Where Education and Technology Intersect
The summer 2008 EDUCAUSE Quarterly spotlights the complete findings of the 2008 EDUCAUSE Current IT Issues Survey as well as feature articles on open source software in education, a first assessment of a learning studio, and student use of clickers in library presentations.
Check it out!!
Tags: No Tags
I am a techie for most of the day, and I can tell you first hand the REAL pain that I have seen when people lose their data. There have long been some PC backup options out there, but today online backup startup Mozy released an automated backup solution for the Mac! Mac users rejoice!
Of course, any good service costs money, but this one is pretty good with an UNLIMITED plan for only $4.95/mo. I don’t know anyone that wouldn’t pay that to retrieve their pictures/video’s/documents/etc!
I highly recommend that you find a backup solution of some type of you don’t have one yet. They also offer the same for PC’s of course!
Tags: No Tags
I received this e-mail today on a listserv I am part of. Google is accepting applications for their next Google Teacher Academy that starts June 25th of this year in Mountain View California… talk about awesome professional development! You should apply!
===========
Hello and Happy National Teacher Day,
In 1953, Eleanor Roosevelt persuaded the 81st Congress to recognize teachers with a celebratory day all their own. Since then, the date of National Teacher Day has bounced around a bit until 1985, when the National Education Association declared the first week of May National Teacher Appreciation Week and the first Tuesday of that month National Teacher Day. If you’d like to know the whole story, check it out here: http://www.nea.org/teacherday
On that note, we’d like to invite you to come celebrate and learn with us at the next Google Teacher Academy, scheduled to take place at the Googleplex in Mountain View on June 25th, 2008. The Google Teacher Academy is a FREE professional development experience designed to help K-12 educators get the most from innovative technologies. Each GTA is an intensive, one-day event where participants get hands-on experience with Google’s free products and other technologies, learn about interesting and new instructional strategies, receive resources to share with colleagues, and immerse themselves in an innovative corporate environment. Upon completion, GTA participants become Google Certified Teachers, who share what they learn with other K-12 educators in their local region. This time around, we’ve listened to your feedback and opened up the application to all teachers everywhere. As long as you are willing and able to get yourself to the Googleplex, we’d love to have you. For more information about the GTA, please check out our full information and requirements page: http://www.google.com/educators
The team of people thinking more about teachers everyday is growing here at Google. As such, we’re introducing a new section of the Google for Educators site - dedicated to using our popular Geo Products. Here you will find information about using Google Earth, Maps, Sky, and SketchUp in your K-12 classroom. Along with some of the great classroom activities we’ve collected over the years, we’ve also included starter kits which feature “cool and easy things you can do” with each product in your classroom. Check it out here: http://www.google.com/educators
Lastly, but never leastly, a few months back, we asked you to share stories about using Google Docs with your students. You told us about the power of introducing collaborative writing to your kids, you mentioned using our presentation software in class, keeping students engaged with the “chat” feature, and you told us how much you like to be able to drive success throughout the writing process, instead of just grading the final product. http://www.google.com/educators
While we were reviewing your stories, we realized that Docs may be a bit intimidating to the uninitiated so we developed a “getting started” guide - with step-by-step instructions for creating accounts, sharing and collaborating, editing and organizing your work. Now there’s no reason to be scared, so give Google Docs a try: http://docs.google.com/View
We hope today is a true celebration of your vocation - and we’re wishing that all of those who are thankful for your hard work take this time to express it. I know I speak for everyone at Google when I say that none of us would be where we are without the amazing men and women who dedicated their lives to teaching us much of what we know today. On behalf of Google, I’d like to say thank you - to each and every teacher - for all that you do every day.
Cheers,
Cristin Frodella
Google K-12 Education Outreach
Google for Educators
http://www.google.com/educators
A friend of mine sent me a link to some research at Microsoft that would let you bend/twist/stretch or even squeeze your computer as an input. Sounds pretty sweet…
Not quite haptic, but still a step in the right direction with more natural input method’s!
Tags: No Tags
This morning a colleague of mine, Derek Rodriguez, e-mailed about the launch of a new Triangle Research Libraries Network Search Engine he has been working on for quite a while. It has some really cool features enrichment features for each search:
Right now there are 1.48 million unique chapter authors and 9.5 million unique chapter titles so you can search for chapter authors for proceedings and book chapters.
There is an awesome tie in with our interlibrary loan system that works like a charm. It finds the items that are available and auto-populates them in our systems to order it. I ordered a couple of things in a few second this morning for pickup in a couple of days at the library here on campus.
Oh, and the entire index resides in memory…. all 18 GB of it… so it can be accessed super fast.
The search uses a platform called Endeca… I don’t think it’s cheap, but it looks awesome!
Tags: No TagsOn a personal note… as many of you may know, I am a TarHeel… that is to say I work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Our beloved basketball team had a great year, but fell at last to a great Kansas squad this past weekend. This past week we were sitting around breakfast and he asked if I wanted to hear a joke. It was so good, I went to get my camera.
Go Heels! Thanks for another great season!
Tags: No Tags
Okay, technically it is only a subcommitte of Congress… but still… a meeting in second life. I’m not sure if I should be afraid, or excited… what do you think?
Tags: No Tags
This morning I came across an interesting article about book publishing in the future. Apparently Penguin Books is doing an experiment called “We Tell Stories” with delivering six different books through six different medium channels over the next six weeks. The first two are already done… Google Maps for the first week and a Blogging/Twitter combination for the second. The third is an interactive writing of a fairy tale…
The google maps mashup, “The 21 Steps” is very creative. There are certainly stories that would benefit from something like this.
I like the blogging/twitter combination book “Slice.“ Blogging is a pretty good way of reading a book. RSS and twitter for little extra’s. That seems cool to me.
The third one “Fairy Tales” is interesting because there are many, many different outcomes to the story. Very clever… and interactive. Should keep our attention.
What do you think? What other mediums do you think they will use? Is this progression, or regression?
Tags: No TagsNeil Hokanson tagged me for a Meme to create a digital quilt of our passions. The rules for this Meme are as follows:
My Passion for kids to learn is Programming! When I think of what I want my own kids to learn, I want them to be able to program. Computers are becoming more and more integrated in our lives and if they have this skill they will not only be able to always find work, they will be creative in thinking outside the box and creating their own solutions! That is why I love programs like Alice!
I’m running out of time so I tag the following three people:
Tags: No TagsYou are currently browsing the EduTechie.com weblog archives.
