Educational Origami

Yesterday we had the bus tour of San Antonio, the 7th largest city in the US.

San Antonio is steeped in history. The tour started with the Missions. Spanish missionaries in the 17th C convert the local indians to chistianity, while avoiding being spitted by the local apaches and co. To do this they set up missions - each about a days walk from each other. These were large compounds with the houses built into the wall of the compound and a church. The one we visited was huge and the church was lovely, I prefered it to the cathedral in the city we visited, a much nicer feel to the place.

The time there was very pleasant, but blisteringly hot. So when we had the opportunity to move into the church we were very grateful. The Church is still a functioning parish church for the local catholic population. While the rest of the mission is part of the national parks the church is maintained by the congregation.

From the mission we went back into the middle of town and headed to the Alamo. The visit was rushed and I would have prefered to have had more time to visit what is regarded as an almost sacred site. The Americans see the Alamo as a key point in their history. I will try to visit again with a little more leisure later.

We visited the cathedral in the middle of town too. Behind the altar is a huge (20ft tall) feature. The statues represent the 4 gospels and Christ. Its interesting too because its covered in gold. The entire structure is coated in gold leaf.

All in all a pleasing insight into San Antonio.

Today is the start of the conference with a full afternoon of keynotes, receptions and sessions.  Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are full of sessions and keynotes. Huge fun - looking forward to wandering through the trade displays - there are 100’s of them.

NECC here we come!

Well, inspite of legendary stories to the contary; security, customs and immigration at the international side of LAX was very good. Weht quickly and efficiently cleared customs and immigration, with no trauma, no fuss and also no officiousness from staff.

Domestic, however, was different. It was quick and efficient as it was run by a very scary woman. She had our shoes off and through the x ray machines, dressed down a businessman who stepped in front of a couple of kids and generally ordered, bossed and brow-beat loudly every one into quick but oh so thorough security checks.

LAX is huge! Our 747 rolled over to the gates from the runway and then kept going, and going, and going, and going…. We got off at gate 140ish after 10 minutes of taxi-ing between buildings, round corners and past row upon row of planes.

Got to San Antonio at 12.30am this morning and the Hotel by 1am.  Just had a good nights sleep, completed registration and had the boat tour of the San Antonio River. That’s an excellent reconnaissance for dinner tonight.

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 at the time of an alternative to sharepoint. But, thanks to Jason, I have been enlightened. This is a tool that uses open office or star office or microsoft office. Cool - document management & collaboration

The product is 0³ Spaces - http://www.o3spaces.com

The product is free at community level (upto 10 users) but beyond that is a priced model.

Its worth checking this out. The pricing is for the professional form but they do have educational pricing on request.

The key features are:

1. End user friendly Document Management & Collaboration
2. Web 2.0 AJAX web-client
3. Desktop integration
4. OpenOffice.org / StarOffice & Microsoft Office integration
5. Template Management
6. OpenSearch
7. Document security
8. LDAP Integration - nice to be able to authenicate the users
9. Cross platform - Linux, Solaris, Windows or Mac
10. language Localizations - English, Dutch, French, German, Spanish, Swedish and Polish.

This could certainly be a useful tool for schools like Warrington that are going open source. Small school = community edition = free

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. They are asking the Ministry of Education to give them the money they would have paid to software companies like Microsoft to employ locals to support the computers.

Absolutely Brilliant! Go Warrington! Well done Nathan Parker - Principal.

The Ministry of education provides schools with the operating system and access to the software available in the Microsoft deal. This includes server 2008 and alike but if we have a quick look alternatives are available.

Here is the list of software from the FAQ’s page

“The ‘core’ software listed below is included in the Microsoft Schools Agreement:

* Windows Vista Business or Enterprise (Upgrade Only)
* Office Enterprise 2007 or Works
* Student with Encarta Premium 2007
* SharePoint Designer 2007
* Visual Studio 2005 Professional
* Windows Server CAL
* SharePoint Server CAL
* Exchange Server CAL
* Systems Management Server CAL
* SQL Serve CAL”

So what are the alternatives (on the desktop)

• OS - Edubuntu - this is the Ubuntu Distro with 70+educational applications
• Productivity tools - Staroffice (Proprietory product but free to education) or Open Office
• Encyclopedia - The “web” is your oyster
• Visual Studio.net Express - cut down free version (PC only - I think)

I have not provided an alternative to Sharepoint designer and here is why. This is the product overview.

“Office SharePoint Designer 2007 provides you with tools to automate your business processes, build efficient applications on top of the Microsoft SharePoint platform, and tailor your SharePoint site to your needs, all in an IT-managed environment.”

This leads to another interesting point. You have to buy the server liciences, exchange and sharepoint server, software management system etc.

So what is missing from the free list…

• Server Ubuntu or any lunix distro server
• Web server - apache
• LMS - Moodle, LAMS etc
• encyclopedia - any wiki on the apache server
• email - open groupware, openXchange eGroupware
• Graphics tool - GIMP
• web tools - eXe, NVu
• Sound tools - Audacity
• Mind mapping software - c-map, freemind
• and so much more

You still have to buy the hardware, you still have to maintain the system, even though the software is free to start with there is still a Total Cost of ownership. But the Minstry is paying Millions for software - not support - for software. Could this money be better spent investing in ICT and using the vast selection of free alternatives? Here is another quote from the Otago Daily Times

“In April 2007, the Government renegotiated contracts totalling $32.9 million to supply computer software to all state and state integrated schools. “

If we moved would we be alone in this?

