Skype in The Classroom

So we all know what Skype is... right?

Have you been struggling to find a way to use it in your classroom to connect your students with others from around the world? Maybe your struggle is not how... but with who? Wouldn't it be great if there was a directory of teachers that are looking for other teachers to connect with? And wouldn't it be even better if you could get on that list so other teachers can find you?

Well there is such a directory. Although in beta right now, you can become some of the first teachers to be a part of this global directory to be launched next month. Click on the link below to learn more and sign up for the beta.

http://blogs.skype.com/classroom-pre-register/

As always, I would love to hear any thoughts or comments, like "This is amazing news" or "I have been waiting for something like this" or "I love Technology". Please go to the blog to do so @ http://beauvoirtech.blogspot.com if you are reading this post in an email.

Thanks for reading.... I'll see you next post.

Is This The Future Of Textbooks????

Say Hello to Kno!

(K)No... this is not a Kindle or Nook... Nor is it an iPad... or a Tablet PC for that matter. It's a Textbook? Well... more like an eReader with some added functionality, and its coming to a student near you. Check out the video below to see what this thing is capable of.

Kno Movie from Kno, Inc. on Vimeo.

OK... now that you have seen it and most likely formed a first impression, let me share mine, if I may. I kno(w)... I kno(w) [<-- you see what I did there? Clever, huh?] this is a marketing video and in a perfect world if this thing works like it does in that video... I'm impressed. What makes it different from things that I've seen in the past is that publishers have not just PDF'ed books as they have done for PC's or Mac's or eReaders. They have partnered with publishers and seem to have created a more "book-like" experience for the student. I mean really... how long do you think it would take... say... You... to figure this thing out? My guess is... not to long at all. Once you figure it out, it might take a bit more time to become efficient with it, but hey, none of these concepts are really foreign are they?

With that said... my first thought though is that it's HUGE! Who wants to carry around this monstrosity? Especially with that ... much smaller thing we all see on TV all of the time... you know... that "revolutionary device"... with the fruit on it? This thing is not quite as attractive as one of those now is it? And it's certainly not marketed as well. Lets be honest, If you weren't reading this, you probably wouldn't kno(w) that this thing even exists. If you didn't use a Tablet PC every day, would you know what it is or what it's capable of? Do you really know what all of it's capabilities are now?

Well...Check out the next video to see their reasoning for the size, and some other good stuff about this new textbook.

So, they make a single screen version too. Thats a good touch, but can it compete with the HP Slate 500 and it's full fledged Windows 7 OS, that can run MS Office and Skype and...? How many devices do we need? Can one do it all? You be the judge.

What does all of this mean for our students? How will they push the market to put out products that will do what they need them to do? What else will they use devices like this for? Maybe we should talk to our kids about this, and see what they think. Will anyone show this video to their students?

As always, I hope you found this post to be informative and thought provoking. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks, and see you next post. :)

FaceBook Heart's Skype

Apparently yesterday, the folks at All Things D posted that a little birdie told them that FaceBook is planning to integrate Skype into their platform in the near future. According to the article, this partnership will allow you to make video calls, SMS, and calls to landline phones, all from within the FaceBook interface. This really kind of exiting to me though not surprising. I figured they would do something like this eventually. My question is how this will look in a mobile platform?

And of course, my question to you all is, how will this affect the way our children socialize online? Does a video chat really count as "Face to face communication"???? Is this scary to anyone? Not to be creepy here, but it almost, and I stress almost could be a way to verify who it is you are really chatting with on the other end.

I look forward to see how this develops and how people really use it.

As always, your comments are not only welcomed, but encouraged. Please don't just respond to this automated email but visit the Blog at http://www.beauvoirtech.blogspot.com to comment. Thanks for taking the tie to read this post.

Articulated Naturality

OK... So most have you have probably heard of something called Augmented Reality. Dictionary .com defines it as -

"-n an artificial environment created through the combination of real-world and computer-generated data"

It's a bit of a step up from Virtual Reality that was popular in the late 80's and early 90's. If your an iPhone or Droid user, you may know about an app called Layar. If you don't know about it.... Get It!

Here's what it does.... As pictured to the right, using the Wikipedia Layer (in the LAYAR app) if you are walking around a city that you may be unfamiliar with, you simply hold up your phone and it will show you virtually what you are looking at. If you were to click on the bottom there, it can take you to the Wikipedia page of The National Cathedral. This is just one of the layers that can be applied. You can also look for restaurants with the Yelp Layer and the list goes on. Like I said.... Try it, I promise you won't be disappointed.

