ICT Guy

Many educators and students are discovering the enormous value of using Google Docs for creating online documents (word processing, spreadsheets and presentations). Wherever you have an Internet connection you have access to your work. Add to this the ability to do ‘real time’ collaboration, export and import different formats, and save your documents offline - you have a real killer app!

But it just gets better because with Google spreadsheets you can create online forms to collect data via email or via the web, the data goes straight into your online spreadsheet. This is can be an awesome way to collect student data and student responses (and I know there are some great free survey tools out there but they don’t always allow you to get the raw data) A recent upgrade to Google Spreadsheets now allows you to embed the online form in your blog or wiki. Have a try at the one below and go sign up today. Students can sign up using their school email account, they don’t need a gmail account.

Ninehub.com is offering free Moodle hosting for anyone. Fantastic!

Everyone who reads this blog will realise that I am a big Moodle fan. In fact, the very reason we registered the need2learn.net domain was so that we could allow any teacher in the district to have their own Moodle classroom without the need to setup and maintain their own servers.

The good news is that anyone can now have their own Moodle setup free of charge with their choice of name eg myschool.ninehub.com You also have full administrator permissions.

The bad news is that you will need to suffer Google ads at the bottom of each page. These are not intrusive but would it be acceptable at your school?

Podcast number 9 May 10th, 2008.
[ICTGUY0809.mp3 Running time: 10:57 mins, size: 5.1 MB]

Download it here!

Todays Topics:
Gliffy for online diagrams - http://www.gliffy.com
The Podcast workflow - http://www.gliffy.com/publish/1425568/

Classroom 2.0 from the iTeacher
http://iteacher.edublogs.org/2007/09/15/classroom-20/

The podcast I do with Tony Richards called the EdTechCrew needs your help. We have constructed a survey about software use and we need you to help fill it in. It is very short, easy to do and completely confidential - please take the time to check it out: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=l7yJs0sT6kHDRS8NtBBEuw_3d_3d

If you feel the need, please send the link to the survey to your friends to get them involved as well. We are hoping to get a good sample size and share the results on the Ed Tech Crew podcast.
Thanks

Podcast number 8 May 4th, 2008.
[ICTGUY0808.mp3 Running time: 10:48 mins, size: 5.1 MB]

Download it here!

Todays Topics:
Call Graph - Skype recorder - http://callgraph.in

Blog Post from Chris Lehmann

Andrew Churches - Bloom’s Taxonomy goes digital
http://edorigami.wikispaces.com

Podcast number 7 April 18th, 2008.
[ICTGUY0807.mp3 Running time: 19:02 mins, size: 8.8 MB]

Download it here!

Todays Topics:

Australian Education Network - Edna - You can subscribe here or via iTunes.

Bill Mackenty’s blog & his post about Games in Education

Google Docs (Online Word Processor and collaboration tool)

One of the professional action learning teams we run in the Sunraysia Mallee Schools Network is the “New Tools & New Media” team, which is basically the Web2.0 team. But if I used that term, most teachers wouldn’t know what I was on about!

This year’s team is another great group of committed teachers willing to try new learning in their classrooms. The big difference I’m noticing with this new team is that those teachers with either a Facebook or MySpace account seem to understand ‘virtual spaces’ and communicating online so much better. No surprise I suppose? But the teachers involved in this form of social networking seem to ‘grok‘ the whole ‘collaboration, connection & communication’ thing, that is so important when trying to understand the value of web2.0 tools (blogs, wikis, podcasts etc).

Teachers are comfortable commenting to a Moodle forum or a blog, adding a voice annotation to Voice thread or sharing their knowledge by uploading to a ‘team space’ on the Moodle or a wiki. It’s great, it makes my job so much easier.

So thank you MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, Ning, and the the thousands of other ’social networking’ tools that help people understand that we live in a global community where these types of conservations can take place for both socialising and learning. I’m sure our students won’t mind being involved in more online learning with their ’social networking’ savvy teacher.

Photo credit: Leigh Blackall

Podcast number 6 April 18th, 2008.
[ICTGUY0806.mp3 Running time: 14:49 mins, size: 6.9 MB]

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Todays Topics:

Konrad Glogowski’s blog & post on 21classes & personalised spaces

Facebook group for 21classes.com

iTunes University K-12 Lesson Plans

Podcast number 5 April 13th, 2008.
[ICTGUY0805.mp3 Running time: 10:53 mins, size: 5.1 MB]

Download it here!

Todays Topics:

Classroom blogging platform - 21classes.com

SLAV Conference featuring Will Richardson

Unlearning Curve
http://weblogg-ed.com/2007/the-steep-unlearning-curve/

Podcast number 4 April 7th, 2008.
[ICTGUY0804.mp3 Running time: 16:06 mins, size: 7.4 MB]

Download it here!

Todays Topics:

Voice Thread

Feedback for the ICT Guy on Voicethread

Remote Access blog

Moving at the Speed of Creativity

I recently wrote a post about videos to use as discussion starters for professional development when working with teachers, and particularly those that highlight the need for 21st century learning skills. So this morning via the twitter network Clay pointed out the video below which I’ll also be adding to the collection. The video was created by Matthew Needleman.

Some of you may be aware that you can use Google Earth to view the sky. Well now you don’t even need the standalone application - you can do it directly from your web browser just like using Google maps! This is good news for teachers in schools that don’t allow the use of the Google Earth.

The images seen in Google Sky are identical to those found in Sky in Google Earth. We have changed the projection to display these images within Google Maps (the Mercator projection). As with Google Maps this means that we cannot view the northern and southern celestial poles.

