planetACEC2010

I recently came across this video from the New Brunswick School District in Canada that really captures the shifts that ‘should be‘ happening in education and the shifts that are happening in society at large. It reminded me a little bit of the ‘Did You Know‘ videos. I particularly liked the quote that “Today’s pen and paper has changed” and so should the ways in which we teach! Enjoy

From the user who submitted the video ….

“This video was created to serve as a discussion generator in New Brunswick – and generate is has. We have received inquiries from all over the world. Feel free to use it in whatever way that you find helpful.”

Presented at the Seventh National Interactive Teaching and Learning Conference at St Stephen's College, Upper Coomera, Australia.

Zagami, J. (August 2010). Neural Interfaces [Presentation slides]. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/j.zagami/neural-interfaces

Many educators use the multimedia media programming language Scratch with students to promote creativity, programming and ICT skills. In the past, you could always view the thousands of community projects online but if you wanted to play with them, see the code and change things, you had to download them and open them up in the Scratch programming environment. While not this is not difficult, things have just become a whole lot more interesting. Scratch now has an experimental viewer that allows you to interact with code online. The ease of interacting directly with a project in your web browser is simply awesome. You can:

• Run the program online as usual
• View individual sprites, their properties and their code
• View used code by coloured blocks
• Interact by changing code and running the program

Click on the image to view in full size.  To opt into the experimental viewer just go to http://scratch.mit.edu/experimental.

Presented at the Seventh National Interactive Teaching and Learning Conference at St Stephen's College, Upper Coomera, Australia.

Zagami, J. (August 2010). Augmented Reality [Presentation slides]. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/j.zagami/augmented-reality-4972353

I have recently discovered a great WordPress plugin called Anthologize. It was built as part of the One Week One Tool project. It essentially allows you to create electronic texts from blog posts. You can create texts in ePub, pdf, TIE, or RTF formats. It also allows you to create chapters to organise your content.

This is a wonderful opportunity for the thousands of educational sites currently using WordPress. It allow students and teachers to export their best content as an ebook or pdf at the end of semester, a project, or learning period. I know of a number of schools who use WordPress Mu as their student digital portfolio platform. This will allow them to easily create an electronic book/portfolio of their best work. The plugin is in ‘Alpha’ at the moment but I have managed to get it up and working relatively easily. A short three minute screencast is below. This is a very promising development effort for the web and education. Well done to the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University for creating this software.

You can download the screencast here or on Vimeo.

Update: More possible educational uses have been outlined by Hope Greenberg. A good post plus another screencast.

I have recently discovered a great WordPress plugin called Anthologize. It was built as part of the One Week One Tool project. It essentially allows you to create electronic texts from blogs post. You can create texts in ePub, pdf, TIE, or RTF formats. It also allows you to create chapters to organise your content.

This is a wonderful opportunity for the thousands of educational sites currently using WordPress. It allow students and teachers to export their best content as an ebook or pdf at the end of semester, a project, or learning period. I know of a number of schools who use WordPress Mu as their student digital portfolio platform. This will allow them to easily create an electronic book/portfolio of their best work. The plugin is in ‘Alpha’ at the moment but I have managed to get it up and working relatively easily. A short three minute screencast is below. This is a very promising development effort for the web and education. Well done to the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University for creating this software.

You can download the screencast here or on Vimeo.

Update: More possible educational uses have been outlined by Hope Greenberg. A good post plus another screencast.

In the last few weeks there have been some really interesting tools emerge for creating games and applications on mobile devices. These software tools will make it easier for the non programmer to create.

GameSalad

The first one I came across was GameSalad for developing games on the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch. It is Mac only but has a very easy to use interface. The software is free to use but has a subscription model of $99 per year if you want to publish your games to itunes (which you need to do to get them on your device). There is also the option of publishing them to the web and using a web browser plugin to play them.

App Inventor

The second one I came across is App Inventor for Android which is not quite in beta but you can still sign up to access it in the coming weeks. It is a free, web-based software tool for creating Android applications.

As the video above shows, it has a very low entry point which is great for students starting to learn about programming and ICT. It is very interesting to note the style of the App Inventor application. It borrows heavily from other environments that students have loved using such as Scratch and to a lesser extent Star Logo. The App Inventor team acknowledge this stating that the “Open Blocks visual programming is closely related to the Scratch programming language.”

What I am really interested to see, is what students can do with these tools. What a great motivation – make an app for your phone or ipod (I know not all kids have Smart Phones but there are a quite a few with iPod touches!)

In the last few weeks there have been some really interesting tools emerge for creating games and applications on mobile devices. These software tools will make it easier for the non programmer to create.

GameSalad

The first one I came across was GameSalad for developing games on the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch. It is Mac only but has a very easy to use interface. The software is free to use but has a subscription model of $99 per year if you want to publish your games to itunes (which you need to do to get them on your device). There is also the option of publishing them to the web and using a web browser plugin to play them.

App Inventor

The second one I came across is App Inventor for Android which is not quite in beta but you can still sign up to access it in the coming weeks. It is a free, web-based software tool for creating Android applications.

As the video above shows, it has a very low entry point which is great for students starting to learn about programming and ICT. It is very interesting to note the style of the App Inventor application. It borrows heavily from other environments that students have loved using such as Scratch and to a lesser extent Star Logo. The App Inventor team acknowledge this stating that the “Open Blocks visual programming is closely related to the Scratch programming language.”

What I am really interested to see, is what students can do with these tools. What a great motivation – make an app for your phone or ipod (I know not all kids have Smart Phones but there are a quite a few with iPod touches!)

Members of the Australian ACCE Study Tour describe and compare the Australian Digital Education Revolution with Canadian and U.S. initiatives.  Recommended by ISTE's SIGTE

Zagami, J. (2010, June). The Australian Digital Education Revolution. Seminar presented at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Conference, Denver, USA. Retrieved from http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/2010/program/search_results_details.php?sessionid=49957285&selection_id=59495889&rownumber=2&max=2&gopage=

Zagami, J. (2010). The Australian Digital Education Revolution [Presentation slides]. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/j.zagami/national-curriculum-presentation

Can virtual environments effectively support learning? Three studies into online discussions, collaborative design and co-construction, and primary years arts teacher education. Recommended by ISTE's SIGVE

Zagami, J. (2010, June). Second Life as an environment for education. Paper presented at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Conference, Denver, USA. Retrieved from http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/2010/program/search_results_details.php?sessionid=49957160&selection_id=59495889&rownumber=1&max=2&gopage=

Zagami, J. (2010). Second Life as an environment for education [Presentation slides]. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/j.zagami/iste2010-secondlife-4679801