My StoryMaker is the perfect tool for younger students just learning about plot design and character development for short stories. Hosted by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, My StoryMaker walks students through the process of story creation using a variety of online tools.

My StoryMaker requires no login other than a first name. Kids choose a main character from a limited menu of possibilities, pick what they want that character to be doing (on a rescue mission? Finding love?) and then designate which secondary character is also involved in the story. These steps are laid out in a very basic, easy-to-use method. The story editor then launches and, in a nice touch, there is an audio tutorial matching up with the text tutorial on the next steps.

The book creator gives kids some freedom in choosing scenery and props without giving them so many choices as to make the task unwieldy. The story is developed over a series of pages, and there are options when it comes to the character in the scene, such as choosing an emotion or action.

A script box at the bottom of the page provides a space for writing. In addition, as students choose elements of the scene, they get written” into the script. So, if you decide your character is mad, the site writes that out for you (which you can edit out, if you don’t need that description). Dialogue boxes can also be inserted into the scene.

When the story is complete, the story gets archived at the site for a month (an archive code is given to the writer, allowing him or her to return to My StoryMaker to view or share the story) and users have the option of printing the story out.

In the Classroom

The interface of My StoryMaker makes it a good fit for younger elementary students. The easy instructions (plus audio helper) and pleasing interface is sure to engage emerging writers. Teachers could easily integrate the basic elements of plot into a lesson that features My Storymaker as the means for students to demonstrate knowledge about story construction.

My StoryMaker

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Have you ever found yourself telling a fellow educator, “I don’t have that file with me, but I’d be glad to email it to you when I get home tonight”? With the aid of Dropbox, you’ll never have to say that again.

Dropbox is a web service that allows you to store up to two gigabytes of data online for free. Simply get an account with Dropbox, download and install the application, and place the files you want to store on the web into Dropbox, and you’re done. Now any time you save files in your Dropbox, they are automatically synced online and on your computer. Better yet, once you install the Dropbox application on any computer or mobile device you own, you‘ll have instant access to all your files with a simple login.

Dropbox can be installed on PC, Mac, Linux, iOs, Android, and Blackberry. If that doesn’t provide what you need, just drop in via web browser at www.dropbox.com.

One of Dropbox’s most powerful features is the ability to share folders with others. Have a project your department or team is working on? Forget about the headaches of keeping up with email attachments and multiple versions. Just create a folder in Dropbox, right-click and share with anyone in the world.

After talking with Adam Gross, Dropbox’s Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing, he said, “Ultimately what makes Dropbox different is our focus on the user experience, and letting people get all the benefits of sync’ing and sharing their documents without having to change how they work. Or as our users frequently say, ‘it just works!’.”

Of course, as Senior VP of Sales, he gets paid to say that stuff. Take it from me — Dropbox has been on my list of top-three tech tools since 2008. I can’t live without it. If a file isn’t in my Dropbox, it may as well not exist.

Get started now. Use the referral code below and get 2.3 GB of free storage (300MB more for free) when you install the Dropbox application. That’s enough storage to backup nearly all of your lesson plans, documents, two thousand photos, a thousand songs, or four hours of video footage from your last field trip.

Referral code: http://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTE2ODQyMTk

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It’s a fact that some video games have been shown to have beneficial effects for developing minds. The merger of video games and educational instruction has been coming for quite some time now, and at one particular school in New York City, it’s already happened.

Quest to Learn is a school that views teaching with video games as an integral part of the curriculum. As such, proponents of alternative methods of education are watching it with great interest. Quest to Learn utilizes everything from problem solving to teamwork to actual game design to engage students in a way that is more interesting and empowering for the student — and quite frankly it’s a very compelling model.

This NPR article goes into more detail about the strategies for learning, the hurdles that Q2L will have to overcome to garner respect from the education establishment, as well as how it will meet current assessment benchmarks (a.k.a standardized testing). Read the article and visit the Q2L site to form your own opinion. Whatever you think about a gaming school, one thing is for sure — we’ve come a long way from the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

Quest to Learn

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This article also appears on LEARN NC.

