One of the several unpopular assignments I force upon my students is the Sophomore Speech. I am capitalizing Sophomore Speech because it has become a thing at our school … a proper thing. Every single one of my 10th grade students is required to write a personal essay and convert it into a speech to be delivered in front of the entire school during our assembly period we call Break.

The word speech has fallen out of fashion these days. It’s much cooler to give a talk than a speech, but talk doesn’t alliterate with sophomore. I guess I could have called them 10th Grade Talks, but as I said, the Sophomore Speech is a thing, so I’m going with it.

Of course, I don’t win many votes for Most Popular Teacher of the Year when I announce this assignment to my students. Most members of our species tend to avoid public speaking whenever possible, and you won’t be surprised to hear that some students consider this the waterboard of English assignments.

“Mr. Brookhouser, I really need to get out of this. I am about to throw up thinking about it.” I reassure students that we work up to the speech with baby steps, and I remind them that Mrs. Rees, the incredible 9th grade English teacher at York, has done an amazing job getting them ready. While I have seen tears shed as a result of this assignment, I’ve yet to see any vomit. I’m ready, though. Our bleach supply is ample.

I tell my students that I want them to be very powerful people. I don’t mean that they should all aspire to be CEOs or senators. I’m talking about influence, not status. I’m sure there are many people doing great things and making the world a better place without ever having to speak to groups of people. I’ve just never heard of them. Few people in power get out of public speaking. After my class is over, my students will have the choice to avoid ever having to speak in front of a large group again. I just don’t want them to reject that opportunity without knowing that they’re actually capable of doing it. When they embrace the opportunity, they embrace power.

It would also be great if they used that power for good and not evil.

–

Last time I was invited to the Googleplex, an engineer introduced me to the notion of “eating your own dog food.” Maybe the phrase came from Alpo advertisers who claimed that their product was so good that they enjoyed it themselves. Regardless, tech companies started using the phrase to suggest that either the software they were developing was good enough for them to use themselves or it was not, and if not, they shouldn’t make it at all.

When I give trainings, many people ask me about the security of data in Google Drive or Gmail. I tell them what Googlers tell me. Google employees are super concerned about their internal communications getting compromised. They use Google Drive. They use Gmail. They believe in their product. They eat their own dog food.

Teachers produce products too. We create lesson plans, assessments, and grades and comments at the end of the year, but the most important products we make are experiences that lead to growth.

Hearing about dog food at Google led me to ask how much of my dog food experiences I’m consuming. If speaking in front of large groups of people is such a worthwhile experience, why don’t I do it more frequently. It’s true that I do speak in front of my students daily, and I also give tech trainings to teachers throughout the year, but I wouldn’t call them speeches.

So last winter, I came across a post on the TEDx Monterey site accepting TED Talk proposals (note the alliteration in TED Talk). So I applied to talk about the 20% Project in my class.

A few weeks later I heard back from the organizers who wanted to learn more about the project, so we had a video conference over a Hangout. Bob and Eva, I learned quickly after meeting them, are ultra organized, super smart, and wildly creative. They asked me to explain what the 20% Project is and why I do it.

I was ready for this question. I went with great depth into the studies about creativity and motivation and Google and Daniel Pink and The Candle Problem and carrots and sticks and autonomy and mastery and purpose and science! After about 10 minutes of this, Eva cut me off. “Kevin, we all know about this stuff. We want to know why you decided to take on this project and how it looks in your classroom.”

“Oh. Right.” I was not ready for this question.

She wanted me to tell a story, not lecture on pedagogy. Eva asked me to do exactly what I ask my students when writing their personal speeches. Dog food.

I guess I explained my story well enough for Eva and Bob to give me a chance at writing a proper piece that people would actually want to hear because they let me move on to the next step.

So I wrote and rewrote. I devoured honest feedback from friends and colleagues. Through the process, I kept going into theory, and Eva kept reminding me to go back to story.

