Stephen’s Untold Stories

Very cool story from New Mexico.

Students at a rural New Mexico school made a unique pledge last winter: Right hands raised, they promised to take care of their Zunes.

This past semester, nearly every one of the roughly 100 students at Fort Sumner High School was outfitted with the Microsoft media player, similar to Apple’s iPod, enabling them to watch videos and listen to recorded lectures created or recommended by teachers and fellow students. Fort Sumner High was one of two schools nationwide taking part in the project.

The students were encouraged to use their devices during class hours, on bus rides home, and on school trips. Teachers got a $400 bonus for coming up with lessons to identify 20 downloadable digital lectures that supported their lessons and to develop five of their own.

“My main hope is it’s going to save us lost class time,” said English teacher Pam Richards. “We are small, and the kids are involved in so many things.”

Link to article

Almost all of the images were taken with Canon Cameras.

 

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I got a few questions about this so I thought I’d share my answers.

Q: Does the device work with Macs?
A: Yes it does! I have used it with no problems on my MacBook pro with OS 10.5.2. I’ve also used it successfully with with Windows XP and Vista.

Q: Does it work in your office?
A: I have tried using the card in my office, but there are two problems. First, my building has windows that are tinted using particles of aluminum in the glass. This does a good job of blocking the signal. It does the same thing for cell phones. Also, my office is located in the center of the building. There is a lot to block the signal there. It is almost impossible to get a cell signal in my office, so it’s the same with the Compass. If I get a 20% signal strength there, that is on the good side. The good news is that I don’t need it in my office since I have a wired connection and WiFi is readily available.

Q: Have you thought about dropping your regualr Internet service because of the device?
A: I have considered dropping my home Internet service, but I need the ability to provide access to my Wii and Apple TV. I can’t do that with this card, so it looks like I won’t be leaving AT&T for home access.

If you have any questions, please post a comment or shoot me an E-Mail at sbrahn at gmail dot com.

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I bought this little guy a couple of weeks ago so I could stay connected on the road without having to worry about finding WiFi or dealing with the content filter of the schools I visit. Yes, there are schools that still block all things Google!

After using it for two weeks, I have to admit that it has been one of the best things I’ve bought in quite some time. It doubles as a flash drive, and the installation software is loaded right on the device. It is also GPS enabled, and it lets you locate nearby restaurants, banks, and gas stations. The connection speed is comparable to standard DSL, usually about 1.5 mbps.

David Pogue did a nice review for the New York Times, but the prototype device he had didn’t have the functioning GPS. Mine works great!

I bought the device for $50, and I pay another $50 a month for unlimited access. Easily worth it to me!

Update! If you are interested in how to get the $50 a month access, shoot me an E-Mail at sbrahn at gmail dot com.

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I certainly hope so. I’m getting one!

The 3G iPhone will be announced June 9, the likely date of Apple CEO Steve Jobs‘ keynote at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference, analysts said in research notes on Thursday.

The 3G iPhone will be the “first of an impressive wave of new products” from Apple, wrote Citi analysts Richard Gardner and Yeechang Lee. They also expect an updated Mac laptop and iPod lines. The Apple conference is scheduled for June 9-13 in San Francisco.

Those predictions are consistent with a February prediction Gardner made that 3G iPhones will be announced by midyear. The 3G iPhone release will help Apple meet its target of shipping 10 million iPhones in 2008, Gardner wrote at the time.

Apple is confident it will sell 10 million iPhones this year, officials said during a conference call on Wednesday to discuss the company’s second-quarter earnings.

When asked about the possible release of a 3G iPhone, Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer declined comment. Apple has new products in the pipeline that the company is excited about, Oppenheimer said.

Link to article

Great stuff from Apple.

iPod in the Classroom Resources

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My contract with Spring is up in May, and I have pretty much decided that I’m going to get an iPhone. I am very excited about the possibility of the 3G version with GPS capability. I’ve been playing around with an iPod Touch, and it is an amazing device. The new iPhone should be even better.

