Telefunken TEL7J tablet

I have blogged about the Telefunken TEL7J and it is pleasing to see how many people have come with their problems. It is not an iPad, though I can say my iPad was pretty hard to get along with today. Not the cruisy machine it normally is. The Telefunken is something you have to think about and it would be good if we had some YouTube clips to get us more familiar with layout and operation. I use it on a daily basis as a multimedia diary. My latest apps are the French newspapers, a cooking timer which I really like, StudyMaster French vocab and Scribtor Lite . I have another couple to install which I loaded from my computer. I have yet to see if this works. When you connect the TEL7J it will be in Computer as the picture shows and have a whole lot of folders. I shift music and videos into the DOWNLOAD folder and then can play them on my device. I haven’t worked out the answer to where you actually put apps if you do not directly install them from the SlideMe app on the TEL7J. That really needs a search box to make it more effective. I didn’t find a free QR code reader like I have for my other devices so I am not able to say whether the forward facing camera can actually read QR codes. It would make it hard. The forward facing camera is more designed for making little video voice messages or taking face pics to mark an event. I tried photographing some plants and had to get myself into an odd angle to get the picture. So I am happy with the personal video aspect of it. Sharing our knowledge has been helpful but I think those who can use this device well need to share their knowledge. I can use it well for what I want but maybe there is more this gadget can do. Certainly a J learning curve.
I have had a chance to check the packages I installed from my computer. I downloaded them from SlideMe on my computer and then dropped them into the download folder of the TEL7J. I have installed them through the ApkInstaller top left of apps screen and chose Internal Memory – that means “hard drive”.

This is how you do it!

oo rev’s LifeArt is a wonderful example of how you put together a blog and then link it to your other sites on the internet so that you offer a full and rich media experience for people. This person obviously has talent and the blog focuses on the exploration and showcasing of their art skills. From the blog you can then go to ooAmerica and follow the road trip. The author of these sites integrates art, written posts, videos and images to create an environment which educates and informs. It is very 2012 and an excellent example of how you can take content and drive it through the internet and create some really good meaning for others. It is a comprehensive use of talents and skills. It uses both visual and linguistic literacy skills which encompass so many of our curriculum areas. Showing this to students would enable them to see just how much is possible and how our world is changing for the better in its communication strategies . The author then directs you to links to Facebook and Twitter to complete your experience but it also ensures them a wide and varied audience. This in turn makes sure the author gets some good feedback to grow on. I love the educational possibilities of this approach.

Social Media really are here to stay

Social media are not going to go away. They are a part of our lives as cars, boats, planes, trains and washing machines are. Social media are becoming more and more important in shaping our world and like transport there are some considerable impacts to come to terms with. Jeff Bullas site looks at them from a marketing point of view but in lots of ways that is what educators need to do. We need to understand social media and how they operate so that we can provide an educative approach and look at how we can use them for ourselves and ensure our students are able to use social media to their benefit. Jeff Bullas is living proof of what you can do with social media but he is also very easy to read and learn from. This particular post has a lots of really good infographics on social media and what they now mean.

What do Digital Natives need?

Digital natives

View more presentations from Sally Smith

Last year I started to make some inroads in getting a much clearer idea of what students who have been brought up on technology need. A computer is as normal to them as a pen and paper would be to older people. They are not print based. They are connected and everything moves and shifts all the time. In the end I connected it to Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy and realised their world of connectivity is serving them well in term’s of Bloom’s. It warrants further exploration. What I need to do now is get some sound research on how 2012 students learn and look at it from a Bloom’s Taxonomy perspective. This is just a quick look.

Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy

When applying Bloom’s Taxonomy in a technology setting it is good to have an idea of what that looks like. Educational-origami is a wiki space which has already done a lot of thinking along those lines and some of the resources have been translated into Spanish. We are revisiting the new Bloom’s Taxonomy this year at school and need to make it a focus so I am thinking that looking at the digital application of it would be a worthwhile pursuit. The thing which appealed to me the most is the digital technology summary map. It looks at the taxonomy and then applies it in a practical way to the technology possibilities which we could then consider for classroom use. My own personal mission, I think, will be to see how many of those communication skills I can achieve with my students this year. Technology is about communication and the more far reaching and profound the communication the better our local and global connections and collaboration will be. This wiki has a list of global visitors on the side so when you are there looking at it , take note of how many people from how many places have been using this site to help support their classroom teaching and learning. There is so much more to this site than I have mentioned so please take a look for yourselves.

TeacherCast app keeps you fully informed

TeacherCast is a dynamic hub for teachers. You can find everything you want and need and more. It is lively, informed, interesting helpful and incredibly positive. It adds the coolness factor to education.We know it’s a cool job. Others don’t. TeacherCast has created a lively centre so that you can go there and get real information which will really help you because they know what a real classroom needs. I downloaded the app and can now access all that lovely stuff anywhere. You can access the site from your computer so don’t feel you are being left out. That’s the point. TeacherCast knows we all have our own way of being connected. I love it! It has heaps of resources, discussions, things to ponder, apps reviews…something for everyone. Why am I so excited? You normally get longwinded theories and explanations on teacher sites. You get policies, frameworks, guidelines. Page after page after page. I read it, I use it. I do what you do and take it all in and put it into practice. It’s just nice to have a lively place to go with a bit of a buzz which will make me look at what I am doing from a different perspective.

New Year start up – lean or not

Getting ready for my new school year is always a busy time with technology. I can tell this year I am better at mustering and creating resources than I was this time last year. The students will be back on the 30th so I still have time. Not sure if this is a lean start up or not. The “customer” feedback won’t come in until I get Twiducate up and running for the year. That will start in lesson one. My plan is simply this. I need the class and home group lists in electronic form. I need my curriculum guidelines. I need to muster my resources into folders but have back ups online so I and my students can access them . The first lessons are designed to get them up and running quickly with their language skills because they have just had a long summer holiday. This is where little videos and well prepared slide presentations play their part. They create instant attention and absorption of content and I can bring in the other elements of lessons from there. Part of my overall organisation has been to sort my files out on my computers and ensure my USB flash drives have the materials I need organised in a way where I can locate information quickly. So, what exactly have I been doing? I thought it would be good to keep track of how I am starting my year with technology:

1.Get class lists from SMS and put into Excel
2.Get TT from LMS and make an image
3.Set up to do app
4.Set up reminder app
5.Set up notes app
6.Look for YouTube videos, Vimeo and Daily Motion videos
7.Organise LiveBinders and think which other ones I can do.
8.Clean and charge MacBook
9.Change desktop and icons
10.Download TT template and then make a colourful version in Excel and save as Word file as well
11.Add term dates and Easter to tablet notes
12.Record phone nos and other numbers on tablet
13.Download and / or locate current curriculum guides and guidelines
14.Set up senior classes on Twiducate
15.Look for videos, images and complementary online texts for course units
16.Add comments in Word doc to a newspaper article to fast track the year 12 start up
17.Keep blogs up to date with useful materials
18.Back all resources up
19.Check emails
20.Make little videos and slide presentations to fast track content absorption

Nest your apps

Create nested groups for apps

If you share an iPad or you have lots of apps then nested groups are the way to go. This way individuals can set up their own group of apps or you can group your apps into a category. So how do you do it?

1. Locate two similar apps like Italian cooking and French cooking.
2. Press on the icon of one of them until all your apps wiggle.
3. You will notice the apps have a black cross in the corner too.
4. If you press the back cross you will DELETE the app from your iPad (it’s still stored in iTunes and your back ups)
5. Hold your finger on the app icon and slide it on top of the other app.
6. It will disappear and your iPad will come up with a screen to suggest the name of your new group.
7. If you like the name keep it. If you don’t tap on it to get the keyboard and change the name of your group.
8. Tap the top screen to get rid of the group name screen.
9. You will now see your new group icon.
10. Move apps you want in your new group one at a time down onto your dock.
11. Now slide them up into your new group.
12. Repeat process for similar apps

You now can create another nested group. I have them for bookmarked apps, reading, productivity, reference , cooking and so on. Much easier!

Cool desktop clock

You can download this cool aeroclock by Nenad Hrg from CNET or just search for it and find a download site of your own choice. My clock matches my desktop colours and look. You can get some really good special effects with the clock and change it according to your needs. You can also change the size and transparency of it. Make sure you untick the box which makes it stay on top or it will get in the way of everything you do. The French version is here at PCAstuces because you can change the clock to French.

Telefunken TEL7J tablet

Matches my Macbook perfectly!

Judging by the hammering this Telefunken TEL7J has had on the Net in reviews it is probably not going to be popular. It was serendipity which brought it to me and it is the perfect gadget for my life as it already has a real place. For a start it matches my Macbook. It cost 90 dollars. I had gone out to buy a 7 inch tablet because I have an iPod Touch, I have an iPad and I figured I needed to complete the set. Truth is, I wanted something I could carry easily in my bag. The iPod Touch is great for travelling. This Telefunken would be too. The iPad fits into my life when I am stationary at work or at home and it is great. The Telefunken is very portable because it is sturdy. I had found there were 7inch Android tablets with USB slots. The very thing – until I discovered there were none in the shops and the only thing on offer was a 7 inch Samsung Galaxy without USB and only 20 dollars cheaper than the 10 inch model. Not for me. As a last resort I went into a department store and they had the Telefunken at such a cheap price I thought it must be a joke. I asked to see the gadget and to see the specifications. Immediately I could see where it would fit. It will be my 24/7 365 tablet . My organiser. It has a resistive screen so it is not smooth like the iPad but it is not bad at all and I have learnt from my phone that resistive screens can be annoying until you tame them and they settle in. It took a day.I use my Nintendo DS stylus because the stylus which came with it is like my phone one. Too small , too sharp for my liking and much too easily lost. At the moment it is charging happily on my computer. It has a wall plug too. I have learnt to work with it and I am more than happy with what it can do and how it operates. It goes quite fast on the Net. Faster than a Netbook and it streams radio easily, plays YouTube videos and downloads at a reasonable rate. You have to get apps from the SlideMe app. It won’t download them from the android marketplace. It plays videos and music very efficiently and music . The sound on music is not as good as video sound – in fact, it is pretty ordinary. It is better through ear buds. Video sound and quality are both very good. I changed the wallpaper easily and it loads files from my USB really fast. I can view Powerpoints, docs, PDFs and any Office files. It can use flash files too but not all of them because I cannot as yet get it to update to the most recent flash. StyleNote has been an excellent application for organising my lists and plans. EzNotePad is great for making notes. I have downloaded dictionaries and there is a big choice of books to read which suit me so I have downloaded some of those. I can connect it to my computer and move files to and from it. So I am happy that this will be a good addition to my working life especially and then something I can just have in my bag.The calendar doesn’t work unless you sync it to an online calendar but it is still there to give you the day and date. Some sites , like Facebook work on the mobile version . Others you get the full site. This little gadget is very careful to explain to me why it will or won’t do something or what the privacy, vulnerability issues will be in loading certain apps . It is a good teacher in that respect. I have been happy to be patient and work it out and am delighted with all the things it can do.I still need and will use my other gadgets . I used to always carry a diary. Now I shall always carry something like this.

The specifications are here.

Study Guides and Strategies

Joe Landsberger is such an inspiration. His site Study Guides and Strategies is the epitome of what learning is about. He has worked on this site for 15years, it loads with lightning speed, runs in a multitude of languages and offers every kind of conceivable help to teachers and students. The site is learner centred and Joe Landsberger leads by example. Read his bio at the bottom of the page and click on the visitor centre at the top right. He shares his knowledge and himself very freely but it is also very evident that this is a man who has had a lifetime commitment to learning and is prepared to put all that knowledge on the web so we can all share.

makeuseof.com

Go to makeusof.com and download the e-book of The Incredible Free Manual for Every Mac User. It is in pdf format so very portable and chock full of tips, explanations and great ways of using your Mac. It has plenty of pictures and is well set out. Following the advice and help shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Wordle

It’s all about content and visual impact….and fun! I spent a whole 30 seconds grabbing some text about pirating off this blog and now, a minute later, I have a visual impact statement and visual literacy works! Sadly, we don’t all have the artistic capabilities to create cool images and those of us who can’t are in awe of those who can. So , here we have a neat little online app called Wordle which comes to our aid. The gallery is good to look at but it is just fun getting word art images! Just imagine what you could do with them…your own cards, your cause statements…a nice gift for Mother’s Day…

The Generator Blog

via FlickrPoet

I have just been over to the Generator Blog and you would not believe how many apps they have for generating anything you want. Anything. Hundreds to choose from. All of them can be used to liven up your day and your presentations of one sort or another. If nothing else you will get an amazing array of ideas to follow through on. I chose FlickrPoet and made myself a story in flight about the MacBook. It was so easy but it has just made me realise that visual literacy adds such a big impact to anything you are trying to communicate.

iWeb for best PIM

I have been playing with iWeb . I don’t need it to build a website but as I was using the software it dawned on me this was the Personal Information Manager I have been looking for forever. There was a really good one , Kalendra, but it is obsolete now and has no support. iWeb can do more than Kalendra. I chose a template and started to put in my own text and pictures. I started with the welcome page and was thinking, well, if I have my laptop with me, this is a good way to quickly introduce myself to anyone because you go from the welcome page to the personal page and you have a photo album page as well. In a few minutes I can show people who I am and pictures of my life and likes. The fill in list of age and what have you struck me too much as a database file. I got rid of that and put my own things in. I considered also it would be a great home group activity for students at the beginning of the year, so they could get to know each other and see for themselves what their friends are like. I added a text page for reminders and then I have the pod cast page. I am using Garage Band to make audio files and am using them as reminders but making podcasts will come in very handy for rehearsing speeches and presentations. This will give me an opportunity to explore making podcasts properly but audio files are very quick and so can be made in an instant and they can’t get lost like written notes! You don’t have to go on the web with iWeb. Mobile Me nags you a bit but you select the publish to local folder option. I put my web page on my desk top so now I can organise my personal life, have something to show others if I want to share photos and I can update it within the iWeb programme and then publish the modifications. Easier than lugging a diary around and bits of paper. It occurred to me that it would be a good way to apply for jobs too because of its easy text and multimedia capabilities. The files can then be emailed, uploaded or burnt to disk and prospective employers would have a far better chance to get to know their applicants and applicants would have a better chance of showing who they really are. It would be more interesting than reading through reams of paper and would certainly be appropriate for short listed candidates. I have actually used Microsoft Publisher to create a website which will run my work day and have decided that local websites are the way to go for managing me and my life@…

Me TV – Ubuntu 10.04

Well, it’s YooHoo from Ubuntu again and what a journey it has been to get here! I can now say all my computers dual boot and it’s the way to go. Two dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.04 and 10.04 and one dual boots Apple and Windows 2003. I get the best of all possible worlds. I like the challenge, I like to be cross platform and I like to be able to pick the OS for what I want to do or how I feel at the time. Basically we all have different learning needs and computers are about learning. I have learnt a lot these last few hours. On 3 other computers I have installed Ubuntu dual boot with no problems. On the Dell Hybrid it has been an adventure and a half. First it decided to have an error just as the installation was about complete so 9.04 took me to a live desk top with an install icon…and it all fell apart. So I tried to install it again. My fault this time. I didn’t set the slider to give it enough space. There hasn’t been a slider before so I just forgot and it is not that noticeable when you are absorbed! I had to go into disk management in Windows and remove the mess! I reinstalled and I was happily going with 9.04 and thought I’d try my USB TV tuner . I actually installed MeTV through Terminal but it wouldn’t work. I couldn’t find the search channels file. By that time I was offered an upgrade to Karmic Koala and did that and still no TV. So then there was another upgrade to 10.04. In the meantime I was searching on the Net like mad. I tried MythTV and couldn’t get the TV going because I couldn’t really work out what to do. I couldn’t get it to search. By that time MeTV , installed in the applications this time,was having trouble demuxing or not demuxing…I didn’t even know what it meant. I had got it to find all the channels and I had got it going…but it kept hanging. So…in true Windows fashion I shut Ubuntu down and booted it up again and bingo!! My TV is going!! I have found once you get digital TV going you have to run it for a while on one channel on a computer and then it settles in. That’s just digital TV on a computer. Get a picture and run it. So, I am happy now!

iPods for learning

My classroom does not have iPods. My students do though and they know not to use them in class. That said, MP3 players can be a very useful tool for learning and it does get students onside if you acknowledge that MP3 or 4 players do have a valid role to play in learning.It’s about effective and responsible use. This article at Literacy News, a site worth exploring, gives a few tips about how to learn with an MP3 or 4 player. I encourage students to download podcasts for French and there are plenty of them and you can even buy them in bookshops now. They can also download sound files in MP3 format and some sites have free MP4 videos they can down load. This makes it more interesting to them as they learn and many of my students have used their iPods for learning before an oral exam. MP3 players can carry any sound files and MP4 players can play videos. The player will determine the format it will play but there are lots of sound and video files students can access to help them and podcasts are mostly good quality these days. Once students get used to this more flexible approach , I find they will bring me things into class and ask me to watch or listen, so that they then start to participate more in their learning. A lot quicker than going to a website or trying to remember the name of the book when you are trying to share good educational information.

Mac/UbuntuTerminal Tips for Total and Utter Beginners

These tips will work on an Apple and it is just nice to know you can do SOMETHING in Terminal. It is actually a very powerful tool and coders use it with remarkable ease. We are not all coders and sometimes you just do not know where to start. This should help and the last slide is really fun and shows you just how clever some people are. We all learn differently and Terminal is text and maths based in its thinking but these tips will help to get you going!

TED

TED is an extraordinary site. It has talks by artists,, mathematicians, authors, scientists, philosophers…all sorts of people saying all sorts of things. TED not only gives you a lot of information, it offers you a smorgasbord of speakers who very eloquently engage you in their audience. It is a site which promotes things, discussion, ideas and as such will be able to contribute considerably to lifelong, anytime, anywhere learning. It is organised in themes and so you can start with something which interests you, but there are so many doors opened to learning on this site. Amazing! It demonstrates very effectively just how much technology can develop us in a good way as human beings and offer us an opportunity to have a global discussion.

150+ online video tools

Mashable.com is a great site for anything to do with imaging , video or otherwise. it brings you a lot of links, information and how tos. This particular link takes you to 150+ tools for video from downloaders, to image improvers, to interactive sites. It orientates you very quickly to the sites and apps available to get the most out of video on your computer. The world is moving towards more and more video presentations and interactions and so it’s a good way to stay up with the trends as well as find things which will improve your capacity to use this medium. The complete video toolbox!

Education World

Education World is like a Fairy Godmother for teachers who need to keep the plate spinning with e-learning. Sometimes people just forget that teaching is a very busy job and with all the best will in the world it is not easy to keep coming up with ideas. The technology part of this site is full of ideas, plans and inspiration so that you can orientate your head very quickly to something which will suit your classes. It’s a great one stop shop to get you motivated with templates and lesson plans and some very practical ideas for getting the best from technology in a classroom situation. It is a very well organised site so navigating to meet your needs is a breeze.

5 quick tricks

1. Double click on a word to highlight it. On some computers triple clicking will highlight the whole paragraph.

2. Windows key and D will hide all open windows. On a newer Apple it will be Command and F3. Press the two keys again to get the windows back.

3. Enlarge or shrink text by using Ctrl + or – in Windows and Command + or – on an Apple.

4. Ctrl s is save; alt d takes you to the address bar; ctrl x is cut; ctrl c is copy; ctrl v is paste

5. Hit the space bar to go onto the next screen on a web page. Hit shift and then the space bar to go back up to the previous screen.

Google Docs Cheat Sheet

If you are not sure how to get going with Google Docs and how to set it up so that others can add to and edit what you are doing, then Lulu has a very clear and well set out set of instructions in .pdf format which you can download and consult as you need to. The editing history is kept by Google Docs and can be shown. This is important for classroom use since you need to know who has contributed to a document and how significant that contribution was.

Ubuntu Tweak

Anything which could fix my dog’s breakfast of a dual boot window as I waited to choose Ubuntu or Windows 7 was going to be a marvellous piece of software. I confess it was my fault for not using Wubi. If you use Wubi , you get a nice, clean boot menu which behaves itself. You can then choose whether it boots into Windows or Ubuntu. Well, silly me put Ubuntu on my desktop and impressed myself no end I had done that unassisted…and then the boot menu nightmare started. Ubuntu kept having yet another choice for me on the menu. I knew which one to pick, but seriously , there were about 6 choices and then Windows. All better now! I have learnt my lesson. If you want to dual boot use Wubi. Now, for Ubuntu Tweak. It is more than a menu fixer. It cleans up, it gives you the option of a fancier desktop. It loads packages and gets everything up to date. It is basically a one stop shop for Ubuntu housekeeping. It has even backed up for me. Only problem at the moment is I don’t know where the back up is!! I’ll track it down. That could be more transparent. It has a nice clean interface and is very easy to use. My best friend on Ubuntu 10.04 now.

About Ubuntu Tweak

Ubuntu Tweak download – the one from the site didn’t work.

Apple Sydney

The Apple store in Sydney is very eye catching and extremely popular popular and friendly . The store is dedicated to allowing the public to get in touch with Apple equipment…quite literally. You are very much encouraged to look, play, use and ask questions and the staff are very helpful and enthusiastic. The store had a really good look because it was so open, light and spacious and there was a steady stream of customers. It’s actually nice to go in a place and feel free to play with gadgets because familiarity does not breed contempt…it creates comfort and interest. The bus stops in Sydney all had the big publicity signs for the iPad and in the store people were doing things on the iPad, taking a photo on their mobile and then sending it to someone! They were particularly popular with students and older people although the older people then seemed to want to play and stay on the desktops. It’ll be interesting to see the demographics on the iPad as they emerge.

Organise yourself with Web Pages

I wrote a post about iWeb for best PIM and I am currently working on two other web sites to run locally to organise myself. The picture shows the one I have created in Publisher to run all my classes. It has tabs and side links so I can go easily from once class to the next and is very easy to set up. Each page features a vocabulary extender, like different expressions with Le weekend and then each class page has the content for the lessons. I also have a page of links I regularly use and a page of time fillers and back ups for those occasions where students need something to keep them going while something else is happening. Plan Bs. I have some decoration but I am focussing on the functionality of this site before I involve myself too much in the tizzying it up.It is a work in progress because it takes time to organise myself properly this way and tabs are the way to go. It will bundle for use with the LMS if I need that to happen. The other website is plainer and for my own use at home. It has taken about an hour to set up. It will be my start page with links to blogs and other sites, my to do list, my projects, a calendar so I don’t forget appointments and birthdays…the one stop shop to run my life at home. The iWeb one will remain my daily routine at work because it has such a nice look and can be set up to introduce myself quickly to others, as I said. All of them will run locally and can be easily updated. I don’t know why I haven’t thought of this before!

Print Screen on Mac OS

There’s no print screen key on an Apple! I can imagine that will flummox a few people. It’s not hard. Command (with the 4 curly bits), shift and 3 when you press them gives you a satisfying click! Like Ubuntu the screen capture goes straight onto your desktop so that is very convenient and helpful. You can then load it into iPhoto or another image programme to make your adjustments!

Comic Life

Comic Life for Mac is a design programme to easily create comic book stories from your own images and ideas. It has a very intuitive interface. If I can use it, anyone can because I am not that good at manipulating image programmes. I get by and do quite well. Comic Life is fun and easy and I can well imagine kids and the kid inside you would have hours of amusement and learning. It is yet another format to help students succeed because so many of them relate to cartoons and comic images. You can trial it for 30 days which gives you a good chance to know whether you like it or not and can see the possibilities. The image in the post is in French because my Mac runs in French (another post!). For me that is great service!

How Tweet!

Social media is changing the world and social media is changing rapidly. 96% of Australians have mobile phones and a lot of them access social media sites from them. 3 out of 4 Australians visit social media sites and Google is the place we go most frequently. Yes, we love to Google. The statistics for Australia are really interesting and out uptake of the anytime , anywhere devices will change these statistics as it will world wide. The in your pocket internet is going to have quite an impact. In the UK 47% of internet users log onto Facebook and 1 in every 6 people int he UK is social networking. Facebook currently has 350 million worldwide users . 30% of them are in the US. ReadWriteWeb has some interesting predictions about how social media will change us and how we will change it. Twitter is the success story of the year. In January is put out 1.2 billion tweets and had 75.5 million visits. it has 18 million regular users but the stats for Twitter are changing so rapidly it is hard to keep up. Since it has created social inclusion by adding more languages , the growth and perceived worth of Twitter has just rocketed. twitter has 60% of its accounts outside the US. In 2008 Blogger, Facebook, MySpace, WordPress, WindowsLive were the top social media sites. Blogger had 220 million users and Facebook had 200million. We know Facebook currently has 350 million users and Twitter is just literally increasing at a mindboggling rate. Social media is here to stay, it has a lot of pulling power and it will change how we interact and do things. Crowd powered media are going to have a considerable impact and the way we run businesses and institutions will have to change . We are moving towards video because YouTube is the next biggest search engine after Google. Now we really can go to the horse’s mouth! Online content will be produced by all of us and we shall be pooling our knowledge and skills as a planet.

Create keyboard shortcut for System Preferences on Mac

Setting a keyboard shortcut to open a programme on an Apple is not that hard but it’s a bit fiddly and sometimes the how-tos don’t quite make sense. I’ll try to make it clear because System Preferences is a place which I often need to open on an Apple so the keyboard shortcut is handy.

1. Go to the global / system preferences icon on the Dock. Probably on the left.
2. Click and open it and look for the mouse/keyboard settings in the second row.Click to open.
3. Click on the tab for keyboard shortcuts. You’ll see a whole list of things which have already been set to open with keyboard shortcuts. You might like to make a note of the ones you like a lot.
4. On the bottom left of the keyboard shortcuts tab which has opened you will see a + and – sign.
5. Click the plus sign.
6. Leave All Applications in the top box/field.
7. In the next box/field down type: System Preferences… DO NOT TYPE 3 full stops. To get the 3 dots (ellipsis) you press the following three keys: option hyphen ;(semi colon) one after the other. If you get an extra hyphen in the box/field just backspace and delete it.
8. In the next box type the keys you want to use to open System Preferences. I used control command P. The symbols will appear in the box . ^ for control, the 4 swirls for the command/Apple key and the P.
9. Click add bottom right of the box .Shut the window. Now try typing your short cut keys and the System Preferences should come up.
10. It’ll take you far less time to do it than I took writing this post!

Run your Mac in French

One of the best ways to reinforce, improve and maintain your language skills is to actually do things naturally in that language. Make it routine. Until recently it has been difficult to run a computer in another language which is silly given they are computers and the country codes are there. The Mac has put an end to that and it shows great insight since we are living in a world which needs to communicate rapidly and efficiently. The easiest way to do that is to switch languages and there are countries where people just swap from one language to another without a problem. They grow up that way and so when they need to use another language they will assimilate it quickly. Since we need to enhance and improve our global communication then the best model to choose is the multilingual approach and let the market forces and natural laws take care of which languages will be the most useful languages internationally. Apple has paved the way by supplying us with technology which does a pretty good job of swapping easily from one language to another so if that is our need we finally have a tool for it and it is not a troublesome chore to change languages in a technological setting. Communication is everything in web 2.0 because communication is inspiration, enterprise and information. The more widely we can communicate the better chance we have of keeping the world moving forward smoothly. So how do you change your Apple to French?

1. Go to the system or global preferences in the Dock and click on it. It’s probably bottom left.

2. In the top row, 5th icon along you will find the International icon. Click on that.

3. Slide French to the top of your list as I have done. Yours will be in English. make sure French is in the bottom right box, second to bottom.

4. Close everything and reboot your Mac. Stop at this point if you wish to stay half and half French/ English.

5. To enhance and increase the French capacity of your Mac go here and download and install the French version of Firefox. Camino Multilingual is nowhere near as capable of enhancing the international capacity of your Mac.

6. When you use French Firefox you will be taken on French searches, to French sites and sites which run freely internationally like Twitter and Blogger will automatically in French.

7. When you want to change back to English reverse the international settings, reboot and use an English browser.

Top 15 media sites

All these millions of people cannot be wrong. Social media are now an inherent part of our lifestyle and create new and interesting ways of interacting AND getting information and content. With mobile access they will become even more a part of our lifestyle. It’s not a trend. it is a reality. This is now how we are operating. Networks are forming the hubs of our daily social and business connections.

Avant Window Navigator for Ubuntu 10.04

I found out about the Avant Window Navigator on the webupd8 site. I tried loading the code into Terminal but the package wouldn’t install. As luck would have it , it was in the Ubuntu Software Centre located in the Applications menu top right on the desktop. It is sort of like the Apple dock but it actually is much more. I have located mine on the left of my desktop and you can stretch or shrink it really easily and apply different effects. If you right click on the panel it will bring up the properties. From there you can see just how much you can do and you can load the applets into the dock from there. AWN has really made my desktop more functional. I also loaded Animal Farm as an applet which gives words of wisdom, mostly with a good sense of humour!

Get rid of the bouncing dock on Mac

I confess I am not a fan of the Dock on my Mac. Past the point of playing with the magnification so I had a Mexican wave going and exploding things off the Dock onto the desktop which amused me for a while, I prefer a bar with icons that just behave themselves and stay still. The Mexican wave had to go because it kept enlarging icons when I was working on the bottom of the page of an application. The bouncing Dock is really rather kiddie and I have got rid of it. It’s easy. Click on the Apple icon top left of your screen. About half way down the menu you will see Dock. Click on that and then, in that menu, click on Dock preferences. This is where you set the Dock placement, effects and magnification. Uncheck the box labelled Animate opening applications. That’s it! Shut the windows and go back to work and your Dock will stay still.

Plasq

I have already introduced you to the programme Comic Life by Plasq, but if you go to their downloads page you will find some other software to download for your Mac. Comic Life you can try before you buy and the trial conditions are very reasonable. Doozla is a drawing programme for younger children but I downloaded it and had a bit for fun. I found the voices for the colours to be bizarre and I’d rather they were changed. The idea of teaching the colours as children play and draw is a good idea. But then the voice things end and the programme takes over. I think there could be some more speech on the programme. The backdrops and landscapes are really good, the tools are really good and the fact you can take photos and then draw over them is a great idea. It’s worth a look if you have children or you are working with children. There are 3 other free pieces of software on the site. One is a music enhancer with a twist, the puzzle maker is great and the screensavers are nice. Plasq is a site which seems to work with its target audience and they do have a good sense of fun and imagination so visiting the site is enjoyable and their software is very positive and creative in its impact.

Mac 101

If you are looking for help with something or you want reviews on Apple products the Mac 101 is one of the best one stops shops for Apple information. It has plenty of tips and tricks and covers a wide range of information so that no matter whether you are a beginner or you have some good technical skills you will be able to find help here. Use the search box at the top if you cannot see what you are looking for. The information is clear and well set out and invariably has images so that you are clear about what you are trying to do.

Twitter Clients for Ubuntu

I am running Ubuntu 10.4 which is in beta but I have had hardly any problems with it and the fact it is running television and anything else I want speaks for itself. There are two lumpy things. Flash and Twitter Clients. I had TweetDeck going which is my favourite Twitter client by far and it was fine, then it dematerialised from my desktop and hard drive. I reinstalled it and the installation didn’t go well and then it crashed again. I was not happy! TweetDeck is good because you get pop ups so you don’t have to interrupt the cognitive flow you have going on on the Net just to stop and find what is going on elsewhere. Pop- ups do not interrupt thinking I have discovered. So I tried Gwibber and that is not too bad and is set out well. I then found some Twitter clients with Adobe Air like TweetDeck and not one of them would work on my version of Ubuntu which was a bit tragic. By then I was feeling desperate and deprived. I found Qwit and it took about 5 minutes to settle itself in and then we were cooking with gas! It has pop ups which suits me beautifully, it has a nice interface and it does what I want! If you are looking for Twitter Clients for Ubuntu, then this site is very comprehensive and this one has some good reviews.

Origami

Origamee.net has a breathtaking array of origami designs to feast your eyes on. The advantage for me is the site offers YouTube instruction for the diagrams. I am all fingers and thumbs when it comes to paper folding but this site is not only an inspiration, it is very practical. There is also a link to some great ideas for displaying the origami once it is folded. Even with the non YouTube diagrams the photos go one picture at a time so you can see what you are doing. If you are serious about Origami or want more links there is a whole amazing database of information here.

Learn the Kana

Learn the Kana is a very simple but effective site for learning Japanese characters. Simple because the screen is uncluttered and your attention is solely on learning what is there and discovering what is on the site. If you click on each character it brings you to a screen to learn how to pronounce and draw the character. It also has a link out to the Japanese 101 podcast site where you can download Japanese lessons to improve your language skills.

iDiary

When I first saw the link to iDiary I thought it was an Apple application. It’s not , it is for Windows. Apple has a nice downloadable iDiary from iTunes here which you can use on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. You pay for it. The iDiary for Windows is a free download without the bells and whistles but its attraction is its encryptions,password protection and beautifully simple interface. Some sites recommend it for journalling and keeping personal thoughts. I wouldn’t do that but you can put in hyperlinks and images so it’s a useful diary, note taker, speech preparer, reminder, list keeper. It has a spiral bound interface and the toolbar does everything, including search your entries, so it’s perfect for keeping lecture notes and would be handy for the Netbooks. It’s like a word processor so any text based things you want to accomplish can be done and if it is preparation for an assignment or project you can keep the resource links and images you want. You can download it here. It’s not really a Tweens application. It’s for anyone who needs a calendar and text application. It is password protected and can be exported and imported to other computers. Quite handy really.

Timeanddate.com

Timeanddate.com is an amazing chronometric site with everything you could possibly want to organise trips, business meetings, calendars. It allows you to make custom calendars, annual calendars, find out when you are 10 000 days old, count down to events. It has weather and eclipse information and the important days around the world for each country. If you look up a city it has a wealth of information about times and the weather in that city.This site is a gold mine of information and it loads quickly, efficiently and is an extremely professional site. It doesn’t surprise me at all that it has won a number of awards and Steffan Thorsen, who appears to live in a beautiful place in Norway , if the photo is anything to go by, approaches his site in a very positive, comprehensive manner. Take a look. I am sure you will be posting this site into your favourites as I have!

Woopid

Woopid is brilliant! It gives you video tutorials on everything you could possibly want to know about Windows, Mac and Ubuntu. This is great because instead of promoting one product or another, or one OS or another the site is totally cross platform and shows you how to do things with your computer. Great self help site and that is one thing which is critical to e-learning.The image approach is great because then you can see what to do! Woopid 2.0 is coming so keep an eye on this site.

topretweet.com

topretweet.com is a site which operates like Seismic Look and promotes the Twitter idea of trending topics. You can register but I am not sure how that would be better than Twitter or TweetDeck so I’ll leave that up to you to decide. Topretweet is trawling sites to get up to the minute information about anything and everything and that is the whole push behind social media and one of its great advantages. On topretweet you can see what the current trends are but you can also search for topics and get information and help quickly. These sorts of microblogging sites are designed to get you moved along. Sometimes when you are searching you cannot get what you want very quickly. Take the microblogging route and you will save yourself a lot of time. A lot of it boils down to having the right keywords for the search and a microblogging search site will get you those keywords quickly. It says nothing about the topretweeting site in the About Us section. It would be nice to know who is behind it. It is not possible to contact them either because the contact us doesn’t go anywhere. Maybe this is a brand new site and it is a work in progress because there is nothing under the Terms and Conditions. Even without registering there is a lot of current and helpful information so take the site on face value at the moment.

Bridge the Digital Divide

Khan Academy

“Salman Khan (Sal) founded the Khan Academy with the goal of using technology to educate the world ” is the statement on the Khan Academy site. Salman Khan will do this I am sure because he is sharing so much information for others to learn. It comes in the form of videos. There are hundreds of Maths videos, History, Statistics, Biology Finance. Go and have a look at the site. There is bound to be something you want to know or want to know better. Students with find this an invaluable resource. In 2009 Salman Khan and Khan Academy got the Tech Award in Education. He also runs a subscriber channel to the Khan Academy on YouTube. He is the maths tutor we have all been waiting for!

Seesmic Look

Seesmic Look is a pretty cool Windows 7 client for Twitter which I found on Twitdom. It has very smooth functionality and a cruisy GUI. The Seesmic Look site itself gives plenty of help and support and even videos to help get you going.Infact, Seesmic Look is the best client I have seen so far to help get you going in a very positive way with Twitter. You can immediately get involved and see its value. Brick bats first and I have to say I am so used to the pop ups of new notifications from Tweet Deck that I missed them a lot. Pop ups mean I keep on top of the in coming tweets . With Seesmic Look, however, I had a much better opportunity to follow my interests and find new links and opportunities to branch out with Twitter. It offers channels as well to things like the Huffington Post but I’d like to see a lot more channels with a global orientation. That might be coming because Windows 7 dedicated software is very new. There is another version of Seesmic for Windows and for mobile phones too. If it had pop ups I’d use it all the time. At the moment I am running it and Tweet Deck so I get the best of both worlds! Bit of over tweet, but still.

Cyberjargon tools

If you have trouble understanding SMS speak then I highly recommend the site Lingo2Word. You can decode SMS but you can also dazzle your entourage by coming up with perfect SMS speak! The other site for decoding cyber jargon and slang is NetLingo. This site has a sense of humour but it also keeps a current database of all the cyber terms on our planet and so you are always in the know! Currency. It’s about currency.

Mac Cut Lunch and Compass

If you have a Mac and you want to get the best out of it , then visit the Canadian Mac site and get some really good hints and tips. It offers a lot of videos to get the most out of the music, mobile, web, video and iWork applications and perhaps it will offer other things as they get around to it. There is a considerable choice and watching a short video teaches you very quickly how to do things and it only takes a couple of minutes! It also offers help with some of the basic setting up and navigating stuff. Sites like this are priceless when it comes to learning how to use your tool!

Mini Mac OS shortcuts

The guys over at Creative Techs are both ingenious and superbly practical. They have a good sense of creativity too. Click on this link to find the dinkiest little pocket edition of Mac shortcuts. Brilliant. If you need instructions on how to fold it, then go here.

Blackle

Blackle is the energy saving version of Google. Our technology emits as much CO2 as our airline industry. Computers, however, can help us save CO2 by allowing us to have local and global video conferencing and webinars. Those sorts of online activities have real potential to save CO2 emissions in a big way. The best thing you can do is run your computer with a black background…but I don’t think we’ll be doing that because most of us are attached to our decorated desktops. So what can we do? Use Blackle. Use power surge boards with separate switches so we can turn off what we are not using by way of equipment. We can use LCD flat screen monitors which use less than half the energy of CSR. We can look up the manufacturer’s energy rating of computers when we buy one. We can go into the power settings of our computer and make sure it shuts down – 15mins for the screen, 30 mins for the hard drive. My new desktop already does that for me so manufacturers are becoming aware we are green and want to be, so we need to keep reminding them. Screen savers do not save energy. They use it. So just set the computer to shut down or have no screen saver.To look get a good look at some of the issues, tips and costs go to Saving Electricity and Pays to Live Green. For Macs go here. If you run XP or Vista you can download the free Edison Software from Verdiem which will monitor your power consumption. There is a lot you can do to save energy and laptops on the whole save more than desktops , but again, you need to check the manufacturer’s details.

Coolest Gadgets

Droolr is a geek’s delight! it has all the coolest gadgets imaginable. It is a good example of a microblog and is using visual literacy very well to promote its content and the content is pretty cool. If you click on the pictures it will bring up a larger version. The site is just gathering the best gadgets around and one of its advantages is that it is a showcase for students with their wild imaginations and technology skills who are inventing things we haven’t even thought of yet. I chose the Twilight Air Purifier but when I researched further I found this post on Tom’s Guide which explained that the air purifier also created an ambience in the room and was in fact an idea brought about industrial design students in Brazil.

Bellzar

Search to save energy and donate rice. Use Bellzar.

50 Open Source Educational Tools

IT management at Earthweb has come up with a list of open source tools which can be used to replace commonly known ones. Why? Sometimes you have to work cross platform and it’s good to have software which will work on all OS so you are not changing what you do all the time from one OS tot he next. Secondly, if you use Ubuntu or another Linux OS you are not always sure which application to use for the ones you know through Windows or Apple. Thirdly, open source software is free and evens out the playing field. This link gives you 50 applications to try our but also points you to other links which are specifically designed to collate IT materials for educators.

Open any file

Don’t know your .png from your .ppt leave alone your .odp ? This is the site for you. The site for anyone who has a file extension they don’t recognise and worse still, can’t open. openwith.org is a site which tells you what the files are and then if you click on the file extension it will take you to the programme which will open it! Don’t now about you but every time I have asked Windows to go on the Net to find me the programme which would open the file, it has never once found the programme! It is the one thing Windows can’t do. In fact, I haven’t found an OS which can do this easily for me so now I have a whole site to consult. Happy now!

E-Learning

Free Presentation Templates

The world is on our side! banks of resources we can access to help us move this e-learning on in a classroom are coming to our aid. Schools cannot be constantly spending and education is in the interests of everyone! Enough. PresentationMagazine has plenty of subject orientated and subject related templates to help you and your students quickly have access to some suitable presentations tools for Mac or PC. When you have time, take a look around the whole site. It has some very handy stuff to inspire you and to show you just what some of the possibilities and current trends are.

Free Graphic Organisers

If you and your students can’t get organised from these 10 pages of graphic organisers…then I’ll just have to find more! This site has a lot of freebies to be used in class and electronically. It is so much easier when you do not have to spend that extra time actually making the tools you need to teach and facilitate learning. The graphic organisers are scaffolding for thinking, planning, ideas development. There are Venn diagrams, fish, apples, charts,note takers, flow charts…so much! A lot of them support literacy and thinking development but even if you don’t want to use them they will at least give you some quick ideas of how to create your own electronic scaffolding for teaching.

10 movies made with Alice

And your students made them all! Have you met Alice? She comes with quite an entourage and is quite a star. She teaches 3D environments for games, video and story telling, but she also teaches programming as she goes along. This is cross platform software and there are versions 2.0 and 2.2 for more mature students and then Story Telling Alice for Middle School.She is a free gift from Carnegie Mellon. Students can actually pursue this with little help because the whole Alice concept has a comprehensive approach to learning and the instructional materials are well paced and well explained. Alice is not something you can just do. You do have to think about it and you do have to immerse yourself in the learning. Watch both the videos here and you will get a good idea about how Alice can be utilised in education. Alice has a wonderful way of infiltrating the hearts and minds of people who make friends with her and so there is considerable school support and teacher help for those who want to take on Alice!

Gamequarium

Gamequarium is a site with plenty of game flavoured but content oriented material for classroom and student use. It also has a lot of teacher support material. I have added a picture from one of the Science presentations but the link is to the Maths materials. There are activities for lots of subjects but the only language covered is Spanish. Some of the activities are more demanding than others so you need to look through the site to find things which will suit your classes. It has e-books and videos too and you are welcome to add resources. Great site!

Massive Change in Action

Massive Change in Action is a Canadian educational site which encourages positive community interaction and a chance to teach students about how they can make change and how they can create positive changes. The link takes you right to the toolkit section where you can look at the activities and download them. They are good examples of how you can involve your students in community based learning with positive outcomes. This site belongs to a much bigger global project. Massive Change which is dedicated to using design and technology to improve the welfare of humanity. If you go to that site you will be inspired by all the amazing things being done around the world and it will give you an excellent idea of how you can blend our technological world with your teaching courses because so much is being done! It’s totally cross faculty learning.

Net Safety

I have already blogged about Net Safety and the help which the CommonSenseMedia site has brought to us, but , as a teacher, I am still not comfortable with just letting students go on the Net in an unsupervised or ad hoc way. It is what we do all the time at home and most students would be doing that too. I don’t know what percentage of parents actively and routinely supervise their children’s net activities. I’d like to think most. As a parent I always had our computers in the lounge room . It meant they were in open view but it also meant anyone in our lounge room was actively sharing what they were doing. It was actually good social and learning time for anyone in the lounge room, including visitors. It showed a great side of computing. Similarly with games. They were in the lounge room. As a digital immigrant I learnt a lot about how people play games and their value as educational tools both for skills and social development. I didn’t just see games as a waste of time. In a classroom, watching how students use a computer add to my own knowledge and practices, but with t he capability of getting more students independently online, then I have some concerns. As a South Australian teacher I have to be registered to teach and that means meeting some decent criteria for teaching, I have to have done a Mandatory Notification Course, I have to have a First Aid certificate and I have to have had a police check.Not just anyone can interact with our students. All that is about ensuring quality teachers who can meet their duty of care requirements and it’s about keeping students safe. No system is perfect, but we do at least have some good benchmarks. With online delivery there doesn’t appear to be any guarantee of who is delivering the courses and materials and who might be there on the other end of the connection and so it is coming down to common sense. That will not protect us though or our students and it will be difficult with so many students connected. So we need:

1. Authentication of online teachers
2. Some way of endorsing education friendly sites
3. Somewhere to report safety issues and concerns

This might seem like more bureaucracy but you and I have both read about he Facebook stalkers and tragic consequences. We have all read about how some people invade the space of vulnerable people with their trickery and treachery. Part of what we do is teach students how to manage their own safety and protection. It becomes more difficult with constant connectivity as parents have found out with mobile phones. So I see it as important we look carefully at our classroom practices and we start to develop some common best practices for engaging with social media and online sites. I see online life as a parallel to real life and the same issues occur and need to be dealt with in a practicalway.

E-learning Wishlist 3

It is interesting to go on this journey because as I learn more my wishes are either being met or I am developing new wishes. It’s a matter of letting time do the work for me because as I absorb myself in the discovery of e-learning possibilities then the information has a chance to gel and / or filter through. From wishlist one to wishlist 2 I had found answers to my wishes. My third wish list is slightly different but I take heart from the site e-learning and distance education managed by Tony Bates. As practitioners we need to be looking at the quality of e-learning delivery. So my list looks like this:

1. Bona fide, verified and child safe guaranteed online learning sites where others interact live with students. I currently have no way of guaranteeing and ensuring these sites are safe. At the very least we need to have the same checks as we have for live teachers.
2. Good real time and online technical support so I am not held up when I have invested my time in creating a technology approach and students are reliant on technology. I have worked out it is essential to always be ready with Plan B and Plan C. Whiteboard markers rule in a crisis! We need to share back up plans.
3.Good teachers need to be encouraged and supported to be good users of technology so they can can transfer their skills into good online and technology practices. No amount of technological equipment will help an incompetent teacher.
4. Feedback on what we are doing. My participation in social networks gives me a lot of feedback and encouragement. It means I have access to a constant pool of ideas and comments. It has meant I have learnt and grown without fear.
5.Reliable pool of education friendly resources and I have found a lot of those, but they need to keep coming!

PicArtia

PicArtia is an online mosaic creating tool. You can buy a higher resolution copy of the finished mosaic if you want so that you can produce a high quality print. Why? The mosaics are very different and very clever and would make a pretty cool present, or again, an individual work of art that you can customise for your own needs. If not you just get the free online version sent to your email address and I’ll show you what I did:

1. I watched the online tutorial which takes about 2 mins on the PicArtia site.
2. I uploaded this photo which I had reduced to 25% of its original size. It just happens to be the same photo I used on the Repper site.
3. I followed the instructions and waited for the code to be delivered to my email account.

4. I cut and pasted the code and downloaded my mosaic.
5. I had chosen the flower option for the mosaic so my original picture has been created into a mosaic using teeny tiny flowers. How cool is that?!

teAchnology

teAchnology is a great site for teachers and the link I have created just happens to take you to a lot of graphing resources, which would be a good help if you happen to be a Maths teacher. That is the whole point of teAchnology, it is a site which offers a constant set of electronic resources to take the burden out of electronic lessons. There is plenty of ready made useful material. If you sign up for the emails, then all this helpful information comes straight to your inbox and that is the easiest way I have found of keeping up to date with this site. It is very positive, very practical and very enthusiastic so it’s a good site to know !

Educational Games

As the author of this site says, be prepared to get lost in a time hole when you browse these games! They are made by organisations like the Nobel Prize Organisation and the United Nations and focus on anything from world poverty to oil, to managing food supplies. Food Force is a complex United Nations game which I have seen students become very absorbed in. We were running games like this on our school servers so that students would engage with educational games, but you always have to be on the look out for ones which can meet the high expectation of students. I have the Free Rice game linked on the sidebar and staff and students seem to like having a go at that and it’s good for learning languages. I have blogged about the Nobel Prize Games. So take a look at the site because you could be raising goats, whacking TB, dealing with global warming or being one of the amazing food detectives!

e-Clippings

Bit more than e-Clippings. This blog by Marc Oehlert is an intelligently written, in depth look at how technology is shaping and forming us and how, in fact, it can be used to deepen and strengthen our knowledge. That might sound a bit drab. Not at all. Go and look at this blog. You will find it interesting, absorbing and informative. Once of the fascinating things on the blog is the constantly updating Social Media Growth Counter. What I really like about the blog is the fact Mark Oehlert is speaking from experience and practice. He does a lot and he knows a lot.

Sweet Search for Students

Sweet Search is not your average search engine. It is specifically designed to broaden the scope of research and to include and find those research sites which might get buried in normal search engines. Sweet Search is a work in progress and the object of the exercise is to enable students to find good quality materials which are beyond their limited Wikipedia approach. Whenever I have said to students, please don’t just use Wikipedia, they look at me like I have gone mad and then want to know why. So then I have to say I really want them to search and I don’t want to mark the same paper 30 times. That bit they understand but then we have to look at ways and means of broadening research and that means I am not teaching content. As a French teacher, content is important. I don’t teach about French. All this takes time, so it was with great relief I found Sweet Search and I blogged about it because it means there is a Search Engine which is education dedicated and I don’t have to spend as much time with all my own explanations. Sweet Search is my online librarian and because it is still being refined and changed then it will get better and better. Mark Moran from Sweet Search was kind enough to leave a comment on the last blog post about Sweet Search so now I know there is a blog about it which explains how it came about and how it is being developed and I can also follow them on Twitter @ findingDulcinea. The blog also has some great links out so I recommend a look.

Pencil – 2D animation

Well you may laugh! It’s the reason I am not an art or media teacher! Pencil is a good little programme though for 2D animation and the site itself offers you some support and help, but a lot of students these days would find this an easy programme to work with and produce something they are pleased with. It’s effective but not complex. If you have those sorts of skills you can help in the development of Pencil as they have a section for that . The gallery and screenshots give you a clear idea of how you can use it, but it is not meant to be in competition with the vector based animation programmes. It is just a nice programme to get some uncomplicated animation going. Again, it is cross platform software which will work on all major OS’s and that’s a relief!

Webcam Trickery

The site is called sillywebcam.com but not alls the effects are silly! It seems that what you might be doing is trivial but that is not the case. The are some silly effects which would just amuse no end and there is nothing wrong with that. It might actually be the effect you are looking for! There are other effects like the fake magazine I have put an image of in this post. Some of these effects would provide some good images for different applications both serious and non serious. This is a site worth knowing because it has collected so many things in one spot and that always eases the workload!

Website spellchecker

Orangoo spellchecks texts in 27 different languages but it also offers the service of checking your whole website in English and then emailing the results to you. Nothing destroys credibility more than daft spelling even if they are typos, so I am thinking a site spellchecker would be a good thing to have to maintain my site. The spellchecker is a good to know about because even though most word processors come with spellcheckers they are not always effective in some languages or they won’t run and there are times when checking text online would be a good option.

