Learning Solutions

Aviary is a great, free suite of graphic tools for your classroom. The beauty of these tools is that they are all accessed through a web browser, with nothing to install on your desktops. The image editor, Phoenix, is comparable to Photoshop with a rich editing toolset and layering, with the ability to import to photo-sharing sites.

Why just read about it? The Aviary site has videos detailing each tool.

Phoenix Image Editor Preview:

The real reason to use this is the developer’s philoshphy.  As stated in their FAQ:

Through our interactions with the artists on Worth1000.com, we realized that while many people wanted to use digital editing software, it was very inaccessible:

• The costs were prohibitive (and many people didn’t want to risk installing a virus by pirating).
• The interface was too bloated with rarely-used features to make learning it easy.
• You actually needed to install the programs on a machine with specifications that complied with the program and suffer through any unwanted DRM malware that might also come with the software.

We have our roots in the grassroots hobbyists community. We are artists ourselves and know that there are so many other potential creators out there like us… all they need are accessible tools.

Testing the Qik service to have a live stream from the JB iPhone:

Google has revealed a new way of combining common communication tools, Google Wave.

The team behind google maps,  Jens and Lars Rasmussen,  focused on the following questions:

• Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?
• Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?
• What if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers’ current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms?

E-mail has not changed much since it was invented and accepted into the mainstream culture.

From the google blog:

Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

The real question is how this learning solution may be incorporated into schools.  eSchool News reports about the educational impact:

For instance, an online teacher could add his or her students to a class Wave, update class information and assignments, hold discussions with students, and view the Wave’s history to see which students contribute to class discussions the most and which students might need extra help.

Instead of receiving 25 separate eMail messages from students, a teacher could use a class Wave to answer common questions or to hold weekly question-and-answer sessions.

A blogging feature will publish all content from a Wave onto a blog; the blog embeds the Wave, so users can still respond to the Wave. But students who might not use Google or who might be unable to participate in a Wave can still see and participate in class discussions through the blog

Google Wave is still in development, without a specific timeline for release, so you may want to go to the Wave site and sign up for alerts.

Wiggio is a free learning solution that allows people, mainly students, to easily set up group areas for study, socializing, or community involvement.  A simple process sets up the site in a few minutes.  All you have to do is invite people to join, and you are ready to chat, share calendar and documents, conduct polls and even set up a phone conference.

From the website:

Wiggio was created in January 2008 by two Cornell graduates looking for a better way to manage the responsibilities of working in groups. The project secured funding in August of 2008 and was officially released to the public as of September 15, 2008. Our mission is to continuously develop an application that eliminates the frustration of working in groups by providing the powerful, straightforward functionality that you need to work effectively.

I have set up groups for my office area, family, and church group.

Wiggio uses Scribd for displaying documents, and Zoho Writer to edit.  Versioning can be enabled to keep track of any changes made to documents.

Many other tools are out there, so it will be interesting to see if Wiggio can stand the test of time.

From Campus Technology:

Bryant & Stratton College graduates will receive their degrees where they earned them–online. In what may be a first, the college will host a fully online, Second Life college graduation ceremony June 10, 2009. About 40 graduates from Bryant & Stratton’s online degree programs have committed to receive their hard-earned degrees in their avatar form on the college’s virtual campus.

Second Life is becoming ubiquitious in higher education, as more schools are understanding the potential.  Schools like Bryant and Stratton College are pushing the boundaries, trying to fully understand the promise of these types of learning solutions.

Seems Blackboard, Inc, is serious about dominating the Learning Management System market.  This email was from CEO Michael Chasen to Blackboard customers:

Dear Bb Customer,

I’m writing today to communicate the news that Blackboard has acquired ANGEL Learning and to share with you some of the thinking behind the combination.

Why put these two organizations together? This combination was about getting better. At Blackboard we’re always trying to improve, both by focusing internally within our company and by looking externally to
other organizations we admire, like ANGEL. We admire them not just for their story of entrepreneurial growth and impact on teaching and learning, but also for very specific strengths that we wanted to add to our story and deliver to our clients:

- The first is their customer support culture that has translated into consistently excellent experiences for ANGEL clients. We can learn from their skill in this area and add their know-how to the ever improving client support capability we’re building here at Blackboard.

- The second is their history of innovation - especially in the areas of user experience, teaching and learning tools and course-based
assessment. Independently our two offerings have led the way in a lot of areas. Now we have the opportunity to bring these strengths together for the benefit of learners in our Project NG vision for the future of the Blackboard platform.

Sincerely,

Michael Chasen
President & CEO
Blackboard

Interesting that this was sent to a Blackboard customer who is also heavily involved in the Sakai community. I wonder what functionality Angel LMS has that Blackboard needs, or is it just market domination?

I came across this article about a great learning solution for supervising teachers advising student teachers in the field.

