Tech Fortress Teacher Technology Blog

The Droid Eris

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:31:00 +0000

Like many others, I have been captivated by Verizon's onslaught of commercials promising a new era of phones that will make us forget how jealous VZ subscribers have been of the iPhone. The phone in question is the Droid, manufactured by Motorola and powered by the Android operating system from Google. The more I read about the Motorola Droid in the weeks leading up to its launch, the more intrigued I became.

When the day came (November 6th), I went to the Verizon store and took a look at this heralded device. After several trips to the store to play around with the Droid, I am pleased to say that I am now the proud owner of an Android powered smart-phone...but not the one we've all seen plastered on TV. I ended up with the Droid's little brother: the Droid Eris (shown at right). The Droid Eris runs Android 1.5, where the Droid runs 2.0. It has a slightly smaller screen at 3.2 inches to the Droid's 3.7. The Droid Eris is also slightly slower, though I haven't felt it lagging yet. Despite the fact that every person wearing a Verizon shirt desperately seemed to want to convince me that the Droid is the superior choice to the Droid Eris, I just didn't fall in love with the bigger Droid the way the commercials had prepared me to.

After spending most of the day with the Droid Eris, I can safely say it is the greatest mobile device I have ever owned! It is very fast, the Internet loads well, and I am connected to my email, Facebook, Twitter, and every other possible electronic information pathway I am involved with. There is also an impressive number of free "apps" available in the Android Market for immediate download.

All in all, it seems like Verizon made the right choice partnering up with Google on this one. I am excited to get to know this phone better and even more excited to see what else Google comes up with as Android matures.

So glad I waited and resisted the many times I was tempted to jump ship to AT&T for the iPhone.

Droid does.

Live Visitor Tracking on your site...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:58:00 +0000

Do you run a website? If so, you are probably like me and are semi-obsessed with wondering if and how many people are visiting your site. There are plenty of free services that will track the number of hits you receive, where they come from, how long they stay on your site, what color shirt they were wearing, and various other metrics. I'm not going to compete with them.

What I have done, however, is develop a very simple flash widget that you can put on any page of your website (or all pages) to allow you and your users to get a live view of how many people are on the site at any given time.

The widget comes in 2 flavors: visible and invisible. The visible version looks just like the one to the right. The invisible version is not seen by your users, but allows you to track your site from a control panel page.

Like my other tools, this one is totally free and I invite you to use it on your site. Have fun!

Here's the link: Live Visitor Tracker

Get my own counter!

Free Stock Market Simulation Game...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:39:00 +0000

I have always been thrilled by Stock Market Simulation Games. I love the idea of investing a virtual lump sum in a market based on real stock prices and watching your investment grow (or not).

I have tried several times in the past to use Stock Market simulations with my classes, with mixed success. The students are almost always very enthusiastic about the idea of having hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest. Many of the students really throw themselves into researching stocks online, on CNBC, or anywhere else they can get a hot tip.
I've even gotten a few of the other teachers in the building in on the action, buying and selling stocks right alongside the students.

The enthusiasm for the simulations was never the challenge. Finding a site that was easy to use and setup was. After several years of using sites that left many students baffled and frustrated, I finally decided something had to be done differently. Luckily, my programming skill is finally starting to catch up to my imagination.

I've created my own Stock Market Game written entirely in php. It pulls real stock prices (delayed 15 minutes) from Google Finance, and allows students to buy and sell stocks at the real prices. The site keeps tracks of every transaction and ranks players throughout the day as stock values change.

I would like to make this game available to other teachers, just as I have the online jeopardy review game and some of my other classroom creations. I am currently in the testing stage, but I can iron out the kinks more quickly and effectively if I have a pool of people testing the software. My students have been using it for a few days with no major issues, but it is always good to run your own creations past other sets of eyes.

If you want to participate, each of your students (or small teams if you prefer) will have a virtual $100,000 and a Trading Password. Students can buy and sell from any publicly traded stock. Stocks trade at real prices via slightly delayed quotes that come from Google Finance. Students can trade from any online computer (works from phones too, I tried).

