Tag Archives: Resources

Freedom Sticks For The Classroom

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I’m working with teachers in a small-town Saskatchewan school. My role involves getting these volunteers to begin using current forms of technology in the classroom, to research the process and to begin a technology-related mentorship program. These teachers will eventually become mentors to others in the division. It’s important to note that these teachers are very new to technology in the classroom and are beginners in this area.

After some initial conferencing, I decided that blogging would be a great place to start. The following documents the process with the first teacher.

I thought I’d start at WordPress.com. It’s been really reliable, and although (philosophically) I prefer edublogs.org, it has been buggy for me and my students in the past. I found out quickly that WordPress.com was blocked by the school filter. So, we tried edublogs.org. It worked!

We started the sign-up process. Everything went well. But, when we went to check the authorization email that was to be sent from edublogs.org, we realized that the school mail filter rejected the message from edublogs.org. Uggh. We tried again, but first I had the teacher sign-up with a Gmail account. This worked, but we had to choose a new userid and URL for edublogs. But that’s OK, we’re getting there.

In edublogs.org, I had the teacher change the presentation (theme) and the temporary password. When we came to create our first post, I noticed something missing. The ONLY browser on the school computers was IE 6. For some reason, the visual editor in WordPress did not show up. This was another big issue, but at least we could post basic messages.

Next we tried attachments. We could upload files in IE6 in edublogs, but when you went to attach the file to the post, it would not work. Another IE 6.0 issue it seemed. Then we went to embed a Youtube video. Nope, YouTube blocked. Oh, we could get to TeacherTube … but, wow, no Flash player installed on these machines either.

So let’s go through the list of things of issues:

  • Filtering blocked some really important, educational sites.
  • No visual editor in WordPress because of IE 6 (it seems).
  • No ability to attach files to blogposts.
  • No Flash player.

Frustrating!

Solution:
I setup a wireless network (probably against board policy) in about 10 seconds using my Airport Express. I take this tool with me everywhere, to every classroom I work in, to every hotel I stay in and to every conference I present at. Setting up a wireless network is idiot-proof with this tool, and this is by far the best $100ish I have every spent.

While on the Wireless networked, I noticed that I could get to any site using Firefox on my MacBook Pro. As I had a few USB sticks with me, I thought I’d try installing Firefox Portable onto a stick and see if it would work on the school computers. If you don’t know much about portable apps, basically these applications run from a USB stick with no need to install on the local computer. In placing this USB stick into the school machine, I quickly realized that we were now able to do everything we wanted to do including bypassing the school filter. For some reason, the entire web proxy system was closely tied to IE, so when we used Firefox, we no longer had limits. Edublogs.org now worked perfectly on Portable Firefox. We now had the visual editor and could attach files. We were free!

I quickly realized that it would be useful for these teachers to have their own sticks. Thus I purchased 8 sticks (one for each teacher) and included the following apps, most of them available at portableapps.com.

  • 7-Zip Portable: Compression utility (WinZip equivalent).
  • AbiWord Portable: MS Word replacement.
  • Audacity Portable: Audio-editing utility.
  • FileZilla Portable: FTP utility.
  • Firefox Portable: Web browser.
  • GIMP Portable: Imaging editing app (Photoshop-like).
  • Open Office Portable: Includes Write, Calc, Impress, Base, Draw, Math (MS Office replacement plus).
  • VLC Portable: The best cross-platform video player (plays almost everything).
  • Opera USB: Another web-browser. I added this because it seems to have the Flash player built in the browser, Firefox Portable doesn’t.

There are a number of other portable apps which I did not include simply because I don’t think the teachers needed the apps (too techy), yet.

Distributing these USB sticks to teachers is done as an interim measure. For now, this will allow these teachers to get to many great resources and will allow them to use powerful Web 2.0 tools. Teachers will also be able to show their students the resources they choose and deem appropriate. I have dubbed these loaded USB devices “freedom sticks” as this was exactly what was gained from this experience.

K12 Online Conference

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I’m sure that the majority of my readers know about this, but I am quite sure there are many than don’t.

This is a conference by educators for educators around the world interested in integrating emerging technologies into classroom practice. A goal of the conference is to help educators make sense of and meet the needs of a continually changing learning landscape.

It’s good to know that there is free registration, and that all sessions will be downloadable. I am sure there will be some amazing presentations and I’m really looking forward to participating in the sessions.

K12 Online Conference Poster

Remixing/Coding For Kids

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A few neat sites/tools I’ve come across lately:

I know I’ve read about Scratch some time ago, but this BBC article highlights this free coding tool aimed at kids. Scratch, a tool developed at MIT, is a “free programming tool that allows anyone to create their own animated stories, video games and interactive artworks has been developed.” The video looks pretty impressive, but I haven’t got a chance to download and use the tool.

The BBC article also points to hacketyhack.net, “The Coder’s Starter Kit”. The tool (available for Windows only … tsk tsk) helps to teach the Ruby programming language.

Somewhat related is the Zimmer Twins’ website. The website allows users to create animated movies, and the best are selected to be broadcast on Teletune. It’s really a neat process, and a clever tool. Here’s an example. Ahhhh … so much has changed since the days of BASIC.

Learning From My Students (ECMP 355)

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This winter semester is almost over and I am starting to realize how far my students have come in terms of understanding blogging, web 2.0, current trends in technology … basically everything I hoped for them to understand. And now, I am sitting back and enjoying their contributions to the blogging community. Here are a few recent sample posts from my ECMP 355 students.

