EdTech Gold Rush

Create Your Own Student-Friendly Search Engine with Google

2008-11-17T19:52:00.000-08:00

By Alix E. Peshette

The web is an expansive collection of the good, the bad and the ugly. Wouldn’t it be great if our students could search online in a safe environment? What if teachers could focus student searches towards specific resources? Sounds complicated and full of java scripts and html?

Welcome to the happy collision of Web 2.0 tools and Google! The Google Custom Search Engine option turns out to be surprisingly easy to set up to search only selected web sites.

Start by finding the sites you want your students to visit. Save or bookmark the URL addresses. Next get a Gmail account if you don’t have one – go to Google.com and click Gmail. Once you have an account – sign in.

Click More at the top of the Google page and then click “even more” to go to the list of Google Products. Click on Custom Search to start the process which takes you to a page where you click the big blue Create a Custom Search Engine button.

Name the search engine and in the next field, put in a short description. Jump down to the keyword field to add words that will direct the search. My example is based on finding copyright free music loops.

What do you want to search? Click the radio button for “Only the sites I select. Select some sites.

Bring up that list of URL addresses you saved and copy them into this field, one address per line. Check the terms box and click next.

On the next page, click the option for “Host the results on a Google page.” Yes, there will some Google advertising, but it will be minimal. While you are on this page, copy and paste the code into a word document for future use.

An email will be generated and sent to your Gmail account with the URL and instructions on how to access the custom search engine. Click and go visit your new custom search engine.

Share the URL address with your students and watch as the resources they mine are ones that you know are safe.

Visit this link to try out my copyright-free music loops search engine.

Cool Tools for School

2008-10-02T08:09:00.000-07:00

Cross-posted from The Impetuous Geek

Everyone likes to find a terrific Web 2.0 tool or piece of free software that makes our digital lives easier. Often these little gems aren’t earth-shaking discoveries – they just make it easier to do things we need to do.

Avoid Sppelling Erors
Some people are naturally good at spelling. Those of us who aren’t rely heavily on spell checkers. Finding a free online spell checker to fill in those web page fields is worth a lot. This is particularly useful if one comments on blogs or fills in fields with more than just name, address and email.

ieSpell
http://www.iespell.com/
ieSpell is a little freeware PC add-on for Internet Explorer

SpellBound 0.7.3 – SpellBound is an Open Source Spellchecker for Firefox and the Mozilla Suite
http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/

URL Shorteners
Ever receive an email containing a long hyperlink that has been broken up line-by-line so it can’t be clicked? This is where URL shorteners are life (and sanity) savers.

http://www.metmuseum.org/store/st_beautyShop_Page.asp/familyID/%7B39022E85-80DE-11D3-9367-00902786BF44%7D/FromPage/catPrints/catID/%7B92FB6113-4FE9-11D4-9385-00902786BF44%7D/familyNo//callFromRelViewer//SpecialPermFlag//FromSearch//tablename/GeneralStorePF

The qualities of a really great shortener are:

Can create shorter URL’s by clicking a browser button instead of going to a site to insert the long URL to make a shorter URL.

The new URL can be customized to reflect the web site content.

The short URL can be previewed by users to see the actual web page address – good for avoiding junk sites.

The new URL doesn’t expire.

One of the first and most enduring URL shorteners is tinyURL. It’s been a favorite despite a few drawbacks. There is no customization of the URL and the resulting link is in tiny font – like the name tinyURL. This play on the name presents the shortened URL in Verdana bold 7.5 pt. This means one has to enlarge the font size and remove the bolding for most uses.

Another favorite URL shortener is Shrink This. The new shortened URL can be previewed and is presented in Ariel which is the web page font of choice due to its readability.

Getting Graphic
Sometimes there is a need to do more to an image than rotate and crop it. For a surprisingly powerful free graphics program try Paint.net. It handles layers which is the function that divides easy, free, but limited graphics programs from more powerful programs such as Photo Shop, Corel Paint Shop pro.

PDF on the Fly
Need to share a document that will open on any computer? Make it into a PDF with Primo PDF. This program won’t ever rival Adobe Acrobat, but it gets the job done.

Cards – Quick!
There are times in the classroom when a teacher needs a birthday card in the next five minutes. This is a perfect time to use Avery DesignPro free software. This is the same Avery that sells the labels and templates for every need under the sun. The software has a great library of templates that make it quick to create something that can be printed on Avery products. If one thinks beyond the label concept, this software can produce classroom materials such as flash cards, table tents, and flyers that can be printed on cardstock, drawing paper and colored or plain paper.

Survey the Masses
Sometimes one needs to poll people to get information for decision-making. Now a good online survey tool is available for free - SurveyMonkey. The basic free version of SurveyMonkey allows up to ten questions that can be sent to 100 people. The paid version is quite reasonable and much more powerful.

Music on Demand
Internet radio is a great way to get music into a classroom without bringing personal music from home. Pandora Radio is easy to customize to play favorite music genres. Consider the power of music to subtly change the mood in the classroom – such as slow calm music for testing or reading activities. An inexpensive pair of external speakers can really help project the sound around the room. Look for speakers that use a power adaptor rather than batteries since batteries often are dead just when you need the device to work. Do check to see if internet radio is being blocked by the network filter.

So, these are a few of my favorite things – to turn a phrase and violate a song copyright. If you have some favorite cool tools, please leave a comment.

Multimedia and Music: Remix, Reuse

2008-09-06T18:33:00.000-07:00

By Alix Peshette

Cross-posted from The Impetuous Geek

Technology has expanded many of the traditional ideas of how students can show evidence of learning. So, it’s no surprise that many students elect to create multimedia presentations. Images, video, narration and sound tracks are combined to produce an engaging product. Naturally enough, students often share these creations online.

Stop the music! The minute the multimedia leaves the classroom and is published on the web, ownership and copyright issues arise. Where did those images, video clips and sound tracks come from?Are they copyrighted?

What about Copyright?
Take sound tracks; inevitably, students want to incorporate music clips from their favorite artists into their projects. While a lot of music is now available under Creative Commons license, often what’s hot is not. So, how can students find music they like and use it legally?

To borrow from the Creative Commons tag line, “share, remix, reuse.” Remixing has become a huge movement in creating online content.Social networking has spawned sites where music loops are shared, remixed and shared again. The Center for Social Media makes the case for remix and reuse of copyright-protected media in their publication “Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video.”

“Mashups, remixes, subs, and online parodies are new and refreshing online phenomena, but they partake of an ancient tradition: the recycling of old culture to make new. In spite of our romantic cliches about the anguished lone creator, the entire history of cultural production from Aeschylus through Shakespeare to Clueless has shown that all creators stand, as Isaac Newton (and so many others) put it, “on the shoulders of giants.”

Remixing music is often based on music loops – audio tracks that are composed to allow seamless looping or repeating. Music loops can provide ambient music, rousing introductions or dramatic finales to podcasts, videos and other multimedia presentations.

Loops in the Classroom
Teachers and students can find great, innovative collections of loops on many remix sites. Obviously one wants to avoid vocal loops that may contain inappropriate words and phrases. Some sites cater solely to non-vocal loops, such as the Freesound Project; a database of sounds, not songs, licensed for use under Creative Commons. Loops are free to be remixed and reused with an attribution to the artist. The Freesound project makes this easy by automatically compiling a citation list as one downloads various loops.

For younger students, loops can be used in their original form in multimedia projects. Older students are more than ready to learn how to edit sounds and combine tracks to compose new creations using a variety of free software such as Audacity, Garage Band and even online editing sites such as Jamglue. Be aware that most online sites have some mature content available.

So, explore some of the sites below to hear copyright-free resources that are available and waiting for a twist of remix and reuse.

Freesound
Soundsnap
Free-Loops
Looperman
Glooped
iBeat
Samplenet
CCmixer

Being There - Panoramic Virtual Fieldtrips

2008-08-20T19:16:00.000-07:00

By Alix Peshette

Cross-posted from The Impetuous Geek

Live, real-time field trips involve all the senses. We walk, stand and turn around to view our surroundings. We move closer to inspect an object or look to see a distant view. The experience is immersive and that’s what makes it memorable.

The opportunities for field trips are often limited by funding, transportation issues and administrative paperwork. As a former 7th grade world history teacher, field trips were out of the question. A lot of time was spent trying to bring history alive through images of the landscapes, monuments and architecture we were studying. Textbook images and even stunning photographs projected on the large screen didn’t give the sense of being there. The available virtual field trips were more like surfing web sites. However, that was then and technology has changed everything.