Email me at info@superteachertools.com if you are interested. I can get your class up and trading in a day or 2.

I hope to hear back from some people!

Very clever use of Google Docs...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:58:00 +0000

I wish I could take credit for this one. But let's be real, most of the best ideas in teaching were copied from somewhere else and modified for classroom use. In this case, the stolen idea came from a link I noticed one of the Wired.com blogs. They have a document that charts layoffs in the tech industry. It turns out it is nothing more than a spreadsheet created in Google Docs. The document automatically updates every 5 minutes. This means any changes the Wired.com staff makes to this document are available to their readers within minutes.

We used this tool in class today to help students with a research project they were working on. I noticed that many students throughout the day were asking for help finding information. Rather than finding the same information multiple times, I created a Google Spreadsheet with a list of links and posted the url on my class website. It ended up working out really well, with students later in the day being able to benefit from links I found and saved in the morning!

If you would like to recreate this, simply:

Create a document within Google.
Click Share --> Publish as a Web Page --> Publish Now
Then simply copy and paste the link to your website, blog, Twitter, etc.
Your page is now available to the world!

Thanks again, Google. Nice work. All hail.

Wakeup Call for Online Service Users...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:54:00 +0000

Ma.gnolia is down. If that means nothing to you, please keep reading.

"Ma.gnolia is a free, public service for saving links to websites. Most users rely on it as a bookmarking storage service, or a place to save links that they may want to revisit later. Links can be saved privately or shared publicly, so that they can be browsed by other users looking for new destinations. Many people prefer to use bookmark sharing services like Ma.gnolia rather than saving bookmarks locally — the main advantage being that while your browser's bookmarks are stored on your machine, you can access bookmarks you share on the web from any computer with an internet connection." (Description from Wired.com's Blog, Epicenter)

Still don't care? Here's why you should. Magnolia is just one example of a web-based service many of us use to organize parts of our digital life. And if you are anything like me, your digital life represents a sizable chunk of your professional and personal life. If a major site like Magnolia can suffer a data meltdown such as this, it is not beyond the realm of belief to think that others might as well.

In an average day, it is not unusual for me to:

Email documents, presentations, project files, etc. to myself in Gmail so I have access to them at home and work.
Upload large files to my Skydrive account so I can download them from another location or share them with others.
Upload pictures to Picasa to keep and share with others.
Upload videos to Youtube.
Work on shared documents via Google Docs.
Post information to this blog.

This is not a complete list, but you get the idea. On any given day, if I were to visit one of the sites listed above and learn that all of my data had been lost, the ramifications would be unthinkable. In the past few years, as companies like Google and Microsoft are literally giving away gigabytes of storage space for free, I have moved away from transferring files with USB drives in favor of storing massing amounts of data online. This latest tragedy for Magnolia makes me wonder if I shouldn't take a step back and reevaluate the way I store and manage my digital data.

Imagine if these sites lost their data all of a sudden:

MySpace/Facebook
Tinyurl -- imagine the effect it would have in Twitter, where tinyurls are the link sharing method of choice!
Flickr

What about you? Where are you storing your digital life? It might be time to reevaluate some bad habits. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Share Your Screen for Free with YuuGuu... or...Reach out and Help Someone

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:54:00 +0000

It seems most of my posts lately have been about things that I have been creating. Today I am stepping down off my high horse and talking about a program called Yuuguu. Yuuguu is a free remote desktop and screen sharing tool.

I rediscovered Yuuguu today after several attempts to help a Flash Jeopardy user by email were unsuccessful. I decided it would be infinitely easier to show and tell rather than just tell. While pondering the best way to do that, a little voice in the back of my head shouted, "Hey remember that Yuuguu program? I seem to remember being able to use that program to share your screen with anyone, even if they do not have a Yuuguu screenname!" As it turns out, that voice was exactly right.

When you sign into Yuuguu, which is available for the PC, Mac, and even Linux, you are able to generate a link and temporary pin number that will allow a person or people of your choice to see your screen. Once they are connected, you can walk them through whatever it is you are trying to explain by doing it on your screen.

