I heard about this a while back but Steven Downes helped to remind me. Picasa, free software from Google, allows you to scan your PC, organize your collections of photos and then easily allow you to share your photographs with others.

I tried it on my PC, and am impressed so far. It’s easy, and does what it purports. It even helped me find photos I forgot all about. However, there is no Mac version available.

The International Open Source Network has recently release a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) primer. The primer covers the use of FOSS in K-12 schools and universities and could be helpful to administrators, teachers and staff in understanding how to move from existing proprietary software to open source alternatives.

The document begins with a rationale for the use of FOSS in education, and builds a strong (and familiar) case. The authors then cover FOSS for infrastructure, administration, learning management, research, training and open content. Excellent and current examples are referenced.

If you are interested in moving to FOSS, this document shouldn’t be overlooked.

Download the report here (pdf format).

My brother George and I came across an interesting and humourous website a while back called Emotion Eric. Basically, the site features Eric, a guy who will portray any emotion you send him. Some of these are hilarious.

Emotion Eric also has an adventures section. This is an equally funny area where the user can view several of Eric’s wacky adventures.

While inspiration has come from more peculiar places, George, a teacher in Alberta, decided this would be a great idea for his Grade 8 Language Art class … and I really think he’s right. Now, he’s put together his own digital story book (eBook) … and while not ground-breaking, I am certainly going to use this example with my preservice teachers to demonstrate that even simple uses of technology can be tons of fun … and well worth the time.

I am a bit late on posting about one of the most tragic events I could imagine, but I was utterly shocked to see this series of satellite photographs that depict the before and after of this devastating tsunami.

See: http://homepage.mac.com/demark/tsunami/1.html



I should also list a few really important blogs that have been important in gathering aid to victims. The most popular ones I have encountered include:

– http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com

– http://tsunamienquiry.blogspot.com

– http://tsunamimissing.blogspot.com

I also find it amazing how quickly the information on the Indian Ocean Earthquake was covered in Wikipedia and the Wikipedia Commons. After such a horrible event, I find it wonderful to see that individuals and organizations are using educational technologies such as blogs and wikis to cover and gather support for the victims of this tragedy. It demonstrates some of the power behind the tools, and more importantly, the social good-will of those doing what they can to help, even if separated by distance.

Lore: An eJournal for Teachers of Writing recently listed 13 articles on academic blogging. I’ve scanned through a few, and there’s a ton of good stuff there. You can go directly to the articles, or take a look at the Weblogg-ed site where Will Richardson has hyperlinked an interesting excerpt from each article.

CNN has released their list of 25 top innovations (non-medical) in the past 25 years. Well, not quite the whole list. CNN is withholding the #1 innovation until Sunday (Jan 16/05). Any guesses?

I’ve been looking for starting points to introduce my upcoming ECMP 455 (ICT in the Classroom) class to the world of blogging, and the potential implications for learning … and I think I just found a glimpse into the future.

BoingBoing reports the story of Dylan Verdi, who become an instant “pheblogenomenon” as she become the world’s youngest video blogger. If you want to know the full story, check out the video from her father Michael Verdi on what happened, and how she became featured on an ABC new segment. For me, this really illustrates what is now becoming possible with (what is quickly becoming) basic equipment and a whole lot of imagination (not to mention bandwidth).

Well I know many of you out there were good boys and girls last year, and may have received an iPod for Xmas. However, if you want to go beyond just listening to music and are thinking about recording to your iPod, your choices up until now have been limited to purchasing a third party product from Belkin or Griffin. Not only does this cost extra money, but also, with these devices you are limited to recording at 8khz (i.e., relatively poor quality).

However, now there is a hack that is not only free … but the quality of recording is greatly improved. Hack-a-day reports a way of recording to your iPod using Podzilla, a user interface for Linux on your iPod.

I ran this on my new 20GB harddrive and it worked perfectly. However, some commenters on the hack-a-day site seem to be having problems. Podzilla IS beta, so try at your own risk.