EdTech – Page 4 – Random Connections

Audioboo and SoundCloud – New Audio Hosting Options

October 3, 2010 Tom 4 Comments

EdTech, Internet

A couple of years ago I lamented about the lack of good resources for sharing audio clips. What I was after was sort of a YouTube for audio. Video sharing sites were becoming relatively common, but audio was another matter. At that time I created a wish list for online audio sharing. I had suggested some possibilities for audio sharing, but none came close to my wish list. In fact, most of the hosting sites I mentioned are long gone.

Now there are a couple of new options to fill the bill. SoundCloud (http://www.soundcloud.com) and Audioboo (http://audioboo.fm) both offer audio file hosting. While very similar, they each have slightly different approaches to how music is shared on their sites.

Google Docs Rundown

October 3, 2010 Tom 1 Comment

EdTech, General Technology, Internet

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m encouraging our teachers to use Google Docs with their classrooms through our new Spart5.info domain. Our district, like most in the state, has standardized on Microsoft Office. We have no intention of changing our basic productivity platform. I think of Google Docs as a complement to, rather than competitor to Microsoft Office.

Personal Use

I’ve been using Google Docs personally for a couple of years now. The convenience of cloud computing was just becoming apparent, and I liked the idea of having my work available on any computer I happened to use, as long as it was online. I first tried it in earnest with an online course I was taking for recertification. It just seemed like a good place to keep everything together.

I’m using Google Docs more and more now, but most often I use it for documents that I need to find quickly – reference documents such as my resume, circuit ID numbers, etc. I also use it for keeping notes at various meetings because it’s so easy to share the notes.

I’ve got a little Dell netbook that I use all the time (I’m using it to type this right now.) Unfortunately, it’s a first-generation netbook with limited processing power and only a 16 GB solid state hard drive. I just don’t have room for MS-Office, so I rely on Google Docs and the ability to be online just about anywhere.

Using Surveys in Google Earth

September 14, 2010 Tom No Comments

EdTech, Geocaching and Maps

This week I’m doing a workshop for our teachers on creating virtual tours in Google Earth. This part of a graduate course dealing with Google Apps, and I was trying to find ways of using Google Docs to create the tours. In the process I came across a neat way of using surveys in Google Earth.

This process is similar to one of the collaborative activities I described in a previous blog post. The process is similar to the one I described there, but instead of having students create PowerPoint presentations and upload them to Google Docs, the teacher creates forms with which the students interact.

The following is from the handout that I created for the workshop…

Bring Your Own Bandwidth

August 11, 2010 Tom 2 Comments

EdTech, Gear, General Technology

While in Washington State last week I didn’t have good Internet access. Laura’s mom still uses AOL dial-up. Neighbor Duff offered access to his WiFi, but we were just out of range. So this was the perfect chance to try tethering my laptop to my HTC Android phone. It worked brilliantly!

I had explored several options for phone tethering. The current crop of broadband modems just seemed like an additional expense for something with limited capabilities. I had almost bought the Palm Pre, which can set itself as a WiFi hub, before settling on my HTC Incredible.

I knew I didn’t want to do anything crazy that involved root access to the phone. I needed something fairly simple, so I first tried PDANet. I’d had some success using the free version connecting to my netbook. However, it was very buggy and kept wanting to crash when I tried connecting it to my larger laptop.

I finally settled on EasyTether, and it worked like a charm. The phone connected to the laptop with no problem, and I was even able to access the drive space on the phone over the USB cable – something that I couldn’t do with PDANet. I wound up purchasing the full version of the program for under $10, which gave me access to https and secure sites. With that I was able to check GMail and remotely log into my district’s network to do some simple maintenance.

I’ve read that 3G speeds are nowhere near as fast as cable or DSL speeds. However, the speeds I got over my phone were pretty darn fast. I didn’t try watching lots of video, but I did see a couple of clips, and they played just fine. I also uploaded lots of high resolution images to Flickr, and those went without a hitch fairly quickly. As far as I could see, there was nothing I couldn’t access that I would normally access from my home Internet connection.

Read More “Bring Your Own Bandwidth” »

Facebook and Professional Boundaries

June 11, 2010 Tom 2 Comments

EdTech, General Technology, Internet

I had an eye-opening discovery this week. One of our principals contacted me about an e-mail she was expecting that hadn’t arrived. I went into our district spam filter to see if it had been caught there. While looking for the e-mail, I noticed a lot of traffic from Facebook that had gotten caught in … Read More “Facebook and Professional Boundaries” »

Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is?

May 5, 2010 Tom 2 Comments

EdTech, Geocaching and Maps

Here’s an interesting activity you can do with students using Google Earth. It helps if you use the actual program (or the satellite view in Google Maps) instead of a static image so that students can zoom in and out…

View Larger Map

The above Google Earth image is of the Cherrydale Shopping Center in Greenville. Using only clues from the image, can you tell me the following:

About what time of day was the image captured?
What month was the image captured?

Good luck!

iFrame Is Your Friend (in Google Earth)

March 27, 2010 Tom 2 Comments

EdTech, Geocaching and Maps

It’s funny how things work out sometimes. I was putting together that last post and stumbled upon a whole world of new possibilities for embedding content into Google Earth. I noticed that several of the embed codes used the <iframe> code and just referenced a URL for the embeddable media. I began to wonder if … Read More “iFrame Is Your Friend (in Google Earth)” »

Three Collaborative Google Earth Projects

March 26, 2010 Tom No Comments

EdTech, Geocaching and Maps

I had wanted to entitle this post “Cool Google Earth Lesson Plans That Don’t Really Use Google Earth”, but I figure that would be a bit wordy. The idea was taken from my “Creating Media Rich Lessons with Google Earth” presentations that I’ve been doing lately. One of the strategies in that presentation is to embed content from other sources into Google Earth. As I was giving some examples to the workshop participants, it occurred to me that you could do a collaborative project in Google Earth where kids do most of their work in some other application, bringing these together at the last minute in Google Earth. Here are a few of those ideas, and the applications needed.

SCETV Workshops Spring 2010

March 18, 2010 Tom No Comments

EdTech

The time-lapse video above gives some indication of the frenetic pace I’ve been hitting this week. Several months ago I agree to once again do my Google Earth workshops for the SCETV Technology Conference. Had I known how hectic these past two weeks were going to be even without the conference, I might have reconsidered. However, despite PASS testing, 135th day counts, and other pressing needs in Spartanburg Five, I headed on down for the Wednesday – Friday sessions.

As I had done last year, I’m presenting two different sessions. The first is a basic introduction to Google Earth. The teachers get some time just to become familiar with the program’s controls and navigation, and I give them some suggestions for using it in their classrooms. The second session is more in-depth. I cover ways that Google Earth can be used to create highly interactive lessons buy using embedded media. I tend to get lots of oohs and ahs with that session because there is some really cool stuff you can do.

Wednesday we had a luncheon and were joined by several representatives from Discovery Education. Phillipe Cousteau, grandson of Jaques Cousteau, was our keynote speaker. In the evening the Discovery Educators Network (DEN) STAR members had a dinner at the SCETV studios, and we were again joined by Phillipe Cousteau. He spoke about some of his current environmental education endeavors.

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