If you’re a teacher, you’re probably familiar with the life cycle of a computer in a typical classroom. The first two weeks are magnificent. The computer works wonderfully and performs all its tasks very quickly. Shortly after the honeymoon, though, things go sour. Internet Explorer won’t load a website. The computer begins crashing frequently. A student managed to get a virus on the computer. The icons on the desktop are all messed up. The computer then spends a few years in this semi-usable state: It won’t run the newest applications or even load a YouTube video. Eventually, it won’t turn on at all. The computer ends up either unplugged in the back of the room or sitting in a closet.

It doesn’t have to be that way. There is a way to invigorate those old computers and turn them back into machines that power teaching and learning. This method is totally free, relatively painless, community-supported, very stable, constantly updated, and secure. What could this magic solution be? The Linux operating system.

Some people spin into high gear when the subject of Linux arises. Will I be able to run my programs? What about my Word files? Does the district allow it? Can I access all the websites that I need to? The short answer is “yes.” The longer answer — this article — will answer those questions in greater detail.

It might be hard, at first, for a teacher to choose to make the switch to Linux. The district is, after all, paying licensing fees for software on the computers. When I switched over in my classroom, I used only computers that were in the “dead computer” room in my school. Most of these computers had no hardware problems; Windows had just gotten too bloated to operate. Once I fixed up enough computers for my room, the rest of the school caught on to what I was doing. Several teachers then asked me to replace computers in their rooms. All in all, I replaced 21 computers school-wide. (Unfortunately, at that point my program was halted due to a district-mandated liquidation of excess computer hardware.)

Operating system basics

If you’re not 100% sure what an operating system does, pretend that you take the hard drive out of your computer, pass it through a series of high-powered electromagnetic fields, which will scramble every bit of data contained on the drive, and then plug it back into your computer and boot up. What would happen? A whole lot of nothing. The little bit of software that lives on your motherboard, the part that tells the motherboard to check the hard drive for an operating system, would tell you that there is no system disk available and ask you to kindly insert one.

The operating system (OS for short) is the most fundamental piece of software on your computer. The OS dictates how the information on your hard drive is manipulated and presented to you on your screen. The OS is also responsible for basic computer functions such as power management, browsing external media, drive maintenance, and program interaction.

Windows, Mac… Linux?

Let’s pause for a moment and quickly discuss the two most common operating systems on the market, Windows OS and Mac OS.

Windows is made and distributed by Microsoft. Windows 1.0 was released in 1985 and several versions have come out since then. At the beginning, Windows was a simple program manager, and thus was not a full-fledged OS. The underlying system, called DOS, was a command-line system that required the user to type all of the commands to make the computer work. This changed in 1995 with Windows 95, when DOS began to be replaced with a native Windows system. Windows became synonymous with PC — a designation that’s a little misleading. PC stands for personal computer, and doesn’t necessarily mean that the computer runs Windows.

Mac OS is a different story. Mac OS never had a command line and was designed from the ground up to be graphical. The greatest of benefit of Mac OS has been the fact that the same company made the hardware and the software, allowing for a large degree of specialization. While there was a period when other companies were able to clone Macintosh computers (thus allowing someone to run Mac OS on a computer not produced by Apple), this is no longer the case. Mac OS is viewed by many to be user-friendly, fun, and easy to use. It is also remarkably stable due to the close-knit nature of the hardware and software.

What’s Linux, then? Linux is an alternative OS originally created in 1991 by the Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds. One of Linux’s foundational principles is openness, which means that the source code is open and available for anyone to edit (though all changes are rigorously vetted before being released to the general public). The earliest versions of Linux were used mainly by computer enthusiasts and hobbyists, but Linux has since grown into a viable public product.

Linux basics

So, long story short, Linux is another operating system. It is not, however, just another operating system. For one thing, there is no single place to get it. Since Linux is free and open, there are several different distributions (also called flavors) available. You can visit DistroWatch to get a picture of how many are available. There are hobbyists around the world who take the Linux kernel, which is what Linus Torvalds actually created and still maintains, and build applications that run on top of it. So as to not overwhelm, this article will stick with what is considered to be the easiest flavor of Linux. That flavor of Linux is called Ubuntu.

