2008 BESSIE Awards May 1, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Tools.add a comment
If you are looking for award winning educational software, ComputED Learning Center has announced their 14th annual Best Educational Software Awards.
ComputED Gazette’s 2008 BESSIE Awards
RSS Awareness Day April 30, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Link Collections, Tools.add a comment
By way of Sarah Houghton-Jan, the LibrarianInBlack, May first, in addition to being May Day, is RSS Awareness Day! Huzzah! Here are my links for RSS: http://del.icio.us/mwoolums/rss.
Simple Programming Reviewed April 23, 2008
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I know this is a bit old fashioned, but I believe that the best way to learn technology is to take control of the technology by learning a programming language. This can be as simple as setting up a macro in a spread sheet, or hand-coding the HTML code for a web page. Programming can also be simple enough for students and teachers and be fun at the same time. Clarence Fisher has posted a nice review of several education-focused programming environments on his Remote Access blog. Lego Mindstorms, Alice, Phun, and Scratch. Take a look and challenge yourself to learn one! Or two!
http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/remote_access/2008/04/simple-programm.html
Encyclopedia Britannica Now Free For Bloggers April 19, 2008
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By way of a post by Michael Arrington on TechCrunch, bloggers and others who regularly post to the Internet may sign up for complimentary access to the Encyclopedia Britannica. If they accept your submission, you can link directly to specific articles for your audience to read. This should allow annotation similar to what can be done with Wikipedia. I signed up and will let you know how it goes if I get access.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/18/encyclopedia-britannica-now-free-for-bloggers/
Documents, Blogs, Diigo, and Twitter, oh my! April 4, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Tools.add a comment
By way of a CoolCatTeacher tweet, here is a Diigo marked up version of a new tool, Docstoc, that embeds document in your blog or website. So many Web 2.0 tools involved, my head is spinning!
http://www.diigo.com/annotated/315042157aafbd1ab3f21fc09e4fd21d
$100 Laptop - Software Only - Jooce Style March 30, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, OLPC, Opinion, Tools.1 comment so far
Business Week has an interesting article about Jooce. It is a virtual desktop that allows a single access point to be used by many individuals. They make their money through advertising, but it removes the need for each user to have their own hardware or network connection. There are other solutions in this space, some of which I have bookmarked in del.icio.us and tagged as webOS. http://del.icio.us/mwoolums/webOS. I hadn’t thought of web OS solutions in this context, and am not sure how this solves much for classroom use, because you still need equipment, whether it is a lab with one computer for each child, or a mini-lab where students work in small groups or as part of a rotation. Still, in places where there may only be a few access points or limited disk space, virtual (online) desktops make sense.
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2008/gb20080325_844094.htm
Alltop Needs More Tools March 29, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Opinion, Tools.1 comment so far
I’ve noticed a few mentions for Alltop lately. It is sort of a mashup of RSS feeds and a search directory. It has general categories for things like Culture and Geekery, with sub categories for Design, Gadgets, and so forth. Alltop is really handy to see the top sites for the categories in which you are interested.
Alltop is helpful in several ways. For one, it lets you find sources of influence. Finding who to follow, whose voice to listen to in the sea of information, is an exercise critical thinking, and Alltop helps by identifying those voices who are speaking with enough clarity for others to listen. Alltop also assists in bringing focus. By clicking on the link for a sub category, you find yourself with a simplified list of posts from each top site. Each item is a link to that specific article, blog, or tweet. As an RSS aggregator, it does a great job of reducing clutter.
Alltop could be even more helpful in a couple of ways. Sometimes even a plain listing of what is posted can be confusing and intimidating. Taking a look at the twitter collection, I find it takes a lot of time to read through everything just in case I might miss something. A tag cloud would be very helpful, collecting key words and displaying them by size. Sometimes I just want to get a sense for what people are talking about, and that would let me focus better on the specifics in which I might be interested.
Alltop could also open up to users and allow them to create their own categories, both private and shared. I’ve always thought the best suggestions came from word-of-mouth sources. Alltop could easily be a source for my own Alltop stories, the voices I listen to, the suggestions of other voices to which I should listen. I know there are other tools for providing exposure, like Digg, but those tend to get dominated by a few noisy contributors. Alltop brings the simplicity of Google to a sea of feeds, tweets, blogs, and so forth. I just want it to be even better.
10 Million Fans Can’t All Be Wrong March 28, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Data, Tools.1 comment so far
Tech Crunch and others are reporting that Wikipedia has reached a milestone: 10 million articles. That is quite an achievement for something that is free to everyone. On a side note, only 2.3 million of those are in English.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/28/10-millionth-article-written-on-wikipedia/
Bit by BitTorrent March 27, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, Tools.add a comment
When keeping track of all the new technology, or Web 2.0 specifically, it isn’t an easy task. One technology that I haven’t mentioned at all, but that fits the idea of the end users being in charge of the content, is BitTorrent. What is BitTorrent? In my mind, it is a distributed file sharing protocol. But what does that mean? Andy Carvin posted a question on Twitter asking for analogies for BitTorrent, and several people posted some very good ones that help explain what it is.
I like to think of BitTorrent as ‘the network is my hard drive.’ In other words, the location of the information isn’t as important as my access to it. What I wonder about is how BitTorrent can impact education. Imagine a district or school or classroom that isn’t concerned with having all of the answers, but instead is dedicated to making the best use of those answers or resources regardless of where they are located. I think BitTorrent is a great analogy for the way education should be structured. We each have a small part to contribute.
http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2008/03/in_search_of_the_perfect_bit_torrent_ana.html
Diigo Video March 26, 2008
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By way of a CoolCatTeacher (Vicki Davis) tweet, here is a YouTube video that explains Diigo. Having watched it, Diigo sort of has a Flock feel to it, but without the extra browser. Of course Flock has additional drag and drop integration with blogs, but Diigo has an easier Facebook side to networking.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0RvAkTuL02A
Interested in Timelines? March 25, 2008
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Library Power has a nice discussion about a couple of online timeline tools, Mnemograph and Xtimeliner. Timelines can be very helpful in organizing information, outlining stories, or to compare changes over time.
http://libpower.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-time-is-it.html
Timebridge March 22, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Tools.1 comment so far
By way of Lucy Gray (with one of the best education monikers of elemenous - lmno’s) here is a tool that provides easy access to calender sharing that combines with your current status to provide a sort of time-based twitter-ish service. For those of you that are organized around a schedule, this might be very handy.
Wikipedia How To March 21, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Tools.add a comment
MediaShift has a great post on steps to being a model Wikipedian. While some items are specific to only Wikipedia “6. Get Familiar with the Talk Pages.” other items apply to almost any collaborative or social-centric site. I really like “5. Be Bold: Don’t Get Discouraged.” and “4. Assume Good Faith.” These suggestions sort of remind me of the idea that we learned everything we needed in kindergarten.
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2008/03/demystifying_wikipediahow_to_b.html
Twitter Everywhere March 21, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Tools.Tags: T
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Noticed two different blog posts on Twitter this morning. Each provides a different look into why one twitters.
http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2008/03/more-twitter-ty.html
http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/archives/003307.html
Video conferencing March 20, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Tools.6 comments
Thanks to another Robert Scoble twitter, here is another new option for video conferencing called Orgoo. Very simple to set up a conference room, password protected, without even setting up an account. Very easy.
