New OESS Titles

One of the great joys in my life is to take a look at new software and figure out what it does, how I can use it, and how it’s going to enhance the learning condition for students.  That’s one of the things that I find so enjoyable about my job.  I just wish there were more hours in the day so that I could approach mastery.  Alas, there aren’t but I do my best.

In Ontario, we have an awesome collection of applications that are licensed by the Ontario Ministry of Education and available for all publically funded schools in the province.  These titles are distributed through the Ontario Educational Software Service.  Recommendations for which titles are to be licensed are made by the Ontario Software Acquisition Program Advisory Committee (OSAPAC).  I’m proud to say that I’m one of two represenatives from the Southwest region of the province.

Next week is the last meeting of our Elementary Computers in Education School Contacts.  This will be my last time to have them all together for a whole day of professional development and awareness of what will be available for them in September.  OESS releases these titles throughout the year but it’s particularly important to have them on the streets early in the Spring so that IT Departments can do an image refresh to provide schools with the latest and greatest applications and learning opportunities for students.

Next Monday through Wednesday, I’ll get a chance to highlight three new titles for the upcoming school year.  I’m very exciting about each of them and look forward to their launch and potential for the fall.  This time around, the Ministry has licensed these titles.

• Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 and 7 for Macintosh and Windows
• Adobe Premiere Elements 7 for Windows
• Comic Life Deluxe for Macintosh and Windows

If you’ve played with any of these construction tools, you know that the sky is the limit.  Where to start?  Fortunately, we’re not starting with a blank slate.  We’ve been working with Windows Movie Maker and iMovie for years.  Photoshop Elements 5 is the currently licensed product so that is an upgrade but a really nice upgrade.  As far as Comic Life goes, it’s going to dove tail nicely into so many of our literacy and language classrooms.

It’s going to be a great (and extremely active) day.

Social Bookmarks:

Powered by ScribeFire.

Advertisement

links for 2009-04-22

• Get Great Gadgets. And Keep Them. – Last Year's Model
  We love cool gadgets as much as anybody else. We just want to be thoughtful about the stuff we've bought. Even the most cutting-edge, tech-savvy geeks in the world are choosing to hang on to their phones or their iPods that still work just fine.
  (tags: gadgets environment green blog tech funny sustainability social)
• Gadgets for a greener world – Blogs – Yahoo! Canada Tech
  With so many tech toys on the market, the mountains of electronic waste around the world are on the rise. Fortunately, there are companies getting into the 'green gadget' biz. Not only are many of these devices eco-friendly, they’re also really useful.
  (tags: gadgets green technology)
• Welcome to the Tricki | Tricki
  Welcome to a brand new Wiki-style site that is intended to develop into a large store of useful mathematical problem-solving techniques. Some of these techniques will be very general, while others will concern particular subareas of mathematics.
  (tags: math wiki Mathematics Reference learning research maths Science)
• Make Your Own Web Site Badges with jQuery and JSON
  All of these services also offer a JSON format feed API, and rolling your own widget is easy. Here’s one I whipped up in no time for Twitter using jQuery. You’ll be surprised at how little code it requires.
  (tags: twitter widget webdev web2.0 javascript programming tutorial web icsxx)
• What's Next – 10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now – TIME
  The global economy is being remade before our eyes. Here's what's on the horizon
  (tags: trends ideas culture future social world news time)
• Three Secrets to Make a Message Go Viral | Fast Company
  Viral marketing has become a hip, low-cost way to reach a lot of people very quickly — with little effort. But as marketers, including giants such as Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, and Procter & Gamble, slash ad budgets, "viral" needs to mean more than "free" and "fueled by prayer."
  (tags: marketing advertising viral socialmedia Business social howto design fastcompany)
• 100 Free Courses & Tutorials for Aspiring iPhone App Developers | Best Universities
  Lots of developers are creating their own iPhone apps, and with the right know-how, you can too. Check out our list of courses and tutorials to learn everything that’s important about developing for the iPhone.
  (tags: iphone programming development tutorials tutorial learning resources mobile cocoa icsxx)
• The Challenge of Recipes on Twitter – NYTimes.com
  But wait. There is one thing. A woman in Northern Ireland has turned Twitter’s solipsism upside down. She sends tweets that tell followers nothing about herself. Instead, they tell useful, interesting things, things they might really want to know.
  (tags: twitter food recipe icsxx)