What if your user has a question about something you are doing on your screen? They have a little chat interface built into the session. They can message you and you can message them. I spent a couple minutes this evening with a user who needed some help with the proper way to save a game file from the Jeopardy Flash game. I fired up Yuuguu, and sent her the url and pin number to see my screen. Within minutes, I had shown her the proper way to solve her issue and we could both get on with our nights.

If you need a quick way to illustrate something for anyone, I highly recommend YuuGuu. It is extremely effective and best of all, 100% free.

Moving Day and some new tools to share...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:02:00 +0000

If you have been a fan of my Flash Jeopardy, Flash Millionaire, or Flash Boardgame programs, you may have noticed that they were residing on a server that was not particularly well named for the programs I had been posting on it. After a little research and a lot of soul-searching, I packed up the virtual moving van and transferred everything to a new, more appropriately named domain.

You can now find all of my Flash Review Games at www.superteachertools.com.

But wait, there's more...

I have some new additions to the site as well. I have created tools that will allow you to quickly and easily create printable seating charts, generate groups, and generate names from your class randomly.

After several requests, I have also updated the Jeopardy review game so that you can embed urls for images in the questions slides.

Even though the domain name has changed, everything on the site is just as free as it ever was. Consider it my donation to the universe.

As always, I welcome feedback and questions from my readers as they try out these new tools at the new site. I hope you find the new tools useful.

Teacher Websites Required?

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:26:00 +0000

A colleague and I will giving a presentation on our school's Teacher website solution at the end of January in Atlantic City. I wanted to have some information about other schools and how/if they handle posting information online.

It would be great to have some feedback from my readers.

Here is what I would like to know:

Do you post assignments, announcements, etc. online for students and parents?
Why/Why not?
Does your school district require teachers to post information online?
If yes, what system does your school use and what has the general reaction from the staff been?
What is your opinion on teacher/classroom websites?
ie. They are positive/necessary because...
Any other comments are welcome!

I appreciate any responses you have time to contribute! Feel free to pass this along to teachers you may know from other schools as well.

2009: Looking ahead...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 07:00:00 +0000

What would New Year's be without resolutions? Life is so much more fulfilling when you have a set of goals that you are working toward. Without a clear and worthy destination, the ride can be pretty dull.

Here is a brief list of some of my personal technocentric aspirations for 2009:

Blog more -- There were too many times this year when I allowed a month or more to pass by without adding anything to this blog. What a shame. There is always something interesting going on in or near my classroom. I plan to make more of an effort to chronicle my thoughts, opinions, and experiences with the technology around me this year. I have made some great connections through this space, hopefully 2009 will bring even more.
Keep Learning -- For me, 2008 was the year of php. This powerful and free programming language has been at the center of almost every major project I undertook this year (Mock Election, Flash Jeopardy, etc, etc). In the months ahead, I hope to continue to learn more efficient ways to use php to add spice to my creations.

I've been meaning to learn some MySQL database programming for a long time. I must have 3 different beginner's books sitting on my shelf to help me do it. In 2009, I hope to set aside some time to learn and experiment with what MySQL can do. I think that it will mesh nicely with what I have learned of php.
Embrace Arduino -- I am very excited about learning more about the Arduino (see my earlier post about the Arduino) The more I read about it, the more excited I get. I already have ideas for half a dozen different devices that could potentially be created. Look for updates throughout 2009 as I experiment with this powerful piece of equipment. If you see no updates, know that I am softly weeping somewhere because my Arduino dreams have gone unfulfilled. :)
Inspire Others -- I am an early adopter and a huge proponent of technology of all types, both in my personal life and in the eductional setting. This year I hope to continue to lead by example and help others to overcome fears and misconceptions about technology so that they can begin to embrace and experiment with new skills and tools in the new year.

This list is by no means all-inclusive. Most of my goals seem to mushroom into other inter-related goals. I predict this year will be no different.

What are you tech/educational goals for the year ahead?

What is Arduino?

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:11:00 +0000

I've come across the Arduino in several of the blogs and websites I frequent. The makers of the Arduino (based in Italy), describe it as:

"an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software...Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators."