Welcome to the world of possibilities with panoramic photography! The word panorama is a photographic term with a long history. The Library of Congress – American Memory has an extensive collection of historic panoramic photographs. The single wide-lens photograph evolved into individual images that were stitched together visually.

New technologies have created online cubic immersive panoramas that let the viewer navigate in a 360 degree circle, viewing everything that is visible from one spot. These virtual reality images are viewed with QuickTime Player, Flash Player, or Shockwave. A good cubic panorama can almost take your breath away with the sense of being there - the technology is that amazing.

New to panoramas? How about a trip to the top of Mount St. Helens volcano? Panoramas tend to load slowly depending on bandwidth so wait until the image is fully downloaded before navigating in the image.

Not surprisingly, many panoramas are hosted by commercial web sites such as travel agencies and hotels. What better way to give potential tourists a glimpse of ancient and exotic locations? While commercial panorama sites abound, teachers need to be alert for adult-themed images.

Connecting with the Curriculum
Finding panoramas to support the curriculum requires some sleuthing in unexpected locations. Government and non-profit sites such as the UNESCO World Heritage Tour and the National Park Service are good places to look in addition to the commercial sites. Once you start finding these gems, it’s easy to make connections to archeology, art, astronomy, cartography, English language arts, foreign languages, geography, geology, mathematics, science and social studies.

Keywords and phrases that unearth panoramas on the web include: 360 degree view; panoramic; cubic panoramas; pano; immersive tours; virtual tours; virtual field trips and QTVR (QuickTime Virtual Reality).

Viewing and Navigating Panoramas
Once these images are projected with a SmartBoard, LCD or DPL projector, there is a slight learning curve in how to navigate inside the image. A mouse-click-and-drag on the image will move the view to left or right, up or down. Hold down the Shift key to zoom in and use the Control key to zoom out.

Some panoramas are embedded in viewers that limit the overall size. Others have full-screen options for viewing which really puts you in the picture. Most updated web browsers also have a full-screen toggle option that opens images to fill the screen.

Being Legal
Creating links to panorama site is the easiest way to show these images in the classroom if the network has sufficient bandwidth. In the case of limited bandwidth, some panoramas can be downloaded for play on a local computer. RealPlayer 11 Gold Free Edition does a good job of downloading most online media.

Be sure to read the terms of use on each site before downloading panoramas. Government site media is usually in the public domain and is free to use, but many of the panoramas on those sites were produced by private companies and are covered by copyright laws. Check out these resources for more information.

PBS Teachers – Copyright and Fair use

Teachers First – Copyright and Fair Use

International Panoramas

UNESCO World Heritage Tour
Need to register (free) to use controls

360 Days, Everyday Life Panoramas – 360 Degrees Scrapbook

Traditions of the Sun – Exploring Ancient Observatories

The New 7 Wonders of the World

Nova – Antarctica – Mountain of Ice

Stonehenge at Dawn – British Tours

The World Wide Panorama – Geography Computing Facility at the University of California
Many images of the contemporary world and events

Cyark – 3D Cultural Heritage Sites
Register (free) to access the K-12 lesson plans and other resources

Panoramas of World War II Monuments 1945-2007

Virtually the World
14,000 Virtual Tours across over 110 cities and countries

United States Panoramas

Cliff Palace Ruins

VR Movies of California Missions

Mount St. Helens

National Parks of the American Southwest - Photographs and panoramas

National Park Service - Panoramas of National Parks

Virtual Tour of Big Bend National Park

The Art of Geography – Virtual Parks
Commercial site with 121 full-screen panoramas of national parks

Related Resources

Pano Guide – Panoramic photography explained

Magic Lantern Slides – The Berkeley Geography Collection - Historic images of California

San Francisco in Ruins -The 1906 Aerial Photographs of George R. Lawrence

Integrating Google Earth Imagery and Cubic QTVR Panoramas into Web-Based Virtual Field Experiences

Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers

2008-07-27T14:52:00.000-07:00

By Alix E. Peshette

It’s been ages since I’ve posted a new blog entry and I feel pretty guilty about that. The machinations of the California school district budget woes have a way of holding everyone in thrall. It’s a crazy system that hands out mass lay-off and re-assignment notices in March and then blithely re-hires staff months later with the promise of going through the entire process again next year. Just one of many reasons why so many teachers leave the profession after a few years!

So here in the lazy days of summer one has more leisure time to read blogs, explore emerging Web 2.0 tools and other techie delights. Here are a few that have popped up lately.

In the Zone
California Department of Education and the California K-12 High Speed Network have stepped up to the challenge of providing safe Web 2.0 tools for educators and students with the creation of edZone. EdZone offers a suite of free tools including blogs and file sharing for video, podcasts, images and documents. Social networking, wikis, messaging, Moodle and videoconference scheduling are a few of the new tools that will appear in September. This evolving community even has a helpful blog to answer questions and offer solutions.

Edzone addresses the concerns for appropriate content and access by limiting participation to California K12 educators and their students. Teachers can register for free accounts, which are verified by a K12 school or district email address. This trusted community is tasked with maintaining a safe environment by flagging inappropriate content, which is removed and reviewed. Other security features include the ability to create groups, invite members and decide what content can be viewed. Viewing options include only you, an edZone group, the K12HSN trusted community or the public. These safeguards make a good case for unblocking this site if one needs to convince administrators and technology people.

A Gaggle of Google Tools
Check out the ever-expanding list of Google tools! Thanks to Google Certified Teacher Colette Cassinelli for posting a link to an article titled “57 Useful Google Tools You’ve Never Heard Of.” Some of the tools have been around for a while, but there are several that are new and offer great possibilities. The real standout on the list is Google Sites. It seems to be the next generation after Google Page Creator, which has almost vanished from sight.

Google Sites
It’s a web page, it’s a wiki, it’s anything you want it to be! As a quick web presence and collaboration platform, Google Sites rocks! A really nice feature of this free tool is that there are three levels of permissions. One can be the owner and give “collaboration rights” to chosen people and viewer rights to the rest of the world or the whole thing can be private. Some wikis have the all or nothing approach to permissions unless you purchase a paid subscription.

Summer is the time for playful experimentation with new Web 2.0 tools. Let me know what Web 2.0 tech goodies you have been testing for use next school year.

The Power of Digital Storytelling

2008-04-13T19:03:00.000-07:00

By Alix E. Peshette

I’ve been absent from blogging lately as I’ve been consumed with writing an Enhancing Education through Technology grant. The proposal is to use digital storytelling with 4th–6th grade Special Education students and teachers as an English Language Arts strategy for achievement.

This latest grant has come down from the California Department of Education packaged as a research project to provide the state and the federal government with proof that technology increases the academic achievement of students. It seems that the connection between spending bucks on technology and seeing increased student achievement on standardized tests is unclear.

I’m the first to confess that I am not a numbers-oriented sort of technologist. I come to my understanding of the role of technology in the classroom by observation. My on-going observation is that there is a chasm between what kids are doing with technology in their personal lives and what education allows them to do with technology in the classroom.

Everything I read or see about 21st century learners speaks about their engagement through digital learning. What goes on in most classrooms are teaching styles that rely on textbooks, lectures and multiple choice tests.

A blinding flash of the obvious is that most school board members and district-level administrators have not been in the classroom (as students or teachers) since the advent of the Internet. They can talk about the importance of technology, but deep down they just don’t get it because they haven't experienced it first hand. They haven’t seen the engagement that comes from letting our students work in a modality that is second nature to them.

During the course of last week, I met with a 4th grade class in the computer lab to help them create digital stories about the California missions. Any parent or student who has lived through 4th grade in California knows that the mission project is legendary for replicas of missions made with sugar cubes, cardboard, modeling clay and bamboo skewers.

The class arrived at the computer lab holding their worksheets with answers from the textbook. I arrived with a flash drive containing mission images, maps, sailing ships and period music files. This was transferred to the shared drive in the lab. We opened up Photo Story 3 and learned how to import images and sequence them on the story line. Next class time, students learned how to create pan or zoom motion on the still images. Third meeting on Friday, I taught them how to record narration for their story, based on their answers from the worksheet.

In the space of five minutes, as each 4th grader recorded their voice and then listened to it, magic happened. The excitement rose, smiles were wide and friends were listening to each other’s recordings. All this with three-dollar microphones and free software!

I’m really excited about the grant proposal to use digital storytelling with Special Education students and teachers. It provides tools for students who won’t be writing 500 word essays to show what they know through narration, images, video and music. We used to call this constructivist learning and authentic assessment. Too bad those are dirty words in the land of NCLB and standardized testing.

