An Interactive Learning Design Blog

An Interactive Learning Design Blog

Sep 28, 2007

Embedding a document in your blog

One of the teachers here wants to be able to post her templates on this blog. My first search for a solution sent me to scribd.The document I uploaded threre does embed nicely, and it actually printed! On the other hand
1) the program requires you to "completely trust this java applet"
2)The document titles were hard to view in the upload phase,
3)there were too many steps for most teachers, and
4) the document was reduced in size about 75%. For a older guy like me, that means I need to find my reading glasses, which disturbs me.
Still, it's a start. Stay tuned for better ideas.

Sep 22, 2007

Introducing Snap Shots from Snap.com


We just installed a nice tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, and more.
Now, when you look at this blog, you'll notice a small dialog box on the right side of every hot link. As you mouse over this box and pause, you'll see a larger box pop up with a preview of the site. As visual thinkers, we think this makes the links far more valuable to our readers than they were before we installed this great tool. It gives the reader more choices in the navigation of this blog's content.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

If you want to install this tool on your blog, the link is here. A few pointers on installing this tool

1)The default install is for both the icon and the link to show the pop up. That turned out to be too distracting, We went back to install and chose option two: only mousing over the icon gives the pop-up box.
2)Don't worry if you didn't get it right the first time; the Snap site sends a confirming email that has a customization link in it. It took me five minutes to change my settings.
3)When the Snap site changes your settings. all it really does is place a new widget on your blog You should remove the first widget you installed before you install the second time to avoid confusion.

Sep 19, 2007

Afterschool Matters


Here's a video from the George Lucas Education Foundation (GLEF) about how a group in Chicago, is using after school programs to change students' lives. Technology is often part of it, but it's wonderful to see how their program serves kids interested in a wide range of areas.

Sep 13, 2007

How to make a rainbow

Margo and I continue to be fascinated by the tool that created this short clip on how a rainbow is created.

A fine example of a simple video blogging class project

Margo found this for me on teacher tube, and we both thought it was a great idea. The kids get to plan out, write down, and practice what they are going to say; the parents will love the video; it takes only equipment the school already has; and there are no privacy issues.




Rachel Boyd, the teacher who did this says:
Let the 6 & 7 year olds from Room 9 at Nelson Central School educate you about what they think a blog is and why they love using them! This is the introduction to my presentation for a New Zealand Online Conference. This part is the student's voice. Primarily it's an AUDIO file, we didn't want to detract away from the children's voices. I've just chosen to upload it here as a movie for flexibility. Check out out class blog here at: Room 9 Nelson Blog Or our teacher's edublog at: My journey in ICT and blogging

Sep 8, 2007

How to create a group in Teachertube.

One of the issues we are faced with in blogging is student privacy, which must be protected at all costs. As you may have noticed, Margo and I post our videos at Teachertube.com. There are many reasons why we do so, but here's one. Watch this short video which demonstrates how to create a "group" at the Teachertube site. This group will allow you to limit the people who can view the video you post to your classes parents and other teachers and administrators in your school. Great feature.


Inspiration for Math Education

Here's a post from Margo's blog, Inspiring Math Learning.

In light of NCLB and the standards movement, teachers are so pressed to raise test scores that it's easy to forget some of the intriguing, fun, math things we used to have time for in the "good old days". So this blog will help remind us of some of the conversations, resources, and really "cool things" that inspire math learning.

Like for instance. I just came across a very elegant simple puzzle, called Ball of Whacks - a 30-sided polyhedra made up of 30 identical magnetic pieces that just pop into place. You've got to feel it to believe it.
Check it out. Here's a little movie of it - Ball of Whacks

Sep 6, 2007

Education Week online is free this week!

From September 5th to 15th, you can read all the articles on the Education Week website. There's a great article on the Long Beach School district(They won the Broad award in 2003, they use professional learning communities). They also have a whole page of articles on No Child left behind. Last but not least, there's a whole section on how technology fits into your educational plans here.
Good evening reading...

Sep 4, 2007

Testing Qlipmedia

Margo and I meet the Qlipmedia people at Barcamp a few weeks ago, We like their tool-the "qlipboard"-and plan to start using it in the lab as soon as we can. More to follow....

Sep 1, 2007

Science in the news

Google news found over 282 stories on the web today about a huge spider web in texas. Most articles were very simple- they told of the place(Lake Tawakoni State Park), speculation about which variety of spider created the web(no one seemed to know), and finished off with speculation about why it happened(voodoo? new variety of Spider?).
After some searching, I finally found a web page created by the Park Ranger who found the web. Turns out it's a lot less mysterious than I thought. The spider is actually a well known one: its a member of the long-jawed orb-weavers(see photos here and here. The bug guide is a wonderful tool when you're trying to figure out what that wierd bug is that's crawling up your window). We don't have the same species of spider here in California, but we do have spiders that to the unexpert eye, look exactly like it. Check out the photo of the web these spiders wove:


According to this web site there are over 25 species of lon-jawed orb-weavers in the United States. There's got to be one in Novato..

A new feature in Google Earth

Well, two actually. The first is that now they added the ability to look at the night sky, see constellations, etc. Parts of it work very well for me(the constellations are marvelous), but parts seem underwhelming(I did not find the graphics of the planets very exciting). But it certainly makes it a more versatile teaching tool.
But what I just find out that should really make things interesting for the kids is that there is a flight simulator hidden in Google Earth.
TechCrunch has all the details:
We’ve always known that Google has wanted to challenge Microsoft’s desktop dominance in a number of areas, but to date we didn’t know that extended to gaming.

Hidden inside Google Earth is a secret Flight Simulator that takes full advantage of Google’s extensive satellite imagery.

To access the hidden feature, open Google Earth and hit Command+Option+A (note it must be capital A) or Ctrl+Alt+A if you’re using a Windows Machine.

The Google Earth Flight Simulator comes with two aircraft options, a F16 Viper and the more manageable SR22 4 seater. Players have the option of commencing the game from their current location in Google Earth or can pick from a list of pre-determined runways. Control instructions can be found here.

Overall the game play is fairly simple in terms of control, but the striking difference is flying over real pictures of locations. I took a quick flight from San Francisco International, headed North to the Golden Gate then turn back over the city before heading towards the Valley. It wasn’t perfect, but it was as good visually as the paid Microsoft Flight Simulator, and in terms of actually presenting real objects it was better.

Thanks to Marco for the how-to.