Wired

If you don’t know Wired, then it’s time you did because it not only brings you up to date technological information, it will also always bring you something a bit different. It is now has the capacity to come to your iPad if you have one and can be picked up through the iTunes store. look around the site because they have revamped it quite a bit and each section is different and very useful. There is the how to section which will teach you a lot of tips and tricks like how to make a Wii cake or a false egg! I told you it would bring you something a bit different. It is a very imaginative as well as practical site. The Science section is also worth a visit because it not only gives you scientific news it gives you a link to the Twitter feed where you can get even more ideas and information. Don’t forget the gallery. Always some great images there. This is a very enthusiastic, interesting site.

Learn in 5 Minutes

5 Minute Life Videopedia is a site which concentrates on videos which will teach you something in 5 minutes. Thankfully they have categorised the videos but what isn’t clear is there are videos you can find to learn other languages or which run in other languages. Japanese is relatively well represented and hopefully more people will contribute things in other languages because it helps to include everyone but it also helps you learn a language. The site covers a wide range of interests and the quality of the videos is good. I found one one from CNET about hooking up a laptop to a new HDTV and I learnt a couple of things I needed to know and it was great to see someone from CNET because it is a site I have used for quite a while. Some of the videos are more educational than others, but they all teach. Someone once said that the difference between a success and a failure is a successful person knows how to use 5 minutes wisely. This is a wise use of 5 minutes!

Quizlet Flash Cards

Quizlet is one of those short term, quick reward sites which offers flash cards in a number of exercises. It means you can run them centrally in class, or students can run their own quizzes independently on their computers. Flash cards are not new but they do provide a very qucik and efficient method for absorbing information and facts and some of these flash card sets show you that you can focus on certain aspects of content learning. Flash cards at least take the drudgery out of learning. I have found even though there are only so many flash cards you can do with students, they do actually like them to start a lesson or to liven up the middle of one. It is also a site to which you can contribute and the more we all contribute, the easier it will be for us to find suitable resources quickly.

Interactive Periodic Table

This is a periodic table with a difference! You can learn it like any other periodic table, but you can engage with it and make it something meaningful in your head. If you click on the elements at the side or on the table itself , you are taken to a separate page where the elements are not only discussed in a bit more detail there are videos to help create an even better knowledge of the element. For those who think that e-learning is not as good as traditional learning, this site goes a long way in being able to demonstrate you actually get deeper and better knowledge from e-learning if you approach it technologically.

Online Cartoon Strips

This is so ridiculously simple and easy to manage I have already thought of at least 10 things I can use it for in class without even thinking about it. For teaching languages, it is a very handy tool because it is straight forward and easy. That means maximum time is spent on the language learning and not supporting the software. My students are just going to love this and it means we can easily liven up a lesson when we need to and present some bigger and better comic strips as we become more proficient. That’s the thing. This sight is short term, quick reward material which will encourage a love of learning and the confidence to learn more. I can even start a lesson with one of these to get it off to a happy start.

Ratings

So are ratings on posts a good idea? I have only enabled the ratings for 12 hours and I am beginning to think not. I’ll try it for a week because ratings are everything in Web 2.0 , aren’t they? Like/ dislike, rank/don’t rank. We are good at feedback! My belief is people will come and read posts but the rating bit is just going too far. Having read the post my guess is people would want to just move on. Besides, you don’t see ratings much on blog posts anywhere and ubiquity tends to tell you whether something is “good” or not. We’ll see. I think the rating may be over rated. I get enough feed back from stats. Maybe the like or dislike button would work, but here isn’t one. It would be nice to know which posts people really like and a straw vote does give you that kind of quick information. Feel free to rate this post!

Open Culture

The internet is full of great materials for e-learning. There is a lot of dubious and silly content out there too. When you are focussed on running classes all day then it is hard to keep up to date with what is there and what is helpful. So it’s nice to find a site like Open Culture which provides a filter or lens on cultural and educational media. More and more worthwhile videos are coming online and since a number of them only last 10 minutes then these are great additions to a lesson so that the times passes happily and the content is driven home in a form which students increasingly respond to. The site picks the best and then has done us all a favour and categorised the material into subject areas. Thank you, thank you!! It is also a site which is maximising the connectivity of web 2.0 apps and so it is easy to keep up to date with new information which is posted.

Free Documentaries

FreeDocumentaries does have a political side to it and its content would not suit a lot of classrooms, but here are documentaries here which are easily available to you in French, English and Spanish and they would be the backbone of some pretty interesting discussions for older audiences. The documentaries explore some of the more demanding aspects of our culture.There is plenty to choose from and even if you didn’t want to show the whole documentary, you have access to video footage which you can show sections of to promote thinking ,ideas and knowledge. Sometimes 3 minutes of video will fast track ideas in a very effective way in a classroom.

InkScape

InkScape is an open source, free vector graphics editor, and I have downloaded it and even though I have no real skills to speak of with graphics programmes, I have been pleased that I can use it easily for what I want to do and that the thing which I liked in the first five minutes was the filters! The programmes is quick to download but takes a little bit of time to install and then snaps open when you click on it. That was my first surprise. Most complicated graphics programmes seem to take a while to set themselves up. This application will suit high end graphics users and will manage the same sorts of things as sophisticated graphics programmes. Its advantage is it is open source and not so memory hungry as some of the other big graphics programmes. That might suit NetBooks and the like. I am wondering whether it can complement or work with the other graphics big names? That would be a real advantage. According to the site: “It imports formats such as Postscript, EPS, JPEG, PNG, and TIFF and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats,” so presumably you could use it with your other graphics programmes. There is a developer and user community for you to join if you want to get more out of this application.

DVD pirating costing industry $1.7b

 

“Instead many of the DVDs that are being bought by members of the Australian public today are effectively being bought from crime syndicates who are also engaged in drug trading, child pornography and other heinous crimes,” he said.”

That is a LOT of money for Australia. We only have 22 million people. Divide it by 28 to 32 dollars and you can see the numbers being pirated. Arithmetic is not my thing. Numbers, though, are playing a big role in our society. There is a Facebook experiment looking at the snowball effect and it builds up incredibly quickly to epic numbers. We can rally millions of people very quickly with our current technology and it is having an impact on boundaries. People know piracy is illegal but they don’t stop copying because you can. You can copy so it must be all right. That is the thinking. We have the technology to block piracy, surely? Then there is the belief that it only costs around 2 dollars to make a copy of a CD/DVD and so the cost of 34 dollars top price seems to be exorbitant. There are just some things which cannot get into people’s heads these days. Some of it is the wonderful sense of entitlement people have and then there is the complete ease with which computers can do things. So we need to know more about these spurious connections. Some of it is people thinking they have bought a bona fide copy of something on the Net only to find out it is pirated. That happens too frequently with software and downloads. The scamming there is putting people in a retaliatory mode and so I guess some of what occurs is what people see as revenge on a system which keeps ripping them off. Then, of course, people just want to have things and there is the lazy approach of it being easier to copy than actually getting up, going out the door and buying it. I think the solution is in technology. Block it.

DVD pirating costing industry $1.7b: Debus – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Net Safety

It is not easy being an educator using online materials and so a site like CommonSenseMedia comes into its own and to our rescue. There are cartoon and animation sites which would be great to use in class but there is unsuitable material on some of these sites because they are for the general public. We have a duty of care and we cannot just use anything and any site. At this stage there is no rating for sites. At some stage we need to consider rating sites as suitable for different age groups and educational purposes. That would be helpful. The same as we have ratings for DVDs and films. CommonSenseMedia allows you to search for films, websites and other types of media and get a review and rating. There is also a section for educators so that you can participate more fully and it’s a great site for parents. It is not just a Net safety site, though, it allows you to discover some really worthwhile materials and keep up to date with the media trends.

Mac, Windows or Linux?

I actually use all of these operating systems now. We still have XP on one of the desktops at home and Windows 2003 at work. The other desktop at home has Windows 7 and one laptop has Vista, the other has dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 and the netbook has Windows 7. I have rescued my really old laptop which was struggling and it is operating really quite well on Ubuntu 8. I just couldn’t use it any more with Windows. It was getting too hot. It is true what they say on the Net about Flash affecting NECs. You can really notice it when you load Flash sites on Ubuntu. Windows was managing it all but you couldn’t isolate the problem. So the laptop was just getting too hot to use! I have to use a MacBook for work. It drives me crazy because it’s WYSIWIG…and what you get is very efficient,you just can’t customise it or the customisations have to be reloaded each time you get to the desktop. Like DeskCover. Great little app but it has to be turned on all the time as far as I can tell. The iLife stuff doesn’t particularly appeal to me but it has high appeal for others and I confess iPhotos is very clever in the way it manages images so quickly and well. I am sold on that and the e-zines. People adapt quickly to the MacBook. It is a computer they can turn on and immediately do things with in iLife. When it comes so some of the publishing stuff it’s a different matter. I like the Mac more since I found Terminal and since I made my Dock do a Mexican wave…but had to turn that off because I kept miss-mousing! I want a personal computer and I find the Mac controls me too much. It does convert very quickly to French and goes like a bomb on the Net . Just charges around and loads the pages instantly. Linux I like because it has a thinking approach as well as being pretty easy to use. The whole Linux thing is very helpful. I can solve things very quickly. It is simple and fuss free. I love the screensavers. Some clever ideas there. I like the sorts of games it loads because they are just simple fun and you can do things like chess, sudoko and mahjonng. It’s essentially about keeping your brain active. Windows I don’t have a problem with. I have become used to it and I can customise it to my needs. What I don’t like about Windows is its jealous behaviour if it doesn’t like a programme or software. Once you tame it though, Windows becomes quite helpful. Windows 7 is even more helpful and far saner than any other version. At this stage I could run a Windows only computer or a Linux only. With the MacBook I am still exploring the system and apps like Journler. We need a choice in operating systems to cater to our learning styles and needs and at this stage there is something for everyone.

We are what we do

Wearewhatwedo.org is a site in line with Martin Seligman’s positive psychology approach and the research in England on Making Slough Happy. Change is action and if everyone does a little thing then it is possible to create a positive feeling within the community and give others a sense of hope and happiness. This site is set up for schools to participate and share but even if you don’t want to do that , there is plenty of material here for you to get your own personal or group approach to creating positive action within a community. A lot of it is centred on sharing online and the current history pin initiative is a perfect example of that.

Website speed test

Every so often you need to check the speed of your website so that it loads efficiently and optimises its search engine potential. We also live in a world where people simply do not want to wait that long for anything to long. We have zero tolerance on slow loading sites and applications. In a classroom a slow loading site is a killer. It just breaks the cognitive flow and attention span completely so I have a commitment to efficient sites! Sometimes there is a problem like broken links or too many bits and pieces on the page. I have been to Website Speed Test and tested all my websites and this one is loading in 3.82 seconds whereas the others are loading in .50 or less seconds. I have worked on my other sites and so it pleases me my changes have improved the page loading. Blogger also seems to be faster than WordPress but it could be MY blogs at Blogger compared with MY blogs at WordPress. Web Speed is a good link because there are other tools on the site to help you manage running your site efficiently.

The times really are changing

Just recently , I have become aware of just how much things are changing. They have been changing all the time , of course, but every once in a while you reach a level of critical mass the the changes tumble into something. You Tube is bigger and more popular than ever. It has a lot more serious content now and it is much more widely used by everyone, not just daft school kids on mobiles. Podcasts are now a really good way to keep yourself informed and more and more people are using them to educate and teach. You can see now that with a Facebook type set up, podcasts and something like You tube, we could actually dispense with schools and create global classrooms. We have the technology. Some students might suit the Facebook/You Tube/Podcast approach better because they are like a lot of people…they don’t like to be tied to time and a desk. Then I have noticed on my other blog that people are now viewing it from iPhones and the like and using USB stick internet. This has been happening more and more often over the last 2 weeks. Our mobile technologies are now up and running an as they infiltrate the mainstream they will free us all up. No longer tied to wires. It’s exciting really!

Zap Reader

Read better, read faster and improve your reading skills with this handy online tool : Zap reader. This is one of those wonderful less is more sites where you do not get bogged down in which link to click and several minutes of trying to work out what to do. The reader is available under the red reader link. The settings are available under the red settings link. There is a video tutorial which explains very clearly what this programme can do. Basically it will train you to read electronic material faster. You can adjust the settings so you can improve your skills . The more you use it , the better you’ll be able to read. If you can get to the 3 or 4 words at a time you will find your hard copy reading improves too. Watch the tutorial! A gift for anyone who has mountains of material to read!

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation is a whole industry these days because the web is everything to connectivity and business. Success on the web can lead to big money and so SEO is vital. It is important your site gets found and ranked highly by search engines.For education , it is even more important we get our sites ranked and up there because the internet does not particularly value education as a crowd puller aka linkbait (says something!) but we need to know we are there and that we can help each other. One of the things you can do is ensure your website loads efficiently as I blogged here. The second thing you can do is consult a site like crainbandy where you get some good tips and ideas. Now, as your average person, you may not understand all of it or want to follow through on all of it, but the more you pick up to optimise your site for search engines, the happier you will be and the happier I will be because I’ll be able to find you. I am not an expert at this but I am surrounded by experts on the web who share their knowledge freely. I have picked up a thing or two , so, to keep it simple, here are my top five SEO tips:

1. Ensure your site loads quickly and efficiently.
2. Keep posting. Keep the site up to date. Even when you are tired , find a way to keep the site current.
3. Make sure you have some posts which are crowd pullers. You might come across them by accident like my one on Ubuntu and Me-TV. That post has consistently brought in the traffic and that helps my search engine ranking.
4. Post helpful ideas. They tend to get ranked more highly. You can always put in your opinions as you go along!!
5. Use Twitter or similar to gauge trending topics because the in thing is the in thing and that’s what creates SEO .The other way to get traffic and thereby ranking is to use something unusual like my post on The Blue Diva.The blog itself does not rate highly because it’s my opinion blog but that post is one of the posts which has consistently brought a lot of search engine traffic.

Periodic Table of Vizualization Tools

This is just plain ingenious and a great site to bookmark! Each of the elements has a visualisation tool embedded onto it. So when you are feeling jaded or your mind seems to be stuck on only certain types of scaffolding and visualisation tools , then you can use this periodic table to look at the myriad of ways we can present information. Great idea, but I wonder why it was created as a periodic table. Not complaining, just curious.

Visual Resumes

Visual resumes are starting to take hold and it is important we look at how to put one together. This one is hugely popular on SlideShare and that tends to suggest it is well worth considering. Employers are starting to look for something which will allow them to see the real potential in their applicants. Videos are hard to make unless you are really good at it. They can make a person seem awkward and silly when they are not. Cameras do strange things to people . Eventually we’ll get better at it but slide shows are a good interim measure for promotion and job panels. They strike a balance between giving personal depth as well as CV information. Some employers have taken to interviewing applicants on Skype and those sorts of web telephone applications, so we need to address these issues in school and the wider community and start looking at how to put a good visual resume together and one of the important points would be to ensure the content does not infringe copyright. We also need to look at what basics to include and for over the Net phone interviews , we are probably going to need to have handy running sheets next to our computer! There is more help here at makeuseof.com.

Random Videos

Wimp.com can be found on Facebook if you’d rather link there, but it is a site which uploads videos which are suitable for all ages and the ones I have seen are extraordinary. You can learn how to remove a cork from a bottle with a shoe, there is this lovely stop – motion sugar skull drawing and then there could be just anything. Sometimes it’s hilarious, sometimes it is amazing and sometimes it’s really helpful. They upload new videos each day. Okay, so now I am going to try making potato chips in the microwave. Didn’t know you could do that till I saw the video!

Blender – 3D animation

Blender is cross platform , sophisticated 3D animation tool and you only have to go on the site to see the gallery to see what it is capable of. It is software which supports education and there is plenty of help and support under the education tab. You can also access Blender trainers or become a Blender trainer yourself. You can download the software and then access the tutorials and manuals. All in all. it is a very comprehensive animation programme and if you have Python scripting knowledge you can derive even more capabilities from this software.

Ratings Review

I wrote about a week ago I was going to activate the ratings on individual posts. My thoughts at the time were that it wouldn’t be very helpful but I didn’t know and I thought a week would be sufficient time to see. Epic fail! Absolutely useless. No help whatsoever and a complete waste of time. I thank the two people who rated two different posts during that week. If they would identify themselves maybe I should offer them some sort of a reward? Perhaps my gracious appreciation will suffice. Needless to say I have switch the post rating off and shall never speak of them again. I ma happy with the feedback I get in other ways so I’ll leave it at that and blog on.

Sweet Search

Sweet Search -The search engine for students. My wish is their command! I have no sooner put requests on my e-learning wishlist than the planet responds. It is that easy. Get out there and tweet and blog and you find there are a whole heap of experts and gurus who are just waiting for a chance to respond to your needs when your back is up against the wall because you are trying to teach, mark, manage, assess, create, inspire. Teachers are really busy people. We need all the help we can get, but I have proven once again that if you let people know what your needs are, they are more than happy to help. I have linked Sweet Search into the sidebar so it is always here. Thank you, thank you. Smiling now!

Twitter Trend Maps

Want to find out what the trending topics are? Curious to know how we are feeling about having Julia Gillard as our new and first female PM? Then you go to TrendsMap and you can see the real time trending topics on Twitter according to location. In our world, information really is instant. It also means that in your classroom, at any given moment , you can look at what the important issues are.

Out of the HDTV Swamp

My new Samsung LA40B530P7F HDTV was a great new addition to the home but, as usual, when you go up a cog or two technically then the components don’t all match. The hard drive recorder I had has had to go elsewhere because it didn’t have an HDMI connection. Enter the LG HR598D Blue Ray/ DVD recorder combo which hooks into the wifi and has LAN capabilities and I was in awe…until last night when I tried to play a disk I own from another region. All my other players and recorders are multizone I had neglected to ask about this one…I just assumed. Assumptions always get you into trouble!! We get DVDs from everywhere. There is no code yet for the LG. It is so new! So then I thought I’d use the Pioneer DV-344, which even though it is old, has very good image quality and is multizone. The Samsung picked it up as a component but nothing. So I looked at what had been plugged where and then googled to my heart’s content. There was no real help but there were bits and pieces of information which got me on track so I offer this to you if are having trouble trying to connect an older DVD player to an HDTV.At the back of the Pioneer is a video switch which you switch to the left for higher input video signals. You change the Pioneer settings to PCM on the sound menu in the settings. You connect the red and white sound cables directly into the sound system box. I chose 5 channel. Mine is not a fancy system. The red, green and blue component leads go from the component connections on the back of the DVD player to the component connections on the back of the TV. Bingo..all works now! Can’t believe it. It was a swamp there for a while…always is with new gadgetry.

Citizen Science

The Barbara Hardy Centre for Sustainable Urban Environments at the University Of South Australia has a commitment to our environment, education and communication. Its Citizen Science projects are designed to obtain scientific data and information but the projects harness the powers of everyone in our community to be a contributor. The research work involves students as well as the wider community and then the findings are returned to us as learning materials for ourselves and for our classrooms. There is a very good teacher resources section of this site. The current project is about spiders and has some very creative and inspirational aspects to it. This collaborative , interactive, guided approach to learning developed by one of our tertiary institutions is great role modelling for the sort of learning we can all engage in now.

Art of Illusion

I am a big fan of cross platform software. Choose the operating system which suits you and your needs, because that is what it boils down to, and then get the software you want. In our current climate we often have to go cross platform because we choose our OS at home and then there is a different one at work…or one for one system and another for another system. Cross platform software means you can choose your software and work with what you want and then the OS is not an issue. Art of Illusion is free , cross platform software which is a 3D modelling and rendering studio. If you take a look at the screenshots and gallery sections of the site you will see if is a very capable piece of software. You cannot just fudge it. You have to know what you are doing but there is help. The site is also an opportunity to explore and share this software with others and more and more the sharing and community approach to learning is becoming normal and that’s good. The contribution part of the site here and there are opportunities to do all sorts of things to help develop The Art Of Illusion, not the least of which is to contribute to tutorials. I really need those tutorials!! There is pressure for us to be able to do everything on a computer and we cannot…not without help.

Repper

Repper is a pretty cool online tool for creating patterns and backgrounds using your own images. For me, as a quilter, I can see the possibilities to create some pretty amazing quilts and for getting help with colour selection and palettes! Repper means you use your own images for backgrounds and embellishment and that personal touch means you are more involved with the process of design. There is a professional version which does more but the lite version is easy to use and you can download the finished pattern to your computer. Given a lot of sites encourage you to provide your own decorating and backgrounds, then Repper is worth having in your toolbox, but it is also a site you can use for making your own cards, business cards and anything of that nature and you know the designs will be unique.

Online Web Tutorials

W3Schools Online Web Tutorials is a remarkably economic, lightning fast loading site which does exactly what it says. It teaches you the code to build websites. It is very zippy at getting through the information and is very helpful in showing what the code does. It is important that it is presenting tutorials on HTML5 since this will be the new standard for HTML. I know this site won’t suit some people and particularly those who need images to navigate and understand content because that is how they learn, but the speed with which you can navigate this site is important in terms of the learning of different aspects of coding. You can just zip back and forth. Those who can would be able to use the site to teach themselves what they need to know and it’s a great site for revising website coding knowledge. It could be used easily in class to focus on different aspects of website building and what the code does. The site covers a lot more than HTML , though, and is a one stop shop for direct, practical help on website codes.

eQuixotic

eQuixotic is a fantastic blog for keeping up to date with e-learning trends. It is a blog which examines software , hardware options and trends and realities in e-learning. The thing I like about it is its conversational tone and the genuine interest there is in the things which are being reviewed. It is very direct which means you can sort out your own thoughts and ideas very quickly and then link ,seamlessly, of course, into the suggestions on the site. A great place to get some inspiration and ideas.

Make:Online

Bob the Builder will need to move over because this site is for the grown up, grand creators and inventors. Make:technology on your time is a fascinating mix of video, technology, electronics with a strong sense of community. There are hundreds of ideas and the link points you to the blog so you can browse and get a better overview of the site. There are projects, videos, podcasts. It is very practical but it is also ingenious . Given a lot of people don’t want to be writing all day , then the Make approach to life is a different way of engaging minds and getting them to come up with practical solutions and great ideas. A lot of people think better when they are making things and can free up their minds. If out of that there are some practical applications for what is made..then Make is proof of that. It has links to Spanish and Japanese Make sites too. Just watch what this Physics teacher has done with his students : Origami hang gliders

What happened in your birth year?

On no account allow the austerity of this home page prevent you from going to the next step and finding out what happened in your birth year. The frugality of the home page is more than matched by the riches you will receive when you dare to discover and type in the year of your birth! It’s a Pandora’s Box and just so enchanting. I loved my birth year report so much I have kept it and I was thinking it would make a great present for someone if you did their birth year and then presented it in a fancy form. What happened in my birth year takes you completely by surprise. It is a fount of information presented in a very warm and unique way. I have to thank @jdthomas7 for sharing this gem of a site on Twitter and I have to thank Philippe Lenssen for creating the gem of a site! Certainly takes the pain out of timelines too!!

Bring on the gadgets

Let them develop. Let them argue about the merits or lack thereof of Flash and HTML5. Let them review and critique iPads, iPods, iPhones, netbooks, hubs, dataviewers, OSs, new applications. Let them talk about their terraflops, their dongles, sustainability, scalability, lean starts, clean starts, MySql, YourSql, HisSql, what Sql? I don’t know. I just want it to be fast, fun, cruisy and exciting. They can talk about their e-books, iDiaries, iCal, iWeb, web essentials, web capabilities all they want. They can Cakewalk, Apple, tweet, Zynga, RssBus if they wish and they can have MySpace, MumSpace, Pingdom, Orkut, Picasa, Flickr, Megavideo, Mashable, .toolbox, RSA animation if it makes them happy. If they want the Twitterati, Gwibberati,Seesmic Lookerati ,Technorati along with their GPS, XML, pdfs, docs,uxes and XPS it is not going to worry me. Just let them develop. Let them do what they do well. Whatever I get from it needs to be leaner, greener and energy smart. They can give me gravatars and avatars, Hulu, Ning, Formspringme and Yelp. They can YouTube me,HootSuite me and give me Digital Chocolate and if they are going to stick my head in the clouds and serve the apps with a silver lining, then bring it on , I say. Just bring on the gadgets.

Twitter Statistics

DigitalBuzzBlog has a wonderful infographic portraying the meteoric rise of Twitter which has received 5.17 million dollars in Series E funding this year. CrunchBase has the breakdown of the funding rounds here. It would be nice to know the criteria for series E funding but I cannot seem to find any other information. Shelve that and let’s look at Twitter. it gets 600 million queries every day on its search engine. Google gets 34 000 searches per second. Twitter gets 600. The fact we can break down the world into these figures is both interesting and worrying. Can we live by numbers or are we going to live in spite of the numbers? How useful are these hundreds of searches and how comprehensive is the information coming back? There are 300 000 new users being added each day and Twitter is increasing the number of languages being added. Social inclusion is everything with connectedness. Currently half the time on Twitter is being spent updating current status and having private conversations. Each of those accounts for about a quarter of the traffic. I think that will change and Twitter will be used for more of the other things listed like getting information out and recommending products and places. That has started to stick lately. Now that Twitter has a status blog it is easier to see what is going on on Twitter. So…happy tweeting.

Technorati Claim 26XGUVCSQMN5

HotChalk

I like the name of this site! We’ve always been called chalkies so what are they going to call us now we are making the change to whiteboards and laptops?? HotChalk is another good site for lesson plans and ideas. It seems to be primarily for maths and Science but there are ideas for seasonal and particular lessons, some good ideas on lesson planning and then some help with improving reading skills. It is more than just plans. It is a very versatile , practical site which will help keep you reinforced as you go out there each day to provide materials for your classroom. It is another site which offers you an opportunity to share your assignments too, so the more we do that globally the better off we shall be for appropriate choices in our classroom and it will take the weight off in terms of forever having to spin the plate with inpiration and enthusiam for presentation of materials!

E-Learning Plan

Twitdom

If you still don’t see the point of Twitter and hope it’ll pass, then you need to look at Twitdom. If you love and use Twitter then you need to look at Twitdom too. Twitdom currently offers 1645 applications to help you get the best out of Twitter. There are the obvious background changers , but then there are the aggregators, the statistics collectors, the apps for browsers, mobile phones, Mac and Windows. There is something for everyone and it’s a good site to explore to increase your understanding of Twitter and its capacity to influence current trends and bring good information into your life. There are applications to let you post directly from your browser, ones which make image sharing easier and then games and marketing applications for Twitter. So many choices! I’m currently trying a new Twitter client I found on there which I’ll post about later. Plenty of toys to play with on this site and plenty of apps to get you streaming up to date information on your topics of interest.

.toolbox

I have joined .toolbox to do the online learning in Silverlight and Expression. As you can see I have achieved the first level in Design Principles. The learning content is delivered by slide and video presentations. Robbie Ingebretsen ex Microsoft and now the successful Pixel Lab creator presented an interesting and animated talk about design which gave me plenty to think about with regard to how to lift my game in the classroom. He made the content very easy to absorb. I did notice , though, he is truly dedicated to design because he was running his presentation with an Apple laptop. Designers love Apple. Shelley Evenson presented the other learning material just with slides. Even though she sounds nice and she explained the material very well, I did notice I don’t like to listen to just a voice. Her presentation was about the same length as Robbie Ingebretsen’s but I learned a good lesson as a teacher. It is important to have live animation whether it be with a real time enthusiastic teacher or a good quality video presentation. The visual animation allows the time to pass more quickly and the content is absorbed more readily because you are better engaged through personality. Shelley’s voice is very good but you don’t see her so you get distracted wondering what she is like. The evaluation at the end of the first course was tough! It came as a surprise and again I had something to think about. I really had to have absorbed all that information and I was expected to synthesise it in order to answer the questions. It was a great test of whether I had REALLY understood what I had learned about and was quite a challenge. One of the bonuses of .toolbox is you can download material and follow it up offline and so you can properly immerse yourself in your learning. It gives you plenty to think about as you are doing it even if you do not teach design…but you will realise, as you are taught in that first lesson, we are all designers and all of us have expertise which can be tapped and utilised to create some inspirational e-learning.

CoolIris Plug-in for web browsers

The CoolIris plug in for Firefox, Safari and Explorer is so cool it is Black Ice! It has finally dragged us into the new millennium with its approach to images and GUI. It has bridged that gap between static images and video so that all imganging is fluid and imaginative. Go to the CoolIris site and just look at the featured images. Then look down the bottom right on the task bar it provides and click the ? button. That will bring up the demos and other information and you will get some idea of what CoolIris is capable of. Creativity. Inspiration. Imaging 2010…at last. It will gather all your image and video needs and present them in such an amazing way you will realise that going to a folder or doing an image/video search and then clicking and bringing them up one by one is so darn passé . CoolIris will make spectacular viewing of your own images but it will provide you with an opportunity to be able to muster everything to do with images. Doing an image search on Google is a delight and no longer a chore. CoolIris makes working a lot of fun but you can also create image presentations which are stunning. Just so cool…so, go and play with CoolIris and enjoy yourself!

ClassTools

ClassTools is an interactive site where you can make a variety of learning games to use on an electronic board in class or they can be embedded into blogs and wikis. The games can be saved as stand alone files. The idea behind the site, though, is to create learning games and share them so that everyone has access to a variety of materials to use in class. Students might like to add to this type of content too and that is an important skill for them to learn in a world which leverages so many opportunities for co-creation of content.

What Teachers Make – Taylor Mali

Slideshare

Slideshare (linked left) is one of the best sites you can join for ready made presentations! You can search for topics easily and there are so many. You are also encouraged to share your presentations so the sharing bank becomes bigger. Slideshare has actually encouraged people to make more and better use of powerpoint and keynote as formats for teaching and flexible learnng options. The possibilites have really been and are being explored.

Museum Box

Museum Box is a great site for students to produce something a bit different by way of a presentation. The site offers classroom and teacher support. Students like it because of the quirky presentation. It is not like producing a slide presentation which some students can knock out quickly. They really have to think, plan and work at Museum Boxes and so it engages them in higher level thinking and learning skills. It is worth the effort and patience because they can produce an assignment as a visual presentation which incorporates sound, video, images and text and it presents it all in rather a novel way. The only disadvantage I have sound is that students have to supply you with a log in if you want to assess the work. It is better to get them to log in themselves and show you, but it means your class has to have access to their own computer or laptop. It doesn’t suit all students. I recommend you get a a couple of students to pioneer the presentations in this format so the whole class can see what is achievable. I have found it to be very worthwhile but I have to encourage students along the way because they are often used to the quick and click approach.

Lesson Plan for e-learning

The approach is no different from any other lesson plan really, but it pays to review basic approaches and keep them in the front of your head when you are breaking new classroom ground, so for languages a good approach would look like this:

Introduction stating goals and learning objectives both linguistic and cultural
Practising the sounds and words students will hear
Repeating of expressions they will hear
Playing the text
Examining one or two of the language structures
Encouraging their own use of language from the text
Looking at aspects of culture covered in the text
Activities to synthesise the new knowledge – electronic games, flash cards, conversations
Reviewing or rehearing the text at the end of the lesson or perhaps the beginning of the next.

MIT Open Course Ware

If you are not sure what the possibilities are for e-learning and online learning for yourself and others, you could do worse than visit the OCW site where you can see the sorts of things they are doing at tertiary level. Much stuff can be very small child oriented when it comes to e-learning but here is a site that shows you many adult learners would benefit enormously from this approach.

Yabla

Yabla is a site for immersion in French German and Spanish. You can subscribe as an individual or a school so that you have access to all the site materials. They are one of those great sites which allow enough demo material to sample so that you can get a decent idea of what they do and what you can do with their materials . Verane on the French site is very encouraging and charming. She just makes you want to learn and the site is very efficient in the way it teaches.

Top 100 e-learning tools

Tweducation

Inspiration

When it comes to e-learning then it is important to be constantly inspired. The audience you are presenting to is likely to be relatively tolerant but probably very critical of materials. It is just how people are. They can accept you are doing your best but there are some very classy visual effects around and we are all living in a highly visual world. On the one hand it is great for artists but on the other it is a tough challenge for mere mortals. aiAlex is a great sight to visit. It provides you with a wealth of positive inspiration and then this list of the 50 inspirational sites for designers.

Butterscotch

Butterscotch offers tutorials in techie things so that you can cut the mustard with others who are more comfortable in that sphere. It demystifies a lot of tech talk and knowledge. The other thing the site does is bring you up to the minute news on technical developments and trends . It is explained in a straightforward easy manner. The site also has links to freeware and shareware giant Tucows and highlights the sorts of things you might find useful in an e-learning world.

Microsoft Education

The Microsoft Education site is full of practical help for teachers with their e-learning initiatives and it also contains plenty of examples of how teachers can use what is already on their computers to help lift the standard on their own use of technology and engage their students in a world they love. Students like to be lost in images, files, videos, games. Microsoft Education lets you know how this can all be done in a real way because there are videos of classrooms there and then there are the educational updates and discussions. A web designer needs to get hold of that site though and tidy it up because in terms of presentation the site needs an artist’s eye. I could not believe how encouraged I felt from looking on this site. I am pretty comfortable on a computer but am conscious of needing to properly shift myself away from my paper trail classroom into technology. Like it or not it is how we are going to be and I have made some good inroads. This site has given me some more clues as to how I can put it all together.

Microsoft Learning Essentials

I downloaded the Microsoft Learning Essentials for Teachers and the one for students. Both of them were very helpful in showing how to make good use of technology for the classroom and learning with plenty of practical tips and tricks. The presentation itself is something I should like to be able to do and it is customisable so I shall give it a whirl after I have mastered the content of the Learning Essentials packages. The Learning Essential packages come with tools and tutorials you can work with if you feel insecure about using things like Office and PowerPoint, but they are more than that because they get you off your desktop and onto the web so you can easily use your computer for what it was intended…a tool to help you learn. As I am doing this I am experiencing what my students will go through to some extent. I have to bear in mind I am a digital immigrant…they are native born to the digital age.

Insert You Tube Video into PowerPoint

Insert You Tube Video into PowerPoint 2007

10 internet classroom technologies

Emerging Ed Tech is a pretty good site to keep in touch with if you are trying to move yourself forward with e-learning. This particular link will inform you of the top ten internet technologies which are potentially very useful to you and your students. Some of it will depend on what the local educational protocols are for accessing web content and sites in your classroom. Even in Australia it differs from one state to another and school administrators can put another layer of blocking on top of that if they feel there is a need to do that. Sometimes things are blocked until the security is in place and responsible use of technology and particular sites. Some times it is up to you to make a case for various apps and sites. If you can demonstrate clearly through example and shared offering that the sites and apps are worthwhile , you’ll break the barriers.

Nobel Prize Games

Nobel Prize.org is a stunner of a site which is so easy to navigate and locate suitable games for students…yes, games. This link will take you to the educational games section of the site where students can play the split brain game or the DNA game or the peace doves game. There are so many of them and they are all based on Nobel prizes. It is literally ingenious!

Keynote Presentation – Architecture

Oscar Winning Presentation

Microsoft Producer

I downloaded Microsoft Producer for free when it came up as a link form the Learning Essentials packages I had also downloaded for free. I am not good at video presentations. Within half an hour I had completed a slide show with music which was accessible from the web and then a video show with slide of animals and birds. I was just using what I had to see what I could do. I wasn’t that perfect and I was stumbling along, but I got it and was quite pleased with my first efforts. In the mean time I have been thinking how I can use this is my classroom. The kids would love it for sure. They’d narrate their PowerPoint presentations with their own video and love it. I need to go onto my laptop because that makes a difference…I have a built in web cam. I also had to Google music I could use because you cannot break copyright laws and even if you own the music and purchased the CD , you cannot just use it. It also means you have to have access to a free photo or image stock. All these things will need to be sorted out for educators and I guess they will be in time. So then I went onto You Tube to see if there were any tutorials for Producer. I found this very detailed and interesting one by Javier and Laura. It’s in Spanish, though. My Spanish is pretty rusty!! Nevertheless, with my rusty Spanish, their good presentation skills and my knowledge , albeit new, of Producer, I actually learned a thing or two and it cemented a few things in my head. It reminded me that as a teacher I might just as well be speaking Spanish to my students when they only half get what I am talking about!!

TweetDeck

I have just downloaded and am using TweetDeck. Took all of 3 minutes…5 mins tops. It is an app which runs Twitter from the desk top and it is as cruisy as. There is more to it than that and I shall investigate as I get around to it. One thing I have learned with e-learning is to just jump on the bus and get going. Sitting back thinking about it is not a helpful approach. TweetDeck also runs from phones and the new iPad. The beauty of it is that it is designed to run from all OSs. Now that is a top of the range app which realises we all have our own way of connecting and we have a right to. It’s about individuality! The layout on TweetDeck is more helpful than Twitter itself and it still automatically updates to my blog. If you want to investigate Twitter more, I can highly recommend this site by internet psychologist Graham Jones. He covers a range of uses for Twitter and how you really can get the best out of it. People reject it because they simply don’t understand the possibilities. Graham Jones does.

E-learning wishlist

1. a bank of images I can freely access.
2. a bank of music I can freely access.
3. a blog style site like this one with a main page for me and my things. The site needs to then have separate pages for each class I take so I can build a lesson and be able to put in video clips, links,tweets, docs, keynote, ,ppt, upload pdfs,Producer packages ; learning essential packages. It needs an interactive part for students to send queries and comments.
4. updates on what is new in e-learning
5. apps which are cross platform
6. reliable and constant internet access at school
7. time to be able to produce good quality e-learning material
8. decent storage and filing system for materials
9. drag and drop composition of pages or very easy site management
10. local inservicing on new and exciting and the time to take it onboard.

Mock up – e-learning desk top

This is my current idea (click on picture to enlarge) of how I can see a big classroom computer screen being set up for maximum potential in e-learning. The areas would be boxes. This way the teacher and student become used to a format for learning…videos top left, slides top right. There is a bit of info and picture of teacher and then the school logo. The live feeds would be teacher chosen and the side bar could be made of widgets. It would be really great to have images there too. Then, the centre part of the board is for the teacher talk and explanations and the bottom are tabs to each class the teacher takes. As we have standard format text books then I think it would be useful to have standard format e-learning screens which could be customised by widgets…the joy of your own desktop!!

Meet Charlotte

Everything Twitter courtesy Squidoo

Squidoo is a great site for staying up to date with all things technical, so it is absolutely mindbogglingly comprehensive when it comes to Twitter. For those of you who think Twitter does nothing…the amount of apps you can find on Squidoo ought to give you an inkling as to how ubiquitous twitter is and just how entrenched in the internet. Apps do not get that kind of attention when they are fizzers. I am using TweetDeck and am finding it very helpful and can see the real possibilities for classroom and educational use. Email is such a chore and so passée. Twitter streamlines communications so you are not needing to text nor to you have to load an email client when much of what needs to be said or communicated in a working situation really is less than 141 characters. Besides TweetDeck the other popular Twitter app is HootSuite. The site is very well designed and extremely helpful. If you play the video you will be told very clearly how HootSuite works and how it can be useful to you. I applaud them on their capacity to deliver good quality, instructive material which answers the questions…so why would I want HootSuite and what does it do? Having seen the video I have decided to stay with TweetDeck until I can grow into HootSuite because I really like what I saw but I am not yet ready for it.

Digital Chalkie

Digital Chalkie is an interactive site for teachers and educators which focuses on e-learning. There is plenty of material to consider and ponder and it is a site worth keeping in touch with or belonging to so that you keep up to date with the e-learning trends from an Australian perspective. It’s more than that , though – take a look!

le studio démo

le studio démo.

Orange phone company is really on the ball in Paris. They have put up domes to show people how to use the new phones. Judging by the videos ( in French) it has caused interest and fun. The videos from the link give you an idea of how people have reacted but just how good the Orange company in France is at getting people involved in e-learning. They have even thought of nice little touches like a massage, bottles of water , having your nails and shoes done. A comprehensive attempt to engage their public. Maybe some people don’t need help with their fancy phones but I bet most people are not aware of the full functionality of their phone nor if it really is the right one for them. This kind of effort by a company to bring people back into the picture through technology and sound communication skills is great. Some people just get a gadget and can run with it. Others need some support but until now the attitude has been …here’s your gadget now go and work it out. Orange is using technology to invite its customers and potential customers to feel at ease with their products. The internet site even facilitated my posting this. Now that is service!…and technology.

Sharing Healthy Ideas

I like the site Sharing Healthy Ideas. Firstly it runs on the successful notion of bringing the top 5 healthy ideas to your attention. The screen is clear and uncluttered and has you focussed. When you click on one of those links it takes you to a page with images and further text information so you can explore that idea. If you like it you can share it on Twitter or Facebook and get the information around. At the bottom of the start page are lots of links related to the top 5 healthy ideas and those links are categorised into their media sites. It’s a really good lesson in how to deliver information and how to easily engage your public.

Top 10 advantages of e-learning

E-learning has some real strengths. I haven’t found any disadvantages yet other than it might be cheaper and thereby replace real teachers and instructors, but then again it might just increase the flexibility of those involved in education as deliverers, facilitators and consumers. People being with people in real-time is vital to wellbeing and growth. However, I do not think we have yet explored all the possibilities. As it stands I can see these advantages very clearly:

1. You could create a virtual classroom along the SIMs lines where everyone is an online identity.
2. You can deliver learning packages to the desktop and make good use of the money spent on technology and enable people to learn skills for themselves.
3. Any room or spot can be a classroom..on the train, as a passenger in a car…it’s amazing.
4. Distance education will be a thing of the past because we shall all be connected and that will make those people feel like they belong.
5.You can go to webinars which then makes those big conferences more accessible to people.
6. It is any time, anywhere learning and so you can work with your lifestyle and your body clock.
7. Simulators can be used for high risk, complex, high level skills learning.
8. It can deliver a lot of information very quickly and easily.
9. Computers do not get cross or exasperated when you don’t know.
10. You can learn at your own pace.

eLearning Sites

eLearning Sites is a portal for all sorts of sites to help you integrate online materials into your life and lessons. They are categorised so you don’t have to trawl through lists. They cover learning languages but there are other subject areas and then videos, podcasts and other multimedia resources. Worth a look.

Beyond Bullet Points

Beyond Bullet Points is a website and a book. I bought the book recently and was impressed with amount of common sense and helpfulness in the book . Cliff Atkinson explains his ideas really well and even though it is not a book to cart around because it is quite heavy, it is not very difficult to pick up the book and consider what is being explained and demonstrated. His storyboard concept for PowerPoint is very valid and means you then start thinking about structuring your ideas and remembering there is an audience out there for your PowerPoint presentations. The book is detailed and comes with a CD of helpful files and then an electronic version of the book which you can cart around! The BBP blog which is linked above does even more to help guide you through to creating good presentations and being enthusiastic about hem. They are not a chore. They become a creative exercise and that is much more satisfying. The one thing you learn about Cliff Atkinson is he knows a lot but he is generous in sharing his ideas so his blog has plenty of good information and some useful downloads.

Teach with Twitter

Sonja Coles Tech and Learning site is a very useful place to visit to see how to integrate technology into learning but the link provided here will take you to her information about Twitter and how you can make the most of it to maximise your capacity to get ideas for teaching. Essentially she is looking at Twitter to help you organise your ideas and share them. In a time poor job it is a very effective way of streamlining information and getting colleagues to share their knowledge. As she goes through the tips you learn about the functionality and protocol of Twitter, so the whole post is very informative.

Image sizes

To make slide shows on WordPress or to upload an image to a blog or website, a reasonable size for the image is 600 pixels wide by 400 pixels high. Then tends to work every time. Bigger can create problems at times with the uploads. For the side bar 130 x 98 is a good general size and you can widen it from there. A tall image can be 130 x 220.

Lesson Plan for e-learning 2

I have previously offered a lesson plan for a language oriented lesson here but have come up with a plan of attack for a generic e-lesson. Eventually this will all be second nature to us but as we transition we need to keep the basics in mind:

1. Ask questions to demonstrate that students do have knowledge gaps…Do you know how to ask for a cup of coffee? Can you tell me what you did yesterday? As you do this use the language and knowledge they have but show them by asking questions that they could fill in some gaps.
2. Tell the students quickly what they are going to learn in the lesson.
3. Show them and teach them how to do this with videos; sound files; YouTube; learning objects; PowerPoint Or Keynote presentations or direct them to sites where they can learn for themselves. This is the part you need to gather your e-tools together.
4. Use more e-tools to contextualise the information they have learned so they can see it as an integrated whole now. This might be more videos;websites; sound files or presentations so they have the new information in context.
5. Their own practice. Set them a task or find a site which will practise the skills they have learned or develop a set of slides which will test their new knowledge…they quite like sounds and music in this bit as they are thinking so feel free to experiment with sound effects and music snippets.
6. Not every lesson but once in a while get them to give you oral or written feedback on what they have just learned. You’ll find it encourages them and you.

iLearn technology

The iLearn Technology site is a great source of information for Apple iLearn. In true e-learning style it supplies tutorials and shows you examples of e-zines. It is a very encouraging site . Check all the tabs along the top and some of you will be pleased to find some tips for the Promethean Boards. Another site demonstrating the value of Twitter!

Rapid E-Learning

Rapid e-learning is a term you need to get to know if you are an e-teacher! Rapid e-learning is about using the tools to get your e learning into place very quickly. Basically they are apps which you can get up and running quickly and things which your students will adapt to quickly. The short term quick reward approach. Barry Sampson has some free e-learning tools to get you going if you are a Mac user. If you are familiar with some of them then you are well on the way. Tom Kuhlman has some free e-learning tools if you are a Windows user. Richard St John shows you here how you can teach effectively in 3 minutes…that’s the key… and start being a workafrolic! (He can take the credit for that joke.)

Nihongo Up

This e-learning programme for Japanese has had some good reviews around the traps but past that point I can only say download the demo and try it out for yourself. The advantage I can see with this is that it is cross platform software and gadget so you can use it on any computer and on your iPhone! E-learning software needs to be cross platform so everyone is advantaged and included and of course, mobile apps increase the anytime anywhere potential.

Tech Talk Podcasts

The New York Times offers tech podcasts to keep you up to date with currents trends and discoveries. The latest podcast discusses using mobile phones to test eyes and then create the prescription for glasses. As someone who has to go to an optometrist on a regular basis, I cannot believe my luck! If my mobile could do all the scanning and checking I’d be so happy because it would save me time and energy. The fact this technology now exists is exciting. We are really making some great uses of technology now. The podcasts cover those sorts of research ideas but also topics of internet safety and protection. Follow the link form this page to the Tech Talk page as well because that particular page comes up with interesting discussions and ideas which do have classroom application and implication.

Ustream.tv

Like everything else these days the trend is towards instant connections across the planet. It helped resolve the crisis with the air space control with the volcano in Iceland and it can help you in your classroom. Ustream.tv broadcasts live video of events. It means you can watch creatures hatching; sports events, see live interviews. Like YouTube you have to check the content for yourself. As yet I have found nothing untoward. It’s all fascinating and because it is live you can see how many people are watching the streams and which ones are popular. In that sense you build up an information knowledge base of what people on the planet are curious about. it can add yo your own educational knowledge but it doesn’t yet have an education tab and I think there is potential there for teachers to share good practice or events they run. Seeing someone do something is a good way to learn…much easier than reading about it.

Splash Up

Splash Up is a fully featured, real time, online image editing tool which you can use any time , anywhere. That is how the world is currently changing. Everything is in the clouds and available online and so there will simply be a need for net access. There will probably come a day where we access all our software online. In the meantime tools like Splash Up are really handy when you do not have access to your own photo editing tools for whatever reason. You can add your images from there to Picasa or Flickr so that you always have access to your own images too. It means students can edit and access their own photos in class and don’t have to keep saying : Oh, they are on my computer at home!.”

You Tube Tab on PowerPoint Toolbar

The instructions to embed videos in PowerPoint are here and here but you might like to have a YouTube tab on your PowerPoint toolbar so that you can just insert the URL of the clip and away you go. Took me a couple of minutes. So easy! The new tab comes up under the INSERT menu. To get the instructions and downloads for the YouTube add in you go to this page and follow the instructions. They are well written and easy to follow. If you go the the home page of the site you’ll fins Shyam Pillai has a number of commercial and free wizards, add ins and applications. A wealth of useful help here. He caters to new learners as well so he has a commitment to anyone learning more than they already know.

Deal with e-learning blocks

This is the first slide show I have loaded up onto Slideshare. I am following my own advice of just jumping in there and taking the risks. This slide show is going really well. The French ones are dribbling along!

Dashboard widgets -Apple

Dashboard widgets are in the library folder of your hard drive or the library folder of your Home folder. You can move them but they won’t work in your widget bar if you do. You get your widget bar by pressing down on the scroll button of your mouse. On the MacBook you can hold down the function (fn -bottom left) key and then press F12. The widget bar pops up and you click on the desktop to make it disappear. Download widgets from Apple or another good place is DashboardWidgets. There is something for everyone! Safari has a scissors toolbar button to open any web page in Dashboard. Customise the toolbar if you can’t see it. It will take any section of a page and effectively create a new widget for you. Power! You slide it over the spot and follow the instructions. I have made a widget of my email login…much quicker than going to the page!

E-learning Wishlist 2

This is what my brain looked like when I was gathering thoughts on my e-learning wishlist. Here is the post about my wishlist in a much more sensible form! So I need to review and update it and I am really happy because I have achieved a lot of these things. I can easily and freely access banks of images now but I still haven’t found a good source of music files I can freely use. The music industry is very particular about what is used where and given it’s their income, rightly so. Music makes such a difference though when you are presenting material. Students really respond to it. By creating my locally published websites which I have written about in the posts iWeb for best PIM and Improved Organisation with Web Pages I have solved the problem of rallying my resources and materials in one spot. Unresolved from that is easy electronic interaction with students. I have located a number of cross platform applications and they seem to be popping up more often. The reliability of internet access is not in my hands but in very capable hands. I still have concerns about how much time it takes to prepare and organise e-learning materials. There is an assumption that computers make it better, but not until you have mustered and mastered resources. I have worked out the best storage and filing system is a portable drive and when they get their cloud act together, and that is not too far off, that will help considerably. I am also happy with the amount of resources I can locate to help me and help others. I think globally we are working better together to produce decent pathways through the e-learning adventure. I have found Twitter invaluable in being able to keep up to date with new trends and ideas so the Web 2.0 approach is ensuring we can support and inform each other.

So my second wishlist looks like this and is half the size! Self directed, independent learning works!

1. a bank of music I can freely access.
2. easy electronic interaction with students
3. allocated time to be able to locate and produce good quality e-learning material
4. drag and drop composition of pages for very easy website management
5. Bona fide, verified and child safe guaranteed online learning sites where others interact live with students. I currently have no way of guaranteeing and ensuring these sites are safe.

