I like how it is not only multi-touch, but it is also multi-user.

Still, for right now, very expensive. But in 10 years, I could see something like this as a learning center in my elementary school classroom or as something I have in my own house for my kids!

It is hard to form an opinion yet based on an advertisement. I would like to see how this is used within the context of an actual classroom. Also I wonder if the table runs with its own open source operating system, or comes with a proprietary SMART O.S. Most likely I assume the table will function like the SMART Board and can be plugged into a local computer.

What do you think about this?

Low tech. crafty creation = hilarious and creepy. No wonder this was stuck between old bank statements and expired gift cards from 2006!

This is pretty exciting news especially since I use Drupal for my classroom website! (I flushed out last year’s content and have been updating slowly this month. Been playing around with design and CCK features; awaiting the big move to an updated install). It could mean improvements in the future such as a one click update module (I have hoped for this for a LONG TIME) just like the Wordpress InstantUpgrade plugin that I love. I looked around a little to find some business information on Acquia and it was nice to find out who is running the show over there.

Acquia Readies Commercial Drupal CMS

“Acquia is headed up by Dries Buytaert, the founder and still a lead developer of Drupal.”

(Via GigaOM.)

This is a good thing, in my opinion, because it hopefully means that there will be significant initiative to push out updates/improvements to the community instead of keeping them proprietary and closed source.

At least this is what I hope!

I just installed Acquia’s flavor of Drupal on my hosted server (the same that hosts this blog) and already I really like the administration panel across the top of the page.

Later on I will have to copy over some of the modules I use over at my classroom website to see how well they function.

Still looking forward to the DrupalEd update that should be coming soon. I will wait until then to make my decision on which version to start pulling my content over to.

Acquia Debuts Drupal for Free

“Acquia has announced the availability of Acquia Drupal, a free and commercially supported distribution of the popular Drupal open source social publishing system. They also unveiled the Acquia Network, which offers subscription-based access to technical support and remote network services that simplify the development and operation of Drupal Web sites. Entry level subscriptions to the Acquia Network will be free of charge through the end of the year.

For those that aren’t overly familiar with Drupal, it’s an open source web development and content management platform that publishes, manages and organizes a wide variety of content on websites. Tens of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal.

With the release of Acquia Drupal with its streamlined packaging of Drupal and a support system via the Acquia Network, there will definitely be a tremendous increase in Drupal developers and websites powered by this Drupal.

All subscribers to the Acquia Network will gain access to the Acquia Network’s subscriber forums, remote network services such as software update notifications, uptime monitoring, Mollom spam blocking, and Acquia Drupal documentation.

What all this means is that many more companies, especially enterprise class entities, will be much more willing to dip their toes in the Drupal pool now that there’s a commercial grade package available that includes tech support. If all this sounds familiar, you’re probably thinking about Linux and how similar its path has been to the corporate world. At one point, only extreme geeks used Linux, until some big names like IBM and Novell started proving technical support plans with their Linux offerings. That allowed larger companies to try Linux much the same way they will try Drupal thanks to the Acquia partnership and support offering.

It seems like the natural evolutionary progression for all open source projects to go from a handful of geek’s using it in their basement to the corporate enterprise once a commercial package with tech support is distributed. It will be interesting to see what kind of websites and social networks are born from this marriage between Acquia and Drupal.”

(Via Mashable!.)

Would this have caught your eye as well?

We had finished listening to four other talks when I decided we should give the last one a listen.

We listened and we loved it.

The talk was given by Benjamin Zander and the most memorable part of the talk is when he speaks about “shiny eyes”. He relates his experiences as a conductor and his personal realization that he wanted to consistently “awaken possibilities in other people.” In order to assess how he was “awakening” these possibilities all he had to do was look at their eyes to see if they were “shining”.

“Who am I being if my players eyes are not shining?”

For parents, relatives, and teachers…

“Who am I being that my children’s eyes are not shining?”

As a parent and a teacher this caused me to pause and think about what I do daily to awaken possibilities in my son’s life and the lives of my students. Often we can get caught up in the daily grind leading to the simple things and glorious opportunities passing us by.

Take a listen to the talk and enjoy. We loved it and I hope you do too!

iTunes U, a wonderful free service full of rich content from universities and community colleges across the nation, is now spreading to K-12!

Kelly has a great post on his blog where he talks a little bit about the program.

“I believe this project will be somewhat of a game changer. Here K12 ed will have a central gathering place for resources, be they audio, video, text-based, etc.” - Kelly Dumont

In order to check out some of the schools and state programs who were part of the the launch you can find the K-12 link within iTunes. Once you have launched iTunes and the iTunes Store all you need to do is click on “iTunes U”

Then click on “K-12″…

After you have navigated your way through you can select one of the schools or organizations from the list. For right now the list is short but I am sure the list and interface will grow with time.

Here is a look at Michigan’s MILearning page…

While you are checking out the K-12 content you should definitely take some time to explore the university content. Neat stuff!

GMail

Google Calendar

Google Documents

Google SketchUp

Picasa

Google Reader

Google Earth

Blogger

and iGoogle

Quite a bit of these web-based applications I am familiar with and use. Regardless of what I use I find there is always new things to learn about these types of tools. It is interesting hearing from other teachers how they look to use these tools in their classrooms.

One tool I had a lot of fun playing and working with was Google SketchUp. This application brings me back to my technical drawing classes back in high school!

Here is a quick snapshot I took from the project I worked on for the course. I decided to try my best at drafting up a model of the school I teach in.

On the left monitor is an aerial view of my school via Google Earth. On the right screen I tried my best to draw the different portions. It is amazing how powerful a free application such as this is. Kevin Jarrett informed me via Twitter that Google SketchUp Pro is free for educators. I look forward to going through the process of obtaining one of these free teacher licenses in order to see the type of features that are present in the Pro version.

Enough about me…

My question for teachers out there is…what Google tool do you use the most personally? Also, which is your favorite to use with your students?

I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer!

One is called Desktop Curtain which displays a blank desktop right in front of your cluttered desktop.

The other application is called Plainview. Plainview is a full screen web browser.

Both are free and both work great. I am the type of user who does not like anything on my desktop but I still leave folders and files there that I am working on. Sometimes I just turn on the Desktop Curtain in order to “forget” about what it is I probably should be working on!

1 year and 8 months ago I made a video containing short clips of my son’s first four months. I also added in 5 minutes of Lynryd Skynrd’s song “Simple Man” as a background track. I shared the video with family members and on a whim decided to add it to Youtube along with clips of my son’s first Halloween and first words. This is where I messed up. It is a mistake many make, and probably do not realize they are making.

I foolishly thought my little video would be seen only by my own family and the friends they shared the video with. I knew the risks. I knew online videos are open to everyone unless the user makes their videos private. But I decided to fight the law and see what would happen. (In reality, I was just naive, and did not feel there was a threat to my video).

Even after I started learning more about content online and copyright issues, I did not take the video down because I was curious to see if it would be noticed.

Almost two years later my video has performed as I predicted…

With 300+ views I can tell you that 90% were from my own mother showing the video to her friends. Regardless, this does not excuse my usage of protected works.

Today I received notification from Youtube that this video had been found to contain music belonging to Universal Music Group. Or at least, I assume “UMG” stands for Universal.

Here is a screenshot of the email that was sent to me…

As you can see my punishment is weak. Their claim allows them to include advertisements on my video page. At first I was relieved my little video could still stay up. This seemed very fair, until I visited my page and saw this…

I have since removed the video and hope to hear from others. Has this happened to you?

How can we as educators share an experience such as this with our students as they venture out and create digital projects?