Intrigued? You can buy an assembled Arduino for as little as $30 and the various buttons, sensors, and LEDs that make your Arduino come to life can also be had for very little money. I finally purchased an Arduino kit from www.adafruit.com. I've spent the last week playing around with my Arduino, learning how to wire LEDs, buttons, and sensors to the Arduino, and programming it to respond to various stimuli. The Arduino site also has a thriving community of users, many of whom were VERY obliging in helping me work through any obstacles I encountered as I played with the Arduino.

So far I have created 2 Arduino-based items: a globe that looks a lot like a crystal ball and a button that resets my home-made Flash Lost Countdown site. I have posted videos of both below. Enjoy.

The Arduino definitely has a lot of potential to be used as a learning tool. Between its low cost, flexibility, and easy to learn programming environment, I can see it being implemented from middle school level and up.

More as it develops...

2008 Greatest Hits...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 20:11:00 +0000

Where did the time go? As the year draws to close, it seems only appropriate to look back at the year that was 2008 and ahead to the potential of 2009. What follows is a list of the accomplishments (tech related, at least) that I am most proud of from the last year.

Flash Jeopardy Review Game -Of everything on the list, this has definitely garnered the most attention. By far. This program has gone from a personal goal of mine, to a buggy program posted online for anyone interested, to its current status of over 4,000 user created games and counting. The response to this game has been amazing! Keep that feedback coming!
Who Wants to be a Millionaire Flash Game - Building off of the success of the Jeopardy game, I thought I would try my hand at a similarly customizable Flash version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Although it isn't quite as "group friendly" as the Jeopardy game, I am pretty proud of the way the game came out. It makes a nice way for teachers (or anyone for that matter) to make a review game, then share the link with students to allow them to review on their own.
2008 Mock Election -My first Mock Election (2004) was a huge success. We invited all of the students in my K-8 school to come and vote for the next President. In 2008, we had another pair of Presidential candidates. However, this time around, we had a lot of new technology to help the process. Students who came to vote this year were treated to a touch-screen voting machine. When the day was done and the smoke had cleared, the machines immediately gave us our winner. This is not a political blog, so I will spare you, the reader, and commentary, but I can tell you the students predicted the national winner this time. As we voted, we used the Textmarks service to submit votes by class, and the results were updated live in the www.mockelection.us website throughout the day. We even made the front page of the Star-Ledger!
Lost Counter - This one was something of a personal obsession. This page has been my php training camp. I learned how to do so many things while getting this to work the way I wanted it to. A php script keeps track of the time that the clock is set to end. When you access the page, a flash file pulls the end time from php and subtracts it from the current time. If the end time has not been reached, it will display the time left. If the time remaining is less than 4 minutes, users can send a text message (again through Textmarks) to the site. Within 5 seconds, the timer is reset.
GPS Phone Tracker -This was created for a course I was taking. I purchased a GPS phone from Mologogo. I was able to tweak the phone so that it will send my position to a Microsoft Live Satellite Map (only when the phone is on).
Random Fact Desk -This is a Flash file I made for use in my classroom. It displays random facts and tivia in my handwriting. Useful if we are taking a quiz, so students who finish early have something to read.
ClassroomUpdate.com -- My super simple teacher website platform has been a big hit at my school. This year I hope to offer the service to other schools.
Joining the Cult of Mac -I finally broke down and bought a Mac last January. It seemed a crime for me to continue to completely overlook and ignore Mac hardware and software. After a year of getting to know the Mac OS and what it can do, I can't believe I waited this long. The machine is great, the operating system is very smooth, and the people at the Mac store are probably the most efficient and friendly bunch I have ever met.
**Plus now I can really laugh at those Mac vs. PC commercials.**

I've learned a lot this year. The exciting this is that every time I learn something new, I have 5 more questions about how I can take it further. There are so many things I cannot wait to learn and try in and out of the classroom in the year ahead.

It would be great to hear your reflections from the past year.
What are you most proud of from the past year?
What was the most exciting technology of 2008?
What do you think will make the biggest splash in educational technology for the year ahead?