I won’t delve into the history of Ubuntu. (If you’re curious, you can read about it on the Ubuntu website.) I will, however, take a moment to mention that Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution and one that strives to reach each and every user by including a wide variety of accessibility tools and language packs.

Getting started

Let’s jump right in with how to install it onto your computer. Relax: You can “test drive” it on your computer before you make any permanent changes by using what’s called a live CD. A live CD is a CD-ROM that runs a complete operating system on your computer, bypassing the computer’s existing OS. You can burn the live CD to disk by downloading a file from the internet, and then put it in your computer’s CD drive before restarting the computer. The motherboard will then load the OS from the CD-ROM instead of your hard drive, without ever launching your ordinary OS. Things will run a bit more slowly than they would from a hard drive, but it’s a fun way to try out Linux.

So, to take Ubuntu for a test drive, start by going to the Ubuntu Download page. It’s designed to be user-friendly: If you are using a new (or even new-ish) computer and want to give it a shot, then just press the big orange button.

After you’ve downloaded the file (which will be an ISO file), look on the download page for the option to burn it to a CD. Note that you can not just burn it like a normal file. An ISO file is a CD image file and needs to be burned in a special manner using special software like ISO Recorder. This is one of the most technical parts of the entire installation process, so don’t worry if you feel a bit intimidated by this step. From here, it only gets easier. If you need more assistance burning the file to disk, you can see the Ubuntu help page.

At this point, it would be a very good idea to back up your important files. Booting from a live CD isn’t dangerous, but if you decide to switch to Linux, you’ll have to start from scratch on your hard drive, meaning that all of the files and programs on there will be lost. These days it’s easy to find inexpensive external drives, so pick one up and save everything you want to keep.

Once you have downloaded the ISO and burned it to a CD-ROM, put the CD into the drive and restart your computer. Your computer ought to recognize that the CD has an operating system on it and boot from the CD. If that doesn’t happen, then you’ll have to change your computer’s boot order. (You can find instructions for doing that on this About.com page.)

Once you’ve gotten this far, it’s just a matter of following the on-screen directions to test drive Ubuntu on your computer. And if you have gotten this far, congratulations! Enjoy exploring a great, free, and easy-to-use operating system.

Weighing the pros and cons

Now that we’ve gone over what Linux is and how to get it, let’s address the question of why. Why would a teacher (or a school) (or a district) want to switch to Linux?

Benefits of Linux

First, Linux is a great way to breathe life into old computers, which somehow seem to be in abundance in today’s schools. Two versions of Ubuntu — Xubuntu and Lubuntu — are specially designed to work on older computers without sacrificing functionality. When districts buy computers, they typically don’t figure for maintenance, so the computers quickly become disconfigured, overfull, slow, and generally not useful. Linux combats this tendency in its design. The underlying operating system is pretty well streamlined, and the program that regulates the desktop can be stripped down to increase efficiency.

More important than Linux’s usability, though, is its security. Due to the way that Linux functions, the individual user does not, by default, have permission to change the important parts of the computer without typing the root password. Thus, while an ordinary Windows user can access and edit the registry, that sort of interaction is impossible in Linux without the user knowing about it. Also, the majority of people who write computer viruses target Windows users specifically, and not Linux machines. Thus, while anti-virus software certainly is available for Linux, it doesn’t need to run constantly (as is often done on a Windows machine).

There is some great free software available for Linux. While Microsoft Office is not available, a fully compatible program called Open Office is a drop-in replacement. Files created in Microsoft Office can be opened in Open Office and vice versa. The interface is pretty similar, making the transition painless.

