Wordle is a toy for generating "word clouds" from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.
an interactive learning experience as you see thousands of hand-selected and relevant links to pictures, slide-shows, videos, audio-clips, artifacts, manuscripts, documents and other primary sources
Mahara is an open source e-portfolio, weblog, resume builder and social networking system, connecting users and creating online learner communities. Mahara is designed to provide users with the tools to demonstrate their life-long learning, skills and development over time to selected audiences.
iTALC is a use- and powerful didactical tool for teachers. It lets you view and control other computers in your network in several ways. It supports Linux and Windows 2000/XP (Vista support will come) and it even can be used transparently in mixed environments!
In contrast to widely used commercial equivalent software, iTALC is free! This means you do not have to pay for expensive licenses or things like that. Furthermore the source-code is freely available and you're free in changing the software to fit your needs as long as you respect the terms of iTALC's license (GPL). Freedom in two ways!
Features
iTALC has been designed for usage in school. Therefore it offers a lot of possibilities to teachers, such as
* see what's going on in computer-labs by using overview mode and make snapshots
* remote-control computers to support and help other people
* show a demo (either in fullscreen or in a window) - the teacher's screen is shown on all student's computers in realtime
* lock workstations for moving undivided attention to teacher
* send text-messages to students
* powering on/off and rebooting computers per remote
* remote logon and logoff and remote execution of arbitrary commands/scripts
* home-schooling - iTALC's network-technology is not restricted to a subnet and therefore students at home can join lessons via VPN-connections just by installing iTALC client
Furthermore iTALC is optimized for usage on multi-core systems (by making heavy use of threads). No matter how many cores you have, iTALC can make use of all of them.
The mission of DOK is to become and remain the most advanced library in the world. Using creativity, technical innovation, and advancing scientific understanding, DOK endeavors to be an indispensable source of inspiration
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.
Professor MacFarlane discusses many issues which ring true to me. In particular:
- lack of vision for what education could be like with new technology (around 4 min mark)
- the web2.0 and technology revolution is great for the 15% of people who have a good life anyway because of their suituation and culture (5:30)
- others don't benefit from the access to the technology - they need help (6:00)
- no change in classroom over last 20 years with computers and in danger of no change in next 20 years (7:30)
- instruction vs. construction (8:30)
- expect learning to change with introduction of technology (10:30) - but hasn't really done so
- student self-directed learning is separate from school work i.e. at home and not related to school (14:30)
- much of what kids do on computers at home is trivial (16:00)
- the ones that do have good experiences are the same 15% (16:30)
- kids that are missing out have a computer at home probably but no access to the community that enables them to have these experiences (17:10)
- doing something by themselves does not really benefit them - it is being part of a community that had benefit for learning
- what are we dong for these people? (19:10)
- talking about missing pedagogical model for how to teach (22:00)
- teachers are expected to use technology to provide innovative learning but no model against which to do so, some don't use it at all, some use it inappropriately - there maybe some individual examples but not overall (23:00)
- schools bad at connecting with their communities in a learning sense (26:00)
- talks about chinese online writing community and how they comment, collaborate (34:00)
- community (47:30)
- communitites aren't formed when people are brought together in schools etc.
- need to have a common problem or interest (48:30) - Plant's definition?
- in education the problem is because assessment is done individually (49:00)
- so forming groups and sharing ideas is not attractive for students - worried about not getti
My Sound FX is your source for a whole heap of professionally recorded and edited, studio quality, free sound effects arranged under a number of categories. These mp3 files may be used, without restriction, for both private and commercial use and load directly into Audacity and Garage Band. They claim to be adding new effects on a daily basis so please be sure to check back often. You can even let them know if you can't find what you are looking for please and they will do their best to add it to the collection.
Technology, when used appropriately, can help make the history and social studies classroom a site of active learning and critical thinking and further student connections with the past. Teachers can use technology to enable students to meet people of different cultures, explore ancient and modern worlds, do authentic primary-source research, problem-solve through inquiry-based activities, and much more.
"Welcome to The Game Programming Wiki! Here you will find game programming tutorials and source code for a variety of languages and platforms. Also, because this is a wiki, you are encouraged to contribute your knowledge and help the repository grow! If you're lost or confused, please try the help page, or else drop on by the forums and ask for clarification there"
The report centres on the application of emerging technologies to teaching, learning and creative expression. Horizon Reports, now published in six languages, are regarded worldwide as the most timely and authoritative sources of information on new and emerging technologies available to education anywhere.
There are countless websites offering images, video and audio files for use in education, but it's not always easy to know which sites are most useful or appropriate. This advice document discusses general tools and strategies for finding digital resources and looks at many of the sites you can use as reliable sources.
we have gotten the cart before the horse. We are less concerned with whether students learn the right thing than whether they learn in the way that we rely upon to measure how well they learn when compared to their peers. We do this without even having considered whether the measurement is even useful, much less necessary or even counter-productive.
We do it for no better reason than tradition, habit, and inertia.
I no longer teach programming by teaching the features of the language and asking the students for original compositions in the language. Instead I give them programs that work and ask them to change their behavior. I give them programs that do not work and ask them to repair them. I give them programs and ask them to decompose them. I give them executables and ask them for source, un-commented source and ask for the comments, description, or specification.
As a teacher, my job is to help students learn, not create artificial barriers to learning in the name of equitable grading. Nice people do not put others in difficult ethical dilemmas. Grading should be a strategy for making learning more satisfying by demonstrating accomplishment.
"Bill Murray approaches the teaching-learning system as a game in which students, teachers, and others play various roles. He wonders whether the game itself encourages cheating, and suggests that teachers could restructure the game so that cheating is less rewarding and less likely."