If you are interested in some resources around digital storytelling and the role of technology in the classroom, take a look at the links below.

Creating Lifelong Learners – Digital Storytelling Carnival #3

Mapping Our Food

The Journalists’ Toolkit: What you need to know to make better video

We Tell Stories: 21 Steps

Stories for Change: Story Writing Prompts

Private Art – A Collection of WWII Letters to and from the Home Front

Marking Time – Back to the Future on Web 2.0

Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling

DigiTales – The Art of Telling Digital Stories

Digital Storytelling – List of links and resources

The Savvy Teacher’s Digital Toolbox:iGoogle Homepage

2008-03-16T17:30:00.000-07:00

By Alix E. Peshette

Many teachers search the web for online resources, images, dictionaries, translation help, news of the day, interactive activities and blogs of interest. Those sites are often bookmarked and usually forgotten in the hodge-podge of the web browser Favorites list.

A lot of teachers spend the day with the web browser homepage showing on the computer monitor. Some teachers are fortunate enough to have that computer hooked up to an LCD projector for whole class activities. Wouldn’t it be great to have those bookmarked resources readily available to use with students?

How about transforming that browser homepage into a digital file cabinet of resources right at your fingertips? Do it with iGoogle homepage!

Use iGoogle as a digital desktop

Gather great educational Gadgets for your presentations

Customize content by grade level, subject area, season

Quickly access websites by using Google Bookmarks

Add any blog that has an RSS feed into iGoogle

Provide easy access to text, photographs, audio, video

Access your iGoogle homepage in any computer by signing in with your Gmail account and password

Let’s get started!

Go online to Google.com, set up a Gmail account and sign into Google. com

Go back to the Google search page and click on the iGoogle link in the upper right corner of the screen

Add a Tab

Click Add a Tab and create a tab for each subject you teach

Uncheck the I feel lucky feature so that you can choose what you want

When all the tabs are created, click on Home, then click on Add stuff

Google Gadgets

Think of Google Gadgets as teasers for the full website content

Once Google Gadgets opens, use the search feature to find content

Find something you want and just click Add it now

Homepage

Add a To Do list and use it to post assignments and due dates

Grab Google Bookmarks and use it to bookmark great websites

Find some great images to bring calm and peace to the start of the school day

Language Arts

How about “Word of the Day”, “Phrase of the Week” or a dictionary?

Look for famous or inspirational quotes to use as writing prompts

Subscribe to National Public Radio’s “This I Believe” series for thought-provoking essays by regular people

Find a great online English Grammar site with an RSS feed, then subscribe

Try out Librivox’s New Releases of Audio Books

Science

Check out Discovery Network New Top Stories

Try Science @ NASA for interesting explorations and ideas

Ditto for NASA TV – Live Video

Nature is always interesting

Scientific American has all the latest science news and topics

Discuss the Einstein Quote of the Day

View weather Maps

Enjoy the NASA Image of the Day

Math

Challenge your students with the NumberCruncher Game

Grab the Math Dictionary for those hard-to-explain math terms

Try Math in a Minute to sharpen core math skills in two minute workouts

Social Studies

Dig through Discovery News for the latest archeology find

This Day in History – yes, there was history before our students were born!

Visit Geography Zone’s Geography Challenge and have the class put the world together a country at a time

Have Encyclopedia Britannica at your fingertips for research

Check out the World Heritage of the Day Site and discuss the site

Art

Use Famous Optical Illusions as an eye-opener first thing in class

Check out the Artist a day: Featured Artist but preview it first for appropriate content

Visit Art Slide Show of the Day -again preview first

Look at the US Geological Survey Earth as Art site for new views of the earth

Take a digital fieldtrip to the Latest Exhibitions from MOMA in video- again- preview first

ELL and Foreign Language

Learn the Spanish Word a Day

Listen to the Audio Word of the Day

Check out the Dictionary Search with the Word of the Day in flashcards

Do a virtual tour of Paris with the Eiffel Tower Web Cam

Using iGoogle Homepage
Think about installing iGoogle Homepage on your home computer and school computer. A quick glance through all the tabs each day can help you decide what content to use with your students that day.

Personal Staff Development
Another great use for iGoogle is as a personal staff development center. Subscribe to educational or technology-related blogs and read them when you have a few minutes of quiet.

iGoogle for Students
Naturally, one wants to figure out a way to have students use iGoogle to collect and read educational content. I found these great ideas with a little searching on the web.

Check out Michele’s CIT blog for how her students are using iGoogle for reading strategies and silent reading.

Read about a school-wide movement where students set up iGoogle Homepages which the teachers subscribe to using RSS.

Visit this educator’s SlideShare presentation to see how he uses iGoogle with his students as they produce podcasts!

Do you use iGoogle in the classroom? If so, please share your ideas!

Google Earth Goodies! CUE 2008

2008-03-07T16:18:00.000-08:00

Hi,
Many thanks for attending my presentation on Google Earth Goodies at the CUE 2008 Conference! Here's the link to the PowerPoint presentation with all the links to resources that I showed in the presentation.

-Alix

The Savvy Teacher’s Digital Tool Box: Screen Capture Programs

2008-02-19T18:45:00.000-08:00

By Alix E. Peshette

Many educators create their own instructional materials. The reasons can range from a textbook that is above the reading level of English Language Learners and Special Education students to instructional materials that are so out of date that they are irrelevant. In California, the textbook adoption cycle is every seven years per subject area. A lot can change in seven years!

The web is a tremendous resource for teachers. One can pluck articles from blogs, grab photographs from websites, download video and harvest clip art from endless sources. Creating instructional materials from online resources becomes a lot easier when there are good screen capture programs in the digital toolbox. While there is a place for print media in the curriculum, use of video and imagery is becoming more common in the classroom. A screen capture program needs to address a variety of media.

Let’s start at the low-tech and Freeware end and work up to the Web 2.0 tools.

OK, for strictly print media capture there is always the Print Screen key on the keyboard. Click it and capture a screen shot of – well, the entire screen. Usually that’s more than is needed, so editing is the next step. For a graphic editing program with some nice features try (Freeware) PhotoFiltre 6. It’s a decent little program with lots of special effects and masks. It only lacks the ability to do layers, which the licensed version PhotoFiltre Studio will do. (PC only)

A past favorite of mine is the screen capture program PrintKey 2000. It’s freeware (PC only) and will capture regions, swap colors, convert to grayscale or black and white, change picture size and send to the printer. It’s a very small program that sits in the system tray and is activated by clicking the Print Screen key. Click here to download a .pdf tutorial on PrintKey 2000.

Moving up the technology food chain brings us to CamStudio. This program can record all screen and audio activity, create AVI files and convert them to SWF Streaming Flash videos. It is low-tech enough to be very user friendly, yet gets the job done. It is free and is licensed under the GNU General Public License criteria.

Several steps up in sophistication is SnagIt. It can capture regions, scrolling window screens, menus and even create video shots of screen actions for tutorials. TechSmith sells it for $39.95, but has an educator discount of $29.95. Among the many features are the free upgrades and the free SnagIt accessories and tools. My favorite is the stamps, which includes cursors, arrows, numbers, symbols and clip art in color or black and white and in several sizes. Select a stamp, left-click, place it on the screen capture and drag it into place.

In the Web 2.0 arena, Jing Project is getting a lot of notice. Made by TechSmith, Jing is sort of a hybrid of software and content that is hosted online. It runs on both PC and Mac. Jing developers explain it as:

Screencast.com

screenshots

screencasts

The Jing capture icon hangs off the edges of an active window. Be sure to set up the file destination and format in advance by clicking on the “More” icon to get to the settings.

To capture, click the capture icon, then left-click twice to define the area. Select the image or video icons. Click the image icon to bring up a work area with arrow, highlighter, frame, text and color tools. Click the video icon and Jing starts up a video recording area, ready to record the screen and audio. Click the Share icon to upload to Screencast.com. Click File to save locally.

Having presentations hosted online provides a great way for people to share their resources from any computer in the world. The captured content can also be downloaded to a local computer. One downside right now is that video capture is saved as .swf files. This is problematic for educators who may want to edit the files. However, the Jing development team is very open to conversations with users about the features.

Ript is another new program and offers a whimsical interpretation of the “screen capture” concept.

“Part scrapbook, part “to-do” list (or to-buy list), Ript mimics the actions of ripping, piling and arranging scraps of information. If you can see it on your computer, you can “rip” it. Simply drag and drop images and text from the internet or your computer and arrange them however you please — making it easy to compile, print and share your handiwork.”
Check out the Ript Help page to see how Ript works and what it can and can’t do.

