Well day one went well. The open source lab was interesting - I attended a session using Blender a 3D image and animation tool. A good session, a little to big for really good learning but it was a good taster and one I will follow up on.
I continue to be impressed [...]
In one of my last blogs I looked at alternative tools to those supplied to schools.
In The Mirosoft deal, which provides state and integrated schools with Microsoft software, is the sharepoint client. Schools have to buy the sharepoint server or connect to a provider using sharepoint to be able to use this.
I was not aware [...]
The Otago Daily Times reports on Saturday 21st June that “School opts for free Software”
The school has decided to stop using the ministry’s SMS (School Management Software) and it hope to be the first school “to exclusively use free ‘GNU/Linux’ software on school managment and classroom computers”
But the best thing about this statement is this. [...]
Yesterday I had the privilage of attending and presenting at the Waimarino Cluster Conference, held at Bethlehem College in Tauranga. Overall I found the experience to be a positive one.
The evening before we had a very pleasant meal out with Richard, Sharon, Rocky, Allanah and Jamin. Having time to network with other enthusiasts is [...]
One of my favourite presentations is “A handful of the best” and I am presenting this workshop on Friday at the Waimarino Cluster conference.
The presentation is looking at a handful of cost efficient tools that you can easily integrate into the classroom to enhance learning.
Its my favourite because there are some many tools that you [...]
Recently, a good friend of mine (thanks Mark) gave me a old desktop. Its a celeron 1700 with 256Mb of ram, so nothing spectacular, but a usable and useful machine never the less. I have wanted for a while to have a linux box to play on. So when opportunity presents one must take it. [...]
Pivot is free product that I am using to introduce Animation and Multimedia to some of my students. Pivot is the creation of Peter Bone and is a simple, easy to use and fun product.
Pivot has a range of pre-made figures with different “Pivot” points on the limbs, so to animate you figure you simply [...]
http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil/index.php?id=Home
This is a neat little free application that is available for windows, mac or Linux based systems. Derek found this tool and blogged & twittered it.
Its a 5Mb Download and the program does not require installation just unzipping into a folder and running the executable (Win). Its got the beginnings of a good help [...]
This is a very interesting article published in the New Zealand Computerworld.
Essentially the article reads as follows The New South Wales Education departments has:
downgraded allvista operating systems to Windows XP
use open office instead of Microsoft Office
The selection of Open Office instead of MS office is interesting as Sun, who make open office’s big brother Star [...]
http://theopendisc.com/programs/
Miguel blogged about his today, and its come at a perfect time. Next week myself, 2 other teachers and 28 students are heading to Nepal for a community service and adventure trip. We have been given several laptops to donate to the Umbrella Orphanage in Kathmandu (watch the video). The laptops only come with [...]
