EdTech Avenue

Lisa Whitaker has a school board member that wants them to run on Linux.  Any thoughts? 

The school board member writes:

I have been looking into Linux and think we could do some travelling carts for pretty cheap. Or if not carts we could have some computers in the classroom. Linux runs well on old computers (Windows 98 or the Mac equivalent), which could be pretty cheap to get our hands on from places that are upgrading, and then you can run all sorts of free programs – word processing, etc. If you put Wine on the computer, it will emulate Windows and you can run many (not all) old software CDs. That would allow teachers to do keyboarding and art and math facts, etc. on the computers.  There is a guy on my work listserv who runs his whole law office using Linux, free software, and internet-based programs.

It might be something to look into for the future. Do you know much about Linux, or have you heard of any schools using it? We probably couldn’t do podcasts and things, but it might be a solution for the younger grades, which could free up tech room space for the older grades.

This post was requested by Lisa Whitaker.  Please see below and join the conversation!

I heard recently that not all features on Smartboards work with a Mac but I can’t find anything so far that shows me that.

Our librarian passed this onto me: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/14847-any-school-using-interwrite-pads-bluetooth.html

I found this free Promethean viewer at Promethean Planet. You have to register but that is free as well: http://www.prometheanplanet.com/server.php?show=nav.15853&ua_siteLoginRequired=1

Anyone using Moodle? Just found out our high school is, and wanting to bring down to younger levels. We are feeders into our high school, and strive to have our kids ready for the task. Not knowing how to set up a moodle server. anyone else???

There are many different ways to report problems with technology, as well as many different problems to report. Anything from user issues to software issues (is the application frozen or is your computer frozen?) to hardware issues can eat up hours and hours of a technology coordinator’s time. And when the technology coordinator is all you have in a school, that could mean teachers and students aren’t getting the personal attention of the technology coordinator either.

Many schools have formal reporting processes such as problem “tickets,” forms to fill out on paper or online, or other procedures. I have yet to find something that works. I haven’t worked out a system of my own, even after six years, because quite honestly, as technology changes, so do the problems and possible reporting methods.

I take requests any way someone wants to give them, although I do handle them a bit differently, depending on my current status of busy-ness and projects. Electronic methods are, of course, my favorite. Email is great because I can flag messages and set reminders – but along with those benefits comes the inevitable problem of old messages getting pushed further and further down the Inbox list. Windows Messenger is becoming a little more common for us as well. I trained my teachers in using IM for tech support in preparation for my maternity leave in February. I will not be having a sub for my position and have worked out a leave that allows teachers and administrators to still contact me with questions. I also have LogMeIn installed on my main workstation, which allows me to log in remotely to my machine, connect to the school network, and access any tools I would have when sitting at my desk (Windows Messenger, Remote Assistance, files, Remote Desktop). With Windows Messenger, I can address problems immediately and my users are able to see if I am available at a given time (online, away, offline) rather than waiting to see if I reply to an email.

Very rarely do I get written requests, although they do still pop up occasionally. These frequently get lost in the paper shuffle on my desk, and I have to be reminded later that they exist.

My least favorite method is verbal. Not that I dislike talking with people, but my mind ain’t what it used to be… I forget! So often someone will wait until they see me at lunch to report a problem, and there is little chance I will remember what they said once I return to my office. I ask them to email me instead. I realize how powerful the visual is – they see me and then they think of what it was they were going to ask – but the fact remains that while I may answer the question and file away the issue in my brain, the likelihood of remembering to actually act on it is slim.

What do you use in your school? Do you have suggestions that would work in various situations? Do you have any comments to share on what works and what doesn’t work for you? Please join the conversation!

It’s been a LONG time since my last post, and for that, I apologize. A summer I thought would be spent relaxing by the pool and tweaking my blog for the archdiocese tech coordinators was not so much that. Instead, I managed to just barely make it through NECC and spent much time on the couch suffering the effects of morning sickness!

But like many of you, I am now back to work full-force and itching to get blogging again! I have yet to fix my form-mailer to collect data from the archdiocese tech coordinators, but I am hoping that while I was “out” some new plug-ins came “in” and that will help that form to be up and running very soon.

What’s Ahead
The big scurry this fall for most of us is getting ready for Learnia, Harcourt’s answer to standardized testing online. Blessed Trinity was part of the pilot program last year, and apparently we were one of the few schools for whom the testing went well. I hope this can be a forum for some of us to share ideas about what works and what doesn’t, and how to prepare your network, teachers and students for the testing.