From eSchool News:

Using a web camera connected to a laptop computer, and a Skype video conferencing account, the (University of Southern Mississippi) assistant professors can observe and evaluate 18 online elementary education students who are working in the field.

“We started the program because we saw a need,” said Assistant Professor Kelley Samblis. “There were a lot of teacher’s assistants [who] were not able to come to school, come to face-to-face classes. So we thought, let’s offer an online venue for them.”

This next part is probably the most revolutionary technique I have heard about in a while.  If you have seen the show “Howie Do It”, this takes it into the classroom:

The assistant professors can communicate with their students through a Bluetooth earpiece and give them instant feedback. “If there’s a problem, we can just whisper in their ear with the headpiece when we’re talking on the microphone,” said Assistant Professor Holly Hardin Hulbert. “But if not, we just let it alone and we talk to them as soon as it’s over.”

You literally have  an expert inside your head.

I applaud the University of Southern Mississippi for thinking outside the box.

Discovered this site from a tweet by Wes Fryer:

This Bald Eagle nest cam provides an intimate view of a wild Oklahoma Bald Eagle nest in Sutton County. Children and adults from around the world can observe life in an eagle nest, and scientists can make observations that will help better understand the life history of our national symbol.

This nest is on OG&E (Oklahoma Gas and Electric Company)  property at Sooner Lake near Stillwater, Oklahoma. The original dead nest tree used by this pair of eagles fell down. OG&E, with technical assistance from the Sutton Center and financial assistance from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, erected an artificial tower which these eagles have adopted successfully.

The eggs in this nest were laid February 6 and with the first egg hatching March 21.

Quite amazing to see up-close the feeding habits of the parent eagles.  The eagles spend much of the day gathering food and tidying up the nest.

Webcams are a great learning solution to bring the world into the classroom.  Students can observe and document the early life of an eagle, using the same tool as professional scientists.

I see this as a perfect example of Alan November’s idea of homework should be a contribution to the classroom’s repository of learning objects, instead of individual effort.

As seen from webcam

The University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC) has developed a Nurse Anesthesia operating room simulation in Second Life for learning the basic induction process.  They identified three major learning solutions for Second Life:

1. For courses dealing with gaming, online communities, and emerging technologies, students can study the Second Life technology itself.
2. Other faculty use Second Life as a communication medium, focusing on delivering in-world lectures, making presentations, and conducting discussions.
3. Finally, faculty can use Second Life as a learning space for in-world learning activities, such as role playing, interactive simulations, and educational games.

The article discusses the history of Second Life on the KUMC campus, and goes into great detail on the development of the nursing simulation.  An audio transcript accompanies the article.

As you get to the end of the article, pictures demonstrate how life-like the environment is in Second Life.  It is hard to tell the real equipment from simulation.

Conclusion from the article:

Training students in the physical space of the operating room was expensive for the Nurse Anesthesia department. They needed a more flexible space for students to learn a complicated process. The Second Life simulation provided the department with a virtual learning space having many interacting objects and without the constraints of a physical space. Furthermore, students could easily access the virtual space without permission or a standing appointment, giving them more flexibility.

The Nurse Anesthesia simulation gave students the opportunity to focus on the steps and the process before learning the tactile use of objects in the basic induction process, which they would learn in the physical operating room. Using Second Life gave us the opportunity to develop a virtual leaning space based on the educational needs of the Nurse Anesthesia department, instead of modifying their needs to fit inside another physical learning space.

Read more from the the EDUCAUSE Quarterly-

Virtual World Learning Spaces: Developing a Second Life Operating Room Simulation

From eSchool News:

High school students are now able to access and download professional Microsoft Corp. software such as Visual Studio and XNA Game Studio for free, a service that has been offered to higher-education students for the past year through DreamSpark.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced the expansion to high school students March 26 at the Government Leaders Forum – Americas, which took place in Leesburg, Va.

DreamSpark provides the most advanced programming and development tools that students can use, Gates said, offering all of the capabilities that professionals have. Having access to these tools is intended to inspire students to eventually create companies that could become the next Microsoft, he said.

“Even at a young age, students want to push the limits,” Gates said. “It harkens back to when I was a student and wanted to push the limits. The earlier you get going, the more likely you are to get super, super good at it.”

Microsoft IT Academy Student Pass

The Microsoft IT Academy Student Pass is a special no-cost online learning opportunity for students. IT Academy Student Pass provides free e-learning courses to verified students who are interested in extending their technical skills with Microsoft technologies.

The IT Academy Student Pass offers 12 to 22 hours of FREE e-learning courses, aligned to the first set of topics you need to master for the first Microsoft certification exam within the track. Each track is unique, and most will require you to take additional e-learning courses to complete all of the topics you need to succeed on the certification exam.

The goal of the IT Academy Student Pass is to give you a head start by providing hours and hours of rich, award-winning e-learning content that sets the stage for the learning to come.

Microsoft is also offering free Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist Testing until June 30, 2009.

Learn more at - Microsoft Dreamspark