ICT Guy

A couple of days ago the MathTrain sent through a link about an application called Uuorld (don’t ask me how to pronounce it!) This application reminded me of one of my favourite Ted Talks by Hans Rosling where he brings vital global data to life through a series of visualisations.

Well, Uuorld turns out to be a great application for visualising data with students and adults. Once downloaded, you can choose from a variety of ‘data sets’ and then choose which countries (or the world) and the time frame for visualising the data.  There are a large variety of ‘data sets’ made available through the application. At this stage you can’t import data but the future for these sorts of tools, in encouraging higher order thinking, looks good!

In additional to taking a still image of your data, you can also export your visualisation in a number of different video formats. They have versions for Mac, Windows & Linux.

I don’t often mention my other podcast ‘The Ed Tech Crew” on this blog. However, in the past week Tony and I have been fortunate enough to have interviewed Will Richardson from weblogg-ed.com. Will is one of the earliest educational bloggers that I know of, and has been pioneering learning in online spaces. He is very articulate and passionate about working with students online. If you have the time, I strongly recommend a listen. Also check out his ‘Powerful Learning Practice‘ network site. Enjoy!

I’ve just finished reading Sartz’s blog where he has been discussing the usefulness of flickr in education (and making bad horse puns!)  Flickr is a photo sharing site powered by Yahoo! that allows users to upload and share their photos. Sartz explains quite a few services based on flickr such Taggalaxy, Flickrcc, PhotoSoup, Bubblr and 10 by 10. All interesting sites based on mashing up publicly accessible photos.

Which leads me to one of my flickr favourites flickr-storm. ‘Flickr storm‘ is a simple tool that allows you to search flickr based on a keyword, select the pictures from the results, and then save those results as a web page that your students or friends can access. In addition, it also adds a link to the flickr user as well as the licensing terms. My short bridge example is here.

In actual fact, I hardly ever use Clipart for presentations anymore, preferring to use pictures that are in the public domain or licensed under a creative commons license and making sure that I give attribution to the author. For creative common searches on flickr try http://flickr.com/creativecommons You could even add it as a keyword search in firefox!

Searching for content within podcasts and videos has always been difficult given the nature of any audio or video file. While text is easy to search, audio and video is not! So the next best thing is to able to search by topics and/or related content. I’ve just discovered this new search engine for audio and and other rich media called ‘seeqpod‘. It appears that it uses a combination of topics, keyword and other data for determining results.

… instant playable search results. Clips, tracks, and presentations can be played, embedded, or shared immediately …. From video to audio, slideshows, and Adobe Flash, the vast multitude of rich media files …

The best part about this search engine is that you can play and preview the material without having to downoad it. Particularly useful given the size of rich media files! I’ll definitely be investigating further the possible uses of this search engine.

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?

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.

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.

A new version of Scratch (the free multimedia programming software) has just been released. This new release includes a number of new code blocks. A full list is here!

The new blocks include volume control, music tempo, new math functions and more sensing values for creating games and determining sprite properties.

Google has added a great new feature where you can embed a ‘Google Map’, just like you can for a youtube video, a slideshare presentation or other web2.0 media.

This is awesome, not only have I learnt how to use the “My Maps” feature where you can:

Mark your favorite places on your map
Draw lines and shapes to highlight paths and areas
Add your own text, photos, and videos
Share your map with friends and family

But now I can add all this to my blog! Here is map of of a recent boating trip we had on the Murray River. We boated from just below Wentworth to Ned’s Corner. (I didn’t take any pictures on the trip but you’ll get the idea)

The Google Map Embed “How to” is available from the LongLat Google blog.

View Larger Map

I’ve just uploaded a number of games created by teachers to the Scratch website. Well done to all those involved!

http://scratch.mit.edu/users/smsn

Today we had a whole day professional development workshop creating games with ‘Scratch‘, which is the programming language developed by the ‘Lifelong Kindergarten Group’ at MIT. We had 23 participants from over 13 schools within the Sunraysia Mallee Schools Network.

All teachers worked extremely hard on their Scratch games and we’ll be publishing some of their efforts at a later date. But in the meantime, have a look at the photo album below. I’m still coming to terms with the level of engagement from all participants - it was awesome!

Mashable.com is ‘Social Networking News’ site. They’ve recently posted a couple of great resources for doing photo and image manipulation online, and also for doing video editing online.

Photography Toolbox
http://mashable.com/2007/06/23/photography-toolbox/
90+ Resources in the photography toolbox

• Online Photo Editors, Photo Sharing
• Free Photo Hosting
• Photography Blogs
• Photo Mashups
• And much more

The Video Toolbox
http://mashable.com/2007/06/27/video-toolbox/
150+ resources in the video toolbox!

• Online Video How-to
• Online Video Editors
• Online Video Converters
• Video sharing & hosting
• Vidcasts & vlogging and mashups
• And much more

Enjoy

“Did You Know” is a video/presentation originally created for a faculty meeting by Karl Fisch in August 2006. It went ‘viral‘ on the Internet and has subsequently been viewed online by 5 million people.

“Did You Know 2.0″ is the re-worked version of the original (with help from Scott & XPLANE) which is much more polished but stills carries the same message - How should educational institutions, administrators and teachers respond to an increasingly technological, globalised world? And how do we prepare students for the 21st century?

The video is on youtube and teachertube (among other video sharing sites), there is also a wiki giving further background on the presentation.

I’ve embedded the movie below from teachertube which should be viewable from all schools. This a fantastic presentation to start a conversation about educational change at your school!

The ‘Ed Tech Crew Podcast’ I do with Tony Richards from itmadesimple.com is now available on iTunes! We also have our very own domain name: www.edtechcrew.net We have just posted episode 5. Make sure you drop by and have a listen and give us some feedback. You may even want to subscribe.

Last week I sent out an email to all Sunraysia Mallee Schools asking if any teachers were interested in using game creation in the curriculum. It’s the sort of constructivist/constructionist learning that can really help students do some deep thinking. The whole process involves project design, analytical thinking, problem solving, and engagement. That’s some of the reasons I really like using software like Microworlds, Logo and Mindstorms for robotics - “it’s serious fun” as Seymour Papert would say.

The only problem with this scenario, is that it’s often hard to convince teachers to spend the money on the software. However, in terms of game creation, there are a few free alternatives!

First up is Game Maker. Written in the Netherlands by Mark Overmars, Game Maker is graphical environment for developing games without the need to learn complex programming languages. It offers drag and drop actions and allows you to create professional looking games without having to write computer code.

Secondly, is Scratch. Created by the “Lifelong Kindergarten Group” at MIT, Scratch is a graphical programming language that lets you control the actions and interactions among different media. In Scratch you program different media by snapping together blocks of code like you would with Lego bricks. It’s very easy to get started and can be used with children from Grade 2 or 3 and above.

I will be posting more information about both the software programs and the project shortly. If you’re interested in jumping on board please drop me a line: ictguy@gmail.com

Most teachers I have been working with find blogs a simple but powerful tool to use. Checkout the Environment Team at Mildura West for example.

When it comes to resizing images on blogs, things get a little trickier. What resolution, what size, what program do I use? Well, why not try this easy to use website called picresize.com for all your picture resizing needs!

Choose an image (browse), choose quick resize, upload the image (continue), download the image ready for your blog. Nice and simple!

Surface is a new technology from Microsoft that allows for multi-touch interaction with a touch sensitive surface. It looks very impressive (but all marketing campaigns are!) The website is here http://www.microsoft.com/surface . Devices built around this technology are set to be released winter 2007 (Northern hemisphere).

There’s some really interesting things starting to happen around the “touch sensitive” devices with Apple’s iPhone, Microsoft’s Surface, and also this multipoint physics demonstration that Tony put me onto a while back.

Multiple touch on an interactive whiteborad will certainly be a leap forward! Imagine if we can get more than one student using an IWB at the same time. What sort of collaborative/interactive software could be created?

[Update: Ars Technica has a good in depth look at the technology inside surface]

I was hoping not to work at home tonight (occasionally teachers get that luxury!) But I really need to share this article written in The Age by Dale Spender.

In an election year we are probably hoping for more than the usual rhetoric about the 3R’s and academic standards.

But that view of education is no longer viable - familiar and reassuring as it may be for many of those who now determine policy. It would take only a few visits to cyberspace - to the real world inhabited by today’s schoolchildren - to understand that there has been an information revolution since the 1950s. And it has changed everything: the children, education - and learning and literacy.

However, it appears that both sides of politics continue to ignore the fundamental changes in the students we teach, the society in which we live and the global nature of an information society. Times have changed! Do yourself a favour and read the article.

Here’s a picture of one of the ‘Post Cards’ that were given out at the Innovation Next Practice conference.

This quote is from Kim Falkenberg, Principal of Red Cliffs East Primary School.

Wouldn’t it be great if all teachers had this approach to students and ICT?

You don’t need to be the expert, just jump in and learn along with the students. As long as you know what sort of learning needs to happen and the different types of outcomes that can happen with different technology/software, then the students can be the technology experts. To quote another blogger: “Learning is messy!”

Kim’s principal blog can be found here: rceps.edublogs.org

I wasn’t fortunate enough to hear Marco Torres do his keynote at the Innovation Next Practice conference yesterday due to a delayed plane flight However, he did speak again at the end of a panel discussion in the afternoon (I wish he went for longer!)

What I did take away were some interesting ways to think about student learning and ICT. He spoke about ‘Pull down’ and ‘Push Up’ technologies. Not having heard the morning keynote I assume that ‘Pull downs’ are the what we take from the Internet - information, websites, resources etc, and the ‘Push ups’ are the things that students contribute back to the web - blogs, podcasts, wikis, video etc.

It’s a really simple, effective way at looking at the whole Internet debate and it gets back to whether we want want our students to be just consumers of information or do we want them to be creators as well? My money is on the latter Remember that Web 2.0 is really just the read/write web!