Capturing with Ript involves left clicking or highlighting images, links, or text and dragging the item on top of the Ript icon. A ripping sound confirms that the item is now saved.

Left-double click on the Ript icon to open up a small graphics program called the table top, that mimics a blank page in a scrapbook. Move, rotate, resize and order the saved captures to compose the page. Use the text tool to add comments, titles and annotations.

Save the page as a .jpeg or Ript project file.

The finished page can also be printed or emailed. Ript is great fun and has some intriguing possibilities in the graphic arts area. It could be used for creating yearbook pages, greeting cards, signs and labels.

Some Last Thoughts on Screen Captures
Remember to check for copyright and terms of use, be aware of the intellectual property rights of others and cite those sources.

The Savvy Teacher’s Digital Toolbox:Downloading YouTube

2008-01-30T20:08:00.000-08:00

By Alix E. Peshette

There is nothing like getting ready to present at an upcoming conference to bring on a frenzy of online research, re-examination and synthesis of information. What tools and strategies might be included in a digital toolbox for both PC and Mac users trying to download online videos for classroom use?

First of all, downloading online video is like shooting at a moving target. As new video formats evolve, the strategies and tools have to change. I blogged about downloading and editing YouTube back in April 2007 and suggested strategies and software. Nine months later, I don’t use any of those tools because there are better and easier tools available now!

All the Right Codec
Ever have a media player whine about not having the correct codec to show a video? Not everyone is interested in learning all about codecs and which ones work with what. Go to Windows Essential Codec Pack , download the pack and be done with it. If you are on the Mac side, visit Afreecodec.com/mac.

Download and Show
Downloading YouTube and most other video formats is now really easy. If one just wants to download and show a video, then go with RealPlayer 11 Gold (PC and Mac.) As an online video appears, RealPlayer puts up a “download this video” button. Click and the video is downloaded into RealPlayer’s library.

Wait until the video finishes playing and up comes another opportunity to “save it to my library.” RealPlayer squirrels away the downloaded videos in My Documents, My Videos, RealPlayer Downloads.

One caveat on showing videos in the classroom using RealPlayer is the ubiquitous advertising that appears on the interface. Not only is it visually distracting, but also some of it is inappropriate for a classroom setting. How about a quietly effective and innocuous video player? GOM Player fills the bill - clean, simple and it plays almost every format. The simplicity of this player hides a wealth of extra features, such as screen capture and the price is right – free!

Convert, Edit and Show
Sometimes a video contains a gem of instructional information in the middle of it. This makes a good case for editing down to the essentials. However, YouTube videos and its ilk are .flv files. The free video editing software in most schools is either MovieMaker on the PC side or iMovie on the Mac side. Neither of these imports .flv files. MovieMaker likes .avi, .wmv, and .mpeg. iMovie likes .mov and .mpeg. Time to convert that video!

A casual online search for conversion freeware will bring up a ton of choices. The options seem to fall into two camps - way too many bells and whistles or way too many conversion limitations. A PC converter that is easy to use and does almost everything is “Any Video Converter” (free version.) It’s free and has a nice clean interface that is easy to follow. For Mac, some freeware possibilities are Isquint and TubeTV 0.9.2 . For $29 one can purchase Quicktime Pro and get a video downloader, converter, editor and player that works with Mac and PC.

Once the video is in an edit-friendly format, break out the video editor of choice – MovieMaker or iMovie. Both programs have a wealth of online resources, forums and helper websites. One of my favorite sites for help with both MovieMaker and Photo Story 3 is Papa John. This quirky site has the kind of nuts and bolts help that only comes from a die-hard MovieMaker devotee. Papa John is also one of the experts at the highly informative MovieMaker Forum site.

So, with the digital toolbox filled and strategies firmly in place, where does one find good videos besides YouTube and TeacherTube? Try Common Craft for great videos that explain Web 2.0 tools in plain English. NASA and National Science Foundation have wonderful multimedia galleries with video, audio and still images – all copyright free and in the public domain! For a lesson in the history of entertainment, visit the Thomas Edison Motion Pictures pages at the Library of Congress site. Tap into the mother lode of all things old and moving in the Internet Archive –do be sure to read the terms of use carefully for each motion picture. Now, go out there and download!

Delicious Dysfunctional Tagging

2008-01-06T15:16:00.000-08:00

By Alix E. Peshette

Anyone new to tagging bookmarks with Delicious seems to go through a predictable phase – dysfunctional tagging. Once I discovered Delicious and the concept of tagging, I must confess I went overboard. It wasn’t until a colleague kindly pointed out that my tags were out of control, that I took a good hard look at my methods. Basically I had no real methods.

This realization led to an online search for any information on tagging. Not surprisingly, many people had written on the topic and offered strategies for getting tags under control and functioning again in a useful, efficient manner. One reoccurring theme was to plan in advance. Since that train had already left the station, it was time for retro-remedial editing.

Get into your Delicious account and go to settings, Tags, rename tags to look at the tags. This alphabetical view makes it easy to spot tagging trends and disasters.

Variations on a Theme: Rename and Consolidate
How many ways can one tag a site about photography? Unfortunately, there are many.

Photography
photography
photos
Photo

Capitalizing and/or pluralizing a word make it a separate tag from its siblings. Decide which version has been used most and rename the other ones with the same name. This little trick will eliminate the extra tags and add their numbers to the dominant tag!

Kill off the Weak
There are two kinds of weak tags; those that are vague terms and those that haven’t been used more than three times. Look through the tags to find vague words. How descriptive are words such as: digital, live, and online? If in doubt about a word, go back to your main Delicious page, go to the links on the right column and click on the offending word to see where it leads. Check the other tags in some of those bookmarks and see if there are more descriptive tags present. Take a vow to use the strongest most descriptive tag from now on.

Kill off the tags that are followed by a number lower than three, unless this is a new topic of great interest to you. Go back to your main Delicious page, go to the lower right side of the page under Tag Options and click on Sort by freq. Scroll up slightly and start looking for trends in the three-and-under tags.

A prime example is my fondness for bookmarking file format converters. I noticed a sad trend of tagging those sites by file format names. This has led to a series of tags with small numbers.

The remedy for this trend is to stop using specific file format tags and just use the tag “converter.”

Check for Misspellings
There are some misspellings that are a slip of the fingers on the keyboard. Unfortunately, Delicious doesn’t supply a spell-checker and my favorite online field spell checker ieSpell doesn’t work with Delicious windows. Time to just eyeball the tag list and try to catch the goofs. Boomark was one that leapt off the list.

Tag Concepts
Some bookmarks beg for longer, more descriptive tags. How about Open Source software? Two tricks that seem to work are the run-on-word and the underscore. OpenSource, defined by the capitalization of the word source, is one solution. Open_Source with the underscore is another method. Neither is particularly elegant, but they do the job.

Creative Tagging
Try a little typographic creativity to move important tags to the top. This tip came from Lifehack.org. Use one of the symbol keys in front of the tag word. This moves it to the top of the unbundled tags list. I tried this out with * and it worked – although Lifehack suggested @ which is a more elegant looking symbol.

Bundle Up
For the eclectic taggers among us, bundling tags under subject headings is the way to go! As an educator and technology integration specialist, I look for resources across the curriculum and grade levels. I’ve started to adopt headings for every main subject area. This has a two-fold result: the tag list is now much shorter and searching by subject area should be more efficient.

A nice example of tag bundling can be found at http://del.icio.us/brasst In playing with Delicious, I clicked on Network and found that a few people had stumbled upon my account and liked what I tagged. I in turn, checked out what they were tagging, liked what Tami was tagging and added her to my network.

Resolutions for being Pro-Active
In a BFO, it occurred to me that I should be tagging resources by grade levels. So, I’m developing new tags such as: K12, 3rd-6th_grades, 7th-12th_grades. While these tags are functional, they’re not pretty.

Another resolution is to continue the resuscitation of my tag list. I’ve been pecking away at it off and on for weeks and I’m only into the M’s. As new trends emerge, I find myself going back through the list and making continual adjustments. Dang!

http://del.icio.us/artfully

The Savvy Teacher’s Digital Toolbox: Bookmarking with Delicious

2007-12-13T13:57:00.000-08:00

By Alix E. Peshette

Many educators spend a lot of time following up on listserv recommendations for great web resources. After these web sites are viewed and evaluated comes the job of saving them for later use by students. Standard operating procedure has been to create bookmarks in the favorite web browser.