The Firefox and Chrome browsers also run on Linux (although Internet Explorer does not). Typically, there is nothing that you can do on a Windows/Mac that you can not do on Linux with free, open-source software. Check Open Source Alternative for a pretty complete list of open-source equivalents of commercial software. To get you started, though, here are some great programs for Linux:

Keyboarding applications

Tuxtype

Gnu Typist

Internet applications

Chrome web browser

Mozilla Firefox web browser

Empathy — messaging application

Creativity

Tuxpaint — an intuitive drawing tool for children

Gimp — an advanced photo editor

Avidemux — a video editing tool

Audacity — an audio editing tool

Education

Childsplay — a suite of educational games for children

Celestia — a space simulation

GCompris — another suite of educational games

One of the most compelling features of Linux is its stability. As a result, most of the web servers and supercomputers in the world run Linux. No more blue screen!

Oh, and did I mention that all of this is free?

Challenges

If Linux really is all that, then why doesn’t everybody use it?

Linux is somewhat more of a technical experience than is Windows. Ubuntu has a command line that, from time to time, needs to be visited in order to solve certain problems. It’s not impossible to manage, though, and the help available online details the steps that need to be taken in a very clear fashion that tells you exactly what you need to do. It’s an exercise in problem-solving, to be sure, but it’s a refreshing feeling to come out of a problem knowing that you’ve learned something along the way.

Linux is also just different from what most computer users are used to, and making the change can be daunting for some people. Linux has a different file structure and different menus, both of which take time to master. Fortunately, ample help is available from the Ubuntu help page. And even though the file system is different, it’s not difficult — in fact, it’s fairly intuitive. All of the user-generated files like documents, songs, downloads, and personal preferences are in /home while all of the user-installed programs are in /usr.

For many people, the biggest pain with Linux is trying to connect peripheral devices, like printers, webcams, scanners, or generally anything that gets plugged into the back of your computer (flash drives aside — those work fine). This is because the makers of these devices don’t often design drivers for Linux as they do for Windows and Mac. Ubuntu has caught up, though, and most devices that are released on the market are soon supported, although sometimes getting a device to work requires a trip to the command line.

Linux in schools

Aside from its value as an operating system, Linux is a great choice for schools. The simple act of using an unfamiliar operating system requires students to think about what they are doing and to solve problems on the spot. Students want to use computers and will figure out how, learning what they need to in the process. In addition, switching over to Linux can be a welcome change of pace for students who are tired of doing the same things over and over on the computer.

Learning Linux involves learning about basic computer concepts, so getting students involved in the installation process can provide them with real-world skills that can serve them very well in their futures. Just about every kid can say that they’re good at Microsoft Office, but how many kids can say they work their way around GNOME, KDE, LXDE, XFCE, or Sugar — all desktop environments for Linux.

It’s not easy to bring Linux into your school. It takes some reading, some studying, some experimentation, and some hard work. But the benefits of adopting Linux are vast. Take some time to download the Live CD and give Ubuntu a test drive. Don’t be surprised if you’re soon ready to tap into the power of those (seemingly) dead computers.

Ubuntu Download page

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Have you ever scrambled to find a game or activity for your students to use to practice a particular skill?  Mr. Nussbaum, created by a 6th grade teacher in Virginia, is home to dozens of free games, activities, and online stories that will solve that problem in no time.

When you enter the site, you can choose from casual games, academic games, online storybooks, and activities sorted by subject. The activities are colorful, engaging, and fun for students.

The games are labeled by grade level, but — as all teachers know — some students need remedial work, so consider those labels a suggestion. Some skills, like subtraction, are practiced in multiple games, so the site features a custom Google search to pinpoint activities for the lesson.

The games are formatted so they can be played on classroom computers, on an interactive whiteboard, or at home for independent practice. While there is a premium version of the site available, the free site offers all of the same games and activities, but with advertisements. The premium version includes teacher tools like a student manager and message boards.

Mr. Nussbaum

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BY KEVIN HODGSON

The origins of words and phrases from the English Language gets a nice twist with Etymologic, a fun online quiz that can be difficult to master. The site consists of a series of questions with two to four possible answers, most of which seems plausible. You have to show an uncanny knowledge of English (or be incredibly lucky with your educated guesses) to get all the questions correct.

