Category Archives: Technology

Technology, Web 2.0

Video and Animoto

Some of you may already be familiar with Philip Scott Johnson‘s videos on YouTube, but in case you aren’t, here is a sample (one of his more popular videos):

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/nUDIoN-_Hxs" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Johnson’s videos have a lot of potential for use in art and social studies classes. In the tradition that a picture is worth a thousand words, his videos will speak volumes to students studying topics as diverse as the Civil War, geography, film, and Picasso.

After your class has viewed a Johnson video, it might be fun for them to use Animoto to create a similar video. Here is an Animoto video I created using old photographs of my family:

Issues, Technology

“Open-Source Has Already Won”

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I hope Steve Hargadon will forgive me for stealing something he said at EduBloggerCon last June (I can’t remember the context anymore, to be honest) for my title, but as I have been reading The World is Flat and thinking about technology and open-source, I have been turning Steve’s statement around in my head.

Thomas Friedman interviews executives from Microsoft in The World is Flat. They seem fairly assured of their ability to compete in a world of open-source software, and they have one good reason to believe in their consumers will continue to purchase their products: the vast majority of consumers don’t know any better, or they are not compelled to learn about alternatives.

Most of my colleagues at work use Internet Explorer. It comes bundled with Windows, after all, which is the operating system our school computers use. I like Firefox enough that I am willing to download it myself. Our school recently migrated to Google Apps for e-mail, and the first thing most of my colleagues did was configure Outlook to use as their mail client. I’m not faulting my colleagues. At what point did anyone sit down and show them all that Firefox and G-Mail can do? I don’t fault our Instructional Technology department either. Teachers are notoriously resistant to technology, and when did they have time to show the teachers these alternatives to Microsoft?

Open-source software has a lot of possibilities that I’m really excited about. But the vast majority of the public who uses computer software remains uneducated about open-source software and shows no inclination to learn.

Did you know…

  • An open-source office suite that easily competes with Microsoft Office is available for free? It’s called Open Office. MS Office 2007 is listed at $399.95.
  • An open-source photo editor that easily competes with Adobe Photoshop is available for free? It’s called GIMP. Adobe Photoshop CS3 is listed at $649.99.
  • In fact, a lot of, if not most of the software you use probably has an open-source counterpart?

Open-source is gaining ground, but only among those savvy enough to know anything about it. As large as our ed tech community sometimes seems, I am reminded on a daily basis that we’re really just a few lone voices crying in the wilderness. It is my hope that we can make Steve’s statement come true, and I have already seen encouraging signs:

  • After years of trying to compete with WordPress after a disastrous move toward tiered pricing, Movable Type recently announced that it is open-source. Actually, it’s my opinion (and I’m not alone in this) that MT could no longer viably compete unless they went open-source.
  • The journal Nature announced two years ago that Wikipedia‘s error rate is about the same as that of Encyclopaedia Britannica.
  • Microsoft’s Office 2007 suite changed the file extensions to Office OpenXML. Files are now a lot smaller. The user interface in Office is totally different, too. One could argue that among the many reasons for these changes is that Microsoft wanted to stay viable in light of the many alternatives to Office that are now available. After all, all of the open source or online office suites and word processing programs I can think of are compatible with Microsoft’s older extensions — anyone smell a move toward phasing the older extensions out, making it harder for the competition to play nicely with Microsoft Office documents?
  • In the first two years of its existence, Firefox managed to erode IE’s market share by 10 percent. When IE 7 was released, who could fail to notice that one of Firefox’s most popular features, tabbed browsing (which is also available in other free, open source browsers), was now included in IE?

All of these things mean that community-built, open-source software is definitely winning some battles, but the war is still raging.

I recently e-mailed my daughter’s school to let them know their website was really problematic in a variety of ways, only to discover they felt they had done a great deal of work on the site. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but after our exchange, I decided to check out the site in IE. It looked fine. When I told them their site was actually not rendering properly in Firefox, they were dismissive. In fact, I think the exact words were “I’m glad you can see the real website now.” As of this week, they still have not fixed the site so that it renders properly in Firefox. I don’t think they know how. And I don’t think they intend to learn. After all, most of the people using their website are probably using IE.

