I iz a media mogul!!!

At the end of the day yesterday, I suddenly realized that we now have three separate websites dedicated to tech communication and growth at MD. This vehicle, which allows me to yodel and you all to comment, has been joined this week by the new MDTech Wiki, which allows everyone in the tech think tank to develop their own ideas in a much more democratic fashion, and the MDTech20 blog, which logs the topics and key information from the weekly Tech20 workshops. In this list I purposely omit the MDTech site in the ning social community which never caught on…and that’s OK.

Added to these platforms, we’re using other production and productivity tools from the net. I upload my PowerPoint shows to slideshare.com an then embed them in one of these blogs. The videos of the Tech20 workshops are uploaded to TeacherTube.com and then linked into WordPress. I’ve had fun with Xtranormal.com as an attention-grabbing communication tool. Finally, I’m considering after the new year to start putting out a weekly podcast.

At this week’s meeting of the MDTTT, I was so excited by the creativity and enthusiasm in the room. I know we are facing immense growth and with that immense challenges ahead, but I also know that Mater Dei will continue to be a leader in the new frontiers of educational technology and education…which in many ways is the same thing.
Blessed Christmas to you all with gratitude and respect.

Tech 20 Session 2

There’s More to a Wiki than Wikipedia

December 11, 2008

Blogs and Wikis are two of the maintypes of websites.  Each has it’s own particular characteristics and strengths.  In this session we define and examine the wiki form.

PowerPoint

[slideshare id=841556&doc=wiki-1229112510013889-1&w=425]

Video 

Links for this workshop can be found at www.delicious.com/gdhuyvetter/wiki

 

Tech 20 Session 1

RSS and News Aggregators: Make Your Browser Work for You

December 4, 2008

It is so hard to keep up with all the information that is available on the Internet.  Using an RSS feed aggregator can help to gather information in one place and present it in an easily digestible form.

[slideshare id=841433&doc=rss-and-news-aggregators-1229108231836203-1&w=425]

Links for this workshop can be found at www.delicious.com/gdhuyvetter/rss

A Famine of Plenty

This morning I was looking at one of our textbooks with another teacher.  She pointed out to me some of the on-line resources available to students that are noted in the book.  There is a website including printable flashcards, study guides, and links to related material.  I was very impressed with this, as I’m sure was the department that selected it.

Thinking further, though, I couldn’t help but wonder, “What, if anything, of this fabulous guide will ever be used?”  This is not a criticism of the textbook or of its selection because both appear to be excellent, but sometimes I worry about dying of thirst in an ocean of resources.

I think we all feel this.  too many resources is no more helpful than too few, and it is easier to do nothing when we can’t do everything.  Like no time since the advent of the printing press has so much of the sum of human knowledge been readily available to us…so why do I feel dumber all the time?

This is not an answer post.  I know that the answer is not to avoid new resources and new technologies, but it seems impossible to wrap one’s mind (much less the minds of all of the students) around every latest technique and resource.  I spend a portion of my week both at school and at home reading about new tech resources for school and for life.  I could easily spend all my time doing this, and that would be just reading about them, not trying them out.

So I suppose this is one with which I, and all of you, will need to struggle.  I guess that recognizing the problem is the best we can do at the moment.

“Tech 20”

I’m planning a new series of Technology education sessions. Here is a brief interview I did about the new “Tech 20”

[clearspring_widget title=”xtranormal” wid=”48b6e98bfb401d7a” pid=”49133c92183c3429″ width=”288″ height=”222″ domain=”widgets.clearspring.com”]

I had an Idea…

Continuing to think about practical applications for the technology we use, I was thinking about Skype the other day.  For any who don’t know, Skype is an Internet phone service providing computer to computer calling for free (and other phone services for cost).  One of the very nice features of Skype is the ability to send video as well as text.  This past summer, while my wife was away, she and I would converse with each other via Skype and webcams.  

