Mission-US.org

I had the opportunity to sit in on the unveiling of a new interactive multi-media project Thursday. Without going too far into the background of the whole thing, it originated from a grant that was awarded to a New York public broadcasting company (see www.thirteen.org), who then chose 10 sites in the US through another grant to start using it with.  KET (Kentucky Educational Television) was awarded one of the grants and I had the opportunity to be invited to the initial training provided to a few teachers, KET folks and representatives from other state organizations.

Now for the important part. This multi-media project is a fancy name for a game, but as we all know using the word game in education isn’t always a good idea.   Mission-US is different however.  While it is a game, it comes with more teacher materials than you can imagine.  It breaks each section of the game down and provides background information, vocabulary, how it relates to standards, and tons of activities to do in class.   So a teacher could decide to use the game in one class, or do what most teachers who were involved in the pilot did and use it over multiple class periods.

There’s really much more to say about it than the information I provided here.  The first game in the series is “For  Crown or Colony”, which deals with the American Revolution.  It has been tested with teachers and students in a variety of settings and proved to be both engaging and increased achievement.  More games are to come over the next few years on a variety of US History topics.  One of the best parts about this is that it is completely free.  I believe the official release date is towards the end of September, but it can be accessed now.  Check it out at www.mission-us.org

MindMeister – Another Brainstorming Tool

I just came across a site called MindMeister, which is a web based mind mapping/brainstorming software. It is similar to mywebspiration.com (which is currently in beta and free, but will likely be available as a paid subscription only soon) and is free for up to three boards, or if you are in education you can get the Premium edition for only $18/year. My initial thoughts on this site are very positive. The free version allows for the basics (create a board, sharing, printing, exporting to a pdf, etc…), but for $18 a year there are some additional very cool features. There is really too much for me to mention in a blog post, so check it out for yourself at http://www.mindmeister.com/. Another big plus for me is the ability to work in offline mode if you are traveling and do not have access to email and the mobile app.

The case for mobile learning in schools

I read an article in Fast Company magazine the other day that talked about the rise in popularity of smartphones and other devices that allow kids to access information anywhere.  There are over 6 billion people in the world today and according to the article, it is estimated that there will be 5 billion cell phones by the close of 2010.

To experiment, I downloaded one of the apps (pocketphonics) recommended in the article and turned my 2 year old loose with it (she’s familiar with the iphone already).  In no time she was following along with the program and learning to write letters.

So this got me thinking about the larger picture of mobile devices in classrooms.  There’s the iPhone, iPod touch, and now the iPad from Apple.  Then there are the droid smartphones that Google has a part in, not to mention the growth of affordable netbooks.  A recent survey showed that over 70% of kids already have access to these devices, but unfortunately are not allowed to use them in schools.

Without writing a book, here are a few of the reasons I think that schools should be seriously considering the use of mobile devices in classrooms:

• Cost (Hardware) – A laptop computer runs close to $1000 on most state bid contracts.  An 8 GB iPod touch is under $200.  In fact, you can buy an iPod touch station that comes with 30 touches and a macbook pro for substantially less that it would cost to buy a few laptops.
• Cost (Software) – Software may be more expensive than computers by the time you add up all the software that needs to be on every computer.  Many apps on the other hand cost .99 cents to a few bucks.  And if I’m not mistaken, with iPods, you sync all of the touches up to one computer… So if you buy an app once for .99 cents, you can then load it onto all of your touches.
• Fidelity – Not all classrooms I visit are using research based strategies.  I know that with RTI, “research based” is kind of a buzz phrase right now, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important.  Something is researched based because it works.  Things that aren’t researched based may work, but we don’t know that for sure.  If you download an app that uses a research based strategy, you know that each student is getting that strategy every time he or she uses it.  This isn’t the case in classrooms where lecture is the primary medium used.
• Cost (technology support staff) – I work quite a bit with Assistive Technology.  It can be a pain to install, maintain, troubleshoot, etc… A friend of mine in the software world was just telling me that the cost of supporting software in schools is actually more than the software itself.  With apps, they are downloaded, maintained and updated through a system separate from the school.  Other than a quick how-to tutorial, the technology support team can spend their time on other projects.
• Access – Many kids already have these devices.  They can use them at home, school and anywhere in between.

Having said all of the above, there are still all sorts of things that can cause this to not work.  For one thing, there is a cost involved.  Although computers are more expensive, those are probably already in the district.  Setting up an iPod touch or iPad station would have a significant start up cost.  Then there is figuring out how to go about purchasing apps, letting students check the devices out, etc…

Of course, we can always think of reasons to not do something, but I challenge people to come up with solutions to make it work rather than why it can’t.

