Stephen’s Untold Stories

Okay, I must admit that I’ve never really had a need to generate some white noise, but it’s good to know that this is available if I ever do.

• http://www.simplynoise.com

You’ve probably seen Professor Michael Wesch’s famous video Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us, (if you haven’t, go see it now!) He recently spoke at the University of Manitoba and you can view the entire presentation online.

“It’s basically an ongoing experiment to create a portal for me and my students to work online,” he explains. “We tried every social media application you can think of. Some worked, some didn’t.”

Watch his presentation here.

An actual research study on social networking? Really??

Outstanding!!

In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered the educational benefits of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. The same study found that low-income students are in many ways just as technologically proficient as their counterparts, going against what results from previous studies have suggested.

The study found that, of the students observed, 94 percent used the Internet, 82 percent go online at home and 77 percent had a profile on a social networking site. When asked what they learn from using social networking sites, the students listed technology skills as the top lesson, followed by creativity, being open to new or diverse views and communication skills.

Data were collected over six months this year from students, ages 16 to 18, in thirteen urban high schools in the Midwest. Beyond the surveyed students, a follow-up, randomly selected subset were asked questions about their Internet activity as they navigated MySpace, an online forum that provides users with e-mail, web communities and audio and video capabilities.

“What we found was that students using social networking sites are actually practicing the kinds of 21st century skills we want them to develop to be successful today,” said Christine Greenhow, a learning technologies researcher in the university’s College of Education and Human Development and principal investigator of the study. “Students are developing a positive attitude towards using technology systems, editing and customizing content and thinking about online design and layout. They’re also sharing creative original work like poetry and film and practicing safe and responsible use of information and technology. The Web sites offer tremendous educational potential.”

Link to article

This is nothing short of amazing.

WebAnywhere is a web-based screen reader for the web. It requires no special software to be installed on the client machine and, therefore, enables blind people to access the web from any computer they happen to have access to that has a sound card. No $1000 software program required!

WebAnywhere’s will run on any machine, even heavily locked-down public terminals, regardless of what operating system it is running and regardless of what browsers are installed.

Please read our WebAnywhere Paper for more information about the system.

Link to WebAnywhere

If YouTube is blocked where you are, you can hear the audio here. (MP3 file)

Now this would really be something.

George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars franchise and head of a nonprofit group designed to encourage innovation in schools, called on lawmakers June 24 to create a free, “third internet” that would be used solely for educational use, PC Magazine reports. “As we move into the future, most everything’s going to end up wireless and as it ends up wireless, [the government is] going to be auctioning off bandwidth,” Lucas told the House Energy and Commerce’s subcommittee on telecommunications and the internet. “As you auction this off, why don’t you just hold some back for schools and libraries?” Lucas appeared at a hearing about the federal Universal Service Fund (USF), which is intended to provide all Americans with access to telecommunications service.

Link to article

I’ve used several of these, but a few were new to me.

• http://www.investintech.com/articles/tenwordalternatives

I use Google Docs almost daily. Zoho is also very good. ThinkFree is very powerful, but seems to be a bit sluggish at times.

I expect (and hope) to see more of this in other states.

Minnesota Virtual High School (MVHS) graduated its first class of 43 students last Friday. The school, a partnership between Minnesota Transitions Charter School of Minneapolis and Advanced Academics, was launched in 2007 and serves more than 1,000 students from all over the state.

A free online public high school, the program serves state residents in grades 9 to 12, offering a flexible schedule, a free laptop to new full-time students, as well as a monthly Internet stipend. Students also have the ability to participate in the Passport2College program offered by DeVry University. The program allows eligible juniors and seniors to take up to two college credit classes tuition-free at DeVry.

In addition to one-on-one access to Minnesota certified teachers, around-the-clock student support, and a full curriculum, students graduating from MVHS earn their high school diploma, issued by a local Minnesota school district.

Link to article

Yes, it’s a somewhat unfortunate name, but it does some cool stuff.

Here is a Rubik’s Cube effect of a photo I took of the Tybee Island Lighthouse.

http://www.dumpr.net

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This has been one of my favorite Firefox tools.

It was a tough call, but we decided to phase out support for Browser Sync. Since the team has moved on to other projects that are keeping them busy, we don’t have time to update the extension to work with Firefox 3 or to continue to maintain it.

Link to announcement from Google.

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I’ve always been a fan of Elluminate, and I plan to use it more next year with our grant schools.

Ed tech developer Elluminate Monday announced new collaborative learning bundles–the Elluminate Learning Suite and the Elluminate Next bundle–and launched a new tool for planning online learning sessions called Elluminate Plan! The company also told us it’s revamping its education licensing structure, moving away from a concurrent user model to a structure based on the full-time enrollment of educational institutions.

The Elluminate Next bundle incorporates Elluminate Publish! and the all-new Elluminate Plan!, a tool designed to help instructors and instructional designers organize and package content for online sessions prior to the session being conducted live.

