Is there Passion in your summer?

The Passion Driven Classroom is officially the subject of a summer book club for Curriculum 21 members!

This book, written with Amy Sandvold, contains helpful strategies to guide a 21st century classroom.

I hope you all sign up for this book club to learn how Passion can make education and learning more exciting, fulfilling, and effective!

The conversation is in full swing!

Preface and Chapter 1 Discussion

This is what Joan is saying about Passion in the classroom:

“I think that passion scares people because it requires an enthusiasm that some feel must be kept ‘under control.’…The trick is to have environments where passion and excitement for learning can be let loose in a productive way…”

Michael says:

“If we look more closely at what the standard is asking the kids to know and be able to do, then we can provide choices that engage those skills in multiple ways.”

Conversely, William thinks:

“Passionate learning seems to come more easily when students are given choices. This doesn’t mesh well with a standards driven curriculum.”

What do you think? I want to hear all of your ideas about Passion and it’s usefulness in the classroom!

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Better access to your content is, well, better

(Cross-posted from the Google Places Blog.)



Google Places makes it quick and easy for you to tell your friends, and the world, what you think about the places you visit.



And since your reviews are your reviews, we figured giving you access to all this content in one convenient way might be helpful. Now, when you visit your profile on Google Places (to find it, click on your picture in the upper left of the screen), you’ll find a link along the left that points to an Atom feed of all the place ratings and reviews you’ve created on Google. The feed address is known only to you, but you are free to share it however you want. So, go on, enjoy your data.



In addition to taking your Google Places ratings and reviews with you, we also thought it’d be useful if you could more easily rate and review on Google the places you’ve found elsewhere in your travels or on the web.



To do that, just find the URL of a public GeoRSS/Atom feed that contains place information you care about. This could be anything from a feed of your Foursquare check-ins to a My Map you may have created years ago. Paste the URL into the search box on Google Places. We’ll show you place cards that line up, as best as we’re able to determine, with the places in the public geo feed. Then, you can rate to your heart’s content.



By making it easier for you take your opinions with you and rate familiar places quickly, we hope you’ll find more places you love, no matter where you may have discovered them.



Posted by Juan Silveira, Software Engineer

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Google Maps on your mobile browser

(Cross-posted from the Google Mobile Blog)

With 40% of Google Maps usage on mobile devices, we want you to have a consistent Google Maps experience wherever you use it. So, today we’re announcing our updated Google Maps experience for mobile browsers on Android and iOS.

Now, when you visit maps.google.com on your phone or tablet’s browser and opt-in to share your location, you can use many of the same Google Maps features you’re used to from the desktop. This will allow you to:

• See your current location
  
• Search for what’s nearby with suggest and auto complete
  
• Have clickable icons of popular businesses and transit stations
  
• Get driving, transit, biking, and walking directions
  
• Turn on satellite, transit, traffic, biking, and other layers
  
• View Place pages with photos, ratings, hours, and more
  
• When signed into your Google account, access your starred locations and My Maps

This past weekend, I was at a team off-site at a ropes course and needed to find a good deli spot to grab lunch. I opened Google Maps on my mobile browser and searched to locate a popular deli nearby. A few finger taps later, I had viewed photos and reviews on the deli’s Place page and found the quickest way to get there using driving directions- all from my mobile browser.

Google Maps for mobile browsers is platform independent - you will always get a consistent experience and the latest features without needing to install any updates, no matter what phone you use.

To get started exploring Google Maps in your mobile browser, go to http://maps.google.com or any domain where Google Maps is available. Learn more in our help center.

Posted by Alireza Ali, Software Engineer

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Know when your bus is late with live transit updates in Google Maps

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

Often when I’m taking public transit, I arrive at my stop on time only to anxiously check my watch and look down the street for my bus, which is running late once again. Those extra minutes I’m forced to wait seem like an eternity, and the only information I can access on my phone is when the bus was supposed to arrive.

Starting now, Google Maps for mobile and desktop can tell you when your ride is actually going to arrive with new live transit updates. We partnered with transit agencies to integrate live transit data in four U.S. cities and two European cities: Boston, Portland, Ore., San Diego, San Francisco, Madrid and Turin.



When you click on a transit station or plan a transit route with Google Maps and there are delays or alerts related to your trip, you’ll now see “live departure times” (indicated with a special icon) and service alerts.

Live transit departure times after tapping on a station

Live service alerts when receiving transit directions

Live departures and alerts on desktop

We’re working with our public transit partners to help them provide live data to more people in more cities. You can get live transit updates in the latest version of Google Maps for mobile (requires Android 1.6+), as well as Google Maps on all supported desktop and mobile browsers.

Posted by Sasha Gontmakher, Software Engineer

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My Places now helps you manage your important locations

Almost every day you encounter new places and businesses, whether it’s a new store you spotted on your commute to work, or a restaurant you visited with friends over the weekend. To date, you’ve been able to star places on Google Maps, rate them via Google Places, or add them to a customized map with your own icons and annotations through My Maps.

But keeping track of all the locations you care about and memorizing which places you starred or rated isn’t easy. So today, we’re unveiling the new My Places tab on Google Maps, which helps you quickly view and interact with your saved maps, starred locations, and rated businesses.


The My Places tab replaces the My Maps tab in the Google Maps toolbar. Items are organized by date with your most recent activity at the top, and filters make it easy to sort and view only your maps, starred locations or rated places. And of course, you can still create and share personalized My Maps through the “Create new map” link.

My Places also simplifies your ability to manage the locations that make up your personalized maps experience. Using the drop-down arrow next to each location in your list, you can easily delete any of your saved maps, stars or Google Places ratings. These personalization changes will automatically be synchronized across all other Google properties including Google Places, Google Maps, and Google Maps for mobile.

To use My Places, you’ll need to sign in with your Google account. Try it now: visit Google Maps and click the My Places tab to access and organize the places you care about.

Posted by Hiroki Asakawa, Software Engineer

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Filter Mania: Add effects and filters to photos in your iOS device

When you want to add image effects to the photographs you have shot, you first transfer them to your computer. But thanks to modern smartphone applications you can add effects to your photos right within your smartphone. One application that lets you do this effectively is “Filter Mania.”

Filter Mania is a free iOS application sized at 5.2 MB and compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad running iOS version 4.1 or later. The app lets you add numerous image filters to your pictures. Unlike similar apps that offer only a particular set of filters or only a small number of filters, Filter Mania offers 12 filters by default. You can download more free filters for the app.

 

Filters are categorized in the application as Color, Lighting, Textures, Frames, Themes, Borders, and FUN. This categorization helps you quickly experiments with the image features that you want to change.

 

Filter Mania will surely be useful to anybody who shoots photos from his iPhone and likes experimenting with them. You can get Filter Mania from iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/app/filter-mania/id431603481?mt=8#

 

Related posts:

1. Top 10 Websites to Create Funny Photo Effects


2. Photosynth: Take visually brilliant panoramic photographs easily with your Apple device


3. Download Flickr Photos with Flickr Autodownloadr


4. 5 Excellent Free Photography Apps for iPhone and iPod Touch


5. Make Funny Images with your Photos

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Photosynth: Take visually brilliant panoramic photographs easily with your Apple device

Panoramic photographs are becoming the latest fad in digital photography. Capturing the entire 360° view of a place produces amazing visual results unmatched by traditional photographs. The panoramic pictures you see online are usually developed by professional photographers suing complicated photography techniques and advanced software. But if you want to create such photos yourself, all you need is a user-friendly tool called Photosynth.

Photosynth is a smartphone application for iOS devices: iPod Touch, iPad, and iPhone. The app is compatible with these devices running iOS 4.0 or later. Interestingly, Microsoft is the creator of this app and the company has decided to roll out an iOS version before the Windows Phone version. Surely this will please all Apple device owners.

The app lets you capture a scene by following a photography line on your phone’s screen. This line indicated where the next picture will continue from and gives an idea as to how the panoramic picture will be pieced together. If you feel that your previous action could be redone better, simply tap on the “undo” button to erase your last action.

Once your picture pieces are complete you can tap on the “finish” button and wait for your panorama to be prepared.

 

Your panoramic pictures can be saved on your phone and optionally shared with friends over the internet.

 

If you want, you can record the location of the picture subject. The location is displayed on a map and can help develop the interest of friends and business contacts.

Photosynth is a free download sized at only 4.4 MB. It can be gotten by clicking here.

 

Related posts:

1. Filter Mania: Add effects and filters to photos in your iOS device


2. Nokia Windows Phone 7 Device Unveiled at Mobile World Congress


3. 5 Excellent Free Photography Apps for iPhone and iPod Touch


4. Apple iPhone 4 Won Best Mobile Device Award at Global Mobile Awards


5. Samsung Windows Phone 7 Device Leaked in the Wild

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