The first public beta of Fresh Brew, now Flypaper was just a few days ago. I must say the program looks very impressive at first glance. I have not had time to explore it in depth, but the sample programs created with Flypaper look very nice and operate smoothly. This weekend I will try to actually crate files. Flypaper is a presentation application, similar to PowerPoint, if you have not heard. To download or learn more, go to www.flypaper.net
No changes on the big project yet, but next week will see some big ones. For a look at my progress on Web 2.0, online free software, open source software and Project Based Learning, go to www.bgoodman.com Remember, it's in rough draft condition. Any suggestions about how to organize all of this (see previous blog) would be greatly appreciated. Edutopia came out today with lots of material about Project Based Learning and international collaboration. Great stuff!
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
The New Project
I have retired from active classroom teaching and entered the world of "highly paid consultants", minus the "highly paid" part. I am involved in helping the Dysart Unified School District create live morning announcements broadcasts on television at eighteen elementary schools. More about that later.
Needing another project to occupy my free time, I decided to create a comprehensive listing of: Web 2.0 applications or sites, project based learning resources, free software appropriate for educational use and open source software appropriate for educational use. At the time, it didn't seem like such a big deal. Little did I know.
Being a clever fellow, I thought the first thing I should do was to create a Google Alert for "Web 2.0". That was easy. Then I looked for commonly available Web 2.0 sites such as del.icio.us, Blogger, Edublogs and so on. About this time I could see that this might get out of hand. To simplify the process I went to the ISTE website and purchased several books, including books about Podcasting, Web 2.0 and "best websites". By now I was nearly suicidal, overwhelmed with information. Nevertheless, I kept plugging away t it.
I found many 2.0 sites that looked great, but not applicable to educational use. Lots of online applications, some of which were not educationally appropriate. But overall I was (am) amazed at the scope of "web 2.0" sites and applications that are appropriate for educational use. As more information became available through the Google Alerts, periodicals, books and so on I created a new database in FileMaker Pro to keep track of it all. Once the entries started to level off a bit, I started importing the sites into my website http://www.bgoodman.com . Organizing the entries was a bit more of a challenge. This is what I have so far. For Web 2.0: Custumizable homepages, Image management and editing, video creation, office tools, collaboration, social networking and project management. For Free Downloadable Software I have lots of entries, but no organization to them as of yet. I also have Project Based Learning resources, real time and primary source data resources. In the area of transformative sources, I have blogs and wikis.
I could use a bit of help with the organization of this mess. The datebase is easing the pain of keeping track of all of this. As the database is in FileMaker Pro developer, at some point I'll be able to publish the db for public consumption. Let me know if you are interested.
Needing another project to occupy my free time, I decided to create a comprehensive listing of: Web 2.0 applications or sites, project based learning resources, free software appropriate for educational use and open source software appropriate for educational use. At the time, it didn't seem like such a big deal. Little did I know.
Being a clever fellow, I thought the first thing I should do was to create a Google Alert for "Web 2.0". That was easy. Then I looked for commonly available Web 2.0 sites such as del.icio.us, Blogger, Edublogs and so on. About this time I could see that this might get out of hand. To simplify the process I went to the ISTE website and purchased several books, including books about Podcasting, Web 2.0 and "best websites". By now I was nearly suicidal, overwhelmed with information. Nevertheless, I kept plugging away t it.
I found many 2.0 sites that looked great, but not applicable to educational use. Lots of online applications, some of which were not educationally appropriate. But overall I was (am) amazed at the scope of "web 2.0" sites and applications that are appropriate for educational use. As more information became available through the Google Alerts, periodicals, books and so on I created a new database in FileMaker Pro to keep track of it all. Once the entries started to level off a bit, I started importing the sites into my website http://www.bgoodman.com . Organizing the entries was a bit more of a challenge. This is what I have so far. For Web 2.0: Custumizable homepages, Image management and editing, video creation, office tools, collaboration, social networking and project management. For Free Downloadable Software I have lots of entries, but no organization to them as of yet. I also have Project Based Learning resources, real time and primary source data resources. In the area of transformative sources, I have blogs and wikis.
I could use a bit of help with the organization of this mess. The datebase is easing the pain of keeping track of all of this. As the database is in FileMaker Pro developer, at some point I'll be able to publish the db for public consumption. Let me know if you are interested.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Blogs, Podcasts and Transforming Teaching
In the last three weeks, the technology program at Cimarron Springs has been in the newspaper, on television and on the AzFamily.com website. What this really means is that our staff here at Cimarron Springs is using technology at a very high level. We have teachers at many different grade levels using blogs, podcasts and websites to improve instruction in their classrooms. Students here at Cimarron Springs actually create and post daily podcasts. We have taken an important first step in transforming instruction with technology. Another important next step in this transformation is to get teachers and students so accoustomed to these new tools that they become primary means of instruction. As they do so, they will create a demand from other students and teachers to use these new tools in more classrooom. Another step we need is to start collaborative projects with schools outside our city, state and country. When we truly realize that we can collaborate with the world from our corner of the earth, we'll make the jump into transforming how we teach. This blog will be picked up by Technorati. Is anyone out there of a similar mindset? Let's hear from you!
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Vyew.com
In the 8th grade class this last week, we experimented with vyew.com. If you haven't seen it, it is a website that allows collaborative work with up to twenty people at a time. We just used two students and assigned simple tasks, like collaborativly drawing a picture, uploading separate pdfs and uploading a photo. At the end of the week the students wrote an analysis of what they thought of Vyew.com. In general they thought it was a worthwhile site, with some limitations.
Being the typical teacher, I created the meetings for the students, but did not give them the password, which meant I had to put it in each time for one of the two students. I did discover that even though they may be registered as different people, they may join meetings to which they are not registered and could save independently of each other. If this remains to be true, Vyew becomes much more user friendly. I can't for the life of me see why I shouldn't give the students the password to their site. Perhaps I will.
One of our teachers made her first podcast about Wikis this week. She was very reluctant, but with a bit of help, she found it much easier than she expected. Now she is ready to do more . . . chomping at the bit, actually.
This coming week, I'll be helping a kindergarten teacher create a video story (digital storytelling) with her class. That ought to be fun!
Being the typical teacher, I created the meetings for the students, but did not give them the password, which meant I had to put it in each time for one of the two students. I did discover that even though they may be registered as different people, they may join meetings to which they are not registered and could save independently of each other. If this remains to be true, Vyew becomes much more user friendly. I can't for the life of me see why I shouldn't give the students the password to their site. Perhaps I will.
One of our teachers made her first podcast about Wikis this week. She was very reluctant, but with a bit of help, she found it much easier than she expected. Now she is ready to do more . . . chomping at the bit, actually.
This coming week, I'll be helping a kindergarten teacher create a video story (digital storytelling) with her class. That ought to be fun!
Friday, September 08, 2006
Technology and Schools
For years we have been hearing about how technology is going to improve education. For most, technolgoy has really had minimal effect on the way we teach. Has technology transformed the way you teach? For most of us, I think not. This blog will address that issue: technology and the transformation of your teaching.
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