The White MacBook

You can almost see the fan site on Facebook –I love the White MacBook or I’ve gotta White MacBook. We are teaching students who’ll be saying “When I was young we had fan sites”. There’s a group for it now on Facebook. The White MacBook site is a bit more than a fan site or a fan club. It has the trappings of the devoted MG owners group or the EH Holden group. The people who run this site love their white MacBooks and it is the THING. The site offers lots of photos, tips, tutorials and even though some of the help is quirky, it is nevertheless help and there is some good help and plenty of ideas to become more at home with your MacBook. So who gotta white MacBook?

YacaPaca

YacaPaca is a site with resources for teachers and students listed in their subject areas. You can register with the site to derive the full benefit of it. It runs in several languages and has resources from several countries. Australia is not yet represented so maybe we need to get onto it! It is a sign of things to come. In order to manage our e-learning and changing workplace conditions and requirements then we need to become more used to online collaboration of one sort or another. Cloud computing and technology are taking us that way but in no way does it mean we lose contact locally and this site demonstrates it well. There are helpful approaches to e-learning here as well.

Microsoft pptPlex for PowerPoint

Well, if it’s good enough for Bill Gates, it’s good enough for me. If you watch the four and a half minute video of Bill Gates demonstrating the Touch Wall technology you will have a good idea of where pptPlex can take you. Mind you, I wouldn’t be turning my back on the students like that, but I have found the mouse and keyboard have excellent zoom capabilities and it frees you up immensely if you use them. I guess a laser pointer would work too but I don’t know for sure. In my opinion it is a perfect tool for teaching because you can zoom in on particular areas of your presentation. You can zoom out again so that you keep your students in the picture all the time. I installed it free from the Microsoft Labs site and the little videos on this site are helpful in explaining some things to get you going. pptPlex installs in the ribbon at the top of PowerPoint 2007. They are making a version for Office 2010 and that pleases me enormously because they said the project had finished. Can’t think why because the capacity to develop and utilise pptPlex in education is unlimited, really. PowerPoint and KeyNote can be good teaching tools but you have to get good at slide presentations. It doesn’t mean complicated but it does mean you have to be able to change the look and process. Although, a text book has always been a text book. Slide shows, in many ways, could be the e-learning text book. You can make them as simple or as sophisticated as you like as SlideShare.net demonstrates so well.

pptPlex canvas

I have made more than one pptPlex file and it was obvious to me as I was working on the files that it was a really good way of organising my thoughts. When you use slide software you often don’t think it out in an exacting manner because there is no obvious way to do that. With the canvas and the dividers you get the headings for the slide sequences and then you look at the logical presentation of material. You can also prioritise the material. pptPlex doesn’t have the capability to put in hyperlinks and animations. The animations are probably wisely left out as they tend to get over used, but hyperlinks in 2010? You have to be kidding me. I haven’t been able to get a video to work. I can in PowerPoint, and I can put the box in the slide and it looks like it will work…but it hasn’t yet. I’ll get to the bottom of it. I was really disappointed to find out I can’t use pptPlex with my Apple Office 2008. I have been on various Mac sites and Mac Office sites and Microsoft Office Mac support, but no, there is no Mac Office version. Tragic. I have emailed people who might be able to help and I do so hope Microsoft will resurrect its pptPlex team because this is a fantastic programme and we need it to work with all versions of Office. There are so many good reviews on the Net about pptPlex and we have the whiteboards… just show us the software!!

Toondoo.com

This is a comics based social network for students who like to cartoon. The episode linked here happens to be French but click on the Toondoo logo top left of the site page and go to the home page. There is a paying part of the site as there is with many sites these days but students who want to practice their art, literacy and interactive skills will probably enjoy this site immensely.

Criminal Minds Episode 148

Is it a good site?

If you are on Twitter or other live feed you get a lot of information and recommendations if you participate in the right channels. As a teacher this the the best thing for me about Twitter. It keeps me totally up to date with what is going on and what I want to know. I contribute, others contribute and suddenly you have a whole batch of usable knowledge at your fingertips with little effort on your part. Every so often I come across a site and I am thinking – Looks good, I could use that….not sure. Hm, really not sure. So what do you do when you are an educator and you are not certain whether a site will actually promote e-learning or be a big flop? Online learning has to work or you get a massive drag in the classroom which you have to work hard to repair. Wallwisher is one of these sites. If it looks really good. It looks like the sort of thing which could take off like a rocket if all the students have a computer/laptop. If it is a good site, it’s one I am thinking I could use to set a fun homework exercise to practise their French. I’m not sure. So when I am not sure, this is what I do:

1. Bookmark the site and watch it over a couple of weeks to see what happens.
2. Go to the forum or blog for the site and read the updates and information which are posted.
3. Put the site up on the whiteboard and ask a trusted class what they think and what they can see as negatives and positives.
4. Sometimes I join the site and participate to get a feel for it but I am tiring of so many logins, registrations and passwords. Sick of it.
5. Blog or tweet about it to see what comes back.

Online Whiteboard

Dabbleboard is for someone like me who can’t produce clean drawings for charts or mind maps when I am creating ideas or action plans. I can’t use a mouse or a tablet for drawing because I can’t draw! Dabbleboard cleans up the drawing you do and then it has the option to work with others or to go public and get good images from other users. The application is free and online so it is always there with your ideas. Someone who can draw would get the complexity out of Dabbleboard. It would also be an easy way of getting students to get their ideas down and saved. The three and a half minute video is very informative and shows you exactly what Dabbleboard can do for you.

Top posts

I haven’t done a post round -up on this blog before , but all that talk about SEO and web speed and optimising my blog made me think it was about time I should look at the last quarter where I have been really focussed on e-learning and online education opportunites and developments. So, my top 5 posts are:

1.Me-TV – Ubuntu 10.04 – by a long shot.
2.Microsoft pptPlex for PowerPoint
3.You Tube Tab on PowerPoint Toolbar
4.Twitter Clients for Ubuntu
5.eLearning Sites

All of this is fascinating. I have blogged about things I don’t know and have wanted to learn, I have blogged about things I thought would be good in a classroom and I have blogged my heart out about e-learning and online options. It’s not until you get to my 5th most popular post – and it is popular – that we have interest in education as such. The SEO information keeps telling me “education” ranks poorly on search engines. Shame on us. Education is considered to be a linkbait word of lowly standing. Shame on us. Education doesn’t even pop up in the next 5 most popular posts! So what have I learnt:

1. Content is king.
2. Doesn’t matter how I write the post just give out the information people want. Content is king.
3. Post length is irrelevant.Content is king.
4. Like me, people want to know how to do things. Content is king.
5. We need to value education more.

Now, mental note. Do this again in October. Set reminder. Done!

Use PowerPoint Efficiently

One of the things I use all the time in PowerPoint is the slide sorter view. Go to view and then select slide sorter. You can go back to normal view by choosing normal to the left of slide sorter. This view allows you to see every slide in one hit. For me it has two good uses. When I am preparing a presentation it quickly shows up if a slide isn’t quite right or if I have chosen the wrong materials and layout for a slide. It will show me if I have put text or pictures in the wrong place. Secondly, if I am running a presentation I print a copy of the slide sorter view which then might be put to different uses. I can use it as a memory jogger. I don’t present unless I know the material but even so, I like to build in my fail safes. Secondly I can consult this view if I am asked about individual slides. When I am ready to go with a presentation I will often start in slide sorter mode just to give me a quick overview. Whether I start in slide sorter or normal view I then do the following things:

Press F5 to put the PowerPoint presentation into full screen mode.

I advance the slides with mouse, touchpad, pointer or keyboard as usual

I sometimes use Ctrl P to change the mouse to a pen. I can then write on the slides if I need to and discard the writing on that presentation by not saving changes.

If I want to review a particular slide or someone asks me about a particular slide I have my slide sorter view to consult and then I press the number of the slide and press enter. It doesn’t matter if you use the numeric pad or the querty numbers.

Esc, as you know, will bring you out of the presentation.

PowerPoint Viewer 2010

Don’t know about you but I haven’t installed Office 2010 yet. I have been receiving PowerPoint shows made in 2010 and needed to get a viewer because it is quite a different experience from other versions of PowerPoint. It has actually made me think I might find out more about Office 2010 to see if I like it enough to change over. I certainly like PowerPoint 2010. Now, if you have been caught short like me , here is the link to the Microsoft downloads for the 2010 PowerPoint viewer.

Change Photos to Video

Foto2avi is a free downloadable programme which converts photos to video pretty easily. There is the free version and then a better premium version and you can download either of them here. At this stage I am not that good with video and have had some success so I guess I’ll keep practising . For now the free version will do me. Please ensure you read the instructions about photo size. You need to reduce them. That was the only error I made. The rest was easy. I selected the photos and transition effects, selected the music and pressed generate. I thought I was pretty clever after that! You can read more about Foto2avi here and it’s worth exploring the site because there are some very useful programmes on it.

PowerPoint Presentations with Music

Don’t know about you, but I have been a bit hit and miss at getting sound to embed in my PowerPoint presentations. Sometimes it’s nice to have music run with the show! Usually it will run on my computer because I have linked it when I thought I had embedded it , or it will run and jam or it won’t run on another computer. Yesterday I nailed it.

1. Put everything in one folder – your music MP3, your photos, your PowerPoint presentation.
2. Download CDex from here: CDex
3. Open the program, go to the convert tab, click and select Add a RIFF-WAVE Header to MP2 or MP3 file.
4. Click on the dots to browse , select your file and convert. It happens so quickly you might think, like me, that it isn’t done.
5. Save the new file to your presentation folder.
6. Go to the sound icon in your PowerPoint ribbon and add the wav file which you now have. make sure you are on the first slide.
7. Go to animations and select start automatically and work out your slide transition and times. I put 5 seconds. I picked slow and the transition sound is No Sound.
8. You should now have a sound icon on your first slide.
9. Double click on the sound icon and you should get the sound options on the ribbon now.
10. Select Play across all slides for your sound option and 5000 for your file size.
11. Save your presentation.
12. Email it to your friends because you are so clever!

Short Video Clips

Babelgum is a site you can use to find short video clips to make a point or liven up a lesson. The search box brings back some good results. There is a wide variety of clips all of about 5 minutes or less and some are very good quality but most of them are good. If nothing else they would prompt ideas for making videos or discussing topics. I blogged about another short video site here. Short videos lend themselves very readily to incorporation in a lesson and depending on the content, they can be the springboard for content, the content around which you will work, or just a different look at what you have already been doing. Chunking, as you know, is a good way to teach.

Why don’t teachers use technology?

Public Domain Music

Public Domain 4U is a good site to get free music downloads in the public domain so that you can use them without fear of breaking any rules. There is some great blues and there is a reasonable selection for other types of music. The other place to go is archive.org which offers an incredibly wide range of materials , including music , to help provide sound and audio stimulus to your lessons. The music section is improving all the time. Until now I hadn’t found it that easy to work with.

PowerPoint Magic – Seth Godin

Seth Godin always cuts to the chase and is great at identifying the things which slow us down, hold us up and numb our brains. We have all heard of death by PowerPoint , but that is not the fault of PowerPoint, it’s the presenter. You only have to go to SlideShare to see there are some great presentations out there which really have an impact. Seth Godin’s PowerPoint Magic is about refocusing and getting it right. If you are going to present a slide show then it needs to go smoothly and it needs to be something which will hold the attention of the audience so they won’t want to be elsewhere either physically or mentally. He gives some good tips and has just reminded me I need to go out and get a remote for presentations. Anyone who uses them is far more engaging and in control than someone who is running back to the laptop or hunting for keys.

Online DIY

Instructables is a site which is similar to Make:Online, but it is not he same. It has a different feel about it. Not better , not worse, but a different look at DIY online. There are some fascinating projects, like the LED shoes and there is an opportunity to ask questions. It is people who have made things showing you in video form how to do them yourself. Video is the best format for teaching this kind of thing because instructions can be confusing . This way you can actually see what to do.

Apple Keynote presentation tricks

15 interesting facts about the Internet

We all seem to have a fascination with facts at the moment and a lot of it seems to centre on social media and internet usage. We are probably aware that change really is going on at the moment and so in our own way we are trying to track it. As people who like technology and the internet then we like to keep up with facts. As teachers we like to use facts and information to create perspective and to get students to understand that all this information means something. So, if you need some facts on the internet, these ones are a bit different and they are the sorts of things which would be meaningful to students and would get some good discussions going.

Apple KeyNote Presentations

There is not nearly as much help around for Apple KeyNote compared with the amount of support and ideas for PowerPoint. The Apple site , though, tells you exactly how to create a KeyNote presentation and does it with beautiful looking tutorials. There is also an explanation of the features of KeyNote and one of them is you can change your iPod Touch or your iPhone into a Keynote remote presentation tool. That is pretty handy! I just happen to have a MacBook, an iPod Touch and an iTunes account in credit….

Mashable

I thought Mashable was a pretty well known site but I realised today there are plenty of people who don’t know it’s there for us. It is there for the readers. It brings very up to date tech and social media information. It looks at trends and topics of interest. It covers mobile interests and entertainment. If you investigate each tab you will find a lot of things which will interest you and your students. It covers current technical interests and is just a really good site to visit to keep up to date on the tech news. It is very content focussed but the information is presented in a very positive, inviting manner.

Use iPad as second screen

There are two applications from the iTunes store which will enable you to use your iPad as a slave or second screen to your laptop, MaxiVista and AirDisplay This has good implications for graphics and video users but it can also mean you can extend your laptop screen to accommodate other things like chat, tools and email . The AirDisplay site gives you some good ideas. Both of the sites have customer reviews. At this stage the iPad loses its touch capabilities because it is annexed to the PC or laptop. There will probably be a work around in time because the touch function is popular.

Twiducate

Twiducate is a free social networking site for students and teachers which remains in the control of teachers. It’s private. It means you can safely introduce students to the Twitter like social medium without fear of unwelcome interlopers. It’s Canadian and Canadian teachers are currently the biggest users. I had been looking at it for a while as I do when I wonder if this is a good thing to use in class. You cannot just march in and do things in a classroom. You have to think. I have decided to try it with one of my classes because I believed they, if anyone, would approach it in the right spirit and then we’d trial it for one term. I explained all of this to my class on Monday and Wednesday I enrolled them all in our Twiducate class and by Wednesday night I had avatars up and French tweets and the students were so positive and excited. All I did was give them their password! This thing ran itself. Twiducate motivated them to write French by themselves and to just be there. In two weeks they get their laptops into class and the plan is for us to use it in class. I am thinking it will help them help each other and it will help me help them. I also believe it will be highly motivating and so far it has more than exceeded expectation. I am excited!

iWebKit

As usual, I was looking for something completely different – a free pdf to swf converter as a matter of fact. I didn’t find a pdf to swf converter – one wouldn’t load, one water marked the final product badly and the other was an online converter from a URL, but I did find iWebKit and it cheered me up enormously. It’s a free kit to make applications for iPod Touch and iPhone. I looked in the gallery section and liked what I saw so I have bookmarked this site. I am thinking, when I have time, I shall have a go at making some French applications for my students.This may or may not work but I shall try! I am also going to show it to my students in Term 4 (October) so that it could be something I’ll offer as a homework option for those students who want to have a try. By then I shall have had a chance to think of what the other options might be because not all students will want to do this. I have one class in mind where half of my students adapt very easily and readily to new things and they will be used to their new laptops by then. I believe as a French teacher I am not just teaching them French. I need to be teaching them things to help them succeed in their world. My other thought is that mobile phones in class can be a real pain so I am currently looking at doing a makeover of the mobile in class approach and finding things which will teach students to use them responsibly.iWebKit is the very thing!

701 e-learning tips

That is a pretty impressive number of tips! Go here and you can download the .pdf with all the tips. Some of them are about practising safe e-learning, some are about keeping it in perspective, some are about getting yourself going if you feel a bit insecure. Technology is not going to go away but teachers like to be in control and they should be. This ensure safe and solid curriculum delivery. The tips have been collated and categorised by the Masie Center and are now offered as a resource. Quite a feat and really helpful.

Digital Citizens

We are all learning how to use web 2.0 more effectively but part of what we have to do as teachers is teach students how to use technology effectively and responsibly. There isn’t as yet an agreed way of teaching digital citizenship. So many of us are now Netizens and it is to our credit the internet runs so amicably. I happened to post this question on Twitter last week:

Should students create an online profile with slides & videos to promote themselves. Is this a must? I think so. Why the resistance?

Schools are in a difficult position because we have to protect students as we teach them with online materials and yet we all have a real life profile or CV and we are at the stage where an online one would be valuable. Who is responsible for that? I got a lot of responses. I was staggered by the amount of responses I got. Teachers think we need to take some responsibility for digital citizenship but then it comes down to where the buck stops and who teaches it. We can complain about students using technology badly or in a negative way, but we need to look at what we can do to promote good practice and responsible use. I mentioned in my last post I was trying to find ways of students using mobile phones in a good way to promote and facilitate education and yet people would know me as the one who is very hot on not allowing students to use mobiles in class. These things are not going to go away. So another thing was considering whether it would be good for students to develop an online profile. I am doing that in French with one of my classes. I am also using Twiducate with a class to try and help them use social networks better and in an educational way. We need to get the ideas coming and find out where to obtain a digital passport.

Mac Photography

Mac Photography Tips is a site for everyone who is using a Mac. It doesn’t matter whether you are trying to work out how to get the best out of your Mac or whether you are good a photography and want to get better or if you are migrating from Windows to Mac, you will find something on this site to help you. It has some good lessons for beginners but the beauty of this site is that it gives you instructions with pictures. You can see what you need to click and change. It is very methodical and the writer of this site is enthusiastic and has a cheerful approach to photography. The icing on the cake are the iPhone and iPad tips which are appearing now.

Turn URLs into Dock icons

Fluid turns internet sites into desktop applications on a Mac, so then you can park them in the Dock. It means you have your Dock filled with the things you use and a lot of what I use on a regular basis are specific websites. It is as easy as in the picture on the home page of the website. I had Fluid installed and my first website icon in my Dock in 2 minutes. The application is free…so no excuses for not playing with it. In the classroom you would be able to get students to have the frequently used sites stored on their MacBooks and then they could get into the habit of shifting them into their dock for the lesson.

Facebook

These demographics may not necessarily be accurate but they are interesting. People do not always give their age or their correct age on Facebook and then they may have an account which they are not actually using. It would be interesting to see what is occurring in terms of active Facebook use because it has changed considerably in these last two years and is less social and more games oriented.It still remains a very good way to be in contact with others.Australia rates number 15 which is not bad given our small population and we are very Facebook dedicated.Recently there have been quite a lot of people going through their friends list to get rid of people they dont’ really know and that, in itself, says Facebook is coming of age and that people what some real value out of it.The changes have brought out some real humour and that coupled with some daft Facebook changes has made it quite funny at times. We all seem to be playing our favourite games and are linking up with our friends there.Whether Facebook really is for younger people is something which will remain unknown if real ages are not on there. The cult of youth runs through our society and yet it seems to be older people who are working out some of the real power of social networking because they have more time to explore options and then more experience in social behaviour. We are getting a better representation of age groups and so more depth and diversity. While this is all happening people are weighing up the pros and cons of using Facebook for business and then what sort of business. There are companies and artists who have formed very successful groups but the jury is out as to whether this will translate into financial success. Money. There are other things. Having a lot of followers tends to suggest you have created something worthwhile but that is not enough these days. In any case, Facebook is the third largest country in the world, uploads 3 billion photos each month, speaks 70 languages and is the second most popular site in the world after Google. It is a very strong international community and it has done all of that in 6 years. Crowd power is stupendous!

USB Typewriters

Everything old is new again. Retro is the ultimate! Quite why you’d be converting an old typewriter into a USB dock for your iPad or anything else is beyond me, but the fact that this can be done is amazing. It is a project form Hive 76 in Philadelphia and if you go to the USB Typewriter site you will see just how dedicated these people are and the complex level to which they are working. It is built on open source and so it is a collaborative project. You can buy a typewriter and convert it with a kit or you can get one ready to go. It could actually get some really old people into computers because some of them would have had excellent typing skills, but then again, some people really are attracted to things form the past. Typewriters are pretty solid and heavy and it is a great way to recycle. It’s the inspiration which appeals to me and the fact that this is such an open and welcoming site. Bit of geek chic I think.

Applications for young children

Moms with Apps is a very comprehensive site which describes and reviews suitable applications for young children . There are some very well credentialled women creating these applications and reviewing them. My personal favourite is MathGirl Number Garden and that says something because maths and I have never been friends. As a parent I used computer maths based games at home to get an appreciation of maths and maths thinking going. It worked. I didn’t have access to a site like this , though, and it would have been great as a parent to get more information about children’s applications.

First Laptop Lessons

It’s worth recording my first experiences with two classes and their new Apple macBooks in class. I have eagerly awaited this day. The students arrived with MacBooks in very sturdy , tight fitting cases. They were enormously proud. I put that down to the excellent preparation they had had with evenings with their parents, home group teachers and technical support when they first received their laptops. The induction evenings had set a very good tone. With my first class we couldn’t access Twiducate which I had signed them up to 2 weeks ago and which we have been running from home. I have blogged about it here. I am more than happy with its progress. Then we couldn’t download the French Dictionary widgets. The sites were blocked. Twiducate will be resolved shortly. So what I had said with e-learning lessons – you have to be prepared. You have to know how the lesson will go -EXACTLY – and you need your whiteboard marker to fall back on! Two lots of double lessons went really well. We got our verb conjugators in place, our Paris site, our pdfs loaded, our presentations worked out and knew where to get our dictionary widget. They were very productive lessons and the trouble shooting went well when we needed it. We changed our computers to French and the students picked up quickly on the operating system language. I am looking forward to the next lessons! It was made easier because I ran my MacBook through the Promethean board in my room. I could easily show students what to do and when they were stuck I could do it on my computer and they could see. We not only did a lot of French, we did a lot of technology too and the students were so happy. One of the boys said that they were probably having more fun than the teacher because I was repeating myself, but it was good. I could see they were all highly motivated.

Customising Mac Finder

I wrote about FluidApp and how that can be used to turn any web site into a Dock icon which helps to streamline your Mac Desktop. The other thing you need to do is customise Finder because it is actually very handy and will help you to locate what you need. If you make Dock apps from frequently used websites and then store other items in Finder it is much easier to go about your tasks. A lot of people migrating from Windows or swapping from Windows to Mac on a regular basis get to the Apple desktop and then cannot find things. That is what Finder is for. This post explains it in detail, with pictures, and extremely well. You understand why you should be making the changes and what benefit they are to you and then you can see how to make the changes.

Archive.org

Where else can you listen to and/or download Yehudi Menuhin playing with the Paris Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pierre Monteux? It’s a superb reproduction of an old 78 and it speaks well of our technology that this beautiful piece is not lost to the world. Archive.org is something I have blogged about before because there is a lot of public domain music. There is a wide variety of folk, jazz, classical . There is international music and even people like The Grateful Dead. Archive.org also houses podcasts, audiobooks and texts .It covers a wide variety of areas and just keeps improving. I have located materials for French there in the non-English audio section. Bit of an unfortunate name for the section, but it’s a goldmine.

Story Boarding for e-learning

the e-Learning Coach is a good site to know because it has some very down to earth, practical help and approaches for e-learning lessons. I was searching for story boarding ideas because if I and my students are actually going to use laptops for instruction rather than just task completion or web surfing, then we need to change our approach and start thinking multimedia, visual…text, sound, images. There are plenty of story boarding ideas for advertisers and film makers and I may well blog about some of those cool tools, but today I just want to look at the teacher and their students in any classroom. What I found eventually were these tools on the e-learning Coach site so that you have a variety of tolls to adapt for text documents, slide presentations and even whole courses. They prompt you to think about the elements you need to consider and you do need to start forming new habits and encouraging the students to think that way too. The other belief I have which is something I am currently testing is that students will think and plan better if they are given visual planning tools where they can paste images, text, link in sounds. My belief is their work will take on a whole new dimension they are comfortable with.

EverNote for Everything!

Every so often you come across an application which you find so useful it just becomes a part of your life. EverNote is one of those really handy applications which will keep you organised, but it is not a PIM nor a diary. you can organise to to help support your daily routine but you can do more than that. It will organise study notes, pictures, webshots, web scraps. You can cut and paste what you need to remember as you build information on a topic, but you can write notes and organise them to pay bills, remember dental appts. Once you sign up there is a lot of support and great tools to get you going with projects. You can run it like a word processor but cut and paste as you need to to make information collection easy. The Mac version is here. The Windows version is here. The iTunes version is here. The other advantage of this application is that it runs in several languages.

Diaries and Calendars for MacBook

iCal is probably the most obvious choice for a calendar/diary on your MacBook because it runs with your email client and address book as well and has some pretty useful features for staying on top of things. There are a couple of other applications worth a look, though. If you like simple and I like that, you can try Diary 0.4. It is searchable and it just saves whatever you type on the page for the date. This can be useful when you are collecting research information as well as shopping lists and birthdays. You can put your upcoming appts and dates in so they show up on the day. Memoires you can try for free and then buy it if you like it. It has a lot to offer and you can make a really beautiful diary /journal. organiser with this because it is visually more attractive. I guess it depends who you are and what you are looking for.

Get going with iMovie

If you don’t know how to get going with iMovie and you are feeling unsure and insecure then Peachpit is the place for you. It explains things in detail but in a very effective , straight forward manner so that you do not lose yourself along the way. The steps are easy to follow and the best thing is the article explains why you are doing things so that you have some chance of understanding more about iMovie. The site itself provides other helpful articles about tech things which may have you stumped.

Speed Reading

This flash reader allows you to paste in any text, adjust the speed it is displayed, the font size, the number of words vied at a time. You can therefore take control of your reading and build it up to greater speeds….in any language! Slow readers tend to read one word at a time. It is important to build that up to at least three at a time and preferably half a line at a time. This is a tool which will enable you to increase reading speed and comprehension. The whole site at Speed Reading is dedicated to just that so it is worth taking a longer look at some of the other help on offer.

The Networked Student

Mobile Learning Technology Project

Mobiles in class can pose problems but as I have mentioned before I think it’s important that we try and find some good uses for them. Everyone has a mobile. We all use them. They can be misused but we generally use them to benefit ourselves and our classes and lots of phones and iPod Touches have applications and web access which could be useful in a learning situation. St. Mary’s City Schools in Ohio is involved in a Mobile Learning project and the amount of work and thought invested in this programme and then shared openly on the internet is inspiring. It gives us all a chance to see what positive incorporation of mobiles as tools for learning can do to enhance and even radicalise classroom delivery. Students love learning but they love networking too. We have to balance this. Networking can create a drag but it can also create a lift. It means we have to re describe our roles and I think this project gives us something decent to look at so we can see how that might happen. Just the list of mobile friendly apps available as a PDF on this site is a bonus. With this kind of a project we are actually in a position to judge better the impact of modern technological tools and how they can improve learning and we can measure that again traditional approaches some of which have been going on for centuries. We don’t need to be guessing anymore. besides, if we are going to be funding mobile carriers during educational hours through mobile phone use, I’d rather we were using them for educational purposes.

World Time Zone Map

It is sometimes important to be aware of what time it is in another country , particularly with web 2.0 applications , if you are travelling, making calls or trying to organise collaborative work. This map shows you some of the major time zones, but you can also put in any city you are looking for and get the current time there.

Educational Resources for Science

Kids Online Resources has literally hundreds of sites to choose from for online science projects and if you are in America it also lists the state fairs. It then offers plenty of other sites as links to help you and your students explore scientific ideas.

The Trouble with Algebra

Dualboot with Ubuntu

Laptops in Lessons

I blogged about my first laptop lessons because it was so different and so exciting. That was August 2nd. It is now August 16th and so I have had them in class for 2 weeks. I have 2 classes with laptops and 2 classes without. The ones without are much harder to work and it is so noticeable to me . Working without the laptops is more labour intensive , you have to use your voice more and you spend time making sure everyone is focussed. In the laptops lessons my biggest problem is my students are so engrossed in what they are doing I can’t get them to stop! I can only come back to the initial setting up and induction programme our school created. That set such a good tone and such a respect for laptop learning that it has been easy for me as a teacher to move that into my own field. The students have constantly been of the opinion that the laptops have made their lessons more interesting and pass more quickly. I have discovered I really look forward to these lessons and I am far more relaxed because I live with computers. I love them. In the first two weeks I have dismantled the Windows machine in my classroom and had it taken away so that I can just connect my Apple Mac to the white board. There has been a bit of fiddle faddling I have had to do with leads but I am just about there now. During the last lessons of the day there has been one student running low on battery and I have had to lend them my power cable. I’d rather have one to lend but it has made it more family like, infact my lessons with laptops are more like being with family and helping each other. The students love a challenge at the beginning of the lesson. They love being the first to find a particular type of learning activity for French or a fascinating fact. I have signed both classes up to Twiducate and that has worked well. The students can type as fast as I talk and one girl amazed me by getting all her reflexive verbs onto a PowerPoint presentation as I was going through the teaching material. It looked beautiful. We use word for note taking, but it is their choice and we use sticky notes for keeping accented letters and reminders. I have got them to load on their useful tools for French. They all love coming in and changing their computer to French but I have not made it compulsory. My only glitch came today when I wanted to give a quick time test. Normally it is scrap paper and pencils, 10 items and swap papers to mark. We don’t have scrap paper on laptops, they could cheat and we talked about that and they cannot swap laptops…so now what? We shall solve that together. That’s the thing. The laptop students really enjoy trouble shooting and problem solving as well as learning. It is a whole new way to teach. They are all happy and my year 9s keep asking me if I am too. That’s different!

E-Learning Wishlist 4

I like blogging my wishlists since it seems to make them come true. Since I started this blog , most of what I have wanted and wished for has indeed become reality. I have good access to image and music resources now, I have located a lot of cross platform resources, my students now have their laptops, I have technical support in a real and virtual capacity, I get plenty of feed back and I have found since my students have their laptops they have been very good at sharing helpful and constructive feedback. They even clapped one of my Producer LMS packages which was really touching. It meant they understood how hard I had tried to produce something they could learn from. It also meant they are now not frightened to try out their own ideas and push the boundaries in learning. My e-learning wishlist 3 is here, so onto my fourth one.

1. I think HDMI connections on whiteboards would be better but our MacBooks don’t have HDMI connections nor do some of our whiteboards. It is a more stable connection and the jacks are more stable . VGA produces a grainy picture and the leads keep walking off. Maybe we need to just have our own VGA cable.
2. We are talking about safe sites and there is a slow move to an awareness we need rock solid , bona fide online interaction. The regulation needs to be identical to real life expectations.
3. Teachers are sharing their knowledge and experiences so more opportunities need to arise where teachers share technology – just using it , ideas for class use and trouble shooting. It is happening naturally so it needs to be encouraged.
4. I want a remote slide controller!
5. I want my dataviewer where I can look after it . It’s a job I can do but it’s on the ceiling!
6. Spare power cords for laptop charging. There is a student every lesson whose battery is running down.
7. Someone to show me how to keep my Apple tidy. I am very neat on Ubuntu, super neat on Windows but my Apple Mac is like a dog’s breakfast.

Mac Maths software

CNET has lot of software choices for Macs if you are looking for things for Maths. I am not going to review them because I cannot say if this material is helpful or not. Judging by the downloads some of the software has , then I’d say it must be useful. There is more Mac software for maths here.

Turn Websites into Desktop Icons

I blogged about Fluid which works on Apple Macs to turn website URLs into desktop icons or Dock icons. It means you can put things like Facebook, news sites and any other sites you go to frequently straight on your desktop and avoid cluttering the browser bar.You can easily locate websites you want to use in class this way. You don’t have to hunt for them. On Ubuntu there is a programme Prism you can install from the software repository and then it too will turn websites into desktop icons. I just did it for Facebook by using Terminal. The Facebook icon was put into the applications menu under internet and I have just shifted it onto my desktop. At the Terminal prompt type :

sudo apt-get install prism-facebook
Terminal will chatter away and in 30 seconds you are up and running!

You can read up about Prism here. It really is a nifty programme.

Greening technology

Kamal Meattle is a researcher who has worked hard to show us how we only have to use a couple of plants and we’ll do our air and our respiration a favour if we bother. It’s about getting the CO2 balance right and so while we are working we need proper air. Using plants and trees can help us while we are surrounded by technology and it will increase our productivity. I have plants in my rooms at home but at work , we have nothing. Links to the video and the TED talk are here.

Create a story online

This is a great little site for creating online myths and legends! Students could do it on their laptop or it’s something which you could create on your whiteboard with your class. It just makes everything simple and effective so that you can concentrate on the creativity and literacy skills. You can put in sound effects, record information, print it out or download it. Easy. All easy.

Interactive Global Warming Game

This interactive global warming game is based on work from the National Science Foundation. It is designed for secondary students so that they can comprehend the issues which relate to global warming and the magnitude of it. If you go to the overview stage there is plenty of information to allow you to make a sensible decision as to whether it would suit your students or not. This includes watching the game being played.It is a multi-user game and so a familiar platform for many of our students. The site itself gives you as much information as it possibly can to help you make good use of this game in your classroom

Net Safety

Websafe Crackers is a complex game designed to absorb students but to teach them how to survive comfortably online. It helps them develop strategies for reporting online abuse, it teaches them how sites and online people waste their time and energy. It is supported by a number of well known and credible sponsors and is a genuine effort to help students cope with the sorts of issues which crop up online. Unfortunately most teenagers think learning about online safety is unnecessary and boring. This site is an attempt to help them overcome this block and get some genuine benefit from the site.

Birth Date

Something which interests a lot of people is who was born on the same day as they were. I looked up my birthday and this site, even though it is not cosmetically enhanced, holds a wealth of effective information! I am glad to know I was born on the dame day as Dr. Seuss!

Art Education 2.0

Art Education 2.0 is a very active, interactive site. It buzzes with ideas for teachers of art. There is a direct Twitter stream feed to keep you up to date with the latest community ideas and discussions, there are projects, really good links out to ideas, a great gallery of art work and then an easy way to get help with generating ideas for lesson planning. It is well designed, easy to navigate and very on the ball.

Tweet Deck on Ubuntu 10.04

I have been lost without Tweet Deck. It has been , by far, the best Twitter client for me because of the columns, the pop up messages and the way I can manage the various aspects of Twitter. Originally it loaded and worked well for a while and then it died and I just couldn’t use it. So I used Gwibber and Qwit. I settled on Qwit because it has a tabbed arrangement and my preferred pop up notifications. I was still missing Tweet Deck so I tried to load it again last week. First try failed. Second try, after Ubuntu did an update and I used Chromium as my browser, I succeeded in getting it loaded and then I found some information on a site about how to get Adobe Air loaded through Terminal. Epic fail. Tweet Deck tried to launch and then I had a parent/ child error message. I removed it and the next day downloaded it again. I tried it and tried it and it tried to launch but nothing. So, nearly a week later, I went searching for help again. This time I found Jams Ubuntu site which gave me instructions to get Adobe Air loaded through Terminal and , bingo, worked like a charm. The first time I tried Tweet Deck after that it didn’t work but about 3 minutes later Adobe Air did an update and to my great relief I now have Tweet Deck and I am so happy! Pays to persist.

National Art Education Association

The National Art Education Association has a very inspiring and active site for art teachers. You will benefit more if you register. There are helpful ideas and current information about trends. There is the Artsonia gallery too where teachers can share their classroom ideas and creativity and get some positives for all the hard work they do in the classroom. It’s a well designed site which is easy to navigate.

E-Lesson Design

Set a quick quiz

The Free Quiz Maker is the quickest site I have found so far to create a quick vocab test. it will even email it to me if I want my own copy. It took me all of 5 minutes to make a quick food vocab quiz for my year 8s and I had to try it out on staff because we had no students at school today. They all were really happy to do it and thought it helped solve our quick quiz problem with the laptops in class. Students seem to like a lightning test on something or other that they ought to know and normally I use pens and scrap paper and it is done in 10 minutes. Now I want to see how long it will take them with their laptops. I’ll give it to my year 9s just as a lesson starter. My year 8s and I will have to use the whiteboard and do it as a whole class revision test. They don’t have laptops.

Crossplatform educational games

These games are mainly for special needs students but they would suit primary students and then I was looking at the Face Game and thinking I might download it because I think it would be good for French. The good thing about these games is they are cross platform so you can run them on any operating system. We just need the iPad and mobile phone versions now!! It’s actually good to find a site which caters to students with specific learning needs. I haven’t been looking for them but this is the first site which has come up serendipitously because I was looking for educational games.

How to undo Facebook Places

Facebook is now including Facebook Places . Anyone can find out where you are when you are logged in. It gives the actual address & map location of where you are as you use Facebook. Make sure your children now know. To change the Facebook Places setting:

1. Go to Account
2. Go to Account Settings
3. Go to Notifications
4. Scroll down …to Places
5. UNCHECK the 2 boxes.
6. Make sure you SAVE the changes at the bottom of the page.

Clean Ubuntu 10.04 with GConf

I guess we are trained by Windows to automatically install anti virus software, file and system cleaners and we are good at it now. Coming onto Ubuntu you look for a cleaner and there really isn’t one. The Computer Janitor in the system /administration tab just doesn’t seem to do very much even though it claims to keep things tidy. I just don’t have the feeling that it has cleaned. That might be my Windows training making judgements. So I have been looking for a cleaner which, basically, would satisfy my needs! I found GConf, installed it from Applications/Ubuntu Software centre and followed the really clear instructions on this site. I’m happy now!

Two and a half year old with an iPad

What motivates us

Mac Educational Software

Znet has put together a whole heap of educational software for Apple Macs. From what I can see most of it is free trial so you can look before you purchase. If you click on the name of the programme you will see what the licence arrangements are. Some of it is totally free! The other site which has grouped and organised a whole variety of free software for Apple mac is the CQU free and open source software site. if you follow their links you can actually burn the software to CD for your own use.

Tweet Grade

Tweet Grade is a very encouraging and positive site for twitter users. It is cheerful and makes you want to do well. I am now at A+. I respond to encouragement. The other site which has a really good sense of humour when you want to get your Twitter ranking is Twitter Grader. I am up to 75% on that and am well pleased with my efforts to improve.

What Teachers Want

Try as I might, I could not get teachers to embrace Twitter, but we spent the whole day exploring ed tech and I ran a workshop and attended two others . From the day, even though there was a big thumbs down to Twitter, there was some real enthusiasm and commitment to other things. I like Twitter because I get a constant stream of up to date information on technology, classroom, content, educational issues and ideas. It has taken the search burden off me. I contribute and I take and it is a very balanced approach to global collaboration in my field of work. So what were teachers enthusiastic about?

1. Comic Life . They could see some real potential in this to the extent they want us to buy it.
2. DownLoad Helper. They wanted me to stop what I was doing and help them download and install it on their computers then and there. They could see it as a way of managing the internet outages we get from time to time. It would mean they can create a bank of useful video clips. DownLoad Helper works as an extension to Firefox.
3. iChatWhen our tech guru came and introduced everyone to iChat it was really good and it took off like a rocket because some of us were familiar with it and so we showed how easy it is to teach others and enable others when you all have access to a laptop. The whole session just buzzed and teachers could see how they could use it to good ends in a classroom and do a lot of laughing as well.
4. Twiducate Again this was something I was mentioning in passing because I wanted them to see the value of Twitter but they easily saw the value of Twiducate and really liked it. I was showing them what I was doing with 2 French classes and they liked what they saw. It is a good way to use that time at the beginning of a lesson when you are setting everything up.
5. Short video clips. They were very keen to follow those sorts of sites up.
6. SlideShare This was a big hit and teachers were searching and downloading as I spoke. They were tickled pink by the karaoke part of it.
7. Teacher Tube and You Tube

We also had more details of our LMS explained and that was helpful and enabled us to make better use of it in future.

So, teachers need to have a chance to explore technology. They need an opportunity to share tips and tricks and then sites and software and approaches which work for them.

What’s on my Mac?

E-learning with National Geographic

The National Geographic Xpeditions site provides a wide variety of customizable maps for online or traditional learning. The site also offers lesson ideas, online resources and activities which will help to teach students effectively about our world. The site runs very cleanly and is very easy to navigate . The pageloading is impressive.

Creative Commons explained

Creativity

Laptop Lessons Review

I am 5 weeks down the track now with my laptop lessons with two classes and then I have two classes without laptops so it has been a good basis for comparison. I blogged about my first laptop lessons here. Overall there are more advantages with laptop lessons than non laptop lessons. I find in my non laptop lessons I am working harder, talking more and having to keep students on task more often. With the laptops the worst thing which has happened is a total of 3 students in 2 classes have done the wrong thing in lesson. One girl was playing a film. Her laptop was locked in my filing cabinet until she was doing partner work at the front of my class. I gave her paper and pen and we had quite a talk but she was in a very emotional state and needed that talk. One boy was transferring movie files. He voluntarily showed me the files and then spent a week at the front so I could monitor his screen and he told me I had done the right thing. The third student was on iChat. I don’t know if I have changed his behaviour but I haven’t caught him out again. I have had a couple of issues with the sound and vision on my whiteboard and a couple of laptops have had camera problems. The technical support and my capacity to troubleshoot have been great! All in all I can say with non laptops the lessons are not as effective. I can see and feel that now. Laptop lessons are more fun, fit in a lot of content and are more comprehensive. The students can type up notes really fast. We have automatically shared all our tips and tricks so now we are pretty efficient. I am up tot he stage where Friday I launch the first multimedia assessment for French. My students could have done with recording booths or a different classroom set up to make their little videos. I shall seek official feed back from them but their French has been good and their videos look like they will be fun. We have done other grammar exercises to complement what they are doing and it seems to be really good. Friday we’ll know!
In a nutshell?
The positives:
1. The students are always absorbed and interested in doing things on their laptops.
2. They type up notes really, really fast.
3. We share technology tips and tricks.
4. They are working at a higher level in terms of content.
5. We laugh a lot or are utterly silent.

The negatives:
1. Technology breakdowns – but I always have plan B and good technology support.
2. I sometimes have to really demand their attention…they drift off into the screen.
3. The occasions they cannot be trusted. This works on trust.
4. The younger ones need to have things repeated more often.
5. Students who are not so confident on a computer can become intimated by those who think they are good.

Online art games

Queensland Art Gallery has an online site worth visiting at any time but it has some good online games to help children look at artists and art concepts in a very pleasant way. While you are on the site, check out the education tab since it has some useful resources for the classroom.

Classroom Clip Art

This site offers lot of useful and helpful clip art to enable your students to have a wider variety of choices for images. While you are there check the bottom left of the left side bar for the link out to lesson plans.

What do I miss about Windows?

I have to use Apple at work all the time and at home I have been running on Ubuntu 10.04. The home option is to meet a challenge of mine. I wanted to be able to use Ubuntu and I wanted to get to the stage where I could do everything on Ubuntu. I can. I can even get files from the Windows partition.I use WineBottler for the Apple and Wine on Ubuntu. So what do I miss about Windows?

1. The cruisy graphics and generally cool look of it.

2. Office. There is nothing at all which can compare with Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 in Windows. It allows me to be productive and creative. PowerPoint 2010 is really good and livens up presentations no end but it has increased my capacity to be creative.

3. Microsoft Essentials. There is some really good stuff and classroom support. The Microsoft in education network is very strong and full of good ideas.

I am having to transfer all my skills and knowledge to Apple or Ubuntu software. The biggest bug has been moving off Producer which I had just learnt to use and then working out how to do the same in iMovie. That has taken quite a long time for me.

4. Windows is intuitive. Apple and Ubuntu you have to click boxes and find the right tab. Ubuntu is actually more intuitive for me than Apple. I wonder sometimes if it’s just that I am very used to Windows…I don’t think so. I think it really is more intuitive which is why there is so much more software.

So I can live without Windows and I didn’t think that was possible but I resent that I don’t have access to all the complexity and variety which can be provided by Office if I use Apple at work and then Ubuntu at home. Apple Office just isn’t as good. Very functional but not as fun! At this stage I have to develop Linux skills so when I go into Windows it’s to do my own thing entirely these days and not for work purposes! That is such a change…and flexibility is the in thing .

Dress up your Mac Desktop

A while back I said I found it very hard to keep myself neat and tidy on my MacBook. Not a problem with Windows or Ubuntu. Just Mac. So, a fortnight ago, I decided to tackle this head on. I used Cool Iris and took a desktop screenshot (command – shift-3) which I then set as my desktop. I went up to the Apple icon on the menu bar and changed my Dock to left to get rid of the kindergarten carry on at the bottom of my screen. I then downloaded some folder icons and changed my Apple folder icons and labeled them with the colours by right clicking and selecting. The spaces between the pictures now serve as folder organisation spots and the pictures themselves are handy areas to temporarily store files as I am using them. The Dock works really well at the left. I feel so much better now and I also feel as though I am in charge of my MacBook instead of it being in charge of me!

iMovie

I have finally succeeded in converting a Microsoft Producer idea into an iMovie equivalent that I can now use in class. I could use Producer more easily than iMovie. All I can say is thank heavens for my brain and Google! The first thing you do with iMovie is go to the preferences and tick show advanced tools. I then downloaded the StreamClip video converter and converted the video file I had wanted to use to a .dv file. Finally!! I could finally import the video. I had tried mov and MP4 as iMovie is supposed to be able to use those. I had even tried moving the file to iPhoto to see if iMovie could pick it up from there. I now know iPhoto plays video clips! The photos imported easily from iPhoto. I then inserted the video along the top of the photos as you can see. You set it up the top on the first photo and select picture in picture , press the space bar and iMovie does the rest. That bit was really easy. I could then export it to my desktop video file. What an achievement! Personal hero stuff. So now I have animal slides with the French vocabulary and as they play there is a video of a zoo in Belgium and a nice song.

21st century learning

Educational-origami is a bit of a misleading name for such a comprehensive and exceptionally well thought out site. The site focuses on 21st century learning styles and ideas but it is based on some well grounded theory, some relevant and logical ideas and then some good creative input. It has everything you could possibly want to kickstart your ideas about how to change your ideas and thinking into the 21st century. It has scaffolding, thinking tools, starting places. It looks at differentiating the curriculum, digital citizenship and the requirements of 21st century teachers and their teaching spaces. It doesn’t have all the answer but there is so much on offer on this site that it is worth exploring as an individual or team to look at the possibilities and then consider your own local requirements. There is sufficient material here to enable some good quality thinking about how education can proceed now we have greater access to technology and better broadband speeds. Teachers are very busy people so to find a site like this were so much is housed and offered means there is a good starting point for sensible planning and thought with regard to the changes which are going to come and it would be better to have them well considered. In terms of 21st century learning I have one word – PLANTS. More of that later, and in the mean time, I am trying to think how they would be cared for in a school…I have seen some disasters in my time.

Change your Mac icons

Students have been asking me how I got the floral icons on my desktop. Changing desktop icons on a Mac is not as intuitive as Windows but it’s not hard. Go to a search engine and search for free Mac desktop icons. I found my lovely floral ones.
1.Download the icons and they will appear in a folder in your applications folder.
2. Go to the folder and click on one of the icons. Right click and find the Get Info on the tab which comes up.
3. Find the picture of the icon in the top left of the box which opens. Highlight. Go to the EDIT menu on hte tool bar at the top of the screen and select COPY.
4. Now go to a folder icon you wish to replace. Click on it. Right click and select Get Info. When you see the folder icon top left in the box again, highlight it by clicking on it.Go to the toolbar at the top and select EDIT and then PASTE. Voilà!

Mac icons and screensavers

The downloads section of the Apple site just keeps improving with what it has to offer to help you make your Mac look more interesting. Macs do have good graphics capabilities so it is good that Apple is actually encouraging users to make use of this strength. Here you can find icon packages and screen savers. Some are just fun but some have good educational value.

Top Posts

It’s time again to do the quarterly review of what works well on this site. I am at the stage now where I can leave the site for a week and it just keeps ticking over and there is significant traffic to the homepage and individual posts. It means I have sufficient current and valuable content on this site to encourage people to visit and learn. Given this is an educational technology blog, then that is a real bonus. So what are my top 5 posts for this quarter?

1. Me TV – Ubuntu 10.04 by a long shot again.
2. Twitter Clients for Ubuntu
3. What Teachers Want
4. Use iPad as second screen
5. EverNote for Everything

So what was it last time?

1.Me-TV – Ubuntu 10.04 – by a long shot.
2.Microsoft pptPlex for PowerPoint
3.You Tube Tab on PowerPoint Toolbar
4.Twitter Clients for Ubuntu
5.eLearning Sites

That’s quite a change and a bigger interest in Ubuntu. The PowerPoint posts for last time rank in the top 10 and the Facebook Places post is rocketing up the list. So what have I learned this time? That I need to keep blogging about Ubuntu because there are a lot of people out here who want to know. That people want to use their iPad for different things and benefit from the graphics aspect of it. That EverNote is becoming increasingly popular and rightly so because it is a handy utility for class and e-learning. I am really pleased my post about what teachers want is up there because it zoomed quickly into the top five and has stayed there. Last time I found that education really wasn’t important in the scheme of things on this educational tech blog. That my own post has had an impact and value for others is really what I want this blog to be about. Teachers can connect well over the internet and we can bring each other and then our students much better content and information. We have to shift from print to online materials and we can do that if we have supportive networks. Doing it alone is too daunting. We do know what we want!

21st century Learning Spaces

Frank Gehry is a good source of inspiration when thinking about 21st century learning spaces because his mind has moved into the next millennium and he has learned that computer assisted architectural design can free up and realise his ideas. His buildings are extraordinary and I cannot think of a better way to get students and staff excited about learning than being in a building which stimulates imaginative and creative reactions. Once inside the building Frank Gehry is expert at creating spaces and niches which suit the functionality of the building. His optimisation of niches is worth considering for e-learning . He can look at a building like a tree where the centre of it might be the large learning spaces like our senior learning centre at school . We have tables and chairs, at least 3 teachers and one full time teacher for that area and then a bank of computers around the outside and a white board. It has a wet area as well. So the space can be used for conferences and in service education, students can work together in small groups, they can sit with each other and work or go off by themselves on a computer. They always have access to teacher support and help. It flows very smoothly there and a lot is learned. So you can have those sorts of composite learning spaces. His buildings then lend themselves to going out on a branch for specific learning which would be faculty or specialist driven . His niches would enable students to have quiet and individual spots for learning and creating multimedia assignments. We need to be more flexible in our approach and Franck Gehry shows how to break the straight line thinking even though some buildings need modification once they are built.It’s just not that easy when you are that cutting edge. His buildings are airy, light and take advantage of those sorts of things which will add to sustainable living and learning spaces.

E-Learning acronyms

To the left of this site is a list of acronyms and if you click on them it brings you to a page which explains the acronym and then links to sites which will help you better understand the concept. Klas has created a straightforward, easy to navigate site to help us all keep on top of the never ending acronyms which come our way. It also ensures we know what we are talking about!

Free Clip Art

Philip Martin’s site is a very cheerful and useful site to know to expand choices of clip art for student work. It is a very sensibly organised site so that it is possible to very quickly find the images you are looking for. The clip art is organised for educational purposes and uses so that makes it even more appealing!

21st Century Education

Back up , clean up, tidy up!