The drawbacks of this procedure are:

Some website bookmark links are non-descriptive or even undecipherable. A good example is: http://www.nsf.gov/news/mmg/ Hard to remember that this is a link to the National Science Foundation’s Multimedia Gallery – full of terrific images and video.

Even if the bookmark has a recognizable name, it still remains a bookmark living on one computer. How does one easily share this resource? Welcome to the world of social bookmarking with Delicious.

Social bookmarking is a Web 2.0 concept of storing bookmarks online where the resources can be reached by anyone and from any computer. Delicious bookmarks make it easy to capture a web address, write a description of the web resource and assign key word tags!

Once an account has been made in Delicious, the user downloads two buttons for the browser toolbar. Click the Tag button and the bookmarking window opens.

Fill in the notes, select the tags or create new ones then click Save.

Click the Delicious Button on the browser toolbar to view the finished bookmark or edit it further.

Sharing Bookmarks with Students
Here's where the concept of social bookmarking really works in the classroom. Put a link to the Delicious account web address on the class, grade-level or school web page for easy student access. Teachers can update online resources for student consumption without having to update the link or unfreeze student computers. Now K-6 students can use their time looking at great resources, rather than surfing the web for resources.

If the Delicious account is getting blocked by the district network filter, put in a request to the IT department to unblock that account. Be sure that students can also get to the Delicious account and sites since they are the main audience for this entire exercise.

Check out this example of a third grade teacher's Delicious bookmarks. Notice how this teacher is bundling tags into categories and using a limited number of key words. This makes it easy for third-graders to select tags to locate online resources. Once one gets into using Delicious, the decisions about how to tag web sites become really important. Stay tuned for a blog on tagging.

The Savvy Teacher’s Digital Tool Kit: Join a Global Community

2007-12-10T12:34:00.000-08:00

By Alix E. Peshette

In this digital age, the staggering amount of electronic print and media has provided a gold mine of resources. Many teachers are mining the web for resources to support their curriculum and engage their students. The question is how to get what one needs efficiently and in a timely manner. The answer is: join a community of educators in your subject area or grade level and reap the benefits of collective consciousness!

This doesn’t require attending meetings or even leaving home – do it digitally. Join a listserv – a digital discussion group. A listserv enables a large group of people to communicate effectively with one another through email. Topics (called threads) are initiated and commented on by anyone in the group. People ask for help, point out great resources or suggest strategies for success. Since the group is bound together by common interests, members have something to learn and contribute. All these groups have great archives of past topics. Just a sampling of my favorites:

EDTECH Get the nuts and bolts of educational technology for all levels of education. EDTECH is one of the oldest and most useful listservs available. The membership includes many national and international leaders in educational technology along with regular teachers in the trenches.

NET-GOLD Not a discussion group per se, NET-GOLD is a steady source of great online resources.

MIDDLE-L MIDDLE-L has been the lifesaver of many a new teacher in middle school and junior high. This list is one of the most supportive and informative groups for teachers working with adolescents.

TeacherArtExchange Sponsored by the Getty Museum, TeacherArtExchange offers lesson ideas, resources and practical tips on teaching art. This group also provides opportunities for art teachers to make and exchange art.

For more information on finding a listserv that meets your needs, take a look at this Education World article. or read Email Discussions Lists.

Know Your Listserv Etiquette
Before you send that first message to the new listserv, lurk and learn. Like any community, each listserv has a set of expectations, rules, social norms and etiquette. While you read current posts, visit the recent archives and read through a thread or two. This will reveal who the players are and how people communicate with each other. Usually a first posting is an introduction of self, along with a polite question or a recommendation of online resources. Before long you will be considered one of the regulars.

Audio Adventures in Your Classroom - CLMS Presentation

2007-12-01T12:42:00.000-08:00

"Digital Immigrants - Digital Natives"
California League of Middle Schools Technology Conference 2007, Monterey, California

By Alix E. Peshette

Many thanks to the folks who attended my presentation "Audio Adventures in Your Classroom." Here are the links to the conference materials I presented and shared with attendees.

Audio Adventures in Your Classroom - PowerPoint

Audio Adventures in Your Classroom - Document

Audio Adventures with Audacity - Instructional Guide

What gets in the way of using more technology in your classroom?

2007-11-06T07:47:00.000-08:00

By Alix E. Peshette

It started as a simple question to the 466 K-12 teachers in my district. I needed this data for an upcoming technology leadership meeting at the country level. I emailed that question on a Monday morning at 7:00 am. By 12:00 noon 62 teachers had responded. The number is now over 100, with more responses showing up daily.

I’m a member of the Technology Support Department (the only certificated member) and I expected the usual grousing about too many computer problems and not enough technicians. What I didn’t expect was the number of “thank you for asking this question” responses! In the midst of their busy day, teachers were saying, “Thanks for asking for my input”. It occurred to me that the entire K12 staff had never been asked this question formally or informally with promises only to share comments and grade levels with others.

Some responded with a short list. Many teachers sent lengthy and articulate responses. As I read the emails and interpreted the comments, the obvious categories emerged.

Hardware:

Need more computers in the classrooms
Need modern computers – some people cited classroom computers that were running Windows 95 and 98
Need LCD and DLP projectors
Too much set-up and check-out time for equipment
Update the computer labs
Not enough access to computer labs

Software:

Lack of software – especially for the K-3 students
Incompatible software between the computer labs, classroom computers and teacher computers
More input into what software is purchased at each grade level

Tech Support:

Need on-site tech support
Need more technicians at the district level
Technical problems in the classroom – from lack of cables to lack of trouble-shooting skills

Network:

Filtering restrictions
Students and teachers accessing student files - problems
How to move curriculum resources to student computers that are frozen with Deep Freeze

Curriculum:

Curriculum time restraints driven by testing
Need curriculum planning time for technology
Dated curriculum materials that don’t address technology

Staff Development:

More basic training – how to connect an LCD projector to a computer
Need trouble-shooting training
How to use limited computers in the classroom

Faculties:

Lack of access to network drops and projection screens at the point of instruction
Lack of space for student computers

I would guess that this list comes as no surprise to most teachers and almost all technical staff. Many of these things can be cured with money and time – both of which are in short supply in school districts.

The Technology Leadership meeting is tonight. We will compare our results, break into small groups and brainstorm some ways to meet these needs. It should be interesting!

Create New Media with Generators

2007-10-28T19:47:00.000-07:00

By Alix E. Peshette

Inside everyone is an artist – often a frustrated artist. Many people seem to equate being an artist with being able to draw or paint. Since most people feel they can’t draw anything beyond stick figures they don’t often venture into self-expression through art.

Web 2.0 has spawned a vast range of opportunities to take online imagery or personal images and mash them up into new media. From this new media, one can assemble or create some pretty awesome artistic statements. I like to think of this as outsider art – funky, quirky personal play with imagery. Is this art with a Big A or art with a small a? Who cares! It’s fun and accessible to everyone! It’s also a great way to create some very cool graphics for the classroom!

To all those who want to dabble – welcome to the world of online generators! Here are some places to start.

The foremost purveyor of generators is the Generator Blog. This wildly eclectic collection of generators offers a glimpse into a sub-culture that is busy deconstructing our cultural icons. Some of the generators are very cool, most are irreverent and a few are raunchy. Do preview and select before allowing children to visit.

Another bonanza of generators is the Sign Generator Collection website. Again, everything from the quirky to bad taste incarnate can be found here. The Make Your Own Sign Generator website also has a huge collection of imagery for re-tooling.

Rubrik’s Cube – Upload a picture and transform it into a rubrik’s cube!

For the baby boomers there is a great opportunity to have the young Bob Dylan show your message in a 45 second video with “Subterranean Homesick Blues” playing in the background. Cruise over and create at the Bob Dylan Message Generator

Food and beverages seem to be a common theme in generator-land. Check out the no-calorie goodies one can personalize.

Birthday Cake Generator
Giant Cookie
Candy Hearts
Alphabet Soup Word Generator
Fortune Cookie Messages

It’s a sign of the times that road signs, fast food, entertainment venues and motels are ripe for mixed messages.

Make your own highway signs
Parisian Street Signs
Big Boy
Chinese Restaurant Sign
Custom Motel Signs
Las Vegas
Motel Signs
The Apollo Marquee
Disneyland

Another popular theme in generators is “All Things Automobile.”

The classic red convertible
License plates from different states and times
Moving Truck

Lastly, art for art’s sake. Turn your photo into Andy Warhol-inspired art or transform it into a pencil sketch. So enjoy. Its all just too much fun!

