Tag Archives: Resources

ServerAtSchool 1.0 Launched

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ServerAtSchool 1.0, a free, Linux-based server product designed for elementary schools, is now available.

The ServerAtSchool project is a Linux network server designed to work together with Windows workstations, offering features that were developed especially for use in primary schools.

Services include a web server, a website content management system, a mail server, a flexible user management tool, a chroot jail for users, hourly backups of user documents, nightly (off-site) backups, spam control, a name server, DHCP, a printer server, web mail, virus scanning, a firewall, a database server, a file server for Windows clients, a time server, and a secure shell.

This looks like something I’ll have to explore next year with my preservice teachers, in a demo environment. It looks promising from what I see on the site and may be ideal for those looking for a good approach to serving and managing documents, and developing a web-presence in elementary schools.

Find out more at: http://serveratschool.net/

Google Calendar Launched

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This week has been rough on me in terms of technology. My domain went down this week, apparently because an old Moveable Type cgi script had been spammed to death, and took down my host’s server. The same day, my PowerBook’s harddrive blew up, and I’ve lost my most recent email and my iCal schedule. While this could have been tramautic, luckily I sent the most recent version of my dissertation to my Gmail account literally minutes before my hard drive failed.

Since I’m out of a scheduler for now, I checked out Google’s new calendar service, and so far I like what I see. You can import iCal files (or other format’s I assume), and the best part is that you can share your calendar with others. This would be great for small groups, families, or groups of students who don’t have access to corporate solutions like OpenTime, etc.

Anyways, check out the latest service in Google’s entourage. If you are not overly concerned that this company will soon have access to everything you produce (email, blogs, calendars, file storage, contacts, etc.), then you’ll likely find it quite useful.

Speech Accent Archive

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This is pretty cool!

The speech accent archive uniformly presents a large set of speech samples from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English read the same paragraph and are carefully transcribed. The archive is used by people who wish to compare and analyze the accents of different English speakers.

Yea, I haven’t been much of a blogger lately … been too busy with some important writing, but I promise to emerge soon. However, this was too neat not to mention.

PictureCloud.com

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Neat stuff.

A picture cloud is the easiest way to make a photo come to life. By using a picture cloud you can turn still photos into images that spin 360° by uploading images you take around an object with your digital camera. Whether it’s houses, cars, toys, or pets, picture clouds are easy to create and can be used anywhere. Picture clouds are helping give depth to the web, and best of all – picture clouds are free.

I have yet to experiment with this and haven’t looked at it very closely, but this may have some potential for the classroom. Do check out the examples or take the tour.

http://www.picturecloud.com/

Wireless Networking In The Developing World

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A new book, “Wireless Networking in the Developing World: A Practical Guide to Building Low-Cost Telecommunications Infrastructure“, has just been released under a Creative Commons license. I’m assuming that this book could also apply to other geographic regions (the Canadian North comes to mind).

I’ve often touted Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) on this blog. Combine FOSS with low-cost hardware and wireless networking, and the digital divide may just dissipate.

Crash Course In Learning Theory

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The “Creating Passionate Users” blog has produced an excellent post on various learning theories. The content is situated for the development of a learning blog, and is well-written. And …

although it’s geared toward blogs/writing virtually everything in here applies regardless of how you deliver the learning–you can easily adapt it to prentations, user documentation, or classroom learning.

Now what I really like is that although I’ve read dozens of textbooks on learning theory, I really appreciate how the art of blogging can remove some of the potential dryness from such academic content.

Online Hate/Media & Race: Resource

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Our Faculty has recently licensed two new and excellent resources from the Media Awareness Network (MNet). MNet is a non-profit organization based in Ottawa and it boasts “one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of media education and Internet literacy resources” (more info here). Their materials are really top-notch.

The two newest additions to the MNet catalog include “Exploring Media and Race” and “Deconstructing Online Hate“. Each resource includes a workshop (slides, speaking notes, handouts, etc.), a self-directed tutorial and a resource guide. This is a great resource as it’s easy-to-follow, and packed with information for students of all ages. I would consider myself very knowledgeable this subject area, but there were still several items that surprised me.

On a related note, I have been a bit of a collector of disinformation/propaganda videos, and especially those that relate to discrimination or racism. A few weeks ago, I came across a shocking anti-homosexual video published in 1961. Here is a link to the short version of the video, and the longer version with some background information can be found at the Internet Archive. In short, the video depicts homosexuality as a sickness and homosexuals as pedophiles. It’s really sad.

What’s even more sad and unfortunate are the views of people commenting on this video at the Internet Archive, and my realization that for many, such views haven’t changed in over 40 years. In this, it’s obvious that the MNet resources I mention above (and others like it) are ones that need exposure in our schools and communities. Certainly, resources like this alone won’t solve all of our ills, but it’s a step in the right direction.

2005 Edublogs Award Shortlist

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I’ve just noticed that the 2005 Edublogs shortlist has been released, and WOW … I’m actually a player in two of the nominations. First, our EdTech Posse has been nominated under the category “Best audio and/or visual blog”. This just further demonstrates that we really need to keep this podcast rolling (it’s been a bit slow lately, especially in this busy time of year). Second, the work of our Faculty of Education’s iTeacherEd project has been noticed as we have done our best over the past several years to integrate blogging (and other technologies) into our preservice teacher education program. This work has been nominated under the “Best example/case study of use of weblogs within teaching and learning” category.

I really didn’t expect either nomination, but I am genuinely flattered, and much more grateful to be a part of such a rich community of peers.

Do check out the other nominees. Everyone of the sites listed should be in your RSS aggregator.

Adam Curry Takes More Credit Than He Is Due

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Here’s an interesting piece of news …

Former MTV veejay and podcasting entrepreneur Adam Curry appears to have been caught anonymously editing the podcasting entry on Wikipedia to remove credit from other people and inflate his role in its creation.

And one of those “other people” appears to be our good friend Stephen Downes. One of the statements that appears to be removed includes:

The recovery of MP3 links from distributed weblogs and distribution of the aggregated list using RSS had been demonstrated by Stephen Downes’s [5] Ed Radio [6], launched June 9, 2004.

Adam Curry … for this very selfish misuse of our liberating, collaborative media known as Wikipedia … you are hereby, now and forever, unsubscribed from my iTunes account.

Although, I did noticed that Stephen Downes, in his comment to the story, is much more forgiving than I am.

Just for the record, I like Daily Source Code, I’ve said nice things about it in my blog, and I will continue to listen to Adam Curry. No grudges. (Stephen Downes)

Gollum: Wikipedia Browser

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I love this idea.

Gollum is a Wikipedia Browser for fast and eyefriendly browsing through the free encyclopedia “Wikipedia”. Gollum gives you access to nearly all Wikipedias in all languages. Further more Gollum gives you some special features which allow you to easily customize your work with Wikipedia.

In my opinion the interface of Wikipedia is too overloaded and confusing. So let’s get an easy to use interface. Gollum, the intuitive way to the powerfull knowledge of Wikipedia.

Gollum is GPL’d so it could be tweaked for a school (where Wikipedia is allowed … ugggh), and could act as a clean portal to viewing or editing great material.