Open-sourcing offers great potential for AT software users. However, currently there are a number of barriers that stop its wider use within the AT community. It is generally difficult to find on the Internet and, until the OATS Project, there have been no specific websites dedicated to developing or downloading AT software.
Open-source software can also be unfriendly to install, often obliging the user to download many different packages before it can be set up and used. Often it is still "under-development", poorly documented or technically demanding, something that the end user finds frustrating and irritating. To see just how complicated this can be for the lay enquirer, one need only visit the most well-known source of mainstream open-source products, Source Forge (http://sourceforge.net/). Finding OATS products here is like experiencing death by a thousand cuts!
The OATS Project's repository will strip away all the technical complexity and provide via its database and search engine an efficient and intuitive way to access good quality OATS. By removing these barriers to open-source AT software, users will not only have a single point of contact for obtaining open-source software but volunteer developers will also discover a forum where they can develop ideas and write software that meets the real needs of specific end users.
An interesting report with the most interesting data being that "100% of students are online in 2011". While the survey data is apparently representative of the Australian population, I would argue that this figure is not the case and that deeper research needs to be undertaken before these figures can be used as a foundation for embedding technology and internet into education. However, it does show the increasing rate of uptake of online activities within Australia and the trends for access information.
Both the author of the article and the people she criticizes are making a fundamental mistake. It is an illusion that kids once learned facts in some deeper way. If the tree octopus had been presented in a book, the kids would have made the same mistake. Much of traditional teaching was not about absorbing certain facts but about learning techniques for accessing those facts. The internet and google really have changed the way we access information. The real challenge is how to restructure knowledge itself to take advantage of the new forms of accessibility. And as for using technology in the classroom: banning computers is like forcing kids to memorize arithmetic tables in an age when everyone has a calculator. We don't need slide rules nor an abacus and there is no reason to teach kids how to use them.
Using Diigo for Organizing the Web for your Class
31
07
2007
A good friend of mine, Randy Lyseng, has been telling people of the tremendous power and educational value that can be gained from social bookmarking in the classroom. His personal favourite is Diigo.
My preference is a social bookmarking tool called http://diigo.com. With diigo, you can highlight, add stick notes and make your comments private or public. (Randy Lyseng, Lyseng Tech: Social Bookmarking, November 2006)
After listening to Randy praise Diigo at every opportunity, I finally started playing with the site (and corresponding program, more on that in a bit) this summer (I know Randy - I’m slow to catch on…)As I started to play with the system, my mind started reeling with all the possibilities. First off, like any other social bookmarking tool, Diigo allows you to put all your favorites/bookmarks in one “central” location. Students can access them from ANY computer in the world (talk about the new WWW: whatever, whenever, where ever). They just open up your Diigo page, and there are all the links. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Diigo’s power lies in it’s group annotations. That’s right, people can now write in the margins of webpages. You can highlight passages of interest, write notes, and even write a blog entry directly from another webpage, quoting passages right from the original text. Sounds great - but to do all that it must be complicated right?
Nope. To use these advanced features all you need to do is run the Diigo software. This can either be done using a bookmarklet or by downloading and installing the Diigo toolbar. While both have basically the same features, the toobar is less finicky, and allows you to use contextual menus to access features quickly. I also find the toolbar’s highlighting and sticky notes to be easier to read. Ok fine… I can leave notes on webpages - so what?
Here’s an example. I’m thinking about having my 7B’s record radio plays. I’ve looked them up online and found many scripts from all the old classics available. However many also contain the old endorsements from tobacco and other companies. So I go to a play that I’d like to my students to record and highlight the old commercial. If they’re using diigo when they access this page they’ll see the same text highlighted in pink, and when they mouse over the highlighted text they’ll get a hidden message from me - “I’d like you to write a new advertisement for this section. What other advertisement do you think we could write for here? Write an ad for a virtue or trait that you think is important. For example - “Here’s a news flash for every person in Canada. It’s about a sensational, new kind of personality that will make you the envy of all those around you. It’s call trustworthiness. Why with just a pinch of this great product….” They now have a writing assignment to go along with the recording of the radio play.
Adding assignments is just one possibility. You can ask questions about the site, or have students carry on conversations about the text. Perhaps about the validity of some information. These notes can be made private (for your eyes only), public, or for a select group of people. You could use the same webpage for multiple classes, and have a different set of sticky notes for each one! Diigo will also create a separate webpage for each group you create, helping you organize your bookmarks/notes further! This technology is useful for any class, but I think is a must have for any group trying to organize something along the lines of the 1 to 1 project. I’m hoping to convince all the core teachers to set up a group page for their classes, and organize their book marks there! I’ve already started one for my 7B Language Arts Class!
One of the first questions I was asked when I started looking at this site, and more importantly at the bookmarklets and toolbar was is it secure? Will it bring spyware onto our systems? How about stability? I’ve currently been running the Diigo bookmarklet and toolbar on 3 different browsers, Explorer, Firefox, and Safari (sorry, there’s no Safari toolbar yet), across 4 different computers and 2 different platforms with no problems. I’ve also run every virus and spyware scan I can think of, everything checks out clean. I’ve also done an extensive internet check, and can’t find any major problems reported by anyone else. To my mind it’s an absolutely fantastic tool for use in the classroom. Thanks Diigo! And thanks Randy for pointing me in the right direction!
planning to offer $25 mobile device + $0 access to Internet ... using apps to speed up visibility of content across slow wireless networks ... computing "hardware is dead"
Fortunately there are a number of free tools that do these things and they are available for use on any technology platform as they require nothing more than access to the internet. Recently Eric Sheninger used a set of these tools to give his audience at the Hawker Brownlow Conference on Thinking and Learning in Melbourne a voice.