I’m finally starting to get caught up after installing some new (refurb) PCs that came in during workshop week!

Another issue for me this year will be researching, encouraging, and attempting to find funding for a Student Information System. Many on our staff (including I) have spent many hours dealing with data issues in the last four weeks. It seems we duplicate our work three or four times these days for all the different changes that come about, which is quite a bit of time when students are still registering on the first day of school! I hope we can reduce that workload with an integrated system soon. I will be looking to my colleagues for advice!

I am sending the following in an email to our teachers this week. I want to encourage them to not take off their thinking caps for the entire summer, just as they send out a summer reading list for students with the same intent. My hope is that they return in the fall with some fresh ideas for integrating technology as a means for creative assessment and that they use the time they have in the summer to really delve in and explore some of today’s great technologies and idea-sharing media.

• Find one educational blogger whose posts you consider valid and relevant to your teaching. Read on average at least 1 post a week, and be prepared to share what you have found during workshop week in the fall.
• Go to TeacherTube.com and find one video you could either use in one of your classes or replicate as a student project.
• Come up with one multimedia project you could use to enhance your curriculum in some way. This project could involve digital photos, music, movie clips, slides, clay animation, drawings, podcasts…
• Come up with one project in your class where you could use a blog with students. You post something and have them respond, give comments, reactions, reflections…
• Look into the following educational technology trends and buzz-words and prepare to talk about them and how they might impact not only your teaching but the learning of our students:
  • Wiki
  • Blog
  • Podcast, Webcast
  • Ning
  • Web 2.0, School 2.0
  • RSS, Aggregator, Feed
  • Streaming
  • Skype
  • Twitter, Meebo
  • Chat, Instant Message
  • Del.icio.us
• Complete the following regarding technology:
  • The one thing I wish I had in my classroom is __________.
  • One activity I wish I could do with my students is __________.
  • Technology would be easier to use in my classes if __________.

I may be setting myself up for disappointment here, but I don’t think so. I believe that the incredible staff with whom I work will come through. If just one or two teachers come back with a great idea, that energy will spark a flame that I can feed throughout the year!

In the interest of keeping things simple, I’ve been looking into re-working this site so that it is a blog first and Archdiocese tech-connection second. When I first started, I didn’t realize I could post static pages on a blog site, and that I could create the forms and such that I needed from within the WordPress database using Plugins. I spent many hours matching CSS to a template I had found for a the static site to the blog for consistency because I thought I had to!
I hate changing things mid-stream, but better now than when I have hundreds of readers (ha!).  For the few of you who subscribe to my feed, it will be changing over the next couple of weeks as I get everything moved over. The full site will be http://edtechaveue.com, with links to the Archdiocese information from there.  Thanks for your patience.

And it’s practical, too!

I’ve been feverishly trying to catch up on the blogosphere and finding lots of great tools I’ve missed out on being stuck back in Web 1.0.  Thank you to Scott Elias of Do I Dare Disturb the Universe for recommending Picnik, a web-based photo editing program that I am hoping and praying will take off, stick around, AND remain FREE.

I will be the first to admit, I was skeptical.  I mean really, a WEB-based photo editor?  How can that be decent?  But folks, it is.  I used it for my personal blog just to test it out and see the functionality of the Flickr connection, and I am happy.  It works splendidly.  I held a digital photo training for teachers today and was anxious to recommend it and show it off – they loved it!  It has the features and user-friendliness of iPhoto and then some, with fun advanced creatives (some of the cool ones will be with a paid version only).

Just register for free, open a photo, and basic tools are available to you: crop, resize, rotate, exposure, colors, sharpen, red-eye, etc.  Click the Creative Tools tab to really have some fun!  Then save your file to your computer or directly to a Flickr account, complete with tags, descriptions, private/public settings, and even the ability to add photos to existing sets (can’t create new ones yet).  I can edit photos from my computer or directly from my Flickr account.  And there’s website tools and widgets I haven’t even touched yet.

I can imagine terrific applications for myself – I’m on someone else’s or a library computer that doesn’t have a photo editing program, I just took some photos that I want to upload and blog about… no problem now!  I can see tons of educational applications for this too, and the kicker is the cost – $0.00.  Unbelievable.  Let’s support this software and keep it available!

Below are photos I edited with Picnik in minutes, although I reduced the size of each one equally to display them better (the high quality resolution of my camera makes them too big for this use).  The original is on the left, edited photo on the right: