More Free Tools

This blog seems to be undergoing a bit of a trend in open source software and things available via creative commons. I thought I'd share some interesting tools I've been reading about recently- all of them free.

Csounds: sound design, music synthesis, and signal processing for Mac, Linux, and Windows.

Plone is open source content management that easily allows you to organize web content for group projects and communities.



Plumi is a little piece of software that works with Plone, once you have Plone up and running.
Plumi allows you to create your own video sharing site! Currently, developers are even working on functionalities that will allow users to upload and download to/from Plumi sites using mobile devices.




For Chris Davis, in response to one of your previous posts- the Open Clip Art Library. This library is user supported- submit your own clip art and contribute to an archive of Creative Commons images, or download clip art when you need some.



Not really open source software, or creative commons assets, blip.tv is a really interesting site that provides learning and hosting resources for web shows and web storytelling. Newbies can learn the craft, and the more experienced web show producers can hone their craft. Free accounts are available, and their tools are good for Windows and Macs.


If you've never been to the Internet Archive, you simply have to go. Home of the Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive is a huge, digital library that is dedicated to providing access to all sorts of digital collections.

FlexSim

So I'm doing a presentation on FlexSim, and I thought I'd share. FlexSim is a simulation software that creates 3d models in a real 3d environment that allows anyone to input a system, ranging from manufacturing to hospital admissions. The user can that figure out where backups or other problems occur, or they could test a new set up without ever having to change the actual system. In manufacturing this can save a lot of time and money when trying to figure out why your widgets aren't being sent through the assembly line fast enough or what would happen if you switched step 5 and 7 around.

What I think is really cool is that you can import your own 3d creations from other programs into FlexSim and put them into the simulation as functioning objects

NetSupport School

I discovered a cool software that we are currently using where I work, NetSupport School. This software allows professors to interact, instruct and control students on their own computers.

One of the great functions of NetSupport is that it allows teachers to push out their computer screen and show the students a quick video or a drawing that was created, they can show important web page that are needed to view. Teachers can conduct testing and quizzes using this software.

How many times do you tell you students don’t check email during class or don’t surf the web while I am teaching. Well, now a teacher can control this. NetSupport allows professors/teachers to keep students on track by monitoring their web usage, email and text chat. Another function allows the teacher to record all screen activity made by a student. Teachers have the option is to lock out the students’ keyboard and mouse and to black out their screen so they are not distracted by the computer. This allows professors to have control over the classroom/lab.

Another great benefit is that it allows students to individually chat with the teacher. No one else in the class can see this chat. It also supports a multi-user chat or a group collaboration chat.

You know those wonderful breakout sessions we have in class? Well, you can also do this with NetSupport. There is an option to have Group Leader control and to create small groups to work together.

There are so many options with this software. Check them out at http://www.netsupportschool.com/index.asp .

Alice 2.0 – Free! From Carnegie Mellon

What is Alice? Alice is a free programming environment developed by Carnegie Mellon with Randy Pausch (remember, The Last Lecture?http://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo ) as one of the lead developers. It is a free, educational learning tool for teachers to get their students interested and excited about programming. It teaches beginner programmers, computer programming in a 3d environment complete with objects, represented by 3D characters, methods, functions, variables, and parameters and can display code in a java like syntax. Alice starts with a world that you can choose such as world that has snow and ice. You can then choose an object form a gallery of objects and there are many galleries to choose from such as Japan, Egypt, a beach, a skateboard park, a city, and an amusement park among others. You simply drag an object into a world, such as dragging a skater into an ice rink world. Then, just by right clicking, you can assign different methods to that object, such as skate one step forward, backward, twirl, etc. Commands always animate so you can quickly see what your method has produced. Since commands in programming are sequential, you can choose the skaters next step like turning 1 revolution. I know a school where they teach this method of programming and the kids are really excited about programming and the response has been tremendous. There are books that can be purchased to accompany this program and there is also a community support group for your programming or technical questions. In addition to Alice for high school students, Carnegie Mellon also produced a Storytelling Alice program for middle school students. It’s free and great for any newcomer to programming. It’s fascinating, check it out! http://www.alice.org/

Blogging News

I was looking for information related to blogging. When I visit some sites they are old and have not been accessed for a few months to even years. I wanted to see what others feel about these obsolete, unvisited blogs and found this website that discusses new software that may replace the simple blog. Shyftr is one http://www.shyftr.com/

Article retrieved from The Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2905/blogs-may-be-rendered-obsolete-by-new-technology

Software Essentials for the Modern Educator

Today I came across a link to Judy Brown's website. In bright red letters, I read the words, "I have been working on mobile learning and tools specific to mobile learning," and I was hooked! Although the page was not about mobile learning, it still had a lot of great information relating to Web 2.0 tools. She listed an amazing site that would be useful for any educator because it provides a wide variety of software tools that educators want to use for free; or at least, most of them are free!