New Flash Review Game!

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:57:00 +0000

After great success with the online Flash Jeopardy game, there is now a new member of the Flash Review family! It's amazing what you can do with Flash, php, and 5 hours to kill waiting for parent-teacher conferences to start.

The newest Flash review game is called Flash Board Game. The game itself plays pretty much like any standard board game:

You can play with up to 6 teams. Each team has a different brightly colored dot as their "virtual gamepiece." These dots are drag and drop to allow movement around the board via a SmartBoard or just a standard mouse.
There is also a spinner in the center of the board. Each turn begins by spinning the spinner (by clicking on it) to see if the question will be worth an advance of 1,2,3, or 4 squares.
After spinning the spinner, the player clicks on whatever square they would be moving to next. (ie. if you spin a 2, you would click 2 squares in front of you). A question will appear. Answering the question correctly allows the team to move forward the number of spaces revealed by the spinner.
There are also Chance squares, marked with question marks. Landing on these squares reveals either a reward or penalty, such as moving ahead or back, losing or gaining a turn, etc.
The first team to reach the end wins the game.

As always, I look forward to hearing from anyone who uses this game in their classroom or elsewhere. It is of course free and available for PC and Mac users.

Best of all, if you have created game files for the Jeopardy Review Game, they will also work in the Flash Board Game. (just make sure they have 25 questions, or some squares will show up blank).

Have fun!

Wordle Word Map...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:59:00 +0000

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.
How much is it worth when the picture itself includes a thousand words? The sheer math of it all boggles the mind.

I recently stumbled across a free website called Wordle. The Wordle site lets a user submit any text or RSS feed to the site. The site then uses some Java to generate a word cloud based on the content that has been submitted. The end result is a word cloud where each word is given a font size based on the number of times that word shows up in the text.

It can be a great way to get a feel for the overall message of a document or web feed without reading the entire text. Submitting the RSS feed for this blog reveals the word cloud below:
**Click the image for a larger view**

As you can see, my site content focuses heavily on the phrases: teachers, website, review, games, etc.

It can be interesting to enter the text of well known documents such as the Declaration of Independence or speeches from politicians to see which words jump at you from the cloud.

Give it a try!

Bringing Tech to the Mock Election...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 23:25:00 +0000

4 years ago I was a new teacher looking to make my mark in a new school. Being that it was an election year, a school-wide Mock Election seemed to fit the bill. We built a double stall voting booth and invited the entire school population (over 400 students K-8) to come and choose between George Bush and John Kerry. The day was quite a success.

4 years later, it was assumed that I would naturally host another Mock Election. It seemed to me to be a great opportunity to flex my tech muscle with some of the new tricks I've learned in the past 4 years.

This year's Mock Election featured the following upgrades:

Touch Screen Voting via 2 booths, one with an 8" touch screen from eBay and another with a touch screen scavenged from a store kiosk.
Live Updates via the Web: on www.mockelection.us. Throughout the day, we submitted results as each class voted. Each submission would update the total number of votes, as well as updating the totals for each class and an "Electoral Map" based on the number of students in each class.
Vote submission via Cell Phone: Using the free Textmarks service and a little bit of php wizardry, I was able to send a text message to submit the votes for each class as they left. This allowed us to instantly update the Mock Election Website in a room with no internet access.

Overall, the day was a great success. The lines moved quickly, every vote was counted, and the website made it possible for classes to follow the progress throughout the day. I won't get into the outcome of the vote (this is not a politics blog, there are plenty of those already), but it was a very revealing landslide.

I can only imagine what we will do in 2012.

Super Easy Teacher Websites...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 01:48:00 +0000

I have been experimenting with a platform that would allow school districts to easily get all of their teachers online posting homework and class announcements.

The idea to do this came to me after 4 years of watching my own district attempt several different approaches to getting our teachers online. We tried everything from uploading MS Word files on a weekly basis (awkard and inconvenient for all involved) to giving teachers their own FTP accounts to let them update their own sites on their own (we might as well have tried to split the atom).