A June introduction of the 3G iPhone could tie in with Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference to be held in San Francisco from June 9 to 13, especially if that event also sees the arrival of the finished version of the iPhone SDK, which is currently in beta.

What’s going to be packed into the new iPhone? GPS seems likely, as well as a dual-camera arrangement to allow 3G video calls as well as taking photos with the screen as a viewfinder. The industrial design of the handset is likely to change, as Apple and handset buyers are both particularly style-conscious.

Link to article

The iPod skeptics are upset to see this kind of article. I’d love to work with a school on an implementation of these.

A ban on iPods is so strictly enforced at José Martí Middle School that as many as three a week are confiscated from students — and returned only to their parents.

But even as students have been told to leave their iPods at home, the school here in Hudson County has been handing out the portable digital players to help bilingual students with limited English ability sharpen their vocabulary and grammar by singing along to popular songs.

Next month, the Union City district will give out 300 iPods at its schools as part of a $130,000 experiment in one of New Jersey’s poorest urban school systems. The effort has spurred a handful of other districts in the state, including the ones in Perth Amboy and South Brunswick, to start their own iPod programs in the last year, and the project has drawn the attention of educators from Westchester County to Monrovia, Calif.

The spread of iPods into classrooms comes at a time when many school districts across the country have outlawed the portable players from their buildings — along with cellphones and DVD players — because they pose a distraction, or worse, to students. In some cases, students have been caught cheating on tests by loading answers, mathematical formulas and notes onto their iPods.

But some schools are rethinking the iPod bans as they try to co-opt the devices for educational purposes. Last month, the Perth Amboy district bought 40 iPods for students to use in bilingual classes that are modeled after those in Union City. In South Brunswick, 20 iPods were used last spring in French and Spanish classes. And in North Plainfield, N.J., the district has supplied iPods to science teachers to illustrate chemistry concepts, and it is considering allowing students in those classes to use iPods that they have brought from home.

Link to article

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That’s right. We educational technology types are already looking for ways to use these things to educate our kids. It’s just what we do!

This is a short five minute video from Elliott Masie after our first few hours of use and testing.  Elliott details the aspects of the iPhone that are high potential for learning (instructional videos, collaboration and more), some of the challenges (no current use of Flash Video) and a few trends in the mobile learning arena.

Link to site with video

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The question, of course is “Hey Stephen, did you get an iPhone?”

An iPhone might be in my future, but not for quite a while. I am perfectly happy with the phone I have. It gives me a speedy Internet, plays mp3s, and gives me access to E-Mail without the need for WiFi. I can also use it as a wireless modem when I’m out and about.

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Do any of you even have any Blu-ray discs? I don’t, and I’m not sure I ever will. It might be worth $300 at some point, but I don’t have any use for it yet.

Link to article

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I’ve been reading Andy’s blog for a while, and he is one of my favortie reads. In his latest posting, he gives a good overview of where things are in this debate.

First it was cell phones, and now it’s iPods. K-12 schools around the country are beginning to ban students from carrying MP3 players, fearing they may use them for cheating. Yet at least one university is embracing the exact opposite approach - giving every incoming student an iPod to enhance educational practices and promote academic responsibility.

Why the sudden interest? It’s due to an Associated Press< story that’s been making the rounds on lots of news websites. The article, Schools Say iPods Becoming Tool for Cheaters, paints a picture of clever kids running amok with their MP3 players, sticking it to The Man by using the devices to cut corners on tests, all under the not-so-watchful eyes of teachers too technologically illiterate to do anything about it.

Well, don’t tell that to officials at Duke University, because they’ve headed full-throttle in the exact opposite direction. Duke entered uncharted waters in August 2004 when they distributed iPods to every incoming freshman. The goal, you can imagine, wasn’t to bridge the digital divide between those students who could download music illegally and those who couldn’t. Instead, Duke had a bigger goal: to explore the potential of digital music players as an integral part of the education process.