Visit the "Software Essentials for the Modern Educator" page to find new tools that may be helpful to you as an educator.

The Green Meter

While doing my Centra presentation on Synchronous Tools, I was researching a "Centra-like" product called iLinc. It is very similar to the way Centra works - an online course or meeting software that creates an engaging virtual classroom. Since we are limited in time during our presentation, I wanted to talk about the Green Meter. iLinc is using this concept as their way of marketing this product so that it stands out above the rest - and for a neat reason.

The way the meter works is this: attendees who are located in different locations will have their name and location in a chart. What the green meter calculates is how much money you are saving in travel costs and, more importantly, how much is being saved in CO2 emissions. It finds your location based on your IP address, and longitude and latitude coordinates. If its less than 200 miles, its calculates automobile CO2 and travel costs. If its over 200 miles, they base it on a filght. It will then give you a legend on how much CO2 is emitted.

It shows some pretty daunting information about how much CO2 is released into the atmosphere. Its a great, accountable tool in addition to the online conferencing capabilities it offers.

*gasp* It's gwap!

Many learning games can claim to help an individual become more adept at learning a concept or task, but "gwap" is one of the few games that claim "You're helping the world become a better place" just by playing it. Gwap is actually an acronym for "Games with a purpose." Gwap claims that "By playing our games, you're training computers to solve problems for humans all over the world."

"Let's take the ESP Game for example. You and a partner see the same image and are asked to type in a tag for it. When you agree on a tag, you move on and are awarded points. After just a minute of play, you've agreed on six or seven tags. We record those six or seven tags and associate them with the images. Everyone benefits! Now a search engine will have a better idea of what's in those images."

Therse games were created by Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science, whose aim is to entice humans into playing simple games that will help computers get smarter. It is the brainchild of computer scientist Luis von Ahn.

“We have games that can help improve Internet image and audio searches, enhance artificial intelligence and teach computers to see,” he explains. “But that shouldn’t matter to the players because it turns out these games are super fun.”

The reason for this? Humans can still solve many problems that computers haven’t yet figured out. The thinking is that Gwap may help bridge that gap.

You play most of the games in teams of two and you and your partner choose which picture is better and you’ve both got to agree. You can’t talk to each other during the game which makes it hard. This game, although seemingly just for fun and giggles, garners a lot of useful data which can then be used to improve search, security, or simply problem solving.

Play Gwap!

Podcasting and Technology Budget

In November, I will be going to a mathematical conference for two days, and already I am wondering what to do to continue my students’ learning when I am gone. I certainly have nothing against leaving substitute plans, but from experience, if the substitute shows up, he or she is often not certified in mathematics. This is not so much a problem when I leave a detailed description of the algebra needed to solve some problems. However, no matter the depth of the explanation, I cannot expect someone to come in and understand the lesson I have prepared for AP Calculus; this is not a required course to graduate. Since time is short, and concepts are many, I do not want students to be stagnant. The wonderful idea of podcasting may just suite me for this absence in the classroom. On eLearningnews.net, http://www.elearningnews.net/view_news.php?news_id=1063 ,I found an article that states:
'Podcasting for Learning in Universities' offers a model for podcasting, describes how podcasting is used in universities worldwide and has a practical step-by-step guide to producing podcasts for education. It also shows that:

• Students benefit from podcasting making resources easier to use, accessible, reusable and more fun
• Lecturers benefit as podcasting is easy, quick and DIY

Clearly, I’d be excited to use this technology if I knew our network could support it! This brings me to a question: how much is appropriate to spend on technology each year in a school district? I’d love to hear your opinion!

Resources for training

During our class on Thursday, someone had mentioned open-source as an alternative to the pricey alternatives for Instructional designers. I found an excellent resource at http://c4lpt.co.uk/Directory/ which lists a directory of open-source, freeware and commercial solutions to assist designers with developing courseware. This site lists everything relative to Web 2.0 and also provides a brief description of the product offering s and how they can be utilized.

