Wired Educator

Windows is bad for education.

Ok, I am going to be Honest.  I hate windows.  That is no surprise.  I have been struggling the past two days with a colleague’s Computer.  It happens to run windows.  It was running slow and poorly so he asked me to take a look at it.  So at first it ran slow, and had poor virus backup.  Once it was updated it ran a little better and all of a sudden it takes about 30 minutes to boot up and I can’t get a mouse or the trackpad to work at all.  It won’t read any CD, not even the boot CD.  I am officially giving up after 48 hours of work and not looking at it again.  

Now why is windows bad for education.  I have a PC at my school that the school provides for me.  I kept track… I was not able to use my computer 18 days of the school year due to technical difficulties.  Some were viruses, Networking issues, One day was even because our grade-books crashed and we needed the bandwidth to run them.  Now we run off a server only so that means that we cannot even run them off the network which is a logistical nightmare.  Not for me of course.

I carry my handy MacBook Pro with me every day to school and run my presentations and what not off of it so I have no such problems.  When I update my Mac I never have to worry about parts of it not running correctly.  I am so sick of windows in education.  Everybody needs to go MAC.

I have been promoting the use of ‘An iPod in Every Classroom’ at eTech Conferences and smaller venues for the past few years.  I enjoy presenting the many uses an iPod offers in education,  and the list continues to multiply each year.  What began as a way to deliver audio and video podcasts to students quickly, and more importantly easily, has blossomed into iPods being used to document student readings, interactive personalized quizzes, SAT and ACT practice, PowerPoint conversion, and much, much more.  Oh, so much more, but now the I believe even that glass ceiling has been shattered with the release of specialized iTunes Education Content and now, even more amazing, iPod Touch/iPhone applications focused on education.  Things are about to get interesting.

In an earlier post I announced the release of iTunes University creating a special section for K-12 content.  Educators now have a wonderful library of excellent audio and video podcasts to download and integrate into their lessons for free. Now not only can educators easily create excellent podcasts easily with an iPod, now they have treasure trove of resources.

Twenty-one iPhone/iPod Touch apps are currently in the iTunes App Store with many more about to be released.  The current lineup includes foreign language study, flashcards, math simulations, eBook reading software, anatomy, other specialized science content, and more. Some of the apps are free downloads, others are small fees, and a couple are about the price of a good book.  Students can study flashcards, create their own, or review with interactive quizzes. Some of the science apps and foreign language apps are just amazing by allowing users to have a pocket palanetarium, view three-dimensional models of hydrogen atoms, or record and play back foreign language practice.  As if that weren’t cool encough, the app store isn’t even two weeks old yet.

Certainly more apps are on the way, but what I am really interested in is the ability to easily create my own. I read an article today that Stanford is now offering a class on designing iPod Touch/iPhone application design.  I am hoping that an easy-to-use program for educators to create specialized review lessons, games, and other content will be released soon.  (That is my hope; I have heard nothing. I don’t think it would be that difficult.)

I will be reviewing education apps independently on site, so keep checking back.  If you would like to submit a review on an edcuation app or share how you use technology in our classroom, please send us an email to wirededucator@gmail.com.

Apple is billing this use of iPods in the classroom as Mobile Learning. “iTunes U and Mobile Learning: The road to knowledge is wider than ever.”

I just downloaded the WordPress Blogging Application for my iPhone. (I downloaded it on my iPhone from my pool via WiFi. Cool!) WordPress is the app we use to create this blog.

“So?” you ask.”What does this have to do with Education Tech?” Lots. First, this will enhance Wired Educator as we blog from conferences, tech sessions, and from various travels. Updating the site from the road and spontaneously. Second, it has just added to the increasing list of jobs I am now doing on my phone. I am using my laptop and desktop less and less as more applications become available. Last, it has now solidified my view of classroom blogging. I have truly been sitting on the fence with blogging as a part of my classroom, but now I see incredible uses and have confirmed the safety features. It is just a matter of approval and implementation. (More on classroom blogging on another post.) Now with this WordPress app, Wired Educators can post from fieldtrips and anywhere learning is taking place. And quickly too! Post those magic moments. Archive those wonderful lessons and success. Document your work. I am very excited.

I wrote and published this entire post from my iPhone. I even discovered it automatically saves when my phone goes off. Handhelds are coninuously taking bigger roles in schools, and in life. Here is another plus for iPods in the classroom.

