by Stephen
Discussion Forums with Zoho
September 22, 2009 in Tech, Web by Stephen
For free! – http://discussions.zoho.com/
And Zoho has plenty of other free tools you should check into.
You are browsing the archive for Web.
by Stephen
by Stephen
A Global Experience
September 19, 2009 in Education, Skype, Tech, Twitter, VoIP, Web by Stephen
Late last night I took a break from studying and I saw on Twitter that a fellow educator who has been working in Hong Kong was asking for someone to Skype in and discuss his or her experience with the K12 Online Conference. I thought I’d take a chance and see if I might participate, and within ten minutes I was speaking with him and his participants live in his classroom in Hong Kong. I was online with them for maybe six or seven minutes, and I must say it was a very rewarding experience.
He was able to get someone from the other side of the world to participate in his class with no notice within minutes using tools that are completely free. It’s a little overwhelming to think how far we’ve come with using technology in education. Of course we still have many miles to go, but I was very glad to take part in a truly global learning experience.
by Stephen
Did you know? Now up to Version 4.0
September 15, 2009 in Current Affairs, Education, Gadgets, Tech, Video, Web, e-books by Stephen
Guaranteed to provoke some serious conversation.
by Stephen
A Library Loses All Its Books – On Purpose!
September 5, 2009 in Education, Tech, Web, e-books by Stephen
Interesting story about a school near Boston that has done something rather revolutionary.
This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine campus about 90 minutes west of Boston have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks – the classics, novels, poetry, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. The future, they believe, is digital.
“When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,’’ said James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing and chief promoter of the bookless campus. “This isn’t ‘Fahrenheit 451’ [the 1953 Ray Bradbury novel in which books are banned]. We’re not discouraging students from reading. We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology.’’
Instead of a library, the academy is spending nearly $500,000 to create a “learning center,’’ though that is only one of the names in contention for the new space. In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they are building a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine.
And to replace those old pulpy devices that have transmitted information since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1400s, they have spent $10,000 to buy 18 electronic readers made by Amazon.com and Sony. Administrators plan to distribute the readers, which they’re stocking with digital material, to students looking to spend more time with literature.
Those who don’t have access to the electronic readers will be expected to do their research and peruse many assigned texts on their computers.
by Stephen
“Pushing our literacy in bold new directions.”
September 3, 2009 in Education, Tech, Web by Stephen
Many will be surprised by this. I am not one of them.
As the school year begins, be ready to hear pundits fretting once again about how kids today can’t write—and technology is to blame. Facebook encourages narcissistic blabbering, video and PowerPoint have replaced carefully crafted essays, and texting has dehydrated language into “bleak, bald, sad shorthand” (as University College of London English professor John Sutherland has moaned). An age of illiteracy is at hand, right?
Andrea Lunsford isn’t so sure. Lunsford is a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University, where she has organized a mammoth project called the Stanford Study of Writing to scrutinize college students’ prose. From 2001 to 2006, she collected 14,672 student writing samples—everything from in-class assignments, formal essays, and journal entries to emails, blog posts, and chat sessions. Her conclusions are stirring.
“I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization,” she says. For Lunsford, technology isn’t killing our ability to write. It’s reviving it—and pushing our literacy in bold new directions.
by Stephen
by Stephen
The Top 20 Sites on the Internet
August 30, 2009 in Tech, Web by Stephen
No major surprises here, although I didn’t know about Baidu.
- Yahoo!
- YouTube
- Windows Live (live.com)
- Wikipedia
- Blogger.com
- MSN
- Baidu.com – Chinese search engine
- Yahoo! Japan
- Myspace
- Google India
- Google Germany
- QQ.com – Chinese Instant Messaging Site
- RapidShare
- Microsoft.com
- Google France
- WordPress.com
- Google UK
by Stephen
by Stephen
Don’t teach your kids this stuff. Please?
August 26, 2009 in Education, Tech, Web by Stephen
Thanks to Scott McLeod for this one!
dear parent
teacher
administrator
board member
don’t teach your kids to read
for the Web
to scan
RSS
aggregate
synthesize
don’t teach your kids to write
online
pen and paper aren’t going anywheresince when do kids need an audience?
no need to hyperlinkmake videos
audio
Flash
no connecting, now
no social networkingor online chat
or comments
or PLNs
blogs and twitter?
how self-absorbed
what a bunch of crap
and definitely, absolutely, resolutely, no cell phones
block it alllock it down
keep it out
it’s evil, you knowthere’s bad stuff out there
gotta keep your children safe
don’t you know collaboration is just another word for cheating?
don’t you know how much junk is out there?
haven’t you ever heard of sexting?
of cyberbullying?
a computer 24-7? no thanksI don’t want them
creating
sharing
thinking
learning
you know they’re just going to look at porn
and hook up with predators
we can’t trust them
don’t do any of it, please
really
’cause I’m doing all of it with my kids
can’t wait to see who has a leg up in a decade or twocan you?
by Stephen
Why a Wiki?
August 25, 2009 in Tech, Web, Wikis by Stephen
A very original and entertaining way of explaining how Wikis work.
by Stephen
KidZui, The Internet for Kids.
August 23, 2009 in Education, Web by Stephen
You parents out there should take a serious look at this.
The KidZui browser was designed to offer kids the same expansive experience adults have on the web. KidZui brought together a team of over 200 teachers and/or parents to scour the web in search of the best content for kids. The founders engaged their kids, nieces and nephews to assess the initial product; they were later joined by over 5,000 other curious young beta-testers and their parents.
Rather than filter the Internet, KidZui’s founders built an entirely new one – customized for kids. Instead of reducing, KidZui expands. There are already over a million websites, pictures and videos in KidZui, all thoroughly reviewed by caring teachers and parents just like you. And the process continues 24/7 with new kid-friendly content added daily.
by Stephen
History of the Internet
August 20, 2009 in History, Tech, Web by Stephen
Very interesting video. Well worth 8 minutes of your time.
by Stephen
Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom
August 19, 2009 in Education, Tech, Web by Stephen
A very timely article for me as I am taking a course of designing and facilitating online learning this semester.
A recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education (pdf) has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion: “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”
The report examined the comparative research on online versus traditional classroom teaching from 1996 to 2008. Some of it was in K-12 settings, but most of the comparative studies were done in colleges and adult continuing-education programs of various kinds, from medical training to the military.
Over the 12-year span, the report found 99 studies in which there were quantitative comparisons of online and classroom performance for the same courses. The analysis for the Department of Education found that, on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile. That is a modest but statistically meaningful difference.
“The study’s major significance lies in demonstrating that online learning today is not just better than nothing — it actually tends to be better than conventional instruction,” said Barbara Means, the study’s lead author and an educational psychologist at SRI International.
This hardly means that we’ll be saying good-bye to classrooms. But the report does suggest that online education could be set to expand sharply over the next few years, as evidence mounts of its value.
by Stephen
The U.S. Army Embraces the Wiki
August 15, 2009 in Education, Web, Wikis by Stephen
Let’s just hope the enemy doesn’t get the password!
Join the Army, where you can edit all that you can edit.
In July, in a sharp break from tradition, the Army began encouraging its personnel — from the privates to the generals — to go online and collaboratively rewrite seven of the field manuals that give instructions on all aspects of Army life.
The program uses the same software behind the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and could potentially lead to hundreds of Army guides being “wikified.” The goal, say the officers behind the effort, is to tap more experience and advice from battle-tested soldiers rather than relying on the specialists within the Army’s array of colleges and research centers who have traditionally written the manuals.
“For a couple hundred years, the Army has been writing doctrine in a particular way, and for a couple months, we have been doing it online in this wiki,” said Col. Charles J. Burnett, the director of the Army’s Battle Command Knowledge System. “The only ones who could write doctrine were the select few. Now, imagine the challenge in accepting that anybody can go on the wiki and make a change — that is a big challenge, culturally.”
In recent years, collaborative projects like the Firefox Internet browser or Wikipedia pages have flourished with the growth of the Internet, showing the power of thousands of contributors pulling together.
by Stephen
Collaborate. Learn. Listen.
August 4, 2009 in Blogs, Facebook, Social Media, Tech, Twitter, Web by Stephen
One of the best blog posts I’ve read in quite some time.
The internet is a series of connected tools. It’s time to start treating it like that.
No more talking about Facebook. No more explaining Twitter. No more asking about connecting on LinkedIn.
Just talk. Collaborate. Learn. Listen.
We have daily, nearly real time access to the greatest trove of information ever known, yet all we seem to do is talk about who’s using which network, and how to do so.
Thanks to Hoke for pointing this one out. I’ve already added his RSS feed.
by Stephen
Moodle heads to N.C. State
July 30, 2009 in Education, Moodle, Tech, Web by Stephen
Yet another university starting to use Moodle. I wish mine would follow suit.
The University is in the process of transferring to Moodle, a user-friendly Learning Management System (LMS) which allows students more interaction between each other and the professor.
Four thousand institutions are using Moodle. The Moodle Pilot team has examined how other universities have made the switch to the system.
“UNC Charlotte and Asheville have switched over, and other UNC schools are also considering making the move,” Dulberg said.
The entire system won’t change until summer 2011, when Vista will completely cease to exist. Three semesters will be given for the changeover, encompassing spring 2010, fall 2010 and spring 2011. If a new course is developed during this time frame, it will be done through Moodle.
The plan is to first migrate Vista users onto Moodle for one-and-a-half years while maintaining WolfWare. The initial goal is to have WolfWare powered by Moodle Beta for production-level usage by January 2010. WolfWare users will be migrated when file management tools, and other WolfWare tools not currently in Moodle, are implemented into Moodle.
by Stephen
If this is what you see as a teacher, how will you change?
July 28, 2009 in Apple, Education, Tech, Web, Wireless by Stephen
I hate to report this, but the answer for many teachers is “not at all.”
Photo from the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
Look at all those Macs! I see the same thing where I work….way more Macs than PC laptops.
Caption added by Will Richardson.
by Stephen
Schools slowly add phones, PDAs to curriculum.
July 27, 2009 in Cell Phones, Education, Gadgets, Tech, Web, iPhone, iPod by Stephen
The key word is, of course, “slowly.”
Smartphones now have hundreds of applications meant to educate kids — from graphic calculators to animation programs that teach spelling and phonics.
And while most public schools don’t allow the devices because they’re considered distractions — and sometimes portable cheating tools — some school districts have started to put the technology to use.
The key, educators say, is controlling the environment in which they are used.
In St. Mary’s, Ohio, a school district of 2,300 students is continuing a pilot program where third-, fourth- and fifth-graders are assigned PDAs, or personal digital assistants, for use as a learning tool in the classroom, and at home. They use applications created by a company called Go Know! to draw pictures and create sketches, journal and write essays, said Kyle Menchhofer, the district’s technology coordinator. Other applications create flash cards for spelling and math.
Students took the phones on a museum field trip where they took photos, uploaded them to a server where the teacher could view the assignment and wrote blurbs about what they saw.