It is my hope that there will come a time when that kind of thinking won’t cut it. I just checked the site in Safari, and it looks the same as it does in Firefox. So essentially, that means Mac users can’t look at the site unless they use IE for Mac, which is no longer available for download from Microsoft and will not be updated. So it’s acceptable for a school to create a site only Windows users surfing on IE can view?

Only in a world where open-source hasn’t quite won… yet.

Technology, Web 2.0

Moodle

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Have any of you used Moodle?  What do you think of it?  What do you like about it?  Please share your comments; I am thinking about using it, but I would like some more information from users first.

Blogging, Issues, Technology

Some Thoughts on The World is Flat

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The World is FlatI have been reading Thomas L. Friedman’s The World is Flat as part of an online PLU course.  Really the course just gave me a good excuse for reading a book I had been wanting to read for some time.

I am still finishing the second chapter about various flatteners that have brought us to the point where we find ourselves today, and I could not help but be struck by his comments regarding blogs.  Is it just me, or does he seems somewhat more concerned about the negative aspects of blogs and blogging in comparison with the other flatteners he discusses?  He says at one point, “A blog is your own personal virtual soapbox, where you can get up every morning, and, in the form of a column or a newsletter or just a screed, tell the world what you think about any subject, upload the content to your own Web site, and then wait for the world to come check it out” (117).  Perhaps the word “screed” just jumps out at me, but I see this comment as somewhat negative.  Yes, some bloggers write screeds, but I don’t read many blogs like that.  He praises the bloggers who were able to expose “Rathergate,” but in the next breath he adds that “no one is in charge, standards of practice vary wildly, and some of it is downright irresponsible” (117).  I know that what he says at true, but part of me wonders if he isn’t worried because bloggers are, as Charles Johnson quoted on the same page describes them, “an army of citizen journalists.”  It just makes me wonder if Friedman feels threatened by bloggers.

I have to say I have found the book engaging and intriguing, and frankly, I have learned a great deal from the book.  I know one thing — it is critical that educators help students prepare for entering this new flat world, and I don’t think all of our schools are doing enough.

Another curiosity I have about this book — when I posted on my reading blog that I was reading this book, a reader who had never commented on my blog before left a comment suggesting I read alternative theories by two other authors, criticized the length of Friedman’s book, and then left.  A quick Google search unearthed four pages of extremely similar comments.  She has not, at least not in the comments I have read, really explained her passion for convincing others not to read this book, or at least not to take it as the last word, but she clearly has some kind of agenda.  It would not surprise me to see her comment here, as I think she monitors Technorati or Google for blogs discussing this book, and it is my hope that rather than leave her standard comment, she will be willing to engage in a discussion of her particular concerns about this book.

At any rate, as I progress through the book, I do intend to post my thoughts about it here.

Technology

Flip Video

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OK, probably everybody and their grandmother (well, maybe not their grandmother) has already heard of the Flip video camera, but I hadn’t until today. One of my students has a father who is a major broadcasting executive, and he was sent one to check out. My student brought it to school. She said, “Hey, Mrs. Huff, you want to see something I think will interest you?”

The Flip video recorder allows users to take up to 30 or 60 minutes of video (depending on the model you purchase) and upload the video directly to Google Video or YouTube. It might work with Teacher Tube, too — I’m just not sure.

I think the Flip video camera will have some interesting applications for education, and if you order three or more from their website, you can get an educator rebate.

Flip Diagram

Technology

Saving for a Laptop

I have begun saving for a new laptop, as I cannot find any teacher laptop initiatives at the current time.  Until I have saved enough money to purchase a laptop, you will see a link at the bottom of my posts.  If the spirit moves you, you can follow the link to help me save for a new laptop.  By no means should you feel obligated to help, even if you have downloaded one of my free handouts or used free lesson plans.  If I wanted to make this site a paid-content site or if I wanted to raise money through advertising, I would have done so by now.  I haven’t ruled out offering exclusive content for a small fee, but that is some time down the road.  A new link also appears in the sidebar to a page detailing the reasons why I am interested in buying a new laptop.

Thanks for reading.  I am always amazed by the feedback I receive from my readers, and I truly appreciate being part of the edublogger community.

