A magazine that offers possible visions of the future of learning with digital technologies and other innovative resources

If you haven't discovered the great resources at Futurelab from the UK (see previous posting) time to browse through a great website! Just a quick review....what does Futurelab do? Well, "Futurelab is passionate about transforming the way people learn. Tapping into the huge potential offered by digital and other technologies, they develop innovative resources and practices that support new approaches to learning for the 21st century."

Of the many great resources that is produced from Futurelab, one of these is their bi-monthly magazine called VISION.

This issue has some articles that could encourage some great discussions with your education community:

• Can every child matter? (and if so, how?)
• The student becomes the master
• Learning to learn: what - or who - is assessment for?
• Environmental lessons: integrating sustainability into education
• Divided we fall: addressing the digital divide

Great resource to be shared.

Pushing Communicaton and Collaboration to a New Level: Create, Manage and Share Presentations on the Web

One of the many great perks of being a part of the Adobe Education Leadership (AEL) program is learning about new technologies, applications or services that are up and coming. Tech Wednesday (they are "Tech Thursday" for us in the Southern Hemisphere) are live Acrobat Connect presentations that Adobe hosts almost weekly. AELs and other Adobe user groups are invited to view/participate in the presentations. They are great and range from new product releases to 3rd party customers. I wasn't able to attend the presentation live this morning, but since the live presentation was recorded through Acrobat Connect, I was able to easily view it later by accessing a web link.

This morning Mitch Grasso - the co-founder of SlideRocket was the presenter. SlideRocket is an exciting new (you can sign up for a beta account on the website) web based application that has been designed using Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR.

SlideRocket is pushing presentation desktop products like PowerPoint and KeyNote by allowing users to "design, manage and share libraries of slides and assets, and to deliver presentations in person or remotely over the web." It has many of the features you have come to use in the desktop products plus more!!!

The cool thing about SlideRocket is that you (as the publisher of the presentation) can add users with different permissions and roles. Some of the other unique aspects of SlideRocket:

• use existing or create your own themes.
• you can pull data in from Google spreadsheets to create charts and tables.
• images can be uploaded to SlideRocket, pulled from your computer or in from Flickr.
• you can add Flash Videos (.flv) and Flash Movies (.swf) to your presentations.
• availability of a "plug-in architecture" that can be adapted and extended then shared with the SlideRocket Community.
• the folks from SlideRocket are presently working with SalesForce.com to create some very unique work flows for the SlideRocket community.

I would encourage you to sign up for a beta account and give SlideRocket a try. I think it will be a very exciting tool that will help to introduce a unique work flow not only for corporate but for the education community as well.

Splashup is a free (beta) "web-based" graphic editing program. You don't need to sign-up to start using the program right away. You can either load an image from your computer or from a URL, Picasa, flikr, facebook, splashup or an image captured from a webcam and edited directly in Splashup.

Splashup has a photo sharing service built into it. With a variety of tools, like many of well known photo editing software applications, such as filters, editing multiple images, layers and blend modes, layer effects, brushes, etc...

I did have some difficulty with some of my image manipulation upon trial. When I tried to erase part of an image it kept moving and replicating itself. I also tried to manipulate layer names and it kept defaulting back to the standard name.

Over all, for a free beta quick and easy image editing program accessible on any computer - anywhere - it has potential.

One Laptop Per Child powered by One Cow

OLPC stands for "One Laptop Per Child" this is a non-profit association that is working to develop & supply a $100 laptop for children around the world.

Presently they are working with the following countries: Argentina, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Libya, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Thailand, Uruguay & USA (read more about selection of countries and those waiting to enter the program.)

The laptop is called the XO, it was "created expressly for the world's poorest children, living in its most remote environments. The laptop was designed collaboratively by experts from both academia and industry" (see laptop specs).

Highlights of the XO are:

• can be hand powered
• light and durable
• estimated product life: 5 yrs
• full-time wireless router
• 2 display modes available (low power consumption)
  
• 7.5 inch TFT 1200×900 pixel screen
• the machine overall has been designed to be power efficient...from the CPU to the display
  
• built from free and open-source software
  

Now, what initially grabbed my attention was an article written about the OLPC experimenting on new ways to power the XO program......they are looking at "cow power."

An article written in InfoWorld discusses finalizing the design of a cow-powered generator that the XO could easily be powered from....."The goal is to develop a low-cost energy source that can be used in Indian villages."

