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I have been putting this post off for a while now, but I am finally compelled to write about all of the apps that I am using on a regular basis on my iPad. I am compelled by just how many conversations I have had about doing more than just consumption with the device. The following list of Apps are what make the iPad essential to me. They are what make it more than just a toy:
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The National Research Council of Canada's Institute for Information Technology (Learning and Collaborative Group) has started a research and development project exploring the Personal Learning Environment. The project researches how new technologies can be used in a personalized informal learning environment and focuses on two dimensions.
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If you're on Windows, need to use OS X, but don't want to buy or build a new computer, reader Bobby Patton shows us how to run Snow Leopard in a virtual machine on Windows with just a few tweaks.
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If you’re like us, you want to stay current on the newest and most effective ways to incorporate social media into the classroom. Social media and Web 2.0 technology is not meant to replace teaching
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Meta search – create your own photo gallery
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Create your travel guide, take it everywhere and share your trip with your friends!
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Search engine with only the current results
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The quickest and easiest way to find the best of everything in your area.
Monthly Archives: July 2010
Learning while Facilitating
If they ever found out, they might charge me to facilitate workshops or presentations. I find that, no matter what I do, I always end up learning something new. This past week at the OTF Summer Camp was no exception.
One of the coolest things that I learned came from a request from @Gill_Ville during the session. She had started a Flickr account and wanted some way to show her photostream on the wiki that she was creating as a participant of our session.
So, we tinkered a bit and then stumbled across Roy Tanck’s Flickr Widget. Using it is a piece of cake – once you make sure that your Photostream is public!
It’s just a matter of going to the widget creation websiteand fill in the blanks.
The only challenging this is finding the URL to your photostream and pasting it into the page. After that, it’s just a matter of determining the size of the widget and then generating the embed code.
From the very beginning, we indicated to the group that they’ll be the master of the embed after three days and this was just another example.
Roy Tanck‘s Flickr Widget requires Flash Player 9 or better.
Get this widget at roytanck.com
If the object doesn’t appear above in your browser, check out this link instead.
Click on any of the rotating pictures to see it full size. It’s a blingy way to display your images. @kellmoor approves.
links for 2010-07-08
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Create gorgeous flash movies
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Rememble is a 'washing line' for your digital bits and pieces. Thread together texts, photos, videos, sounds, scribbles, scans, notes, tweets… so they're not drifting in a digital wasteland
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Save Stories, Photos, and Videos on a Collaborative Timeline.
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Introduction to Moodle. Created by @celfoster on Twitter.
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As a world-class research facility, Jefferson Lab is a valued partner to the local, regional and national education community. Jefferson Lab's long-term commitment to science education continues to focus on increasing the number of teachers with a substantial background in math and science, strengthening the motivation and preparation of all students, especially minorities and females, and addressing the serious under representation of minorities and females in science, math, engineering and technology careers.
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The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is a national organization that advocates for 21st century readiness for every student. As the United States continues to compete in a global economy that demands innovation, P21 and its members provide tools and resources to help the U.S. education system keep up by fusing the three Rs and four Cs (critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation).
Professionalism
In a day and age where bashing teachers and education seems to be common sport, it’s nice to see that educators are holding up and doing their very best to stay on top of their profession.
It’s easy to take shots; after all, teachers get two months off to golf in the summer time, right? Such a wide sweeping generalization is really hurtful and not reflective of reality.
In reality, the learning and growth of individuals continues.
This past week, for example, I co-lead a professional development event hosted by the Ontario Teachers’ Federation for a group of Ontario educators. For three days, we worked closely investigating the creation and use of Wikis and many other Web 2.0 applications for classroom use, K-12.
Camp OTF Wiki at McMaster University
As facilitators, we had a script that was modified and customized on the fly to meet the environmental and educational needs of the group.
Even here, at the end of the day, wouldn’t you think it would be time for a round of golf or some other summer activity? Not for this group – the learning continued into the evening and the wee hours of the morning for some, including the facilitators.
So, hats off to this group for their devotion to learning and to the millions of teachers that will do similar things in big group format or individually as they retool for another school year in the fall.
links for 2010-07-07
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ONLINE-TELEVISION.TV is optimized for IE and it is neither affiliated with the broadcasted channels nor responsible for their content.
