Sylvan Technology Leadership Blog

A while back MS debuted some new touch technology. Here is the same type of system using a common projector.

LCD Projectors Buit into Phones

 

Camtasia Studio software allows you to easily create screen capture tutorial, develop assessments(online quizes), and a suite of additional useful online instructional materials. Normally this application is priced at about $300.  Currently they are running an offer through (UK) PC magazine that allows for the download of the older 3.1.2 version.

Here are the pertinent links:
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/pcpls.asp - Request a serial number

Download software here:
ftp://ftp.techsmith.com/Pub/products/camtasiastudio/312/camtasiafs.exe

By the time you read this post the offer may have expired. Don’t hesitate if you are interested in this tool!

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=7430

Mention the topic of fair use and copyright to a group of educators, and you’ll likely get multiple definitions. Fair use and copyright in education is one of the most difficult concepts to get a clear understanding of in education. As a result, many educators do not take advantage of the many resources available to them in designing instruction.

Legal scholar, Kenneth Crews claims there are four key factors that help decide whether use of copyrighted material constitues fair use.

1. Purpose of the use
2. The nature of the work
3. The amount you are using
4. The effect of your use on the market.

Additional resource: http://www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/webcast.cfm#   – The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy

http://www.adinasdeck.com/

A very middle school friendly video on cyber bullying. This video stays very true to the issues surrounding cyber bullying in school.

It was a graduate project of a Stanford student this past year and had it’s premeire at the Gallo Center a few months ago. More informaton surounding this project can be found here: http://ldt.stanford.edu/~debbieh/cyberbully.html

Licensing information can be found here: http://www.adinasdeck.com/dvds.html

http://www.buzzword.com

A very nice web browser based wordprocessor. The interface is driven by a series of choices in the menubar above the page. The user interface is uncluttered and easy to navigate. You can even import MS Word documents, edit and save them again in Word format.

https://www.veodia.com/beta/index.php

Another web resource, similar to UStream.tv, that provides live video streaming.

Many of the current web resources that utilize engaging media have a feature that allows them to be embedded into your blog or Moodle site. This feature is called an embed tag. These embed tags are part of the resource’s ability to be shared. Some of the current web resources that provide these embed tags are:

SlideShare – http://slideshare.net/
PageFlakes – http://pageflakes.com/
YouTube – http://www.youtube.com
Vuvox – http://vuvox.com/

I recently presented a workshop on using these tags in Moodle Titled, Extreme Moodle. You can get to the online presentation materials by using this link: http://voicethread.com/share/25953/
 

www.alice.org
Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a freely available teaching tool designed to be a student’s first exposure to object-oriented programming. It allows students to learn fundamental programming concepts in the context of creating animated movies and simple video games. In Alice, 3-D objects (e.g., people, animals, and vehicles) populate a virtual world and students create a program to animate the objects.

What is Alice? http://www.alice.org/index.php?page=what_is_alice/what_is_alice

http://ustream.tv

This site allows you to broadcast live video out to the world. Broadcasts can be saved and played back at a later date if view does not tune in for the live broadcast.

http://www.packet-level.com/kids/

Learn about keeping children safe on the Internet. Some very powerful resources to make the point about children learning to use the net safely.

http://htcia1.securesites.net/isfc/

The goal is to reach out to children by promoting and facilitating existing “Internet Child Safety” programs. It is a proactive, allied effort between the public and private sector. The training curriculum and materials are currently being developed and will soon be available to HTCIA members to facilitate this program. 

http://allocinit.com/index.php?title=CamTwist

Turn your Macintosh computer into a little broadcast station. CamTwist is a software package that lets you add special effects to your video chats. It’s also possible to stream your desktop and still images. With CamTwist, you can also use multiple video chat programs at the same time.