Now, lets get back to what this post is really about... Articulated Reality! Watch the video below, because I just don't think I can write well enough about what its capabilities are. I guess I could just say that it's the next step up from Augmented Reality.

Enjoy the video....

QPC - Articulated Naturality Web from Justin Montgomery on Vimeo.

OK..... Did you get all that? No.... Watch it again.... I'll wait.

Now, My question to you is: How will this change the way that our children will learn in the future? I would love to hear some creative possibilities about how this technology can be used personally, and in the classroom (and outside of course.... the world is a classroom you know) to learn.

As always, your comments and questions are not only welcomed but encouraged. I look forward to hearing from you.

Have a great weekend!

What Does Digital Citizenship Mean To You?

Let's have a conversation. I invite you to share your thoughts about what Digital Citizenship means to you. Is it different for you than it is for your, friends, family, colleagues, students? Does your digital personality reflect who you really are... personally or professionally or both? How do you plan to prepare our students for the unknown digital world that we will all be living in? How can we help them to become responsible global digital citizens?

There are many questions that can be asked. Lets hear some of your questions and comments about what Digital Citizenship means to YOU.

Digital Citizenship, Interactive Whiteboards, and One-to-One Computing

Here are a few videos on Digital Citizenship, Interactive Whiteboards, and One-to-One Computing from the floor of the ISTE 2010 Conference that took place last week (6/27/10-6/30/10) in Denver, CO. You may recognize someone in the videos.

As always, Your comments on the Blog are not only welcomed, but encouraged. I hope your all enjoying your summer.

In case you are unable to view all of the videos, Here are the Links:

http://www.edtechmagazine.com/k12/video/iste-2010-digital-citizenship



http://www.edtechmagazine.com/k12/video/iste-2010-interactive-whiteboards



http://www.edtechmagazine.com/k12/video/iste-2010-one-to-one-computing



 

Food For Thought over the Summer Break

As we get ready to go off to a summer filled with fun in the sun, I just wanted to share a little food for thought while you sit on the beach or wherever it is you may go. I will keep this one short and let Sir Ken Robinson do the talking. Have a great summer everyone and enjoy this very inspirational talk. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.



As always, your comments are not only welcome, but encouraged.

Oh, and if you happened to miss his talk from TED 2006... here IT is!

The Wait Is Over! ...Well... in 5 days it will be.

Hello World! Remember me? My... How I have missed you all!

It's pretty ironic to me that my last post was over a year ago regarding Multi-User Video Conferencing, and a [then] new program called ooVoo that made it possible for free. Since that post, ooVoo has undergone some changes that now require payment for "premium features".... like Multi-User Video Conferencing! (Grrrr!!!) The 2-way video chat has remained free, but they just don't quite seem to do it as well as Skype in terms of quality, reliability, and ease of use. So many die-hard Skype users never took the leap.

I also predicted in my post that Skype would have an answer to ooVoo soon. Although "soon" was not really an accurate prediction.... According to a recent post by the AP....The wait is over! Next week Skype will be offering Group Video Calling to Windows users for free! Apparently, the Apple version is still in development but should follow soon. Sorry Mac users, you'll have to keep waiting. :(

The service has been reported to be free for now but will require some coin in the near future. So... you better get your Group Video Skype on while it's free.

Hmmmmm, I wonder how long it will be before we will see what this will look like for say... iPads, iPhones, Android tablets and phones, maybe even WebOS tablets made by HP? How will this affect how we communicate in the future... or how our kids will communicate? Watch out Dick Tracey! I guess thats a whole-nother post.

As always, I would love to see your comments. Thoughts please?

UPDATE: Here is the link to download the BETA-

http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/get-skype/on-your-computer/windows/beta/

ooVoo: One up on Skype? Maybe two or three?

OK... OK... I haven't had time to blog lately, but I thought this might be worthy of a post.

I have been waiting (years now) for Skype to add some Multi-User Video Conferencing functionality to their already amazing free product. (Can you tell I like Skype?) Up to this point the only Multi-User video conferencing options were uber-pricey and required special network appliances to work.

Well... the wait is over, but... Someone has beat Skype to it.... and that someone is ooVoo. That's right.... ooVoo. This dandy new little piece of software let's you video conference with up to four different users for.... wait for it...................... FREE! So, if you are here in DC, and you have some family in CA, and some more family in NJ, and even more in PA (as I do).... you can all talk and see each other at the SAME TIME! Any more than four users including yourself, your going to need to pay.

