new tricks for an old dog

With this post here, I tried to give a glimpse into how Web2.0 and its tools were changing the way we receive and keep up on news.

A more local tragedy provided a look into how my students were using facebook to accomplish the same goal. Last week, one of our families received news that their son had been in a car accident back in the US. (We are located in South America.) The first people to make the news widely known were the teens who used a combo of email, IM, and facebook in the process.

Some adults were upset that “someone posted it on facebook, what right did they have?” They had every right. They showed the power of email to mass communicate, the power of IM to make sure everyone knew, and the power of the social-network to keep everyone up to date.

They had every right, and they did it right.

Digging through my bookmarks, I found this link (thanks to SEGA TECH) for TiddlyWiki, best described as a wiki for your thumbdrive. As it is located on your thumbdrive, its really not a collaborative tool.
BUT

Tiddlyspot will now host your tiddlywiki, making it more of a collaborative tool. As a new administrator I have policies, student rolls, schedules, and my lessons plans all “wikied.” (Is that a word?) The organization just feels better than the folder inside a folder inside a folder routine.

The first notion I had of the bridge collapse in Minnesota was when djakes twittered about it.

Here was his twit:

“Surprising? No Wikipedia page up yet about the bridge collapse… about 21 hours ago from web ”

My rrs feed today gave me not only the wikipedia entry on the bridge and its collapse, but also the flickr link to the currently (as of this post) 131 pictures showing the destruction.

Living and teaching in Brazil, this news may have trickled into our consciousness after a few days. Teaching about current event has suddenly become possible.

Not to overlook the loss of life, and the families torn apart, but the teaching possibilities are almost endless. We can use math/science to measure the stresses required to shear steel, language arts to write newspaper articles, and so on. Imagine the possibilities.

BlockCad (which I wrote about here) has a partner named AnkerCad, a freeware program for building virtual models with bricks.

I think most of my students would prefer to use BlockCad (lego-based) over AnkerCad, but it does give you another option. (and its pretty cool.)

The question is still: What can I do with this?

What can I do with this #2 was going to be about Scratch, the new toy/tool from LiFELONG KINDERGARETEN at the MIT Media Labs. But Kevin Sandridge at notesfromtheridge beat me to it. He has links to a few videos and other resources. The questions is still, what can I do with this?

Here is what the scratch homepage says:

“Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.”

edit: EwanMcIntosh gives some other links to using scratch as does teachinghacks.

So, because of Kevin, I’ll skip right to number three. BlockCad is a program I found mentioned here and there ( sorry that I lost the pages that showed it to me and can’t give the proper credit.)

Again to quote from the homepage:

“BlockCAD is a freeware program for building virtual models with Lego-like bricks.

You can save your models, or save pictures of them (.bmp, .jpg), even reuse a complete model as a part in another model.

Everything can be controlled with the mouse, but it’s also possible to use the keyboard for most of the commands, making ‘routine building’ more effective, and there is a minimum of text involved, to make it easier for kids.”

What can I do with this?

Part one of this foray into facebook is here. Not much has happened since then, school doesn’t start for a few weeks, so mostly I’m developing ideas on how to use this and the documents that I’ll need for the kids to use and follow along.

In this post I wanted to list the apps that I’ve installed to hopefully make things easier and smooth.

First was the zoho online office app to have access to any documents that I produce. I’m thinking about posting test reviews, lists of website I feel could be helpful to a particular class, and other related items.

I created added a calander to post reminders about projects and test days (along with vacation days.)

The private group I created for my classes has seen the students trickle in, we will see how many eventually join.

Readwriteweb added the 4th and 5th parts of their week long series on facebook. Here are the links to the top 10 utility apps and the top 10 extension apps.

Introducing a new feature here at new tricks for an old dog, the “what can I do with this.” Here I want to link to site or programs (freeware or opensource) that interest me, and ask the question: how can I use this in my classroom or as an extension for outside classroom assignments/activities.

The first site is Imagination Cubed from GE, and its a limited online collaboration drawingapplication.