Gary Dietz, product marketing manager for Elluminate, provided us with a preview of Plan! last week. He explained that the software allows users to plan a template, structure, and framework in a non-real-time environment. It allows the structure used for interaction to be, essentially, packaged in advanced. “You can take the actions and content from a rich environment and provide this plan, which is a single file [and] runs on any system,” he said. (It will be compatible with Elluminate Live! version 8.5, which is slated to be released at the end of June.) “It’s like moving back to old planning book.”

Link to article

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is involved in this new Web site for 7th, 8th, and 9th graders.

Visit the Our Courts Site

Here is a very nice online presentation creator. You don’t even have to register, and you can save your files in PowerPoint 2007 format. It looks like a more functional version of Google Presentations.

280 Slides

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This one certainly fits the bill. As you type, it makes suggestions and gives you a quick result when you’re ready.

Check out Definr!

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Has anyone tried this? It looks amazing.

John LeSieur is in the software business, so he took particular interest when computers seemed mostly useless to his 6-year-old grandson, Zackary. The boy has autism, and the whirlwind of options presented by PCs so confounded him that he threw the mouse in frustration.

LeSieur tried to find online tools that could guide autistic children around the Web, but he couldn’t find anything satisfactory. So he had one built, named it the Zac Browser For Autistic Children in honor of his grandson, and is making it available to anyone for free.

LeSieur’s quest is a reminder that while the Web has created important communication and educational opportunities for some people with cognitive impairments, computers can also introduce new headaches for families trying to navigate the contours of disability.

The Zac Browser greatly simplifies the experience of using a computer. It seals off most Web sites from view, to block violent, sexual or otherwise adult-themed material. Instead it presents a hand-picked slate of choices from free, public Web sites, with an emphasis on educational games, music, videos and visually entertaining images, like a virtual aquarium.

Other programs for children already offer that “walled garden” approach to the Web. But LeSieur’s browser aims to go further: It essentially takes over the computer and reduces the controls available for children like Zackary, who finds too many choices overwhelming.

For example, the Zac Browser disables extraneous keyboard buttons like “Print Screen” and turns off the right button on the mouse. That eliminates commands most children don’t need anyway, and it reduces the chance an autistic child will lose confidence after making a counterproductive click.

Children using the Zac Browser select activities by clicking on bigger-than-normal icons, like a soccer ball for games and a stack of books for “stories.” The Zac Browser also configures the view so no advertisements or other flashing distractions appear.

Link to article

The Zac Browser

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Interesting study. I hope lots of people who control funding will read it.

A technical report from a University of Houston Department of Health and Human Performance researcher finds that students in a “hybrid class” that incorporated instructional technology with in-class lectures scored a letter-grade higher on average than their counterparts who took the same class in a more traditional format.

Brian McFarlin measured the student involvement and academic performance of a traditional class–Kinesiology 3306–from fall 2004 to fall 2005. He compared those measurements with those of students in the hybrid class, offered as an alternative from summer 2006 to fall 2007.

“One reason we offered the hybrid class in the first place was because students said they wanted it,” said McFarlin, a researcher and assistant professor. “Their formal evaluations of the class indicated the traditional class didn’t take advantage of instructional technologies available, and that these technologies could give them additional help and access to course material outside of class time.”

Hybrid classes are growing in popularity and practicality for students and professors, at UH and on campuses across the country, because of the presentation of material and the accessibility and flexibility to students. For example, an upper-level business law and ethics class in the UH Bauer College of Business reaches more than 1,000 students each academic year because of its flexible, hybrid offerings.

Link to article

A while back I got a comment here from one of the editors of the Official Google Documents Blog. She asked if I could put something together to include on their blog. I’m glad to report that my contribution went live today.

Here is a link to my post over there.

Does this mean I’m famous? Or maybe infamous?

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Good news for those of you who work in Title I schools.

ePals this week announced that it will make its In2Books series of digital literacy tools available to Title I schools at no charge beginning in fall 2008. The company has also announced some enhancements to the 2008-2009 classroom edition of In2Books.

In2Books is an online literacy curriculum based around a dialog between a student and an adult mentor. Designed to improve student achievement on standardized tests and increase critical thinking and writing proficiency, it combines digital books with collaborative technologies linking students, mentors, and teachers.

Link to article

Here is an excellent interactive Flash-based tool that shows how much Americans spend on various things.

Link to full graphic

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Very interesting. I don’t think I would have been ready for such a course.

The ease of video production has greatly expanded the academic world’s ability to communicate, and has been used successfully as a supplement to the classroom experience. Most people who have taught in the college environment, however, would argue that there are limits to what can be accomplished outside the classroom environment. Alex Juhasz, a professor of media studies at Pitzer College, decided to explore those limits in detail by holding a class on YouTube entirely within the confines of YouTube’s video and comment systems.

It would be easy to dismiss this as a gimmick or publicity stunt, but Juhasz’s analysis of the experience provides a good perspective on what’s provided by the classroom experience in an era of distance learning and easily accessed podcasts of entire courses. The key features of a class, as she sees it, involve an interaction among the students, controlled and directed by the professor, that relies on preexisting communications skills.

Link to article

Link to the Professor’s YouTube Page

This would be worth a look for those of you working in school systems.