Discmakers is something that I most recently have found.  For many years, actually ever since being able to burn discs, I have slaving over my computer manually inserting discs over and over.  As a matter of fact only two years ago I remember burning 300 Discs manually to get highlight film ready for football.  One at a time.  I believe it took me well over 20 hours with four computers burning.  Well those days are over.  I have talked our athletic boosters into purchasing a duplicator to automatically do this.  It came in and I love it.  All I have to do is use my computer to create the first copy of what I need to burn and then all I do is insert it with the blank DVD’s and come back a while later and all of them are burned.  I have added time back to my life!  And it only costs $500.00!  What Have I been thinking all of this time.

About Discmakers…  What a company.  They have been a 5 star service.  I stumbled upon them totally by chance.  I was in Manhattan walking to my favorite photo place when I saw this store called discmakers.  So I went inside.  Inside it was only a sales office.  There was nothing in there to buy but the people working in there were very helpful and excited about what they were doing.  And young I may add.  Then don’t just sell duplicators, they will Burn, package, and distribute any type of media that you would like to produce.  If you would like something to look very good, they are the company to go to.  They do just about everything when it comes to creating CD’s and DVD’s.  I highly suggest checking out their website at www.discmakers.com and if you have any questions just give them a call.

Apple has recently filed for a patent that may take podcasts to an entirely new level.  The patent unveils plans to include software that combines both a video and audio feed of the presenter with the keynote/powerpoint presentation in one single appealing format. The plans are also designed to emiminate the need for editing and stream the podcasts wirelessy to any number of iPods, iPhones, and Macs.

The filing is basically for an automated content capture and processing system where a live camera feed of a presenter can be automatically merged with a Keynote or PowerPoint presentation to form an entertaining and dynamic podcast that lets the viewer watch the presenter’s slides as well as the presenter. In one example outlined in the filing, the content capture system provides a video stream (Stream A) and an Keynote presentation stream (Stream B) to a recording agent such as a Mac running specialized Podcast creation software. The recording agent then blends the two feeds together based on certain cues and sends the combined feed to a syndication server that would then distribute the video wirelessly as a Podcast to any number of authorized Macs, iPods or iPhones. (From AppleInsider.)

Keynote 08 allows for the presentation/slideshow to be recorded with audio and  exported as a video podcast. Also, a nice software titled ProfCast allows for the capture of audio to be combined with your Keynote of PowerPoint and converted to a video podcast. There is no software that seamlessly and easily allows you to capture both the presenter and the slides as well as audio. The best you could do now may be for a simple iMovie capture using your MacBook but it would not make the slideshow you worked so hard on look very good.

The entire patent includes much more in the way the presenter can interact with the recording through voice, gestures, and laser pointers.  Please note that earlier reported patents such as Podcasts on Demand and  PodMaps have not been realized so there can be absolutely no gurantee this will be a reality.  ( I sure hope it happens, though!)

I am a huge advocate of podcasting. The benefits and uses are numerous. I embrace, recommend, and teach the idea of limited or no-editing podcasts, so this new patent really intrigues me.  My desire podcasts to be as simple, yet effective as possible.  My goal is make it as easy for the teacher as possible to capture an audio or video podcast.  The teacher has the challenge of making  the podcast meaningful.

I really like this patent idea and will be following it closely.  I hope I can update this article soon as to a date of delivery to educators everywhere.

iPhone 3G

Ok so the iPhone 3G has been out for a week now.  My impressions are Wow.  My hands got on a 3G iPhone at my local ATT store here in Sandusky Ohio.  I currently have the first generation and have no plans to upgrade any time soon.  Now from my experiences I can fairly say that this is the greatest phone that I have ever had.  Every where that I go I am sharing my own uses of the phone with others.  As far as uses in education I have many.  I have used my iPhone to show others movies that my class has made, pictures of things that I need to remember, and even to share music with my class and football Players.  I love it and the uses have only gotten larger with the opening of the App Store.

In case you have been out for the last 6 months, the iPhone has oppened its OS up to 3rd party developers to write native applications.  So far I have downloaded 18 different apps that I have been using.  16 of them were totally free applications.  The two that I have paid for are a voice memo application and a game called Enigmo which is a great problem solving game.  Rather than review all of my applications, I will review only a couple and when I see fit I will try a couple more.

Shazam:  Shazam is a song recognition program that I see as the most refined and wonderful pice of software that I have used probably my whole life.  This program is a song recognition software that can figure out what song is playing, the artist, and the album with only a 10 second recording of the music.  I have tried this at home, in the car, and even at a shopping mall.  It has worked each and every time.  If you hear a song you want more information about all you have to do is complete a 10 second recording and it somehow communicates to its own servers and a very short time later (about 5 seconds usually) it will provide you with the song name, artist, and album.  It will also provide you with a link to download the song in some cases if it is available.  Love the app.  Not sure how to use it in my classroom yet but I am sure I will find a way.