The program, part of the Duke Digital Initiative, has been running for three years now. This semester, more than 1,300 students and 85 professors are using iPods in 71 courses, with a heavy emphasis on language and the humanities. Professors can use the iPods to deliver copies of lectures, books on tape and other course-related electronic materials, including video. And everyone who gets an iPod is encouraged to participate in iPod training seminars so they learn the ins and outs of the device.

Read the rest here.

Thanks, Andy!

Thanks to Tony Vincent for posting this.

Go to iQuizMaker.com to download free software for making your very own true/false and multiple choice quizzes. You can include explanations with your true/false questions. You can set several options, including how many questions a user can answer incorrectly and the graphics theme of the quiz. iQuiz Maker includes an iPod simulator so you can take the quiz on your desktop before syncing to an iPod. Currently the software is Mac only with the Windows version due in May.

iQuizMaker.com has additional quizzes you can download for iQuiz, including Human Anatomy and Cats & Dogs. You can download the Quiz Installer for making the process of getting these on your iPod easier. [To manually install a quiz pack, put the quiz pack folder in the iQuiz folder, which is in the iPod Games folder in your iTunes folder.] Apple has more detailed information for installing and creating quizzes.

Here is the rest!

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If you haven’t added Woot.com to your aggregator or list of sites you visit daily, you might want to check it out. They have some incredible deals on all kinds of gadgets, and I have bought 3 Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners from them. (One for my parents, one for my sister, and one for me.) They recently had a contest where people could design their own fake Roomba for prizes. Here is the winner.

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Microsoft has released details about its “iPod killer,” the Zune.

Endgadget.com has a nice rundown.

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I’ve really enjoyed my Sprint PPC 6700 mobile phone/pocket pc. It allows me to access the Internet using EVDO technology, which is pretty fast. Here is an interesting podcast concerning this new technology.

EVDO is a mobile broadband technology that sits upon the CDMA network, the same network Sprint uses, and delivers download speeds of 400-700 Kbps on average, with peak speeds up to 2 Mbps. While many can get great speeds with Wi-Fi, you have to find a Wi-Fi hotspot to get it. Available in hundreds of cities, EVDO is practically everywhere. It follows you.

Link to article & podcast

Here is one you should definitely save!

Headphones…check! Computer and web connection…check! Podcasts…good ones…huh. We’ve all heard about how podcasts offer ground-breaking indie audio content on the web, but how the heck do you find them?

You could spend hours scouring the end of the very long tail for quality podcasts, but thankfully, there are a few sites that have already done the heavy lifting for you, including podcast search engines, directories, and roundup sites. Keep reading, and I’ll show you how to find some of the best, most interesting, and must-listen-to podcasts on the web.

Lifehackers’ guide to podcasts

I find myself in a strange situation. I’m between jobs, and I don’t have a laptop. I don’t want to buy one right now just to present at NECC, so a former colleague who will also be attending has agreed let me borrow his during my presentations. The rest of the conference I will have to fend for myself by using E-Mail/Kiosk stations and my five mobile devices. Here they are:

My Sprint PPC-6700. Has EVDO wireless Internet so I don’t have to rely on having WiFi. It does allow for WiFi if present, and the slide out keyboard works really well. The majority of blogging I do at NECC will likely be done with this device.

My Palm TX. A great device. It has WiFi, so I will use it for browsing and E-Mail. The graffiti text entry is not something that I enjoy, so I do very little typing with it. The Blazer web browser works great for most sites, so I will get a lot of use out of this.

My old friend, the Dell Axim. It has WiFi, but I will likely just use it as a backup to the TX. It’s battery life is very limited, but it has always been a reliable device.

My XM radio. I usually listen to this in the car, but it will be with me at the conference. I can listen to Major Leage Baseball games with it, and it has lots of great music channels.

I also have a photo iPod, but no pic for that. Hopefully these gadgets will get me through the conference.

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Cutting edge stuff.

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This is the best one I’ve seen so far.

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