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Showing posts with label RAGBRAI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RAGBRAI. Show all posts

Friday, July 17, 2015

Dr. Z Has Gone Pink!!!

You know, Angela Maiers says that when you engage in social media at least 30% of it should be personal.  Including the personal part in your blog provides an opportunity for your readers to see who you are and what you do.

Here It Is!!!  Time for RAGBRAI!!!

Every year I get together with 20,000 of my best friends who I haven't met yet and we ride our bikes across Iowa in a week.  This is called RAGBRAI (Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa).   The route varies each year but it is a great way to see Iowa.  This year the route is 462 miles. 

This is my 13th year.  It is an annual extravaganza that is too exciting and fun for words.  I find that riding RAGBRAI provides a great sense of accomplishment so that what I confront the rest of the year doesn't seem so daunting.

I ride with Team Flamingo.  I am Z-Bird.  It is a great group of friends who train all spring to get ready for this trip.  As you can tell, we really get into the Pink Flamingo thing.  If you go to our website you will see some pretty scary pictures.

I just wanted to tell you that life involves more than using technology to support learning.  Life is filled with opportunities to do new things and confront new challenges and meet new people who interestingly become part of your life.

Go out and do something CRAZY this week.  Maybe I will see you on the RAGBRAI road.

Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Dr. Z Reflects on Reflectors

I started this blog six years ago so that I could share my thoughts about things that I thought should be shared.  Most of this deals with educational technology but I want to share something about another passion of mine - biking.

As you may know, I love biking.  Every year I ride RAGBRAI with Team Flamingo. It's an opportunity where I get together with 12,000 of my closest friends and we ride 500 miles across Iowa during the last full week of July. We call this fun.

This is my 10th year doing this.

The best part is the training rides that we make with our wonderful Team Flamingo members during the 3 months before the ride.

The other day I broke my mirror while putting my bike in the back of my truck. It costs $20 to replace so I went to a nearby auto parts shop and purchased a $3 convex stick-on mirror. What a find!!

I just love this. It shows so much more and you have a much larger field of vision.  It's made of plastic or metal so I don't have to worry about breaking it again. Even if I do, did I mention that it's only $3?

Sure, I know that this is a lame topic for a post but I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to "Reflect on Reflectors."  BTW if you look closely in the photo above you can see the photo of my grandson, Tyler, on my phone. =-)


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Thursday, July 31, 2008

Podcasting from Your Phone

Podcasting is a great way to record what is happening or what is on your mind, but the technology is sometimes daunting for some educators. That's too bad because usually simple is best. Cell phones are in everybody's pocket in schools today. Yes, school policy usually restricts students from having cell phones at school, but they have them anyway. Wouldn't it be interesting to find an academic application for them?


I just returned from joining 15,000 of my best friends to ride our bikes across Iowa (500 miles) in a week. This was an annual experience called RAGBRAI and I rode with Team Flamingo. This experience is something that I wanted to share with my friends and readers so I created our Team Flamingo blog. I tried to maintain the text-based blog, but the wireless access was limited from the back of my bike. =-)

I tried posting to our blog using by texting from my Treo 800p smartphone, but Verizon decided to add 9 additional lines of advertisements to the end of each of my posts. I called up Verizon and went to their stores to find out how to stop this but it wasn't possible.

Ultimately, I decided to use my phone to post audio podcasts to my blog. It was easy to call the 888 number and leave updates about our progress. It was easy, it was quick and it was effective.
The coolest part of it was that I could embed the podcast receptor into my webpage/blog. This made it easy to access and enjoy.

I used GCast. It only took creating an account and then putting the receptor on my webpage/blog. I called up the GCast phone number, 888-654-2278. I entered my secret code number. Then I created the podcast. When I was done, I could review the podcast to approve or deny its posting. Once I have approved the podcast, it was posted within minutes. Best of all, this is FREE. You can even upload files from your computer if you want to include a file that you custom-made instead of limiting it to the phone versions. I found that I could even subscribe to the RSS feed of my GCast podcast using iTunes.

A similar service is Gabcast. You call a toll-free number (they provide phone numbers for multiple continents) and leave your thoughts through your phone. Gabcast has a three levels of service. The free version doesn't allow you to upload files from your computer but you can do that for $6 or $12 per month. Paying for the service will provide you with more storage space services as well. One capability that I found in Gabcast that didn't seem to be in Gcast is that you can link to individual recordings. They suggested that you could use this to verbally explain things like eBay postings or interesting webpages.

Westley Fryer wrote an informative article about these sorts of tools entitled Mobile Digital Storytelling for The TechEdge: The Journal of the Texas Computer Education Association. This is an informative article with lots of links if you want to learn more about it.

I don't know that this storytelling is the only way that students will benefit from this mobile digital recording system, but it provides an exciting way to chronical throughts, ideas and experiences.

Have you used these tools? If so, share what you have done.

Z