Remote:  Ok now this little software company called Apple Inc. even got into the mix and wrote their own app for the phone.  This app takes control of your iTunes Library on your computer and allows you to play through your MAC or apple TV whatever you would like to.  It is much nicer than using the apple remote itself to remotely control your music library.  You get to see the music artwork and browse wherever you would like when you use this app.  The only thing that is not supported by this is cover flow which is more of an aesthetic thing anyways.

Well those are two must have programs that I have been messing with this week.  I hope if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch that you enjoy the software that has been released and please provide be with any apps that seem to help you out.

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the National Education Association (NEA),  as well as three other powerful educational organizations, have joined together to develop a public service announcement aimed at the presidential candidates, and the need to emphasize the importance of both education in our nation’s future and the role technology will play in it. The public service announcement calls for the next president to address their vision of the 21st-Century classroom and make technology initiatives in education a major part of the upcoming debates.

The 2008 Presidential Race debates are on their way.  Much will be said about the war in Iraq, Health Care, and the economy.  Hopefully this public service announcement will bring some much needed attention to schools.

The groups funding the ad are concerned about the shrinking number of college students majoring in math or science and the need for technology in our schools. They use the ad to show how the focus decades ago on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) helped America in the 60’s win the space race and paved the way for economic progress of the 80s and 90s, a similar focus will help determine the United States success in the new global economy.

“Today, nearly 40 years after this historic accomplishment, we’re facing new challenges–including a flattening global economy and climate change,” the ad reads. “Now, more than ever, we must engage and train the next generation of scientists and innovators to address these 21st-century problems and opportunities. Student access to school technology, robust teacher technology preparation, and a renewed focus on 21st-century skills are as critical to this mission as they were to the Apollo astronauts.”

Classroom textbooks are undergoing some notable changes, giving schools many new options and resources.Technology is rapidly changing the way textbooks are produced, sold, and used.

According to the Government Accountability Office, textbooks have outpaced inflation 2 to 1 in the last twenty years, and they make up 26 percent of tuition and fees at four-year colleges. A recent USA Today article cites the increasing use of “open textbooks” as a way to combat skyrocketing textbook prices for college students.  Open textbook are basically free texts that are available online.  Licenses are sold to schools and users are able to download any or all of the text. The texts can be read online or can be printed out.  Educators are also given the ability to customize the content for their classes. Some open textbooks agreements also allow for inexpensive print-on-demand, professionally bound copies at inexpensive prices.

Kindle, Amazon’s amazing ten ounce wireless reading device, is becoming a major player in the future of classroom texts as well.  Kindle already boasts an online reading library of over 130,000 books and a host of other electronic content.  Now it is being picked up by Princeton University, Yale, and the University of California for use this fall by giving students the option of buying hundreds of textbooks in a Kindle edition rather than hardback. The University of California already has 40 percent of its texts available for download.

Kindles cost $359, and the online editions are not much cheaper than the hardbacks.  Still, it is a major advancement in textbooks. Imagine having all of your texts available wherever you go and it weighs just ten ounces. The special “electronic paper” of the Kindle makes the text much easier to read. It has been reported, however, that diagrams and charts do not do as well on the Kindle.

This past school year I served on a curriculum textbook adoption committee and worked with four different textbook publishers.  I was surprised to learn how much content is now online and offered on CD.  Houghton Mifflin, Holt, Glencoe, Prentice Hall, many others now offer entire texts on CD for teachers and students to take home.  Additional resources are now being provided online to compliment the texts including power point, smart board lessons, video segments, and more.

Online textbooks were also available with these publishers. Students are able to log onto a web portal and access the entire text.  No more, “I forgot to take my book home.”  I was truly impressed with the integration of technology and textbooks during this recent adoption.

In the end, books will never go away.  They are loved and treasured by many.  I do enjoy my books and would prefer reading a hardback over any other form.  Books are durable and dependable.  They are extremely portable and can contain a huge amount of information.  Books will always be around, but it is nice to have a variety of options and additional resources for teachers.

“Protecting Your Online Reputation” Written for Wired Educator by Edward Shepard, Small Dog Electronics, Ed@Smalldog.com

You have a good reputation around town, but how does your online reputation stack up? Your online reputation includes the content returned when your name or email address is queried in Google, Yahoo, or the new people-search websites such as Spock.com. This content includes news, personal web sites, participation in blogs, forums, and social media sites, even photos and videos. The internet has become the place where second and even first impressions are very often made. This is as true (or even more so) for educators as most other professions.

According to Search Engine Watch, there are 25 to 50 million proper-name searches performed each day. Beyond curiosity, people “Google” other people to verify credentials, assess reputation, and to look for a method of contact. A 2007 survey showed that 50% of hiring officials use the internet to vet job applications.

