Mike Brown has published a helpful review of the Fourier Systems Nova5000 in the latest edition of TechLearning. At around $600, the Nova5000 has a pricepoint that will look more attractive to many school districts considering a 1:1 laptop initiative. Miguel Guhlin posted a helpful podcast interview about the Nova5000 back in July to the
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“The Future Of Learning In A Networked World” is a traveling conference sponsored by Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand that started on September 18, 2006, and is continuing. The conference blog and wiki have more details. This is really a superb idea: An ecclectic group of participants “are now travelling as a roadshow to participating
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I am enthused to have learned yesterday and today about two new podcasting collaborative project and contest opportunities for students. The first came from Maria Henderson, who told me about Dan Schmidt’s new “Where in the World? A global geography podcasting quiz!” project. According to the announcement flyer, the shows are: created by students from
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I listened to the podcast “The Mighty and the Almighty” by Madeleine Albright today in the car, and I found her reflections and responses to questions from the audience insightful and thought provoking. Her view that the decision for the U.S. to go to war in Iraq was a decision of choice rather than necessity
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Good conversations continue to take place during and after my E-Rate and free digital curriculum workshops across the state of Oklahoma– Of those discussions, one from last week stands out. After discussing the ways blogs can be used to permit students, in a teacher-moderated environment, to publish their writing for a global audience, the discussion
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Skype 2.0 for Macintosh is out, I’m guessing with better support for videoconferencing. I’ve been using the 1.5 beta for several weeks and the videoconferencing from my MacBook has been GREAT, both to Windows users as well as Mac users. This article (via Devin Henley) shares the announcement but doesn’t make it clear how the
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I was glad to see today that Imbee has launched a Teachers and Schools initiative to help young and older people in schools learn about safe digital social networking. Imbee is designed for kids ages 8 – 14. I am convinced EVERY school today should be addressing Internet safety and safe digital social networking issues
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Brett Moller posted a good question relating to digital ethics and P2P file sharing, in his post “21st Century Ethics.” Here’s my reposed comment: Brett: I think we have to do a lot more than just tell kids, “That’s wrong, don’t do that.” The response of these kids does show they may be off the
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This past week when writing a late-night article, I did a basic keyword Google search for “universal literacy” and was appalled (made physically ill would almost not be an exaggeration) to see the first result out of almost 11 million hits was for the Voyager Reading Program. Our school district back in Lubbock (which we
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Cosmeo is a new commercial, homework-help service from Discovery. I saw this advertised a few weeks ago at our local mall in Edmond, Oklahoma. Has anyone tried it, and have comments or feedback on the service they’d like to share? There is so much good stuff on the Internet, but finding it is often a
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One of the favorite bedtime books of my daughters and I is “O Is for Orca”, which is an alphabet book about animals in the Pacific Northwest that I bought in Seattle several years ago when I was there for NECC. This evening my youngest and I were reading a related book she recently got
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As a geographer and a geography lover, I was delighted to discover “My Wonderful World” today. Sponsored by the National Geographic Society, one of three organizations of which I am a lifetime member, the site is a fantastic, free resource for helping students of all ages develop better geographic literacy. According to the About page
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www.k12onlineconference.org Announcing the first annual “K-12 Online 2006″ convention for teachers, administrators and educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice. This year’s conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, Oct. 23-27 and Oct. 30- Nov. 3 with the theme “Unleashing the Potential.” The
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Is the Internet good or bad? Should we ban it or embrace it? Is there a place for web 2.0 in our schools? These simplistic questions fail to acknowledge the complex and multifaceted aspects of digital literacy and digital content today. A practical question many people may ask themselves regarding the Internet is, “What constructive
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The BBC reported yesterday that Google has released a new blog search tool: http://blogsearch.google.com. The tool currently offers two primary sorting options: by “relevance” and by “date.” I don’t think this looks nearly as powerful as Technorati yet, but I’m sure the clever people at Google will continue to improve and tweak the interface and
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Nicholas Negroponte is one of my favorite thinkers about digital literacy (as the author of the 1995 book “Being Digital”) as well as a practical evangelist for the transformation of teaching and learning through the lever offered by 1:1 technologies (now via OLPC.) I was delighted to find this evening on the Internet Archive an
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Richard Shearer is the director of technology for the Wynnewood School District in Oklahoma. For several years, with the support of his superintendent, Richard has switched many of the desktop computers utilized by students from commercial productivity software to the free, open-source software package “Open Office.” From a financial standpoint, this decision has saved the
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I have shared three seminars with school administrators this week in Oklahoma focusing on E-Rate and free digital curriculum. In the conversations which followed these workshops, I was again struck by the vital importance of engaging educational leaders at all levels in conversations about the importance of digital literacy. One of our most pressing needs today
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