Chris selected as K12OnlineConference keynote speaker Each year the K12OnlineConference provides tremendous professional development for free, and entirely online. This year, they have selected me as one of their keynote speakers. I am thrilled to have been chosen and look forward to participating in the conversation. Read the full post announcing all the keynote speakers here.
Two quick links on Cognitive Load Theory I've been fielding lots of questions lately about Cognitive Load Theory. Here are two quick links that may be useful. First is an article talking about the practical implications of CLT on the design of learning. The second are some "recent" (as of 2003) developments regarding CLT. Happy reading! Update: I clarified the second...
Practical advice on kids and Android app development After hearing about my students' success developing an Android app, I've gotten several emails asking for more details as to how I practically worked with my kids. Here are some pointers that I offered to the first person that emailed me, perhaps they are of some use to you. Please note that your mileage may vary. It's ok to not be...
Publishing an App Inventor app to the Android Market As I mentioned earlier, my students and I published an Android app to the Android Market. See those links for more information on the background. This post is decidedly technical. First, once we finished the coding process, we packaged the app for to download to the computer. This is an option in App Inventor. This downloaded an .apk file....
Designing and publishing an Android app with kids This post is designed to provide some context around how/why we decided to build this app. The more technical details of the code and how we published it will come in a future post. My students and I recently completed and published an Android app, and here's how we did it. First, the genesis for this goes back to a question I asked...
May
31
On-the-fly, browser-based, java-running screen capturing?
Oh heck yeah.
Here is a quick little playful piece I did, and I did it on my iMac!
http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cihw2HjS
And since it’s Java-based, it is cross platform. I have to be honest, the entire process was super easy. I think this is a tool I will use a lot!
Screencast-O-Matic (via Lifehacker via Download Squad)
May
31
Category : General
I’ll spare you the it’s-been-crazy-with-the-school-year-ending apologies, but it’s been crazy around here. Heh.
Listen, I’ve been working on my presentation for NECC in the open source lab. It’s on Open Source Solutions for Student Blogging (or some catchy title like that).
I created a one-page comparison of Moodle, DrupalEd, WordPress and WordPress mu.
Take a look at it, would you? Help me proof it, see if there are errors, etc.
Thanks!
Chris
May
22
Category : General
Let me begin with a disclaimer, I do not watch television. My wife and I do own one, and it is connected to a DVD player for occassional movies, but even that is not too terribly often.
That said, I was reading this morning that Google added a meme-like function to Google Trends, called Google Hot Trends.
I took this screenshot and quickly edited it in Snipshot.
What does it say about our world that the top trends are all about nonsense. I had to look up the first one to see that Andy Baldwin proposedto Tessa Someone. I am scared to find out who number 10 is.
I will save you the social commentary, and merely point you to tvturnoff.org. I imagine my readers (all 12 of you) are not searching for this stuff, but chances are your students are. Let’s help them turn away from this and into a good book!
May
18
This popped up in my email, and it’s interesting.
In the Google Educators Discussion Group (did you even know it existed?) an educator asked this question..
Is there a way to use tools such as google docs without an email address?
To which a Google employee replied…
Great question! Currently, you do need an email address to use Google Docs and Spreadsheets.
If you need an email address, you’re welcome to create a Gmail account at www.gmail.com . Â You’ll get over 2,500 megabytes of free storage (so you’ll never need to delete another message), plus the power of Google search in your inbox!
To which I added…
I think the problem is so many of our students, especially the younger ones, do not have email addresses and signing all of them up for a gmail account would possibly be a violation of the TOS.
Can you clarify?
Thanks…
Chris
To which the Google employee responded…
Great point, and one that likely affects many teachers. One easy way to bring Google tools such as Gmail and Page Creator into the classroom (or your entire school district) is through our Google Apps Education Edition.
Using Google Apps, you can give each of your students, teachers, and administrators their own Gmail account, plus access to Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Calendar, Page Creator and Talk. And best of all, it’s free!