There are 10 questions awaiting the viewer, and if you get one wrong the site provides you with the correct answer. The homepage explains the art of etymology, which is the study of words, and notes that the answers are set up to be close to what people would expect, even if the correct answer initially seems implausible. Truth is stranger than fiction, in some cases. (Did you know that triskaidekaphobics fear the number 13? I do, thanks to a lucky guess).

In the Classroom

This site would be a fine supplementary resource for the study of English, or any language, and you might even have students create their own simplified version of Etymologic for classmates. I like how a lot of the words and phrases have origins in other languages, allowing for a discussion about cross-pollination of words. There is even a form at Etymologic for visitors to submit their own questions to the quiz generator.

Etymologic

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Many of us are fascinated by robots. I mean, who doesn’t wish for a robot that will cook, do laundry, and clean the toilets? Some of us are scared by robots and would like some robot insurance. No matter which emotions robots inspire for you, learning more about them is probably a good idea, just in case they become our overlords. One site you can do that is at Learn About Robots.

This is a website created by professional engineer and robotics consultant, Rich Hooper, PhD. While fairly simple, the site contains information on various types of robots, from those in law enforcement to robots designed for entertainment. Most importantly, each section contains pictures of examples of real-life robots in each category. While some of the undersea robots looked pretty familiar due to the news coverage of the Gulf oil spill, some of the space robots were pretty unique!

In the classroom, this website would be a good jumping-off point for students so they could do some further research. The descriptions of the robots are pretty easy to read and the pictures are an added bonus for students. Hopefully, this website will inspire your students to learn more about real-life robotics.

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Let’s say you have an audio file but you only want a piece of it, not the whole thing. How do you remove just a few seconds of audio from a larger file? Online MP3 Cutter does exactly that, and does it well.

Online MP3 Cutter allows you to quickly and easily take an MP3 file and cut a section out of it. The entire process takes about 10 seconds, and best of all, you don’t lose an iota of sound quality in the process.

Online MP3 Cutter is free to use and requires no registration. The directions are pretty straightforward — upload your audio file, make the cut, and save. The revised MP3 file now resides on your computer. The site says that you can even cut online audio files, but I don’t see any links to make that happen (yet) and I imagine you might run into copyright issues.

In the Classroom

If you create podcasts or voice recordings with students, Online MP3 Cutter might be a valuable tool to have on hand for students to excerpt snippets from their podcasting files. This might come in handy, for example, if you are making an anthology of voices from the classroom. In just a bit of time you can easily have small audio files that you can then patch together with another utility, such as Audacity. It’s true that you can probably accomplish what MP3 Cutter does with other software programs, but its ease of use and ease of access makes it valuable.

Online MP3 Cutter

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For the past few years, the United States Library of Congress has been aggressively pushing its archives online through such sites as Flickr and others. This wealth of resources that was previously hidden away in stacks somewhere can now be utilized by educators thanks to the technological revolution. The latest push from the Library of Congress is its new App for iPhones and other Apple devices. The Library of Congress Virtual Tour is free for download at the iTunes store (I’m not sure if an Android version is coming in the future) and features galleries of exhibits along themes such as the Bible, Creating the United States, and Exploring the Early Americas.

In the Classroom

As more and more schools (mine included) move to fund technology initiatives that integrate hand-held devices into the curriculum, apps like the Library of Congress Virtual Tour will become even more valuable for students doing research and exploring historical archival material. The Library’s efforts to become more open with its materials also signals a significant shift in the attitude that documents, photos, and other elements of media from our country’s history, really belongs to all of us, not just historians.

Library of Congress Virtual Tour App

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I don’t think it’s a stretch to say most people now understand there is a wealth of valuable and interesting videos on YouTube. Of course, there is a wealth of not-so-great content, too, and often the good and the bad sit next to each other. Kideo Player is a website that showcases fun and educational videos for very young viewers by filtering out content inappropriate for young eyes.

