo.

The iPhone is anything but free, especially the part where you subscribe to a plan so you can use it.  Here in Canada, the charges for data plans are particularly onerous, and that’s a big part of ther reason I don’t have an iPhone yet.

If you already have an iPhone, the upgrade to OS 3.0 is free.  So, it’s worth being aware of, and spreading the word about, the accessibility features that are part of the new iPhone operating system. Ars Technica has put together a video that effectively highlights functions that support vision challenges and that offer text-to-speech.  I’m embedding the video here to help spread the word.

iPhone OS 3.0 Accessibility Features from Ars Technica on Vimeo.

Here’s why I love  

I feel like the victim of a happy set of circumstances that has left me with too much life and too little time.  Regular blog posting has been a casualty in recent weeks.  I’m moved to write this post by a painful and somewhat embarrassing experience that ambushed me last week.

In a vain attempt to multitask, I wasn’t paying enough attention when I tried to open what I thought was a  legitimate link to a video that had been sent to me on Facebook by a trusted friend.  The friend is indeed trusted, but the link was NOT legitimate, and it had not been sent intentionally.

The net result was that I installed a vicious worm on my XP Pro system.  As a result of this malicious intruder, any time I clicked on a search result (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc), my browser would be redirected to an advertising site.  The same thing happened when I tried to go to blogs in my Google Reader.  To make  a bad situation worse, the worm also disabled some of the anti-spyware protection on my computer.

The very worst of it, however, was that although I was able to get rid of the worm by using standard anti-malware software, I was not able to repair the damage.  I could not get my searches and my Google Reader to function properly  To say the least, this was frustrating; and it was costly in terms of my time!

That’s my cautionary tale.  Now for the happy ending and a tribute to the wonderful people who facilitated it.

I wasn’t aware of Geeks to Go! until I went in search of help with my Google redirect problem, but I’m extremely glad that I discovered this amazing community!  Someone in Dublin, who goes by the name of Rorschach112, and who is a “moderator” with Geek University (Geek U), provided me with exactly the help that I needed in order to restore my system to normal.

The fix required a complex multi-step process, but the instructions were detailed, clear, and ultimately successful.  I  was also impressed by the fact that the personal response to my query on the appropriate Geeks to Go forum came just a few hours after I posted about my difficulty.

A brief exploration has revealed that Geeks to Go! is an online community that offers support  on its forums for all manner of software and hardware issues.  Here’s how they put it in their own words:

Geeks to Go offers free, quality technical support, in a non-technical way. We take pride in being a friendly, family site, that’s accessible to all.

It turns out that Geek U, which is part of Geeks to Go!, offers free intensive training in the “techniques and tools of malware removal”.  Graduates of the training are expected to “pay it forward” by offering help on the forums of Geeks to Go!. Volunteers are encouraged to apply, but I could find absolutely no evidence of soliciting for financial support anywhere on the site.

I love the concept of Geeks to Go!– a community of people who help other people, just because they want to!   On the basis of my initial experience with them, I can’t recommend Geeks to Go! highly enough.

Multiple means of engagement and multiple means of representation are essential if there  is any chance of connecting with all learners, or of meeting the diverse learning needs in any given classroom.  With the rapid proliferation of digital resources, there is less excuse every day for educators who do not encourage learners to use resources and tools that work for them. 

It is paramount that teachers recognize and remember that most of their students do not learn in the same ways that they themselves learn. Simply trying harder doesn’t work if you learn differently!

I’m especially pleased when I discover new resources that put multiple means of representation together in one place!  Here’s one that gathers text, images, and videos into one place.  Of course, you can add an audio version of the text as well, with one of many readily available text-to-speech options.

Navify is a service that combines Wikipedia articles with related videos from Youtube and online images.  So, when a topic is entered into the search bar, it brings up the pertinent Wikipedia article along with videos and images on the same subject.  With the multiple means of representation offered, there is a far greater chance of engaging a wider range of learners.

The first screen shot below shows the Wikipedia article that opens when ‘tiger’ is typed into the search box.  You can see the tabs above the article for Images and Videos.  The second screen shot shows what appears when the Images tab is clicked, and the third shows the videos.

It should be noted that it is up to users to select the images and videos that are associated with an article.  For all of the search terms I entered, I was offered an extensive collection of images and videos to choose from.  Since Navify is a relatively new service, there were relatively few videos associated with any of the topics I searched.

Two other features of Navify are also worth mentioning.  The first is that users have the opportunity to comment on topics.  Secondly, related topics are suggested with search results.