Watch the newest online television channels and the latest tv programs for free. -
Collection of tools to help with network diagnostics
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Chromoscope lets you explore our Galaxy (the Milky Way) and the distant Universe in a range of wavelengths from X-rays to the longest radio waves.
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Welcome to InfiniteYouTube, the easy-to-use
YouTube video looping tool. -
WizFolio is an online research collaboration tool for knowledge discovery. With WizFolio you can easily manage and share all types of information including research papers, patents, documents, books, YouTube videos, web snippets and a lot more.
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Tim Peltz made a revolutionary move: he removed the firewalls that had blocked students from many parts of the Internet. He didn't just remove a brick here and there. He tore those walls completely down.
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My approach to staff development (and teaching) borrows from the thinking of Donald Finkel who believed that teaching should be thought of as "providing experience, provoking reflection."
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Just because most wireless routers have a firewall to protect you from the internet doesn't mean you're protected from others connected to the same network.
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The following resources offer material you can use to become more informed about learning differences. They encompass a broad range of viewpoints and approaches to the issues.
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The form below will let you generate a Flash Flickr widget for your website or blog using your Flickr RSS feed. It will create a short bit of HTML code that you can copy-paste code into any HTML page, blog post or a WordPress text widget. You’ll need the following values to get you started.
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Apple's iPhone App Fraud: Where Were the App Police?
I Used to Use Paper
It’s kind of difficult to think about or even remember the good ‘ol’ days. There was a time when you would attend a workshop or a presentation from me and you’d walk away with a paper handout from the session. Depending upon the topic and my level of preparedness and enthusiasm, it could actually be a pretty significant chunk of trees that would be used for this purpose.
It sure wouldn’t have worked yesterday.
I’m in Hamilton co-presenting at an Ontario Teachers’ Federation session with partner @kellmoor and the topic this time around is about using Wikis and other collaboration tools in the classroom. We’ve been preparing for this session for quite a while and we could have written the Great Canadian Novel if we had put our content into words on paper and gone the traditional handout route.
And, traditionally, it might have worked. But, in these electronic times, the key word is flexibility. Our plan was to focus on intense hands-on activities, constructing the knowing and abilities as we went. But, we were in someone else’s house and didn’t have total control over our environment. There was no show stopper event and terrific people from the OTF and the McMaster IT Department got us moved and connected and running and happily learning. And yet, if we had a paper presentation or agenda, we would have had folks circling this and moving this around and down here and … You get the drill.
But, since it’s electronic, it’s not a problem. We just jump to the appropriate session and things did flow together nicely. We covered much of what we wanted to do, just in a different order. At dinner last night, the two of us were planning and scheming about a changed Day 2 and Day 3. It may well be better than the original plan.
In a paper world, I could just vision us running around looking for an all-night duplicating store with lots of supplies so that we could revise the day. Instead, we’re back in our rooms co-editing the affected parts of the day from our course wiki. Collaboration and planning like it’s supposed to be. I woke up with another idea and hopped in to add it and noted that Kelly and I were not alone on this entity. One of our campers had already been in throwing in her two cents and the time stamp was somewhere around 4:00am. How cool is that?
Spring forward and I’m watching the morning Twitter stream come through and seeing people bemoaning that a particular collaboration tool was blocked at their school district based upon a room that said that the site was a chat site. Now, this wasn’t your regular chat-define resource-it was a site where you could collaborate on a document and chat about it on the sidebar with your collaborator. It’s so weird to think about the context of our presentation which is all about openness and collaboration juxtaposed against this.
Last night, I read this article entitled Revolution Needed for Teaching Literacy in a Digital Ageand maybe there is a great deal to be learned from this. While articles like this seem to reach the sensational, the reality is that a lot of things that are happening are just tinkering with the status quo. I think about a discussion that I had once that included the line “I tried group work once and it didn’t work. The students couldn’t handle it so we went back to the old way.” How’s that for a great attempt at meeting students at least half way?