What a great innovation!

Cows hold an honored place in Hindu society, and it is part of Hindu tradition to avoid the consumption of beef. There are an abundance of cows in India and what a great partnership this would be to help the children of India!

Some delays in production has the XO hopefully rolling off the production line for mid-November 2007 (Reuters).

Adobe releases new Technical Communication Suite

Adobe has come out with some great bundles this year and the latest is the Technical Communication Suite.

Technical Communication Suite is "a first-of-a-kind, integrated solution for authoring, managing, and publishing technical information and training content across multiple formats and languages."

This package contains:

• Adobe FrameMaker® 8 (Author and publish technical documentation)
• Adobe RoboHelp® 7 (create help systems and knowledge bases)
• Adobe Captivate® 3 (create engaging learning experiences)
• Adobe Acrobat® 3D Version 8 (Communicate and collaborate more securely with the complete PDF solution for 3D design)

For any schools/universities/districts that are developing tutorials or creating help systems for their community this is a great solution to look at.

Pros and Cons of Online Digital Storage

There are a variety of websites that allow free storage of data online. Whether it is word documents, flash files, video, pictures, etc... there is a service on the web for even the most discerning user. The common options you will find are:

• load your data for anyone on the web (or account members) to see and use
• create your own communities and allocate who can see your data
• load your data for storage and your own personal use.

I have talked to many of my colleagues to see what they are using and many of them are nervous about these types of services.
Who are the faces behind these services?
Who is managing and has access to your private data?

A few years ago one of my students came to see me. She had a disagreement with a couple of other girls. The girls altered her photograph and then loaded it to a open community website. The picture and the things they wrote about her were quite rude. She was devastated and so were her family and wanted the picture removed immediately. We tracked down the girls but they denied any part in this. The next step was to try and track down the web service to have it removed. The website ended up being hosted in Russia but goodness knows by who....we never were able to get in touch with the "owners" of the web service. Several weeks later the guilty parties finally fessed up and took the picture down.

Remember: Anyone with a bit of know how can setup a server, a webpage and look like they are a respectable company.....

It is important that you research the web services prior to you revealing your private information either during the sign-up process or by using the service to upload and store private data.

It is about trust. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal: - Pushing Paperless: The Pros and Cons by Eleanor Laise discusses how "online storage practices vary" within the financial world.

Pros and Cons....

You don't have control of your documents....they are on a server somewhere in the world.
BUT
You will have access to your documentation from any computer with an Internet link - anywhere in the world.

A lot of companies work in "BETA" which means its free for now until they can figure out if enough people will use their service then they may start to charge for it.
BUT
Blogger is an example of a company that kept their service free...bravo!

As educators you need to be very wary if you want your students to access this information as many of these websites also have a lot of adult content on them.
BUT
Another option for students to access information/work from you 24/7 beyond your Intranet or CMS.

Some online services to investigate if you are looking for this type of service (there are many, many more to choose from):

• Boxnet
• Xdrive
• MediaMax
• Scribd
• VMN Storage
  

Do a bit of research about the company/services. Send some emails to their customer service and search for the company online. You will be suprised how much information you will find out....

Wufoo - the tool to help you create web forms for any type of survey

So you may not be the world's greatest web designer but you want to create a web survey for your class. Wufoo is the web based tool that can help you do just that.

Wufoo "allows you to filter through entries, create reports, and build graphs based on your collected data." You can export your data to Excel or CSV for further analysis.

If you have your own website and would like to include your form(s) on your site rather than hosted on Wufoo you can easily copy/paste the form code onto a webpage or use CSS or XHTML markup.

Free to sign-up (this includes 100 entries per month - 1 entry = 1 user filling and submitting an answer to a survey) and then minimal cost for further plans (see sign-up costs.)

School 2.0: join the conversation

This is a site that I stumbled upon late one night while doing some research. With one eye open and the other already sleeping....School 2.0 website appeared on my screen.

The website and poster (image shown on the right) is a tool that has been created "to help schools, districts and communities develop a common education vision for the future and to explore how that vision can be supported by technology."

The poster is an amazing tool that has a huge amount of detail. This is a tool that can be used to create dialogue with ALL levels of your school community, from students to Trustees.

You can order up to 5 copies of this poster for free and may I encourage you to do so today.