It is increasingly difficult for our in-house training department to get funding for much needed applications to develop effective online curriculum. Through the use of open source and freeware we can develop training programs that "stand-out" and assist with making the case for ROI and gaining buy-in from the powers that be to consider the pricey alternatives. If you're searching for open source solutions, do check out this directory of resources and I hope that you find some tools to add to your arsenal.

Who needs avatars?

When the Epcot Center at Disney World opened in Florida, it presented some very unique scientific demonstrations. One demonstration was a 3-dimensional hologram of a man jumping from one computer mainframe to another as he explained how things were controlled at Disney World. Recently the appearance of Gates at a conference in Kuala Lumpur in May presented some interesting possibilities in education. Imagine the efficiency of using a hologram of an instructor and beaming it to classrooms around the world.


Bill Gates Makes Special Appearance Via Holographic Tech
Bill Gates, chairman of software giant Microsoft Corp, made a special appearance via holographic technology at the 16th World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT) 2008 here Monday.Holographic is a technique that allows the light scattered from an object to be recorded and later reconstructed so that it appears as if the object is in the same position relative to the recording medium as it was when recorded.The image produced changes as the position and orientation of the viewing system changes in exactly the same way is if the object were still present. ..........

Gates said with more and more people participating in the knowledge economy, the result will be in the form of new innovations that make everyone's life more productive and more compelling."I'm very excited to see what this future will be bring," he said.Source: Bernama.com Date: 19/05/2008

Zune 3

The Zune is Microsoft's answer for the IPod. They have recently updated to Version 3.

Changes and Improvements:
New Sizes: 16GB and 120GB with black color.
Automatic Identification of FM Radio Stations.
Zune Wireless Access at McDonald's.
Game Features: Upload games onto Zune.
Audiobooks features, provided by Audible and OverDrive.
And a built in Clock.

More competition for E-Learning "podcast" resources and development is a good thing because the market does not have enough differentiation in it.

More Information: Zune.net

Project Upload to Uplift

New NAACP leader kicks-off tenure:
“Register Every Last Voter” 
BALTIMORE, MD ––While most kids were home playing Nintendo, 14-year old Benjamin Todd Jealous and his friends were out commanding card tables and conducting voter registration drives. After registering thousands of new voters, Jealous realized the power of community organizing. Now, twenty–one years later, he is combining his organizing skills -- honed as a youth by the NAACP -- with emerging technologies to transform the organization that he now leads. As the youngest President in the NAACP’s nearly 100-year history, and a fifth-generation NAACP member, Jealous starts his tenure doing what he does best. Getting people involved. 

“As an organization, our goal is to make the promise of this country real for all families,” said Jealous, “and this starts with making all Americans regular voters. 

While unprecedented numbers of African Americans and young people are expected to register in this year’s election, Jealous’ aspirations are higher. “We must register every last voter, verify every last voter, mobilize every last voter, protect every last voter and ensure that every last vote is counted,” said Jealous.

Benjamin Todd JealousLast week, Jealous started his first day on the job rolling out a new online voter registration initiative, Upload to Uplift.  This initiative uses Web 2.0 technology to encourage visitors to register and upload the email addresses of family and friends that are not registered. Upload to Uplift also uses a text message feature to remind registered voters to go to the polls on Election Day. “Online voter registration is a natural extension of the NAACP voter empowerment programs,” said Jealous. “While we will continue to do employ successful strategies, like door-to-door canvassing and phone banking, however, this tool adds the power of viral voter registration to our mix.” he added.

Many of the 1200 active NAACP units have tested the site anticipating its ability to expand their existing voter registration efforts. “Our branches and our Youth and College units are excited about using this emerging technology to reach a new and very active core of activists – both online and offline,” said Nelson B. Rivers III, Chief of NAACP Field Operations.

The NAACP is calling on all community partners, bloggers and individuals with web sites to download the widget onto their Web sites. “By making the tool available to partners to place on their sites, the NAACP aims to reach the millions of remaining unregistered African Americans and youth voters and to encourage greater turnout at the polls,” said Kirk Clay, Sr., NAACP Director of Civic Engagement.

According to the United States Census Bureau, only sixty-nine percent of African Americans are registered compared to seventy-five percent of non-Hispanic whites.