The reality is that students are using these tools and admittedly at different levels of proficiency and expertise. But, banning them altogether gets us nothing but frustration. Only when it becomes the way that we do business does it kick in and become effective, scaffolding, motivating, and engaging for all. Otherwise, it’s back to the paper and drawing lines to move topics around on the sheet of paper where the agenda is king, not the learning.
links for 2010-07-06
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Using Diigo for intentional learning and sharing
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MapSkip makes the world a canvas for our stories and photos.
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BusSongs.com has the largest collection of children's music on the Internet – with lyrics, videos, and music for 2,108 kid's songs and nursery rhymes.
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Classroom Clipart Over 62, 000 free images, clipart, illustrations animations and photographs for every occasions.
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Welcome to quality educational clipart. Every item comes with a choice of image size and format as well as complete source information for proper citations in school projects. No advertisement-filled pages with pop-up windows or inappropriate links here. A friendly license allows teachers and students to use up to 50 educational clipart items in a single, non-commercial project without further permission.
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How many times have you participated in a brainstorming session, only to be underwhelmed by the utter lack of follow up?
Unfortunately, in most businesses, this is often the norm. Here's why: -
This is interactive mathematics
where you learn math by playing with it! -
At Learn it in 5, you'll learn what is Web 2.0, and strategies for using Web 2.0 technology in the digital classroom – all in 5 minutes or less.
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The last time I looked at roles in education I was inspired by Anil Mammen to create a table based on his definitions. I think some of the descriptions can be used in a prescriptive way of getting out of our industrial, hierarchical mindset and moving to an enterprise 2.0 or wirearchical culture. In networks, learning is the work, so a critical part of this culture shift is viewing learning as quite different from traditional training
Chart Updated
From what I’ve gleaned through today’s Twitter messages, add TheCleverSheep to the left side of the grid.
So near and yet so far
It’s amazing how reliant we can become on technology and the joys of being connected. As I type this, I’m at McMaster University in Hamilton where in an hour or so, I’ll kick off with my partner Kelly a three day technology professional development session with my friend Kelly as part of the Ontario Teachers’ Federation Summer Camp Program.
It should be fun. We have a full house with the last couple of registrants coming in this week. We had a set of challenges already trying to find the parking and the hall. My poor old GPS really struggled; it appears that some of the streets have become one way since it was originally mapped. But, we persevered and got to the parking and our residence and last night downtown to the Copps Coliseum to see the American Idol Live show.
In downtown Hamilton, there were lots of wireless connectivity options but we weren’t there for that. It will become a necessity when we get back to the dorm rooms and do a last minute check so that we know what it is that we’re doing! Most of our materials are web based so that we can truly demonstrate what we preach.
Connectivity is always great at universities with their high speed connections, probably to the Orion research backbone.
As I fire up the computer, I see a number of wireless networks. This is looking good.
You guessed it. Login/password needed to get connected. I guess that makes sense; you don’t want unwanted guests mucking about. Ah, but there’s an ethernet cable coming from the phone. That’s even better than wireless. Connect and load the browser and wham, I’m there.
Almost!
Login and password required to get onto this network as well. The young lady at registration points out that we have to get the access info from our session organizer. And, of course, that’s easier said than done.
Oh well. The networks are there – they’re everywhere and so close that you can taste them. The coffee shops are “closed for the season” and I’m really not interested in wandering through downtown Hamilton looking for a Starbucks so I’ll just have to trust that all our planning and preparation in advance pays off.
If not, Kelly can carry me.
links for 2010-07-05
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While the phrase “founding fathers” is often used in conjunction with men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, we wanted the think about the phrase on the global level. And what is more global than the world wide web?
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There are eight basic parts of speech and every word will fall into one of these categories. Some words can actually be classified as being in more than one part of speech depending on how it is used at the time.
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Spectacular visualtization of American art on a timeline
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Instructional Design Central (IDC) is dedicated towards providing instructional design professionals, educators, and students access to instructional designer resources, information, learning opportunities, and community services.
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Determine how long it would take a computer to hack your password
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Chrome Experiments
Not your mother's JavaScript -
Google has been hard at work this summer making your document editing, sharing, and creation experience much better. We thought this might be a good time to get you up to speed on all the new features that will make your upcoming school year much MUCH easier.