There’s more to this from a global perspective than what I am writing here.   I’ll save that for another post.  In the meantime, I am working on a session for a few upcoming national conferences.  Hope to see you at one of them.

CEC 2010 Sessions – Nashville, TN

Apologies for being away for so long… I started another venture that occupied way too much of my time.  Fortunately I’m back now, so should be able to provide updates much more often.

This post is just to speak on the two sessions I did with my colleagues at the CEC Conference in Nashville, TN.  They were both very well received.  Handouts can be found in the downloads section of our educational site and www.systemsofsupport.org.  The titles/descriptions were as follows:

The Best of Both Worlds: Integrating Technology and Instruction to Increase Reading Comprehension”, with Jason Gibson, University of KY, and Lisa Shaw, Central KY Special Ed Coop

Reading comprehension is critical for students’ long-term success. With the availability of numerous instructional strategies and technology applications, it is unclear what works and where to start. The presenters will share a variety of comprehension strategies and technology solutions validated through research that can be immediately implemented into any classroom.

“Tools at Your Fingertips: Emerging Technologies for Preservice and Inservice Teacher Training”, with Jason Gibson, University of KY and Rob Pennington, University of Louisville.

Supporting teachers in implementation of effective practices is a critical process in preservice and inservice settings. Unfortunately time, distance, budgets, and limited personnel limit the level of support provided. During this session the presenters will demonstrate simple ways of using no-cost/low-cost Web-based solutions to provide teacher training and support.

I hope everyone has a chance to look over the handouts.  Let me know if you have questions.

Cool Whiteboard Software

Just finished reading about how to integrate whiteboard lessons into online learning environments where the FREE software LectureScribe was mentioned.  LectureScribe is a software developed by Brian Dean, an assistant professor of computer science at Clemson University.

I viewed a demo of the software and found it very well put together.  Although it is recommended that you use a tablet PC or WACOM (input device you for computers that you can use a digitized pen with), you could always use a regular PC with a mouse (just know it may be a bit frustrating).

The software gives you multiple boards so that you don’t have to include your entire lecture on one board.  It also allows you to record audio.  When finished, it saves as a .swf or flash file, which is compatible with almost all web browsers.  From there, you can post it to your site, blog, eLearning course or whatever floats your boat. Currently the software is PC only.

Oh, and did I mention it’s FREE!  Check it out at http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~bcdean/lscribe/.

Academic Earth makes going to college easy

I ran across one of the best sites I’ve seen recently after reading about it an article.  The site is called Academic Earth and this is how they describe themselves:

We are building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars.  Our goal is to bring the best content together in one place and create an environment that in which that content is remarkably easy to use and in which user contributions make existing content increasingly valuable.

The colleges you can visit include the most pretigous in the United States.   Here’s a list:

• Berkley
• Yale
• Harvard
• MIT
• Princeton
• Stanford

The lectures are great and users can rate the lectures after watching.  I have never been one of the YouTube types that can sit around watching videos on the web all day, but I literally spent an hour (56 minutes to be exact) today listening to Paul Brown at Yale discuss Sigmund Freud.  I learned more in 56 minutes than I can remember from my entire college psych class and found the whole thing very enjoyable.

So in addition to giving you something useful to do during your free time, what else can Academic Earth be used for?  Just think of the opportunities this gives many of our students.  Not all of us are able to go to Yale or MIT, but viewing lectures from some of the worlds greatest professors gives us opportunities we may have never gotten otherwise.  This is just another example of how education is becoming more accessible.  You’ve probably heard of California’s Open Source Textbook Iniative or MIT’s Open Courseware project.  Academic Earth is another one of those great free resources to add to the list.

Kindle 2 Released

It’s official, the Kindle 2 has been released.  I must admit that after seeing the Kindle 2, I now think that I may have purchased my Kindle too early.  Although expensive ($359 at the time of this writing), it has updated many of the things that I find problematic with the 1st generation Kindle, including:

• Battery life – The Kindle 2 is reported to have a 25% longer battery life
• Delayed page turn – now turns 20% faster
• More storage – Hold over 1500 books
• Text to Speech – This is the number one thing I wanted in the first version of the Kindle but didn’t get.  Text to Speech is not only for those who have reading disabilities, but also for people wanting to listen to their book while driving down the road.  I prefer to read than listen, but after running a couple of red lights I’ve found that listening is the better option while on the road.  One worrisome factor here is Amazon’s decision to make it optional for text to speech to work with books after some heat from the Authors Guild.