The site lets you and up to two friends who you invite draw free-hand (like we all drew with MS-Paint back in the day) at the same time on the same project.You can change the background color, change pen styles and color, add a few simple stamps, and add text.

The completed project can be printed, emailed or replayed.

Here are a few screen shots:

So the question is, what can I do with this?

Ha. Well, here it goes. I joined facebook some time ago, mainly just to see what the fuss was about. My students were there, but that was about it.

After starting the master’s program that kick started this blog, I began to wonder if I couldn’t involve my student’s interest and high motivation in using facebook as my wedge into combining evolving web2.0 technologies and education.

I created a closed group (don’t have the courage to have an open group yet, small steps people, small steps) and invited my students to join the group. I have already posted instructions for one class (pre-calculus) showing how to download and install Maxima, an open source computer algebra system. (For more info on Maxima see below). I intend to post documents involving extra credit problems, my syllabus, worked out solutions, and hope to use other facebook applications was I find them.

Two Three posts at readwriteweb (where it is facebook week), one on facebook apps for work, one on apps for play, and the third on apps for media, have given me some ideas to toy around with.

We will see how this goes…stay tuned…..

Maxima seen in the picture below is an open source alternative to more expensive programs like Mathmaticia, Maple, etc. More details and downloads can be found here.

Games, faceboook/myspace (or as my dad calls it myface), IMing and maybe word processing. Thats typicially what my students use their computer/web for, and about the right order they would do them in. More important than what is on their list is what is missing–research, e-learning, online collaboration…

The question is how to impress on them the need to see the computer/web as a tool as well. One way might be to introduce them to the homepage tools that are beginning to pop up all over the web. All of them are customizable, flexible and offer many services. Imagine if when one of your students started their web browser instead of the default homepage they went to a web-based web that gave their assignments for the week, along with a to-do list for those assignments. Maybe even a quick summary of recent blog entries having to do with their biology research into regeneration. Along side of those would be a link to your blog where you have posted the extra credit problems of the week, along with the discussion question you want them to write a comment on. Included could be the top 5 videos on youtube or the latest whatever they are interested in. Maybe even the last 5 emails they have received.

Here are a few sites that can provide just that:

Stan Schroeder at franticindustries in a two part post reviews 20 webOS. The reviews can be found here and here. These are different than homepages/startpages but could be used in a like manner.

Remote  access has a post comparing pageflakes and igoogle here.

In my current job, I end up making a lot of presentations. These come in a few different settings, usually to people who only know me by name and I have struggled with how to make my talks relevant and interesting. That these the two ideas–being relevant and interesting–must go hand in hand is one of my core beliefs.

The site where I spent the most time was Presentation Zen. Among the goodies at the site, I found a few posts on different presentation styles.

The 4 that interested me the most are:

(1) Lessig Method–Named after Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig. A great illustration is found here (available for either download or streaming). This method uses lots of slides (hundreds) often with only a word or a phase on it, flashing across the screen quickly. If a word or concept is repeated, so is the exact same slide.

(2) Godin Method– Named after Seth Godin. A sample presentation can be found here. Godin’s 5 rules for powerpoint are:

1. No more than six words on a slide. EVER. There is no presentation so complex that this rule needs to be broken.
2. No cheesy images. Use professional stock photo images.
3. No dissolves, spins or other transitions.
4. Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never use the sound effects that are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs and leverage the Proustian effect this can have. If people start bouncing up and down to the Grateful Dead, you’ve kept them from falling asleep, and you’ve reminded them that this isn’t a typical meeting you’re running.
5. Don’t hand out print-outs of your slides. They don’t work without you there.

(3) The Kawasaki Method–Named after Guy Kawasaki. To quote from his blog:

“…I am trying to evangelize the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points…Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting…” (link) (video here)

(4) Takahashi Method–Named after Masayoshi Takahashi a computer programer who developed the style because he did not have access to presentation software. It involves using large text only. A sample presentation can be found here.

There are a few other interesting posts at Presentation Zen. These two (here and here) compare and contrast the presentation styles of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.