In 2004, four-fifths of all registration happened in the last three months of registration and two-thirds of people who downloaded the online registration forms actually mail them in. “We’re encouraging all our community partners and anyone interested in uplifting the voices of the underrepresented to utilize these resources,” said Clay.

Individuals interested in registering can visit www.naacp.org to complete, print and mail the registration form before the Oct. 4 deadline. Organizations and individuals interested in offering the online registration widget to their site can download it from www.naacp.org. For more information, contact Carla Sims, carlasims@verizon.net, ph: (202) 547-8313.                                                                                  

Upload to Uplift
Upload to Uplift is the NAACP Online Registration Initiative that uses Web 2.0 technology to encourage visitors to register themselves and upload the email addresses of family and friends that have not registered. Individuals can visit www.naacp.org to complete, print and mail the registration form before the October 4th deadline. Community partners and bloggers are encouraged to download the widget and place it on their site. 
http://www.philasun.com/wk_review06.html

The NAACP has good intentions but I think this initiative can leave a lot of opportunities for fraud and other illegal behavior. Don’t get me wrong, I hope everyone has the right to vote in this election, which is no shorter than a monumental moment in history. But, on-line voter registration sounds highly suspicious. What is to prevent someone from entering someone else’s information?

Using Wikipedia in the Classroom

When I was student teaching, I can remember one of my student teaching cooperating teachers telling me about what a problem Wikipedia was with her students. She said all of them were using it and she was going to make a rule that it could not be used at all. When I asked her why, she told me because it wasn't accurate and that "most" of the information was wrong.

For a long time, I used this same mentality with my students as well. When I saw Wikipedia as a resource on a paper, I'd take points off. Now that I teach online, I see even more cases of students using Wikipedia. So, I decided to do a bit of research on the site myself to see if it was valid or not.

I've since realized that Wikipedia can be an extremely useful research tool for students. I advise them to use Wikipedia as a starting place for their papers- to use it to find additional sites or other points to research on a topic. I also found a very interesting way to use Wikipedia in the classroom that I thought I'd share with everyone. Many teachers have started using Wikipedia as a learning tool. They have their students research articles to find out if they are valid. Another teacher, who commented on this blog , had her students research their town history to add information to their Wikipedia article.

In fact, Wikipedia itself appears to be getting in on the trend of using their site in the classroom. The Wikipedia Signpost (which is a "community-written and community-edited newspaper, covering events and stories related to Wikipedia") has a great article about classroom ideas. You can read the article here. Enjoy!

School shooting in Finland

Finland is a small and safe nordic country. It has a reputation of dynamic business opportunities with low crime rate and only minor drug use. The social welfare system and society are designed to quarantee everyone equal opportunities in terms of education, employment, health care and retirement. Also the direct democracy offers people a chance to participate in decision making. All and all the country is a wonderful place to live.
This is true especially for me. As I have been away for a long time the image of my home country as described before has been tattooed in my mind.

However, the image of a Nordic haven has shattered in the light of recent events. There was a school shooting in a high school of a small rural town in the beginning of this week. A young 22-yeard old male student shot 11 people , shot himself and died in a hospital a few hour later.

The whole county is in shock. There has not been a single school shooting in the history until a year ago when a similar tragic even took place last year. The severity of the situation might not feel as terrifying for most people, as such acts of violence unfortunately happen all the time around the world.

However for me as a Finnish citizen this is a terrible thing to witness. The thought on my mind shared with the 5,2 million other citizens is; How has our society changed in a direction where young people are depressed and expresses their desperation in such horrifying way.
Both the Finland shootings followed the same pattern as the unfortunate shooting at Virginia Tech. a few years back. Both murders in Finland included violent YouTube videos prior to the shootings and a quiet and introverted young man, who had no criminal record, no previous violent activities or drug use and no diagnosed depression or mental disorders.

I have a really difficult time understanding what brings young people to the state, where they feel as though suicide and hurting others is the only way out. My common sense tells me that a person who has healthy and meaningful human relationships, interpersonal communication and feels and receives empathy does not act in this way.

Isolation from the world that happens around you is a scary thought. I realize that this is can not be the sole reason for the violent acts of the few, but I have a reason to believe that lack of real human interaction (which has been the case in all of the cases I have mentioned)drives people to desperate spheres. As people are consumed more and more by the virtual worlds, simulation games and web communities, a certain ability to feel human connections and develop real relationships where people care for one another and develop emotions disappears.