Heyjude pointed out that commoncraft have another great video explaining how twitter works. While I’m new to twitter and still coming to terms with the nuances of the world of ‘microblogging/text messaging‘ via the web, it seems to have some useful applications for education. I personally find it very useful for the ’synchronous stuff’ - someone puts out a tweet and says “Edtech live in 5 minutes” and gives the URL, or “I’m doing staff PD can some drop by and conference with us”, or “I’m trying this web app can you help at this URL?” In the past week I have conferenced with a school in Melbourne, tried out tokbox and skyped with someone who has won an EE PC. It’s also great for networking with other educators and following their links, blogposts and thoughts but you may get sick of the inane tweets like “Just going to walk the dog …” and “Having a lovely tea at home …”

Tony, my partner in crime from the from the Ed Tech Crew is currently experimenting with his ‘5 by 5 rule’, where he picks one person and then adds 5 people from their network. Each time someone adds him to their network he adds five people from their network. He’s currently following 247 people with 65 following him. I’ll be interested to hear about his experiences! It seems that proper twitter etiquette is to add someone to your network when you’ve been added to theirs. Anyway, enjoy the video. I’m the ictguy on twitter (of course!)

I will update with a non-youtube video when it becomes available - sorry to all Victorian schools!

Here is the flyer I recently sent to all principals regarding three professional learning programs that will be running in the ‘Sunraysia Mallee Schools Network’ in term 2.

Online Curriculum using Moodle
Exploring curriculum delivery in an online environment using a ‘Learning Management System’.

Interactive Whiteboard Learning Team
Exploring the use of IWB’s in the classroom and to develop a network of skilled IWB teachers.

New Tools & New Media
Exploring online tools in the classroom.

Please contact me if you need more information.

I just came across a new technology call iPaper which looks really promising. It basically takes a large range of documents and converts them into the Adobe Flash format. This means that it will basically work on 95% of all web-browsers. So if you want to publish or share a document, you no longer have to make it available as an external download, you can embed it right into the page. The iPaper has a number of document controls which allow you to zoom, select, search etc. You can watch the demo here.

Update: It seems the the embedded ipaper kept crashing the Internet Explorer web browser so I have removed it. Although it might serve as another good reason to use Firefox

Podcast number 3 February 19th, 2008.
[ICTGUY0803.mp3 Running time: 14:10 mins, size: 6.7 MB]

Download it here!

Todays Topics:

Comic Life
http://plasq.com

Comic Life - Examples & Templates
http://www.countrymeadows.district96.k12.il.us/Comic_Life_site/CLindex.html

Blogs host
http://21classes.com

How Cognitive Science Can Improve Your PowerPoint Presentations
http://io9.com/357063/

I thought it might be useful to post some of my favourite Internet videos on ‘Educational Change‘. With a new year started, we have four new coaches working in our district and many schools looking at trying to get teachers moving with ICT. Hopefully, some of these videos can be used at staff meetings and professional learning opportunities to start rich discussions and conversations about learning in the 21st century.

Education Today and Tomorrow (2:30 mins)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnh9q_cQcUE
Comment: Are you teaching for the future or the past?

Did You Know (8:19 mins)
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=1b425a7717504bca103d
Comment: Shift happens, the world is rapidly changing.

Pay Attention (7:40 mins)
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=d02fda0fe3f9a3e7b89f
Comment: Are you teaching ‘digital‘?

3 videos from Michael Wesch

The Machine is Us/ing Us (4:33 mins) http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=1a3f19d9ad0ac2196849
Comment: The read/write web, participatory culture.

A Vision of Students Today (4:44 mins)
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=e0b93b5f334ffb4e4064

Information R/evolution (5:28 mins)
http://revver.com/video/436594/information-revolution/
Comment: The changing nature of knowledge and information

A few more of my favourites …

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? (19:29 mins)
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66
Comment: This is both humorous and too close to the bone!

Digital Students @ Analog Schools (7:12 mins)
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=b5c8973ade16764156be
Comment: Digital learners

Are kids different because of digital media? (2:34 mins)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-PT3vEjw5g

When I become a teacher (1:39 mins)
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=78699224bb449509694c
Comment: A spoof about ICT, teachers and change

Please add any other movies you find useful to the comments. I’ve tried to use teachertube.com where possible.

I’m not sure how long this website has been up, but the government now has a dedicated website for the so called ‘Digital Revolution’ to happen in Australian schools.

http://www.digitaleducationrevolution.gov.au

The Commonwealth Government is committing new funding of $1 billion over four years to provide:

• through the National Secondary School Computer Fund, grants of up to $1 million for schools to assist them to provide for new or upgraded information and communications technology (ICT) for secondary students in Years 9 – 12; and
• a contribution of up to $100 million for the provision of high-speed fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband connections to Australian schools.

 

Podcast number 2 February 4th, 2008.
[ICTGUY0802.mp3 Running time: 6:37mins, size: 3.3MB]

Download it here!

Free Scratch course

Qtrax backflip

Free cartoon artwork for Comic Life

Tony Richard’s blog
Growing Up Online - Just How radically is the Internet changing the childhood experience?

Jo Mcleay of the Openclassroom blog

Twitter

Podcast number 1 January 2008.
[ICTGUY0801.mp3 Running time: 12:30mins, size: 5.9MB]

Download it here!

Todays Topics:

Ultranet
http://www.sofweb.vic.edu.au/blueprint/fs1/s@c.htm

Ed Tech Crew with Tony Richards from itmadesimple.com
Edtechcrew.net

Inkscape Screencasts
http://screencasters.heathenx.org/
http://www.inkscape.org/

Open Source as Alternatives
http://www.osalt.com/

Free, legal music downloads?
Qtrax.com

The Scratch Moodle course
Need2learn.net

Update: Looks like I was on the bleeding edge with Qtrax. It may not be all it promised.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3264556.ece
Thanks for the heads up, Mark!