Look at NSW open Office on to 41,000 machines

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Major_OpenOffice.org_Deployments

ancient greece - http://www.ancientgreece.com/s/Main_Page/

Medieval studies -[ http://labyrinth.georgetown.edu/ ]

Center for History and new media -[ http://chnm.gmu.edu/index.php ]

Digital History - [ http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/ ]

The History Lab - [ http://hlab.tielab.org/

Timelines -[ http://www.historyonthenet.com/Chronology/timelineexplain.htm ]

Ancient Egypt timeline - [ http://www.historyonthenet.com/Chronology/timelineegyptian.htm

BBC history - Byte size - [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/ ]

BBC HIstory site -[ http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/index.shtml ]

National archives - [ http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/museum/ ]

Academic Info - Main portal - [ http://www.academicinfo.net/histanc.html ]

Ancient Greece - [ http://www.academicinfo.net/histancgreece.html ]

Ancient Rome -[ http://www.academicinfo.net/histancrome.html ]

Ancient egypt - [ http://www.academicinfo.net/histancegypt.html ]

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 very beneficial.

The conference itself was well organised. I enjoyed Michael Pohl’s Keynote, but I did think that there was too much for one keynote and to get real benefit, I would have needed to attend the other workshop. In spite of this being aimed at a primary audience I did find much of the material interesting and applicable.

One concern I had, and I have seen it a number of times with presenters who are also authors or product vendors, was the self promotion. I feel that if your presentation is up to speed and engaging, this will be promotion enough. Make your materials available after the session, people always come and talk to you. Slipping slides of your latest publications into the keynote or shamelessly refering to your learning management product etc is a little tacky.

I was also rather glad that I had the afternoon session rather than the morning slot as I had a number of technical hurdles to overcome. The support staff were very helpful and of great assistance. However the key lesson is..

…. go straight to the horses mouth. Many of the issues were infact due to unclear comunications. Had we spoken directly the issues would not have been issues rather just part of the process. I think this is a key for any conference organiser, have the presenters liase directly with technical staff when they are doing a practical session.

Its fair to say I love that presentation, a handful of the best - teachers get PLAY TIME. I spend a little time exploring the tools and highlighting them, then its play time. Teachers need time to experiment, to test and try, to play and have fun. This is part of the learning process.

The other part that I feel is key with this is cost. Most are free and open source, some like comic life are brilliantly priced. Its a great product at a very competitive price.

Overall - I am a happy camper. Lessons learnt, presentation presented, delegates happy. Can’t complain really… Oh and did I mention nice food

This is a interesting collection of readings about technology and education. The papers are written by vendor but make for interesting viewing

http://www.campustechnology.com/mcv/resources/whitepapers/

The papers are technically focused but this is a useful resource for support staff, technicians network admin etc.

Worth a visit. Here are some examples

Educause has released there monthly briefing paper on a technology. This time the timely and informative paper is looking at SECOND LIFE.

The paper is a download in PDF format - Click here.

You need to see the others to they are brilliant resources for teaching and Learning. Click Here

http://www.neatorama.com/2007/01/02/13-photographs-that-changed-the-world/

This is an amazing blog post and one that is as interesting from the comments as it is from the content.

This is a post about some of the all time great photos. Every one has there opinion, but this is a pretty good collection. With each image is a explanation, these to are insightfull and captivating.

A good effort and a good read - don’t forget the comments.

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 can use. many of them are FOSS - free or open source software. Some, like comic life, are proprietory but warrent a place on the list becuase they are so good.

The list is PC based and does not include some tools like productivity suites because they are not easy to implement or suitable for a 90 minute workshop. Here is the workshop playlist, my favourites (This list changes everytime I present it to suit teh audience and also to suite the new toys I have found).

• Audacity Http://audacity.sourceforge.net
• Camstudio - http://camstudio.org/
• Cartoonist - www.vicman.net/cartoonist/
• comic life (trial version) - http://plasq.com
• c-map - http://cmap.ihmc.us/
• freemind - http://freemind.sourceforge.net/
• google sketchup - http://sketchup.google.com
• pencil - www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil/
• photostory - Microsoft download
• pivot - www.geocities.com/peter_bone_uk/pivot.html
• gantt project - www.ganttproject.org
• rasterbator - http://arje.net/rasterbator
• readplease (free standard version) - www.readplease.com/
• tuxpaint - www.tuxpaint.org/
• exe - http://exelearning.org/

Whats missing? Well the obvious ones for me are

• Open Office - http://openoffice.org
• the GIMP - www.gimp.org/
• Scribus - www.scribus.net/
• Pinnacle’s Spinvideo - www.videospin.com/
• Moodle - www.moodle.org
• openproj - http://openproj.org/
• google earth - http://earth.google.com
• hot potatoes - http://hotpot.uvic.ca/

These are brilliant products but they don’t fit into the small window of time I have for this presentation. The tools I have selected are quick easy and allow the staff and then their students to achieve success on the first attempts.

But I am interested - what did I miss?