This has both strong positive and negative implications. Websites such a Ratemyteachers.com and Rottenneighbor.com make it easy for anonymous individuals to post malicious personal attacks on the internet. More common are examples of jobs lost, promotions denied, and job offers never made due to information that individuals posted about themselves on sites such as Facebook or Myspace. And perhaps, the most common are cases of embarrassing mistaken identity–when a stranger who happens to share your name posts information you’d prefer not to be associated with.

There is already plenty of information posted about us online, whether we want it there or not. The important thing is to make sure this information reflects positively on our name, work, and character. Fortunately, with a little effort, we can influence what people find when they search for us. Here are a seven steps you can take to establish, protect and enhance your virtual reputation.

#1: Use Common Sense – Information posted online is often available for many years, especially to determined seekers. The easiest way to protect your virtual reputation is to avoid posting seemingly-fun-but-potentially-embarrassing information about yourself, especially on social network sites, in public forums, and under your own name. Even college students are learning not to write about their hangovers and hookups online.

If you are writing about a controversial subject, it’s often best to post anonymously (when possible). Otherwise use a pseudonym and try to post in private, password protected forums. Still, be cautious. Pseudonyms can be deciphered, and just because information is originally posted in a private forum doesn’t mean it will stay there. Remember, especially online, you only get one reputation.

#2: Set up a LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is a very easy, positive, and free way to summarize professional accomplishments, connect with colleagues and partners, and promote yourself online. It is fast becoming an essential resource for hiring and HR departments. LinkedIn is Google-friendly, so your LinkedIn profile will show up via a Google search. People-search programs like Spock.com rely on LinkedIn. Also, on LinkedIn you are in strict control of your profile, and only connect to trusted contacts.

#3: Buy an internet domain in your name (such as www.edwardshepard.com), or as close to your name as possible. There are malicious individuals who have purchased domains in other people’s names, solely to post derogatory and false information about them. While this could happen to anyone, people who work in public service are especially vulnerable. I own Edwardshepard.com, Edwardshepard.net, and Edwardshepard.org. It costs me less than $20 to own all three for two years, and I can easily renew for up to five years at a time. This prevents someone else from making a website that makes me look bad, either on purpose or accidentally. I can make myself look bad enough, thank you very much.

There are many good websites where you can purchase a domain in your name. Many offer web hosting on top of domain registration. Popular registrars include Godaddy.com, Google.com, and (most expensive) Networksolutions.com. I use IntuitiveISP.com, because a friend founded the company.

#4: A personal website is one of the most powerful tools for protecting your online reputation. Establish at least a basic website with information about yourself, preferably at the domain you purchased above. Many domain registrars include free, basic webpage hosting services. Alternately, many web hosts offer free domain registration. Your website can be very simple, with your name, some basic information about you, a public email address, and a link to your LinkedIn profile. Your website is also a good place to showcase your special interests and expertise. Don’t be afraid to have fun with your website, as long as it’s tasteful and ultimately reflects well on you. Also, most modern website creation packages include the ability to password-protect certain pages, where you can post private information for select friends and family.

Even if you don’t want to buy a domain, there are some great, easy-to-use free blog and website hosting companies. My favorites are Blogger.com, Google Pages, Tumblr.com, and Weebly.com. These typically provide an URL that includes your name (www.edwardshepard.tumblr.com). I will cover these and other free, high quality website creation tools in a future article.

#5: If you use social networking sites (Facebook, Myspace, etc), be sure to polish your profile. Most online social networks give you a fair amount of control over what information is shared in your profile. For many professionals, less is more. Simply posting your name and profession is often best. Addresses, phone numbers, and birth dates are best kept private (especially as these can be tools for identity thieves).

#6: Use Google Alerts: You can receive an automatic email (for free) from Google anytime Google discovers a new webpage with your name. This is very easy to set up, and you can control how many times a day, week or month you receive the alert. You can also do this for your school or business. Of course, if your name happens to be “Brad Pitt” or “Brit Spears,” you will get lots of bogus alerts. On the other hand, this can be an easy way to find out if people online are talking about you.

#7. Consider third-party reputation management solutions. Companies such as Naymez.com (free) can help you positively nurture your virtual reputation. Wink.com (free) shows your online profile, and can help you you to dispute it. Reputationdefender.com (fee-based) not only shows you what’s being said about you, but actually provides tools for you to get rid of the content you don’t like.

We must consider that our virtual reputation is as important as our real-world reputation. Fortunately, with just a little effort, we can gain enhanced professional and networking capabilities when we do this.

~Wired Educator encourages you to support Small Dog Electronics.