• The reinvention of email

    01Jun
    Author: Katherine Pisana Categories: Mind Amplifying Tools Comments: 1

    I didn’t realize how archaic email was until I saw what Wave can do! I first heard about it from David Wiley’s blog, and after posting the YouTube video of its unveiling to my Facebook profile I continued reading public reaction to it which led me to Jon Mott’s post in which he notes how closely the timing of the announcement fell to the launch of WolframAlpha. He also comments about how he thinks this might impact learners:

    I’ve Seen the Future and the Future is Us (Using Google)

    Based on an hour and 20 minute long video, Google Wave appears poised to dramatically improve on the Twitter model. Accordingly, the possibilities for enhanced interactions between learners are encouraging. And the ripples of the Wave (sorry, couldn’t resist) have profound implications. With Wave, entire learning conversations are captured and shared with dynamic communities of learners.

    I’ve included a link to the unveiling below.

    I’m still wrapping my mind around the possibilities. I’m definitely one of the believers that this will be a huge revolution in the way we use technology to support communication…and…what is education if not the communication of ideas in the name of greater understanding.

  • The Crime is in the Parking

    13Apr
    Author: Katherine Pisana Categories: Educational Technology Comments Off on The Crime is in the Parking

    We’ve been practicing a few things in the world of educational technology. We’ve been identifying possible uses of technology in education. We’ve been creating research studies that test these uses in practical settings. We’ve raised money to conduct these studies and we’ve been publishing lots and lots of picture-13conclusions about what we think the outcomes of our experiments mean. Sometimes we even develop wonderful technology-enhanced tools like games and content management systems that support and even enhance learning but after the studies are done, and the funding is tapped out, where do these tools go? As this video discusses, lots of these tools get ‘parked’. They end up sitting on our office shelves, stored on our external hard drives or perhaps posted on our personal websites. But that’s as far as our contribution goes. Perhaps because there’s not enough money. Perhaps because there’s not enough time. Perhaps because…no one’s listening.

    Where are the effective mechanisms that enable practitioners to store the vital information that we’re collecting about what works, what doesn’t, when what works actually works and when there’s no reason to even try?

    Science published a special issue this January focusing specifically on education and technology in an effort to stimulate discussion on the subject. It brings to light the ever-growing importance of the long-term goal and continues to question the contribution that standardized tests make within our education system (the one in the US in this case). Progress in our understanding of how technology can work with us as we strive to become more educated, rather than work against us in a misconstrued attempt at updating today’s classrooms for the future is one of the major points addressed in this issue.

    How do we share our great ideas? Pit stops are great, but one day soon, we’re going to run out of parking spots…and then what? Will we stop car production all together?

  • C what eye C

    10Apr
    Author: Katherine Pisana Categories: Educational Technology, Mind Amplifying Tools Comments: 3

    Whether you want your local students to have a way of meeting outside of the classroom, your distance learning students to remotely collaborate in their study groups or for you to conduct seminars online or have one-on-one conferences with your research students, the technology available to us today affords us with many free and easy solutions that connect people, and that allow for the sharing of videos and images as well as text and sound. The types of technologies focused on here are screen capture, screencast and screen share technologies along side video conferencing applications. These types of tools are more and more often being bundled together – so teach yourself what each technology does so that you can decide which ones are important to you.

    In this post, I’m not going to go into great detail about the ways in which you could apply these technologies within an educational context. Instead, my intention is to build an evolving list of resources to which you can refer each time you find yourself looking for a new way to connect with your students (or to have them connect with each other).

    Because the technologies below can seem similar to one another at first glance, it’s important to have as clear an idea as possible about what you want the technology to do for you. If you’re not sure exactly what it is you’re looking for, browse through the list and start to develop a familiarity with the capabilities of the tools. To help you get comfortable with their features, I’ve included links to demo videos and/or tutorials where they are available.

    Just to clarify for those of you who might be unclear about the difference between Screen Capture vs. Screencast vs. Screen Share tools:

    Creating a screen capture (a.k.a. ‘screenshot‘ or less eloquently as a ‘screen dump‘) is basically the process of taking a static (still) photo of your screen (great content to add to help documents and other instructional material that mix text with images). A screencast is a way for you to capture moving images (videos) of what you see on your screen and share them with other people so that they can see what you see (useful for demonstrating tools or for giving overviews of resources and course websites to distance learning/remotely located students). Participating in a screen share means to either have access to someone else’s computer or to give access to the other members of your group (lots of security issues arise in this scenario, but some people find the function useful).

    Screen Capture / Screencast

     

    freescreencast

    Demo Video

     

     

    goview

    Demo Video

     

     

    jing

    Demo Video

     

     

    mykogo

    Demo Video

     

     

    screencastle

     

     

    screenshotcaptor

    Demo Video

     

     

    screentoaster

    Demo Video

     

     

    skitch

    Demo Video
    Read more about Skitch here

     

     

    snipsDemo Videos & Tutorials
    Read more about sni.ps here

     

     

    utipu

    Sample Uses Videos

     

    Video Conference / Screen Share

     

    dimdim

    Demo Video

     

     

    elluminate

    Demo Videos

     

     

    mousecloud

    Demo Video

     

     

    oovoo

    Overview

     

     

    palbee

    FAQs

     

     

    powwownow

    Demo Video

     

     

    skype

     

     

    thinkature

    About

     

     

    twiddla

    FAQs

     

     

    wiziqDemo Video

     

     

    yugma

    Also see their education program

     

     

    yuuguu

    Tutorials

     

     

    zohomeeting

    Demo Video

     

     

    And remember, if you’re a MAC user, you can easily take quick pictures (screen shots) of any part of your screen by simply pressing COMMAND SHIFT 4 and highlighting the area you want to capture. A .png file of your selection appears neatly on your desktop.

    Have I missed a tool you want to share with others? Add a comment and let me know!

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