To get started using ooVoo: just go to www.oovoo.com and download the software. Create an account, add some friends... and your ready to ooVoo! If someone you know doesn't want to install the software... That's OK..... you can send anyone an invitation to video conference through the web! Basically, it sends them a link to a website, when they click on it, they join your conference in a web browser. You can't do that with Skype!

OK... This is the disclaimer section of the post: This is pretty new stuff, and they haven't quite worked all of the bugs out yet, but hey.... you get what you pay for.... right? The voice quality tends to echo a bit and video can't even touch Skype quality, but it's not too bad... And I'm sure it will get better. Because it is free, it also does have advertising as you can see in the image above. The interface is a bit darker than what you may be used to with Skype too.

The best part is that I can't imagine that Skype won't have an answer for this. I'll be keeping my eye out on both companies to see how things are progressing. A little competition usually helps the people get what they want.

I hope you found this post informative and helpful. I will try to not let so much time pass between posts next time. :)

As always..... Many Thanks..... and your comments are not only welcome, but encouraged.

CAM-Trax: Please not just for Games!

I haven't had much time to blog lately, just as I am sure you are all busy (with 8 days of school left) and don't have much time for your RSS Readers either, but I just had to quickly share these thoughts with you.

Last night, I stumbled across this post from Engadget in my Google Reader about some new software called CAM-Trax being developed for Gaming. It uses a web cam to track movement of colorful objects that can be "locked in" by the software and used as a controller. The best part of this is that the objects can be anything as you will see in this video.

So here it is (Enjoy the Bestie Boys music!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0srY37kkMw



The sad part about this whole thing is that it's only being developed for gaming right now! That is all well and good for games and the gaming community, as this would be a great step for them. However, What about the rest of the computing world? To think of gaming as the only application for this is a bit narrow, wouldn't you say?

I can imagine this being used for interfacing with PCs in a variety of ways. How about for an art application? or just as an interface to your computer without having to touch anything? I could see this being used in some type of science or Physics application to track movement, speed or velocity. The possibilities are countless in my mind right now, and I would love to here what kind of use you all can think of.

My worry is that because it is being developed for gaming right now, these guys may get an offer from some gaming company to buy the technology and who knows if it will make it out for other applications.

I have signed up for the BETA and when it comes out, I will be sure to share my experience with you all.

I hope you found this post to be at least thought provoking and somewhat informative.

Lets hear your thoughts!

Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope: Free! Yes I said FREE!

Apparently.... Microsoft is giving Google a bit of a run for their money. They have recently released an outstanding program to compete with Google Sky (the outer space portion of Google Earth that not many folks use or even explore).

Much like Google Earth, Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope allows you to navigate the universe with the greatest of ease. But don't let me be the judge, try it yourself! You can download it from Micro$oft for free here! Did I just use "Micro$oft" and "FREE" in the same sentence? Yes! But I wonder how long that will last, so download it soon.

As always, I would love to hear what you think, and what your students think about it. So please, let the commenting commence.

Also, if you need any help with downloading or installing it, feel free to contact me... if you work for Beauvoir that is. It looks like we have been getting some hits on this blog from a few places in the US and Europe as well. (updated: Asia now too!) Pretty cool! Check out the ClustrMap of visitors to the blog.

I hope you found this post to be informative and thought provoking.

See you all again real soon.

Video: Learning to Change

Wow! What a great, inspiring, and thought provoking faculty meeting yesterday. Thank you all for its success. A special thanks to all of you who presented with such true passion and enthusiasm. I have already received some great feedback from some of you this morning and I look forward to hearing more about your success.

I thought a lot last night about when Paula spoke about change in the beginning of our meeting and I would like to thank you [Paula] for your vision of innovation and support as this organic process evolves. Thank you!

It made me think about a video I would like to share with all of you that I came across while reading a post on David Warlick's Blog about Change. Please watch it, think about it, and share your thoughts or comments. (Just click on the comments link at the bottom of this post. If you are viewing this in a reader, or the automated email, you will need to go to the blog to leave a comment, and watch the video for that matter.)




OK! Let's hear it! Tell us what you think!

Oh, and in case you would like to subscribe to the Beauvoir Tech Blog in your reader, the feed is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Beauvoirtech

and my shared feed is:

http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/14384467146681191132/state/com.google/broadcast

and last but not least, here is a link to the post on RSS which has the video we watched yesterday, just in case you want to share it or watch it again:

http://beauvoirtech.blogspot.com/2008/05/rss-what-is-it.html

As always, I hope you found this post to be inspiring and thought provoking.