Yes, clean up your computer and your work area. I have just redesigned my home work area so that the wires and transformers are not in a constant muddle. Why does everything come with a transformer these days? They take up a lot of room! My wires are tidier and I have gone for the layered look with shelving and then boxed areas so I can house everything better. I have attached my external drive to the system so I don’t keep having to go and get it to back up or transfer files. Mini external drives are for portability. I run a bigger La Cie drive to back up critical information.It now has a proper spot and my back up is current! I have then been through all my files and sorted them out, created new folders and got rid of the dross. My CDs, DVDs and pens and paper are more accessible and the TV antenna is attached properly. I then made sure all my programmes were up to date and running the latest versions and topped it off by getting new wallpapers and screen savers to reflect the New Delhi Games. The last thing I did was get a cushion for my computer chair so I can sit more comfortably. None of this is grand in the scheme of things but it makes sure that a) my set up is not a fire risk b) everything is handy c) everything is running smoothly.d) I can work comfortably. It has been a couple of hours well spent.

E-learning Wishlist 5

My e-learning wishlist 4 is here and I haven’t progressed a lot with that but there have been some positives. Everyone is sharing their ideas more and talking about what they can and cannot do and so it is far easier to help others and be helped. The technicians we have have played a key role in moving things forward and helping us to articulate our needs better and then pass on the information. We are all working at different levels on the continuum and they have been adept at catering to our individual needs. That aspect of our one to one is rock solid and blossoming. We have also made some inroads into online safety and awareness raising with regard to that because it has to be a state and national backed situation in order to protect our students. Gradually this is falling into place and it needs to be constantly considered and in the front of our minds. Classroom teachers here and their helpers are subject to scrutiny and high expectation when it comes to engaging with students. It has to be the same online. We have all been talking about remote controllers for our slide shows. iPhones and iPods have apps which we need to investigate and some have spoken about just having a rechargeable wireless mouse . It is becoming a must have. I am still working on the stability of my vga connection to the whiteboard. It has fallen apart because we do not have a single double ended nut available in the school to use! I need one to anchor the vga connector to the wall.It’s crazy but we are still looking for one. HDMI connections would be better but our MacBooks don’t have them. Speaking of MacBooks, I have done a good job of keeping it tidy and learning how to do that.The spare cords for recharging laptops is resolved. So now onto wishlist 5.

1. I have drawn up my class room and added sound booths along each side . On both sides of the room are curtains ,windows and wall space which could be used to attach sound booths. They could be very simply made and with the addition of audio active comparative headsets and even just headsets with microphones it would really help with creating video assignments and working with videos and audio to practice language skills. The booths need to fit 2 students for when they work in pairs but we need something which will improve the whole video aspect of the laptop learning and this is a simple solution. It makes the room far more flexible because the booths can be used for private work as well. Students still need face to face practice with languages. talking to a machine and repeating a machine is good for developing skills but language is responding to real people. The room still caters to 30 students.

2. Stable video connections to whiteboard.

3. Remote slide presentation controller.

4. Constant updating of technical skills at the appropriate level

5. Dataview to be where I can service it.

Photoshop Action Scripts

I guess the digital art teachers would know all about this but for me this is magical and I can see it would be fun! The Photoshop action scripts also let you create out of bounds images which are fast becoming popular because they have such a different impact visually and are creating a new form of unique. The scripts are free and can do all sorts of magical things with your images!

21st Century Learning Spaces

Next Generation Learners

It is really worth considering the information presented in this slide presentation. It gives a detailed and informative picture of the sorts of technology driven lives our students have. when you see it presented like this , it is far easier to make better decisions about how to present materials, how to adapt materials and how to create a more discerning media audience.

MacQuarium

Recycling is an important and valid part of any educational institution these days, right? With technology it is even more important to get the recycling message across and besides, these MacQuariums look really cool and are very individual. If you read some of the sites you can see it has been a very good thinking and problem solving challenge to build a MacQuarium. I have now decided e-learning spaces need MacQuariums. I think focussing on technology in a fun way is a good way to teach students how to be responsible and enjoy their learning. They might even come up with some other ideas of how to recycle technological waste. There are some good instructions here and some good examples here.

Make a YouTube video with PowerPoint 2010

Didn’t ever think I’d see my work on YouTube. I have upgraded to Microsoft Office 2010. As I have said before, it is in a league of its own. Other office suites do the job but Microsoft Office allows you far more flexibility and creativity. I made a slide show from a photo album, which you can do in PowerPoint 2010. It means I had a mix of photos and slides. I then applied effects and timing. I added a sound track as per these instructions. You don’t have to worry about the sound file size in 2010. Make sure you check across all slides. You will notice some effects take longer than others, so you might have to fiddle a bit so your slides and music match. I had 50 slides and 5 minutes worth of music just as a guide. I then saved it as a wmv file from the save as options. That takes a while. I had to open a YouTube account and then I uploaded my video which took 25 mins for a 177MB file. I am pretty proud of myself and have had some good feedback.

Download Facebook Information

It’s not on my Facebook account yet, but the downloading information feature is coming to everyone’s account. It means you can have a copy of what you have stored on Facebook – photos, videos, links, messages. It would be a pretty big file. The advantage for me would to be to have a copy of my photos. Do I want all my inbox messages? I don’t think so, but maybe for old times’ sake. It will show as an HTML file as far as I can tell . There isn’t a possibility yet of modifying that information and then uploading it again. That would be a handy feature so Facebook could be kept current, but it has been a great big database tracking this and that, so , until now there hasn’t even been an option of us owning that information, leave alone changing it. The feature will come up under your Facebook account settings. I am curious to know how long it will take to download! Tech Crunch gives more information here. I’d like to think there would be an option coming to modify and upload a new version of information .People change, kids grow up, it would be nice to let people improve and enhance their profile particularly when online profiles have taken on a new force in the scheme of things.

Top Posts

This blog has been going for 2 years now and it is this year I have made it education specific. I thought it might be interesting to see which posts had been the most popular over the 2 years and compare it with the recent quarter analysis. Oddly enough, there isn’t a lot of difference!

1. Me-TV Ubuntu 10.04 by a long shot

2.Facebook Virus – remember the one which had us all worried?

3.Microsoft pptPlex for PowerPoint – people really do want to know about it and Muicrosot needs to bring it back and keep working on it. For education, it is excellent.

4. Twitter Clients for Ubuntu Getting the right client for Twitter on Ubuntu is important and very popular!

There is a tie for 5th place:

5. Using iPad as a second screen People are keen to know about this and it extends iPad use.

5. What teachers want Teachers know what they want – here is a list.

Laptop Lessons

My first review is here but over recent weeks I have had a better chance to get some good feedback from my students as part of a formal review process in our school. I have had the thumbs up from my students for using technology and the things I have done. What do they like?

1. making little videos for French.
2. the way I use PowerPoint and slide presentations to teach content.
3. learning technical things and content at the same time.
4. being played little French videos. They really think this helps them and can show it.
5. having and using their laptops all the time.

What they value is the combination of content and technology. They like learning about their MacBooks and what they can do and then using that to improve their French. They also value the electronic white board very highly and think this is a good way to focus a lesson before they have time to go off on their own work. It means my instincts were right and my lesson approach has been right and now I have had a chance to truly work in conjunction with my students and they like that.

Organise your work with Sprred

Sprred is a blogging client which is being advertised as a microblogging option like Tumblr. The way Sprred is set up it would suit really well the possibility of gathering online resources either to teach or to learn. As a teacher you could muster online teaching resources – photos, links, videos, notes, exercises. As a student you could use Sprred to either gather resources for an assignment or use it as a way of displaying the assignment, particularly if you had to give an oral report. You could also use it as it was intended, as a blog!

Top 10 Tips for Classroom Technology

Draw your own house plan

This is ridiculously simple to use if your students need to draw up a house plan. Mine do for French. We are designing our dream house so we can talk about it. One of my girls found this on the internet so I thought I’d share it. You can easily draw the plan and then walk through it in 3D ! There is a print option too. I need to teach content so I am always looking for things which will speed up the computer side of things. Small blue printer is just great! There is another really good one here with fish that swim in the pond, cruisy cars and a concert grand! You have to sign up to the site.

Remote control Mac with iPod/iPhone

I’m excited! Last night I was on iTunes and decided to load the Remote Tap app onto my iPod Touch. There were others but this one looked the best to me. Cost a couple of dollars. Today I went to Read Pixel and downloaded the Remote Tap Monitor and the Remote Tap app for my MacBook. I changed nothing in the settings for Remote Tap on my iPod Touch and entered the same password as my MacBook when prompted. It took no time to locate my MacBook on my iPod Touch. It took me about 5 minutes of fiddling to get a MacBook screen on my iPod Touch. I filled in the preferences on my MacBook but I didn’t sync it as it said. It had already synced itself. I put up a slide show and could easily go from screen to screen. I also discovered there are other things you can do so that I run my MacBook from my iPod. Pretty amazing! I went into the lounge with my iPod Touch and could still see and manipulate the screen. I went to the other side of the house and I could still run my MacBook and there was no delay at all. So, running it on my home network is easy. This week the school network may be another thing. I’ll let you know, but I am so excited!

Remote Tap – control your Mac!

Can’t believe it!! I am running my laptop from my iPod Touch using Remote Tap. The previous post explains about the app and the site. I have now had it running on the school network and can offer you these insights. Initially it was like at home, it too a little while to find its feet. Patience and do not panic. Use the remote tap preferences pane to check for the server connection but it does it all automatically. Each time I have used it , it has been better so it is one of those programmes which needs to settle in. There is a keyboard on the iPod which comes up and then you can close running programmes, run slideshows, access the dashboard and spaces. The icons for manipulating it are very handy and I am now working out how to open and shut folders and files. Our techie also suggested KeyNote Remote which is very easy if you just want to run KeyNote presentation form your iPhone or your iPod Touch. KeyNote Remote just slides form one screen to the next. I’ll download that from iTunes tonight and give it a whirl…

Online ESL Practice

This site offers a lot of online activities for ESL learning. There is also a bilingual section which offers some good activities and quizzes in a lot of other languages besides English. The advantage is these activities have been created by teachers and as a teacher you can contribute too. It is a fuss free site so it doesn’t use much by way of system resources and this means the site loads quickly and runs efficiently. it is very much a vocabulary building site and it does that well.As a teacher you can contribute to the site to help build the choices for all of us!

MacBook Remotes

I have blogged about Remote Tap which I find very handy but it is a little more complicated than other remote apps to control your MacBook via your iPod Touch or your iPhone. The easiest one is KeyNote Remote. You can download it from iTunes and it only runs KeyNote. You have to go into the preferences of KeyNote and sync it with your iPod Touch or iPhone app. It can be up and running a few minutes. You open Keynote and set it to running the show and then your IPhone or iPod will show the slide and all you do is swipe the iPod/iPhone screen and the next slide is on your computer. It is so easy to run and so easy to manage. The other app which has a really cool interface and makes you look the goods is Mobile Mouse. It is very cruisy, easy to install and run and controls your MacBook but not as much as Remote Tap. Mobile Mouse though lets you access your Dock and go on the net and manage your media. it is very easy to use and looks fantastic.Mobile Mouse has a PC version.

One Minute Language Podcasts

No more excuses!! You can learn so many languages with these one minute podcasts at RadioLingua. We live in an international, multinational global community. We have to develop the headset we will meet people half way. One of the online communities I belong to has people from everywhere on the planet so we have to use our own languages, the languages we have some knowledge of and then a bit of what we can learn to facilitate and smooth out communication. It is working really well and everyone gets included. It means my Spanish is getting a lot better because it is a global language like English and French. It also means we have developed a community where people are not frightened to use what they know to make a point or communicate and that is what languages are. Communication. We need to know them on the internet. So RadioLingua is a great find. I have some chance now of learning something! I can spare a minute. The content is free to download but there is also premium content you pay for. There are also full blown language podcasts if you want to concentrate more on one language and get better at it. you can put the files on your MP3 player and it is that easy and it means you can make good use of times when you might be stuck waiting. The material is well produced,well explained and just good to use.

Online typing tutor

I practise my keyboard skills from time to time for three reasons. It helps me make adjustments to the keyboard at my desktop to make sure I have it in the right place for typing properly. If I don’t, I make a lot of mistakes! I also like to practise because I am a digital immigrant so I wasn’t brought up to type and now and again I just go back to basics to remind myself to use all my fingers properly. I find 5 minutes here and there when I can manage it makes a difference. These free online lessons are wonderfully uncomplicated and straight forward. You get feed back on speed and accuracy. All computers should actually come with a free typing programme which isn’t too hard to practise. This online site is handy because I can access it from any computer I am on. The typing bricks game will keep you amused and help you know your keys!

Change KeyNote to .mov

So why would you want to do that? I was only doing it to see if I could do it and then see how long it would take…for future reference! I had made a grammar teaching KeyNote presentation. You go to file, slide down to Export and convert it to a Quicktime movie. When I played it I found I could still use the arrow keys to advance and reverse the slides. It was a much clearer image and the presentation was already started. I didn’t have to go through the play slide show hoo-ha. I then worked out it means I have a copy of my KeyNote presentation that can play on ANY computer…so that’s why you do it! I have since converted it to a .dv file , imported it into iMovie and added an appropriate French song. Since I have come this far I may actually put voice on it too for pronounciation!

Free Music

Jamendo is a music site where the music is published under the creative commons licence. If you click on the about tab you will have your questions answered and understand better the terms of use. It is music you can contribute to if you are a musician, therefore a platform where you can be heard, and it is also a site where you can download music to accompany your multimedia presentations. The other good thing about Jamendo is it is available in seven languages. Have fun!

Quick backgrounds

If you quickly need a pattern or a background for a presentation or an assignment, then this is the site for you. You choose the colour, the pattern and then down load it. There are other visual adjustments you can make if you want to . Easy as!!

We are Teachers

We are Teachers is a very dynamic American site for and by teachers. There are plenty of encouraging initiatives and there are plenty of lesson ideas and thoughts on technology in the classroom. it is very much about sharing the trial and error, the success and determined thinking of how we are going to get technology into the classroom. The site leads the way. We have to just do it, share it, evaluate it, strive to do better and get some decent encouragement. This is a resource I found on the #edchat stream on Twitter. It is really worth tuning into that to get a constant stream of ways forward with technology. I haven’t yet joined but I assume I can be in Australia and contribute and share because it is about collaboration and I cannot think of a better idea than to get teachers all around the world to get together and establish the best practice and ideas for technology in the classroom.It will endorse what I actually believe – we cannot dispense with teachers because they are a driving force for learning!!

PS: Read comment: it is a global site. Anyone can join. Fantastic!

Tidy up your folders!

We are a term and a half into the laptop programme and last week a lot of people were tidying up their laptops. Staff had realised they were going to have to create more folders and be more particular as to how they were going to manage everything electronically. Some were automatically backing up to a mini hard drive, some were going to do it later and some were just sitting and planning. I had already started to create a system which I could manage because I am not as tidy minded on a MacBook as I am on other operating systems. I have used the colour coding from the Get Info (right folder click) for each year level. I am developing folders for each term and I am developing folders for each topic I teach. That is a lot of folders!I also need a folder for marking which incorporates a folder of the work I have already marked. Some of that may be alleviated when we can access our LMS from home and work can be uploaded and marked there more easily. Things are being introduced gradually so that staff and students are not swamped and that is a good plan. It is really important, we have all realised, to ensure we have a good system for organising our files.

Search and save energy

Bellzar seems to have lost the plot at the moment. I have used it reliably for 6 months but this last week it keeps coming up with and error message. I have contacted them about it and I guess they will fix it in time. I used Bellzar because you save energy and donate rice at the same time. Since Bellzar is not being too co operative at the moment, I have switched to Blackle. It is a Google search engine on a black screen so you can do your bit for saving the planet.

Posterino

If I owned my Mac , I’d buy this program. Our Macs are on loan from work. Posterino is a great image programme for people like me who are not very good at creating my own image layouts and styles. I rely heavily on software to make me look good. Posterino can present your images for iPhoto in all sorts of clever ways and the size is large so you could get them printed and mounted. I was thinking I could make great mementos of events and great reminders of holidays, that special class, pets, plants…anything.
The demo puts a watermark on the final product so it is not a programme where you can actually see the final product. You can just get an idea of it on the computer and that is not the same as if I were to organise to get the poster printed. Even so, I can think of a hundred uses for this at home and at school. I could make vocabulary posters to decorate my classroom, or just have the electronic version available for students. You export the arrangement to iPhoto under File so it can be saved as a jpeg file. All very handy! There is another review of it here. It can do more than make posters and isn’t expensive like some image programmes are.

Twiducate

The students really like Twiducate. I have a class of year 9s and a class of year 10s using it and we started in Term 3 when they got their laptops in class. I think it will be better when I can start it at the beginning of the year. They love going on there and they feel they need to be writing French even if I say an English response is okay. I use it to ask French questions and get French responses from them to practise particular grammar points. I use it to get feed back on what we are doing or something I might want to do in class. They have a lot of fun when they are on Twiducate and take it very seriously. Their responses and efforts are far superior to anything we have done with pens and paper. It is the fact they will make a real effort to communicate in French. Sometimes I run it from my laptop on my whiteboard so they can see responses on the big screen and they like that too. It has been a great way to incorporate new students into the class quickly and a good way to keep in contact with students overseas. They still have a spot they can link into. They liked it when I was putting deadlines on Twiducate but I have since shifted that to our LMS. What students have really valued is using technology as part of their lesson and learning new programmes. Twiducate keeps them very safe because I have total control and it’s just as well when they forget their passwords! It has been a life saver if I have had trouble getting my laptop up and running or a programme on it. I can tell them to go onto Twiducate and write about their weekend or their pet or something I know they can do. Today they gave me feedback on their new multimedia assignment. It is a way of involving them in a genuine way and students like that. This is where I started with Twiducate and I have now run it successfully for a term and a half.

Web 2.0 tools for maths

I am not even going to pretend I know whether these tools are helpful or not to Maths teachers. Maybe you will look and leave a comment so that we know. There is quite a range of sites and choices here so I would imagine you will find something to help you with teaching Maths with technology in a classroom. I like archimy.com for drawing graphs!

Great graphics

Abduzeedo has a number of tutorials which you can follow so that you can create some really impressive graphics. Different software is used so the tutorials apply to different graphics programmes. There are step by step instructions so that you are easily able to see and do each step. Time to show off!

Google Earth for Class Assignments

I would never have thought of it. This is one of the unexpected bonuses of the One to One laptop programme in our school. I can go in properly prepared and have my lesson planned and then find my students are coming at the assignment from a different angle and I have to quickly rethink and decide on the spot how to manage that. It means we negotiate, they share, we learn. We all learn. I had wanted them to get 10 pictures of Adelaide because they were going to advertise it in French. I assumed they would use Google images for their searches for pictures because they always do. I would have gone to Flickr, so I was prepared to show them that. Half the class went to Google images as I had thought. The other half wanted to go to Google Earth and thought it was blocked and that the MacBooks wouldn’t let it run. I connect my MacBook to the white board so students can see what I am doing. There is a boy in the class who is very good on a computer. So I went on my laptop and he was on his and within a couple of minutes I could see that we needed to approach it differently though Google maps, get the download of Google Earth and away we went because the boy instinctively manipulated it better than I did. The students who wanted to use Google Earth could hear the conversations, see what I was doing and in 5 minutes we were all happy. Those on Google images just ignored us…so I haven’t yet shown them Flickr. What they then did was take screen captures of the things around Adelaide they wanted for their photos. That then meant we could all learn how to do screen captures on a Mac ( command, shift, 3) and then we could learn to put that into Adobe Photoshop and crop it and change the image size. This is not French but that was about 15 mins of my lesson which I won’t have to reteach. They have to write a sentence for each picture and what pleased me was they remembered the sentence patterns I had taught them for our virtual trip to Bordeaux. They were remembering all their city vocabulary and they were creating some really good sentences based on what we did on Quebec and Bordeaux. Somehow the Google Earth thing had brought together all their learning. The bonus for me is I can now suggest to other students and classes to use Google Earth for their assignments. Since it is dynamic it held student interest really well and they moved themselves onto their French. Next lesson we look at Keynote and how to convert that to a movie to get some really good visual effects.

MissionX

Mission X is a good example of how school communities now have the opportunity to collaborate internationally both in the name of education and wellbeing. The programme centres around training like an astronaut but while that is happening students have things to do and learn on a regular basis and plenty to learn with regard to space and physics. So Mission X shows us how we could manage our classrooms once we are on top of the technology and teaching with technology issues. It would be good to hear back from teachers to know how such a programme is succeeding in their classrooms. The next one is due to start in January. You can find details of the 6 week international fitness programme here at the human Spaceflight and Exploration site.

Google Trends

Google Trends gives you a chance to look at the search volume index and trends for your region or any other region in the world. It will also give you an idea of the languages being used for the searches and in South Australia it was English, Chinese and German. You can refine your search by year, month, last 30 days and so on. We can come up with a wealth of information. It is a matter or knowing that the information is there should you want to use it! The USA gets the hot topics and hot searches too. I guess our turn will come!

Adapting lesson plans to e-learning

We have had our laptops in class for a term and a half now. It is making me very restless with the two classes who do not have laptops. This is in turn has made me very motivated to move my paper based lesson plans and assignments into their digital equivalents. I do not have a lot of thinking and planning time so I have worked out I shall have to spend a bit of my holidays thinking through some of those assignments more carefully to ensure their conversion to e-learning will work. Thinking it out is essential and then there is the delivery and evaluation which will tidy up the loose ends. TeacherPlanet has some good electronic worksheets which I shall use to help me think out some key areas of my courses. I think it’s important to start with assignments I know well. I have found though that I can refurbish old assignments and turn them into something quite magical in their electronic format, so I am going to include some “flat” assignments and see what will happen. The electronic planners take e-learning into consideration for lesson planning which is why I am going to use them. These give me a good framework for rethinking my approach when I am short on time. The format I need is there. The one featured comes up under the Other Subject Lesson templates.

Anki flashcards for anything!

Anki is a flashcard programme but if you read the documentation and look at the screenshots, you’ll see it is more than that really. It operates on Windows, Apple and Linux and there is a mobile version too. It is incredibly well thought out because it keeps a check of what you have been learning, can be synchronised to different devices and will batch the work into manageable learning portions. It is very easy to operate and has some learning sets which you can down load to see how it works. There is plenty of material for Japanese, French and then you can even programme it for maths equations. You customise it to your own needs so it is more complex than your average flash card programme. Very handy! It is well worth learning how to use it properly because it gives you some real learning flexibility.

Black Google Mobile

The planet is thinking! You can save battery power and energy by using the Black Google Mobile search site on your mobile phone. We need more of this!

Giant mosaic images

In less than 10 minutes I have made the most gigantic mosaic image from 250 of my photos. I was thinking it would be a good way to remember all my students, or my year level, or an event. You choose the main picture and then 250 + photos. They upload really quickly and then the original picture is made up of all the other photos you uploaded. On the site you can zoom in and see them. On my computer it is not so clear but I downloaded a low resolution copy and it still looks pretty good.. You pay for a high resolution copy which you can then make a high quality print from. EasyMoza is on Facebook and Twitter so it is easy to keep up with the site updates and the new features and the site itself runs in four languages – English, French, German and Spanish – and explains itself really well. Certainly worth a look and a different way to present visual information.

5 tips for laptop lessons

When it comes to classroom delivery with laptops I have learned as I have been going along that there are better ways of doing things. Here are my top five tips:

1.While you are setting yourself up and taking the roll, get the students to be doing something useful on something like Twiducate or your own dedicated subject blog.

2.Be prepared for outages. Never go into a lesson expecting online access or power. Know you cannot always access the net and know there will be days when there are power failures. Be prepared.

3.Be ready for the unexpected and delightful surprises. Know you might have to think on your feet or know you can say…I will take a look at that and come back next lesson (next week) with a solution/work around. Make that type of approach normal.

4.Focus the lesson first with the white board with a slide show/site/video/document and content practice , then move into clearly defined independent work.

5.Do not assume. Always check they can use the software and techniques you are expecting. Don’t assume they know how to crop images, do screen captures, use a particular programme. Model and engender collaborative learning so that you do not get bogged down in computing rather than content.

What makes a good online teacher?

I have participated in some online/video learning and we do now need to consider how we could change ourselves and the next generation of teachers, in particular, into online educators. It is not simply about edutainment. There is a danger we shall confuse edutainment with creativity when real creativity comes from skills excellence and knowledge i.e. high level learning and knowledge. To get me and you started along the thinking path of what would make a good online teacher, then I offer the following ideas:

1.sense of audience/stage presence, as in a number of the TED talks. These people are often teaching a live audience as they are videoed and talking to us, so they have a real sense of audience needs and real capacity to engage the audience. Online teachers have to have some drama and television skills!

2.animation – of face, voice, body. I have watched number of dead pan educational deliveries on You Tube and it may not stop me learning but dead pan delivery with a droning voice is not going to have long term success.

3.interesting voice – the voice is crucial. It has to sound friendly, it has to be clear. It needs to be conversational and warm. It needs to vary its mood and tone.

4.some humour – works like a charm whether it be anecdotal or visual.

5.visuals – things to look at besides the person works well online so images, videos, diagrams all add to interest and the absorption of material, even if it is only text which highlights the main points.

6.good content – learners want to know. They do not want great preambles and context . Context can be integrated as you go along in the conversation. Content needs to be clear. The aims and objectives of what is to be learned need to be explained first. The structure of absorbing the material needs to be well thought out.

7.content reviewed – as you go along, reminders, connections and then a review at the end of what has been learned. Content is king.

8.narrative – content is always absorbed better if it attached to some kind of narrative so a logical context is established and the reasons for knowing this knowledge are unfolded. This is where something like the TED talks really do work well and someone who explains the value of the knowledge succeeds. People need to know what they can do with the knowledge and that is critical to online content because it is often delivered to a lone learner.

9. questions to think about – yes, why would you want to know what you are being taught. What might it be able to do for you? How might it be further developed. Make learners curious. Have they thought of what they could learn next?

10.colour – colour works well online. Colour in clothing, in images, in video, in the surrounding. The bland background is dull. The white screen is dull.

So it is a matter of finding the good examples of online learning and deconstructing them and analysing why they work so well… and it is always warmth, humour, animation and value.

Clean your computer

When you are always on your computer , always online and often having to plug in USBs from anyone, then it is really, really important to keep your computer running cleanly and well. You, like me , probably don’t know what to look for. You just know your computer isn’t right and not running properly. The easiest way out of this is to download and use a good cleaner and system utility. On Windows I have reliably used Advanced System Care for a couple of years now. Nothing else comes close and it takes a couple of minutes each week and order is restored. It means I don’t waste time on a computer which crashes and files which won’t work. On the MacBook I have reliably used Onyx for 6 months and it improved performance right from the start. It means that if I use it once a week I have no problems. My Mac can be destabilised for a little while with rogue files but it won’t crash and Onyx restores it to a perfect condition in about 5 minutes. On Ubuntu I use GConf.

Avatar generator

You don’t always have time to create an avatar and there are times when you need one online. Go here and make your own avatar in less than a minute!

Google Sketch Up

Google SketchUp really appeals to students. They are used to SIMS games and similar and have the capacity to work quite quickly with 3D elements. There is an educational link on the Google Sketch Up site which you can consult. It can be used to compliment the activities you are doing and make a change from 2D software.

Learn a language with podcasts

I blogged about the One Minute Podcasts here which are a wonderful example of just how helpful technology and our world can be in taking the burden out of learning. Podcasts are a good way to learn a language. The people who make the podcasts are usually native or near native speakers with very good accents and usually they produce something to listen to which is helpful, interesting and explains things well. the practise you get is not necessarily as intense as in a classroom but that is a good thing. They are a very good way to support learning a language or refreshing language skills. They are non threatening, success oriented and can give you a real feeling of achievement as well as a genuine feeling you are making progress. Most podcasts come as a series of lessons and can easily be taken with you anywhere on your MP3 player. Great use of time and a good way to improve your language skills in a multilingual, multinational, global society. There is quite a choice of podcasts here to practice some of the more popular languages. Multilingual is magnificent!!

Assessing Twiducate

I had no intention of assessing Twiducate.I wasn’t sure what it would do for me and my students and just thought it was something worth trying as we rolled out our One to One programme and had our laptops in class. I didn’t feel happy about using Twitter with younger secondary students. Twiducate is perfectly safe because you have total control. My students have never stopped loving it and still get excited when they have to go on there to do something. They have fun and know we do not have to be so formal, but they show a lot of respect and then some good humour at times. In all fairness I thought, we have been using this for two terms, they have put in a good effort,I should really reward them by giving them a mark out of 10 for their use of Twiducate. I didn’t want to go as formal as this rubric, but I can see you might have a need to seriously assess social media skills in this world. I was using this with 14, 15 and 16 year olds. The younger ones were far more at home. By looking at what they had written and how they contributed I could determine a mark which they were free to challenge and I would be prepared to defend. Twiducate was the one thing I have used which showed up some real learning gaps so that has given me something to mull about over the long break. I could see some students were far more adept at social media and it showed. There was a real split in how competently some students could use a social medium like Twiducate. I could see the learning gaps in their French because they were writing spontaneously. I could see their strengths too. I may well get that rubric out above and look at it for classroom use because I need to be clearer about where the gaps and strengths are. I have been left in no doubt by my students that Twiducate has been something they have valued in my classroom and which has contributed to their sense of happy participation in a lesson.Sometimes it is a simply as being able to say the word Twiducate because it makes them laugh but also makes them feel superior when they talk to others. It’s funny and fun in their heads. I now need to think about how I can get more out of it next year. My previous review is here.

PowerPoint Templates

If you are looking for some really good PowerPoint templates and a wide selection of them, TemplatesWise offers a really good range of templates for all your presentation needs.

Coolest word fields ever

Tag Galaxy is a word field generator, a tag cloud generator, an ideas generator and just about the coolest image selector going. You type a word into the field which comes up and then you have a whole galaxy of associated words and ideas. The students are just going to love this because it is kinetic. The more words, the more planets. If you double click on your original word, you will get an amazing array of pictures associated with your word from Flickr. If you double click on any of the the other planets you will get more words associated with that one.If you click on one of the pictures, it will bring it to the front. It is just a whole galaxy of fun and ideas! Students love interactive, they love movement and they love colour. They give this the big thumbs up!

Back up your files!

No more excuses, no more putting off. Now. Do it. Back up your files, back up your computer, back up your flash drives. Back up your work. As an e-teacher you cannot afford to lose the assignments and presentations you have worked on. Back up at home. Back up at work. keep a copy of everything and make it a habit to back up…NOW!! Time Machine on my MacBook took an hour to back up 37GB onto my mini external drive. Do it. Back up. THis time I have done it properly so it future Time Machine will pick up where I have left off and maybe I can keep my MacBook tidy. I am so bad at that.

Visual News Aggregator

Every 21st Century learning space should have it! A visual news aggregator. 10×10 is the creation of Jonathon Harris who has a very modern approach to our world.10×10 is a visual news aggregator whose sources are the rss feeds from Reuters, the BBC and the international news of the New York Times.It would be great to add some more major world newspapers so that it would truly represent world news and as a learning space tool for our century it would be invaluable. It is a clever way to present news and far more interesting than any other aggregator. You click on the picture, or one of the tags on the side of the pictures, and it will take you to links to the newspaper articles. Great way to present news because its visual aspect lends an artistic approach and that high appeal for students .

Teachers need Twitter

I wouldn’t be without Twitter. It is the best way to keep informed and up to date with trends, developments, news and views. I had a hard time on a conference day trying to persuade teachers that Twitter would contribute enormously to their capacity to be informed and develop content. At any given moment you can use Twitter Trends Maps to discover the current and hot topics anywhere on the planet. It is a great tool. If I am using Twitter my client of preference is TweetDeck. I use it because it runs on all 3 OSs . I also access Twitter from my iPod Touch. On TweetDeck I run 4 columns. One for current feeds, one for mentions, one for direct messages and then one or sometimes two for the current hot topics. At the moment it is #qldfloods and #edchat. I am getting all the current information about the Queensland floods and #edchat gives me good content, good ideas and I contribute as well. My subject area is French so I can run searches on #french , #learnfrench and #frenchvocabulary and I get and contribute plenty of good content. I started by following people and organisations I was interested in and it just grew from there and I now have plenty of followers. It is invaluable since I am never out of touch with what is going on. News sites turn over too slowly and news on Twitter is immediate, so is feedback and information from companies. I even run a couple of recipe feeds and that is great. Follow your interests, follow your area of expertise and follow your type of people. It all falls into place from there.

Video file converter for MacBook

For some reason it is easier and more successful to import dv files into iMovie than other formats which either will not import or are not as co operative as the dv file format. Streamclip is a fantastic fie converter for the Mac which will convert your files quickly and efficiently into dv files. The thing is, we don’t have a lot of time as teachers to faff around with things which won’t import and when iMovie says it will import MP4s and then does or doesn’t, it just is too frustrating. The dv files always work. Once you have imported your movie you can then save the file as you which in iMovie…it’s the importing of a video file which can block progress!

Look after your laptop

1. Ensure ventilation.
2. Don’t leave on the floor.
3. Clean screen with great care.
4. Don’t leave things on the keyboard and shut the lid.
5. Keep in a sturdy case.

More information here.

Image search in style

Search-cube is one of those classic, fuss free sites which does well what it plans to do! You type in a search term…like snow – and then the images are brought to you and you can decide how they will be presented in the cube format. Simple, slick and a nice way to gather images. We aren’t going to die of boredom wth our searches these days! Once you have your cube you can manipulate the images as you wish.

Put your name on your MacBook menu bar

Maths resources

Subtangent.com has a number of resources suitable for maths lessons including electronic versions of maths specific paper. The puzzles and games can be used as lesson start ups ,gap fillers or breaks inbetween mor challenging material and then there are other useful resources for you to try.

Look after your laptop battery

In a perfect world we’d all be doing the right thing. Lithium batteries respond well to being treated properly, so make an effort and maybe saving the cost of a new laptop battery will encourage you.

1. Charge the battery to 100%
2. Run the laptop until the battery is nearly run down…which is probably a normal working day.
3. Now you should rest it, which is a bit hard if you have homework! It should be turned off for 5 hours or more. Maybe that is better accommodated at the weekend. You do not have to treat your battery like this all the time.
4. Now you charge it back to 100% again.
5. If you can arrange to do this every term, you will improve your battery life. It is not something you have to do every day or every week.

In brief: charge, use, rest , recharge! (Not bad advice for yourself either!)

Mac .flv to .mp4 converter

This site is useful so that you can get the more widely played and recognised mp4 version of a file. It means you can use it on your mobile devices amongst other things! That’s it!

Connect your laptop to your TV

Online Tech Tips is a great site for self help on solving some of the problems you confront with technology at home and at school. Not all schools have whiteboards so here is a way of connecting your laptop to a TV. Online Tech Tips is a good site to consult because you get helpful videos, clear instructions and pictures of cables so you can identify them. It is a good example of how to teach people new skills!

Geek chic

One of the coolest geek presents I have seen is apps fridge magnets. I know everyone wants the latest coolest gadget, but we don’t all have that kind of cash, so it is nice to see and find things which encourage a geek chic touch. The circuit board necklaces are great and , in fact, with leather thonging, you could make your own and help reduce landfill. ThinkGeek has some good idea for geek presents which are a bit different. If you are really flash with cash, you could go all out and gift the augmented reality eyewear. Signs of things to come?

Easy Online Photo Effects

I am always looking for easy and effective online ways of customizing and enhancing photos or ways of organizing several photos. I am just not that good with image software and I am not that good with image manipulation and there is a reason I teach French! There is also a need, now we have laptops in lessons, to find quick and easy ways of coming up with some good images. Images really enhance content and students love to use images in their work. They were born into a very visual world. befunky.com is just the sort of site I need and in two minutes I had whipped up an image . At the moment befunky has some nice little Christmas decorations so that you can Christmas up your images. There is a range of image effects to choose from and then the premium version of befunky offers you more. I like that way of doing a site!

Microsoft .toolbox

I just got design principles 3 on .toolbox. It wasn’t that easy because there was a lot of information to absorb. I was so relieved when Anushka finally showed a video capture of her using the accessibility options in Windows 7. Movement! It was also good to look at the Accessible Media Player. toolbox is teaching me plenty of content but it is also making me aware of online learning needs. It is great to see images, movement and preferably a video of the person talking. I am not good with disembodied voices. Much of what I learnt today was making me think about students in a classroom and the User Centred Design approach would be a good place to start. Classroom e-learning materials have to be useful to the students, usable by the students and then have that desirability factor which everything seems to need to have these days. I am learning about design principles but I am also becoming aware of how to manage classroom materials and approaches for e-learning and today’s lessons at toolbox were really good at getting me to think along those lines.

Shake up your e-learning ideas

Well, that has given me a LOT to think about, how about you?

Decorate your computer for Christmas

I have decorated my computer for Christmas…and my laptop. I love doing it . This site offers some nice Christmas things for adults and children. There is a Christmas countdown and Christmas lights for your computer as well as some backgrounds and animated Christmas trees. This site offers some really interesting educational information on Christmas, some backgrounds, Christmas JavaScript games to download and much, much more! Have fun getting into the spirit of Christmas. Finally , go here and enjoy this lovely version of Jingle Bells.

Digital Storytelling

Jason Ohler is a gift to all teachers. His site is designed to task the worry and heavy duty work out of transferring your skills and knowledge to Digital Storytelling. He has a five part series which thinks through the approaches and rationale for you and he is making a supreme effort to enable your capacity to transfer from paper and pens to digital engagement of students. He has tips, help, ideas and a very methodical approach. He offers you the theory to consider as you go along and has created a site where you, as a teacher , are immediately drawn to what you do best – teaching. he is very aware, that as a teacher we are task rich and time poor and so we need a way of quickly and competently shifting our thinking and ideas into practice.

Downloadable Online Christmas Cards

In 2 minutes, I selected my card, wrote my message and downloaded it so I can send it off. Christmas card maker is the best idea ever! There are lots of choices of images, you can customise the cards easily and it is just a breeze. I like having my own digital Christmas cards to send off! Easy as.

V-Frog

A long time ago in the dark ages I studied biology at year 12 and the thing I could not bring myself to do was cut up an animal. I couldn’t do chemistry or physics because my maths just was not strong enough for that level of study. I argued very strongly not to be forced to cut up animals and fortunately my teacher realised how traumatised I was and worked with me. In the final exams I still did well. I have observed over the years a few students who have been like me. They have wanted to study biology but cannot bring themselves to cut up an animal and it is a very disturbing experience. I know those who have a commitment to biology and physiology will say it is the only way to get a true understanding of how things work. It was such a joy for me to find V-Frog and know that technology is providing us with an alternative to just cutting up so many innocent animals in class. I question the real need for it at school level but others with be able to explain why it is so necessary. V-Frog does not come cheaply, but if it is offset against purchasing animals and other dissection costs then it may well be a sound purchase. It can then be used year after year with no harm to creatures. You can access a free trial and you can buy your own private version. I should like to think this is something we could provide in schools to create a more inclusive curriculum for those who feel strongly about depriving a living thing of life.

Online Visual Effects

Dumpr is a horrible name for such a good site. In 3 minutes I had signed in , created a visual Christmas card from one of my photos (which you will see soon!) and found out there are other image effects I have access to. To get the full size , high quality image it is a paying site, but there are plenty of interesting things you can do and then download a decent image without paying the annual fee, which is very reasonable if you wish to make high quality copies of what you are doing. It’s fun and runs in several languages.

Free web conferencing tools

One of the things with laptops in the classroom is you can try our new ways of doing things and it means taking a risk, but without the doing there is no knowledge of how it can benefit you as a teacher or students as learners. This year I have tried a few new things. This year I am thinking of trying web conferencing. I have picked my class. They are really reliable students who will push through the nuisance value of not being quite sure what you are doing and they will help sort out issues. I am the one who works out how it all goes together and I am the one who works out what we can do with anything new in terms of work and then they enjoy pioneering the software and applications so we have a sense of success. I know Net Meeting works but we have Apples and no Windows so I am looking at these open source web conferencing tools so I can see what they do and how they can help us learn. In the end we may well find an application we have to pay for, but if I don’t know what to expect in terms of benefits then I wouldn’t be asking for an investment from anyone. It is really important as we pioneer technology in schools that we have a proper chance to work out how things can help and we are not forced to buy things to try them. Once we know what we are talking about, then yes, we would be able to make sensible purchases if necessary. I am grateful there is enough free software for me to be able to try things like web conferencing and I am thinking of starting with Web Huddle!

Microsoft WorldWide Telescope

If you want to explore the universe then the Microsoft Research WorldWide telescope will take you on a magical virtual tour . It has an education section and I encourage you to take the tour so you can see the possibilities for using this is class. The site keeps its data current and there are other aspects of the site which you can explore so that you get a better understanding of the universe and astronomy. It’s designed as a rich media experience so sit back and enjoy!

Make a Christmas Ornament Greeting

MakesSweet has an easy way of creating an electronic Christmas Greeting. You supply the picture or the text. You press on the green plus to add text or picture and then you can save it to your hard drive. Easy as!

Website speed test

I wrote previously about checking page loading on your site and I referred you to iWebTools. iWebTools doesn’t seem to be responding tonight and maybe the site is in maintenance or maybe it has gone the way of some web sites and just isn’t working any more. I have food another speed test site at rapid searchmetrics. This site has the advantage that it actually shows you what is using up space on your site and therefore maybe slowing the site down. I think I particularly need to look at image sizes even though I have been careful with sizing them. I could save some loading time there in particular.

Website Speed Test

Think big with BigThink

BigThink is a site more suited to teachers and tertiary students. There would be some secondary students who could manage it but it would need interpretation and planned exploration of ideas for most. It delves into the news and current ideas in a big way and brings expert and well informed opinion to bear in such a way that it does expand your ideas and thinking. One of the interesting articles on the site at the moment is a map of the world where big countries have become the nations with big populations. Australia then becomes Pakistan and our antipodean nation, Spain, becomes Australia. It is an idea which provokes considerable thought and to see the map isquite fascinating. There are articles about everything from current news to Alzheimers and it is good to read some well considered material on any given topic. The site is helpful and categorises information so you can find the material which might interest you easily.

Open resources for education

SchoolForge is the site where you can see what developments there are in open source educational software. By now most people are familiar with Moodle and Audacity and these are two software programmes which are helping teachers create new learning paths for their students.Moodle has become a great resource for teachers and those who use it , swear by it. Audacity has become popular because it is so easy to make podcasts using it. Open source provides some good software but it also levels the playing filed for those who cannot make a big financial commitment to educational software. It ensures education remains inclusive and social justice is achieved. SourceForge keeps you up to date with new developments and an overview of available software.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone and may you all have an enjoyable festive season with your family, friends and close ones. Enjoy the break and reinvigorate yourselves. Nothing wrong with face time. We can get back to the interface soon! I appreciate your support throughout the year.

Smart Defrag

Apple and Linux computers are very tidy minded with the files, but Windows tends to get fragmented files and to improve performance you need to defrag the computer on a relatively regular basis. You can set it to be done automatically through the Control Panel, but then you might be doing something and find your computer is a bit sluggish when , in fact, it is running a defrag in the background. I always like to see it happening. Windows changed and made a red box throwing up cubes which indicated a defrag and that was nowhere near as informative or mesmerising as watching all the little memory blocks being sorted out. I tend to find it a calming activity. It is better than waiting for the kettle to boil or watching paint dry. I actually find watching a defrag has a good effect on me! Smart Defrag by IObit is very effective and fast. You can see the blocks being tidied up and you can choose your level of optimisation. It’s a free download and a very handy piece of software to have on board. The most noticeable difference for me was how quickly my computer shut down after I had defragged it. Windows 7 has been very good compared with other versions of Windows, but you do need to do your house keeping and, to be honest, I quite like doing it. I miss it on the other OSs, but I have blogged about GConf for Ubuntu and OnYx for Apple. Both those programmes have been more than helpful to me.

Top Posts

Time to do a quarterly review again! My last top posts are here. So what were they last time?

1. Me TV – Ubuntu 10.04.
2. Twitter Clients for Ubuntu.
3. What Teachers Want.
4. Use iPad as a second screen.
5. EverNote for Everything.

So, onto this quarter.

1. Me TV -Ubuntu 10.04 by a long shot again.
Me-TV served me very well during the Delhi Olympics . I’ll blog about it again soon because I have tweaked what I am doing. I get a very clear picture and pick up all the channels with no hassles at all.
2. Use iPad as a second screen I guess people like to extend the use of their iPad and make it more than just a gadget. By setting it up as a second or slave screen it gives more computing flexibility.
3. Microsoft pptPlex for PowerPointSo, is Microsoft ever going to notice that this post has been consistently in my top 5 ever since I created it? I’d be using pptPlex for one to one learning if we were using Windows. It is unique and you can create e- lessons very easily in a hierarchical, logical fashion and then zoom in on what you want students to focus on. It is a great addition to PowerPoint and is a powerful classroom tool. I just wish they would develop it a bit more to enable some better customisation. I have no idea why they abandoned it and this blog is living proof it is something which is very popular and in demand.
4. Downloadable online Christmas cards This was a post I put in last week because I had been making Christmas cards to email. It just rocketed into the top 5! People like simple and straight forward things to do which can be shared.
5. Twitter Clients for Ubuntu This post continues to do well and why not? Personally I am still using Tweet Deck even though there were some issues. I resolved them again. My second preference is Gwibber.

Me TV – Ubuntu 10.04

I decided to swap my old TV tuner for a new one when I had the opportunity a while back, but I had been more than happy with the results and I blogged about it here. There were intermittent demuxing problems and sometimes I had to fiddle with the reception but not very often. I just thought I could do better. The Artec tuner was 2006 and it was time to upgrade. I decided on a Kaiser Baas USB TV stick netbook N1879 and I haven’t looked back. Not a problem. Not a hint of a problem. It has picked up all the digital TV and radio stations and records well. It changes screen size with a right click of the mouse and shows you underneath the picture, in one of the views, what is available. It works beautifully on Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04 but will not work on my Apple Mac. It may be a netbook TV tuner but I run it on my Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop and Dell hybrid desktop. Not a problem. As for the antenna, I just found an old rabbit’s ears antenna in my cupboard and attached the TV tuner to that. I twiddled the ears until I got a good picture on each channel, which took about 5 minutes or less, and have just left the ears as I set them. For 6 months now I have had perfect TV reception on Ubuntu and Windows 7. Love it!

New Year Countdown

Just got myself a New Year countdown ready for this evening. You can get one pertinent to your time zone from timeanddate. Happy New Year!

Story Boarding for e-learning

I wrote my original post here and was looking at the benefits of story boarding and found some tools to help. I had thought it would be a good way to get students to approach a number of tasks with their laptops. I wasn’t wrong. It was really important for us to include the story boarding part of our assignment so that the finished product had taken shape and form properly. There is a really good post here on Word Of Mouth where David Becker has written a guest post explaining very clearly the reasons for story boarding, how to turn that thought into a classroom reality and then he uses a very good example so that you can see what it looks like. I downloaded the story boarding template because I think it will be another good tool in my classroom and I am interested to see how students will respond to it because it is clearly set out. I have discovered that with story boarding it is important to have electronic versions of the story board which demonstrate that they can be easily filled out or the tendency is that students will vote with their feet (keyboards , actually) and go off and start doing their assignment their way. Laptop learning has to be reeled in sometimes so that the students focus on the content and not get lost in production faffing!

Easy Paint Programmes

Are you like me? Most of the time I just want a paint / graphics programme to resize images or crop them. I don’t need to be doing fancy things most of the time which is why I don’t teach media or art. I just want to puddle with images. On Windows I use Paint from the Accessories folder and then I have downloaded Paint.net which is a lovely little programme. For more complex things I have graphics programmes which have come with my digital cameras. On Ubuntu I use Gimp when I want to do something complex but the easiest paint programme for Ubuntu is mtPaint graphic editor. So easy and does everything I want. On the Apple Mac I use Adobe Photoshop or Gimp for more complex things but the easiest paint programme is Paintbrush. You can preset the image size and the format you want your images saved in. Doesn’t get easier than that. If I want to quickly do an artistic layout of images on the Mac or Windows, then I use Shape Collage which makes me look really good!

Photofiltre for easy graphics

Photofiltre for Windows is a cut above the easy photo software I blogged about yesterday and thanks to my friend Mireille in France I now know about Photofiltre which runs in several languages and is free. I have just installed it on my MacBook using Wine and as you can see it is working fine. I am assuming I shall be able to use it on Ubuntu too since I have installed Wine on there as well. On my MacBook I tried Winebottler first but it couldn’t convert it to a Mac app. Never mind. Photofiltre is really good because it does have some nice image filters to dress up your images and you can arrange a batch process so you can modify a number of images in one go. I like the lake mirror filter. That appeals to me greatly but I am Pisces.! Photofiltre is designed for Windows but Wine takes the worry out of accessing good applications when you are working on other OSs.

Google Docs

If you are like me and not sure whether Google Docs is for you and your classroom , you need to watch this video about asynchronous editing in Google Docs which @wootang01 kindly made for me! That is the power of the Internet and online learning. @wootnag01 just happened to mention Google Docs on Twitter so I asked a bit more and a bit more…in the end he made me a video. That is how you teach someone!! Show them how and give them their own copy so they can take it all onboard in their own time. The one time I was going to use Google Docs last year for synchronous learning and editing the site was blocked. It wasn’t supposed to be blocked, but these things happen in schools. By the time it was resolved the teaching moment had passed so now I want to pick that up in this new school year. I can see a lot of value in us working as a class on a document. It would really improve our writing skills in French and I know my students would love it. My concerns about asynchronous editing is that someone could hand me in work which had actually been written by more than that student. I need to know I can verify the authorship and I won’t know that until I use it. I am very appreciative of @wootang01′s help but you know, this is what technology in education is all about…and social media! You do not have to wait to learn. I can also recommend the other video on Google Docs for language exchange where all of this started. For some reason neither of them will embed in WordPress , neither by URL linking nor by using the embed code.

E-learning leadership

As teachers we should not underestimate ourselves. If we work together and follow our own principles and guidelines we have a very powerful capacity to work collaboratively to create interesting and absorbing learning environments. Sharing our knowledge and using the technology at our disposal so we can strengthen and inspire each other is crucial. It is not just a matter of renovation, it is about regenerating our profession.

You know you are a techie teacher when…

This is hilarious and it got me off to such a good start in the new year. Lisa at blog.simplek12 has come up with the giveaway signs of being a techie teacher. I got the link via We are Teachers. Their newsletter pops into my inbox on a regular basis and is always full of inspiring and positive ideas. I rest my case about belonging to online learning networks.

Students want videos

There is no doubt about it and it should not surprise us. Students want videos and feel they learn better with videos. They are a generation brought up on TVs and computers. No surprises there. Allow my own students to reiterate this:

” I like it when we watch a video and have to write what they’re saying because it helps me figure out words I don’t know and helps me remember words that I have already learnt.”

“I like it when we watch videos because it helps us to learn and it is also enjoyable so we will absorb more information.”

“I enjoy watching videos in French because it really makes me listen and begin to understand the conversations. I can pick up basic information and learn what things are. It sinks in more.”

” I like it when we watch short French videos and also when we make our own slide and video presentations.”

“I enjoyed watching the video of the French girl telling the story and watching Phineas and Ferb because I learnt a lot of new words but it was also fun.”