All of the new netbooks (it appears that this is becoming the settled term for Eee PC’s etc.) have a built-in web camera, so this type of contact is possible with no extra software and no extra cost.  Since we have outfitted room 503 with Eee PC’s, I was wondering how this could be used.  

One application that I thought about was real-time access to outside resources.  A teacher could set up a call or interview with another teacher across the country or across the world.  The call could take place over Skype, and students could watch the speaker projected on the screen while asking questions.

Another thought I had was to mount a better video camera in the room and alloing a student who is ill to call in to a classroom Skype account and have audio visual access to the class.  Depending on how elaborate the setup is, this person could participate as well as watch.

I guess I’m talking about dabbling with distance learning.  We have all the tools to do this now.  The only thing missing is working out the logistics.

Does anyone else have ideas for use of cameras in the classroom or any other transformative program?

Shiny New Chrome

I follow several technology sites which help me to keep up with the latest developments in hardware and software.  Much of it is just noise, but once in a while I see something that seems to be important both in what it does and what it means in the world of tech development.

This week Google released the first significant new browser in some time.  The new browser called CHROME is currently only available for Windows, though versions for Mac and Linux are expected soon.  I downloaded the beta release and installed it on several machines including my office computer, my home computer and a few of the Eee PCs.

In a few words…I LOVE it.  It’s simple, and fast Fast FAST.  It seems very compatible with most pages and web applications (Acceditation Plus won’t load on it…which probably speaks in its favor).  It works with a tab design similar to Firefox, but the tabs run as independent programs, so if a web page or app. won’t load or crashes, you can close that tab and the others continue running.

I don’t want to take too much time describing and analyzing Chrome, so I’m including two links.

This first link is to a short (5 minute) video demonstrating the key features of the program:

http://demogirl.com/2008/09/02/screencast-tour-of-google-chrome/

This second link will take you to the Chrome download site:

http://www.google.com/chrome/

Why is this important?  The fact that Google is releasing its own browser emphasizes its committment to “cloud computing.”  In this model, the browser takes the place of the operating system, and applications run on web pages rather than on local machines.  This further supports the development of new UMPC’s (or “netbooks” as they seem to be called now).  

Give Chrome a try.

Learning to Fly

As we enter this new year, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Wright brothers’ first flight in 1903.  Most of us have seen pictures and primative video of this and other early flights.  This first flight took all of 12 seconds and covered 120 feet.  By all standards of what we know is possible, this flight was an embarrassment.

However, we don’t look at this (or any other new frontier event) this way.  We see these brothers as willing to try something new and willing to fail repeatedly before a limited success.  Without those who try and fail, no one succeeds.

I think it is the same way with educational technology.  This is a transitional period in the history of education.  The brave souls who try new programs and techniques often fail, and often count succcesses by the inch, rather than by the mile.  This is very hard for educators.  We don’t like to fail or to be less than good, particularly in front of the stduents.

No one questions the value of the Wright brothers’ “pathetic” achievement.  Most of the field of aeronautics today can trace itself to this event. And (and this is probably the most important and) people the field grew as much through analysis of the mistakes made as copying what was done.

So perhaps we are the “mistake makers” who will pave the way for our students to soar.  Attempts in this new field are valuable when they succeed and when they define the boundaries of what won’t work.  Someday our students will say, “I remember how badly he did that…it would be so much better to do it this way.”

To use one other analogy, in Medieval times (not the restaurant), those who began building a cathedral knew that they, their children, and grandchildren would be dead before the edifice was completed.  In the same way we have to keep working on this new building, secure in the knowledge that we may not see it, but we will have been a part of it.

Summer Daze

Hey everyone, it’s finally summer, time to relax a bit and let our minds run free.  So that’s the assignment.

If you could get any type of technology into a classroom, how would it change your teaching?  School’s out, so we don’t need to worry right now about our fears.  Fear is the easiest response when it comes to technology; talk instead about your dreams.

