iSean

I am off to Kansas for a wedding, class reunion, and just the general enjoyment of 98 degree heat ; however, I will return to blogging on the 4th. I want to discuss my use the editing tools built into Microsoft Word. I also plan to start developing Quicktime 7 video enhanced podcasts now that my university has finally upgraded to QT 7, which supports chapters. I plan to offer Quicktime movies and Flash movies and see which version my students prefer.

I also have a lot of data from this past spring semester (I surveyed my students weekly) and I plan to share some of the preliminary findings on class discussion forums versus blogging. Stay tuned.

it’s about time. Google has finally come through with a beta version of a web-based calendar system. Google’s Calendar is free, just like their other services, but it’s still in the beta stages (then again, isn’t every Google tool in perpetual beta?).

i like 2 things about this calendar system, in particular and i’ll describe these two things in this blog, but the tool has much more than i’ll discuss. it’s worth visiting and learning more on your own.

the main thing that makes this web-based calendar worthwhile is that it offers the ability to collaborate amongst many users. in my program, we share a lot of technology equipment between the 20 sections or so we teach of our ed tech course each semester. for example, we have digital video cameras, digital still cameras, handheld computers, and more and scheduling can be a nightmare. we have been using email for the most part to try and get things scheduled, but a person who decides to change dates never had a place to go and make that change quickly or to even look for open dates and let others know the previous scheduled day is now available. Google’s calendar is easy to use and share and it’s easy to allow many users to view your calendar. so, we should easily be able to implement this tool in our workflow.

the other feature i really like with Google’s calendar is that it appears to integrate well with iCal. i just tested it and imported 2 of my iCal calendars and they showed up moments later in Google’s calendar. very nice.

it doesn’t work great with Safari, but it’s working for me as i fiddle right now, but Firefox is supported. i have high hopes for this web-application.

Tags: google, calendar, iCal

i like to read a lot of blog sites. occasionally, i even post comments on other blog sites. and, i often forget where i post comments. if the author happens to respond i may never know. now, some bloggers will come back to my blog and comment and that allows a dialogue to take place. but, i wonder how many dialogues i’ve allowed to flounder away? well, this is how i go about introducing coComment — a free tool to track your comments on various blogging sites. i have a little bookmarklet that i click just before i submit my comments and then my comments are recorded and tracked on the coComment site as well. i can visit the coComment site and login to see where i’ve posted and to see if follow up discussions ensued. here’s the snippet from the coComment site:

When you comment on a blog, coComment keeps a copy of your message on a special page - called "your conversations" - that allows you to quickly see your comment and where it was posted, with a link to the original site.

moreover, i can also have my comments from elsewhere appear right here on my blog, which you can view right now off to the top-right. i should be able to customize it in the future, but coComment is still in the very early beta-testing phases. in fact, you need a secret code to sign up right now. i was lucky enough to find a bunch of invitation codes posted on another blog, so i don’t have any i can give away at this time. but, as the tool develops more, i imagine the site will open up. and, if you really want to try it, you might just have luck emailing the folks at coComment and asking. cheers!

Technorati Tags: coComment, blog, ed tech

well, it looks like the wikitext is off and running. my core team of professors who teach the same course i teach are all on board. we’re scheduled to meet and discuss how this might best work and how this can be an improvement over our current textbook (which i helped write, fwiw). i am going to spend some time explaining how the wiki works and how folks can contribute to our project.

one of the instructors asked me why we don’t just start with wikibooks. that’s a valid question, but i think our immediate efforts are sort of selfish. we want a textbook that meets our teaching objectives. the State of Michigan has standards that will be unique to Michigan schools. then again, our standards differ from the national ISTE (NETS-T) standards very little. so, we’ll donate our efforts to wikibooks when we’re satisfied. but, i want to be able to mess up along the way and not worry about the world community misinterpreting our progress and veering us off in a different direction. i want to try content and let it sit for 2 weeks and then replace it completely if it doesn’t fit. wikipedia doesn’t seem like a collaboration as much as it is many individuals trying to independently come together and produce quality work and i want our wiki to be more of a team project. i guess what i am saying is that i don’t want to be completely responsible to the world just yet. i do want to let MACUL members know that we’re starting this project because other university instructors in Michigan could potentially benefit from our version of the text and they might choose to help, which would be nice.

there are just so many little steps that keep creeping up that i am sure this project will not move as quickly as i had hoped. on top of that, our college of education is undergoing major discussions for restructuring in our university. this restructuring effort could have major implications for the computers in education course i teach . . . and, thus the wikitext. that being said, i am committed to making this project work.

in other news, i just upgraded to WordPress 2.0. this is quite a nice upgrade. i was nervous because the upgrade notes indicated that i shouldn’t upgrade if i had altered themes and/or installed any plugins. i have done both. i backed up prior to the upgrade, but i quickly realized that nothing was ruined upon upgrading. whew!

Technorati Tags: wikitext, mediawiki, ed tech

Link to Richmond.com article

Henrico County soon will embark upon the most extensive study of a school-based laptop computer program ever undertaken in the United States.

The county’s School Board last week unanimously approved the first phase of a two-and-a-half year study of its high school laptop program. Noted technology and education research expert and Columbia University professor emeritus Dr. Dale Mann of New York-based Interactive, Inc. will oversee the study, which will begin Feb. 1.
. . .
Mann said the focus of his study would be to determine not only whether the laptops help improve student test scores but also to gauge how effective they are at helping students learn. He also wants to determine how frequently teachers use the laptops during classroom instruction.

