The Netbook Experience

Want to try the Netbook experience?

1. Dig up some old PC or Laptop.
2. Download and install Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 Beta
3. Terminal: sudo apt-get install ubuntu-netbook-remix
4. Restart

Open source goodness!



Image source: Neil J. Patel's Flickr Photostream

Impress Your Colleagues with Classroom or Office Automation

Imagine that you and a colleague walk into your classroom or office for a short discussion. As you enter your Mac senses your presence and kicks off a series of actions.

Your Mac welcomes you back to your office, launches your email, announces the number and subject of new email messages, and then announces the current date and time and upcoming appointments.

What fun to see the expression on your supervisor's or colleague's face when they see just how organized and automated you are.

You can do this and much more with a very small donationware application called Proximity.

Read the MAKE post to find out more.

A Learning Tool for Every Learner

Imagine for a moment that your son or daughter will be going off to college shortly. The college sends you a letter that due to circumstances students may only be provided with ONE learning tool. ONE.

You may choose a textbook or you may choose a pen, calculator, or whatever. One tool.
What would that tool be?

I know what I would choose.

Why, then, are educational spending priorities so difficult? Why are we not providing that one tool to every school age child? At the very least to every secondary student...

Ask your school leaders the ONE tool question. I'd like to hear the response. Post it here.

The Next Killer App? Google Voice

Could this be the next email? Google announces Google Voice!

An when this gets integrated into Google Apps for Education, THEN will we consider migrating from our beloved Exchange server?

Firefox tips

Here are two Firefox tips that I didn't know about. Perhaps there are other Firefox users who weren't aware of these keyboard shortcuts.

1. Zoom in and Zoom out of a page with Command-+ and Command- - (minus). Handy! Mac users enjoy zooming using the Universal Access system preference. This is done in Firefox and was new to me.

2. You can scroll down using the spacebar and scroll up with shift-spacebar. I didn't know that either.

I've been computing forever (if you ask my kids ;) ) and I still love finding new features even if they're only new to me.

I was a member of an old computer club run by a famous blogger. He used to share Macintosh "Easter eggs" in the newsletter... in the olden days!

Do you have little known browser tips? I'd love to hear 'em.

KP

Posting an Audio File Online is NOT Podcasting

In my state many teachers are experimenting beyond PowerPoint thanks to an initiative to place laptops in many high school classrooms.

The buzz is exciting as we dabble with web 2 applications, conduct online research and more. What fun!

I'm bothered, though, by misuse of the term "podcasting."
Podcasting is not simply making an audio file available for download.

From wikipedia:

A podcast is a series of audio or video digital-media files which is distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers. Though the same content may also be made available by direct download or streaming, a podcast is distinguished from other digital-media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added.

We've been able to upload audio files for ages. That's not at all what makes a "podcast." It's the feed, the syndication that's transformative.

CFF coaches, if you're reading, join me in teaching the difference between a podcast and a plain old audio file posted to wikispaces... unless of course we're just happy that we're getting beyond PowerPoint! :)

Scheduling Meetings and the Email Avalanche

We've all seen this scenario! Administrator sends out an email to 20 people requesting a meeting time. The message ends with "What time is good for you?"

The avalanche of "reply to all" email responses is enough to trigger an Excedrin headache.

Internally, of course, we can use our groupware calendaring system and the meeting planner features... provided everyone's calendar is up-to-date. What do you do when all of the meeting participants are on disparate systems?

Here's a tool that's new to me. (keep in mind I could very well be the only one in the universe where this is still a problem) A free, web-based, no-account-needed, meeting time planner called When is Good?

Trying to get a team of 7 volunteer football coaches together on a summer evening? This is the perfect tool... if they're all online!

This suggestion courtesy of A Plethora of Technology blog.

Do you know of other tools that do this too?