See you all again soon!

Online Environments and Young Children: The Importance of Teaching Responsible Use

I came across an interesting article the other day about a study done by Warren Buckleitner, Ph. D. from the Mediatech Foundation for Consumer Reports Webwatch. The study was about how young children (ages 2-8) interact with online environments. I thought the findings were interesting but what I found even more interesting, and quite disturbing, was the focus of commerce aimed at this age group. It's not really a surprise to me. I see it all of the time on TV and on the web, but it reminds me to think of how important it is to teach responsible use for a variety of reasons.

An excerpt from the executive summary reads:

"We discovered that the digital world offers a wealth of opportunity for young children to play and learn. But even in this small sample of 10 families we found–too easily, in several circumstances–repeated examples of attempts to manipulate children for the sake of commerce."

"Like taking candy from a baby" as this study is appropriately titled.

Many of the thoughts that come to our minds when we think about responsible use have to do with protecting our children from online predators, or bullying, etc. Don't get me wrong, these are extremely important topics to discuss with our children and we should continue to address them. However, It might be easier for a child to identify and filter out an attempt by an online predator or bully than it would be for them to resist an enticing option or threat that their online creation (on sites like Webkins or Club Penguin) would become inaccessible unless a purchase was made. This goes beyond the realm of responsible use of technology and becomes a question of how we can help them become a better more selective consumer of media and information in general, and in all aspects of life for that matter.

Well before I get to carried away here... Let us also remember what our children can gain from their responsible online or digital experiences.

The video logs of the study can be found here, and again, the study PDF can be found here.

As always, we encourage you to comment, and we hope you found this to be informative and thought provoking.

See you next time! :)

RSS... What is it?

OK... Another "What is it?" post for those of you who are unfamiliar with RSS.

RSS is an acronym which stands for Real Simple Syndication, or as Oprah likes to say "Ready for Some Stories".

Wikipedia describes RSS as "a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts."

Basically, instead of going to all of the websites that you normally do to read new articles, news, or blog posts (like this one), you can make new ones come to you!

Check out the video that explains this a lot better than I can type it.



Now that you have seen the short video, your probably going to need an RSS Aggregator or reader if you don't already use one. I recommend Google Reader. You will need a GMail account which is free and only takes a minute to establish.

Google reader will keep track of the articles that you have read and let you know when you have new ones that you haven't read yet. You can organize them by category, "star" them to save them for later, and even share them with others as your own RSS feed. Here is my feed to my shared articles.

http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/14384467146681191132/state/com.google/broadcast

I warn you, it can become a bit of an addiction, so be mindful of how many subscriptions you have in your reader. Before you know it, you may feel yourself drowning in articles and posts.

I hope you found this to be informative. If you need any help with setting up your reader, please feel free to contact me.

Happy Reading! And as always, your comments are welcome here. It's nice to know what you think, or maybe you have a favorite reader or shared feed to share with us!

If you have any topics that you wish for me to post about, please submit them here.

See y'all again real soon.

WEB 2.0 ... What is it?

Well... We hear this term, WEB 2.0, used allot these days but what is it really? Is it a thing, something tangible? mmm... Not really but guess what? Your experiencing it right now.

Wikipedia's short and skinny version reads:

"It is a trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to facilitate creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users."

10 years ago, the world wide web was a static holding tank of information. The content was updated only by webmasters who controlled those sites. Today's web has evolved into something much more dynamic.

A comment from someone on YouTube in response to a video explaining Web 2.0 wrote:

"Web 2.0 is a buzzword that no one has the same definition for, even experts. It's is more of an abstract than concrete. It's about the way the web is evolving and changing toward providing more interaction with users, making users the content generators - but then, it's also about design. So web 2.0 encompasses not only the interactive content but also that sleek, minimalist shiny design you all see."

Here is a video that helped me learn more about Web 2.0. It's a bit fast, and slightly hard to follow, but it's the best one I could dig up (today).



Now imagine what the web will be like for our children and students 10 years from now. It begs questions to me like: "Are we doing everything we can to prepare our children for the web of tomorrow, or the web we know today?" and "How do we prepare our children for something that doesn't exist yet?" or "How can we teach or help create content generators?"

I don't know or have the answers for either of these questions but it does make me think of the last seven words of any dying organization: "We have always done it that way."