I notice myself that I spend a great amount of time on my laptop and in the internet. I do mostly education related things, keep up with innovations in the field, read world news and interact with my friends on social networking sites. Sometimes in the evening I sadly notice that I have spent more time of the day on my computer than interacting with my significant other who lives with me or any of my other friends.

For myself I am not worried about the use of the computer, as for me it is not aproblem to shut it off. In fact usually look forward to being able to walk away from it to enjoy my real life. However, I can only imagine what the empty black screen of a shut down computer must feel like for a person, who lives most of their days in the surreal world created by web applications, online videos, movies and games all accompanied with the quiet humming of the computer. As the computer shuts down, their world disapprears and leaves them in a vast emptiness.

I know this is not the cause of the problem, but as the internet and its many uses take over a great chunk of our time,we sometimes forget what is actually important. Turn the damn computer off, and go enjoy the world and life that happens around you, right now.

The End of IP Addresses?

As the majority of our discussions on this blog relate to the Internet, it seemed necessary to discuss the issue of vanishing IPs. According to Vint Cerf, a main developer in creating the Internet, the Internet protocol addresses (IPs) days are numbered.

In 1977, Vint Cerf and his colleagues created the web using the IPv4 system. The IPv4 system uses 32 binary numbers that create a unique number which allows Internet devices to communicate with each other. However, the fast expansion of devices and an increase in Internet consumption has decreased the current amount of IP addresses. Current figures that the Internet will run out of IP addresses in 2010. Cerf recommends that current Internet users should transfer to a new system, the IPv6 system which uses 128 binary numbers. Here is the full article.

Need Your Help!

I am currently preparing a presentation on Digital Media ethics. I have been researching this topic and there is, of course, an abundance of websites and wikis devoted to this topic. What I want to provide at the conclusion of the presentation are copyright-friendly resources. So far I have included the following:

Creative Commons
Wikimedia
Soungle
Flickr (Creative Commons)

If you know of any other royalty-free or copyright-free resources for image, videos, audio files, please leave a comment and let me know...and thanks a bunch!

Wordle!

This site seems to be creating quite a 'buzz' amongst technology coaches. One can enter ANY text - could be the contents of an email, could be text copied and pasted directly from a website - something of personal interest or something content-specific. Hence, the educational application. There is one drawback, Wordle is not intended as an educational site specifically and its content is NOT monitored in anyway for appropriateness to an educational setting.
It is, however, very cool - here is a sample of a word cloud created in Wordle. The creator must have been comparing presidential candidates McCain and David Letterman ;-)
What I suggest you do for fun, if you want to check out Wordle is click on the link in this blog to your latest entry and simply copy the URL. Wordle will pull the text and 'word cloud' it for you - you can then change font styles, background colors, etc. Here's what the create screen will look like if you decide to do that:

Virtual Worlds

I have been doing a lot of research for my Centra presentation, The Dangers of Virtual Worlds, and I found a few things that really surprised me. I had no idea there were so many real dangers in a make-believe world. I won't go into detail because you'll have to hear it again in November, but I wanted to give you all some links that I found really interesting/disturbing regarding the virtual world, Second Life. It was really hard to create my presentation because I don't exactly agree with the view in which I had to write. I really think virtual worlds are what you make of them and if you have half a brain I think most people can avoid dangerous situations. I found a story online about a woman who was raped in Second Life and tried to sue Linden Labs for allowing something like this to happen. Couldn't she just log off? I think that's taking it a little too far. I mean, I don't really understand what exactly happened to the woman's avatar, but she was in no physical danger herself so how could she be emotionally scarred? It may be that she was a rape victim in real life, but like I said before..why not walk away from the computer? The research for this project was a great experience and I learned some things that really opened my eyes to the dangers of virtual reality. Check out the videos I found, you might be surprised.

Virtual Relationships
Virtual Child Predators
Children & Second Life

Move over low quality Video on the web. Hello........

Now you can upload and watch videos in high quality Standard and High definition on the web. This is not the you tube quality we are all accustomed to. There a few e learning related videos up there now. So get out the camera or your favorite screen capture program and add the content. And while you are there, sign-up and rate the other videos. http://www.vimeo.com/


The Sound of Wood from Anthony Edels on Vimeo.