Then I practiced. In front of the mirror, in front of my dogs, in front of the homeless men on the streets of Santa Cruz.

–

With my microphone scotch taped to my ear and cheek, I was two eternal minutes away from taking the stage. My wife sat in the audience with students, parents of students, fellow teachers, and I was pretty sure I would stand up there and forget how to get my mouth and tongue to make so many different sounds. I wondered how much I would owe TEDx if vomit ruined the mic.

I paced the “green room” while Ailis Dooner, the 10th grader who has pretty much single-handedly discovered that algae can cure cancer, eyed me. She was scheduled to follow me and asked me how I was doing. “I’m a little nervous, but I think I’ll be ok,” I lied. She knew it. Then Ailis looked me in the eye, and with the fierce commitment of a prized gladiator owner, she said, “Adrenaline focuses the mind.”

I didn’t forget everything. My mouth worked. I showed my slides. People clapped.

I’m pretty sure I now have a little better understanding of what it’s like to be one of my students. I’m reminded about how scary this assignment can be, but I still don’t fully understand it. I’m a grown-up who has lots of experience talking in front of large groups of people, I don’t consider myself someone who is particularly afraid of the job, and I’ve never been told that some grade depended on my willingness to go through with it. But I feel more empathy for them, and I hope that will allow me to support them more next year.

It may not be the exact same vintage my students eat, but I ate my dog food this past weekend, and I’m proud to announce, it stayed down.

Ubermix is an all-free, specially built, Linux-based operating system designed from the ground up with the needs of education in mind. 

I downloaded the image file onto a separate machine and formated the image onto a USB stick following these instructions. The process wasn’t as easy as I expected. I noticed that the install would hang after it said it would take about five minutes to install. So, I did what any sane person would do in this situation. I asked a teenager. In this case, Nils, who is launching his own web design business as a part of my class’s 20% project. He recommended that I give it more time to install. My problem is that when installing something at a root level like an operating system, you’re given no feedback that anything is happening. After an hour of nothing, I noticed the red light on the usb stick flashing. Something was happening! Nils was right. After about eight hours, the OS started to boot. I felt like a 15-year-old in line for The Hunger Games.

Start time This thing goes from shut down to browsing the web in 65 seconds. That’s slower than a MacBook Air with a solid state drive, but it’s much faster than my windows machine. Once booted, it immediately connects to a wifi access point and is ready to surf.

User Interface I love the simplicity of the UI. With its large icons, it is designed to look more like a mobile operating system than a desktop operating system. There is no “start menu” like Windows, or “dock” like OSX. Rather the left column are app categories including internet, games, education, accessories, and system. Click on the category and your given the apps that could be Android or iOS app icons.

 

Software Ubermix comes bundled with a bunch of freely available software including the entire Open Office suite, Skype, Scratch, Gimp for photo editing, and other math and science apps I haven’t had time to explore. I’m most interested in this as a web machine, and for running apps like Moodle, quizlet, Poll Everywhere and Google Drive, this thing is perfect. Both Chrome and Firefox can handle any website you throw at it.

 

Quick Restore One of the must-have features of Ubermix is the easy system recovery feature. Students tend to mess with settings, change background images, and download garbage that slows everything down. By pressing esc on the boot, you are given the option to restore the operating system to its original state.

 

One Hitch So far I cannot get the thing to wake up once it is in sleep mode. I’ve tried a couple bug fixes recommended on the web, but still no luck. If anyone out there knows a fix, please send it along. As it is now, I just have to restart the system after the lid closes.

 

1:1 / BYOD Solution? Anyone looking to adopt a 1:1 program or Bring Your Own Device program at a school will want to consider this as an option. The world has tolled the death of the netbook to the tablet and ultrabook.

Not so fast. Compared to the iPad, a netbook running Ubermix could be half the price with a keyboard and a fully functional web browser that could easily handle editing complex web apps like Moodle or Google Docs. What do you think?

This week on the Google Educast: Kevin leads the crew in a fast-paced discussion of the new Forms interface, some creative learning opportunities, as well as the new road to Oz. Also workflow ideas and Advanced Power Searching tips!

This week on the Google Educast: On this week’s show we look at the new Google Forms, we head across the pond to the UK’s BETT conference to learn from Dom Breadmore about Google’s interest in teaching programming to students and Danielle Filas shares how to use “edit your form” response in the classroom.

Special Guests:  Dom Breadmore, Kim Zimmer, Danielle Filas

This week on the Google Educast: Kevin, Sean, and Juan discuss new handwriting recognition, offline Slides, screenplay templates, the language app Duolingo, infographics, and the Advanced Power Search class, where Nick Cusumano shows up the gang finding a solution ridiculously fast.

• Segment 1: What’s New with Google Surviving The Holidays When You’re The Visiting Tech SupportTeach Parents Tech http://www.teachparentstech.org/
• Google Goggles for envy shopping and window shopping
• Comparison shop by using vs. [ Vizio 55 inch vs    ]
• http://lmgtfy.com/ (KEVIN)

Segment 2: Tips and Tricks, Easter Eggs – Amaze Family and Friends

• Search [ do a barrel roll ]

• Search [ askew ]
• How to play snake on YouTube. KEVIN
• Search cheat sheet
• Go to http://google.com/maps Click on GET DIRECTIONS. In the starting location put [ The Shire ] and destination [ Mordor ] then choose walking directions.
• The wadsworth constant and YouTube. parameter: &wadsworth=1 KEVIN Right click on the scrubber to in YouTube to get a link that will start a video at that time.
• Search for [ Bacon Number Actor/Actress name] and get how many connections they are away from Kevin Bacon
• CTRL + Alt + A ( or command + Option + A if you’re on a Mac) in Google Earth for a flight simulator. Choice of planes. (FD)
• Search for [anagram] KEVIN
• Youtube Card Trick http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbEei0I3kMQ
• Batman vs Joker Break Dancing Interactive http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR3ywoc2Cp4
• How to auto fill cells using Google Sets KEVIN
• Seach for [ sqrt(cos(x))*cos(300x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.7)*(4-x*x)^0.01, sqrt(6-x^2), -sqrt(6-x^2) from -4.5 to 4.5  ]
• Google Sphere

• Google Gravity KEVIN http://mrdoob.com/projects/chromeexperiments/google-gravity/

Segment 3: Chrome and Android: Free games for your browser, tablet or phone

• Angry Birds Seasons https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/angry-birds-seasons/hkecdmjkomgnadjomghnjjccpdlinajl?utm_source=chrome-ntp-icon
• On your Android device go to Settings application, in the About phone section, repeatedly tap the Android version section. The animation is different in every version of the OS.
• Screenshot on Android KEVIN
• Replay the Olympic Google Doodles http://www.google.com/doodles/search?query=olympics
• Free Full-length movies on Youtube KEVIN http://www.youtube.com/user/movies/videos?flow=grid&view=26
• Little Alchemy https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/little-alchemy/knkapnclbofjjgicpkfoagdjohlfjhpd?utm_source=chrome-ntp-icon

Segment 4: Thank you Google for:

• Google Crisis Response http://www.google.org/crisisresponse/
• Google RISE Award http://www.google.com/edu/rise/index.html
• Google Earth Outreach Program http://www.google.com/earth/outreach/stories/showcase.html
• Moving us toward having a self-driving car before we die. http://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_thrun_google_s_driverless_car.html

This week on the Google Educast: This week Kevin, Sean, Diane, and Fred review some great fancy features that you may have missed in the news this week: exporting to docs, adding questions to YouTube videos, mail merge and more. Let’s dive in!

This week on the Google Educast: This week Chris and the crew look at more Chrome experiments, improvements to docs, and the mysterious beast called “Drive”. Lots of Chrome tips and tricks and some fresh ideas for teaching vocabulary.

This week on the Google Educast: Kevin Brookhouser  and Fred Delventhal, cover many things SEARCH including how you can get your very own Google Power Searcher Certificate, determine any actress/actor’s “Bacon Number” and a look at what’s coming for search education. We’ll show you how you can have the Transformers visit your school, how to display your Android device on your computer screen and how keep time with your Professional Learning Network using a world clock. All this and more on this week’s Google Educast.

This week on the Google Educast:Kevin Brookhouser, Fred Delventhal, Sean Williams, and Diane Main discuss Docs on tablets, YouTube for teachers, discussions in Google Spreadsheets, the next Google Teacher Academy, and much more.

This week on the Google Educast: As the new school years begins join hosts Chris Betcher, Fred Delventhal and Sean Williams as they discuss the latest news from the Google world of education, including turn-by-turn navigation for cyclists, Google+ improvements for Apps customers, cool things you can do with Google Reader bundles, and the highs and lows of 2-factor authentication. Get some good ideas on how best to present Google Docs to the rest your staff, some cool Chrome extensions, and lots more.

This week on the Google Educast: Fred Delventhal, Kevin Brookhouser,  Sean Williams, and Chris Betcher take us through a bevy of tools and extensions that will help out the classroom, especially if you have a tablet device like and iPad or Nexus 7.  This show really delves into the conundrum some educators have when collaborating on an iDevice.

This week on the Google Educast: Diane Main, Kevin Brookhouser,  Sean Williams, and Chris Betcher are getting excited about the new school year (in the U.S), anyway, and Chris Betcher gives us his tips from the Australia side of the world. Google for Education has so many tools to start off the school year; let’s see what the GCTs have to offer!

This week on the Google Educast: Fred Delventhal, Kevin Brookhouser and Sean Williams share frequently requested features in Google Spreadhsheets that are now available, how you can easily share any page on the internet to Google+, and Google asks for your input and help in adding images to Google Apps. All this and more on Google Educast #59

On this week’s Google Educast Show:  Hosts Sean Williams and Kevin Brookhouser oogle and ogle Google’s Nexus 7, while Kevin talks about the use and the possibilities of the Nexus 7 as a BYOD device. They also dig into docs templates for writing, taking screenshots, and handwriting on your tablet device.

On this week’s Google Educast Show:  Host Chris Betcher along with fellow Google Certified Teacher Sean Williams, talk about the YouTube’s fab new Digital Citizenship resources, taking part in a Google usability study and using Google Alerts in your classroom. We offer some search tips for a listener, and share a neat twist on what you might do with a collaboratively produced Google Doc.

On this week’s Google Educast Show: our host Chris Betcher, along with fellow Google Certified Teachers Kevin Brookhouser and Fred Delventhal and special guest Googler Tasha Bergson-Michelson talk about the Power searching with Google MOOC, plus latest news from Google, a snapshot of the World Wonders Project, and some awesomely good classroom work from Kevin’s Grade 10 students from their 20% time projects.

This week on the Google Educast:  We’re getting into the Dog Days of Summer! On this week’s Google Educast show our host Chris Betcher, along with fellow Google Certified Teacher Fred Delventhal share their experience with Google’s Power Searching Massive Open Online Course , as well as give nods to our fellow Google Teacher’s that are sharing their knowledge at the Google Apps for Education California Summit.

This week on the Google Educast:  On this week’s Google Educast show our host Chris Betcher, along with fellow Google Certified Teachers Sean Williams and Fred Delventhal talk about how to become a power searcher, more things getting shut down by Google and share some amazing things about Google Chrome.

This week on the Google Educast:  Our host Kevin Brookhouser with our slew of guests including Rachel Wente-Cheney, Corin Richards, as well as stalwarts Diane Main, Sean Williams, Fred Delventhal, and a roomful of Google educators – weed through many of the exciting announcements from Google IO. The news at Google IO has many implications on education; this time around we are treated to a new tablet, the Nexus 7, Google Chrome on the iPad, and so much more. How will Google change education this year? Let’s find out!