My coding skill finally caught up with my goals for an easy to use teacher website. Thus ClassroomUpdate was born. Every teacher has a username and a password to log in to their Control Panel. The control panel is simply a web form that allows a user to enter homework assignments, announcements, links, and to update their contact info. It could not be easier and allows you to maintain a website in seconds per day.

I am wondering if any of my loyal readers (both of you) would be interested in a free site on ClassroomUpdate to help me bug test it. As far as I know, it works flawlessly, but a dozen real users may find things that I miss.

If you are interested, you can create a page at: http://www.classroomupdate.com/newpage.php

I have taken the liberty of putting in the admin password so you can create your page. Anyone who creates a page can keep it indefinitely. In the meantime, please let me know what you think and if anything is not working properly or could be improved.

The readers of this blog have been extremely helpful and supportive with the Jeopardy Review Game, and I do appreciate it. Thank you in advance to those who help me with this. (And it isn't entirely altruistic, you are getting a 100% free website!)

Play Flash Jeopardy Online (finally)

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 14:03:00 +0000

I've gotten a lot of great feedback from the online community about my Flash Jeopardy Review game. I've even received more than a few requests about upcoming features. The most common request is the ability to play created games online. This would be useful in schools where aggressive content filters do not allow the game client to be downloaded. It would also serve as a way for teachers to allow students to play the review games as a study tool from home.

After a great deal of thought on how to accomplish this functionality, I finally sat down yesterday and coded until I could code no more. I think users will be happy with the results.

When you create a new Jeopardy game, the confirmation screen will now give you two links: 1 is the link to download the game file to play offline. This works exactly as it has since the beginning. However, you are also given a link to click (or cut and paste into your own website). This link will allow you to play (and/or test) your new game immediately online without the need to download the Jeopardy.exe offline player.

All newly created games are still added to the game library, including a link to play them online.

I have also added a Google Search to allow users to search the game library.

Next Up: ~~The ability to edit previously created games~~, the ability to embed games in another site.

If you have not yet tried my Jeopardy Review Game, I encourage you to try it. It is 100% customizable to your content and makes a great review game to prepare for tests and quizzes. Paired with an LCD Projector and a SmartBoard, it makes a great teaching tool.

If you have other suggestions and or feedback, I encourage you to comment here or email me direct. I always appreciate hearing how and where my Jeopardy game is being used!

Does your school use a homework site?

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 15:06:00 +0000

I am painfully aware that I have not posted to this blog in quite some time. It isn't because I've lost interest in educational technology. In fact, quite the opposite is true. I've been ~~working on~~, ~~focusing on~~, consumed by several programs of my own.

One of the programs involves an easier way to allow teachers to post homework and announcements to the school district's website.

As I move forward, I thought I would reach out to my limited readership with a few questions.

Does your school district require teachers to post homework assignments online?
If so, how is it done? Paid service, free service?
What is the general response from teachers in schools where this is required?

I know I don't have a huge legion of readers to this blog (chances are you found your way here looking for Flash Jeopardy), but I am cautiously optimistic that a few people from around the country (world?) will take a moment to respond to this discussion.

Thanks to anyone who does!

Broadcast Your Software Use...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 02:50:00 +0000

It seems to be a growing urge of many people to broadcast their every move and thought, no matter how mundane, mediocre, or uninspiring. Twitter seems to have built a successful business model on this (I use it too).

I recently came across a site, however, that allows you to broadcast a different side of yourself that might be revealing in a different way. Wakoopa.com allows you to broadcast a list of the software you use. So that means if you are only using that $2,000 dollar laptop to play Solitaire, using Wakoopa will let the secret out to everyone.

Users of Wakoopa can put widgets on their blogs or websites showing their most frequently used software, recently used software, and newly used software.

Sure, this might be useful to you if only out of the egotistical, yet altruistic sense that you use the most cutting edge software and must perform the public service of sharing your program choices with the wide world. However, it is the ability to see what other people are using that makes this web service really shine.