Blogging and Reverse Research

2007-09-23T13:12:00.000-07:00

By Alix E. Peshette

One of the benefits of my position as a technology training specialist for a school district is that I get to indulge my passion for research. When I say research, I’m not talking about facts and figures, case studies and long-term research projects. I love to research the how-to’s, what’s new and wow-what-a-great-ideas. It’s akin to digging for gold - hence the name of my blog.

An unexpected source of cool stuff comes from reading the stats on who reads my blog. Please understand this isn’t an just ego-trip thing – heck, the numbers are low but do exist. I enjoy exploring the recent visitors map and seeing the locations of the people who have stumbled upon or bookmarked this blog. Think of it as armchair tourism.

In looking at these locations, I have the opportunity to see the referring link that got these travelers to my remote speck of a blog. Often this techno-breadcrumb trail leads back to a web search – and I get to see and follow the results they got. In a blinding flash of the obvious – these people are interested in the same things that interest me!

A visitor in Belgium was looking for free video editing software and led me to Vivia.

Vivia is a video editing program for Linux and Windows that offers very user-friendly editing of DV video material.
Vivia is Free Software with a GPL license.
Efficient and easy editing of clips and transitions
"Multi-cam" edit mode: support for natural editing of scenes that were recorded by multiple cameras simultaneously, as is typical in music videos and interviews
Support for multiple "scenes" in a single movie project

Exploration of the search made by someone in Gauteng, Pretoria, South Africa took me to one of my favorite blogs Confessions of a Freeware Junkie and a recent post titled “Free alternatives to un-licensed software in the corporate environment” Why shift from unlicensed software to Open Source and Freeware? What are the pros and cons? What is the reality of tech support when FOSS is rolled out in large organizations? All good questions!

Someone in Karnataka, Bangalore, India was searching for PowerPoint ideas and led me to this newly released freeware FlashSpring Pro. "FlashSpring Pro makes you able to produce high quality Flash content fantastically easy in PowerPoint environment. Using FlashSpring functions embedded into MS PowerPoint toolbar you get fast conversion of your presentations to Macromedia Flash format. FlashSpring Pro keeps interactivity and animation effects of your original presentations."

Blogging as research– wow – what a concept!

Summer Technology Academy - a Staff Development Model

2007-07-03T15:54:00.000-07:00

By Alix E. Peshette

The end-of-school frenzy has died down and now I’m truly on my summer schedule of leisure and reflection. So, here are some observations and reflection about our recent Summer Technology Academy. What motivates teachers to attend a few days of technology training right after a strenuous school year and during their summer vacation? It’s timing, topics, toys and money!

If one can grab teachers before the dog days of summer have worked their lazy magic, there is a better chance of getting good attendance. So, the Academy took place in the first four days of summer vacation. The trainers were teachers in our district who enthusiastically integrate technology across their curriculum.

Four “topic strands” were offered, each composed of two three-hour trainings over a period of two days. The topic strand would give teachers an in-depth experience in connecting curriculum with technology tools. The idea of spreading out the six hours of training over two days was to avoid information overload and allow participants time to reflect and come back with questions, and comments. The topics were planned with something for everyone, from the techno-phobic to the techno-power-user.

Computer Basics and Your Laptop as an Instructional Tool: Becoming personally proficient in technology is the first step towards instructional proficiency. Like learning a new language, it takes time, practice, experimentation and perseverance.

It’s easy to lose sight of the number of teachers who need really basic information and experiences on a computer. These people are invisible because they don’t attend trainings for fear of being embarrassed or left behind in class due to their lack of experience. Often they are veteran teachers who feel that technology has nothing to offer them in the classroom.

When they do attend trainings, the common theme for success seems to be a trainer who has patience and humor, maintains a leisurely pace and refrains from technical jargon. As these teachers gain a little confidence and learn a few cool ways to use their laptops for student instruction, using technology as a classroom tool looks much more do-able.

Wikis and Blogs and Authors on the Web: The Wikis and Blogs training gave an introduction to social networking and writing for a global audience. All the teachers left with a new blog and an opportunity to safely explore this realm during the summer.

The second part of this training, Authors on the Web, has morphed the old book club into a blog where students respond to writing prompts from the teacher and correspond with an author. What can be more real and exciting than writing for a worldwide audience and interacting with the author of the book you are reading in class? What can be more motivating to be sure that punctuation, grammar and spelling are correct?

Classroom Web Pages and Bells and Whistles: The district purchased the web management program Adobe Contribute for each school a few years ago. Every teacher has a web site on the network, which they can personalize and post current information for students and parents. Contribute has made updating web pages as simple as creating a word document. For those who had the basics down, the bells and whistles were custom banners and graphics, calendars, embedded video and pod casts.

Multimedia Mash Up: Audio and Video: Start with Open Source and freeware, learn a few easy techniques, mine the web for public domain resources and it’s Showtime! The first part of this strand introduced the possibilities and power of student narration, using Audacity and a cheap microphone. We inserted edited, multi-track audio recordings into PowerPoint, Photo Story 3 and Movie Maker. The second part was all about video without shooting video. Drop Photo Story 3 presentations into Movie Maker, toss in a public domain video clip, do a little editing, add a music track and bring out the popcorn! The number of authentic assessment possibilities for student products boggles the mind!

And as a lovely parting gift, we have….tech toys! Everyone who attended a full strand received their choice of a tech toy: 1 GB flash drive or Dell external speakers for their laptop. Often, for lack of one small piece of equipment, teachers leave a training without the resources to make it happen successfully in the classroom. In reality the cost of these give-aways came to about $11 per person. So, skip the box lunch and buy people hardware!

Rather than pay to attend a training, how about getting paid to attend? In California, K-12 school districts no longer have staff development happening within the school day. Instead, the state has given districts a pot of money to pay teachers to attend staff development outside of the school day. It’s called Buy-Back Days. Many teachers had not used up their buy back days or were three hours short of finishing a day for pay. Since Buy-Back Days for 2007 expired on June 22, it was great motivation for teachers to attend the Academy during June 18-21 to use up those days.

Over the last four years of offering summer trainings, this format proved to be the most successful. The number of teachers who attended one or more strands was amazing. Almost every topic was filled to capacity.

How does staff development happen in your district?

Computer Games in the Classroom?

2007-06-03T18:20:00.000-07:00

By Alix E. Peshette

There is a residual knee-jerk reaction to the idea of kids using computers to play games. It’s the sworn duty of every teacher who has one or more student computers in the room to keep the kid on the computer on-task.

Sure, as educators, we long ago opened our computer time to remedial software and it has had some benefit. However, the digital natives are getting restless and have both the interest and the skills to engage in constructivist learning with computer games. So, where does one find computer games that go beyond remedial into the realm of remarkable? Here are some resources to explore.

Robots, anyone? Technology, programming, science, chemistry and physics all come to together in the learning experience of designing something that moves, competes and wins.

Sodarace - Human and machines create and compete
Sodarace is the online Olympics pitting human creativity against machine learning in a competition to design robots that race over 2D terrains using the Sodaconstructor virtual construction kit.

MeChem- Building Better Bots through Chemistry
How good a bot builder are you? Can you select the right materials for your armor, weapons, power plant, capacitor and coolant to create a male or a female MeCH that can turn other MeCHs to scrap metal? What a way to learn chemistry!

Want the dependability of a downloaded program that offers a wonderful first experience in programming? Welcome to Scratch; free tile-based visual programming software from MIT.

Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art. It is designed for ages 8 and up to help develop 21st century learning skills. As students create projects, they learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design. I played with it and really enjoyed how easy it was to program avatars using the visual script blocks.

Along the lines of games that fall into the category of simulation, here are a few offerings:

The Education Arcade has developed an online simulation built around the American Revolution. The supporting materials and projects look engaging and open to creativity. In addition, other simulations are in the development stage.

Nobelprize.org has a gallery of games and simulations based on the Nobel prize-awarded achievements. Students play through games and simulations that test and build their knowledge in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, peace and economics.

Games and puzzles comprise a large portion of the online java-script experience. Check out this gem. The Thomas Jefferson Lab National Accelerator Facility has a great K12 Education department with tons of games and puzzles.

So how can a classroom teacher with a few computers make it easy to direct students to selected educational games?

Plan A: Create desktop shortcuts of the web addresses, put them in a folder and place that folder on the student machine desktops. Go to a web page, find a blank spot (avoid images, embedded video, etc.) right-click and select Create Shortcut. Up will pop a window stating that “A shortcut to the current page will be placed on your desktop.” Return to the desktop and harvest all those shortcuts into a folder. Use a flash drive or network drive to put the folder onto the student computers.

