Category: Educational Technology

Free Open Source Software (FOSS)

I’ve run across several lists of free open source software (FOSS) in the last few days. I’ve added each to my del.icio.us bookmarks (see My Bookmarks in the main menu) but I wanted to a bit more proactive in sharing this information with teachers, thus the reason for this post.

Free/Open Source Software for Kids – This list was generated for those teaching 3-12 year old students. It suggests FOSS for music composition, painting, space exploration, math, and more.

KDE-Education Program – This group is “developing high-quality educational software for the K Desktop Environment. Our primary focus is on schoolchildren aged 3 to 18, and the specialized user interface needs of young users. However, we also have programs to aid teachers in planning lessons, and others that are of interest to university students and anyone else with a desire to learn!” You’ll find about 30 educational software games/ tools related to math, science, languages, art, keyboarding, and more.

23 Most Valuable Free Software – A list of the most outstanding free/open source software.

GIMP – “The GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.”

Exploratree – Exploratree is a free web resource where you can download, use and make your own interactive thinking guides, concept/semantic maps, organizers, charts, tables, and more.

Firefox – A cross-platform browser, providing support for various versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. However, the source code has been unofficially ported to other operating systems. This project has a large community of external contributors. If you haven’t already switched from Internet Explorer to Firefox (or at least something else) then I strongly suggest that you consider it.

Blender – “Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite.”


For even more, you can also review my previous notes on other FOSS and TeacherJay’s Free Software Guide.

Free 3D Software for Interactive Whiteboards

It’s always exciting to run across cutting edge technology that has true educational implications. “Edusim is a free opensource 3D virtual world” designed to be used with interactive whiteboards. Did you hear that? It’s FREE and OPENSOURCE!!! “Edusim is an extremely powerful way to engage your students by bringing a 3D virtual environment that allows the direct manipulation of the 3D virtual learning objects directly from the interactive whiteboard surface.” You can also use the software to connect multiple interactive whiteboards allowing teachers and students to collaborate with others around the world.

Now, don’t misread my enthusiasm. The graphics, interface, etc. all have room for improvement, but that’s true with all new innovations. That will all get better with time, resources, and more innovation. And, yes, educators will need to look for effective ways to integrate this with teaching and learning and refrain from using another bell or whistle. I just find it intriguing to think about the door of possibilities that this opens. Aw, the fun we’d have with this in my math and science classes. We could potentially use this kind of technology when studying the parts of a cell, the layers of the Earth, fractions, ratios, proportions, measurement, metric vs. British measurement, conversion of measurement, and so much more. I’d love to be part of its future development!!! Wouldn’t that be a blast?How could/will you use this kind of technology in your instruction?

Recommended Free Technologies for Teachers

Steven Yuen recently posted his recommendations for free technology for teachers. I’m surprised at how many of his recommendations with which I agree. You can quickly browse through Steven’s slideshow (below) and add these free technologies to your teaching toolbox.

Teens Talk about Educational Technology

One of the highlights of the 2007 AECT International Convention was the fireside chat with Marc Prensky and 5 high school students. Prensky pretty much said the same thing he’s been saying for years (I’ve heard and seen that speech and presentation 3 different times now) but the students brought a fresh perspective to the technology integration conversation. It was great to hear students describe what they consider to be ideal instruction, assignments, assessment, and the desired classroom environment. I sat there thinking that we need to hear from students more often. You can read a transcript of this event here.

Steve Hargadon has recently posted an article (here and here) summarizing his interview with a 14 year old student “who has recently become actively involved in the online dialog about educational technology.” Steve’s summation and the audio of the interview are both intriguing.

I encourage you to spend some time listening to what the students have to say and then share your thought in the comments below.

AECT’s Teacher Education Division’s Online Convention Activities and Resources

Introducing the Teacher Education Division’s most recent venture into the world of Web 2.0 technologies. TED Live! 2007 is a member generated e-newsletter of anything and everything related to TED during the 2007 AECT Convention. TED Live! 2007 has robust RSS capabilities and will mashup blog posts, images, podcasts, vidcasts, social bookmarks, file attachments (slide shows, handouts, papers, etc.), tags/keywords, and more into an easy to use e-newsletter. This information will be archived and will be available on The Playground. Consider the possible benefits of being able to provide your students access to particularly relavent information and materials, for those with research interests related to the social aspect of a professional organization, professional development communities, online learning and callaboration, social networking, and much more.