The site has a very kid-friendly interface in which YouTube videos play automatically, with the shift key advancing to the next video in the queue. On a recent morning I watched three Sesame Street videos about literacy, and a few other videos dealing with math and password safety (featuring a very cute song about staying safe online). Much of the material at Kideo Player seems to be culled from PBS videos, which is fine with me.

The site is being developed by a man named Tom, himself a father of young children, who notes:

“I was amazed to see how little has been done to help curate they [sic] sea of online video content in a way that makes it easy, interesting, and fun for parents and kids to experience together. Online video and simple interactivity can be a great source of entertainment and learning for the whole family. Someone just needs to care enough to make it so.”

In the Classroom

The videos featured at Kideo Player are for very young viewers and for emerging literacy development. That makes it a good fit for an early elementary classroom, but not so great for the older kids. I did like that the shift key allows the viewer to advance to another video. I didn’t like that I could not pause the video. Also, I was a little put-off (as a dad) that the site seems to be geared towards moms specifically and not parents in general. Hey! I care about what my little guy watches, too!

Kideo Player

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With the budget issues that have plagued schools over the past two years, educators have found themselves without opportunities to attend education conferences. Sadly, they miss out on the perspective of subject-area experts that can reinvigorate one’s teaching. Thankfully, a group of dedicated individuals decided to create the K-12 Online Conference. The 2010 conference, as with past conferences, is FREE, run by volunteers, and open to everyone. Co-convener Wesley Fryer is an adjunct instructor at the University of Central Oklahoma and blogger for “Moving at the Speed of Creativity.”

Given its online environment, sessions are asynchronous and available via archives for years to come. This means you don’t have be online at any particular time and can, in fact, miss the conference altogether and take in the content at a later time.

For those new to the K-12 Online Conference, there is a First Timers section to get you oriented to the particulars of the conference. Directions to presentations, handouts, videos, and a social-networking hub are all included in your tour of the K-12 Online Conference.

This year’s theme is “Cultivating the Future.” As William Gibson said, “The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet.” The conference sessions, keynotes, and conversations will focus around how we should carefully map out our professional-learning connections so that we may reap the benefits from our work. A recent announcement from Wes Fryer, “Keynote speakers will be announced on September 1, 2010.”

So what’s stopping you from attending? Is the cost? (It’s free.) Is it the schedule? (It’s on your time.) Is it the relevance? (There’s something for everyone.) Head over to k12onlineconference.org and start reading more about the K-12 Online Conference coming this year. While you’re there, take a look at the 140 past presentations archived from 2006-2009. Finally, follow the conversation on Twitter, continue the conversation with #k12online10 and become a fan on Facebook.

K-12 Online Conference

]]> http://blogs.learnnc.org/instructify/2010/08/19/edtech-conferences-persist-without-funding-the-k-12-online-conference/feed/ http://blogs.learnnc.org/instructify/2010/08/18/augmented-reality-civil-war-history/ http://blogs.learnnc.org/instructify/2010/08/18/augmented-reality-civil-war-history/#comments Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:14:46 +0000 Christopher Panna http://blogs.learnnc.org/instructify/?p=4865

BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

Ever watch Pop-Up Video? Or have you noticed the first-down line that magically appears when you watch football on TV? These are examples of augmented reality — adding information to enhance a real-world view. Thanks to efforts like the American Civil War Augmented Reality Project, the concept is making its way into education. A few Pennsylvania teachers plan to use this technology to help visitors understand Civil War battlefields.

Their vision involves using tablet computers or smart phones to snap pictures of a battlefield site, then superimpose Civil War-era photos of the same areas along with information about the site. They also plan to install augmented reality devices resembling coin-operated binoculars. As the viewer swivels the “binoculars,” he or she will see the battlefield as it looked during the war. The project is still in the early stages, but it’s an exciting development and we’ll be watching its progress closely. You can get more information and even make a donation here.

Moreover, this should make us consider the use of augmented reality in our own teaching. Students could do a scavenger hunt for old photos of their hometown and then take present-day pictures for comparison. They could design audio or video tours of sites relevant to what they’re studying. After all, reality is what we make of it.

American Civil War Augmented Reality Project

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