Plan B: What if the student computers are “frozen” with some form of software that dumps any changes to the basic image once the machines are turned off? Get a Delicious or FURL account, ask the IT people to unfreeze the computers and place a permanent shortcut to your Delicious or FURL account. Refreeze the machines and just update the web resources in those online accounts.

Plan C: What if Delicious and FURL are blocked by the district filter? Talk to the IT Director and ask that YOUR Delicious or FURL sites are unblocked in the name of educational technology.

Plan D: What if your request falls on deaf ears because the prevailing view is that there are no educational benefits to computer games in the classroom? Beef up your campaign with commentary and research from educational technologists!

Duvergne Smith, Nancy . "Games and Their MIT Makers. Participatory games advance education.." Technology Review May/June 2007 5/15/2007 http://www.technologyreview.com/article/18678/

Shaffer, David Williamson . "Epistemic Games - Building the Future of Education." Epistemic Games. Tuesday August 01st 2006. University of Wisconsin-Madison. http://epistemicgames.org/eg/?cat=28

Jackson, Lorrie . "Sites to See:Online Games." Education World 05/02/2006 http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/sites/sites082.shtml

Grab Bag of Wow – Tech Tips and Tricks

2007-05-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

By Alix E. Peshette

I really like finding a tip or trick that makes me say “Wow, what a great idea!” Many times these finds are just small but cool twists on a technique, strategy or idea. Often I can’t even use that idea right now, but I squirrel it away for future reference on Delicious. That said, I’ve had a rich week of surfing the web and stumbling across some “Wow’s”

Running Google Earth from PowerPoint – Many thanks to Digital Geography for this tip on how to insert an object into PowerPoint and cause it to open a Google Earth file. Now you can fly out of PowerPoint into Google Earth – think of the possibilities!

Videopanorama - The innovative and always edgy folks at Photojojo have a great article on how to make a video panorama from digital camera video clips. This technique uses the compositing feature in Final Cut Pro. In following this cool idea, I ran into a very nice example of videopanorama – Broken Time.

Download those YouTube videos: Kiss the Address Bar - Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspiration posted this gem on how to use a site called “KissYouTube” to download YouTube videos. Now if it will only work for TeacherTube!

MashUp Lesson using Audacity – It’s a tutorial for Audacity, it’s a lesson on creativity, and it’s a very cool idea from Todd Seymour of Westfall High School in Ohio. This teacher even includes a great rubric for grading. Thanks Todd!

Designing with SketchUp Infowiki – Fred Bartels, head of the computer department at Rye Country Day School has started this wiki as the Web 2.0 equivalent of a traditional textbook for teaching architectural design using SketchUp.

If you have found a Wow factor tip or trick and would like to share it, please do!

Cool Tools - Open Source and Freeware

2007-05-18T13:38:00.000-07:00

By Alix E. Peshette

I love Open Source and Freeware! As a past junior high computer science teacher, I was always looking at software prices and multiplying them x 34 workstations. Even the least expensive software took a pretty large bite out of the department budget. I spent a lot of time researching, installing, testing and using Open Source and freeware as the only viable alternative.

In the years since I was in the computer lab, Open Source and Freeware have gained a higher visibility and a well-deserved respectability in the technology world. The egalitarian paradigm of Open Source software is hopefully the way of the future!

So, here are some of my favorite picks:

ieSpell – The Blogger’s friend! This little gem is an Internet Explorer spell-checker for input text boxes on web pages.

CamStudio - A really decent screen capture program, CamStudio records activity from your screen and audio from a microphone into AVI video files and can also convert the AVIs into Streaming Flash videos (SWFs) using its built-in SWF Producer.

Audio Tools:

Audacity - Probably the most popular audio recording software in the K-12 tech arena. This software runs on almost everything; Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux.

Levelator - A great companion to Audacity for podcasting and radio theatre. Levelator adjusts the audio levels for variations from one speaker to the next. Levelator runs on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) or 10.3 (Panther)

Sony AcidXPress - Record audio and create original music using loops. The power of the application stems from its ability to take any audio loop and make it fit into the tempo of a project. This fully functioning freeware has some high-end features, but pop-ups inviting one to purchase companion software can be annoying. But hey – it’s free!

Among the paint, image editing and graphics programs I have known and loved:

Photo Story 3 – This very cool software falls somewhere between very simple graphics program, presentation software and video creator. Once one uses Photo Story 3, it’s hard to go back to PowerPoint! WinXP

PhotoFiltre – This is a very nice basic graphics editor with a great selection of useful and fun artistic filters. The interface is pretty standard and simple – great for kids.

GimpShop – Finally, a version of Gimp that has a nice familiar interface! This is the closest thing to a free copy of PhotoShop.

Deep Paint - Deep Paint integrates stroke-by-stroke artistic photo-cloning, fully editable brush and canvas settings, and paint functionality for realistic and stunning paint effects.

Paint.net - Free image editing and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.

TuxPaint - Tux Paint is a free drawing program for children ages 3 to 12 (preschool and K-6). It combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program.

ArtRage - Paint with oils, sketch with pencils, sprinkle glitter, and more. You can paint with gold leaf, silver foil, and other metallic colors. You can even load in your photos as Tracing Images to help you recreate them as paintings. Runs on Windows and Mac OS X

The Rasterbator - The Rasterbator is an application which creates rasterized versions of images that can be printed and assembled into enormous posters.

Andy Warhol Replicator - An application for adding Pop-Art effects to your digital photos. The freeware comes with ready to use filter effects pre-defined in various color compositions.

Audio and Video Tools:

Rad Video Tools –The Freeware RAD Video Tools are a set of utilities for processing video, animation, and sound data. RAD Video Tools run on Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, and XP.

Web Authoring:

Nvu - A complete Web Authoring System for Linux desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.

Well, I’m sure I could dig up some more favorites but these make a good start. Got any Open Source and Freeware favorites you would like to share? Please do!

Classroom Adventures with Audacity

2007-05-12T15:24:00.000-07:00

By Alix E. Peshette

In last few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure to spend time working with 5th and 6th grade teachers and students in their school computer lab. This school is in the first year of an EETT grant (Enhancing Education Through Technology), which funds additional computer lab time, hardware and staff development. The goal is to raise student technology proficiency levels and teacher proficiency and instructional technology levels. The effectiveness of this infusion of time, equipment and staff development will be measured by the EdTech Profile Technology Assessment.

Two 6th grade classes are working on their BookShare projects; audio book reviews which will be part of a PowerPoint project and then posted to the school website. The two 5th grade classes are working on a project called Tall Tales. Students write an engaging tall tale, illustrate the story and scan the pictures to insert into PowerPoint. Students narrate and record the story then edit and add sound effects and music. The final product is a PowerPoint with sound track and animated characters. These are wonderful language arts projects with a generous infusion of technology skills!

My role has been as the Audacity guest presenter, ad hoc tech support, and additional live adult body in the computer lab, along with the teacher and computer lab specialist. It’s a staff development model that is very powerful. It is also a wonderful learning experience for me. How many Audacity skills can one teach in a 40-minute lab period? How much can students and teachers learn in that time frame?

Lesson One: Introduction
Plug mic and headphones into correct ports
Open Audacity - learn the basics of the menu and toolbar buttons
Record narration. Listen, delete and re-record if needed
Save file as an Audacity project file into the correct folder on the lab server

Lesson Two: Mashup
Open Audacity – get narration file
Check track for signs of clipping (waveform distortion)
Discuss ways to avoid clipping – change recording volume, move mic farther away
Normalize the file – watch waveform change
Add sound effects and music
Listen to all tracks at once, mute tracks, lower volume on individual tracks
Time shift tracks
Save file as Audacity project file

Lesson Three: Refinement
Review key skills in Lesson Two
Cut, copy, paste – create longer sound effects, shorten music tracks
Fade-in, Fade-out – transitions between tracks
Envelope tool to change volume with finesse
Exporting file as WAV or MP3

Lessons Learned
I was surprised by how enthusiastic students are about audio recording and editing. The ownership of their own voice recordings compels them to critically analyze the recordings, try out numerous sound effects and even create their own.

The computer lab specialist had done a marvelous job of collecting copyright free sound effects and music in advance of the lessons. Having these resources on the lab server eliminated any waste of computer lab time searching online.

The students were so immersed in the creative experience that it was somewhat hard to get them to finalize a product. The lesson learned is to limit the number of sound effects and music and sort them into subfolders with genre names like western, sci-fi, spooky, etc. The kids wanted to sample everything!