Virtual Attendance and Participation
We realize that everyone can not make it to Anaheim this year, but you can stay connecTED with us and enjoy the presentations and content via TED Live! 2007. If we don’t see you at the convention then we hope to see you online!

Contribute Content
TED Live! 2007 can only be as rich and useful as we make it and we need your help to make this a valuable resources for us all. Please read TED’s Legal Disclaimers.

K-12 Online Conference

The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This FREE conference is run by volunteers and open to everyone. The 2007 conference theme is “Playing with Boundaries”. This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of October 8, 2007. The following two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog for participants to download and view. Live Events in the form of three “Fireside Chats” and a culminating “When Night Falls” event will be announced. Everyone is encouraged to participate in both live events during the conference as well as asynchronous conversations.

Click here for information about podcast channels and conference web feeds.

$15,000 Interactive Classroom Makeover

TeacherTube and Interwrite Learning are partnering to bring a great contest to classroom teachers. This contest provides the opportunity to win an interactive classroom makeover worth over $15,000. Your video submission could make you an your students the big winner! Contest rules and information are available here and you can check out the contest entries here.

Teaching and Learning in the 2.0 Era

Many of this blog’s readers and many of my students have asked me to provide an overview of the buzz-term 2.0. As you’ll see in just a moment, it is reported to have all started with the use of the phrase Web 2.0 back in 2004 and was soon followed by phrases such as Learning 2.0, Presentations 2.0, School 2.0, Identity 2.0, and Office 2.0 just to give a few examples. All of these are ideas that represent a change/ evolution/ revolution in thinking and practice. Clearly each of these terms has really cool and innovative technologies associated with them, but we must not get distracted by the toys. I think it’s far more important that educators and instructional designers consider the philosophical, theoretical, pedagogical, and pragmatic implications of these ideas as I think each could potentially influence education in the future. I intend on posting more about this later, but for now let’s start at the very beginning. Here are introductions to the terms Web 2.0 and Learning 2.0.

Let’s Set the Scene

  1. If you have access to Integrating Computer Technology into the Classroom, I encourage you to read Chapter 1, Rethinking Computers and Instruction. Otherwise, proceed to the next item.
  2. Consider the information presented in the Shift Happens presentation.

Web 2.0

  1. An Introduction to Web 2.0 – This post includes 2 videos that will provide you with a quick introduction to the concept of Web 2.0.
  2. Web 2.0’s Potential Impact on Teaching Learning – Includes the viral video Web 2.0…The Machine Is Us/ing Us.
  3. Web 2.0 entry from Wikipedia – Look over this information and become somewhat familiar with the big ideas. I’m not expecting you to become an expert on this. Spending 5 minutes here should be just fine.

Learning 2.0

  1. Learning 2.0 entry from Wikipedia – This is a very quick read and provides a basic introduction to the idea of Learning 2.0.
  2. Example of teaching and learning 2.0 – 13 Yr. Old CEO of Innovative Educational Gaming Company

For Your Consideration

  1. Do Schools Kill Creativity?

Free Educational Software

My friend Neil Hokanson had an interesting post on his blog about a suite of open source (which also means FREE) educational games for young children. The software is called Childsplay and is available from SourceForge.net. Neil explains that Childsplay has “several games in the software that test basic math and language arts skills along with other exercises that practice matching, listening, and memory skills. The activities help children learn fine motor skills as they navigate the computer keyboard and identify specific number and letter keys, mouse, and mouse pad movements.”

I encourage those of you with learners that are under 10 years old to take a look at Childsplay. Please share your review of the games in the Comments below.

Clif

We Didn’t Start the Fire: A Brief History of the U.S.A.

Scott Allsop has taken Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire and created an educational video that depicts all the historical events that Joel sings about. Tracey Osborn uses Allsop’s video and takes it even further. Osborn created this webpage that provides the song’s lyrics and hyper-links all of the historical events metioned to related online resources. Wow!!! I could see some kids just going crazy with this kind of activity. You know they’ll even do this at home and come back the next day still talking about all the history that they’ve absorbed.

You can watch the video here…

…or you can also view/download this video (and many other great videos for use in the classroom) from the awesomely cool TeacherTube.com.

What impact do you think this kind of lesson would have?