I learned today about a Web service called Drop Box (found at www.getdropbox.com), which has a number of features that will be beneficial to both individuals and groups. The Tour explains the features or you can watch the video.
For individuals who have more than one computer and they need to keep file synchronized, Drop Box allows you to easily keep the files in synch.
If you work with others, you can create a Shared folder, which will allow others to access the files. They can be shared with either Drop Box members or non-members. See this Web page for more details.
Free accounts come with 2MB of storage.
One of the things to think about is that if you put a file in the Drop Box that will be on your computer, you will have moved it from its original location so it would be best to put the original in the Drop Box and then put an alias in the folder where it was originally.
Evernote allows you to clip information from the Web and edit the Web pages. You can create your own notes, drag and drop content into Evernote. Also, there is software that you can download that allows enter information and sync it with the Web-based content.
By default, the information is kept private on the Web but you can make it public.
A number of video tutorials are available here. The Getting Started Guide can be found here.
With the free account you are allowed up to 40MB of uploaded files each month. With a Premium account, which costs $5/month or $45/year. the amount of uploaded files allowed is 500MB. There are other advantages of upgrading to the Premium account. Click on this link for more details – Premium account.
You can also embed widgets into your Web pages such as the one below.
An interesting comment from the Tony Bates in the article below is this:
“…technology has not yet transformed education:
- Student expectations about the educational experiences (e.g., connected, participatory, engaging) are not being realized
- Rather than introducing 21st century skills, technology is often being used to automate outdated education paradigms
In other words, technology is in the main just being added-on to the traditional classroom experience. Thus, while there are ‘pockets’ of innovation, technology is not being used for systematic change.”
Later, Bates states “Where are the ‘pockets’ of innovation? The area with the most potential is the use of Web 2.0 tools, such as blogs, wikis, virtual worlds, and mobile technologies such as phones, cameras, and iPods, that allow learners to collect, create, share and evaluate their own learning materials.”
I have assumed that DVDs would last a long time but this article by David Pogue points out the problem. It sounds like gold DVDs are the way to go (for the time being).
In another post, I mentioned the Optoma Pico Projector that David Pogue reviewed. In a later article, David discussed other pico projectors. This article is worth the read if you are interested in purchasing one of these projectors, especially if the source of the video is important to you. The Optoma Pico projector can’t hookup to a laptop but the 3M Micro Professional Projector can. To learn more about the 3M Micro Professional Projector, check out this article.
Want a video projector for short distances? The Pico Projector, reviewed by David Pogue, might be worth getting for small classes. Cables come with it that allow you to hook up a variety of devices, including an iPod (both video iPods and the iPod Touch). But you’ll need a speaker because the speaker in the projector is pretty small.
The folks at Inspiration, the popular software that allows you to create concept maps, have created My Webspiration, which is presently in beta. I’m very impressed. Not only can you create your own concept maps but you can also collaborate with others. Additionally, you can both import and export Inspiration 8 documents.
If you you would like to create Web pages easily, download the free software, exe. You can download it from exelearning.org I have been using it extensively to for creating Web pages that have screencasts for the Anatomy and Physiology class that I am teaching as a hybrid course. Here’s a video describing exe:
If you are an teacher and you would like to use a WordPress blogging site as a site for a course, you can install the Scholarpress plug-in available at ScholarPress Courseware.
Here is the description of what is available with their plug-in:
“As of version 1.0, ScholarPress Courseware gives you the ability to create entries in a schedule in the Schedule page, add items of various media to a bibliography in the Bibliography page, and assign those bibliography items to read (or create other types of assignments) in the Assignments page, and edit your course information in the Course Info page.”
A nice software title that allows you to create tutorials by screencapturing portions of your computer monitor is the software ScreenSteps. With ScreenSteps, you can insert various images of various portions of what is on your screen and insert things like arrows, boxes, and circles. With the Pro version of the software, you can export the tutorial as a PDF or HTML page. Check out the videos on the Web site to learn about some of the other nice features.
If you are not already familiar with Google Apps, you can go to the introductory page to learn more about them. One of the really nice apps is Google Docs since it allows a group of individuals to collaborate on a paper.
Probably many of you are familiar with the various Google Apps but may not be familiar with the relatively new Microsoft Live Workspace.
If you need to collaborate with anyone or if your students need to collaborate, these are tools intended for that purpose although, of course, you can use them for your own personal work.
If you read the comments posted in response to this article, you’ll notice the one particular comment that points out that the article failed to discuss some of the features of Google Apps not found in Microsoft Live Workspace.
So that you don’t have to figure out which comment I am referring to, here it is:
Google Docs is far better than Office Live, especially thanks to its real-time collaboration and mobile access. There are some any other features of Google Docs that should have been presented, such as the chat feature in spreadsheets and presentations or the integration of Google Docs with other apps (you can schedule an event in Google Calendar from a doc, you can integrate a doc in the brand new Google Sites wiki-like application, you can transform a Google Notebook into a doc, you can use a Google Spreadsheet as a web-based bookmark storage thanks to its integration with Google Co-op subscribed links, you can also published in Blogger directly from a doc, you can use a Google Doc spreadsheet template to upload a complex Google Earth map – see Google Earth Outreach, you can access from Gmail a Google shared spreadsheet even if it has been sent as attached email, etc.).
You missed so many advantages of a very web-based workspace, and you seem to ignore that Google is preparing to launch a Google-Gears enable version of their suite that will let you access and EDIT shared docs OFFLINE directly from your Internet Browser. This has been officially announced and is currently tested by Google teams.
MS Office Live is a “workaround” to retain users. To keep Office is to play against the “in the cloud” computing trend, which is the future of collaboration. If you like a continually improved editor, don’t wait years for the next Office version: Google release amazing features every week!
At the 2007 Educause conference, Diane Zorn described an online course in philosophy that she created.
Here are the main points that I got out of this podcast:
“The goal of distance education, in my experience, is not to replicate the in-class experience but rather to go beyond what is possible in a conventional classroom.”
She used Mediasite which provides a video of the instructor along with the corresponding Powerpoint files but with a little ingenuity, something similar to this could be done using Keynote, Garageband, and iMovie.
Using Video Streaming and Podcasting to Design Rich-Media Online Courses [29:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
This video is quite impressive. It presents some interesting facts about tomorrow’s world and challenges us to consider what we are doing to prepare students for tomorrow’s world.
I’m becoming more interested in how video can be used in education and how to make it interactive. An interesting application that can be used is VideoPaper Builder, a free program produced by the Concord Consortium.
If there is video on the Web (i.e., You Tube, Google Videos, etc.) and you want to create some text or hyperlinks that relate to certain objects within the video, go to Asterpix to see how easily this can be done.
Hyperstudio has been resurrected and is in version 5.0 now. There are some new features. Years ago, I used Hyperstudio instead of Powerpoint and before Keynote was out.
I wonder if you can still export the Hyperstudio files and put them on the Web? If I remember correctly, a plug-in had to be installed on the server but I don’t think the user (the person wanting to view the Hyperstudio file on the web) had to install anything on their computer. (I know they had to install a Hyperstudio viewer on their computer and I assume that is still the case.)
Unfortunately, the MacKiev website provides some information but I’d like to see a more extensive list of the features.
convert this post to pdf. 