When you visit Wakoopa.com, you will immediately see a scrolling section on the homepage. The scroll displays programs being used by all Wakoopa at that time (see movie below). The useful part of this is that as you hover over a program icon, you will see the name of the program. If you click the icon, you are directed to a page that tells you what that program is for. It is a great way to find out about programs people are using that you might not be aware of. You can also see crawls of other users and your own programs.

Wakoopa will also make recommendations to you based on the software you use. Essentially, the recommendations are alternative programs to those that you are using. Again, this can be a great way to learn more about what is available. Maybe there is a free or open source alternative to a pricey program you are using. If no one knows you are using that program, how would you know? Wakoopa can tell you.

I am very impressed with this software after using it for only a few hours. I think it is a fairly new idea and think that it could definitely bear fruit for software users.

GPS Tracking Device...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:46:00 +0000

Another tech goal I can cross off of my list for 2008....

I read about a site called Mologogo in Popular Science last year. They hacked a Boost Mobile phone to allow you to broadcast your GPS position to a Google Map. Naturally I had to try it. And I did. I had a page set up that would automatically load my most recent position via the cell phone. For a while I was happy with this. Then I saw the stunning satellite imagery of Microsoft Virtual Earth. All of a sudden the pictures from my Google Map didn't look quite as impressive. I looked for a way to set up the phone to transmit location info to Virtual Earth, but I couldn't figure it out. At least not yet.

Fast forward many months and many hours learning php code later, I am singing a different tune. I finally figured out how to set up the Boost phone to transmit to my own script, when then loads the coordinates into a Microsoft Live Map. The results are both stunning and creepy. Now you can track me as if you were in a low-flying hot air balloon.

Click here for the full size page...

I just made my own Twitter...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:41:00 +0000

If you are reading this blog, chances are pretty good you are not a hermit living in a cave somewhere. That means odds are you have heard of Twitter. Twitter is the super-hyped web service that allows you to post short messages that anyone else can read to see what you are up to. I'm still trying to understand the hype, seeing how I thought we have been doing this with away messages for at least 10 years. However, I do like the fact that you can update this information by phone. I have always been thrilled with being able to affect things from a distance. The idea of being able to update a webpage from anywhere I have a cell signal blows my mind. I can 100 miles from my computer and still post a message to my class website.

I experimented with Twitter here and there over the past few months. Like many such services, Twitter offers code to post widgets on any website that will show your status. My problem was that they only had 2 or 3 different options for the widget, none of which were particularly attractive to me. I felt there had to be a way to make my own widget and display a message sent via text message on a cell phone. After several failed attempts, I finally found a way to do this without Twitter. Twitter could drop off the face of the net tomorrow, and my page would still work.

You can test it out below. Here's how:
**Click here to open the test page in a new window**

Send a text message to 41411. It is a site called Textmarks.com.
The first word of the text must be edutech
After that you can type your own message (edutech Here is my message.)
Refresh this page.
Read your message below.

Email me if you want this on your site. There are a few things you need to know. If a lot of people want it, I will post more detailed instructions.

Custom Split Flap Flash Code for Websites!

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Sun, 25 May 2008 14:09:00 +0000

Click here to make your own split flap message!

My own personal Flash Vision Quest continues. I have been playing with the Flashvars parameter to embed variables in the html code that you use to embed Flash on a webpage. In the past, I had used separate files to hold all of my variables, which Flash would then import values from. Now I figured out how to use php to make a page that would write the code for me complete with variables!

My first experiment was with the split-flap message you see above. If you like it, you can make one of your own. You will be given html code that you can embed on any web page, including Myspace, blogs, etc.

Stay tuned...more to come!

Make a Custom Font....

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Thu, 15 May 2008 02:57:00 +0000

Are you tired of using pens and pencils all the time to write letters and little notes to people? Why not make a font that looks like your own handwriting and liberate yourself from pesky ink and graphite based writing utensils? I stumbled across a site called "Fontifier" that will let you do just that.

The process is simple.

Visit Fontifier.com
Print a full page copy of their font template (shown at right).
You complete the template by writing in all 26 letters in uppercase and lowercase, numbers 0-9, and all punctuation.
Scan the template.
Upload the completed template.
If you want to keep your font, it will cost you $9. You can pay via Paypal and you get to keep the font forever. I felt it was $9 well spent.