Issues, Teaching Writing, Technology, Wikis

The Best Laid Plans

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Some weeks ago, I shared exciting news that my students were collaborating with a girls’ school in Israel on a joint wiki writing project. Just as we got our wikis off the ground, a teachers’ strike in Israel put our plans on hold. The strike has now lasted more than a month. If it is not resolved before the winter break in about three weeks, the project will be on hold indefinitely as my students will be writing a research paper from January to March.

I know that the teachers I am working with are saddened about this turn of events, and I think we all agree that the timing of our collaboration was unfortunate in light of the strike. However, I think our situation poses an interesting lesson for all of us who are interested in embarking upon global collaboration in our classrooms.

What do we do when the best laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft a-gley?

And what does it say about the project that the kids are still chatting through the discussion area of the wiki and friending each other on Facebook even though the project is on hiatus?

Blogging, Professional Development, Teaching Literature, Technology, Web 2.0, Wikis

GISA Conference

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I went to the annual Georgia Independent School Association (GISA) Annual Conference today.  I ate lunch with Megan; it’s cool to see connections I made through this blog become “real-life” connections as well.  Incidentally, Megan presented a session on using social bookmarking (such as del.icio.us).  The two sessions I went to were very interesting (which hasn’t always been the case at GISA — the session I presented last year included): Fantasy Literature (teaching The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Harry Potter along with Campbell’s ideas about the journey of the hero) and Blogs and Wikis in the Classroom.  Frankly, I confess I went to the latter to see if a) it would be better than the session I presented last year (it was), b) what the presenters would say.  I did not expect to learn about anything new.  Of course, I did learn about some things that were new to me, at any rate.

One thing that interested me in particular about the Fantasy Literature session was that so many other schools already have this class as an elective.  A teacher from Pace Academy shared his successes teaching the course to 8th graders, and a teacher from Griffin Christian High School shared that he teaches The Lord of the Rings for the first semester of 9th grade, teaching all the literary terms, etc., through the context of that work.  I taught The Hobbit one year — when I was a student teacher, in fact — and I found that students in general didn’t like it much, but I think as part of an elective, it would be a different crowd.  Frankly, I could see myself really enjoying such a class.

The blogs and wikis session introduced me to Voice Thread, which Megan mentioned also at lunch.  I imagine if you hear about something twice in such a short span of time, someone’s trying to send a message.  For the uninitiated, Voice Thread is online software that allows users to create documentaries using images and creating narration to accompany the images.  Check out this sample of its use: Slavery in America (by Jeff Morrison’s middle school students at the Lovett School).  Jeff (one of the presenters) also introduced us to TrackStar, which somehow went under my radar, even though I’ve used 4Teachers‘ other service RubiStar to create rubrics.

I am thinking about ways I might integrate some of these resources with my current projects — The Canterbury Tales and The Odyssey.  You can view Jeff’s wiki, which has links to a bunch of sources he shared with us.

One of my favorite parts of Jeff’s presentation was a video he shared:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/1SmgLtg1Izw" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

As Jeff said, that is what it is like to teach.  Especially middle school.

By the way, I am now receiving e-mails when comments are posted.  I kept my eyes on the WordPress Support forums’ thread related to my problem, and eventually, someone posted a solution that worked for me.  I uploaded a plugin created to work around the problem.

Technology

Stress Test

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My students participated in the 2007 Apple Insomnia Film Festival contest and created a video entitled “Stress Test.”  Filmmakers can win the contest in two ways: 1) be awarded first place by the judges, or 2) win a popular vote.  Please check out their video, and if you enjoy what you see, vote for them.

If you don’t have an Apple ID, you need to create one in order to vote.  If you have an Apple ID, you can vote here.

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments, and I will ask the students to address them for you.  Thanks!

Issues, Technology, Web 2.0

Any True Crime Fans?

I guess fans isn’t the right word, is it? I mean, that sounds kind of like you “like” the fact that crime exists. At any rate, my husband is a true crime writer, and he will be appearing on a special for Court TV — MyCase.com:

The internet provides a startling new look into the mind of a criminal. Profiles are posted on personal web sites, motives revealed in online blogs, and premeditated plans detailed on email. There’s a new type of investigator following the trail: the Cyber-sleuth. They will show us that, online, we are closer than we realize to clues and insight into criminal minds. TV-14

You can learn more about it at his blog.