The Kindle 2 has even fixed a few things that I thought were fine to begin with.  The device now uses a 3G wireless connection (where available), which should make the download process shorter.  I must admit that I never had trouble downloading so this isn’t a big deal to me.  There is also mention of more shades of gray being supported to make the text look clearer, but I never had an issue with this either.  I’ve used the device in low lighting and in the bright sun without an issue.

There are a couple of things that I would like to see added (these may be included, but I didn’t find any mention of them):

• Some kind of back lighting option available in case I’m reading at night.
• Page numbers at the bottom of the screen… the current system for numbering pages is confusing at best.  Surely (I know… you’re name’s not  Shirley) it wouldn’t be that complicated to put “page # of #” at the bottom of the screen so readers know where they are.
• A better way to show lists and tables.  I’m not sure I know the solution here, but there have been a few occassions when it was very difficult to understand what the author was trying to say due to the way it was represented through the Kindle.

Overall, I really like the Kindle and will consider upgrading when I get a better idea of how many authors/publishers plan on allowing text to speech.  I think the implications for educators and students are tremendous… just think, an entire library on something smaller than a notebook.   If you’re an avid reader it doesn’t take long to make your money back when Kindle books are typcially $9.99 vs. the $20 plus for hard copy new releases.

Text to Speech just got easier

Most of us are probably familiar with products that turn digital text into speech.  Programs like Read&Write Gold and Kurzweil are feature packed applications that will not only read almost any digital text to you, but also provide numerous other supports such as advanced spell check, word prediction and more.  Other programs, like ReadPlease are basic (but free) and allow you to copy and paste any text in and have it read out loud.

The only major downfall to these programs is that a student must be sitting in front of a computer to use them.  Having one computer with text to speech capabilities doesn’t do you much good when 15 kids need it at the same time.

To help remedy this, there are several products out there that allow you to turn text into an audio file (typically an mp3 or wav file).  Once created, students can listen to it on their portable mp3 player, cd player, or even their computer at home.  Granted, this isn’t always as effective as being able to see the text as it’s being read out loud, but it does work for many students.  Surely you’ve seen all of the earbuds hanging out of kids’ ears haven’t you?

Before I list some options, I should mention one concern I consistently get is that not all students have the mp3 players.  This is true, but according to a recent report specializing in tracking the use of digital music and digital music players, over 70% of respondents ages 12-17 already have some type of portable music player.  This is up from 54% last year.  What’s more is that not all portable media players are as expensive as iPods.  A recent search on WalMart.com showed a 2GB video and audio portable media player for under $30!

Now that that’s out of the way, how do we turn text into audio files?  Well, there are really 2 ways: a software application (or one feature of a software application) and a web site.  Let’s look at each…

On the Web:  These websites allow you to paste digital text in and they will automatically create the audio file for you.

• Vozme.com
• HearWho.com (only free for limited amount of text)

Software Applications:

• Read&Write Gold – Contains a “Speech Maker” feature that turns text into a wav or mp3 file
• Text to Speech Maker
• Other options – a website containing several low cost text to audio programs

If you know of any additional programs, especially free programs, be sure to post in the comments section or send me an email.

Podcasting 101

I’ve held off on doing a post on podcasting because every school, district or organization I help get started have things in place that make them unique.  For example, I typically recommend using a blog to run your podcast through, but many places do not have or even allow the use of blogs.  Others may want to use their own server for podcasting while some organizations do not provide access to their servers by anyone except IT staff.  Having said this, I’ll use this post to provide the basic information you will need to create your own podcast.  You may email or leave a comment if you have additional questions.

The first thing I recommend is to give my previous post on “Podcasting and Podcatcher Options” a read.  It talks specifically about what a podcast is and how you subscribe to one.  This is important because I find that most people interested in creating their own podcast would be just as well off finding podcasts that are already out there.  There is no use in re-creating the wheel when many high quality podcasts are already available for you to download and use with your students for free.

Keeping the above in mind, here’s my 4 step process to creating your own podcast:

1. Record your audio.  Most podcasts are audio podcasts unless defined otherwise.  To record audio, I recommend downloading the free application Audacity.  It is simple to use and works great for podcasting.  One thing to note is that by default Audacity does not save audio files as MP3 files (the format needed for podcasting audio).  To remedy this, you must download the LAME MP3 encoder.  You can find this on the Audacity download page.  Once downloaded, upzip the file and copy the folder onto your computer in a location that you will not delete or move (your C drive, my documents, etc…).  The first time you use Audacity and export your audio to an mp3 file it will ask you if you would like to locate the encoder.  Just select yes, and browse to the folder. You will only have to do this the first time.  Audacity will remember the location for future exports.  Although Audacity works with both PC and Mac, most new Macs come with Garage Band, which has all sorts of additional bells and whistles for creating audio podcasts.
2. Store your audio file. This is where the unique part comes in.  Once you have created your audio file, you will need to store it in a place that is accessible via the web.  For example, my organization has a website at www.cksec.org.  If had an audio file named audio.mp3, and uploaded it to our server, you could access it by going to www.cksec.org/audio.mp3 (this is just an example, it will not work if you try to access this link).  Once there, you would either download the file or listen to it straight off the site.  This is important because if your file is not accessible through the web, no one except you can access it.  So where will you store your file?  Several options exist… For example, you may be able to store it on your organization’s server.  There are also several hosting services, like switchpod.com, that will host your files for you (usually for a fee).  You may also use a blog to store your files.  Blogs typically come with a predefined amount of storage space for videos, images, etc… that you want to share.  I use Edublogs.org and it gives me 100MB of storage for free.  This should be sufficient for several short audio files.  If you plan to produce large files (like video or long audio segments) you will want to upgrade your storage limit or only keep them up for a specified amount of time and remove them afterward to save space.
3. Syndicate your files.  Syndicating your file simply means making it available for subscription.  I explained in fairly good detail why you want to be able to subscribe to your files in my podcasting and podcatcher options post mentioned earlier.  In short, a podcast is not a podcast if you can’t subscribe to it.  It would only be an audio file on a website.  Syndicating your files is the primary reason I recommend using a blog to run your podcasts through.  Since blogs are already syndicated, simply including a link to your file in a blog post should suffice.  If you are not using a blog, you will want to use a service such as RapidFeeds.com to create RSS feeds for your files so users can subscribe.  Other services, like feedburner also help with syndicating feeds, tracking your subscribers and more.
4. Subscribe to your podcast.  Most information you need here is also available in the podcasting and podcatcher options post.  You need a podcatcher, such as iTunes, to subscribe to podcasts after they are syndicated.  Once you have your feed from step 3, simply go to Advanced – Subscribe to Podcast in iTunes and enter it in.  Then iTunes will automatically download your most up to date podcasts each time you open it.  If you use a blogging service, like Edublogs, this feed can be found by clicking the subscribe to posts button.  After clicking, copy the link from the new web page that is displayed and paste it into the subscribe to podcast box in iTunes.

Hopefully this post will be enough to get you started with podcasting.  If you are interesting in video podcasting, know that is very similar to audio podcasting excpet you will be recording video instead of audio in step 1.  I’ll go over some things to think about when recording video in a separate post.

Podcasting and Podcatcher Options

For those that aren’t aware, a podcatcher is a software application used to collect and play podcasts. By far, the most popular podcatcher is iTunes. However, not everyone wants to rely on only one software application. In addition, there are many schools or entire districts that do not allow the use of iTunes. So what exactly is a podcast and are there options for those wanting to subscribe to podcasts other than iTunes? That is what this post hopes to answer.

To start with, a podcast is simply an audio or video file that is syndicated, which means people are able to subscribe to it using a podcatcher. Why would you want to subscribe to a podcast? Let me use an example that I think will help. Imagine there are 5 podcasts that i am really interested in. They are on various topics, maybe Spanish lessons, technology, financial information, music, and math strategies. All of these podcasts contain great information, but it is a time consuming task for me to visit each site every day just to see if a new podcast has been posted. If I find that there is a new post, I then have to download and store it somewhere before I can listen to it on my computer or on a portable media player like an iPod.

Now let’s look at using a podcatcher, such as iTunes, to make this process more efficient. Instead of visiting each site everyday, I only visit it once. While there, I find the feed information for that podcast (usually by clicking on a link that says “subscribe to this podcast”). I take that link and copy and paste it into my podcatcher (if using iTunes go to Advanced – Subscribe to Podcast) and viola, I am now subscribed to that podcast. I do the same with the other four sites and now every time I open my podcatcher it searches to see if any new posts have been made. If so, it automatically downloads and organizes them for me. Is that cool or what! iTunes also offers an extensive list of podcasts you can search and subscribe to without ever leaving the application.

So moving on, are there other podcatcher options than iTunes? The answer to this is yes, but you may need to spend some time exploring the options to find which works for you. Below is a list of a few options you may want to try:

• Doppler
• gPodder
• Juice
• MediaFly
• myPodder
• NewsFire (mac only)
• NIMIQ
• PrimeTimePodcast
• QuickNews (for PalmOS)
• RSSRadio
• SmartFeed (for Windows Mobile)
• ZiePod
• Zune (Microsoft’s Version of iTunes)

I figure this list will do you for awhile. I personally use iTunes, but if I didn’t I would probably give Juice, MediaFly or ZiePod a try.  If you have tried one of the options above feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think.