I’ll probably write more blogposts (I’m expecting three new UMPCs in the next few weeks and I’ll talk about each), but feel free to take this one over.

Thanks for reading, and thanks even more for writing!

Take care.

A Modest Proposal

No, unlike Swift I’m not going to suggest eating children…I have a much more radical idea.

One of the “givens” in the realm of computer use is that every computer on campus should have (and every employee and student should use) the Microsoft Office Suite. I must admit that I have been one of the major proponents of this view, and I used the uniformity of Office as a benchmark of our development as a technology-rich environment.

Fifteen years ago there was good reason for this. Mater Dei and other organizations were working to bring uniformity to the productivity applications that were created by several different companies. Many of you remember WordPerfect WordStar and others. They had very different user interfaces, and they did not speak to each other well. In this Tower of Babel, MS Office stood as the gold standard. The applications were well designed, rich in features, and they worked well with the Windows OS. They also were the first office applications that bridged the PC Mac gap. The general perception was that MS applications prepared one for the workplace and were the mark of a “professional” organization. It was technological Darwinism…and the dinosaurs all disappeared (strangely enough WordPerfect still exists in the Lotus Suite…though the next person I find who uses this will be the first).

Move forward 15 years. We have taught an entire generation to use Word, PowerPoint, and (for some) Excel (Access remains a mystery for most). The brand has become generic, like Kleenex or ipod. I don’t even ask at interviews whether candidates know how to use these programs because I assume that they do. It’s a Microsoft Office world, and we live in it.

The problem is the Office is not only a tool, but also a product. Years ago Microsoft recognized that the company could not grow if consumers and businesses bought one copy of Office and used it for the rest of the life of a particular machine. Therefore there is a constant need to innovate and release new versions. Many of these innovations have been great. However, after a certain point the program began to include features for features’ sake. I don’t really use any more of Word 2002 than I used in Word ’98, and (editorial comment to follow) Word 2007 is a bloated mess that is much less instinctive and much harder to use than any earlier product (not to mention the new .docx extensions!).

Coupled with this is my discomfort with our position as “inculcators” of the Microsoft message. Participating in the technology program of the school is a four-year commercial for the inevitability of their use of Office. We don’t do this with any other aspect of student life. If we use Dell computers, we don’t conceal that other brands exist. If we only offer Coke in our vending machines, we don’t deny the existence of Pepsi. Except for a few Mac users who use the excellent Mac Office Suite, very few if any students could name an alternative to MS Office.

But there are alternatives. Google offers a document program existing only online. Users don’t have to download any software to use this suite, and though it is not as robust as the MS product, it has some great collaboration options. There are many other online document editors, and any student or adult with Office familiarity can jump right in and get started.

Outside of these “cloud computing” options, there is a very solid desktop product. Openoffice.org offers a free, downloadable office suite with 6 applications:

  1. Word Processor
  2. Spreadsheet
  3. Presentation Editor
  4. DataBase
  5. Drawing Editor
  6. Mathematical Calculation Editor

The program is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, and though it is a hefty download (don’t try to download it on a dialup connection), it is much smaller than MS Office and runs faster (particularly on less powered systems).

Opening the different programs in the suite, there is immediate recognition of the general layout and commands of each. Though a few of the commands are on different menus, it is easy to edit and produce complex documents without any special training. All of the more advanced editing features are available. Best of all, it opens MS Office documents and saves documents in MS Office format for easy carryover to other machines (it doesn’t currently open the .docx format from Word 2007, but word 2002 doesn’t either).

I’ve been using Open Office on the Eee pc for about 5 months now. A few weeks ago I loaded it on to my regular desktop machine and I’ve started to use it there as well. With a few exceptions, I have found the experience to be seamless.

So I guess the radical suggestion for consideration is whether schools should consider teaching students using free open source software assuming that they can make the jump to MS Office when (and if) they need it.

We could also talk about operating systems…but that’s another entry.