The students worked on the projects in both the computer lab and the classroom using the mobile laptop cart. For some of the teachers, this was their first experience having the laptop cart in their room. The computer lab specialist and I directed the steps of the technology skills, while the teacher reinforced the curriculum goals. The students became the modelers of technology use for the teacher – they already knew how to take the laptops out of the cart, plug in the peripherals and log on from their increased computer lab time. The experience that was modeled will hopefully encourage the teachers to try it on their own knowing that the students are really capable users of technology.

The last big lesson has been the power of reflection. It is the critical evaluation of the entire process: triumphs and pitfalls. Before the experience fades from memory, think about how to do it better next time. Save this debriefing information where one will find it and read it again!

As the old saying goes, “The proof is in the pudding.” I can’t wait to see the data from the EdTech Profile student and teacher assessments!

Audio Adventures with Audacity

2007-05-02T12:50:00.000-07:00

By Alix E. Peshette

I’ve been on an interesting learning curve lately, nailing down the intricacies of Google Earth, YouTube and Audacity so that I can build staff development trainings around these exciting tools. The training titled “Audio Adventures with Audacity” debuted last week.

“Learn how easy it is for students and teachers to record narration, edit, and add sound effects and music to create an audio recording. From poetry, storytelling, interviews, and how-to instructions, audio recordings fit into almost every subject area. Using free software called Audacity, and an inexpensive microphone, students and teachers can create powerful audio recordings that can be used in PowerPoint, Photo Story 3, Movie Maker and podcasting. Participants receive a free microphone for classroom use.“

There were the usual expected technical glitches and a few unexpected ones stemming from the variety of Dell laptops we were using. Who would have guessed that the control panel sound settings would be significantly different between a Latitude D505, D510, and D520? Lesson learned!

The other lessons I learned before, during and after the training have been:

The spoken word is a hugely compelling multimedia art form and instructional product! Students have to research and write a script, read it aloud, know what they are reading, and infuse it with emotion and intention. Think how invested a student becomes as he produces an audio recording. Think of all the English Language Arts Content Standards addressed in that process!

Other content standards that come into play are:

Mathematics
Sound recordings in Audacity produce very interesting visual representations of the recording. There is mathematics at work here! Check out the K-12 lesson opportunities at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Visual and Performing Arts
Besides meeting the obvious content standards for performance and audio editing skills, audio recordings can be the springboard for a flourishing art career as a Foley artist. Both film and sound recordings are sweetened with sound effects! A favorite example I use to illustrate the power of sound effects is a recording of “The Raven” by the actor Christopher Walken. Turn up the sound and close your eyes while you listen.

Software and Hardware
Readers’ Theaters are wonderful sources of scripts for sound recording. Imagine a circle of students, each reading their part of the script to create – dare I say – Radio Theatre! Technology-wise, this will require a decent omni-directional microphone to get the entire production in one or two takes. Take a look at this retro-tinged very cool microphone at a very do-able price – the Blue Snowball USB Microphone.

After recording multiple voices comes the task of adjusting the audio levels for variations from one speaker to the next. A nice piece of Open Source software for this job is the Levelator. It runs on Windows or Mac and is drop-dead easy to use. Drag the sound file onto the Levelator window and it’s done!

The last lesson I learned is perhaps the best. It’s often the little things that count. Each teacher in the training walked away with an inexpensive Cyber Acoustic ACM1 microphone, the kind that used to come free with every brand new computer. Leaving the training with this microphone in hand makes it so much more likely that a novice-techie teacher will infuse sound recording into the classroom.

Editing YouTube Videos for the Classroom

2007-04-21T15:54:00.000-07:00

By Alix E. Peshette

YouTube and other web sources of video can provide a bonanza of instructional gems for teachers. Just like diamonds in the rough, these videos often need to be cut down and refined before they are really valuable in the classroom. What if the instructional content is located somewhere other than the beginning or the end of the video? The entire video may be too long and would benefit by being shortened to just the essentials.

YouTube videos like many other web video sources are Flash Video - ending with a file extension of .flv. The reason Flash Video is the darling of the web is because it compresses nicely into a really small file size for streaming video. While Flash Video can be shown in media players such as Democracy Player, for video-editing it requires conversion to a friendly format, such as
.avi, .mp2, .mp2v, .mpeg, .mpg, .mpv2, .wm, .wmv, or .mov.

Enter the wide world of file format conversion! What software converts what into what and at what compression and bitrate? Everyone has their techie specialties, but frankly compression and bitrate are not two of mine! In this instance, being a novice is useful when creating instructional materials for the novice-techie teacher. Bottom line: the conversion software must be simple and free!

In the search for software that meets the criteria, here are two:

Audio/Video to Exe
This freeware does a few cool things:

It converts .flv to mpeg files, which import into Movie Maker for editing.
It converts .flv into other formats that play well in Windows Media Player, but not necessarily import well into Movie Maker.
It can also create executable files and play them as a standalone player. This is a much cleaner look than those played on Windows Media Player or Democracy Player.
There is a Pro Edition of this software for $27.69, which contains all the features for setting bitrates. The freeware version states that it has a time limit for file conversion, but I converted ten-minute videos and it didn’t time out.
Lastly, for simplicity of interface, this one is so simple it makes you long for one bell or whistle.

FLV Conversion using FFmpeg
I stumbled upon this website and read the treaty on the waywardness of free video conversion software and the wonders of FFmpeg. I was almost scared off from it when it stated, “it is a command line tool that on first glance seems like something only propeller heads can use.” The author assured me that I could do it.

After a couple of false moves on my part, I did get the FFmpeg into the correct folder, added an .flv video, did the command line dance and lo – it worked!! It yielded a very nice .wmv file that imported into Movie Maker without a hitch!

So, mission accomplished for two simple and free ways to convert Flash Video files into something that can be edited! If you have a favorite way to convert Flash Video – please let me know!

YouTube in the K-12 Classroom

2007-04-09T15:14:00.000-07:00

By Alix E. Peshette

The explosion of video available on the web has been astounding. It's also been both tantalizing and frustrating for K-12 teachers. The tantalizing part is the presence of really good educational resources showing up on YouTube and other video locations such as the National Science Foundation and NASA websites. As an ex-world history teacher, I got chills when I saw this wonderful Bayeux Tapestry animation on YouTube – what an incredible way to bring a piece of history alive!

The frustrating part is this:

Most districts block YouTube – obviously for the unacceptable portion of videos that reside there.

Even if YouTube isn’t blocked (such as at home), teachers want the certainty of showing a video when they need to show it. The Internet isn’t always reliable in the educational setting.

Since most teachers really want "video-on-demand” (not talking streaming video here) then there must be a way to download it and show it.

I’ve been pondering this issue, reading the hacking blogs and playing with software solutions. Being a member of the educational community, one naturally turns to Open-Source and freeware for solutions. As a Technology Training Specialist, I also look for solutions that aren’t beyond the comfort level of the novice-techie teacher. So, here is what I've found and tested, with many thanks to various blogs.

Download those Videos!
Those videos are web-embedded and viewed in a web browser. The browser for this job is Mozilla FireFox! Internet Explorer isn’t set up to recognize the very long URL’s of embedded video. In addition, IE doesn’t have the plethora of add-ons and plug-ins that are available for FireFox. There are a variety of “video download” add-ons and everyone seems to have their favorites: VideoDownloader, Amazing Media Browser and Vixy.net. among others. I’ve had varying degrees of success with them and most of them flunk my “anyone can do it” test. The one download tool that has performed consistently and easily is UnPlug.

Go to a YouTube page that has a video and click the UnPlug icon on the toolbar. UnPlug obligingly opens a new page with a list of the videos it has found embedded in the previous web page. It even states: Type: Flash Video Data (this is probably the one you want) Save. Can’t get much easier than that!

Show those Videos!
As noted above, YouTube videos are Flash video and it takes a special media player to show them. Enter the Open-Source Democracy Player! This gem of a media player (gotta love the name) states: “Play virtually any video-- Quicktime, WMV, MPEG, AVI, XVID, and more.” It does just what it says. Easy, reliable, simple; so comforting!

So, now anyone can access video from YouTube and other sources, download them to the local hardrive and show them in the classroom, even when the Internet is down! Ready to go visit some awesome collections of video? Take a look and keep in mind the fair use and copyright guidelines. Power to the people!

National Science Foundation Multimedia Gallery

NASA Multimedia Gallery

Edison National Historic Site

The National Archives Video Sections