Just a thought! I would love to hear your comments and I hope you found this informative, and thought provoking as well.

Google Earth: A Joystick for Learning

OK.... Just a quick post about a website I learned about today from TechLearning. The folks over at Apple Learning Interchange (Yes... Apple)have a great site to show you how to integrate Google Earth (the incredible free resource) seamlessly into daily lessons.

Click the link and enjoy!

Google Earth: Small World, Your World, Our World -
A Teacher's Guide to Google Earth for the 21st Century Classroom

Great Stuff! I hope you find this as useful as I have.

SoftChalk Lessons are now ALIVE!

A few years back, we created an intranet (not internet) of sorts for Beauvoir and called it BVRWEB. It was supposed to be used as a place to get and share information with other teachers and or staff. There was some professional development and references for Global Studies as well as quotes of the day and standard operating procedures for Technology. Well... it never really took off, and was kind of swept under the rug.

Soooo, it is being introduced once again. This time as a portal to the Tech Blog, (hey that's this site :) HelpDesk, and best of all, (drumroll please)... all of those SoftChalk lessons that everyone has been working so hard on.

Please remember that because this is an intranet, it cannot be accessed while away from Beauvoir, (just like the helpDesk) unless you are connected through the VPN.

If you can think of any other creative ways that we may be able to use BVRWEB, please don't hesitate to send us your suggestions, and we will see what we can do to help make them happen.

Coming Soon To A Surface Near YOU!

OK , so I have been following the progress of this project for over a year now, and it seems like it's finally turning into a reality. Not exactly how I would have hoped, but for now, it's a start.

Later this month, 12 AT&T Wireless stores in 4 US cities will be the starting point for a new computing platform called Surface Computing, developed by Microsoft.

If you are unfamiliar with it, take a few minutes to watch this video. You might be amazed. :) (please ignore the wierd "mushroom music" in the beginning and end of the video. It is about 5 min long in total but worth it!)


After watching the video, you can see that the possibilities of this platform are endless. I am sad to see it make it's debut as a marketing tool however, I can only assume that it will begin to surface (pun intended) in homes and schools in the near future.

Can you imagine having a few friends over the house and sharing photos from your recent trip to [insert your favorite vacation spot here], literally on the coffee table? All of you sifting through and manipulating the media simultaneously, without a mouse or keyboard or stylus for that matter.

Even better, imagine this in a classroom... of any kind. I could not even speculate what the imagination of a child, native born in the age of technology, could do with this.

So... I will let you speculate, go to The Beauvoir Tech Blog and leave a comment to this post, how you think this could be used in a classroom. C'mon and get those creative juices flowing, I wanna hear some off the wall ideas! please don't reply to the email that this post automatically generates. Visit the Blog and Comment... Please.

Thanks!

Are you looking for Technology Professional Development? Look no further!

Do you know the way to San Jose... um... I mean... San Antonio?

I just wanted to take a minute to share this opportunity with those of you who are seeking Technology Professional Development for this summer. The 29th annual National Educational Computing Conference put on by ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) is the largest "EdTech" conference in the USA. It is attended by over 18,000 educators from all over the US and some international visitors too.

Last year, the conference was held in Atlanta. Roya, Andrea, Atanas, and I all attended, and it was amazing. They have some of the best Keynote speakers and the best sessions and workshops of any conferences that I have been to. You may just run into some folks like Alan November, or Daniel Pink, or Kathy Schrock, or David Warlick, or David Thornburg, or my favorite Mitch Resnick just to name a few.

I hope that some of you can have a chance to attend this conference, It is as much fun as it is inspiring! You can click on the logo above to find out more information.

Thanks, and keep those comments coming!

11 Year Old Student in Charge of IT at Arkansas School

You have got to love a story like this!

The Victory Baptist School in Sherwood, Arkansas has made 11 year old Jon Penn, the Network Administrator of the schools 60 computer network. Jon has been at it for nearly a year, since the previous IT person just up and quit one day, leaving the network and all of it's hardware a complete mess for someone else to clean up.

Not only has this kid stepped up to the challenge and cleaned up their network and it's hardware but he has also implemented a firewall for security and SPAM and Virus protection. This may just be the geek in me talking but this kid ROCKS, however, does make me feel slightly insecure :) Move over Billy G... Jon Penn is moving on up!

I would definitely love to hear your comments about this, so remember... Visit http://beauvoirtech.blogspot.com/ and click on the comments at the end of the post!

I hope you enjoyed this little post :)

You can click on his picture to get to the original post from Engadget.