“We want to know, Is this thing working? How is it working? And for whom is it working? And how do we know?” Mann said.

They still don’t get it. My guess is that the evidence will reveal that the laptops did not contribute to a significant improvement in learning. There will be qualitative data revealed to show that students were excited to have the laptops and that parents liked them as well. Many students will explain that they used the computers for extra-curricular activities (e.g., chatting with friends). Teachers will even say that the laptops were a good idea and that they integrated the laptops into their teaching. Attendance might be up (and, that is a good thing), but test scores are not going to move much, if at all. Teachers will receive training to help learn how to integrate technology, so they may actually use the technology more in their teaching, but the fact that we put more effort into helping the teachers use the technology could be time we could have spent to provide other professional development to those teachers . . . so, some improvements could just be the result of the extra effort we put into working with teachers; not the laptops themselves, eh?

However, the question not being asked is whether or not we value teaching our students how to become literate with regard to technology and with regard to the massive amount of information on the Internet. Every state has a No Child Left Behind test. Not one of these tests assesses these literacy skills, but I would argue that being able to navigate information online and find relevant and unbiased information are skills that are increasingly becoming as important as many of the skills that NCLB testing measures, particularly for life behind the k-12 experience. If we aren’t testing skills on the NCLB tests, then we aren’t going to spend time teaching those skills; however, these laptops initiatives will undoubtedly force schools to cover this material as part of the ubiquitious computing learning experience. These kids will benefit from having had this experience, but the evaluation in this study doesn’t appear to have the resources in place to reach this conclusion. That’s a shame.

the Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning is an organization dedicated to promoting good technology integration into our schools. well, MACUL holds an ed tech conference (conference link here) each year in either detroit or grand rapids. this year, it’s in grand rapids (convention center). they attract thousand of folks from around the state and even around the country. the conference typically has 3 days worth of presentations in various categories and they also bring in some national leaders in the field of ed tech. a few years ago, my friends from the university of kansas did a few large sessions and it was nice to show them around grand valley state university as well.

well, i recently learned that i had 2 presentations accepted. one is with my wife and pertains to software we developed to help students with disabilities. however, the presentation i am most excited about is one titled, “Online Class Discussions Made Easy.” i plan to teach participants how to create phpBB discussion forums as well as blog sites like this. and, i intend to do it all in an hour. should be hustle-bustle of activity, but i think i can pack it all in. if you’re in the area or planning to attend, make sure you stop by and say hello. i present on Friday, March 10 at 11:30 AM.

i got back from boston this week where i was attending the Annual Human Research Protection Programs Conference since i am now on our institution’s IRB. next week is finals, so this blog will be slow for the next week, i’d guess. stay tuned. thanks.

free wireless for 900 sq. miles

Every home, school and business within the 910 square miles of Oakland County, Mich., will have mostly free wireless Internet access by late 2007. That’s approximately 1.2 million people from 500,000 households and 30,000 businesses in 62 cities, villages and townships. But users are in for a surprise if they think their online activities will be automatically protected from bots, spyware, worms and the cyberthieves who control them.

“Because it’s free and widely available, that means it won’t have encryption and other traditional security,” said Scott Oppmann, the county’s application services manager and the man in charge of the wireless project.

This will at least be the case for the free service being offered at the lower bandwidth. Those willing to pay for higher-end service could receive extra security.

wow, i hadn’t heard about this project, but i think it’s great to hear of something like this happening in michigan (that’s where i live, fwiw). free wireless internet to whole communities. and, regarding the security issue . . . duh, use a Mac. ;~)

this is really just for oakland county (near Detroit), but i have really worried about the big Internet companies (e.g., Comcast, SBC) squelching this type of service in many states and michigan has popped up as a state going through this debate. so, seeing this one get under way is a nice sign. and, seeing it offered for free is beyond just a nice sign. kudos to Oakland county. i can think of many businesses who could benefit greatly from having this service. if i was a small business or large business, i’d have to seriously consider locating my offices inside of this free wireless umbrella. that could be a huge savings.

warhol sean

Originally uploaded by atticmooses.

so, i just figured out that apple’s new application called photobooth is available for regular Mac computers and not just the iMac. i downloaded it and just installed it. it works right with my iSight camera (or any web camera, i’d think). it comes with about 20 special effects if you’re in the mood for that.

i am not sure how this applies to ed tech at the moment, but i thought it was pretty nifty none-the-less.

well, if you notice that some of my articles have comments being added en masse daily, that’s because i am having my students read through a specific category of my blog entries this week and choose one entry to add a comment to. previously, i was getting mass comments because of spammers, so this is much better.

this is one way to draw traffic to my site, but that’s not the reason i do it . . . i have only a limited amount of time to spend with my students and there is much i’d like to discuss with them if given more time. using my blog allows me to comment on stories and subjects briefly and then to have my students sift through these various blog entries to find the one they wish to discuss further. the end result is that my students and i have a chance to ineract on a stories that pertain to our curriculum, but that provide an alternative means to cover this material and hopefully my students find the exercise to be worthwhile.

in the future, i am going to have my students visit other blogs that cover material and comment on those blogs. after posting a comment, my students are instructed to post a message on the class discussion board explaining where they commented so that i can check up on it easily. it’s a nice little system for getting my students involved with the online world in a productive manner.

Technorati Tags: blogging, teaching online