“I enjoyed the video conversation activity we did. I think it was fun and enjoyable but I also learnt a lot about doing a French conversation.”

“My favourite project was the iMovie project in which we had to write an oral in French. It allowed me to hear how I pronounce things so that I could fix some of my mispronounced words.”

“I like French when we do interactive stuff like making a movie or putting together a slide show. I also like working in pairs or groups a lot.”

“I feel that the introduction of the laptops has meant excellent things for this class. We do a lot of work with technology and I think it is a convenient and faster way of learning. The student must take responsibility for staying on task and I think that teaches us skills that we’ll need in later years of study. The laptops have meant a huge number of resources are accessible to us at any time.”

” I really enjoyed the projects we did throughout the course of the year, especially the video conversation . It was a very creative way to learn and it was fun and educational at the same time.”

We are asked each year, as part of literacy development across the school , to survey our students in a prose under supervision assignment. This way the students get the practice writing and we get some very valuable feedback. I use short videos of two to five minutes and I always make sure the students have a task to complete while they are watching. Since I teach French, it is often trying to keep a list of what they have understood. I have tested them later and they do remember things well this way. I try and keep the videos topical and I have found out they will go home and come back to class with recommendations of what we could watch! When they make their own videos we do a draft script and then I make sure they know the software before we do any recording. They have loved this and worked very hard and have been quite inventive.

Shutter Screenshot Editor for Ubuntu

Shutter is a pretty useful desktop tool for Ubuntu. You can install it form the instructions from the Shutter site. Add the first line of code into Terminal, press enter and then add the second line and press enter. The site also gives you links to down load packages. You can grab an area of screen and then edit it right from inside Shutter. It has some good features and it is very easy to use. You can then export it to folders or webpages directly from inside shutter. This is this is the easiest screenshot tool I have ever used because the editing and then exporting /saving are all there. It’ll be great for making teaching presentations since I can save the edited screenshots as jpegs and then use other programmes to make the presentations.

Using Jing for Screencasts

Screencasting is something I am currently trying to learn. It means I will be able to make tutorials with sound and video and do screen captures. A lot easier than trying to make a doc or pdf with the instructions of how to do something. When you can see what people are doing sit is so much easier. Jing is free software you can use on a PC or Mac. This video allows you to see some of the possibilities and if you go to the Jing site you will get even more information. It is also a way students can quickly help each other out and since it can have a chat function as well I am sure it will have high appeal!

Windows Live Movie Maker

I am actually trying to find a programme to make screencasts to do desktop tutorials. I still haven’t found anything that will operate with sound and video that suits my needs. I happened across Windows Live Movie Maker in my start menu and thought I’d take a look. It comes free with Windows 7. Within a few minutes I had images loaded, screen transitions, music and was putting in captions. It was really easy. The easiest movie maker programme I have used and I am no movie expert. It took me a little while to make it look really good and I have since loaded this movie up onto my YouTube channel. Doesn’t come easier than that. You can load it directly from Windows Live Movie Maker to YouTube but I found it didn’t preserve the integrity of my video so I had to reload it directly from YouTube. Not sure why that happened. I am now in the process of making a little film for my French class to teach them snow vocabulary. It really is easy!

Teach with videos

The wonderhowto site has thousands of videos to help you teach and learn. They have organised the videos into categories and so it is much easier to select and find what you are looking for. It is also easier for browsing. There are over 2000 maths videos and over 1000 science ones. There are also videos for learning other languages and plenty of them. A video can transfer information quickly in a short time and in a way which students like. A site well worth bookmarking!

3D Biology lessons

“Much more interesting than looking at a flat text book,” added Polly.

I was only joking in my Geek chic post for Christmas that you could buy someone some augmented reality eyewear. Well, I am here to eat my hat and tell you that they are already using these things in Biology classes at a school in Reading in England and it is a massive success. You don’t need me to tell you about the article because you can read it for yourself and watch the video. Technology in the classroom is not just about transferring the good old tasks into a technological version , it is about rethinking how to approach teaching using technology. As I said in my post yesterday we now have students brought up on the internet , computers and TV. They have a different approach and different learning needs which we need to address so that we are still the teachers. The students at this school obviously have been finding this an exciting way of learning. That is what it is about – making them want to learn! I have found with computers I am more able to get students to deal with more difficult tasks than if I were dragging them through with pens, paper and text books and with the resources of the internet it is far easier to find texts which suit their needs and my purposes. We still use the electronic version of the book to guide us and we still do our workbook exercises on the laptops…but they respond far better to the interactive versions I supply of practice.

Internet Safety

February 8th is Safer Internet Day. It’s a good day to change your passwords, clear out your cache, clean up your computer and use a programme like advanced system care to go through your Windows system and clean up your computer. For Ubuntu there is Ubuntu Tweak. For Apple there is Onyx. It is not just about cleaning your computer, though. You need to remind yourself and others that there are predators of one sort or another out there and they like to do harm. Conversations around those topics do not go astray. For teachers and trainers there are some great video and game resources at Thinkuknow, a site which deals with a lot of cyber unsavouries and puts you and your classes in the driver’s seat.

Current world disaster and emergency map

The RSOE EDIS gives you a real time visual look at which disasters and emergencies are occurring where. If you scroll down to beneath the map then the events are catalogued and to me, it is surprising how many volcanoes are erupting. The information is current and each visual tag has more information if you hover over it. An extraordinary site. Link it with real time searches on Twitter and you will not be able to get more up to date information. The world has changed.

E-learning Wishlist 6

Last time I had a wishlist I was looking at how I could easily change my current classroom into a better e-learning space for very little financial outlay. I doubt it will happen because the school has major commitments to large structural changes and updating which means the small, inexpensive things will be shelved because that is how it is. I can live in hope on that one and it made me happy to think current learning spaces wouldn’t need much to change to more viable e-learning spaces. Try as I might , I cannot get a stable VGA connection to my whiteboard. You only have to brush it and then you get a coloured screen – green , red, yellow. The kids like it and the techies and I have tried hard to stabilise that connection. HDMI would be better I am sure. I am very happy with the remote control of my Mac to the whiteboard through my iPod Touch. All of that has been very impressive and not very hard to do. It is something which gives me more flexibility and really impresses my students. I am able to keep well in touch with the new developments by running this blog and then using the right searches on Twitter so that has really come along and the last thing I wished for was to have my dataview moved down so I could service it myself and take some work away form the technicians. Probably no hope on that one. So what am I wishing for now?

1. A Mac laptop with a bigger screen. The white MacBook is cute and a good size but I find I get eye strain. Enlarging things mean I scroll around and that is inconvenient. No amount of wearing glasses has helped. I just want a bigger laptop screen.

2. I am still looking for a suitable programme to do desktop screencasts for tutorials. I just can’t find the one which suits me that I can use and it will run audio and sound as well. I don’t want to do the bits separately.

3. Solid internet connections which never run out! I always have plan B but faffing around isn’t how you develop the new learning environments and approaches.

4. An easy way of clipping audio or sound. I mean easy. I want to start, press a button, play and then press a button to stop it.

5. Teachers to get on the Net – on Twitter, blogging, on teacher community sites. It will strengthen , broaden and deepen the knowledge pool. It will keep us all in sync.

Flood Relief – A chance to help

Teaching by example is probably what we all believe in. When it comes to a crisis situation then it is important that we lend a hand to those who need our help. So many schools and teachers have been affected by our colossal floods affecting Queensland and Victoria in particular. Huge areas have gone under water and so much has been destroyed. As we gear up for our new school year, then it is important to think of our teachers who are having to start with little or nothing. The Teach This site has started a campaign so that we can all easily help as we get into our start up. The site itself has a wealth of wonderful resources. Take a look!

Audio and Video Screen Capture

It’s easy when you know how and it is even easier when you have the software you feel comfortable with. I now have two screen capture programmes which do the audio and video at the same time. I can navigate my desktop, talk and capture it as a video. With Freez Screen Capture I can save the file to my computer as an .avi. Jing creates a support community and you can load your screencasts online so that others can share easily. The Jing site shows you so much about how you can make this work for you. My main concern was getting it all working. Both Jing and Freez screen capture are free and they both create very clear videos with good sound quality. It’s a lot easier than I thought. I am told that Camtasia is the best software you can buy for screen captures. Now I need lots of practice so I can make video tutorials!

21st Century Learning

Collaborating, sharing, networking, informing…in the 21st Century we are what we share.

DNA Extraction

howtosmile.org is an invaluable site for Maths and Science teachers. You can belong to the site and become a contributor and the bonus in that is the more we contribute to sites like this as teachers, the more material available for us all. Collaboration! The link will take you directly to the DNA extraction experiment. What impressed me is that the experiment was set out very clearly and then to the left are the multimedia links and options. Then there are the keywords which can contribute to the literacy standards of students and be particularly helpful to students learning English as a second language. Comments are also allowed which is a great way to get more and better ideas for any assignment. People who comment are invariably helpful and positive so it is an efficient way to work on improved practices and curriculum delivery. The other advantage of a site like this is when assignments are presented like this then we hare saving printing and electricity costs. It is far kinder to the environment to have material available in this format on line so the site is a good example of how we can help ourselves and our planet.

Social Media Learning Checklist

At last. Social media are not something to be integrated. They are already there. They are already playing their role. They are tools to be used. The Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies has clarified the ways in which social media can be used to improve individual and organisational learning. It differentiates the different learning stakeholders quite well and so provides a good basis for any discussions with individuals or groups about what the learning gaps are in social media. It is not about using Twitter , Facebook or FormSpringMe.It is about whether people can use social media, whether they know what avenues there are for social media involvement and whether they know how to make the best use of these tools for their own learning and helping others to learn. We live in a connected world. Social media are one of the ways in which we connect. They are one of our learning and promotion networks. This blog , for instance, does very well through Facebook and Twitter. I don’t promote it on Facebook but I do promote it on Twitter. Social media do the rest as do the links on the side to Facebook and Twitter.

ICT skills checklist

There are so many things you can do on a computer it is important to keep a clear picture in your head about what you can and cannot do so you can see the progress and the learning gaps. Students I have worked with have found it invaluable to do a skills checklist because it makes them realise they have knowledge gaps and do have things to learn.It also enables them to see what they have as ICT skills assets. For the students I have worked with their gaps have largely been in database knowledge and then a number of them have media gaps. It changes , though , because our world is changing. Currently there are these many jobs which require ICT skills. A simple overview of skills can come from this checklist. There is then a very comprehensive list which you can download from the NSW Public Schools site. This checklist is invaluable because you can build your own custom lists for training or working out where you are delivering ICT skills in the curriculum. Fantastic audit list. I check these lists for myself from time to time and work out what I need to do next. Computers can be daunting but they can be very helpful when they supply you with such comprehensive checklists!!

Learn to blog

The more teachers are coming on the Net to share their ideas , the more the world is learning there is an important role educators can play in the development and underpinning of good practice on the Net which enables all to share the benefits of being digitally connected. Blogging is one of those benefits. I have blogged since 2003 but now we have the One to One programme I am finding blogging is taking on a new role in my life and my classroom. One of the ways I rally my classroom resources is by having a subject specific blog. My French blog initially started because I had student teachers asking me to make my ideas available. I also had ex students asking me where they could learn French. The school then went into One to One and I thought I could use a blog to help me organise my classroom. I put media and interactive materials on my blog so I can quickly find them. It means I have the unit materials there and ready to go. I also put up grammar points or useful sites and then I put up interactive practice and things for students to be able to do if we have some spare time. The laptop students have made good use of this blog to help them while they are at home and it has helped to fast track students who have learning gaps. I then run this blog to help teachers and students become more aware of what is available in terms of classroom technology. So, if you want to blog, WordPress has opened up a teaching corner for you so that you, as a new blog learner , can get support and ideas to open and run your own blog. That is what I like to see! So visit Learn WordPress.com and welcome to the blogosphere.

Information is Beautiful

David McCandless has been specialising in infographics and visual representations of our world. All of the information has a surprise factor and the images themselves are interesting. This one on Because Every Country is The Best at Something only has Australia as best at car theft. That’s sad. David McCandless cites his sources so these images would provide some excellent material for discussion and further research. My own personal favourite is Colours in Cultures.

Apple Keynote 08 Tutorial

It’s unfortunate that Apples’ presentation software is called keynote because if you are searching for help you will get a lot of keynote addresses to conferences which Apple has made and not a lot comes up on tutorials for keynote. So try searching for keynote tutorials because there are some good ones. The one I have here is for beginners so that you can get used to using Keynote. It also helps you quickly migrate from PowerPoint to Keynote. Keynote presentations can be saved as movies for specific purposes. Keynote presentations can also be imported into iMovie very easily so you can create more complex multimedia presentations. There is also an iPhone or iPod Touch application, Keynote Remote which will run Keynote by remote so you just swipe across your hand held device and allow you to walk around your teaching space.

Create talking avatars

I took a risk today because I had really been pushing my year 11s today with their vocabulary for the new assignment, some grammar and aural comprehensions. I needed to lighten it up. I had heard about Voki so I thought we could start a presentation on it and continue with it next week. They have to present themselves in French. Within 30 seconds their were shrieks of excitement and a lot of laughter. Then there was some serious silence, some sharing of tips and techniques and silence. We realised we needed to sign up to get the Vokis in a form we can share as class presentations. So we signed up and they got going. They worked on their French for what they are going to record for the Voki to say and then they had a lot of fun choosing and shaping their Voki. Tuesday next week we’ll really work on it because they are all going to look at the site properly at the weekend. I had NO motivational problems . They all were totally committed to this and I am so glad I took that risk. It meant when we put that on hold and went back to the serious vocabulary development for their summative piece, they were able to fully concentrate again. Try Voki. It looks like it is going to be a great help for learning any language or encouraging language development. It was also clear the students who are a bit shy has the perfect medium for practising their language skills.There is a good educational section on Voki for you to consider.

Starting the year with Twiducate

Last time I looked at Twiducate it was after a 6 month trial with my One to One students and it had worked very well. This time I have a chance to start it from the beginning with some interesting twists! Twiducate is a perfectly safe site for training students in social media skills without putting them at risk. I wrote my classes in and then transferred the number passwords to “petits papiers” – little bits of paper – which I gave to a student to issue as I did the roll. I have 3 classes. One is a class who used Twiducate last year, have laptops and 3 new members. The second class won’t get their laptops until next term. The third class is new to the school and new to French. I assumed the year 8 (youngest students) might jump at the chance to be able to use Twiducate. Assume nothing. These are lovely students and when I showed them Twiducate there was a resounding flop sound and I couldn’t even get them to tell me why. I’ll find out eventually so I have shelved that for now. The second class is year 9s who are waiting for their laptops. They were excited and agreed to sign on at home and update their profile in French and pick their avatar. I shall use it as a homework site and may well use that Twitter rubric I mentioned in the last Twiducate post to assess them. Already half of them have done what I asked and I had given them until next Tuesday. They must have left school and got straight on their computers at home! That is how much they rate and value Twiducate! So I’d like to suggest a spot on Twiducate for students to be able to comment about Twiducate or offer suggestions. I have even received a note from a student who was going to change out of French that he is no longer going to do that.Twiducate power! My year 11 class was so glad to be back on Twiducate and most of them have updated their profiles, got their avatar and their first responses in French to my question on Twiducate were far longer and more accurate. They even loved the chat function which is new to them. I found out I can send a chat message and it goes to them all. We have promised to find out more ways of using that.If we leave Twiducate open they will be able to ask me questions and send me messages. This class loves to “chat” in French. So my class of new students has got me stumped. I won’t push them into it. I shall have to try and work out why they were not impressed when every other class has been so excited about it. I actually have a really solid basis for assessing Twiducate and giving it a good run this year.

Interactive Maths

I was watching bacteria grow exponentially right before my very eyes. It grew so much I nearly broke my browser! The site is called the Math Warehouse but that is a bit of a misnomer. It should be called the Maths Funhouse because I was actually enjoying what I was looking at and finding on the site. I confess I have no real commitment to, or interest in Maths. That is why I teach French and have taught other subjects. As I looked around the site I could see there were some really interesting things to find out about and the site did all the work for me because I don’t have a head which can think mathematically, so because it was showing me information clearly, I could actually engage with those activities and understand what I was supposed to be doing. As a maths teacher you might see this differently, but I would find this a really good site for trying to get across some the very things which block people from understanding maths. Really look around it. It has a lot to offer.

Edmodo

If you do not have a Learner Management System then Edmodo is a very safe alternative with access to your classes and other teachers. If you watch the video you will see it is a very comprehensive learner management system for technology based classes . It is a way you can share resources and access resources as a teacher. No school has to be disadvantaged this way and teachers and students can interact safely in a social network which operates as a learner management system. You can access the Edmodo site here which also has a blog and a Twitter account so you can keep fully informed. One of the real advantages of Edmodo is it is accessible to mobile phone users so you and your students can keep completely and easily up to date.

Let’s dance

Dance Phenomenon is a new Australian site for dancers. It is designed to create better exposure for dancers and it certainly showing us how to trip the light fantastic in the technology age. The site is still a work in progress but , before long, it will be a hive of activity for the performing arts. It is an opportunity to attend online dance classes, find out about dance news and auditions and a showcase for dancers .It is an online venue for dancers to be encouraged, supported and aired. Translate this into any skill like music, writing, art, sport and you have a good blue print for how we can muster resources and interact in cyberspace. Great way for students to see what it is possible to achieve in an area they love and a great way for people with a chosen interest to advertise, promote and reinforce themselves. PR and education are simultaneously delivered on this site which is making the most of our online communities.

International Children’s Digital Library

The ICDL is mustering many of the well loved children’s stories of yesteryear and quality children’s literature in many languages. It is becoming an archive and irreplaceable resource for language development and culture. The books are available as e-books and can be read on the site by turning the pages. The driving force behind the site is tolerance and respect for cultures. Award winning books are also featured and some very valuable links out to sites which promote reading and writing for students.

Voki

My students and I had a lot of fun with Voki today. We tried it out last week but they went home and tried it out there just to get the hang of it better.All that with no prompting from me! We did an oral for French using it and we tried the options so we could see what we thought. On Friday I will get feedback from the students to see what they think. They had to write 10 sentences to introduce themselves as this is something which you always have to do when you are speaking another language. They loved choosing their avatars and playing with the voices. The group then split distinctly into two. Those who were not so confident could put their sentences into Voki and then choose a French voice with a French accent. The male voices were marginally better but they were all quite good. The synthesizers had a bit of trouble with a number of French vowels in a row. It wasn’t a bad problem but the students wanted to change what they were saying so it sounded better. They were taking a pride in how well their avatars were speaking French. The students who were confident recorded their own voices onto the avatar and did the same thing. Changed what they were saying so the avatar wouldn’t run some vowel sounds together. I can see already it is helping them improve their ear for French but it is also creating an environment where they will write French quickly just so they can get to their avatar! I also noted we got the oral done in half the time and so had time to work on a bigger project. Voki would help native speakers develop speed and confidence with speaking as well.

Missing Windows?

I had my own private mission to be able to live without Windows. Doesn’t pay to be OS dependant when the world is ever changing and technology is changing at a phenomenal speed. So I blogged the day I had achieved that goal. I run Wine on Ubuntu and my Apple Mac so I can use Windows applications and access my Windows drive. Oddly enough it is a rare occurrence and these days I use Windows when I want to, but still, there are times when I want things which are saved under Windows or normally run under Windows. I really think applications need to be multi platform and a lot of them are these days. On the Mac you just download an install Wine and it’s pretty straightforward from there. Ubuntu takes a little more time but is quite easy. This YouTube video shows you step by step how to install Wine and use it on Ubuntu.

Cook it!

If you teach cooking, and even if you don’t this is a very well thought out site for immersing yourself in an interactive way in cooking , food and recipes. There is some fascinating information about what people have eaten across the ages and then there is the recipe builder software which is quite fun.Cookit is a comprehensive site and provides a teacher section and support for using the software. I really like the way everything is so well organised and effectively explained .

Printable St Valentine Envelope

This is a pretty St. Valentine envelope students or you can print for St. Valentine’s Day. I have found students really enjoy creating something for St. Valentine’s Day and they do it with great gusto. There is a wide choice of activities here should you feel you have time to celebrate the day at school.

Which interface are you?

I have just bought a Telstra Glide mobile phone which is going against market forces really. I didn’t even know they exist. You hear about one or two phones and that is it. First lesson in technology – look for what you need. I needed this phone and have been looking since Christmas. I have an iPod Touch so I don’t need another scrolling touch gadget and certainly not one which is in danger of cracking the screen. I love my iPod Touch and really enjoy the apps, the podcasting capabilities and the fact you can carry so much in such a small gadget which also has wi-fi access and can run my MacBook. I wanted a separate phone. I needed one with a keyboard. I type much better on a real keyboard and am a total klutz on a touch keyboard. It is just too annoying and makes me feel stupid. So that is the second lesson. Technology should actually suit you. Some students will have adapted to touch technology quickly and easily. Others will feel better with a keyboard. Others would rather a mouse than a track pad. To optimise learning we have to optimise the use of the tools and not straight jacket ourselves into what is popular. I can be disadvantaged on a touch screen. The third thing I learned which was really brought home solidly is the Telstra Glide comes with computer software which enables you to manage your phone. Nothing new here but it came up as a totally unadorned and very straight forward text based interface. I zipped around it at lightning speed. I realised I am so comfortable with totally text interfaces and even though I like pretty colours and pictures, I learn and operate best when I just have files and text. Complete change from the iPod computer interface where I have to hunt around to find what I am looking for. Too many distractions for me. So , now I am wondering how many students are being disadvantaged because we have very visual interfaces now. Before people were disadvantaged because computing was all text based. It is something we need some concrete information on so we have an idea of percentages of students who benefit from visual interfaces and things like touch screens and then those who benefit from text based interfaces. All this from one little phone which has the best of both worlds..and I can use my fingers or a stylus. I love options!

New Blekko Search Engine

Blekko is so new it is still in beta testing. It comes up with a wider variety of results when you put in a search. Search engines keep throwing up the same results and they don’t necessarily cover what you want nor a broad range of suitable material. One reason to try SweetSearch too. With Blekko you can do slash tag searches and it gives you examples of how to do that in the left hand margin. It also has a slash tag of the day which is a nice feature for a search engine. I guess the best thing for you to do is to put in searches, as I have and see whether you like the results.

Clover Diary for Apple Mac

Clover Diary is easy to download and install and runs in English and Japanese. I can’t put French accents on very easily, but that is not a big problem. It is a very simple interface which keeps note of what I want to do, vocab lists, and other bits and pieces I might want on a daily basis. There is a calendar view and overview and cute little emoticons for your mood! It is highly useable and useful!

World Maths Day

Something different! World Maths Day is March 1st and the challenge is to answer a billion Maths questions, set a new record and fundraise for your school and Unicef. Students love a good challenge and this one is awe-inspiring. Can the world answer a billion Maths questions? I can see on the site we have some Australian school and students already signed up. The competition is really well organised and provides the resources you need. Go for it!

View Earth

Choose your satellite, zoom in and out, get an update from the moon or sun, make it light, make it dark….you could play with this site for ages! Earth and moon viewer is one of those fascinating sites to visit. If you really are interested in these things and want even more information, go to the main site where there is plenty of material and links out to keep you absorbed for hours.

Magic Pen for Mac

Magic Pen is an application for the Mac so that you can write on your screen. This tutorial shows you how and then there is the YouTube video. You can download Magic Pen from CNet .It took me a little while to get it going. It works more easily if you run it from the desktop application shortcut. Click that and then the top left corner of your screen. Took me a couple of goes to get it right. To go back to mouse click on file and then ignore mouse. That brings the mouse back! To clear the screen of your pen work, then go to file and clear pad. Quite handy really once you get the hang of it.

Facebook is publishing Phone Numbers

EVERYONES PHONE NUMBER IS NOW PUBLISHED ON FACEBOOK!! . Go to the top right of your screen, click Account then Edit Friends. Go to the left side of your screen and click Phonebook. You will now see all your friends’ phone numbers. Please repost to let your friends know this is happening so they can remove their numbers. You do this by changing your privacy settings. (Privacy Settings-Phone-Customize- select Only ME in dropdown box)

Five One to One Basics

Working with students with laptops means you have to rethink your approaches and genuinely involve yourself and students in a new approach to learning or it is more web surfing , more spreadsheets and more word processing…at what cost? Rethinking it all if you have a joy of running the class from the front and watching and interacting with your students can be a bit of a challenge. After nearly a year of one to one learning I have these basics to offer:

1. Be clear about the real and genuine problems in your class in terms of individual students, the group and the environment. Work out how you are going to address them. Can you trust them all to do the right thing on their laptop? How will you solve that? What will you do if you have flakey internet access? What will you do if everyone works really well on a laptop but you have one student who is a technophobe? What will you do if the students start telling you how to use your computer?

2. Draw students in gradually to their laptop lessons. What do you plan for them to do? What might it look like when it’s finished and how might it help them in real life or later on? Do you have some good examples of what you want them to achieve? Do you have a poor example of what you want them to do and challenge them to do better. I find the latter works really well with laptop lessons! Students love overcoming mediocre!

3. Make things easy. Show them on the whiteboard the things they think they might not be able to do. Get them started on the first bit . Ask them to do a dummy run for 5 minutes and then compare notes of how the approach could be improved. Make it light hearted and uplifting but tell them when they will have to try really hard to accomplish or achieve something. Literally organise the one to one and let them approach you one at a time for 10 minutes or whatever you say until all the bugs and problems are resolved. The others need something clear and precise to do.

4. Never assume. What you value and like on a computer is not necessarily what they like and value and each students will have their likes and values. This is the basis for sharing and part of your job is to help them value their own way of being on a computer. It really is individual. Your second job is to get them to accept there are different approaches and ways of doing things with technology but you will have to agree on the core approaches for any task. Will it be recorded? Will it be a movie? Does it have to be a doc? Is acknowledging pictures important? How many pictures? How many slides? All these things can be agreed to. Allow them an opportunity to suggest ways of doing things. Share and get feedback.

5. Keep asking them about their experiences and ways of looking at things on a computer until you understand blocks, blind spots, knowledge gaps, things they love. Talk through what you are doing as you are doing it so they understand how you are approaching and creating as you use a computer. In lots of ways it is a about patience and tolerance because people really do use computers quite differently and we move forward by sharing our approaches and ideas. Make sure they know why you are saying and doing what you are saying and doing.

Animoto

Animoto is an online site for making quality short videos. It is handy because it can access your photos on sites like Facebook and Flickr and so making a movie might be a quick follow up to taking all those images! It also means you can access images under the creative commons licence to make a video. There are some good examples of that can be done on the the sample videos tab. Windows Live Movie Maker and iMovie will make good movies too, but Animoto is very good at building confidence because you will get a completed video you are proud of. In terms of bolstering students who are not very confident with moving pictures it is a site worth knowing and trying.

eSchool News

eSchool News which keeps very up to date on news in technology for education and the classroom. There are ideas, information and some good materials for discussion the varying merits of introducing classroom change with technology. It is a thinking site but also a place where you can keep yourself current in terms of the possibilities for technology in education. The turnover of material is good and it is not a site which just stands still! Plenty of good resources are to be had.

Seismic Monitor

The recent earthquake in Christchurch New Zealand has had a big impact on us in Adelaide because it is our sister city. We all feel for the people in Christchurch trying to manage this destructive event and we are thinking of them. The Seismic Monitor map tracks and identifies earthquakes around the world and gives current information. You can zoom in on areas of the globe and get a lot of information about the patterns and intensity of earthquakes.

Smart Planet

We were all talking about the sunspots last week and the effect they were having on communication and could have on communication. SmartPlanet is a site which explores the current scientific and technological progress and initiatives we have and how we are using those developments for problem solving and improving our conditions. There are numerous articles like the one on how mobile phones create more activity in our brains, how bilingualism improves our brain power and then articles on robot technology and space exploration. The articles, often with videos, are designed to keep us thinking and to look at where our learning and development gaps are so the reading is both interesting and compelling. If you are a science teacher there is plenty of current information about cutting edge development and research.

One to One lesson tips

1. When they are busy on their laptops , stay out of their way and let them approach you. A good time to help students who are struggling!

2. Do not give them too many options or choices with what to do. They view this as piling on the work. Be clear and specific.

3. Limit distractions. Work out the sequence of events for them.

4. Give clear directions and instructions. Tell them clearly what they have to complete and what the time frame is. Highlight where they do have options.

5. Explain the context. Why are they doing this? How will it help them? Insist they stay with your context in class.

6. Explain subject specific or technology terms.

7. What is the fall back position? What if they cannot do what you are asking them to do on a computer?

8. Show them how to troubleshoot and find the work arounds. This is the time they usually have some good input as well.

9. Keep them active. Do not allow bottlenecks or waiting time.

10. Alert them to the tough, tricky bits and the routine procedures or they will see it as boring.

11. Be consistent in your approach to assignments and lessons with laptops.

12. Think out the first steps they will do carefully so they are on track quickly. If you can show them a finished product of how their assignment could look.

Make a strong password

Making a strong password is essential to online safety. This video gives you some tips but I would still find it hard if I customised my passwords that way. The problem is that we all have numerous sites we belong to and even more sites we have to register with in order to benefit form the site. It is getting out of hand and becoming a major headache. This is why people use easy passwords and something they can remember and they repeat it more or less. The video gives a much better approach but I still think we need help with all the online registrations we have to complete on a daily basis just to exist in cyberspace. Sharing how we manage this is essential really, so I appreciate this video.

Oral assignments on iMacs

My year 9 students won’t get their laptops until next term so I have spent this term getting them used to a technology approach for learning a language. At the moment I use my white board in class and then we use the computer room for 2 lessons a week. We also use Twiducate for homework and for giving me feedback about what I am doing. I must say they are very good at adapting and are very keen to try out new things. We were going to use Voki for the oral assignment because there are some good French voice synthesisers. They had prepared 20 sentences to introduce themselves as an avatar. That was all easy because they loved the avatars and so were keen to get their sentences together. We couldn’t record our own voices because the network blocked flash as we still use some Windows computers. What I then had to decide on the spot was how to resolve this. What we did was use Voki to rehearse the sentences which the students had cut and pasted into Voki and then could play and hear how to say it . They could still consult with me when they wanted to. Then we used the microphone button on Garage Band to record our voices. Some students played their recording to me on the iMac, some saved it to a USB and brought it to me so I could listen on my MacBook. These students have one year of French and the standard was impressive. When they can do it on their MacBooks it will be easier because they can record on Voki at home or we can still do it this way in class. Read some of their feedback. It speaks for itself:

I think it was great using garage band for the orals. It was a lot easier because I shake when I talk in front of audiences.

I think that working with garage band and Voki is good because you don’t get quite as nervous as going up in front of a class and doing a oral.

I thoroughly enjoyed presenting the French oral on Garage Band, because there was no pressure from the rest of the class and we could rehearse our speeches several times. I hope that next time I don’t have as many problems with my usb and iMac!

I really enjoyed doing the oral presentation on a computer. It was something new I never did before. Of course there were some problems, like this weird echo on the background, because of which I had to restart my presentation 3 times, but overall I had lots of fun with Voki and the Garage Band.

Really enjoyed doing the oral on Garage Band because there wasn’t as much pressure as doing it in front of everyone. It was really good apart from the background noise. It is also interesting hearing yourself speaking.

The oral was interesting and the first time I have done a French oral through the computer. At times it was hard to hear because of the background noise. Other than that, it was a good and fun assignment.

I really liked doing the Voki oral. It was interesting and fun because it was different. It was sometimes annoying because of the problems I encountered, but overall I enjoyed the assignment very much.

Learning Japanese

One of the advantages of being able to access the internet is you can get a real feeling of authenticity into a classroom and students really like authentic. They like to know it is real, that it really is what you do and that they too have a valid way of succeeding. Amanda’s Japanese blog offers a lot of resources for learning Japanese but she also speaks about her own experiences in adapting to learning the language and culture. The are some good links out from the comments on her posts and Amanda also provides very good direction in how to get information and manage problems. A very worthwhile and positive blog.

Food and nutrition

The www.MayoClinic.com site has very high quality information and infographics for food and nutrition. If you do a search you will find an interactive food label which explains very easily how to read food labels just by hovering the mouse over the label. Cumbavac.org has a great deal of material for teachers and classroom use and then these food and nutrition webquests. May not be the best laid out site in the world, but the information and links are there and when you need straight forward then that is what you want – the links! The wealth of practical and usable information is worth a good look if you value health and nutrition.

Facebook Security

Don’t want people hacking into your Facebook account? Want to know if a different computer or mobile device tries to access your account? look at the address bar while you are on Facebook. Look at your URL address. If you see http:// instead of https:// then your Facebook session is not secure and you can be hacked.

Go to : Account (top right)
Account Settings
Account Security and click Change.
Check at least the first setting. FB defaults to the non-secure setting.
Consider whether you need the email with regard to your account being accessed by other computers and mobile devices. Check that too if you want to know. It will mean the next time you go onto the Facebook site it will ask you to name your computer. It is something which can annoy you, but you can decide whether it is worth it or not.

If you play Facebook games it might want you to change from the secure setting. you just change it back for the rest of the session.

Funky Photos

It took me 3 minutes to select my photo and make my changes on the Be Funky site. It is the quickest and easiest way to get some quick photo effects.

Top Posts

My top posts for this quarter are heartening .Finally I have something directly to do with classroom based learning in the top five! Ever since I started this blog I have been dismayed at how little we value education on the internet. Since then, I and other teachers have worked assiduously to bring education to the forefront of the web. At last teachers are sharing what they do and showing that the internet can be enhanced by our skills. We are teachers. We know how to teach. We know how to get information across. We know how to create material which can help all sorts of learners. That is of great benefit for the internet because it goes into homes, educational institutions and workplaces with the express intent of connecting with others. Connectivity is the thing, content is king and teachers know how to bolt that together! So, what were my top 5 posts for this quarter?

1. Me TV – Ubuntu 10.04 This has been a winning post and consistently at the top. People want to know how to use Ubuntu normally.

2. Downloadable Online Christmas Cards It was Christmas. I was sending off my e-cards. I thought of putting the link up on E-WOT and it took off like a rocket. People like to do nice things.

3. Current world disaster and emergency map No surprises here. I put this up at the time of the Christchurch earthquake. It is graphic and disturbing but it shows where the emergencies are and how we are all in the same boat, really. It is current and up -to- date. It has been a popular post ever since I put it up.

4.Microsoft pptPlex for PowerPoint This has been a popular post ever since I put it up and it is always in my top 5. Microsoft still won’t do anything about pptPlex even though there is demonstrably very wide and popular interest in it. It is a great ass on the PowerPoint and has some valid educational uses and is very well suited to education. Microsoft does take an interest in education but it is not listening as far as enhancing pptPlex is concerned. Strange.

5. Starting the year with Twiducate Twiducate posts are always popular and finally this one has shot to the top five. I couldn’t be happier because Twiducate has been a site which has added enormously to my classroom practice with the one to one learning.

For comparison my last top five posts are here. So, I’ll see you for the next top five in August.

Calculator converters

If you are like me, you probably cannot remember how to convert miles to kilometres or inches to centimetres. You probably cannot calculate depreciation or compound interest very easily either. The Online Calculators site is now bookmarked in my favourites so I can easily do all those calculations that life and lessons seem to come up with. Very handy!

Incredible Art

Google art may not sound very swish nor may it necessarily conjure up images of fine and high quality art – but take a look. This is an inspired Google project par excellence. Never before have we been so privileged to be able to see the best paintings from some of the the best art galleries in the world on our desktops. Great for art history, fantastic for learning technique and just plain inspirational. Well, not so plain. You can visit the art galleries and zoom in on the detail of the paintings like never before. Nothing will quite match seeing great art in real life, but the Google Art Project is just such a wonderful gift in our technological lives.

Nuclear Energy Resources

We are all watching the situation in Japan and we all want to know. At lunch time today much of our discussion was pooling the information we knew and allowing science teachers to correct our misinformation. The thing which impressed me most was I got a good idea from our science teachers about nuclear energy . They explained it extremely well. Hand gestures seemed to be a significant part of the explanations, but we have access to laptops and whiteboards in our classrooms can be a hive of learning and activity from this point onwards . Students are concerned about the situation in Japan. The world is watching and we need to understand so we can help and so we can look at our own patch of the woods. We need to be properly informed. As teachers we have to be prepared to answer questions about anything extreme which occurs so our children are able to understand better. If they get a sound explanation they worry less and they start thinking more creatively. Some of these children will be world leaders in science. The Argonne site has some excellent resources in nuclear energy which have been approved by nuclear experts. They offer these resources in English, French, German and Spanish. Maybe in time , other languages will be available. When catastrophes happen the world wants to know and the world speaks a lot of languages. Key resources need to be multilingual. This site is a good start and the information is kept current. The other pleasing thing is that they invite feedback about the resources.

Geography Matters

Esri is a site where geography matters. As it says on its About page :

“Geography connects our many cultures and societies and influences our way of life. Esri is built on the philosophy that a geographic approach to problem solving ensures better communication and collaboration.“

As Japan struggles and we watch , hope and care,then getting correct and current information is absolutely essential to communicating and collaborating across the planet. This kind of disaster cannot be managed alone. We need to become adept at reaching out and helping. The Japan incident map is excellent. Completely zoomable and totally packed with critical information. The news page is full of current trends and the most obvious impact of that page is that technology is being used by Esri as a strong driving force to create solid communication and reliable information.

iPods in the classroom

Dan Spencer has only made me want to do this more. I have been finding software for screencasts and need to practise more, but I need the iPods in class too. About half my students already have suitable devices themselves as I do but we need to even it out a bit more here and make sure everyone has equal access to technology, so I am working on that. I really would like to see how to streamline use of class time by using mobile technology and then how to deepen research by finding ways for students to use mobile devices for investigative studies. Once I have all the pieces I know it will be a good adventure because students love to discover new ways of learning and really enjoy pioneering new approaches. They like the team spirit approach. So, thank you Dan Spencer. That seals it for me! Pocket classrooms!

SharkBreak

SharkBreak has a whole host of very colourful and interesting widgets which promote marine conservation, ecology and marine ecosystems. These widgets which will appeal to the young and the young at heart and they all have a good ecological message. The code can be used in websites, on your blog, in any programme which reads html script and you can keep up with their news here. It is such a fun site.

Miracle Workers

Taylor Mali is unashamedly a teacher and he does it well. He recreates so well the complexity of our job and he shows there is honour in it. I put up another one of his poems What Teachers Make here. From time to time we need to listen to people like Taylor Mali so that we remember we are doing something important, significant and utterly indescribable at times. We will carry on whether we get thanked or not, but , at last, our job is being recognised and described in a way that perhaps others can understand. We owe it to ourselves to be proud of what we do and know there is no better job than being a teacher in all its inspiration, complication and frustration.

Graphic Organisers

No big assignment should be embarked upon with a computer unless there is a core organising management system in place. It is too easy for students to get lost in their computers, the web and then a lot of woolly ideas which are terribly fascinating, but do not enable them to complete the task at hand. In my ideal world we’d be able to go off along these paths which come up spontaneously and negotiate as we went along what we could do with all the things we were discovering and learning. Last year I taught students how to use the smart art in Word so they could create their own ideas mapping tool. Sometimes, though, I need a specific sort of ideas generator so having ready made ones I can show on my white board has become essential. One place to get good graphic organisers for class is on the Real Classroom Ideas site. Tomorrow I shall show one of my classes the Concept Web under writing/pre-writing because it is just the very thing we need to organise their ideas now they have done some research and have an idea of what they want to focus on. They can then use the lesson to build their own concept web and I think they will feel happier about the research topic now.

22/3/2011 As promised, I gave the Concept Web to my students today for their research project in French. I had shown it to them on the whiteboard and then shown them how they could build one of their own using smart art in Word. I uploaded the Concept Web onto the LMS and the students downloaded onto their laptops. They opened it in PREVIEW mode and started filling it in.Some dragged it into Adobe Photoshop and filled it in that way. Some built their own concept tool in word. They were all happy and productive and within half an hour they had most of it filled in in French using what we had done last week. They had a sense of progress and satisfaction that a tough job was being managed by some helpful technology tools. It made me realise they had done a lot of research and it also made me realise again this is the best way to organise complicated writing/multimedia tasks on a computer.

Kinetic Typography

Kinetic Typography is moving text. It has some real implications for visual literacy and would be a great way to get students who are reluctant writers into writing, art and graphics all at once. You need After Effects for Adobe Photoshop but I confess this looks a bit daunting to me but I’d love to be able to do it. There is a simple tutorial here which you need to play in full screen so you can see what is going on. Some will pick this up very quickly and if YouTube is anything to go by , then Kinetic Typography is a powerful and popular way of communicating. Some more complex kinetic typography films are here on Box of Crayons and YouTube has more tutorials and good examples if you wish to pursue this.

Earth Hour

Are you ready for Earth Hour? Saturday 26th March 8.30 pm to 9.30 pm and beyond if you want to. There are plenty of electronic and social media things you can involve yourself with. It has just grown and grown over the years. There are some good things for students to become
involved with. If you missed out this year be ready for 2012! Take a look around the site if you are not familiar with it and you will see just how much you can involve yourself and others.

The Networked Teacher

This graphic of how a teacher can network is probably familiar to you and I’d like to thank Alec Couros for making it available to us on Flickr. I want you to look at it. The world is changing quickly and this image was put up in 2008. The first thing I noticed was there was no Twitter. I’d say Twitter is my best tool for connecting to networks as a teacher, but I also use Facebook and Slideshare. Those are my main tools for direct contact with like professional. I then have my blogs. I have never found a good use for social bookmarking and I am currently trying to avoid printing and email is not the most efficient way of contacting me any more. I really am making a big effort to live in a paper free zone. So, this image is a good way for me to work out how to connect and how I connect. It makes me notice what I value and do not value in networking. I think there is a real need to see how students connect these days and how they form their networks. In certain respects we all need to build our own graphic of how we can connect so others quickly understand how we “plug in”. Communication then becomes smoother and sourcing information easier. We would also see what an impact pocket technology is having, I think.

Seesmic Desktop 2 for Mac

Seesmic Desktop 2 is a social media organiser for your desktop. I have added my Twitter and Facebook accounts for now and then the bit.ly plug in for short URLs. I really like the look of it. I had to update the silverlight plug in for Firefox and then the Desktop 2 app downloaded to my downloads folder. From there you go to the site and install all the social media applications you want. It is a bit more than that so take a good look around the Seesmic site which also has mobile phone downloads. It is very streamlined, has the columns and pop ups for Twitter that I like and is generally very easy to get along with. Took me all of 5 minutes to get it going!

29/3/2011 I installed Seesmic Desktop 2 on my Windows 7 computer and it took all of 2 minutes. Windows installed most of the common apps and plug ins so I was up and running on Twitter in record time. I really like Seesmic Desktop 2. The interface is great, the ease of use is exemplary and it is just a really helpful piece of software. My next challenge is to get it onto my iPod Touch.

My Professional NetWork

When I blogged about Alec Couros’ networked teacher image the other day it had already made me wonder what I looked like as a networked teacher. I realise I create a lot of networking for myself and then I am fortunate to be in an environment where networking is the norm. In this way I have a constant stream of input. It looks busy but what it is, in fact, is a constant feed of information, resources and ideas which keep me buoyant and capable. My conclusion is that to create successful teachers you need to connect and network them and then encourage them to create their own networks and connections. I am still curious to see what networked students look like.

The true size of Africa

This infographic has done the rounds like a few others, but you may not have seen it. It is really fascinating how many countries can fit into the land mass of Africa and then which countries. You can zoom in on the infographic and when you do , you will see the land mass sizes of all our countries. That is a very handy list for the classroom! Students like information and they like to be able to compare with their own country.

Website Grader

Website Grader has proven to be a very useful too. I found it about two months ago and when I first graded my website I had a lot of laughs, because Website Grader keeps you really entertained while it is crunching through your site, then I got a lot of really helpful information.At that stage this site was rated 84%. I followed the tips for improving my website and now it is graded at 90% so I am both grateful for and pleased with the help I received. It pays to ask! One other useful thing I have discovered through this Website Grader is that tying my Twitter account to this blog has helped promote the blog. Social media work! This site also has had a good teaching component in getting me to understand how to improve my standing and search engine optimisation. The advice I got and continue to get is very specific , so I can follow through on it easily.

Practical Wellbeing

Currriculum Press has resources which you can purchase but it also has these very practical and cheerful free downloads which will add some colour and positive thinking to your wellbeing materials. I like the PowerPoint on the mood meter. Students can use it to look at their emotions without feeling threatened. It’s a refreshing approach and might well help deal with some of the sorts of things which can weigh students down.

Free Diary for MacBook

I was absolutely lost on Friday. The fantastic Clover Diary which I have been using on my MacBook decided it was not going to play anymore. No amount of coaxing, reinstalling, clean installing would convince it to work. Since it perfectly suited my needs I was heart broken!! I have had to do quite a search to come up with a diary which suits me and my MacBook classroom needs. iCal is too squashy, does not fill in easily nor display in a way I need. I just need block areas for each day . I can write my reminders, vocab lists, notes, students to see. I just need boxes to complete and then a way to skip forward and backwards for bookings , appointments and special days. My diary needs to be uncluttered and basic but I need room to write. So now I have found Diary 0.4 and hope it will behave itself. Apple needs to create a decent diary application for classroom use.

Ten tips for using classroom technology

Jose Picardo has shared his top 10 tips for classroom technology on You Tube. If we all did this as teachers , imagine how many ideas we would generate amongst ourselves because one tip goes a long way! He has covered the ways we can use technology in the classroom but we need to expand those ideas in our own way in our own area so that there is some real flexibility with technology use.

Firefox 4

I tend to change browsers a bit according to what I am doing , and, in recent times, according to which one is misbehaving. Browsers behaving badly has returned. Taming them can be annoying . I loaded Firefox 4 because it is cleaner looking and more efficient than Firefox 3. it’s a bit different int he way it operates so wither do the tutorial which loads when you install it or just be patient as you work though the different tabs. I think it is a nice, clean design and i am especially happy because it got rid of all the toolbars which some software seems to think we need. How many tool bar search boxes can you manage? How many toolbar add ons do you want?! Some can be removed easily and then removing them in the registry sends them away for ever. Others are rather hard to dispose of so reloading a new version of the browser is just wonderful. I now live in a toolbar free zone. If there are things you want to change about Firefox 4 or you want to go back to some of the older features, I can recommend these tweaks and tips from the Software Crew.

Firefox 4 download.

Interactive anatomy

This site is fun and there is no way I’d be voluntarily learning about anatomy! InnerBody is as intriguing as it is informative and all the anatomy material is well presented, interesting and really fun! It is very much an information rich and factual site but whoever created it has had a touch of inspiration. The site also offers brain training exercises and so it completely dedicated to improving your knowledge and your skills. It could well get you a pretty good coolness rating as a teacher!

Tips for sound recordings

This Rapid e-learning blog gives four good tips for improving sound recordings. As a busy teacher I can manage four tips quite well and turn out something better with my students. If you want even more information, go to PC Mus

Get to know ChronoZoom

If you are interested in earth and planetary history, this is the cloud application for you. ChronoZoom would create some spectacular visuals on a white board, if that is all you have access to and students on a laptop would enjoy exploring this site I am sure. The advantage is you can quickly and easily get an overview of planetary of earth history and then you can zoom in on any aspect which you need or want to. It creates a very clear perspective of our history. The clear and colourful design would appeal to students and it makes something which might seem a bit dry , if you just use a text book, have real meaning and value since it clearly emphasises exploring the knowledge on offer.

Zoom, zoom, zoom!

ZoomIt is a Windows based application which I installed and had running in 2 minutes. Obviously I am going to have to practice more if I intend to use this in public, but it offers a really useful functionality for instructional use. The ZoomIt software allows you to zoom in on a particular aspect of your screen and then you have access to a drawing facility should you wish to highlight material. You can use a pen and tablet. I just used my mouse and with my drawing skills it is nice and obvious! If you follow the information offered with the programme you will find thre are some good options for you if you want it to add variety to your classroom presentations. You get rid of your changes by pressing the hotkeys again. It is very easy. On my MacBook I use Magic Pen and then press control and slide my fingers up the keypad to zoom in on the screen. That too is easy.

Teaching for Effective Learning

The South Australian Curriculum framework is actually something we can use. Our school is currently looking at Domain 3 and so I thought it would be a good idea to take a closer look at it in a presentation and try and explore the concepts. For me it was an interesting journey and I found some good resource material for technology in the classroom along the way which I am sharing with you. For once I found theory and practice could walk hand in hand and that the theory was helping me to think forward. If you download the presentation from SlideShare you will be able to take advantage of the hyperlinks in the presentation.

Tom Lehrer’s The Elements Song

There are a few versions of this song on YouTube but TimwiTerby’s is the one I have picked because you end up with a copy of the periodic table and the images are clear. From a teaching point of view , this is what you need – visual clarity and well ordered information. Tom Lehrer also has some good Maths songs which might liven up a lesson. We are a specialist music school so I’d love to hear our students singing in science class or singing a science song!

Graph Generator

Graphs can be difficult things to create. Some office programmes come with graph generators as do some database programmes. This graph generator from Learning with NCES appears to be effective without being too complicated and would be an easy way for generating some basic graphs without getting lost in the making of it all if you are easily swamped by graph making. What I like is the way it explains the terms used in the making of the graph so that I have a clear understanding of what to put where. It means I am more of an independent learner whereas something like graphs can make me quite dependent. When you have created your graph you can print it, save it to your computer or email it to yourself.

Earth Clock

Poodwaddle.com is a funny name for a site but it has some very interesting apps you can view online or embed into web pages. One of the more powerful apps it features is this earth clock where you get current information on CO2 emissions, population, the amount of nuclear waste and so much more. The sorts of things we have been talking about and are trying to remedy. There are maths apps, health apps, there is a meditation timer and a count down to christmas. It is an interesting site to browse.

Windows Live Movie Maker

If you have Windows and you want to make some movies, especially from still pictures , Windows Live Movie maker is very easy to use. I have used iMovie on my Apple Mac a lot and that is quite easy too but at home I tend to be on my Windows desktop. By making a movie I have something other than slideshows for my classroom use and then I also have something which can be played on any operating system or loaded to a video sharing site. When you add pictures and music you need to ensure you do not infringe copyright if you are publishing online. This video covers the basics of using Windows Live MM and so you can see how easy it is. You can use photos or create images in a paint programme if you want to show something you wish to teach. You can then let Windows Live Movie Maker create all the transitions and effects for you for you or you can play with those yourselves. Students concentrate hard on videos so you can capture their imaginations and their interest with a quick video that you show them. A couple of tips though – I tried using my Windows Live ID to load my movie onto my You Tube account. It didn’t upload the movie as I had made it! Load the movies up onto sites directly . Then there was the time WLMM decided to cut out converting my file to a movie at 96%. I just ignored it and converted it again. WLMM has never done that to me since. People have commented to me how clear my videos are. It does make very clear movies which show well on a big screen and that is very encouraging. Try it! If you think you cannot make a movie – you can!!

Learn Science by Gaming

What is Vanished?
“Vanished is an 8-week online/offline mystery game for middle-school children, meant to inspire engagement and problem solving through science. Developed and curated by MIT’s Education Arcade and the Smithsonian Institution, VANISHED is a first-of-its-kind experience where participants become investigators racing to solve puzzles and other online challenges, visit museums and collect samples from their neighborhoods to help unlock the secrets of the game. Vanished also provides a unique opportunity for players to collaborate Smithsonian scientists, MIT students, and their peers online. Players can only solve the mystery by using real scientific methods and knowledge to unravel the game’s secrets.”

This information is from the MIT Vanished site, a game which has been designed by MIT game designers to engage middle school children in Science. Students will also be engaging with scientists and their local museums. In this way the game is the vehicle for connecting students with a community of high level learners and experts in order to solve problems, learn, adapt their thinking, research. The game started on April 4th and ends 31st May and you can be caught up if you didn’t start at the beginning. With these kinds of initiatives developing the current writing of curricula is looking a bit dusty. This initiative is inline with comments some of my senior students made in class recently – they just wished they could learn. They wanted me as a teacher to construct modules and units and entrusted me with their learning path but then they wanted to be able to say – can we follow this up? Can we do that? They actually wanted to form learning partnerships.Vanish is very much that and the teachers would be there to monitor, trouble shoot, enlighten and follow up the things which were sparking the interest of students. It’s a great initiative because it is using community knowledge to extend how we are learning and the forums the students participate in presumably indicate how and what they are learning and the sorts of things which set them on fire as learners. They leave 4 000 posts a day, so they must be keen.

Earth Day

Since today is Good Friday, the fact that it is also Earth Day this year may have escaped some people’s notice. It may also be difficult to do anything for it today because of other commitments and interests. Good Friday is not a moveable occasion on our calendar but perhaps Earth Day is. In Australia we are also on school holidays and so organising anything as teachers might have to be delayed until next year or maybe we shall just have to postpone our plans for educational activities around Earth Day. I have found some lovely free templates from Indezine which can be used for Earth Day presentations. Since Earth day is about recycling this year , then I think we can all make an effort to ensure we do recycle effectively and even creatively.

Ghostery for Chrome

Ghostery is an add on for Chrome which tracks the trackers on any web page. You often see Facebook Connect because many sites now are allowing people to connect with their Facebook page to vote for the site or like it or share a post. The picture I have posted comes from the SlideShare site. It gives you a quick run down on what else is connecting to the site, possibly for data mining or harm. If you click on Ghostery you can get more information on the reported trackers and then you will see the next picture. it is quite handy if you don’t know what the reported links are. On this page on WordPress there is nothing but WordPress will often come up with WordPress stats. They collect information about who is coming to the blog. It means you have a better idea of how web pages are being run and what information is being collected. When I first installed Ghostery there was a bit of an implementation dip for about 15 minutes where I was getting poor connections or no connections with some web pages as I was surfing. Reloading the page fixed that problem and it has run quietly in the background ever since. When you install Ghostery you have the opportunity to try the beta version of the blocking facility. I haven’t yet used that because I haven’t found anything as yet I want to block. I actually found it heartening that the sites I visited came up with what I would more or less expect to see. Ghostery is a good preventative action tool for while you are on the web.

Sound Cloud for Musicians

Sound Cloud is following what is now a tried and true format for visual creations but is encouraging the work of musicians. It is an online peer review community where you can upload sound works in progress or polished pieces and get feedback from your online personal network and community. It means any musician or aspiring musician can get an understanding ear and some good encouragement from online friends. Fantastic idea because you can work at your own level but benefit from experts if they are included in your online community. It also means you are not working in isolation and able to find that much needed audience for your work.

Let Sophia help you

Sophia looks to be a very helpful site for all of us who are committed to education. The object of the site is to link learners, parents, educators and experts so that anything can be taught, learnt , explored and understood. If this quadrilateral material is anything to go by, then the site attempts to engage the learner and many ways. There are images, texts, videos and then your learning group. I can imagine this site will go well and improve with age.

Taming Updates

Windows updates usually work like clockwork. Then you come to Windows Update groundhog day where the same updates keep trying to install, they fail, the computer goes through the same hold up routine of trying to configure when you turn it on and after a few attempts of this you grow mighty sick and tired of it. Windows just keeps on going and never gives up! You have to break the update mania and make Windows think more logically. 1. Go to the start menu > All Programmes> Windows update and click on that.
2. Click on the updates to be installed and they will probably install from there and when you reboot they will be successfully configured.
3. When you have a problem with Windows, search the help files and you will be asked to supply feedback. Fill it in briefly and politely. Windows will come back with help.
4. Had those updates not installed from the update centre, I would have searched online for each update package by the code number it gives you and downloaded them and installed them that way.
5. These 3 updates which were failing to install were important precursors to the service pack 1 update for Windows 7, so without them I would not have had the improvement of the service pack….and my computer would still be going round in circles…and I would have gone nuts!

My MacBook was having the similar problems the day before because I wanted to install Firefox4 and as I was doing that, Microsoft decided to update the Office suite on my Mac…well…MacBooks don’t like multi installs. I shut the Microsoft Office update down and concentrated on Firefox and then went back to the Office updates from there. On the whole it is preferable to do one update at a time on a computer. Some programmes tell you to shut other programmes down and that is helpful and good installation practice.

Be a better blogger

Ten tips for better blogging

1. The length of the post is irrelevant. It’s the content and it’s a bit hard to judge sometimes what will take off. Readers often like different and quirky, but they also like to get stuck into some meatier subjects and they certainly love to know how to do things.

2. Pictures help. Readers react to pictures and it’s often the ones which stir a memory, capture the imagination or make them laugh which get the reactions. Pictures also help readers follow instructions. We live in a visual world.

3. One day you will go to your blog and you will feel sick. You will not want to blog. It’s like aversion therapy. Some people delete their blogs or blogs are left suspended and abandoned in cyberspace. Know this will happen, that it feels awful but that it will pass.

4. Blog holidays are good. After a week’s break you come back just popping!

5. Get a stat counter (if your blog site does not supply one) which lets you see who visits. It is so exciting to know that someone has come in from Thailand or Greece. It really cheers you up to know there are people in far flung corners who come to read your blog. It is even nicer when they leave a comment of appreciation or help.

6. Get an RSS feed going. It does improve the traffic. Advertise your posts to your Twitter community too. Let people know because they lead busy lives like you.

7. Join online communities. Most of them ask you to put your main website on as you fill in your profile details. It gets your blog known, it makes you feel like a somebody and it helps you to create the connections which you wish to make.

8. Some of the best bloggers I have come to value suddenly just stop blogging. It can be very upsetting and you wonder what has happened. Expect to feel attached and be ready for the separation anxiety. Blogging is about change.

9. Don’t be frightened to ask for help if you don’t know how to do something or what something means. The blogosphere is full of kind , helpful , knowledgeable people who do not make you feel stupid.

10. Link away! Ask to link your blog, let others link to you. That network can be crucial at times. Make sure the links on your blog are solid and valid. It pays to check them from time to time.

Teaching for effective learning

I explored the notion of our South Australian curriculum framework guide here. One of the strengths of an online peer review learning community like the one I have on Slideshare is that you can be encouraged to develop your ideas and knowledge. It was suggested I make a series of presentations to cover the framework. That was a good challenge. It advantages me because I get the practice in presentations and because , as a school , we are looking closely at domain 3 this year. It helps others because I can understand and share my knowledge so I am not just paying lipservice to a departmental requirement. In that sense, my PLN is teaching me to become involved with my own learning and deepen my knowledge of what learning is. One of the things I shall now be saying in my classroom is , Don’t just do this because I have asked you to. Find your own way of making this material meaningful to yourself. Lifelong learning means you are going to have to know how to learn and that is essentailly what our new TeFL framework is about. This is the first of 3 parts for Domain 3 -Develop expert learners. With regard to technology it is even more important to develop expert learners so that people are not just soaked in all that technology which bombards them each day with all sorts of information and possibilities. It is important to be able to make sense of it, prioritise what is useful and helpful and to know how to become very good at something very quickly. As I do Domain 3 I am particularly looking at technology and so I have an idea of how to now develop this further. ..watch this space!!

TfEL Domain 3 Challenge 1

Shelley Terrell created and drove the #30Goals for teachers through social media channels. She is a very passionate, dedicated teacher who wants us all to love our job as much as she does. She has pioneered a whole new way of being for teachers since she has used technology to encourage us to group and focus as a unit on various aspects of teaching. The teachers who participated in the #30Goals were going from strength to strength and the subsequent boost to their morale and capacity to connect and benefit became very obvious. I followed the #30Goals on Twitter and just participated that way. I found it made first term fly for me and I was much more focussed in my thinking for the classroom. So now I am up to Term 2 and I miss those #30Goals. I have decided I shall set my own challenges based on the Teaching for Effective Learning (TfEL) framework for South Australia. Our school is concentrating on Domain 3. I have started to explore it and am going to take a technology approach to it. So , with that in mind:

Challenge One :What have you done to make them curious?

My double lesson today was with the year 9s who get their laptops next week for the One to One programme. I have offered to help roll it out because I think it will be interesting and they set a high standard last year with the roll out. I shall have to think about how I am going to get those students to think of their laptops not just as a new toy but as something they can really benefit from to educate themselves. Today those students were excited about their laptops coming so I made sure we had a lesson to feed that enthusiam. Wednesday we are booked into the computer room for a timed internet challenge. They really enjoyed the last one and enjoyed their voyage of discovery. This one is on French transport so I had to really think how I would make that interesting and teach them French. I am also teaching the future tense and how you make them wonder about that is a challenge! To meet my aims we went through some vocab practice on the whiteboard and I had different versions of the same thing. They came alive when they could pick the right answer from the 3 choices. That is what meant something to them. We then spent 20 minutes drawing 6 pictures of our life at 20. That caused a lot of laughter and chatter and then we had to work out the 6 French future tense sentences which would apply to those pictures and used the future tense – At 20 I’ll climb a mountain… When they get their laptops they will be able to quickly convert that into a little iMovie to give them the skills for their big term project – their view of Paris. They really are excited about being able to make a movie for French. So my basic approach is feed and teach what I know interests them, find out how they learn and use that, and then give them things to look forward to.

Personalise your search engine page

First you go to ShinySearch and in 30 seconds you have your very own custom search engine page. You can link into your social networks, news , Google Maps. The common sorts of internet activities are there on your page…plus you have a search engine. You can set it as your home page or save it to your favourites or your toolbar. I like it! Students will love this.

Teaching for Effective Learning

Since I was encouraged to develop the series of slide presentations , then I have realised it is a good way to come to grips with a curriculum document! I am turning 3.1 into weekly challenges to further reinforce my knowledge and practice.

The Artist’s Toolkit

The Artist’s Toolkit is a clear, efficient and interesting way of exploring the basic principles of art in a dynamic, multimedia way. It means the principles are readily available for reference at any time from a computer .There is also an opportunity to practise the knowledge. Artist’s in action are featured, a section which hopefully will be expanded over time.

Close your Mac programmes!

If you have migrated from Windows to Mac , you can get caught in the Mac trap of thinking you have closed a programme when, in fact, you haven’t. Then you wonder why your Mac is so slow. The give away is the dot next to the programme when it is in the dock. My dock is screen left so the dot comes up to left of the icon in the dock. To see what you have running press : command – option -esc. You can close programmes from there. Alternatively command -tab displays your open programmes as icons across the screen. You can select them and press Q and the programme will shut. As you finish with the programme you can also go to its name top left in the task bar and select Quit Firefox or whatever it is you wish to close. You can also right click on the icons witht he dot in the Dock and select close or Force close when necessary. Finally, if you are feeling geeky, you can go to Terminal and type in killall iChat, if that is the programe you wish to close. Closing a programme with the cross in the top left corner of the programme’s screen doesn’t close it on a Mac. Get into the habit of pressing command -option- esc to find out what is running so you are not straining system and battery resources.

Make a simple quiz using Powerpoint

If you have a whiteboard then it is always good to have some easy ways of making quiz materials so that you can assist and check on learning. ProVoc is one resource I use all the time on the MacBook to help my students learn French, but you could easily use it for other things. Powerpoint is also readily available on any computer and you can adapt it quite quickly to make an easy quiz. Students appreciate the visual approach and they focus their attention better. With pictures you can add a bit of interest. The first time you make one , you might take a little while, but then you get used to it and you can make a Powerpoint quiz very quickly. Computor Companion has very clear instructions as to how to make the quizzes.

Linux Wall Wart Computer

Photo: Treehugger.com That’s it! That is the tiny computer which runs on Linux and plugs into the wall. They don’t appear to be available in Australia but America has them selling for 99 dollars for the developer’s kit and 49 dollars for the wall computer. I am not going to pretend to be able to discuss this Sheeva plug adequately, but to me it is a sign of what is to come and it is exciting! They are developed by Marvell and Treehugger has a clear discussion of them. The Linux site itself has some good detail which you can follow up. To actually run it as a computer you’d need a USB vga adapter which will cost about 60 dollars and you’d need to plug in a USB hub. I know it doesn’t have as much power as a normal computer but I run Ubuntu 10.04 on an old NEC 540 Versa with only 256 Mb of RAM and it runs very efficiently. More than adequately. One of the things about the Sheeva plug is that it appeals to your imagination and so you wonder what you want to do with it. You can use it as a server, you could use it as a home security system with a web cam and you could run it as a small computer. I keep thinking there has to be a classroom use for these if they can run a whiteboard and it would be a good, viable alternative for schools which do not have a lot of money. The wall plug computers have a social justice role to play. I just love it and I want one!!

My eCoach

There are several reasons I appreciate My eCoach. It is very easy to navigate. I can quickly see what is available. There are a lot of free and shared resources which I can contribute to as a teacher if I want to. There is a free membership option which is solid and workable and would give me a really good chance to know and evaluate the site without committing myself to a financial outlay. It supports mentoring. Everything about the site is about supporting teachers ,enabling teachers and helping teachers to help teachers. It offers levels of involvement and levels to work towards. I can start off as a newbie and see a plan of where I am headed and what I can achieve. Along the way this site offers training and help so I can improve what I am doing. With that amount of collegiate and expert support this site has the right approach to making teachers confident and competent. We need opportunities to improve ourselves but in this day and age of interactivity we need online options in which we can involve ourselves in our own way. Check the eLibrary link on the left to see just how many resources there are.

TfEL Domain 3 Challenge 3

Challenge One is here. Challenge 2 is here. This challenge is a little bit harder than it looks. Times have changed , as have students . The internet challenges I used to get completed in a double lesson have had to extend to 2 double lessons this year. I was watching why the students were so “slow”. They weren’t being slow. They were being exceptionally thorough in their research. It was important to them they had exactly what they wanted and that they understood what they were choosing to answer the questions. They were also stopping to read information properly instead of just meeting my requirements. I praised them for that approach and gave them the extra time. I often use Twiducate to get feedback about assignments so that I can better understand how students have approached an assignment and so that I can better see what they value. It is also important to build reflection into as assignment. I have learned just recently that my year 8s are not as good at research as I had thought and so something I set them was hard but they had tried to complete it in their own way. It is important to stand back and think because students have a lot of ways of doing things these days and plenty of ways of getting on the wrong track. I am now very mindful to get them started in the right place and offer the next step.

TfEL Domain 3 Challenge 2

Challenge 2: How have you asked them to take risks and learn for themselves?

Ah well, in the light of recent experience, the smart Alec answer to that is to ask them to pick up a dictionary and look a word up for themselves. “But how will I know if it is the right word? ” “How can I be sure I have the right word?” “What if I can’t find the word?” You will know you are on the right track when you get a lot of questions. They will bombard you with questions when you have asked them to take a risk and learn for themselves. “But you wouldn’t tell me how to do it!” ” I asked you and you didn’t tell me!” ” How can I do it if I don’t know how and you don’t tell me?” You will know you are on the right track when they pull out the guilt trip. This is where deep breathing and meditation practices come into their own. No matter what barriers your students put up and no matter how hard they make it for you, you will teach them to take risks and learn for themselves! My year 11s are used to me by now so they know they have to make a good fist of sorting something out before I will help and they know they have to ask specific questions which they cannot look up. ..or they might have looked up and then they need me to clarify. I will meet my students half way. I will do everything I can to make things clear – content, expectations, where to start, tools to help. I will trouble shoot stumbling blocks when I see them. My year 11s are preparing for an interview oral on a pretend exchange trip to Paris. We have book work to cover and we have vocab lists and expressions to prepare. I have given them the interview questions and a list of all the exercises I am going to do. I am teaching them the perfect and imperfect tense as a refresher. I have organised 3 students to speak to the class about their exchange trip to France. So I told them we were going to prepare this assignment in iWeb and they could bring me their web page and show it to me as they spoke. iWeb is perfect for uploading albums, links, information. It comes with preformatted templates so then you can produce a decent e-portfolio pretty quickly . I showed them my iWeb and how to make new pages, name their file and how to publish it to the desktop so they could access it quickly during the interview. They have a week while I am working on hearing other oral assignments to work out iWeb and to alert me to any problems. They have learned to look up Mac tutorials and help each other. They have mastered iMovie and are so pleased with that and so now they are happy to move on…but it is a big challenge for them to do the French and iWeb. Nothing wrong with a challenge!

E-Learning Wishlist 7

My last e-learning wish list is here. I still don’t have an easy way of clipping sound files. Not one that I am happy with. My MacBook screen hasn’t grown but I have made inroads with screencasts, teachers are starting to get on the Net in a big and powerful way and that is heartening. So on with my wish list:

1. I have found by following Shelley Terrell’s #30 Goals and then setting my own from the TeFL framework that this is a good way to challenge and enthuse teachers. So I’d like to see internet challenges as a normal part of professional development.
2.When I analysed my Professional Learning NetWork I realised that the network which supports me as a teacher is large and complex. We need to give a more formal status to these professional and personal learning networks because it is how we sustain teachers and help them to make inroads into technology.
3. I’d like to see every teacher have and be a technology mentor. If we create the links we shall create the web which supports future development.
4. I want a quick way of monitoring what students are doing on their laptops so I can spot check. Most students are 100% trustworthy. I’d like to be able to know the ones who are not because they are letting the team down and it is just encouraging behaviour which then becomes ingrained which they then pursue at work or in tertiary institutions. We need a way to remind people a laptop is not yet another licence to do as you please if you can get away with it.
5. I want to get past the email, flash drive, paper options of handing in work. I want it all in one place which is safe and I don’t want to use paper. I want to get past paper and pens.

Tweet Heaven

I came across Tweet Grid yesterday and it’s my idea of heaven. I use Twitter a lot as a search engine for current events, subject matter discussions and subject content. Twitter for me is one of the best teachers around and I get a constant stream of information both to keep me up to date as an earthling and as an educator. It keeps me totally current.Imagine my delight at finding a site where I can make 6 searches simultaneously and so keep a constant stream of ideas coming my way! You can actually set it to a number of different layouts so please explore the site to find out its capabilities.

Teaching for Effective Learning

This is the final part of Domain 3 and it focuses on the construction of knowledge It is important to teach students to be as impartial and unbiased as possible and to be able to share their ideas effectively and willingly. Now that I have completed slide presentations for the whole of Domain 3, which is about developing expert learners, I feel better prepared as I go into my classroom in terms of actually having some good strategies at my fingertips for making my students learn better and more effectively. I have done it and now I can share that knowledge with them. Experience is a great teacher. 3.2 is here and 3.1 is here.

iPod Touch saves the day

I was ever grateful I had packed my iPod Touch and had loaded and set up Keynote remote. Stroke of genius, actually, and made me look good!On Thursday evening I participated in the one to one laptop rollout this year for our school. I had two classes accompanied their parents to do. My venue was one of the prime spots in the school but when I got there it had been set up to fit all the parents, students and Macbook deployment items . I had to put my Mac on top of the computer case, attach it to the white board and that is about all the space I had to do the presentation. Enter my iPod Touch. In 30 seconds I had gone into the settings and set the wifi to the school wifi , picked it up and had connected with the slide presentation , which , thank heavens, was a Keynote presentation ( I could have used Remote Tap on Powerpoint but it takes a little while longer to set up and a bit longer to respond). It meant I wasn’t squashed in the corner trying to do the presentation. It meant I was free to wander, talk and help and then swipe the slides back and forth as the audience needed. It meant I was living Challenge 2 of teaching for Effecting Learning and asking myself to take risks and learn for myself just as I had blogged about! Keynote Remote shows the current slide and the next one and because it seamlessly integrates with a Keynote presentation there is no delay in going from one slide to the next or swiping further forward or back. The parents and students could also see if they had a Macbook and an iPhone or iPod Touch, they too, could do clever things. At one stage I was thanking my lucky stars because one parent came in and was oblivious to the fact I was presenting and wanted to resolve their child’s immediate problem. It could have considerably disrupted the proceedings, but I could see the slide show on my iPod Touch, I could still ask if it was okay to go onto the next slide , I could still help the student I was standing next to and I could help this parent with their problem. Without the iPod Touch we would have been totally held up. All I can say is present in Keynote and use Keynote Remote on your iPod Touch. Takes all the worry out of presenting!

Searches with Tweet Grid

You do not have to have a twitter account to enjoy the benefits of Twitter searching with Tweet Grid. You can load your search tags into the search boxes and see a Twitter stream of those and Twitter at the same time if you want to. The searches can come up in different languages so it is living proof real time is multi lingual and the real world does not come with sub titles. So, if you are trying to get up to date Apple information, you can search with #mac, #imac, #ipad, #macapp, #keynote,#macbook, #apple. You can filter the language if you want to and you can decide how many grids you want to run. When you do searches like this it is a matter of sorting the goats out from the sheep and applying some filters of your own as you see what is there. Not all the information is relevant. #ipad today has people hustling for gaming colleagues. #keynote isn’t just about Apple keynote. My observation on this random search on Apple tags is the percentage of useable and helpful information could be better. Repetition of tweets is a great deterrent. Nevertheless, there are some useful links and it will only work better if people provide good content under those search tags.

TeFL Domain 3 Challenge 5

Challenge 5 : Have you explained how their physical development is affecting how they learn? Have I? Not easy when you are a French teacher…but where there is a will , there is a way. I notice when they are sleep deprived, stressed, unwell. I don’t have to say much and I can practise French vocab at the same time. I make sure I tell my year 8 students about peripheral skills development and fine motor skills because it brings a lot of relief to some of their faces. I just have to include it in a conversational way. Being aware of their emotional, psychological and physical development as adolescents helps me and them to keep the workload up because I am acknowledging who they are. When we are talking about learning I discuss brain development and how learning can help their brains develop better. It is a challenge working these things into lessons, but I have found I can and one year I even had a French assignment where they drew and described their brain. They really enjoyed it and it made them laugh. Now they have their laptops, maybe I should do that again.

Physical and cognitive milestones

Adolescent Brain Development – a really good slide show.

Challenge 4

Challenge 3

#Mac Zen

A very observant staff member made an astute observation the other day about our MacBooks. It is a bit frivolous, but shows how minds can be used to make positive use of any information they have. MacBooks are not just computers. They can be used to assist well being and peace of mind. When you shut the lid of the Mac and put it to sleep a little light comes on at the front. After a short time the light starts pulsing. If you breathe in sync with the light it is actually a very calming breath! The Mac is capable of helping you establish some good recuperative breathing techniques so that you do not stress out!!

TeFL Domain 3 Challenge 4

Sharing how we learn and go about something has to be adopted and developed as second nature. For some it might seem as time wasting because it’s not directly about content, but if you do it properly, the sharing and reflecting will deepen a student’s capacity to actively use and build on content. You are giving them tools to think about it and strategies for processing. Some of our courses have reflection built into them but the challenge here is to stop students making broad generalisations and trotting out platitudes. They need to be guided to think about impact, change and how their knowledge can be used and developed. Twiducate has become a regular habit for engaging students in reflection and exploration of ideas and they love it. They respond readily. Another thing I do is bring them examples of what I want them to do and get them to have a critical look at them. What do they think is good? What do they find is offputting? What annoys them? What could be improved and how? They are slow to respond because they do not like to critique work, but once they get going – and I usually use the 3 good things and 3 things which could be better – to get them going, they warm to it. We then look more closely at technique and skill and I find they are more attentive that way because they want to be good. I also find that oral presentations with a multimedia approach make students far more aware of what can be really engaging and what can really put you off. Again, afterwards, we look at some tips and tricks to make things better. They live in a visual world. It is important to show them and let them see for themselves how something can be good if uses skill and expertise. Over time they realise that slapdash isn’t a good approach. The important thing about sharing and reflecting together is that it strengthens good students and reinforces their skills and knowledge but it also offers ideas and approaches to students who struggle. Bit by bit they can pick up on ideas and strengthen themselves without being humiliated or shown up.

Get Ubuntu to recognise digital camera

I have just been driving myself bonkers trying to get Ubuntu to recognise my Sony Cybershot camera. As it turns out, it is quite easy if you know how, so I’ll share this with you so you don’t waste time!

1. Before you attach the camera and while it is turned on, press the menu button back right of the camera.
2. At the bottom of the new information which comes up you will see Mode.
3. Press the right arrow button of the circular cursor guide. Mine has a little tulip next to it.
4. You will see Setup with an arrow pointing right.
5. Press the right arrow cursor again with the little tulip.
6.Press the down cursor on the round cursor guide until you reach the camera icon with 2 under it.
7. Press the right cursor arrow again. You will be on File number.
8. Press the down cursor arrow and scroll down to the USB connect.
9. Select PTP by pressing the right arrow cursor and the up or down cursor button.
10. Now press the round, raised button in the middle of the cursor guide and PLP will be the selection.
11. Press the menu button on right of image screen.
12. Now connect the camera to the computer with the USB cable and your camera icon will show on the desktop.
13. Click on the icon.
14. It will offer you the chance to open FSpot. Do that and import your pictures.

Done , done and done!

Top Posts

The top posts for this quarter have varied a bit.

1. Network connections on Ubuntu. People were having trouble with mobile broadband on Ubuntu. I got the cheapest Vodaphone stick, set it up on Windows and then could use it on Ubuntu. It relies on RAM and the fact mobile broadband is basically set up for Windows. Once you have your account in place it is very straight forward. The value of dual booting. Worries me there might not be dual booting on Windows 8
2.Current World Disaster and Emergency Map No surprises there. We are all deeply concerned with the way the planet is being wrecked. We all want to know and keep the information straight in our heads.
3.Me TV – Ubuntu 10.04 I have it running on 11.04 and they have updated the interface. It is not quite as reliable as on 10.04 but this post has been a huge success.
4. Use iPad as a second screen This post has been a winner too. People like their iPads and like to be inventive with them.
5.Eject CD on MacBook To think I nearly didn’t post this! I felt so silly when the technician showed me the eject button which had been right in front of my very eyes for over a year. I felt so dumb!! I always figure, though, if I can be that dumb, so can others. We all have our blind spots! You can also reboot the Mac and hold down the left mouse button or trackpad key to try and eject a CD on a Mac if the eject key on the keyboard doesn’t work.

On a weekly basis the education posts do well but they are not holding a top spot in the quarterly stats, so I’ll just keep plugging away. Eventually the internet will get that education counts.

Tops posts for July

Cybersmart

Cybersmart is a very comprehensive and practical site relating to cybersafety. It offers resources, training , things to think about and a way of dealing with the issue without becoming overwhelmed by it. It caters to parents, teachers and students. It offers lesson plans and quizzes so that adults are able to better guide children but children are also able to navigate the site freely and get some sensible and practical help. Sites like this should be constantly and widely publicised so the information is circulated as a matter of routine.

EarthGlobe X

This is a great Mac app! It is a real time 3D planet earth which can sit on your desktop. When you click on it you can rotate the globe, and for students it would be teaching them about map reading, longitude and latitude, how the light changes on the planet…all sorts of things. EarthGlobe has a sister app called MoonDock.

Dress up Ubuntu desktop

Changing desktop themes in Ubuntu is not as easy as it sounds – or it is easy if you know how and finding out how is not that easy! That said, I have had some success and I am more than happy with my results and my new cruisy Ubuntu desktops. I have choices! To change the desktop you right click on it and select change desktop. Within that there are customising options for folders and colours. Trying to load a theme is hard. Liberian Geek has some instructions which I will try later, much later but they will probably work since Liberian Geek has very solid information on Ubuntu. In the meantime I’ll share another couple of sites with you so that you don’t go through the frustration of downloading themes which then won’t load into the theme manager no matter which way you try. The Ubuntu Studio theme is really cool and I customised it with a picture of my own and it is a very slick interface. If you follow the instructions on the site for the terminal codes, they work like a charm. Last night it was the first thing that worked and I could not have been happier.The WEBUPD8 site also has some very nice themes which you can install easily by following the instructions. The bisigi ones on Liberian Geek are really nice too and so I shall have to try out those instructions. Meantime I am really happy with my desktop makeovers and feel a real sense of success!

PS: Have tried the ideas from Liberian Geek and they work! Now I have some really great themes to play with. Happy lady.

Marble Desktop Globe

Earth Globe X which I blogged about yesterday has proved to be popular with my students today even though I am not a geography teacher. They are fascinated with the fact it is a real time satellite picture of our planet. The Marble Desktop Globe is a KDE initiative . The software download is available for all platforms. It is a 3D spinning globe which you can twist and turn to see any country on the planet. You can also search for cities. It provides a much better idea of where things are than a flat map and is a very handy, nice looking desktop tool.

National Geographic Games

National Geographic has a wide selection of games which would provide good support to a number of courses. They appear to be well thought out and well constructed. Some of them support subject content, some technology skills and the ones I have tried are both challenging and interesting.Have to confess the gecko one make me laugh. I am very bad at being a gecko!

What makes a good online teacher

I made this video as much to practise my video making skills as to explore the idea of what would make a good online teacher. It is something we need to think about now. Moving into an online arena for teaching and education is something which needs to be planned and implemented. At this point we need to practise the art of noticing. We have been told not to kill people with PowerPoint so I think we have improved our presentation skills in that area. We are currently risking killing people will webcasts and screen casts. Latitude has to be allowed because we have to start somewhere so actually getting up and running with various video formats is the current challenge. We need help in how to make things more effectively and grow quickly into the new arena.Video tips and tricks to make good use of our transferable skills. Most teachers are teachers because they like to interact with students not a screen. We can have the best of both worlds by developing our online skills so we can impart our knowledge electronically. There is a need for teachers on the internet and you cannot fake good teaching. So I decided to start looking at what we need. We could do with a better idea of what makes an impact online and how to manage it. Not that easy!

Mental Maths

I had one maths teacher who made us do mental arithmetic tests at the beginning of very lesson. There was a kind of adrenalin rush about it and even though I was no maths student and no lover of maths, I used to like the mental maths tests because they made the rest of the lesson bearable and more straightforward for me. The Teaching Treasures site has times mental arithmetic tests you can do online for ages 6-13. Take time to look at the rest of the site too because there are some other useful materials and links out. This is a good example of something helpful students with laptops can be doing while you are setting up your own laptop and taking the roll.

Change default folder colour on Mac

I have been redecorating my Mac and changing it from basically blue to green. It was getting on my nerves I couldn’t just change the colour of all my pale blue folders. Well, now I can! I downloaded FolderTeint and used the colour wheel to change the default colour of my icons. After all of that, it was that easy. The new icon colour shows up when you restart the computer.

TeFL Domain 3 Challenge 6

Challenge 6 is How have you developed a variety of learning modes? Differentiating the curriculum is essential. We all learn in different ways. Today with our big numbers in French we were saying them according to a pattern but I had them up on the screen for the student who has auditory processing difficulties. It probably helped other students to process the big numbers better to hear them and see them at the same time. Same with my year 11s. We were doing negatives. We were saying things, writing things and seeing things on the board and then they were doing things to reinforce that on their laptops. I try to encourage art and artistic students by providing ways and means of incorporating visuals into their work. My year 9s invented a planet to practise the future tense and adjectives. They liked having a chance to develop their own planet and write about it. Laptops have helped studnets who are slow writers. Most students get around a keyboard very quickly and it has evened the playing field that way. Nothing surpasses the girl last year who was taking notes from my grammar Powerpoint and turning it into her own beautiful learning Powerpoint. The speed with which she could ingest information, type it up and then use her imagination to create something beautiful and very striking on her laptop was awe inspiring. With French it is easy to compensate for those students who are not such good writers by allowing what I call a two for one exercise. We do the same exercise twice. They hand it in as a written assignment and they also present it as an oral assignment. This helps the students who have a good oral facility but who are not so accurate with their writing. It also means I encourage both of those language strengths. I always provide a learning diversion and support with videos or images. In a longer lesson it is good to break it up with pictures or little videos. My year 11s have to do a piece of writing about getting up in the morning so we have looked at a couple of songs on You Tube along those lines . I choose songs they can sing along to if they want to! We practise the grammar with some slide presentations and then move on to writing some things themselves which we share as a group. I look at different ways of presenting the same materials, ideas and themes. By and large it makes for happy students who are enjoying their learning and who can build on it.

Challenge 5

Speak your spelling

BigIQkids is a great site for learning spelling , customising spelling lists, hearing the lists and then being tested on them.it offers screen and keyboard options for input. Once you are done you can play educational games! The site offers membership and premium access but it has also provided a useful and workable free section. Doesn’t get fairer than that. Voice synthesisers have come a long way and are good to use in language learning because not everyone has access to a real, live native speaker.In any case, they are fun. These sorts of sites need to become more mainstream so we increase and improve our language acquisition skills. Voki is also a site which offers good language synthesiser learning possibilities.

Back Up Now!

Back up your important files and even your system now! I back important files and folders onto an external drive when I am in Windows. I back up current critical files onto a flash drive and even put a spare copy on my external drive if they are really important files. On Ubuntu I use luckyBackUp which is in the Accessories folder and back up the system which takes no time at all. I then back up important files and folders separately. On my MacBook I use TimeMachine and a small external drive. The first time I backed up it took a little while but now I do it very week and it takes no time at all. Again, critical files I put on a flash drive and on my external drive as well. Does it seem like a lot of messing around? Not really. It really takes very little time and if you plan it you can be backing up files in “down” time. The thing is to get into the habit of it. It is also important to do a Windows restore on a regular basis and that was worth its weight in gold the other day. Backing up is an easy way to ensure anything you are doing is safe. A system back up means you have your beloved files and folders when things go pear shaped. My priority is always files and folders. My MacBook is backed up weekly because it has all my classroom information. So, back up now!

Personal Learning Environments

The more we introduce technology into our schools, the more mobile technology and tablets take hold, the greater chance there is for developing our own personal learning environment and we need to think about that as teachers. Some already are as you can see from the ARRFF picture. I like this picture. It combines art and theory. Our new world will blend all our skills in a new and interesting way. According to Wikipedia a Personal Learning Environment allows learners to:

set their own learning goals
manage their learning, both content and process
communicate with others in the process of learning

So our world is one of gathering information, remixing it in new and interesting ways like that ARRFF picture, finding new reasons for having this information as we have done with tablet devices which have not been very successful until recently and then moving it all forward so the skills, ideas and developments can be remixed and changed again.

According to Stephen Downes of the National Research Council of Canada in his article in eLearn Magazine:

“They absorb information quickly, in images and video as well as text, from multiple sources simultaneously. They operate at “twitch speed,” expecting instant responses and feedback. They prefer random “on-demand” access to media, expect to be in constant communication with their friends (who may be next door or around the world), and they are as likely to create their own media (or download someone else’s) as to purchase a book or a CD “

He is , of course, speaking of digital natives. We have a set of students who are ready to learn, re-learn and recreate. We have the tools. We just need to keep thinking about how we are going to maximise all that raw material and create the system of education which we now need. Like any good game we need the goals and levels, the rules, the challenges and rewards and the networks.

Webcams on Ubuntu

Cheese is webcam software you can load from the Ubuntu software centre in the Applications menu top left on the menu bar of Ubuntu. I then use a little Logitech Webcam 500 which does a perfectly good job. Cheese is similar to Apple Photo Booth so you can take still photos and make little videos. You can also apply some simple effects for your own amusement and the amusement of others. The photos are sent automatically to a folder in your home folder or you can slide the photos from Cheese onto your desktop. Easy when you know how!

Mac Tutorials

The Mac Basics site offers a considerable number of tutorials on Mac basics so that you feel more comfortable with your Mac and Mac interface. Apple has provided plenty of video and text help to get you going and keep you going. If you are new to Macs and don’t know how to do something, chances are you will find it on this site. Right in line with creating your own Personal Learning Environment!

CCleaner for Mac

CCleaner image

CCleaner is a well known Windows cleaner which works easily and efficiently. It quickly cleans the rubbish off your system. There is now a Mac version which is very zippy. You do collect rubbish on a Mac just like any other computer. CCleaner cleans your waste bin, your internet cache, and some of the recent lists so it keeps your system running smoothly. It takes a few minutes to install from Softpedia and cleans your Mac in about 30 seconds if that! CCleaner makes that part of computer upkeep so simple!

Eject CD on Macbook

There is an eject key on the Macbook right below the power button. Maybe you have seen it, maybe you haven’t. I didn’t! If you cannot eject a CD or the CD doesn’t appear as an icon on your desktop, then you can use the eject key to get it out again . Saves a lot of time and trouble if you know where the eject key is!

Create MP3 voice files on Mac

If you want to make a straightforward voice recording on your Mac and save it as an MP3, start here:

1. Download Audacity
2. Put Audacity into your apps folder
3. Open Audacity
4. Press the red record button and say something.
5. Press the blue stop button.
6. Press the green arrow forward button to hear and replay to check quality.
7. Go to file on menu bar.
8. Do not select save.
9. Select Export
10. Choose MP3 in your file options in the file type box
11. Click okay
12. If Audacity cannot find the MP3 library , download it from here. Currently it is the v3.98.2 version for Snow Leopard.
13. Save the file to your folder.

It is a very quick and easy process for voice recordings once you have set Audacity up. As simple as opening the programme and recording.

Enlarge your Macbook icons

enlarge icons

The little radio button bottom right of the window may have escaped your notice. You can slide it backwards and forwards to enlarge and reduce your icons in a folder. Easy!

USB Aquarium

Not sure there is any educational value in this. Perhaps as a stress buster and a reminder we all need to play and distract ourselves when we are thinking hard. Computers need their desktop toys not as a diversion but as a mind break. A chance to be a bit frivolous. The USB aquarium is a diverting desktop toy!

Food Pyramid Game

Not so much a game as a straight forward learning aid. It teaches the basics of the food pyramid in a non -threatening way and there is no pressure in this game. It is a visual way of teaching something which is often just brought to us in text form. The MealsMatter site then has a host of nutritional and food information to explore to enhance the knowledge of the food pyramid game. What I really like about this site is that it states clearly: This activity complies with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and links to the relevant act. More sites need to do this so perhaps we need some international symbols to indicate that sites are school friendly and privacy friendly . Why not? It would make it so much easier and it means , perhaps that sites would need to liaise with a central education body in each country to get their symbol. Worth thinking about. In the meantime, explore the food pyramid and the wealth of healthy eating information on MealsMatter.

Hotot Twitter Client for Ubuntu

Hotot can be found in the Ubuntu Software Centre in Applications top left on the menu bar of Ubuntu 10.10. I installed it to see . I am a big fan of TweetDeck because of the columns and the pop up feed. I found Hotot to be very easy on the eye. It has a really nice interface and it scrolls very quickly and smoothly from screen to screen. It also supplies feed notifications and I like that. I also like how it colour codes everything with very well chosen colours. All my tweets come up in green. I can also do a quick search for my tweets and that is produced very fast. If you don’t particularly need columns then Hotot is a very well thought out client for Ubuntu.

Make an MP3 file on your Mac

Recording yourself and making an MP3 file on your Mac is a little bit fiddly but not that hard. 1. Download the free version of Switch for Macs and put it in your apps folder.
2. Open GarageBand
3. Click on the Voice icon.
4. Choose your voice on the left
5. Click the round red recording button at the bottom and record. Stop with that button or the arrow forward button.
6. Replay to ensure you have the recording you wish.
7. Go up to the menu bar and select share and send it to iTunes.
8. Your Mac will come up with the prompts to create the folder.
9. iTunes saves it as an MP4a file.
10. Open Switch.
11. Use the add button to find your file in iTunes and put it in the Switch display.
12. Click the convert button. Done!

TeFL Domain 3 Challenge 7

Challenge 7 : Do your students have a clear picture of their learning strengths and weaknesses? I’d like to think they do. I make a point of showing up their learning gaps and then working towards filling them and showing them there is value in filling knowledge gaps. My biggest challenge at the moment is to get the year 9s to use the future tense properly. It is normally very easy. These students are quite bright and very motivated but they are still confusing it and mixing it in with other grammatical structures I have taught which are similar like the futur proche. There is evidence some have not heard what I have said. There is evidence some have listened to everything. We have tried 3 exercises around it. Now I have isolated it, made them type all the examples up on their laptops and Friday we are having a test using the same sheet but no laptops.For me this is drastic! I have also been getting them to bring out one of the exercises they did on their laptop and one by one we are sorting out their learning gaps. One boy is very good at asking questions so I have encouraged the others to do the same. If he thinks he has got it wrong he will ask. That is a great way to learn . Once he knows, he knows. We have found verb conjugators to help us but on Friday I shall know if it is in their heads. With my year 11s we look at what they don’t know and they are very good at asking me to fill the gaps and we can usually do that quickly with a slide presentation or some oral practice. Students seem to have a lot going on in their heads so I don’t find them as good at remembering or noticing. It is something I am actively working on because digital natives are processing the information differently and can drift off – perhaps because they are bombarded with information. My job then is very much about making them see the value of learning what we are doing and the reasons why and then providing avenues for further follow up. They seem to like to sort things out themselves in many ways. I sometimes get students to rate their week in French out of 10 and explain why they have given themselves that mark. They often understand better that way what they have learned and what they haven’t. A little rating programme on their laptops would be great.

Challenge 6

Paper Batteries

These supercapacitors retain the flexibility of normal paper, but they have a rating that is comparable to that of standard commercial hardware—a 100g sheet could replace a 1300mAh battery. Because the medium is flexible, the researchers say you could shape batteries of all sizes for very specific use.

ars-technica brings this article about nano technology bringing us flexible , paper batteries. There is a lot of science in this and you can tell there are now things to be created which we haven’t even thought of. Flexible batteries mean flexible gadgets! Roll up phones, roll up gadgets, smaller gadgets. We need the flexible screens to go with the flexible batteries. We have been talking about technology taking us to a paper free environment. Not so. Nano technology is going to bring us right back there. The batteries are able to operate in a wide range of temperatures which means they will be able to be used anywhere. Will they save carbon? Will they save land fill? They will lead to more light weight gadgets and that would be a relief. Some laptops and phones are quite heavy. It means students and teachers would be freed of the burden of lugging piles of things around . It will also have bigger implications than I can think of right now…like battery powered clothing! Might actually lead to some social justice in technology because hopefully paper batteries will be less expensive to produce and would then make items more affordable.

LearningTube

LearningTube is a site where teachers can contribute and find educational videos. It is a work in progress and will only get better as more teachers and educational organisations contribute. teAchnology.com has got behind it and that represents a solid contributor. I recommend having a good browse of the front page to see what is recommended there and then looking under each of the tabs. It is a good example of a site that we can grow to help us get a web based approach to learning and classroom delivery. It caters to classroom management as well as content and from that point of view is a comprehensive site for teachers.

Dress up Firefox

If you’d like to dress up Firefox and give it some sparkle, then get the Personas add on and choose from a vast array of skins for Firefox. At the moment I like the fractal ones. While I am here, the F11 button gives you a full screen in Firefox and pressing the F11 button again will bring the menu bar back. Some people have been losing the menu bar and forgetting how to get it back!

I’ve got Natty Narwhal!

I now have Ubuntu 11.04 so can be part of the ongoing debate. I have had it loaded for 5 minutes and I like it! I like the look and the feel. It is running on my old NEC Versa M540. I had to upgrade from 10.04 to 10.10 and then I upgraded to natty from there. My first reaction was I needed to shrink the sidebar. I don’t know how to do that yet. It is too big and kiddie. I then wanted to take a screen shot and then learned the value of being cross platform! I clicked on the Ubuntu icon top left as you would in Windows and then did a search in the search bar as you would in Apple Spotlight. It is running okay from what I can tell but my NEC might need a rest so it runs better! I am happy with the interface and think it tidies everything up. I won’t be happy if I cannot find things! So…I’ll keep practising and will report back later…much later.

Tame your Mac start!

As a teacher you might want a programme to load at start up. As a student you might want that too. There are times though where programmes load themselves into start up or you have to many things opening at start up which slows everything down. We have no patience in this world. We don’t want to wait on a computer to do what we want. To tame your Mac start up :

1. Go to system preferences
2. Go to accounts
3. Click on the Login Items (ouverture in French!) tab
4. Click the programmes you want to stop from loading at start up.
5. Use the + button bottom left if you wish to add a programme.

Voilà!

TeFL Domain 3 Challenge 8

Challenge 8: Have you helped them to appreciate the input of others? Students are swamped with information from television, the internet, social media and school . For me the challenge is to make sure I am not competing with a lump of plastic with connections so they drift off glazy eyed into the screen and I am just a droning hum in the background. I believe teachers are irreplaceable and have a crucial role to play in a technological world. One of my prime jobs is to ensure students know where to get valid and valuable information. Teaching them to consult and check and double check has become important since a lot of information is misinformation and a number of things are just plain wrong. I used to be able to use song lyrics and know they were fine. I now have to check and double check because some lyrics are wrong and some lyrics are very poorly spelled. One of the things I do these days is put the lyrics on the whiteboard and correct them as I go along to explain why they are wrong. The world is full of willing collaborators but they haven’t all had a good education so you appreciate their input but know there is stuff to fix. For students this is a valuable lesson. Tomorrow’s song is a perfect example because the person has written foie instead of foi – liver instead of faith!! Last week it was ninjas falling from the sky instead of angels and I am proud to say one of my students was very quick to point that out to us all. In my classroom there is open contribution to factual information and correction of errors. I teach check, double check then triple check. I ask them to consult with other teachers and their parents. I encourage them to check with each other. I also show them how to verify information they have accessed. Today I was showing one boy on his laptop how to type the information into google.fr so he could verify the spelling of the stadium he was writing about. Students use Facebook to get help and verify information from each other and their Facebook friends. I use Twitter. Social media is very good at getting immediate help when you are not sure. I have even known students to email authors, artists, chefs to verify something or other in their work or life. Often they get a warm response. Sometimes they are ignored. You teach them just to try the next avenue. We live in a connected world so teaching the value of this is important. No one has to wait to be sure..they can ask and, sure enough, the planet gets back to them.

Challenge 7

Natty Narwhal Newbie review

I have to bear in mind I am running Ubuntu 11.04 on an old NEC Versa M540 so that I can decide whether I like it and want to use it permanently. The answer so far is an unequivocal yes…yes…yes! I loaded it at the weekend and the post is here. There is a very helpful site at OMG!Ubuntu!. My mission has been to change the size of the launcher. You won’t get me messing up my pristine screen with mucky fingers. So, I went to Ubuntu Geek and followed their instructions. The launcher is smaller…but I want smaller. Honestly, it is so kiddie. I have also learned to use workspaces and you can see that in the picture. I couldn’t get my screen grabber to go into the launcher…maybe on another day.I’d rather have AWN.That said Natty runs really well,it even got my mobile broadband stick going. I have choices as to how I will navigate natty and I can find whatever I want in the search menu. Hotot doesn’t seem to work so at the moment I am living in a Twitter Client free OS. Doesn’t matter. I like Natty and I like what it does.On a newer, faster machine it would be incredible I am sure. I’ll just keep investigating for now.

TeFL Domain 3 Challenge 10

Challenge 10: Do you help students with time management and organisation? Do I? I think most teachers do and do this well but our current frustration is that students have so many distractions in life that they only half listen to us or they listen and then try to cut corners and do it the easy way. Bottom line? It is always our fault!! Accountability and responsibility for themselves is lacking in some students. Some do listen and some hear what I say. Engaging them in the planning and preparation of their work tends to mean that more students succeed and can get their work in on time. The protected species become accountable after they leave school and I have to satisfy myself with that notion. With technology it is easy to waste time. A number of students voluntarily put themselves off Facebook when they have big assignments due. Some parents block it on their behalf. Students have become more aware of how they can fritter time away with technology and that is a good sign. Today I gave my year 9s an assignment of a list of clothing but expressions like green cotton trousers, a pink silk blouse. This was for French. We had covered some clothing vocab and last term we had done adjectives so we were combining the two. They had 20 things to work out what they meant and then they had to find the items online on French clothing sites. I was curious to see how they worked on this. The translators failed them miserably with this vocab as I knew they would. So after they had battled for 25 minutes I asked if they were using yahoo.fr or google .fr. I then asked if they had done it as an image search and then I asked if they had cut and pasted the words into the search engines. The lights went on, the energy level rose and then they completed it quickly and got the prices in euros and dollars. This same class is the one I worked on iMovie with last term. I taught them that as we practiced our adjectives and turns of phrase in French. They had to find a good French song to go with their presentation. As we went as long we shared tips as a class as to how we could do different things in iMovie. We were all learning together and some of them came to my desk for the one to one approach. As we worked on the French we shared how we could improve our efforts with iMovie. They were all so happy with their presentations and showed them to the class with a lot of confidence. On Twiducate some of the students wrote:

I liked doing my presentation on iMovie, because it’s easy to fit in a French song and put cool effects on it. Although, next time, I’ll do everything on iMovie because I took screenshots and then put them on iMovie. But after I had done that I realised that I had got a feminine and masculine wrong. I think it was fun when we did it on iMovie because I have more knowledge of it.

I think this was very good because we could practise our nouns, adjectives, masculines and feminines as well as thinking what we want in life. Also we used this to get used to iMovie which I think I am better at using iMovie now.

I liked this activity because we got to use iMovie and put music in. I think adding the music aspect to it makes it just a little bit more exciting. I enjoyed using the board and I like presenting things on the big board.

This was something we had managed all along the way because learning their French and learning iMovie and then whiteboard presentation was a big ask so we did have to look at how we would do that. As you can see, it meant a lot to them.

TeFl Domain 3 Challenge 9

The 30 days goals challenge – Matt Cutts

I got this video via my 30 Goals Challenge feed on Facebook. One of the advantages of Facebook is I can “like” groups which contribute to my professional knowledge and so have a regular stream of useful and inspiring input to keep me going. This 3 minute video makes changing your life and your attitude achievable. It allows you to think positively and see that if you want to learn something do and change your life – you are it and you can do it. It applies to all aspects of your life. It is how I have become better on a computer. I broke it down into achievable tasks and worked on them consistently for a month more or less. Now I am better at presentations, I can manage videos, I am better at locating classroom resources, I can use specific programmes better. Being a better learner means making yourself clear about achievable goals and Matt Cutts shows us how we can do that.

Mac Basics

One of the basics people forget when they are using a Mac is command shift 3 gets you a screenshot on the desktop. They also forget to shut their programmes (command tab and then Q) and they forget to empty the rubbish/garbage/ trash/recycle bin. They often don’t realise the quickest way to locate a programme is to go to Spotlight top right of the screen and type what they are looking for in the search box. So it is a good job there is a site How to Mac Basics which reminds you of all the routine need to know and must do things for your mac. The site is well laid out, gives straightforward help and really does cover the basics!

Formula Bar Mac Office Excel

If you always want the formula bar in Mac Office Excel, go to Preferences and click on the formula bar option it.The preferences for Mac Office Excel are worth exploring if you want to customise it to your own needs. You can also find the formula bar in under the View menu towards the bottom. Don’t confuse it with the formula builder. You can , of course, type things directly into the cells but people who migrate from Microsoft Office on Windows are used to having the bar there at the top of the worksheet. As a teacher with class lists I confess that is my preferred option.

TeFL Domain 3 Challenge 9

Challenge 9:Do your students know that sharing is empowering and consolidates learning?
This is something Australian schools do well. They do know how to encourage and promote student learning and activity in a public sense. Classroom walls and ceiling are decorated, events are organised, newsletters home are the norm. Students do thrive on the publishing of their work in one way or another. Twiducate has been successful in my classroom to help students share ideas with each other in a safe environment and to share ideas with me. We have often come up with plans for lessons or how we might improve practice. Students continue to be excited about using it. I have also built into my classroom practice this year in a much better way the pairing of students so they can help each other. Most of the time I let them choose their partners but I strategically choose times where I allocate partners so that students with particular strengths can share that knowledge with others. It works really well. I just say we are practising our collegiality skills and learning to work with anyone. Some of my students are also taking small steps to publish successful videos we have made on You Tube. I do not push it but I do mention it. They have to do that at home but I always say if I think their video is worth putting on a global market. It is important for students to realise there is a whole world out there where they can float ideas and get feedback.

Challenge 8

Love Natty Narwhal

I have just loaded Natty Narwhal onto my desktop computer which dual boots Windows/ Ubuntu. I had previously loaded it onto my old NEC Versa M540 as I explained in a previous post. I just wanted to try it out. I like Natty. It is a bit nutty sometimes but it is still being refined and it’s quite fun to now participate in the polemic most of which centres around the non classic desktop arrangement. I liked Ubuntu as it was and was quite happy with the classic look, which you can still choose, but I like the new Natty desktop because it means I have to think and reteach myself how to use it. It is not that hard and there is real value in getting out of the rut. The backstop is you can revert to the classic look. Now I know how to shrink the launcher I feel better but I hated how it popped on and off the screen. Problem solved by using the CompizConfig Setting Manager. I realise it is to allow maximum space for open windows, but I just get annoyed by a moving desktop . I want it there or not there. I also do not like how the system settings is at the bottom of the shut down menu. Just let the computer shut down when you press that icon and put other things elsewhere. System settings could go into launcher or the dashboard and in the classic set up it could be an icon on the menu bar. Some people get annoyed how the text comes and goes on the menu bar as you mouse over. I like that. It leaves the screen uncluttered unless you need to use the menu of a programme. I really like Banshee as a one stop shop for video and audio feasts. It took a while to adjust to Miro but now it is working well. Sometimes you just have to let the net and software sort itself out. Natty looks good and is highly usable. I can do everything I want and it is all very easy. I don’t mind searching in the dashboard and I find it helpful there are suggestions of other software to download. Just wish the dashboard would colour co ordinate with my theme!! Natty works really well with more ram and a newer computer and yet I can still get good functionality on my old laptop. I cannot ask for more than that.

Network connections on Ubuntu

I got the cheapest Vodafone mobile broadband stick and it works well on Ubuntu. I had trouble when I was using my old laptop with Ubuntu 11.04 because the stick would connect and drop out. I think that was probably an issue with the ram. My other laptop has 2GB of ram and the Vodafone connection works every time.Just go through the VPN settings in the network manager top right in the menu bar.The wizard takes you through. I set the account up on Windows because it comes prepared to do that and it seems to prefer Windows but I have not had issues with it on 11.04. I just plug it in before I start my laptop with Ubuntu and it has been a stable connection.

On the home network front the wifi posed a bit of a problem at first because Natty just wouldn’t connect to my wifi. I downloaded WiFi Radar from the Ubuntu software centre and could type in the name of my network . WiFi Radar then found it and tried to connect. Still nothing but hope. I searched in the Dashboard and there is an Additional Drivers utility. I used that and it updated my drivers! Bingo! The wifi connection appeared, I could log in and I have been happy since!

Set margins in Apple Office

Not easy to find how to set the margins in your Word document in Apple Office. Go up to the toolbar and select Format. Then select documents and under that you will see the screen with the margins tab.

Sit properly!

This little video is well designed and in 2 minutes you can work out very quickly what you need to do to improve your posture and positioning at a computer! Classroom and office designs need to pay heed to these practicalities of health and welfare.

Top Posts

This quarter the posts haven’t changed a lot but they have changed a little. Enough to tell me again that people are looking for things to resolve problems on their computer and then interesting and useful software.

1.Me TV -Ubuntu 10.04 This works just as well on 11.04 and has been the top post forever!
2.Use iPad as second screen m – this has been a hugely popular post too. People are always looking for ways to extend the use of their iPad.
3.Current world disaster and emergency map – again , this was an instant hit and has remained a much visited post. No surprises as to why.
4.Eject CD on MacBook – The day I posted this I had felt very silly for not noticing there was an eject button on the Mac. Well, looks like I am not the only silly one! This became an instant hit. I have also heard you can reboot the Mac and hold down the mouse button or trackpad key to try and eject a CD on a Mac if the eject key on the keyboard doesn’t work. I’d be wary of trying anything else suggested on the Net unless you are quite certain you can do it. Could cost you dearly. Maybe the eject CD thing on a Mac is more of a technical problem than we think and something which Apple needs to take onboard.
5.Microsoft pptPlex for PowerPoint Aagin this post is in the top 5 and still Microsoft ignores the fact we are hugely interested in htis and we could really use it in a classroom.

Top posts for March

Make a DNA fingerprint

I just made a DNA fingerprint! It was that easy and all on my computer. This is a great way to learn about science because the computer takes you through the steps and you learn how to do it as you are going along. The pictures and game approach make for good learning. Click on the Teachers’ Domain next to the picture to come up with the experiment. Check out the rest of the Nova site for some good teaching ideas.

TeFL Domain 3 Challenge 11

Challenge 11: Have you helped your students develop a personal learning network? Developing a personal learning network is critical to thriving and surviving at school. Good students have a lot of dependable human resources. It is therefore important to ensure isolated students have plenty of reliable and stable human resources too. Students will often use Facebook to good effect to get help and support when they need it . It is one of the strengths of Facebook that it can bring students into easy contact with reliable people who can help them. Some students also use YouTube with mixed results as to the positive impact of that on their work. Developing safe online networks can be incorporated into lessons which is why I use Twiducate. My students love this and it helps bond them as a learning network. Our school also has houses and homegroups and this can help cement some good contacts for students. Approaching experts is a skill but I have found that students who send a polite email often get a warm response from someone important or an important organisation. It’s in the numbers, though. If we all contacted experts it would swamp them. Sometimes it is better to show studnets things like TED or online communities and sites where they can get valid and well researched information.

Challenge 10

My Professional Network

Facebook could be publishing your mobile phone contacts

All the phone numbers in your mobile (cell) phone might now be on Facebook. Go to the top right of the screen, click on ACCOUNT, click on EDIT FRIENDS on left side of screen and click CONTACTS. You might see all the phone numbers stored on your mobile(cell) phone (Facebook friends or not) are published .

TO REMOVE, go to RIGHT column, click on “this page” and follow the instructions. That will allow you to stop that particular function.

Make a habit of going to your Facebook settings and checking the changes which often occur without notification to account holders. Your privacy is very much your business and responsibility these days because the default position for some sites is they publish what they want to and offer you the option of making the changes. Checking settings on any site is important.

Cool Workstations

So what makes a cool work area for a computer? This site has some pretty interesting images. Coolness seems to come from the number of connected screens, the screen size, clarity and then the way peripherals are neatly accommodated into the system. Then there is the lighting coolness factor and the screen saver factor. Apples are featuring pretty strongly on this site so they must have a coolness rating. So if we are planning work stations, desk areas and work places for schools, does coolness have a role? If we set up cool work areas would students function and focus better? Are lighting and screen quality important. We do live in a visual world and I would expect students to respond well to cool work areas. The thing I like is schools could easily and profitably engage students in designing cool workspaces. I am sure students would love to do that. I just really enjoyed looking at the cool set ups available on the site and would love to see more of this since we do live in a technological age. Car design and functionality are important. Why shouldn’t space and functionality be important?

Eject CD on MacBook

I have written this previous post to show you the keyboard eject button. So if you cannot eject a CD, what can you try?

1. Right click on the CD icon on the desktop and select eject CD
2. Go to the menu bar at the top of the screen and go to File and select Eject CD.
3. Press the eject button top right on the keyboard under the power button.
4. Shut down the computer and as you reboot/restart hold down the left mouse button or left trackpad. The CD will eject as you hold the mouse/trackpad down.

Any attempt to try and fish the CD out needs to be left to experts.

Media servers – the future is here

I was watching a programme last night about hi tech homes and it was clear we are well on the way to the future. You can now have your home theatre which runs games and DVDs but you can also stream content around your home, create channels and make it kiddie safe. You can access the weather, run your lighting, blinds, air conditioning. All from one remote. Your media can be loaded and then you use the icons to select the content. How easy would that make teaching? One remote for climate control and everything else which you could walk and talk with, a touch wall screen with weather and content as well. Students could access video and sound content from screen icons and central control could manage the energy output and avoid waste. I wouldn’t be scrambling to find the right links or clips. It would be there on my screen. Classes could view similar content simultaneously when appropriate so no booking venues and organising screens and what not. Bring it on!

This is the sort of possibility: Connected Living

And these are the servers currently being developed.

Clean your laptop and mobile devices now!

Don’t even think about all those germs on your hand held devices and look at your laptop. Some people can seem to keep things very clean. Touch screens are a great invention but they spread bacteria. Webopedia has a great set of instructions for keeping your digital devices clean. Don’t use tissues and paper towel and don’t use normal window cleaner. You need anti static wipes. Make sure everything is turned off and NOTHING should be wet. You just need a hint of damp! With the white MacBooks a good trick is to use a clean eraser to clean the hard plastic parts of the laptop – like the lid and bottom and around the keyboard. Treat any laptop screen with great care and respect. They are very expensive to repair.

Clean your mobile phone

Pogo iPhone /MacBook stylus

Photo via thinkgeek.com

I love the Think Geek site. It has really cool gadgets but I have restrained myself this time and brought you the Pogo Stylus. Why a stylus? if you read my last post then it is one way of minimising the transfer of germs and nasties. Secondly it is something you can lose and spend your time trying to locate. Thirdly it is more accurate than your fingers. It only works on the new MacBook trackpads. It probably also works on iPads. I have watched young students typing on their smart phones and they use their thumbs and go a million miles an hour. I have also received text messages from smart phone users where I have had to guess what they are trying to say. I have a phone with a stylus and a keyboard and that is what I prefer. I am very bad at typing on a screen keyboard. I am faster with a stylus. My fingers are too inaccurate on a phone or iPod Touch screen. So the Pogo sounds like a really good idea to me and it is bigger than some of the styluses I have seen and/or used. My phone one is small and I am always losing it. The bigger stylus I have I do not lose. Go to Think Geek and read all about it…and check out the giant pencil stylus while you are there. Hilarious!

Activity Monitor Apple

The Apple Activity Monitor is very similar to Windows Task Manager. You can look for it in Spotlight but it is in the Applications/Utilities folder. It is handy to monitor activity when your laptop isn’t running properly. It is also handy, as it was this morning, for shutting down programmes which are hanging. I tried to quit from dock, I tried the command -shift – tab and then Q. Nothing. Word just would not shut down. I keep activity monitor in my dock. I opened it and forced quit from the big red button top left after I had highlighted the offending programme! Fixed. I could then get on with my day.

10 skills students should graduate with

Lisa Thumann presented the morning keynote at NJEA Technology Integration Institute. She has posted the skills to her blog, Thurmann Resources along with a slide presentation. Something well worth discussing and thinking about. What 21st Century skills do our students need? It is great to see Lisa Thumann has been so keen to share her ideas electronically.

Online science games

The Science museum UK has some good educational games for science in its online section. I played Thingdom which is a game designed to teach students about genes and genetic makeup but there are plenty of other online games to choose from. They run on shockwave so you would need to make sure that plug-in is installed in your browser. It probably will be or there will be a message to update it. The main science museum site has a number of interesting themes for science which might be suitable for your classroom and it also has a section for educators with online resources and an e-news section.

You know you’re a techie teacher when…

Earlier, I blogged a link to Lisa’s techie teacher post which had got me off to such a good start this year. Well, we are past the half way mark, we have delivered yet another year level of laptops and we are well into our teaching with technology. Last week gave me a good reminder that my world had changed and I was now a techie teacher…so here’s my list:

1. You know you’re a techie teacher when you can’t find a pencil in your bag or your classroom for the national testing.

2. You know you are a techie teacher when it feels very odd when you are walking around the class collecting hand written international test papers.

3. You know you are a techie teacher when you go into a flap because there are no hard copy dictionaries in your classroom.

4. You know you are a techie teacher when you say, “You’ll need to pop around to the technicians” rather than “You’ll need to pop to the resource centre.”

5. You know you are a techie teacher when you’re asking yourself : ” I wonder if I should tweet that.”

6. You know you are a techie teacher when you say : “I think we had a status update moment.”

7. You know you are a techie teacher when not one of your pens works because you haven’t used them in such a long time.

8. You know you are a techie teacher when you have plans B, C and D incase the internet isn’t working.

9. You know when you are a techie teacher when there is a big, emotional moment and you hear: “I’ve dropped off!”

10. You know you are a techie teacher when you check your Bonjour list to see if your students are on iChat in class…and they pop a cheerful message onto your desktop.

Previous post : You know you’re a techie teacher when…

Make thinking visible in action

Make thinking visible in action

View more presentations from Sally Smith

I have had a look at Ron Ritchhart’s criteria for making thinking visible in the classroom. I found it very helpful and useful but I would have been lost without my students’ comments on Twiducate to help me!

TeFL Domain 3 Challenge 12

Scaffold their thinking I cannot imagine it any other way now. I automatically go into my classroom with ideas of how I am going to help my students manage the technology and learn their French. Today was no exception. We are doing clothing in French. We have learned quite a lot of vocabulary. We have been working on the placement and agreement of adjectives. We have looked at how to describe clothes and say whether they are in wool or cotton. Last week I took in some French fashion magazines and I took them on a 10 minute tour of Vogue.fr fashion parades. They were alive and alert. When I explained that most top fashion designers were men and the fact our own Colette Dinnigan had managed to make a hugely successful career for herself in Paris the students were even more interested. Then we looked at the top models and Australian girls featured well. As we looked at the clothes and practised our vocabulary the boys were having trouble identifying. The assignment is to make a mini fashion parade in iMovie with 3 French sentences for each image from a top French fashion designer. They had to find 5 images they liked, one they hated and one for the boys if they were a girl and vice versa. About 10 minutes into this the boys were looking very glum. “There must be something in you boys which can connect if the world’s top designers are men!” is all I offered at the time . I could see them try harder. 10 more minutes passed. I could feel the pain. So my laptop was hooked to the white board. I showed the boys if they searched for a designer and then an item of clothing – Balmain pantalon (trousers) they would find pictures they could relate to. Success! The girls by then had found some more images and were suggesting things to the boys like the streetware section of Vogue.fr. Everyone was at home. We have since worked on the sentences. They are very comfortable with iMovie because we have worked on it a lot. I suggested they might like to record their sentences and make a voice track. Their eyes lit up and I may well see that. They have loved the fashion. They are learning their vocabulary well because we did some spot quizzes today just quickly and they know just about all the words. Their presentations are coming along and they are looking forward to Friday when they will be sharing them.

Challenge 11

TeFL Domain 3 Challenge 13

Challenge 13: How do you help your students learn critical thinking? Teaching critical thinking has to become second nature. It is important when students are using technology they can learn how to muster the best information and the most reliable resources. They also need to know how to produce something which is less than routine because the world is not very keen on ho-hum effort these days. There has to be a dazzle factor and there has to be a an eye catching aspect to anything you produce. We are visually saturated so we have to know how to get the best out of our ideas, information and software. I have trained my classes to look for what makes them learn and look for what makes them notice. We have presented things to each other and we have looked at how we can improve our efforts and make them even more interesting and better thought out. Since this is my approach we have become far better at being honest about how to improve, how to eradicate mistakes, how to create something which will wow others with its palatable and worthy information and graphics. We have to think and plan. We have to get it right. We cannot just slap something together. We know that now . So the Thinker’s Keys have been a useful tool and you can download a free copy from the link. I also use Twiducate so that students can record what they have learned and share help and advice so that they have support in their thinking. When it comes to complex language tasks the concept webs and graphic tools because it helps them think out their ideas. When I show them videos in the target language I give them things to listen for. They need hooks into thinking and discerning information. With technology I have found it is important to give them things to look for as they go along and then teach them how to extract value from what they are doing and HOW they are doing it.

Challenge 12

Fantastic Mac Desktops

I have given some space on my blog to cool workstations because our base for computing needs to be somewhere we love and can feel comfortable if we are going to be computing for a large portion of our day. Besides cool work stations can give you a bit of status! Today I was thinking it would be good to feature some cool Mac desktops. Some of my students have cool desktops on their computers and I am showing my current desktop in the image for the post. Smashing Magazine has some cool desktops images. Macappstorm has a wide choice of Apple logo desktops.Outlawdesignblog has screenshots of some really cool mac desktops. Desktops are a good artistic outlet but decorating your desktop can help you become more organised because you are considering how each element fits with another. So, keep the creativity in your day and get yourself a really fantastic Mac desktop!

What is an operating system?

It has come to my attention that a lot of people do not know what an operating system is. Without an operating system you have no computer. An OS (operating system) is the management system for your computer. Most people are familiar with Microsoft Windows operating system.Windows 7 is the newest version of the Windows operating system. Apple runs a unix based operating system. The newest one out is Lion but most people are running on Snow Leopard. Linux has a wide variety of operating systems like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora , Mandriva, SuSE. I run different operating systems because they all have their advantages.

If you are running an operating system on a workplace/school then the computers need to be able to “talk” to the server or servers which are running the system. You need to use the recommended and supported OS for work and you need to be mindful that you cannot change things on a workplace computer without talking to a technician about it. Most work computers are set with one operating system and that is the one you use for your workplace. If you try and run a different OS you will have compatibility problems because different OS’s speak a different language and it is very hard to make a lot of computers work together if they are not running a compatible OS.

At home you might have your operating system dictated by your internet service provider. Some internet providers find it hard to work with Linux and some find it hard to work with older versions of Windows. Your internet service provider will generally be helpful in providing you good information as to how to smooth out your internet connection.

That said, I use the operating system the school provides for school AND I DO NOT CHANGE IT. It is a workplace computer and has to fit into a big system. At home I run the latest versions of Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Windows 7 but my Apple laptop is quite happy on my home network too.

There is a very clear explanation of operating systems here at learnfree.org.

Back up now!

Students are often caught out with not having their work backed up. It means no result or applying for an extension and then redoing the work. Most students get it right. When students are on laptops it is really important to remind them to make back ups. They also need to remind themselves to make back ups. It saves time , energy, worry and keeps the system running smoothly. Our laptop students are all issued with an external hard drive to back up their computer . They can also back up their files on the external drive. Backups need to become a habit and I am not going to stop saying that. It is also possible to find free and paid for online storage if you do a search for it. I don’t store my files online in a particular place but belong to groups and run blogs where critical classroom files are then stored. If you are using computers you need to have more than one place for accessing your important files. Online storage can be a good option. It is not a waste of time! Back up now!

Mac Keyboard Magic

Working with a keyboard means you can save time if you know the shortcuts. Trick is not to try to remember everything. You won’t. Here are 3:

Command then M – minimises the page you are viewing to the Dock.

Command then D – brings up the bookmark window so you can save current page in your bookmarks

Command then F puts the Find function into the bottom of your open window and then you can search for , find and highlight any particular text you need to.

Don’t try to remember all the shortcuts. Focus on one and make yourself use it all the time. They soon become second nature!

Mac shortcuts

Minecraft for class?

Wasn’t sure what to make of a student request to use Minecraft as part of our house exercise in French. The students have to take me on a tour of a real or imagined house , talk about it in French and let me ask them interview questions about it. One girl wanted to use Sims and take screen shots. I know Sims very well and what it can do because my daughter has played it forever. Minecraft was unfamiliar ground and I could neither say no nor yes. I said I’ll give you 10 minutes next lesson to show us on the whiteboard what it can do. Other students might be interested and will be able to see what you can do with it. Act of faith on my part but then I had to spring into action. So what do you do if your want to be open to technology in a classroom but don’t want to put yourself at risk?

1. Search for it in more than one search engine. Minecraft came up easily and I could see what others were doing with it and go to the official site. This game is huge is what I learnt and seemed liked electronic lego.

2. Search for it on Twitter and see what comments are being made. Having done that I felt like it was okay and probably safe for my classroom. I still wasn’t a hundred percent certain though.

3. Talk to the technicians. This gave me a chance to get information I might not have known or hadn’t thought of. Technicians are a fount of thought and information so the next tips are theirs.

4. Look it up on YouTube. What comes up could well be indicative of the sort of programme /software it is and you get the comments on YouTube as well.

5. On the USB sticks left behind in our computers Minecraft has featured very heavily. That could be good or bad. I asked the students why that was. They like it . It is a good game. I asked them if it was violent. They said zombies came out and attacked them in the house and village they had built but they could switch that off.

So now I was ready for the student to show us for 10 minutes in class and what he showed was really interesting and it had a real retro game look and feel but all the students could relate to it. He could use screenshots or take me on a tour as he was doing in class but do that in French. For secondary students it would make life quite interesting and Minecraft could be used in the way I shall be using it in class. Mine is but a modest contribution!

6. If you are going to use a game or screenshots from a game – how are you going to prove that this is student work and not that of a Net friend or expert gamer? That is a very good point to think about from one of our technicians. We need a work in a process approach and we need to have some idea of how games work. I could tell from the way the student was talking that he was new to this game and was doing the sort of things newbies do but could recover as you do and was very good at thinking on his feet.

So now I look forward to going on French tour of his imaginary house and he’ll be happy because he really likes that game.

7. If I still felt insecure I would not let it go on the whiteboard. I would get the student to show me on their laptop which this student did at lunchtime after he’d asked me if he could use it. That is how keen he was!

Travel through the solar system

“The “Eyes on the Solar System” interface combines video game technology and NASA data to create an environment for users to ride along with agency spacecraft and explore the cosmos. Screen graphics and information such as planet locations and spacecraft maneuvers use actual space mission data.” Nasa is now giving you the chance to travel through he solar system in real time and see what the Nasa missions see. That has to be exciting! Follow the link and the article explains all about it. The site is still being worked on so over time it will get bigger and better.

Phun for physics

If you actually knew what you were doing with physics principles you could probably build a working image far better than mine. In 5 minutes I had downloaded Phun, put in a background, inserted some physics objects and then had a working contraption which was sloshing the water about according to the laws of physics. It was fun! I can see how you would find it addictive and how you would want to make an even better contraption. I think physics teachers need to work out the best possibilities for this. For me it will probably become a cool desktop toy! There are plenty of YouTube videos showing you how to get the best out of it.

Is there an app for that?

This blog looks really cool on an iPad2. That was the first thing I learnt about iPads. They make websites look fantastic and the display is very sensible. The graphics and text are very clear. I borrowed an iPad2 because I wanted to see what it could do compared with a MacBook and an iPod Touch. On the down side it doesn’t run Flash and that’s a problem for sites like Voki. The other thing which turned me off was it was location, location, location. Every 5 minutes there was a location message. No I don’t want to locate everything I capture and do. Settings became my best friend. I turned location off. I could turn my iTunes account on and off and my home network. It sent me the French24 news in English because of its location obsession. FRENCH news. Hint. I want it in French. Bottom right of the screen I could turn it into French. Good.Oh – it cannot do anything with screen shots. You take a screen shot by pressing home and on/off button. Click. Then you cannot do anything with it other than email it. So the iPad is like my iPod Touch. It has to be tethered to a computer from time to time.I thought I’d have trouble typing because I am such a touchscreen klutz but I turned it sideways and could clatter away quite well on the touch keyboard. That made my life so much easier than on my iPod Touch. I downloaded some free apps for French. I am just wondering how schools will manage payment of apps for different things and if iPads are shared how that will be worked out. When I showed my year 11s the iPad and what I had put on it for French I was an instant cool teacher. I then wanted to see what they would do. While they were working on an exercise on their laptops I said they could try the apps out. It was interesting to see how much they all wanted a go. Then those who got a turn were totally absorbed. I realised it was harder to see what they are doing than if they are on a laptop because they lean over the screen on the desk. They were so excited and absorbed. They have begged me to bring it into class again tomorrow so they can try some more things. I have downloaded another half a dozen free French apps and we’ll see how they go. I can see they would have a good use in a French classroom for verb conjugation, dictionaries, language practice, vocab practice, language extension , research. I have had it a day. Already the iPad2 has worked hard for me. I’ll try it for a bit longer and see.

TeFL Domain 3 Challenge 14

Have you helped your students to be lifelong learners? I am fortunate to work in a school with a sizeable international student intake . We also are a school which different sorts of professionals like to visit. It means my students are exposed to students and adults who come from countries where they are automatically are learning a number of languages, get the practice in the languages and then can put those languages to use. I also get visiting exchange students from France and teachers and assistants from French speaking nations. This means our students are always aware that languages are very real and that other people have to try just as hard to learn English and that some people just slide from one language to another . This is our world and this is why we are learning what we are learning. It means our students leave school and many visit other countries and continue to learn languages even if they do not pursue a formal study option. To facilitate fast communication in a world which is rapidly changing then switching from one language to another smooths the way. As I consider each topic with students I do make an effort to show the practical benefits about whatever we are learning. There are linguistic, cultural , global and technology benefits to everything I do in class. If we are practising our French using iMovie I explain how then that can be transferred to other things. It has become part of our discussions. We are looking at how we can make good use of our iPhones and portable gadgets. I have just shown a student how to use KeyNote Remote on her iPhone so she can sync it with her laptop and use that as a script as she videos her home (we are doing house language in French). She was very excited to be able to do that. She had me and a visiting teacher from Noumea to look at her script as well so she is feeling pretty good right now and why not? It means all her hard work has suddenly taken off into a place she could not have imagined.What hse has learned are presentation, communication and information skills for her future life . I had told her how I had used the same approach for the laptop delivery sessions and how I had made my life so much easier that way. When we review our work we look together at how all this can add to their skills base and how it can be used later on down the track. The contextualising of learning is important. It has to be what we used to call in SA a connected conversation. Nothing wrong with that.

Challenge 13

Earth TV

Nothing grand, just the Earth TV site which has video cams and a quick run down of quite a few places in the world. It would be useful in my classroom just to be able to show the students a real time video and map of a particular place. Students are very visually oriented and like to see what you are talking about. It’s interesting for me to I have to say. You can change the language on the site by changing the en in the web address to fr, de or by clicking on the flags at the top of the page.

French iPad/iPod/iPhone apps

As I said, I have been taking an iPad2 into my year 11 French class just to see what happens so I can make better ,educated guesses about how I might use iPads in class. The way the students use it is interesting and intuitive. They automatically work in pairs, not singly on the iPad. Some put it down on the desk and lean over it together. Others are very mobile in their use of it and love the kinetic screen and will change it around, hold it up with the screen facing them and touch the icons that way and then move it around again and then put it down on the desk. They love its mobility. Not once have they done the wrong thing. Not once have they been off task and not once have I had to ask them to get on with their work. They are totally absorbed. They leave the lesson asking me to be sure to bring it back next lesson and could I please find more apps. I have loaded apps for French at different levels and have just asked them to try them out and tell me which ones they like. They have automatically settled on the ones for their level and then have worked hard and enjoyed learning French that way. If there are sound files they have plugged in their ear phones. I have not had to “manage” them at all. It has all been self regulating. The sorts of apps I use and have downloaded for students are things like the word reference.com app, Busuu , which has been a huge hit, The Odyssey Translator, Larousse dictionaries,27/7 French Lite, Best of French Cuisine, TV5 Monde, le Figaro.fr, France24 which streams live, mon guide ecolo,cote maison ,24/7 French vocab and verbe2verbe. There are others like Coffee Cup French. You just need to look and a lot of them are free or have a useful free trial version.

Top Referrers

Pays to advertise! Pays to use social media !

WordPress itself offers a number of useful features and it pays to learn about them and to incorporate them into your blog. So who were my top referrers for the past year?

1. en.wordpress.com – the WordPress page which keeps you up tp date on the latest posts from WordPress blogs.

2. The Tech Blender – for my Evernote post

3. Twitter – I tweet out every post and WordPress has made that bit easier in the last year.

4. Daymap – our school’s LMS

5. Facebook – I offer an opportunity to share my posts through social media because it is something WordPress offered me.

If I scan the rest of the list of my top referrers then social media is playing a strong role, as are Linux/Debian based sites and then Google. So what have I learnt?

1. To tag my posts is important.
2. To offer readers a way of sharing.
3. To centre my blog on what might be useful for my school.
4. To offer practical help
5. To show the scope of technology in education.

More French iPod/iPad/iPhone apps

Jules et la foret d’Hallowe’en is a cute story app with sound, word and pictures. As a language learner you can hear an authentic speaker and read along with it and look up the words you don’t know in the word reference app or a dictionary app. There is also the Histoires HD app which offers the first story free and then you can purchase others. The stories are well illustrated and read very clearly and well. These sorts of audio visual apps are perfect for improving your comprehension and accent. There are also the Gratis Anglais flashcards which are much more than simple flashcards. They are for French speakers to learn English but they do a wonderful job of teaching English speakers French! Then you can learn french with 7 jours sur la planete from TV5 Monde. You hear short videos of the news and then there are vocabulary and language building exercises. Perfect for more advanced students. The Speak Easy French Lite is a good audio themed language builder for beginners. There are plenty of apps at your level both free and paid.

Advantages of iPads

I borrowed an iPad2 to take to my French classes to see whether they would be any good in class or not. To cut a long story short I have found with my year 8s (beginners) it has been a real eye opener and I’d love to have a class set so they could share one between two. With my year 9s I have found they explore it more and like to see what it really does. With my year 11s they have really enjoyed using the advanced French apps . My year 8s don’t have laptops so they would really help in class. For the other year levels a couple of iPads would provide a different approach to learning french and a break from the intense approach of a laptop. The benefits I can see at present:

1. I loaded Documents free and ask students to record what they have done on the iPad there and save as a text. They have also saved images and drawings for me by using the camera and image apps. They are very honest in their appraisals and work output.

2. Every student has been totally absorbed when they have been using the iPad and any conversation has been totally about the work on the iPad.

3. Students know how touse them even if they have never been on an iPad before.

4. They agree with me that the apps are everything and that I have chosen good apps for them. Not one thinks they would replace a laptop and I agree with that.

5. The year 8s who use them can produce far better quality work if I show them the right apps or websites. I have been astounded by the level of output from the year 8s who have used it.

6. Adding the Documents Free was a good move on my part because students like to tell you what they have learned and how they learnt it.

7. iPads have a coolness factor extraordinaire. I became instant cool teacher when I brought it into class and studnets do not mind at all waiting for a turn.

8. It has really given them a motivation boost. They like pitting themselves against an iPad app. It doesn’t seem like work to them.

9. They have treated it very carefully and with respect.

10. The iPad has shown them apps they can download themselves and use on their iPod Touch or iPhone.

Now I have found the right sorts of apps and can see each year level is unique in using it I am going to explore the notion of creating work on the iPad since my year 8s have shown me they can be a real asset when it comes to producing better quality assignments in their books. I am also going to get them to rate the apps. I am getting the idea of which ones are popular and they find useful, but I need to clarify that more.

They’re watching you

I go this link via zecool on Twitter. Koppel on Discovery has created an interactive daily routine for you to follow and then you will find out how by you are being tracked by whoever it is who is tracking us. It isn’t news and it isn’t a surprise but when you do this interactive activity it makes you realise that we are being tracked all the time. As you do it, you will see how to avoid data collection. Surely their databanks are full by now – whoever they are. What surprised me was when it was suggested you might not get your purchases if you did not give your phone number. Is this a common practice in other countries?

Blogging with iPad

I am writing my first post from the WordPress iPad app. It doesn’t connect at school but is fine at home. Not sure yet if I can post a picture which I have saved on my iPad and which I have customized using the PhotoPad app. I have also loaded the Photoshop Express app and PhotoPad app. There are very easy apps for doing simple things with images like changing size, adding frames and using some quick filters. So far so good. I have had to come onto a computer to shift the place my image. Maybe I should have inserted the image first?! When I uploaded from the iPad the image displayed at the bottom of the post.I really do think I should have loaded the image first but that is all part of the learning curve.

Make your iPad go to work!

An iPad can present a challenge because we have been brought up on or have migrated to computers. So we are used to leads, wires and things to plug in. We don’t feel right without them. An iPad requires you to rethink how you are going to achieve your ends. Three apps help you create pieces on your iPad which you can store there or online. Evernote I have blogged about before because you can use it to be a one stop shop for ideas and the creating of ideas. On the iPad it is a lifesaver because you can record things, put in pictures , write notes and text. it is an amazingly flexible application. Evernote Peek is designed for the iPad2 smart cover and based on the look, cover, learn technique. It has a number of topics and subjects which it covers . It doesn’t seem to work without the smart cover. It’s a very easy way to learn basics. The last app for today is Documents Free which is a pocket rocket office suite which is really easy to use and has some nice features. With Evernote and Documents Free you do not feel so alone on your iPad!

Change Keynote and Powerpoint presentations into movies

Wings of inspiration

View more presentations from Sally Smith

Being able to convert Powerpoint or Keynote presentations into movies has its advantages if you are a teacher and a non movie maker. Most teachers can easily use these slide presentation programmes and so can their students. So why not try the next step? Create your slide presentation as you normally do and then put in the animations and transitions you want to. In PowerPoint you go to the file menu and save it as a movie. In Keynote you go the the menu bar and then to share and then export and you can export it as a movie or iPod movie. You can then create a teaching video or your students can use this approach to present work. Once you have your movie you can import it into Windows Live Movie Maker or iMovie. It means you can then add music, other pictures, video snippets or movie effects really easily. I have used this to teach vocabulary and grammar quite successfully. In one example I taught the students negatives using my original keynote presentation. As they were working on exercises to master this new knowledge, I imported the keynote into iMovie after I had saved it as a movie. I added some good pictures and then a nice French song. I played it to them in the last 5 minutes of the lesson as a form of revision. I have put an example of what you can do by turning slide presentations into a movie so you can see the effect. What you choose to do then is a matter of your own imagination!

iPad Curriculum

ipad Curriculum is a good place to get started and then to keep bookmarked so that you can familiarise yourself with the sort of apps which could be used in a school curriculum. There are some very good ones. If they are paid apps then the school will have to work out how these will be paid for on shared iPads. The syncing to one computer then seems to be an issue which , in the end, will be resolved. The apps on iPad curriculum cover a number of subject areas. The advantages of an iPad in class as I have experienced are that you cannot multitask. The student has to be focussed on the app or apps you provide. Students are also very motivated to use iPads and use them very easily.They love them and want to use them. I have found the one I have been taking into class as a bit of an experiment for the last two weeks has been used constantly for the entire lesson and whether students share the iPad or are asked to try it out for me for one lesson, then they will be totally absorbed and are also finding it very easy to ask me questions. Not sure why that is. They just ask when they are stuck and even the shy students will ask.It is a matter of finding the right apps to practise various aspects of the curriculum . My students like the reference material, they like the apps which include sound, they like quizzes to test their knowledge and the ones who don’t have laptops like to use them as a help to completing worksheets.iPads + students + good apps = happy classes!

Cyberbullying Toolkit

Commonsense media has a very good section on cyberbullying which is divided into age appropriate areas for school. The cyberbullying toolkit provides information, interactive activities and a good base for managing the ongoing problems and issues with cyberbullying. The toolkit is there to help provide resilience, practical help and a way of collaborating so that cyberbullying is less of an issue and more of something which can be managed. It is designed to help adults facilitate conversations and strategies around cyberbullying so that the social network can unite in a clear and common message that it is not something we want. Good approach given there are more of us than there are of them. A team approach is always a good way of dealing with social ills.

Windows, Apple or Ubuntu?

I am not about to write a post where I soften the edges for everyone and agree but I do accept we are all different and what I am about to say expresses my personal preference.The one thing I can say about all the OS’ is that they have some good support for teachers and education and over the last year that has increased. No matter which OS you use there are now viable choices in software and education groups and forums. At work I use a MacBook all the time because it is our laptop of choice and with good reason. Technically the students and MacBooks have come up with some interesting challenges occasionally but MacBooks are pretty robust and system failures and interference is very limited. Apples are based on Unix and given Unix was the original OS to offer software for all then it was disheartening to discover that Apple was pushing the paid software line. Apple and the market have since rearranged themselves so there is now a good balance between free software, free to try software which is not crippled and then paid software. The apps store is a good move because apps are now familiar ground for everyone. I have found plenty of freeware which I can use and try which has added to my MacBook. I do not own it so the paid software is supplied to us. I leave the OS alone but I certainly have fun finding things which will help my MacBook look better or increase my productivity in the classroom. My biggest learning curve was how to keep my MacBook tidy and organised. It was a challenge but I have mastered that now. Initially I found the Apple approach very confusing and I had to work through a number of steps and get software to help me. My MacBook runs smoothly, has some good tools and software and has been very reliable. It’s a bit shaky on flash but not too bad and so everything I want to do is accomplished without a hitch. I have learned to use Spotlight and programme preferences to make my life easier on a MacBook. It runs hard and it runs well. I rarely use Windows these days. I dual boot Windows at home on my desktop and laptop. Microsoft Office cannot be beaten. It easily produces classy, original material and has a far greater capacity to be creative and imaginative compared with other office suites. Other office suites do the job. Microsoft Office not only does the job there is far more depth to it. Windows also has so much software on offer both freeware, shareware and paid software. I stay out of Windows because I get tired of the updates and then the long wait to shut my computer down. I get tired of the range wars between Windows and whatever it decides at the time and I get tired of hauling what seems to be a huge amount of stuff around. Windows 7 has been quite good and it accesses international news sites far better than other OS’ and its capacity to manage flash is second to none.My OS of choice remains Natty Narwhal from Ubuntu. I dual boot it with Windows and my MacBook dual boots with Windows as well. I like the search function of the dashboard in Natty. I can do screencasts and graphics more easily in Natty. I am getting better at Gimp so I use that on the MacBook as well. Natty makes very good use of my graphics cards and images are far better on Natty than any other operating system. I like to decorate my desktop so image is everything to me. I like the dock at the side. Natty makes life very easy for me. It has some trouble with international news sites. Silverlight handles these things better than Moonlight. I really like the Banshee music player. Natty just runs well. I had a problem with the screensaver hanging my computer from time to time. I have taken it off and not had a problem since. Ubuntu has always made my computing life easy. I can just get on with what I want and it is not using up all my system resources and running the processor or hard drive too hard . Being cross platform gave me a challenge at first and when new versions come out I still have to think them out. Nothing wrong with using my brain. If I had a NetBook I’d be running that on Linux because it is more efficient at using system resources and so there is superior speed and page access. Windows on a Netbook is why you have an iPod Touch to play with!

Teacher Education and 21st Century Skills

I found this video on the Educational Learning and Mobile Technology and it is certainly something we have been thinking about in our school. Teachers are aware there is a big change coming and it might be true as this video points out that society will force us to change. Bit by bit we are going with the change because that is what people do. They have adapted to trains, planes, electricity, fire, phones. Humanity has a great capacity to change. The point this video makes is we have to change the sort of teachers we are because nothing is cut and dried anymore and it is difficult to articulate what exactly it is we are now dealing with and what it is we are preparing our students for. We do have to teach them to think and adapt as we have done ourselves. The more I work with technology in a classroom the less I am concerned with lessons and the more I am concerned with delivering the skills, knowledge and tools students need to create something which will both reinforce and extend their learning. I have become a team leader. I have had to work out ways that students can safely input without taking us too far off task and the set curriculum. We are still teaching to exams and standardised tests.Students can be taught how to contribute validly and purposefully to a team and they like that. They like sharing their knowledge. They like trouble shooting and they like team learning. Then they like to be left alone to get on with the job but be allowed to ask whatever it is they need to do/learn to complete the task. The video gives us a way of thinking about what we need to be doing and how we need to be changing . What is clear is team work really highlights the students who are non contributors who then drift off. There is a risk these students will become underskilled and isolated. We need to create a way of linking those students back in and I think it is the one to one and the one on one which will become increasingly more important, yet that is a very expensive way to deliver education – or is it?

Turn 2D images into 3D online

3Defy is a flash site which uses GPU acceleration similar to Vista or Apple’s OSX so the quality of the 3D graphics isn’t bad at all. You can take a 2D photo and turn it into a 3D wonder. There is plenty of help and support on the site for mastering the techniques if you want to improve on what you have done. There are also plenty of YouTube videos to help you as well. The effects are really quite good. The site is divided into channels so you can look at the science or art images, so even if you don’t want to make your own 3D images, you can appreciate the work of others.

MacIntosh Classic iPad

Technology modifiers are in a league of their own. I got this via osXdaily where you can find the complete instructions for changing an old MacIntosh Classic into an iPad dock. The only problem I can see is the peripheral buttons are hidden. It looks fun though and the truth is, it would challenge you to find ways of using it without resorting to the home , camera or sound buttons. it forces you to think laterally. There is a Japanese how to video on the site so that you get a really professional finish.

Fairy God_Webber

Switch File Converter

Switch File Converter

I wrote a post about how to use Switch to convert audio files in Garage Band on your MacBook. Switch is a handy file converter for Mac or Windows and works very simply. It means you can play files on your iPod or phone or retrieve the audio files from videos you have made. You can switch between popular audio formats according to your needs because not all devices use the same format unfortunately.

Adjust your Facebook privacy settings

Photo:Melinda Kolk pics4learning.com

When the new Facebook timeline is rolled out every post, status update and photo you posted will be searchable to your friends. It may or may not bother you. For more information and then some sensible advice about managing this, please read this PC Advisor article. You will have one week to make the adjustments so be sure to work out what you plan to do.

Speed up your Macbook

Photo: wikipedia

Speeding up your MacBook can be quite easy. If it is still running slowly then you will probably need to get technical help.

1. Clear your rubbish bin. If you don’t all those files are sitting on your hard drive taking up space.
2. Clear the downloads folder. You will probably find quite a few files you downloaded that you no longer need.
3. Check photos ,videos and music. There may well be files there you no longer need.
4. Check spotlight. When you are using spotlight (top right) you may see more than one copy of the same file. Remove duplicates.
5. Clear your desktop. Macs do not like a cluttered desktop. Learn to put things in your home folder, dock or documents folder. Run your Mac from system folders not the desktop. Using the desktop should be for the short term not the long haul. You’ll notice a difference once you take everything off the desktop!

Then give it all a nice shine with CCleaner!

E-learning wish list 8

I still really haven’t worked out a 100% sure way of knowing every student is engaged properly on their laptop. I guess I have kept them very busy and changed my tactic so they have to report back on something they are doing or I walk around and help them as I go. They like to come to my desk though. I am pretty used to seeing a student get up and carefully bring their laptop to my desk after they have asked if I will help them. Sometimes it is so quiet but I am generally happy that if I set them absorbing work they like then they will so the right thing. So on with my next wish list.

1. iPads. I want iPads in my classroom. I have been really impressed with how the one I have borrowed has gone to work and made a difference. One iPad can do a lot of work in a classroom. For the class which has no iPads I’d like to have enough so that the class could use them. I have learned how each level has used them and my year 8s would really like to use them to help them do the work I have set and we are doing. They just want to browse the apps. These are Netizens. In my other classes about 5 iPads would be good so the students could do some intensive work on their French. They love the apps and using them to get better at their French. I have also noticed the iPads are good for advancing bright students and helping students who are having difficulties. iPads are very adaptable.
2. Media server. Ever since I saw the programme on media servers I want the school to have one. I want to be able to go to a wall /screen of icons and select the videos, e-text books or files I want to use. If it were developed properly, the whole state, the whole country, the whole world could have icons to choose from which would enable access to hundreds of suitable classroom videos, slide presentations, assignments. No more borrowing . Just like a massive media library for education. Smart TVs are starting to get it, education needs to. Saves paper.
3. Recording booths. I so need recording booths which would buffer sound and enable a private space for recording voice or video.
4. Teachers who can connect with non attenders and reluctant attenders online. We need to be looking at developing a virtual school arrangement so that all students are at school. I hear Los Angeles has a virtual school . I am thinking less of an online school but more of a virtual school with avatars and classes for students who cannot seem to get to a real time school for whatever reason. Bit like our school of the air but a school of the internet!
5. Massive clear out and recycling effort. Get rid of all the old technology. Get rid of all the old papers and books. Get rid of the folders and things we were using which we no longer need. A massive spring clean. I am certain we’d have more space, cleaner work areas and better air!

E-learning wishlist 7

Put your home folder in your dock

If you clear your Mac desktop you need to access your files easily. I am using my home folder. To click onto it from the Finder menu isn’t what I want to do. Click on the Mac HD icon. Click on the Users folder. Move the home folder into the dock. Right click on the home folder icon and click folder and then display it how you want – either as a list or folders. You can then access what you want easily. Ubuntu does put the home folder in the dock as a matter of course. It is surprising Apple doesn’t. Don’t try to shift the home folder from the sidebar of an open window on the Mac. That is just an alias and you can lose it if you try to move it. It can be put back – but still. To shift your home folder you need to go to the users folder!

iMovie Tricks

iMovie is very popular with the laptop students. They love learning how it works. There have been some hiccoughs which I’ll deal with in another post, but by and large it has been relatively easy to introduce into lesson as long as I have allowed time for problem solving and one to one learning so they can master the software. Their final products have been really rewarding and student feedback tells me they want to get better and better. This YouTube clips gives some clear instruction on some of the lesser known features of iMovie.

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs' Lessons!!!

View more presentations from Sompong Yusoontorn

I cannot ignore the fact the universe has changed and we have noticed. Steve Jobs is proof that people are not replaceable. He has inspired so many and his firm belief is that he has trained his team so well they will carry on without him. As teachers and educators we can learn a lot from this man who had the capcity to change the whole way we looked at everything and could value all he learnt. His speech at his commencement at Stanford University gets it very clear about how education and learning are to be valued and that lifelong learning is unique. He talks about loving what you do and doing what you love and within that he shows , as he speaks, how learning leads you to a life you love.

Pay it forward

Free Sound Clips

At last!!! A site where I can find sounds to make my presentations sound more interesting. You can contribute sounds too , so it means the SoundBible will become a wonderful, growing resource for the classroom. Book mark it! That’s it. Done. Sounds. TA DA!

Embed YouTube videos into Word

Teacher Experience Exchange has a very clear and well constructed video about how you can put a YouTube video into a Word doc for teaching purposes. The principle is the same for embedding YouTube videos into PowerPoint. It needs to run in Windows since the ones I did would not show on the MacBook in Office. Maybe there is MacBook magic for embedded videos in Mac Office. This is a very handy tip since you don’t have to worry about finding URLs and remembering them. You can put the video you want students to watch straight into the doc or Powerpoint.It also gives you the flexibility of setting some good assignments for study time or homework. Much smoother and more authentic transitions in content delivery! My instructions for Powerpoint are here.

E-lesson template

My e-lesson template for French

I have found it is quite difficult to distil what you do as a teacher on a daily basis in a classroom in order to teach students. This is my best effort and I had to think about how I actually cover topics. it is not as simple as following a format because there is something organic and spontaneous about teaching.

I generally cover two topics a term . Within that I teach vocab, grammar and sentence structure.

First things first:

1. Roll – students have 3-5 sentences to write or a simple exercise while I am doing that.
2. Explain what is in the lesson and what it will do for them
3. Teach content simply with slide show
4. Teach content in a more complex way with slide show
5. Use a short video to reinforce content
6. Do some exercises to practice

Follow up lessons:

1. Exercise to practise what we are learning – whiteboard
2. Ideas and examples about how they can improve – whiteboard
3. Look at the technology involved – whiteboard
4. Set the assignment and explain it
5. Examples of what I want them to achieve – whiteboard
6. Include other short videos which reinforce vocabulary ,content and presentation skills

Follow up lessons:

1. iPad apps to reinforce what we are doing
2. One to one help and tuition
3. Group input about how we can improve
4. One to one help and tuition
5. Specific quick exercises to reinforce and further develop content
6. Leave them alone to work
7. Respond to specific requests for help.
8. Negotiate deadline and presentation requirements

Homework:

A long term assignment which will practise the skills we are learning in class and then I alternate between an oral and written presentation.

Feedback:

I collect it informally along the way but ask them to report back in writing on Twiducate. I generally ask them questions so that the feedback I get is quite specific.

Materials:

I create a folder with the short and long term assignments relevant to the topic
I collect the slide shows relevant to the topic
I collect the sound files
I make sure I know which parts of the text book/workbook we are doing each lesson.
I collect videos and video links relevant to the topic and make sure I have book marked video links and created a text file with them.
For students without laptops I make the necessary computer room bookings each week according to our needs
I ensure everyone is comfortable with the technology aspect and spend at least 3 lessons on that.
I bookmark sites which will help them learn and get started or further develop their knowledge
I upload tasks and files to LMS or put in network folder.

The whole internet’s in my computer!

The whole internet's in my computer!

Take a bow , educators!

It ‘s not all in vain! For over a year I have blogged my heart out trying to get education on the internet and search engine agenda. When I first started this blog I was dismayed to discover that SEO ranking considered education to be a weak link. Oh really? Since then I have found so many educators who get on Twitter, YouTube, who create blogs, who have organised websites for teachers and education. World wide we are working together to bring education into the 21st Century and to make the online world know what we are doing. We are real teachers in real classrooms who share what we do . By doing this we have strengthened each other and helped each other but, more than that, the world can see what our job actually is. They can see for themselves what we actually do and hear it from the people who do it day in day out, year after year. We have to innovate with technology. We have to find the ways of making it work in a classroom. We have to be there trying to put it all together and keep up with curriculum implementation , performance management and best practice. Education does count. It is important. It is the future. So, I went to my spot on Slideshare and when I looked at the most viewed I finally have 5 slide presentations to do with education in the top 12. Do you know how heartening that is? My Slideshare network has always encouraged me and helped me to learn more and more. They are not all teachers but they are all tertiary educated and some are teachers. These people have helped me make better presentations which I can use in class but I can now also make better presentations which the rest of the world can and has viewed. Education is not a weak link and it is not unimportant. So, finally, I can say, thanks to all my online activity and the encouragement I have received ,that education is starting to count online. Take a bow, teachers.

Does your blog pass muster?

Does your blog pass muster? Can you improve? Can you do what you ask your students to do and turn in your best work on your blog? WebsiteGrader is a website SEO tool by HubSpot which is better than sliced bread if you are taking your blog seriously! They have a great sense of humour , so as you wait for your blog or website to be graded then you have some interesting little thoughts pop up to make you think and chuckle. I have used it before and it rated this blog at 90% in April. I am still up there at 90% in the top one third of websites and I could not be happier. The Fairy God_Webber is there to help us all. WordPress offers practical help on a regular basis too so you can make your blog succeed. HubSpot’s WebsiteGrader offers a criterion reference assessment so you can see quite clearly where your strengths are and what you need to do to improve. You can also access paid help. I figure if I am holding my grade I am doing well because it is a highly competitive arena on the web. If you ask for help, if you follow good practice and if you take notice of suggestions then bit by bit you can become very competent in what you choose to do. There is a lot of good help out there. My challenge now is to head for a distinction!

Put a guinea pig in your monitor – no, really!

Funmunch had this great photo by someone who had turned their old monitor into a nice home for their pet. The planet is drowning in e-waste so it’s always great to find people who can think laterally and give the rest of us some idea of how we can recycle more imaginatively.

So you think PowerPoint is boring?

View presentations byDOINA K

This lady, Doina K, is the doyenne of Powerpoint and her latest show on Alice in Wonderland has to be seen to be believed. There is nothing dull about PowerPoint.

Measuring Up

Measuring Up (3min, 27secs) from Graham Cousens on Vimeo.

This 3 minute video shows how powerful technology can be in getting a message across. It underlines the importance of working with others in a real way and using your talents and skills to unlock theirs. The Sydney Story Factory is an initiative to unlock the power of education for all.

Fly that plane

Ken Blackburn knows plenty about aerodynamics and aeronautics in a very serious sense. He is also the Guinness Book of Records holder for the paper plane which can stay aloft the longest. I have noticed building paper planes has come back into vogue with students. They need to know how to get them right.Ken Blackburn has openly shared his knowledge on a very easy to navigate site. He is participating in learning on the web and in real classrooms. Classic example of how to put technology to good use in order to educate others.

Free online Word tutorials

The Teacher Experience Exchange is a very helpful site if you are looking for support with classroom based technology and ideas. It is also a very practical site. Teachers need to know so much these days and it is important to master the basics – like Word. If you follow the link you will be able to sign up for some free online help which will make you a more confident Word user

Get onto Twitter!

My last ranking on Twitter Grader was 75%. I have managed to raise it to 79%. You have to work hard to improve on Twitter. It’s a real challenge. So, why use Twitter?

1. It provides constant input of thought and ideas.
2. It supplies current and real time information when you want it.
3. Follow and be followed and you can build up a reliable, helpful, positive personal learning network.
4. You can current and helpful information by using the hashtags -like #japan #qldfloods #seo #ubuntu #science #maths
5. You can use it like a search engine and get different results from a search engine so you optimise information you can obtain.
6. You can participate in online discussions which interest you.
7. You can always access ideas for content.
8. You can access expert help.
9. If companies you deal with are on Twitter you can contact them informally often with good results.
10. It’s a real brain work out to keep your thoughts to 140 characters.

I wouldn’t encourage secondary students to use it in my classroom. Some of the comments can be random and inappropriate for school. If I want to use Twitter I use it via Tweet Grid where I can quickly vet searches before I make them public. I also use TTwitter Trends Map because it shows in real time what any location is tweeting.

Clear, cull, clean! Do it!

I realised last week that we are in a good position now to move everything forward. Step into the future with confidence. If we don’t clean up around ourselves, though, we are going to be choking in dust and dirt and tripping over the rubbish as we make our first, certain steps into the new era. Nothing confident or dignified about that. So, now’s our chance. We can continue to cling on to the past or we can clear the clutter and enjoy a future which will be lighter and brighter and cleaner and greener. We need to take action now and commit to reclaiming our spaces. Technology is giving us a great opportunity to live in clean, spacious areas so let’s do it. This term I am committing myself to #cleanandgreen. This week all my blog posts will be about reclaiming my spaces. So I have some questions:

Do you need all those old videos?
Do you need that old dinosaur computer with the CRT monitor and its radiation emissions?
Do you need all that paperwork from 1997?
Do you needs all those leads and peripherals ?
Do you need those text books from 1987?

Clean it up! Last week I got my faculty involved for a lesson in clearing up our office. We binned, recycled, reclaimed. We found some neglected, great treasures which we could put to work in our lessons and even had thoughts as we went along as to how we might convert them to digital versions. I was dusting and wiping reclaimed containers and surfaces. It was horrible , black dust and my hands were filthy. We are breathing that in…or we were. Everyone is really pleased and delighted with the difference we have made. That is motivating. So I am doing it again tomorrow. Monday is #cleanandgreen day.

Technology Competence Levels

Technology Competence Levels

View more presentations from Sally Smith

We have to start somewhere. We have to look at what we need by way of skills in technology and then create checklists and levels of competence. It means we then know which level to go onto next and it means we know what we are aiming for. I have designed this as a means of discussion. It is not set it concrete. It ought to be able to be changed and rearranged so it suits our needs. We need to be far clearer about what we can do and what we need to be able to do in order to progress further. It is something we can state clearly and then self evaluate. We just need a decent set of competencies for each level.

In the picture

If you haven’t done so already , connect your computer to your TV ! With the newer flatscreen TVs it is a far superior experience and quite fun, really. I have just connected my desktop to my Samsung LCD TV via an HDMI cable and I cannot believe the quality in sound and image. I use a wifi keyboard and mouse so that I am not sitting like a twit in front of the TV!

So, look at your connections:

vga

VGA are the older video connections and are on most computers, monitors and TVs. You can connect through those. You will have to go into the display settings and adjust for you screen.

dvi

DVI are more modern and are on some monitors and computers. My experience is they are not as reliable with graphic drivers as HDMI and VGA. They do produce a very high quality picture, though. They may not be on your TV but you can get DVI/ VGA leads and DVI/ HDMI leads so you could connect that way.

hdmi

Through experience I am sold on HDMI. They are very solid connections. You don’t have to worry about bent or broken pins and the sound quality is excellent. I connected my desktop to the TV via HDMI , chose HDMI from the menu on the TV, selected HDMI sound in the control panel on my computer and it was that easy. I went into the display settings to adjust the display to my liking but the default one was fine – just couldn’t read text from where I was sitting. My desktop is a mini tower so it is now staying permanently hooked up to my TV. Don’t know why I didn’t do it before.

Pictures: shopping.com

More information about HDMI via CNet :

Why HDMI?

Take the plunge

av media systems has a great many links to different sites which are listed under curriculum areas. The sites are designed for whiteboard use but some of the sites I visited could be used to good effect on laptops in class. Be warned. Not all of the sites under each heading work. It is the nature of the internet that some sites just close and that some people running sites do not always take the opportunity to keep their links current. Persist. There are some good materials here. I found one interactive learning game on compound machines which would probably be a good tempo changer in a lesson. There are some good materials for teaching languages on the whiteboard and other subject areas have some sound research materials as well as interactive ones.

Stick your ideas on an electronic memo board

I have just been introduced to LinoIt. It is a great way to get informal discussions going and build up a bank of ideas which can be sorted and sifted in the same way as you might do it with sticky notes. You can create your own memo board for developing your own ideas and thoughts or you can create a group and get everyone to contribute. It’s fun, easy and so simple to do. Doesn’t take long to sign in and get going. You can also access it from iPads, iPods and iPhones so it means you can harness all that mobile discussion power too. I can imagine it would have great classroom application too and that students would be very motivated to use it.

iPads in the classroom

The Victorian Education Department has developed a site to look at iPads in learning. It has some good links to useful education links and then an appraisal of how this can all bolt together in a classroom environment. The site is extremely practical and very helpful if you are using or thinking of using iPads in a classroom.

Convert tapes to CD

You know all those cassette tapes you have around the place? I culled a lot of mine and replaced them with CDs and digital versions, but there are some I cannot replace especially my language learning material. I keep meaning to transfer it to my computer and maybe even create CDs. It is something to think about and plan for. In order to encourage me and you to get moving on the tape conversions I have found two clear sets of instructions. These instructions are for Windows and use Audacity. The other instructions are for Mac. If you don’t want to invest an afternoon in doing this there are paid services which will do the work for you. The longer you leave it, the more the tapes will deteriorate. I’m thinking Christmas break. I am thinking one really hot day when I cannot go outside I’ll do some tape transfer. What are you thinking?

Interactive soccer lessons

I am surprised I haven’t seen more of these sorts of real life coaching sites. Perhaps because I am not a sports or phys ed teacher. It makes sense. We have video cameras. We have well trained teachers. We often break things down into skills. This site breaks the skills down and then targets various age groups for the training. It is a good way for a student to go over basics and see for themselves. It would also be a good way for a teacher to get students to look at particular skills and see where they could improve. Seeing can be worth a thousand explanations. Digital students are very visual and respond quickly to visual support. The interactive training site is clear, fuss free and very focussed. I am certain we could use this practical approach more often in a number of areas in our curriculum. Students relate well to people giving them information.

Why would you run a CRT monitor?

Photo: Aimee Bloom pics4learning

Why would you run a CRT monitor?They weigh a tonne,they emit radiation, they use over 60% more energy than a flatscreen LCD monitor and they take up all your space. They are great dust collectors and we have other, smarter, cheaper, more energy efficient alternatives. Laptops save the most energy and take up the least room. A CRT monitor uses 76 watts of power compared with the 20 used by an LCD monitor. The same applies to TV sets. Why would you run the incredible hulk TV or monitor when you can save so much money and energy by installing the lightweight LCD versions? If you want to save more money – turn your TV and computer OFF when you are not using them. Off at the switch and off at the wall. Final word? Aim for the LED monitors. They save 25% more energy over their LCD counterparts. As they say – you do the maths. If you are running a lot of monitors imagine the saving you would make!

What do you do with old video and cassette tapes?

Today I sorted a lot of old video and cassette tapes. I was wondering what I was going to do with them all. Maybe a library might want the better quality commercial ones. You cannot legally copy the commercial ones into digital form as far as I know. Free to air recordings might be able to be transferred but our resource centre manager said they would have to be considered one at a time . I know some use the actual tape for art and craft projects. Planet Ark also has suggestions of where they can be recycled. While we are sorting through the old materials we have made a point of keeping the old until we have viable new alternatives and those things are happening now we have made the decision to clear the old clutter. The amount of space now available is gratifying. My next question is who will want floppy disks?? Just keep moving.

Save time, resources and energy

Today was about saving time, energy and resources by using technology. Our school will be introducing a tech help desk and it will save time trotting around to see the technicians. It will mean their input is automatically logged and it ought to mean we are less worried about getting tech support because it is right there on our computers. I have had the experience of technicians fixing my in class problems via remote and that is a bit weird and Halloweenish but it is also takes less time and energy. Sometimes you need the face to face conversations and you need to watch someone doing something so you can learn to be independent, but often a quick fix via remote is all you need or a technician just needs to know the sorts of things which are occurring. That adds to the big picture in a big school. I also used LinoIt for the first time with my year 11s. It was fun. Took some patience to set up but we had a really good and useful time practising the subjunctive and I wasn’t using real paper, nor were they locked in their own space on their laptop. I could see what they posted and could talk them through the edit or edit their stickies myself. No pens , no paper and shared learning. My email also went to work hard for me today to get out information and create contacts. It saved a lot of paper , photocopying , phone calls and legwork. It is a matter of getting the right tool. You travel much lighter with technology when you master the tools.

Build your own fish

The Aquarium of the Pacific has this fun fish building game to teach students about the parts of fish but it is also a serious site for getting some high level and current information about the aquatic environment of the Pacific. It has an education section and the multimedia section has videos by experts in the field and there are podcasts you can subscribe to. It is one of the largest aquariums in the USA so if you live there or are visiting the country you could actually take a tour of the aquarium. Its site has a commitment to educating all ages and provides materials that anyone can use to improve their knowledge of the Pacific Ocean.

How green is your office?

Harvard Education has a green office sustainability project where the levels of achievement are graded by leaves. Leaf One is the easy level where you can do the obvious. The site offers you a PowerPoint for each level and some explanations as to how they have done it so that you can follow their lead and then pass it forward! I guess my clean and green week at school with the Clear , Cull and Clean motto has led us to the achievement of Leaf One. At the end of this week we have achieved so much and can see our way clear to the next step because we dared to confront the past and deal with it. We have to move on and let go the old resources. In a week we have reclaimed plenty of space. The office is so much tidier and lighter and we have been talking about the future. We have found some great treasures which were lost in the piles and piles of old resources. There also has been a natural flow of co operation, inspiration and organisation which has come from it just from sorting, throwing things out, recycling and thinking about how we can become more digital. It is , after all, the digital age. My hands have been black with dust and dirt, our students have seen us sort and clear and I have noticed some of them have had a locker sort out too. Since we have dared to clear then all the old resources which we have decided to keep for now are in one spot and can be easily removed and recycled when we have the digital replacements and avenues. As we have gone through the week then others have come on board and shared what they know and what they can offer so that we can move ourselves out of the past and into 2011…nearly 2012. I am going to look at the rest of the Harvard leaves because that might fast track me to where I want to be. They have done the field work for me. I can say though that just by tackling this clear, cull and clean it has generated plenty of momentum and regeneration and opened up a clear path forward.

Easy TV

As a rule I do not like toolbars on my browser. They clutter the screen and cut down space and often they do not actually offer anything helpful. One search box is sufficient. I have installed LiveTV as a toolbar on Internet Explorer in Windows 7. I did install it on my MacBook on Firefox but it didn’t work very well. That might be for various reasons to do with the network set up , Apple or Firefox itself . It doesn’t work very well on Windows 7 on Firefox either. On Internet Explorer it is fast and efficient. I can watch TV from so many countries and okay, the choices are limited for some places, but the very fact we have reached the day where we can watch television from anywhere in the world is a grand step forward for the planet and human relations. The global village where you and I can watch the same TV. In time I’d like to think there will be more choices, but as it stands it is a great TV viewing option for me. There are also a number of useful media links which come with the toolbar which will help you internationalise yourself.

Interactive ecology

EcoKids has a number of interactive games and activities to teach material to do with ecology and a sustainable planet. It presents the material clearly and well. You can build a food chain, learn about climate change and wildlife.There are plenty of choices. There is also a teachers’ section and a contest area. The material is further supported by a blog. For younger students it would be a good way to absorb this material and for older students it would be a quick way to get the key points into perspective. As well as the games and activities there is some more complex, well presented material on the environment. A very well thought out, well constructed site.

Bluetooth saves the day

Okay, so it was supposed to be a quick job. I had to get photos into a network folder for the year book. One teacher had photos we could use on an iPhone. They couldn’t be put into iPhoto with the cord connection to the laptop. Now what? He sent the photos to my phone. My laptop wouldn’t notice my phone. By that time lessons had started. Luckily I was free. Technicians are wonderful people. They think of everything. They had mentioned to the other teacher about using a bluetooth connection. To be honest, I find little use for it. Others are very bluetooth reliant, I know. All a matter of what you know and what you are used to. So I turned on the bluetooth connection on my phone and then activated the bluetooth connection on my MacBook via the system preferences. Within two minutes I had the photos on my MacBook and could transfer them to my folder with the other photos I was going to use and they are all ready to be submitted now. I don’t automatically think of bluetooth to connect devices. Note to self : Bluetooth is very handy! This site gives some good instructions on getting going with Bluetooth.

Bluetooth again

Until now I have hardly used Bluetooth and all of a sudden it’s my best friend. Yesterday, as I wrote, it provided a handy bridge for getting photos from someone else’s phone onto my computer so I could put them in the correct folder. Today I showed two others how to use it with their phones and knowledge is a powerful thing. Suddenly students are volunteering their photos to add to our collection and teachers are confident at using this in class to get said photos onto their computers. A real positive. I also found out yesterday that it’s an easy thing for students to photograph their work with Bluetooth enabled phones and then send the images to my MacBook. Yesterday I needed an image for a blog post and a student could draw and forward it to me in electronic format via Bluetooth. This now has opened up my mind to a whole new way of looking at classroom activities and what the possibilities are. Master the tools and the rest falls into place with a teacher.

Computer Basics

GCFLearnFree has plenty of free online material to help you master your computer. There are written and video tutorials and then free mobile apps which you could make use of while you are waiting, on the bus, on the train – those times when you have to wait and you want something to occupy the time. As an added extra there is also help with Maths and Reading. This is an example of a well designed site which just offers what it says and then lets you get started easily. With computing it gives good instruction in social media, your computer , office applications and internet use. It is very clear and well thought out. When you know you are not very good on a computer then this sort of approach is invaluable. It is important to master one tool, one application at a time. A computer can do so many things. It is not possible to know everything. People who are good on computers know this and feel no sense of inadequacy when they can’t do something. Someone who feels like they are bad on a computer tends to think they can’t do anything. You can. One thing at a time!

Educational games

You cannot just use educational games in a classroom. They need to be vetted and a teacher needs to be very aware of the content. Some games are just badly constructed and offer little in terms of education. Others are unsuitable but you might not know that unless you have been through the games yourself. Time. All time! So it is good if we have trusted sites and sites we can turn to which will either have or recommend suitable classroom games. Even then you still have to check them out before you use them. Trusted sites would cut down the amount of time you spend looking at games which do not fit into an educational context or just plain don’t work. I have just been on a site looking at games I thought would be good and not one of them worked. The Media Awareness Network based in Ottawa offers some really good information about selecting games and offers some games for classroom use. It has a good look at the media impact of games, cyber safety and the sorts of things you need to consider with games in a classroom. At the moment I try to find one good game a term. This ensures I build up my bank of knowledge on games but it also means I have had a chance to look at them properly. Games can bring welcome relief to intense laptop activities but the games I use practise French grammar or French language and offer a different way to students for learning their language and remembering their language skills. A year into the one to one programme and students are starting to find suitable games and recommend them to me!

Get out of the search engine rut

I am as guilty as anyone for heading straight to Google to find something out. I love googling. We love googling. Everyone loves googling. We have been conjugating google for a long time. Just to show that you can actually break out of your search engine rut, then why not try a different search engine? The Search Engine List has so many to choose from! Having choices in searching engines is important when you are trying to get really accurate information or more comprehensive information. I’m book marking The Search Engine List so that I branch out! We also have our own Australian search engine at Matlidasearch. I tried it. It really does come up with different information.

Convert file formats online

We are going through another stage of technology where everything seems to have a different file format. That is okay if you are only using one OS or one gadget. Most of us are going across platform or receiving files in different formats. My need for an online converter comes from the fact I have to go from Windows to Apple to Ubuntu. On a daily basis I am going from Windows to Apple or Ubuntu to Apple. I have worked out that video presentations just need to be able to run on all platforms. Enter the online converter. It is not just for videos though. It will convert different files to another format for you very efficiently. I do have file converters on my computer and they are fine. The problem arises when I am not on that computer or I am using someone else’s computer or I am shifting from one OS to another….or I cannot be bothered downloading yet another converter. I might build a presentation in Windows but then need to run it on my MacBook or vice versa. So last night again I was converting files so they would play in a presentation I am making.The original files would not import. Online Converter is quick, easy and efficient. No more frustration because I cannot import my files!

Live TV on Linux Mint

My new computer under Windows 7 wouldn’t open media centre, wouldn’t open the TV tuner software, wouldn’t let me use my TV tuner stick, wouldn’t let me load a new version of Windows 7 to try and correct the problem – so it is now all out the window and I am running my lovely new computer on Linux Mint. It means I have to work through some issues because even though Mint is very cruisy it makes you think! Once I got the drivers installed for the monitor I tried the onboard tuner. Oh well – I’ll just wait till I can get the right drivers. I got out my trusty TV Tuner stick and typed the following into Terminal:

sudo apt-get install libusb-dev

It chattered through the installation and then I rebooted. Now I have great TV using Me-TV which is the only TV software to use on Linux in my opinion. Neat, organised, easy to install and run. I realise now that TV is always going to perform better the more ram you have. I have 4GB ram on this computer and and an HDMI connection to monitor. The TV is running perfectly and the image is crystal clear. More than happy.

Show and tell technology

I keep saying it. If you learn something with technology – pass it forward. Pass it on. Share it with someone. It’s the only way. It joins the dots and fills in the learning gaps. At school we are getting better and better at this and there is a noticeable lift in confidence and competence and then that real high you get from implementing something good in a classroom. Tips?

1. If you don’t know how to do something – ask!
2. Plan one on one or small group meetings where you are going to share what you know. Our faculty has planned to share its individual knowledge openly at meetings in the last week of term. That way we’ll all have a bigger pool of expertise to draw on.
3. Our technicians are very patient. They make sure each individual can do whatever it is they wanted to learn to do.
4. Our resource centre has implemented a media server and that means we are all now talking about how to use it and the resource centre staff are being rewarded for the time and effort they are putting into it. Everyone is in the conversation.
5. Students love to share. Teach them to ask and show too and include them in the learning loop.
6. Make technical resources available and let some people get good at them and then facilitate the learning of others. Spread the expertise by snowballing.
7. Show people what you do. Invite them to look and see. It generates some good learning conversations about how to use technology in a school.
8. There are no dumb questions. No stupid questions. Just things people don’t know or cannot do.
9. Use technology to circulate information. It keeps everyone in the loop and gets them to be a part of the learning curve.
10. Enthusiasm is a wonderful thing. If you are keen , it is very infectious and breaks down barriers.

Elementary Maths Cuteness

This site is just too cute! The ABC news site is offering a section of education games which build up the number skills for littlies. Count us in is a really enjoyable and inviting area for young children . They can play the games and improve their number skills as well. The unbelievable bonus on this site is the games can be downloaded so they can be played offline. Now that is thoughtfulness! I might also add they are charming games for stress busting if you are an adult. Full credit to the designers and the ABC for offering the games.

Amazing anatomy

If you are looking for interactive materials for health, nutrition or science then Science, anatomy and health is the place for you. There is a wide choice of useful and interesting materials which students can engage with or you can use on your whiteboard. It is a well thought out and well planned site and it is no wonder it has won a number of awards. If you check up on the menu bar there is also a blog which supports the site.

Learning Japanese, learning Japanese…

I was over at archive.org looking for some music for a presentation. It would never have occurred to me to look for Japanese resources on archive.org. I tend to think music and texts. I don’t think in terms of learning materials and content for lessons. If you go here there are quite a number of resources you may or may not find useful for teaching Japanese. At least you know they are there now and if you don’t teach Japanese this will jog your memory to go over to archive.org to look for resources for class.

Mind Games

The Idea Generator Gives you lists and pictures which you can shift around the page. There is nothing difficult about it. It is just a free association thinking generator which might get your mind thinking along the lines of creating some ideas relevant to your real needs. It’s uncluttered and simple.At the bottom of the page you can find links to other thinking games and then an electronic Mastermind which is quite fun and helps discipline your thinking. These sorts of tools are useful when you want to free up or stimulate your thinking.

Mapping our World

Mapping our World is a British Oxfam site which goes though some straight forward exercises to show how we actually map our world and create the notion of a globe. It demonstrates how mapping can create a particular perception of our world. It is designed for middle school and for whiteboard use. It is very clear and easy to follow.

QR Code Alchemy

I have just made a QR code and I tell you – it is alchemy. It is strange and weird but so amazing. These coded images can transfer information and can be used in a classroom. They would be a good use of mobile technology. I have actually been using my iPad to scan the codes and it is extraordinary how you scan the image and go to a web page or photo or to read a text. It is so quick. Students have phones with cameras. So do we. We need to make use of this! There is an explanation here at Technomag about QR codes and then you can watch the slide presentation by Marielle Lange which shows some practical classroom applications. I generated my code here.

QR codes in education

View more presentations from Marielle Lange

So, what can I do with QR codes?

This video on QR codes for periodic tables shows you there is sound educational value in developing QR codes but we are at the stage where it will be labour intensive in some respects to get some decent value out of QR codes. The high resolution image of the tables is here. It’s extraordinary and a totally different way of thinking about how you can share information and then putting mobile technology at the centre of it. If you are like me and you are still not sure how you could use them in your classroom, then let me share some good sites with you. WIZIQ gives you a no nonsense explanation and some examples of QR codes to try. Cool Cat Teacher Blog has some very hands on material because Cool Cat Teacher is a teacher and so has had a comprehensive look at what QR codes can and cannot do in a classroom and the sorts of problems you might be faced with. There are some good practical applications on the site. Best Colleges Online has a number of very practical ideas for QR codes with further links out which will probably get you thinking about what you can do with QR codes. ITBabble has an excellent discussion of the QR codes to highlight whether they really do have any real value and perhaps are just something which might create social injustice or isolation and then extra work. This article provides the balance to the discussion so you go about your thinking of QR codes with your feet on the ground! I plan to try them and the thought of being able to put QR codes on a slide show and have the students actively involved with that appeals to me. The value, the use, the point and the purpose will become clearer to me when I get QR codes for a trial in my classroom. Two things are selling them to me at the moment:

1. Students like using their mobile phones and QR codes could make good use of them.
2. QR codes save paper and other resources. I am all for that.

Organise your iPad apps into folders

If you already have a lot of apps on your iPad then you will need to move them to the dock and then find the screen where you have created the folder. You slide them from the dock into the folder. For a while I could just slide the apps left or right onto the next or previous screen from where they were to get them into the folder. It is not consistent, though, so moving them to the dock and then into the folder works all the time. Organising apps into a folder makes them easier to locate if you have quite a few! Press the home button to stop the wiggling. Do not press the cross unless you wish to delete the app.

Cool QR Codes

Let the reporter introduce this show in Brittany in French and then sit back and watch how cool QR Codes can be! They are not just a code which connects the real world to the virtual world in less than 40 seconds. They can be art and totally transform how we view art. So the video will will probably capture your imagination as it did mine. I am still stuck with trying to work out how I could use them in my classroom. I can see how they could be used in course booklets and printed materials coming from the school to home where they would link to online sites and video clips which would give students and parents more information about events or courses. I can see this working well. So what about my classroom? Scott Sibberson has shared some good , down to earth ideas about how to use QR Codes in physics and science. Alice Leung has also come up with a really hands on way of using QR Codes in class to create effective learning. I have also found the BeQRious forum (what a clever name!) which discusses all sorts of things to do with QR Codes. So I’ll keep on looking and searching until I can think of the thing which will be valid learning using QR Codes in my classroom.

QR Codes are go!

I think everyone is getting excited about QR codes now. If you want data about QR Codes and their market penetration in different countries then Heidi Cohen has done a fabulous job of collecting it all and displaying it really well. This will help you to know how important QR codes are becoming. It may well be they are a fad but everyone has mobile technology and they want to use it. QR Codes give them that opportunity. Restaurants are starting to use them because they are a very effective way of engaging their public. Isn’t that what our schools and classrooms are about? Scoop it has some very solid links to sites which will help you work out how to use QR Codes to engage your learners and your learning community. Youngupstarts has 50 ways to use QR codes in a classroom. So , by now, you are probably developing some ideas about how to use QR codes. After 4 blog posts I am starting to get workable ideas. At the moment I am thinking a theme or a text and then the qr codes would surround that to link resources to help students learn the language and get the information they need to create their own assignment. it is also how students could link information to something they are doing. This would be especially useful to students who don’t have laptops but who do have access to mobile technology. There is a novelty value for sure, but the more you look , the more you can see that they are probably here to stay and will just get better at sharing information via mobile sources.

Looking for Christmas Wallpapers?

Looking for Christmas wallpapers to get a festive desktop going? A lot of them feature snow and we live in a warm climate where it is hot at Christmas! No snow for us. Noupe has a nice collection of festive wallpapers with or without snow. There are some nice French ones at Cyber-noël and you can learn that Joyeux Noël means Happy Christmas in French. HD Wallpapers also offers a pretty good selection of festive desktops. Netz-Online also offers some nice cleanly designed festive cheer.

Little Christmas Games

Need something to amuse the children but teach them at the same time? Looking to feed your inner child for Christmas? There is quite a selection of games at Primary Games. I decided to decorate Santa’s Room. There are puzzle and word games as well as just entertaining ones. They help the child develop skills and ideas as well as just being good fun.

Connect your iPad to HDTV

I borrowed an iPad adapter to see if this would work. It does! It takes 2 minutes and is as easy as pie. You need the adapter to connect to the iPad. I connected the iPad charger to the other outlet. Then I connected the iPad to the HDTV with an HDMI lead. I have learnt I need a longer HDMI cable for my set up or I am sitting awkwardly with the iPad. No matter. I know it works. The bigger picture is good to look at and the adapter comes up with some extra search functionality which I can use. So I’ll be off to the shops soon to get myself a longer HDMI lead and an iPad adapter. I just wish we had HDMI connections on our whiteboards at school!! VGA to HDMI adapters, which are around $20 dollars, seem to be like hen’s teeth and our white boards have VGA connections…and then I am wondering if there would be a problem with the sound. White board and technology suppliers need to help us out so we can move with the times.

Instant engagement with pen tablets

You never know what to expect with totally digital students. My year 8s have grown up with technology in a big way and I have spent the year trying to find out how they react , act and learn with regards to technology. Not easy when they do not have laptops. I noticed they used the iPads differently when I trialled them with my classes. They just used them whether they had seen one before or not. They seem to know what to do and they love sharing what they know about technology. I have been given a Bamboo Pen and Touch which we had at school to try out. I have installed it on Windows and the Macbook and I hear there is an iPad app too which I’ll try. It’s a USB tablet with a stylus. You install a dock and on the dock you can reach your settings, make adjustments to its response and then install apps. There is a world map you can zoom around. There is EverNote which is great because that should be available on every device you use. There is a game called Free the Bird which helps you learn to use the stylus and tablet and then there is a notetaker where you can write with the stylus. For me it is better than using the whiteboard to write on. I rarely write because I am good on a keyboard but writing on the whiteboard seems very old fashioned to me…when I can type. My year 8s loved me using this tablet. They patiently sat as I wrote up our lesson in the note taker. Had I been that slow on my keyboard they would have switched off. They loved it when I changed colours and I was going at a pace they could really learn. They learned everything I wrote without my having to repeat myself. That taught me something. This was the penultimate lesson of the year so then I let them play one level each of the bird game and the group cohesion, the fun, the capacity to help the one with the stylus was all awesomely positive. Such efficiency in helping and learning. Two students tried the animation app I had loaded and loved the freehand drawing. So then I asked them if they would like to use one themselves or just a computer. They were very enthusiastic with their yes response. So I asked them why?

Remember these are digital students. They said:

They thought the tablet would be good for any writing rich subjects because they liked to write with a pen but wanted an electronic pen.
They would love to draw with it and make their own drawings with the lovely backgrounds they were accessing.
It would make such a nice change from a keyboard.
Ihey would love to play the sorts of games we played because they could see how much better they were getting in their thinking and functional skills .
They thought the pen and tablet were a great way to ring the changes in their learning.

I had to agree. For the whole time I used it they were focussed, patient, willing to learn, co operative, on task…learning. Now I am seeing if we can get at least one to use in class. For me I am faster than a mouse, it has really good functionality in Windows and on the Mac. It is more precise than a mouse. I’d love a wi-fi one so I could walk around class with it! So easy to watch the students and run my computer. I think flexibility in learning resources is important but this tablet would also do away with pens and paper. I am so committed to that. Just a tip if you try one yourself: I had to set it to left hand even though I am right handed. If I set it to right handed I was not able to use it properly!

I wish you a USB Christmas

My new computer has a lot of USB slots and I am making good use of them this Christmas. I have bought myself some lights and I already had my Christmas tree so my desktop computer corner with the Christmas desktop on the monitor is looking very festive. It pays to look around because the prices vary quite a lot. I have always liked this snowman USB decoration but have never found one here. They have been around since we first got USB connections on computers and they look so great. Slashgear also has some good decorations to give you an idea as to what is available. USB Brando. I did not buy mine on line. I looked around the net to see what was available and then looked around the shops – not just tech shops. In the Christmas section of various shops while I was out looking for Christmas presents. Prices differ quite considerably so the casual looking as you are doing other things works well.

Free the bird

Let me share my classroom conversation with you:

Student: This reminds me of Angry Birds
Teacher: Tell me what happens in Angry Birds.
Student: You catapult birds into pigs. You throw birds at pigs because they are angry the pigs stole their eggs.
Teacher: Do you think that is mean throwing birds at pigs?
Students: NO!!! Angry Birds is addictive.
Teacher: But don’t you think that is mean? Don’t you think it will make you not care about animals and make you think birds can be thrown?
Students: NO!! Angry Birds are cartoons.
Teacher: Well, what if I catapulted you out of the window? Don’t you think that’s mean?
Girl Student: No! If you hit a tree with us you would get 100 points!!

Different way of looking at the world. It pays to talk to digital students. So we were in our last lesson for the year. They had asked to do the French oral practice with the lady with the fixed grin so we worked on that DVD for 40 mins. We had 20 mins left and they asked if we could get out the graphics tablet and play Free the Bird. I blogged the other day about how much the year 8s (first years) loved the graphics tablet. Instant focus. Instant co operation. Some of the students I had yesterday were not the same as the ones I had had the day before. Didn’t stop them form being enthusiastic because the others had cued them in. So I asked them what was so good about Free the Bird while I was setting up the tablet:

It makes us laugh
We have to really think
It’s not as easy as it looks
We can’t just do it
It makes us think of Angry Birds
It is making us learn
We are getting better and better at it but we have to work

All of this information is for me as a teacher to know how I can approach digital students. Games and the gaming approach bring them alive. If I know about the games they play but bring safe alternatives into class they accept that but can see how it all fits together. Free the Bird makes them work as a team if you are running it off the whiteboard like I was. Each student completed a level and some were really hard. As we did it they were saying – oh, this is geometry, this is maths, this is art, this is – they could make the cross curriculum connections so easily. I cannot use it for French. I could use it at the end of the year because I wanted to see whether we should be thinking about graphics tablets. Each time it was 20 minutes of intense, fun learning. The game really improves their skills with the stylus and tablet area. They start off wobbly but each time they use it you can see they can better manage the stylus and the tablet, so the game is helping them master the tools and they can see and appreciate it. Thumbs up from me!

Cool Christmas Cards

You won’t go into cognitive overload trying to make sense of these lovely little electronic cards even though they are French. You’ll be able to work it out and the site has met you half way with some English. The card left is cute. Hover your mouse over each character and they will sing carols to you. Look around the site because there really are some good and original cards to send your friends and family. There are more Christmas cards here.

Random Resolution Generator

Not sure what to decide for your New Year’s resolutions? Try this random resolution generator. It actually has positive and kind resolutions: the sort you would want to keep! I found it quite enjoyable running through the resolutions on offer and it made me realise that you can resolve to do simple acts which will improve your own life and the life of others’ in a helpful, gentle way. Resolutions are often about deprivation rather than enhancement. These resolutions are about embellishing life so I think I might look at them all and pick my 5 favourites. I actually feel like I want to accomplish these resolutions! Is there an app for that?

New Year’s Resolution Ideas has achievable resolutions too at the click of a button.

Clean up for Christmas

1. Empty the rubbish bin. 2. Defrag if you are in Windows or use OnyX if you are on a Mac.
3. Keep the wires as neat and tidy as you can. 4. Get the dust off the screen and the bits off the keyboard. 5. Remove the files you no longer need. Back them up or dump them. 6. Clear your browser cache/history 7. Look through your emails and get rid of the ones which no longer apply to your life. 8. Go through your contacts in your email and on Facebook and remove the obsolete contacts. 9. Sort your images into folders and name them appropriately. 10. Clear unwanted icons from your desktop and launch bar.

Now enjoy the festive season and start 2012 in style!

Privacy on Facebook

Facebook has a number of ways of broadcasting information. You need to regularly check you settings top right of your profile page. The other thing you can do is hover over the name or avatar of the friends who come on your feed or page.Take care of your privacy. You need to ask others to do the same for you and there is a little message going around on Facebook which you can put on your status:

PLEASE TAKE CARE OF MY PRIVACY. I’ll take care of yours. With the changes in Facebook, we need to keep up to date. Place your mouse over my name or picture, wait for the window and select “SUBSCRIBED”, then uncheck the “COMMENT AND LIKES” and “PHOTOS”. This way my communications among my friends and my family does not become PUBLIC DOMAIN. Special thanks! Now paste this onto your wall for your contacts to do the same for you. Let me know when you’ve done it so I can to do the same for you

I make the changes as people come onto my feed or profile depending on how often I am likely to interact with them. This way it’s easy and not a chore!

Group presentations are fun!

Organize and analyze

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Co-authoring a group presentation is turning out to be fun. When you have an online group you can use its combined skills, talents, knowledge base and networking capacity. One person set the parameters and then invited us to contribute. We have over 50 slides now and can contribute when and where we wish as thoughts and ideas occur to us. There has also been some good discussion on the thread beneath the presentation. It is a work in progress but it has generated ideas, enthusiasm and then some really interesting contributions. I have never done anything like this before so I am finding it a good experience and can see it could well be a valuable tool in a classroom situation to enable students to work collaboratively on assignments but allowing for the fact that, as a teacher, I would need to know who has contributed what. It could apply to all sorts of educational purposes because even teachers could collaborate on presentations to do with curriculum, a school or site focus, behaviour management strategies. It actually is a disciplined discussion which creates good content. On the internet content is king!

Merry Christmas Everybody

Card from Dromadaire.

Lift off with Latin

Latin is making a come back. It is not quite in the digital era yet but there are some excellent signs that it will be. You can go to Learn Latin Online and access the free Latin lesson pdfs .There are also some other useful resources from the links. The Guardian has a good article as to why Latin is so useful to know and how it helps you. The Cambridge Latin Course has some useful links and interactive tools. It is where I did the featured Latin quiz and I was surprised at how much I still remember. Why is Latin making a comeback? There are lots of reasons. The current problem is getting enough teachers. Latin increases high level linguistic capacity. It creates sound thinking and study skills. It is the language of law , medicine and science. It lends itself perfectly to the digital age because it can be learnt in chunks, accent is not an issue and neither is fluency per se. We need good thinkers with high level linguistic skills because we are communicating fast and furiously and we need to think quickly to adapt and manage our sharing of information and knowledge. You know there will be lift off with Latin when it reaches the apps store. Sona si Latine loqueris.

Ready for the New Year?

My New Year desktop comes from aeli9 at Deviant Art. Ninja Crunch has some other nice desktops for you. The best one stop shop for a techie New Year is here at The Holiday Spot. It has everything you would want for New Year – how to say it in many languages, e-cards, wallpapers, decoration ideas and a great flash New Year calendar which you can run on you desktop. It is so cheerful and well made. The site has so many goodies and ideas for New Year. I love sites like this.

Livebinders

Livebinders provide global collegiate support

I am surprised I haven’t found Livebinders before! Every teacher should know about it if they want to be able to make informed choices with regard to technology. All school have different facilities and levels of funding so teachers need to be aware of what is available so that they can implement technology in the best possible way for their situation. Basically you can have a big folder with all your resources on the Net but then you have access to the folders of other people. Some are obviously better than others. Some teachers are very tidy minded and put everything in their folders in a very organised , comprehensive manner. There was one French folder on there and I don’t think the person who put it up knew French. I’d love to know the story behind that one because some teachers have to do it hard. This is where Livebinder is very helpful.If you find yourself in a situation where you are forced to teach out of your depth, Livebinders would be such a gift. I am staggered by the amount of work teachers have put into their folders. It’s a tribute to their dedication. You need to have a look at the featured binders and then look at the categories which apply to you and then you’ll soon see how this all works. I am thinking it’s a good place for me to get my resources on line so I have yet another back up to what I am doing. All electronic resources are valuable and it is important to ensure you have more than one place where you keep your valued materials. I have to say it did not work that well on my iPad but I dare say that will be sorted in time. It works well on my computer. It’s a great site because it means if we all contribute we can support each other across the planet.

Try Storify

I went onto Storify last night to see how it works. It links social media sites so you can build a narrative of your own and publish it. It seems to be designed for tablets but there are already a number of classroom applications for it that I can think of.It works well on a computer. News services are certainly showing how effective it can be and then you have to browse the stories already available to see what possibilities there are. It is a good way to connect social media generated content with your own imagination. I did the obvious and used what I had to create a New Year story. I can access my social media accounts or search on a topic or theme to get relevant items for my story. It is amazingly quick to build a story. I used the text from a slide presentation I had just made. When you use the work of others Storify notifies them that you have done that. I used my Twitter account to log in so that was sent out as a notification on Twitter. I can see students could use it to make themed assignments with their own writing included. I could see them using it as a gathering point for ideas for big assignments and I could see them using it to develop their own pieces in another language they are learning or as a way of managing things like the Maths directed study. As a teacher I would have to ensure I could be clear about what is original and what is borrowed content. It would be a useful way for students to use all the social media sites they know so well to good advantage. I believe in anything which will put a good spin on what we have now moved into. Social media is not going to go away. It is now a part of our world and our lives and it is a significant part… as newspapers became, as television became , as transport became. I was quite happy with my first story because now I know I can create a different sort of narrative when I want to and I could even use it to create a lesson. All the information and media would be there. Storify will probably become the big news of 2012.

Top Posts

The last review of posts is here. My top posts for this quarter are:

1.So, what can I do with QR codes. That became an instant hit and has demolished the pecking order on my blog which was steady for quite some time! People are like me. They had seen QR codes, they weren’t quite sure what they were and what they could do with them. I wrote several posts around them so that I and others could find out about QR codes. This has remained an enormous favourite.
2.Me TV -Ubuntu 10.04 This came in at number one as soon as I wrote it and held that position for months. The QR Code post has done the same thing. Will it hold on to number one for as long at the Me TV post? People want to know how to set up TV on Linux and it’s a matter of getting the right software. My Me TV posts are always popular.
3.Use iPad as a second screenThis has been constantly popular as well. The iPad is now ubiquitous and people want to know how to get the best use out of it and how to connect it to other equipment and use it in a range of ways.
4. Live TV on Linux Mint As I said. People want to be able to use their TV tuners on Linux. I run mine from a stick. I had wiped Windows from my new computer by using Linux Mint and had a dream picture, a good OS and TV working in 2 mins by using Me TV. Windows Media centre had been very unco-operative.
5. Free Diary for Macbook I used to use the Clover Diary but it stopped working and was no longer available. The other free diary I found has been my best friend on my Macbook and I use it to organise everything at work. It is straight forward, reliable and really has plenty of space for the sorts of notes I wish to make. I love is ease of use.

The other post which rates a mention because I am tracking it is Group Presentations are Fun. I only wrote the post last week and it is already in the top 20.

Social Media are us

Social Media are not going to go away. Crowd sourcing, crowd input, crowd thinking and discussion are how we are and how we want to be. We are connected and chattering so there is a whole layer of virtual activity which runs parallel to real time and we can ignore it or pretend it’s not there but it will not alter the truth. Students are growing up connected and parents are learning how to manage that as are teachers. It still becomes a question of digital responsibility and who teaches that as has social responsibility always been an expectation in the real world. We are in the situation where we need to meld the two and realise they are not mutually exclusive. The video is a good discussion point for the issues around this.

Bonne année – Happy New Year

Happy New Year 2012

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Wishing you all a very Happy New Year and some good technology adventures next year!

Create an online learning adventure

Group presentations are fun!

I posted a few days ago about Group presentations are fun with a link to a slide presentation which is spontaneously being developed on line. We started before Christmas and now the presentation has 94 slides and what a learning journey. If you are talking about effective teaching and learning and if you are committed to the South Australian Teaching for Effective Learning guidelines then this is a good example of how to approach a topic or assignment. The slide presentation and approach creates the scaffolding for learners to commit themselves to the topic in a way that suits them. We were asked to contribute one slide but more often than not people have contributed more than one slide and that has in turn created some good on site discussion and analysis of what has been contributed and then some interesting follow up to what has been published. Ali, as the co ordinator of this online learning experience, has used his social and academic skills, network and capacity to organise a project to ensure that it never stands still. It is obvious he has a vision but he is no way set in his views or path. He is open to the ideas and changes coming through. So many ideas and thoughts have now been contributed in such a short time. We know that sharing knowledge is empowering and consolidates learning , we have been given an opportunity to appreciate the input of others and then the knowledge gaps become clear and we fill them. It is now a slide presentation which has drawn on so many curriculum areas to sustain itself and grow and so now it is an excellent example of online cross curriculum learning. We still do not know how this will end up but the depth and amount of knowledge we have generated is amazing. As it has gone along we have had to sharpen our critical thinking skills. Now I have had an opportunity to participate in this I can see how it would be of great classroom value in some areas of the curriculum and the best thing is that it has been a voyage of discovery.

5 things teachers cannot do

Feel free to add your own

Assessing an online learning adventure

Analysis of first co authored presentation

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Analysing our online learning adventure has become quite a challenge. That last post about creating an online learning adventure has proven to be very popular and is currently my best post for the month. Whether it gets into the top 5 for the quarter remains to be seen. There is time and I should like it to do well because education is still undervalued on the internet and the only way to change that is to keep creating material and constantly striving to find educational and educative ways of promoting content sharing and learning. This idea of us all creating material to go into a slide presentation called Organise and Analyse has proven to be very successful. So now we are in the slow lane trying to work out how we are going to analyse what we have done. It’s new ground so thinking it through is important. Ali, who organised our co-authored presentation, has used some software to look at how our material was utilised, how we connected and what was proving to be popular. The software is looking at networking and participation and the sorts of areas which connected ideas. As a teacher I cannot help but think in terms of assessment rubrics. There are some good ones you can use at teacherplanet. I already looked at it from the point of view of our Teaching for Effective Learning guidelines in South Australia when I wrote the last post. So how would I charter and assess this co-authored presentation given it’s new ground?

1. Participation: There was a high level of participation both in the comments section of the slide presentation and the slides themselves
2. Continuity : There was a continuity of ideas and they were explored before another idea was taken on.
3. Consistency: There was a consistency of approach even though authors chose different ways of expressing themselves. They all approached the matter with thought and well constructed ideas to put forward.
4. Clear and understandable content: No one needed clarification as to what we were doing and what had been expressed. The next author could and did logically follow the previous and built on that idea or moved it in a slightly different direction.
5. Effective connections : There were very good connections with art, literature, science, marketing, global issues, environmental issues, social issues and historical knowledge. That was the highlight of this co-authored work – just how much knowledge it incorporated.

Looking at how we achieved that is important so that it can be replicated. Understanding the social dynamics of our group work is important to ironing out the bugs and ensuring any future efforts are based on best practice.

You, too, can be a blogger!

Blogging in the middle

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I originally composed this presentation to support a recent speech to other teachers about the value of blogging. It is important for educators to blog. It gives us a voice. We are giving each other support. It gets the education message out there in a powerful, authentic way. Once you start blogging you realise the power of networking and how it can really help to join the dots, create the picture and develop a vision for the future based on what we are practising now. Teachers need to blog!

Amuse yourself with Appstream

So amusing!

I downloaded the free app Appstream onto my iPad today. From the moment I saw it I was engaged. It is amusing to watch the icons move around so it has an instant calming and cheering effect and could well be used as a stress buster and desktop toy! It’s one of those apps which is really well conceived and thought out but falls short of perfect. I wouldn’t blog about it if I didn’t think it was worthwhile and I am keeping it on my iPad because I think it will improve with time. Like many things on the internet it is really important for ideas to be shared and see how consumers are using products before anyone can actually tweak what they are offering to meet market needs. It is very easy to use. I was actually looking for French apps. I could easily find Spanish , Italian, Japanese, Chinese and English apps whether I set the app to France or Australia. When I set the app to France I got more Spanish and Italian apps but found no French apps. This was a bit frustrating. I wanted to set the language or be able to do a search for French apps. What I really liked was I could set the app to free apps or paid apps. This is really helpful. I also liked the gentle push notifications to the right of the screen. I do not mind at all if apps send me push notifications in a considerate manner. This is often how I find out about new ideas or new trends. I shall be using this app when I am looking for new apps. It puts me in a good mood and it gives me ideas. I just hope they might be able to sort the language thing out. The other thing I might mention is that apps like this can concern me a bit because you never know what might come up on the screen. As it turned out ,for the whole time I was working with the app , I was in a safe and considerate environment.

Organise content with Flipboard

More than a social magazine

Flipboard is described as a social magazine designed to bring content to iPhones , iPod Touches and iPads. If you go to the link you will find there is a blog where they keep you fully informed and up to date. It’s another free app which has so much classroom potential. I downloaded it and again I was excited with how it was operating and what it could do. It organises content into categories for you to choose or you can use the search box and add your own content as you wish. It runs in a very similar way to the interface of the i-gadgets but you customise it to your own needs. It follows the same principle as the iPad for organising content. If you wish to shift or delete something you hold your finger on the picture until they all wiggle and have a black cross in the top left of the picture. If you press the black cross you will delete that picture and associated content. If you want to move the picture – hold your finger on the picture and slide it to where you want on the screen. you can even slide it to the next screen if you have lots of categories as I do. Flipboard is now my one stop shop for news, information, social media. I don’t have to keep going to other apps, icons, bookmarks, webpages, logins. It is wonderfully well thought out and easy! In a classroom we have an issue with borrowed iPads in that they are tethered 5 at a time to an email address to download paid apps. So whose job is this? We are gradually working it out. Some schools get students to purchase the iPad and download the content themselves to help with this awkward procedure. It is a good deal to get paid apps onto 5 iPads but if you have 30 students that is 6 email addresses and 6 lots of updating. We’ll work it out. Just a bit of an implementation dip. In the meantime I was thinking Flipboard would actually be a very good way of mustering content and sites suitable for classroom use and it would be easy to get the students to do that on the borrowed iPads. In that sense Flipboard would be a powerful tool for education because as a teacher or student you can organise your Flipboard to cater efficiently to you teaching and learning needs. Much more than a social magazine.

Physics and Maths Cupcakes

Ingest cross curriculum ideas

I like it when you can ingest cross curriculum ideas and these physics and maths cupcakes are just so clever. Okay so it has nothing to do with technology in the classroom. I couldn’t resist , though, and I’ll just have to use it as an excuse to tell you about image sizes for optimum iPad viewing. Many people are accessing their websites via tablets these days. WordPress is helpful in that it allows its blogs to be seen in tablet form. I like the way my blog looks on the iPad but it is then set to browsing as such. You just slide from screen to screen and pick the posts you want to look at. To ensure the pictures are seen properly set them at 300×200 pixels. I have gone as big as 400 pixels but 300×200 is better. Bigger than 400 and the screen will look messy. So when you are blogging and adding images , remember your tablet viewers!

Latin is undead

Latin is undead

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I made this slide presentation because Latin really is making a comeback and doing surprisingly well in the technological world and age. It is amazing how something so “old” can renew itself so easily.Says something about knowledge. There must be a reason for it. I enjoyed putting the slide presentation together because it made me remember my Latin and I realised how well it had stayed in my memory banks. There are lots of good reasons why Latin should still be a part of an education even for lifelong learners. The technology connections are strong and so now it is easy to refresh the original courses you did or discover new learning material. Cornell College has put together a very comprehensive list of online Latin resources. One of the amusing ones for me was the Computer Romanus which uses Roman numerals instead of Arabic ones on your calculator. Barbara F. McManus has also put together an impressive list of online resources and practical classroom software for Latin. Her site was created in 2002 so there is a link or two which doesn’t work . Nevertheless there are some really good materials there. Sona si Latine loqueris.