We are on the cusp of a global revolution in teaching and learning. Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use. These educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge. They are also planting the seeds of a new pedagogy where educators and learners create, shape and evolve knowledge together, deepening their skills and understanding as they go.
I agree...While I don't want technology to overtake my classroom, I do want to engage students as much as possible, and I'll use technolgy when it's easy to manage/use and effective.
I feel that our plan right now is to throw a bunch of software applications and hardware at us and let us figure it all out. Not working for me. I need to take one thing at a time and really learn it before I can use it in my classroom.
Diigo is a social network, Gary. The types of discussions you have on here, the learning that you do, that's why we need to be involved in the personalized professional development social networking can give us.
laptop, projector, and internet access.
I recommend investing in low cost laptop carts so students also have devices
If you click on the link just 2 lines below this highlight ('over here') there are clues on how to use wikis in teaching. In Chemical Education, we have been investigating using these both to teach and to build an online living text. See Laura Pence's talk at http://www.softconference.com/llc/player.asp?PVQ=GEDM&fVQ=EKKJFJ&hVQ= (may require ACS membership). Contact me if you are interested in how other chemists are using them.
Family Entertainment reviews and ratings for movies, television, video games, music CDs, books, and web sites.Common Sense Media helps parents choose what's best for their kids.
Register for a free account and access:
Curricula/scope&sequence across grade levels
Classroom lessons
Parent resources
and MORE!
This site is all about teaching age appropriate and responsible use.
The internet is host to a ton of great information. The challenging part is keeping all the information you need organized and accessible wherever you go. This is where Diigo comes in.
"Art lovers will be able to stroll through some of the world's most famous galleries at the click of a mouse after Google put the venues online using Street View technology. In a collaboration with 17 leading galleries in nine countries, the US internet giant took equipment from the cars it used to map cities and recorded the galleries so they can now be enjoyed by anyone with web access."
Feed readers
are probably the most important digital tool for today's learner because they
make sifting through the amazing amount of content added to the Internet
easy. Also known as aggregators, feed readers are free tools that can
automatically check nearly any website for new content dozens of times a
day---saving ridiculous amounts of time and customizing learning experiences for
anyone.
Imagine
never having to go hunting for new information from your favorite sources
again. Learning goes from a frustrating search through thousands of
marginal links written by questionable characters to quickly browsing the
thoughts of writers that you trust, respect and enjoy.
Feed readers can
quickly and easily support blogging in the classroom, allowing teachers to
provide students with ready access to age-appropriate sites of interest that are
connected to the curriculum. By collecting sites in advance and organizing
them with a feed reader, teachers can make accessing information manageable for
their students.
Here are several
examples of feed readers in action:
Used specifically as
a part of one classroom project, this feed list contains information related to
global warming that students can use as a starting point for individual
research.
While there are literally dozens of different feed reader
programs to choose from (Bloglines andGoogle Reader are two
biggies), Pageflakes is a favorite of
many educators because it has a visual layout that is easy to read and
interesting to look at. It is also free and web-based. That
means that users can check accounts from any computer with an Internet
connection. Finally, Pageflakes makes it quick and easy to add new
websites to a growing feed list—and to get rid of any websites that users are no
longer interested in.
What's even
better: Pageflakes has been developinga teacher version of their tooljust for us that includes an online grade tracker,
a task list and a built in writing tutor. As Pageflakes works to perfect
its teacher product, this might become one of the first kid-friendly feed
readers on the market. Teacher Pageflakes users can actually blog and create a
discussion forum directly in their feed reader---making an all-in-one digital
home for students.
For more
information about the teacher version of Pageflakes, check out this
review:
"There is a wealth of video content available online that can help the teaching and learning process, but some of the main issues of using online content within the classroom include inappropriate advertising, inappropriate recommendations, and the dreaded school firewall or slow internet connection. Yet, gaining access to such video content can really help to explain certain concepts, with opportunities to include footage, clips or teaching points in the lesson."
Multimedia presentations can enrich education and enhance learning for many students, but it can also pose barriers for others. Audio and video are inaccessible to people who are unable to hear, and video is inaccessible to people who are unable to see critical information that is presented visually. Other students are impacted by low bandwidth Internet connections. Multimedia players can pose barriers as well if the player controls require use of a mouse or if they are not labeled sufficiently to be usable by screen reader users.
It took a politician to show the
word’s educators how to communicate, teach, frame a problem, provide facts and detail,
THEN a solution.
All
children in school by 2015, with massive injection of funds by the private
sector, public sector, religious institutions and not-for-profits, all given
wings by technology, mobiles and the web.
shouldn't we admit we got it wrong" and asks that
we put it right
'Let's march. Let's march for education and
let's march for it together.”
Cached
Jessica Smith on 15 Apr 10Open-sourcing offers great potential for AT software users. However, currently there are a number of barriers that stop its wider use within the AT community. It is generally difficult to find on the Internet and, until the OATS Project, there have been no specific websites dedicated to developing or downloading AT software. Open-source software can also be unfriendly to install, often obliging the user to download many different packages before it can be set up and used. Often it is still "under-development", poorly documented or technically demanding, something that the end user finds frustrating and irritating. To see just how complicated this can be for the lay enquirer, one need only visit the most well-known source of mainstream open-source products, Source Forge (http://sourceforge.net/). Finding OATS products here is like experiencing death by a thousand cuts! The OATS Project's repository will strip away all the technical complexity and provide via its database and search engine an efficient and intuitive way to access good quality OATS. By removing these barriers to open-source AT software, users will not only have a single point of contact for obtaining open-source software but volunteer developers will also discover a forum where they can develop ideas and write software that meets the real needs of specific end users.