For more info, feel free to visit http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/edu_benefits.html
. Also, learn how other schools, from K-12 to college, are using
Google Apps in the classroom at http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/customers.html#edu
Reading through the Google Apps for Education TOS it doesn’t seem to mention age. Even so, is this a good idea? Is Google correct that this is ok? Isn’t there a law here?
May
16
Category : Software
Go read the official WordPress release post for the entire list of changes. Some of the tasty ones include Blogger imports and widget support at the core level.
I have not upgraded yet, but plan to soon, I’ll let you know how it goes. Or you can use the link below to hit the download page.
May
15
It’s no secret I am interested in managing my citations online. You can read about my previous adventures here and here. I ultimately settled on NoodleTools, which I have now used through hundreds of APA 5th edition citations and my profs made only minor corrections which could have been corrected by my input being better on the front end.
So I took notice when lifehacker mentioned BibMe. I sat up when I saw the interface, very clean and a nice use of graphics. NoodleTools’ interface is just slightly clunky and not terribly web 2.0ey. No sweat, Noodle, you make up for it in functionality.
I played with BibMe and did not like what I found. First, when I entered the name of an article I particularly like, it immediately returned this result…
“ZOMFGWTFBBQ!!!”
I may just be getting more conservative in my old age (just turned 30, remember) or it could be that nagging love for Christ, but this offended me a bit. Was there any need for OMFG or WTF? I imagine they are trying to be funny, and given the silly image of the guy that shows up on the same page it is clear, but the implication of bad language is not needed. I make it a point not to see things at school that I would not want someone to see me looking at, and this falls into that category.
Strike 1.
Strike 2 came at the lackluster results. I end up usually having to use my University’s proxy login to access my journals, because so many require it. So I thought I would try the manual fill-in section. Major problem…
When you enter the authors’ names, it lists them backwards. I made up a completely bogus entry and listed the authors in order that they would be listed on the article. BibMe put them backwards, with the second author ending up first.
Oops.
So fake entry looks like this…
Connely, Joker, and James Flitch. “Ugly in a world where you can choose to be beautiful.” Educational Technology and Research, 54.2(2004): 335-390.
Other than that, I think there are some formatting issues, but I will leave those alone since I have already ruled this out as an effective tool. Research is too important to get messed up by a bad tool.
Sorry, BibMe, I wanted to dig you, but you gotta fix these issues before we can talk any more.
May
12
Category : Feeds
May
11
Category : General
Great tip from Doug Belshaw about the advanced WYSIWYG editor in WordPress 2.1. I wasn’t aware of this until reading it on Doug’s always great blog. Here’s Doug:
A quick tip for those who use the excellent WordPress to power their blogs: pressing a combination of buttons can make your WYSIWYG editor display another row of icons, giving greater ease-of-use and functionality. If you’re using Firefox on Windows, it’s Alt+Shift+V; for Internet Explorer on Windows it’s Alt+V; for Firefox on the Mac it’s Ctrl-V; unfortunately it doesn’t work on Safari…
via Doug Belshaw via justsome…
May
08
Category : Educational Technology
I just wanted to let you all know that edublogosphere.com is no defunt. I registered it some time ago and would be happy to put it to good use.
I had pligg installed, a digg clone that we all could use to submit ed tech stories, but it’s always tough to get buy in to something like that, and I didn’t promote it much.
It seems those sites don’t last much. The crispynews site (http://edbloggernews.crispynews.com/) seems to be gone.
I recall having heard of another pligg site for ed tech, and I would happily point the edublogosphere.com domain there, or maybe to another site.
Any suggestions? It’s a cool domain, what do I do with it?
May
07
Category : General
This is interesting. Below is the slide presentation that won Slideshare’s contest. Is it any marvel that it’s a remix of Karl Fisch’s Did You Know?
Truth is, I am a bit speechless. Tell me what you think…