Jaymie posts a link to a classic “Ma and Pa Kettle” math video, and suggests how she might use the video. Using Youtube in the classroom should be a no-brainer, unfortunately many local school boards have taken measures to ban its use.

Jenna refers to “Facebook in Mourning”, how parents and family of a recently deceased teen have used Facebook as a support forum. Jenna writes, “I think what interested me most is the global reach of this. The internet is able to bring her friends and loved ones together from all over the world. They are able to form a support group to help them get through this tragedy.”

Sarah contemplates the old question of “Mac vs. PC”. It’s great to see students contemplate which technologies to use, rather than still trapped in the “why use technology at all” paradigm.

Tristen discovers Stumble Upon and how to use the Firefox Add-on to use the service. When students first took the course, they knew little upon social computing, open source software, or the importance of such services for education. It’s wonderful to see the discovery and sharing going on.

Vanessa contemplates the effectiveness of PowerPoint as an instructional strategy, discusses technical problems she’s had and writes about her use of videos for class presentations. We’ve come a long way in this course from when I had to teach “how to do PowerPoint”. Now, we can contemplate other modes of instruction related to technology, offer hybrid forms (e.g., wikitations) and discuss the benefits/barriers to each.

These are just the last five posts from my students. I haven’t filtered anything out. While the posts vary in depth and quality, I am very pleased. It’s great to see that these future teachers are knowledgeable about educational technology and becoming impassioned about teaching.

See more ECMP 355 student posts here at this Google Reader page.

Scribd – “The Youtube of Text Documents”

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I noticed Scribd, a tool for sharing text documents, in a recent TechCrunch article. It’s being touted as “the Youtube of text”. So I thought I would give it a shot and see how it handles a larger document. I uploaded my recent dissertation to the site. You should see it below.

There are several neat options. When I uploaded the document, it was converted to .doc, .pdf (kind of), .txt and even .mp3 (yes an audio file). I didn’t notice any open formats, however.

I think it choked on this document. The PDF conversion didn’t really work. The other conversions were pretty much what I expected. I may try it with a few other documents, as it does look promising in some ways.

Update: Yea, when I went to look at how it was embedded into this post, it doesn’t seem to work. Likely, the document is too big. This obviously has serious implications for the usefulness of the service. I’ll leave it up for now, maybe one of the Scribd people will find this and offer an explanation. Here’s another URI to the document that may be more useful than the embed code.

Media Education 101 Presentation Download

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I’ve only gone through this briefly, but it looks like an excellent, free resource from MNet.

The Media Education: Make It Happen! program is a series of free resources to help educators understand and facilitate media literacy in their classrooms. The program consists of a booklet, PowerPoint workshop, and a facilitator’s guide with handouts.

Link.

Media Representation of …

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I’m putting together another wiki/wikitation for an upcoming Ed. Foundations class. I have been asked specifically to talk about how the media represents various cultures and groups in our society.

Media Representation Wiki

One of the videos I’ve included is one titled “Boys Beware”, an anti-homosexual propaganda film from the 1950’s. I first viewed this video a couple of years ago, and as I view it now, it still shocks me.

I don’t think I have to say much about how it erroneously equates homosexual men with diseased pedophiles. While the anti-gay messages found in popular forms of media today may not be as explicit, it certainly still exists.

If you are interested in the topics partially addressed in this wiki, feel free to use this wiki or add your own ideas and resources. I’d love to see this wiki grow, reshape, change and be useful to others.

Emerging Technologies Presentation

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I offered a short presentation focused on emerging technologies and digital literacies last Friday (Feb 2/07) to faculty members and library staff at the University of Regina. I think it went well.

When I began preparing for the presentation, my first instinct was to use a presentation tool (Apple Keynote). I got about 3 slides in when I realized that my brain no longer operates that way. I opted for the wiki-presentation method and here’s an outline of what I came up with.

http://couros.wikispaces.com/emerging+technologies

I borrowed from another similar presentation facilitated by Rob Wall and Donna DesRoches. I thought for a bit about just going in and editing their wiki for my presentation. I’m sure they wouldn’t have minded, but I guess I just felt my digital immigrant accent cut in when I thought 1) I shouldn’t mess with their stuff, and 2) about the need for some control over my own work.

Wow, no wonder it’s hard to convince others of trying to let go of “old ways”.

Teachers Without Borders To Release Free Software

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Media Newswire reports that the Teachers Without Borders organization is set to release new software tools that “will provide the world’s 59 million teachers with easy access to online educational materials that previously have been available only in developed countries with access to high-speed Internet connections and elaborate computer networks and platforms.” These tools “will make it easy for teachers to collaborate by creating groups and then working on individual pages, or by creating and sharing galleries, blogs, forums, news feeds and bookmarks.”

OK, I’m a bit confused. I thought these tools already existed in various incarnations (e.g., Moodle, WordPress, Flickr, etc.) Aren’t these available to everyone?

OK, I’ll read on:

TWB Tools will initially contain a small library comprising primarily TWB books, five full professional development courses “and all the tools one would need to build one’s own library and/or contribute to the main branch,” he said. Mednick added that it will be “quite easy to import more, so that the local communities can have a baseline of content from which to work — to copy, remix, reuse, adapt, adopt.”

Well, I guess I will have to wait to see what these tools actually will look like. “TWB Tools are scheduled to be available in February 2007 on the Teachers Without Borders Web site.”