Flash Jeopardy Game Update....

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Thu, 08 May 2008 04:13:00 +0000

I've been getting some nice feedback from all over on the Flash Jeopardy game I posted a few days back. I've added a few features based on your feedback.

--You can now set the values for each question, instead of the automatic 100,200,300,400, and 500 point defaults.

--I created a Mac version of the game. The Mac version is able to use the same text files for games that makes the PC version work. Pretty nice.

If you haven't had a chance to play around with the game yet, you can use the sample below to give it a test run.

The game name file is: sample

Everything you need to start running your own game of Classroom Jeopardy for the PC or the Mac is available here.

Please keep the feedback coming!

Make Your Own Screen Saver...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Wed, 07 May 2008 02:09:00 +0000

Bored with your screen saver?

If you are an Adobe (or Macromedia) Flash aficionado, www.creamshavers.com can help you go beyond that boring starfield or those endless winding 3d pipes. With nothing but a Flash file, you can now quickly and easily make your own screensavers that can be installed on any Windows machine.

Simply visit the Creamshavers site, upload your Flash (.swf) file, and the site does the rest. Within seconds, you are given a download link for the .exe file to install on your computer. Once installed, it will show up in your control panel with the rest of your screen savers. I have made several screen savers in this way and can attest to the fact that they contain no watermarks, ads, popups, or spyware like many other so-called "free screensavers."

Of course I created a sample screensaver. And it should come as little to no shock to anyone who knows me that my sample screensaver is Lost inspired. I took the Lost Countdown Clock from Season 2 and used a little basic Actionscript to create a Lost Clock screensaver. Feel free to download it and install it on every computer in your office for that authentic "Lost" feel.

Flash Jeopardy Game...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Kries) — Sun, 04 May 2008 16:18:00 +0000

If you use an LCD Projector in the classroom, or better yet a SmartBoard, I have just finished work on a review game that makes setting up and using Jeopardy reviews simple and fun. I have used the blank Jeopardy Powerpoint template in the past and always found it to be a bit dull. I have felt for the past couple years that there had to be a better way to do this in Flash and make it more customizable and easy to create new games to use, rather than changing 50-60 slides in the Powerpoint version. I finally sat down this past week and was able to make a fully customizable Flash Jeopardy game. What you are seeing is a realization of one man's dream to change the "Jeopardy Review Game" game.

The Jeopardy Review game has 2 parts. The first part is a Flash form (shown to the right with the gray background) that allows you to create 5 categories of questions. Each category can have up to 5 questions each. The nice thing about it is that you do not need to fill in every field, the ones you leave blank will not be programmed into the actual review game.

Once you enter all of the questions, you click "Create Game" and the web page will create a simple text file that can be saved into a folder on your computer. This text file contains the variables that will tell the Flash Jeopardy file your category names, questions, and answers. You can create multiple text files for multiple reviews. They can all be saved into the same folder with separate filenames.

After you have created a game file, you can run the Flash Jeopardy file. The file will ask you to type the name of the game text file (for example: worldwarone) so it can load your game info into the Jeopardy game. From there you are ready to play!

The game itself is pretty self-explanatory. All of your questions are loaded into the template. When a user clicks on a square, they are taken to the page for that question. The game also automatically keeps track of the score for up to 5 teams.

If you want to try this for yourself with your own questions, a more complete set of instructions can be found here. This page will guide you through the easy steps of creating and playing a new game.

If you want to try this online, click this link. Enter the word "sample" as the filename when the page asks.

I created this program in the hopes that others would find it to be a quick and easy way to create review games with no programming knowledge required. If you use this and you have feedback or suggestions for improvement, please leave comments. I welcome any constructive criticism.

P.S. If you create games that others might like to use, please send me the text files for them. Maybe I can create a game library of all different subjects.

**UPDATE**
I have created a Mac version of the jeopardy game. It works exactly the same as the PC version. You can still use the game file creation tool using the link above. Let me know how it works out for the Mac users!