DIY Virtual Hard Drive

Ingredients:
- One gmail Account
- One gmail drive shell extension
- Windows XP This is a great little recipe , which I learned about at the engadget web site. I have been using it to move and share files between my home and office.

What is really nice is that the look and feel of my gmail account is like another hard drive, although there is a limitation of file size ( 10 megabytes transfer and 1 gigabyte total storage).

Students might use this virtual hard drive to have a shared storage drive for team based projects, working on a year book or general file sharing. Maybe students will organize homework or exam preparation sharing areas. Teachers who work in geographically diverse professional learning communities could use it as a learning object or document repository.

February 27, 2005 | | Comments Closed

KnowTips Conference

I couldn’t partcipate in the KnowTips conference this year, but I hope to attend next year. This virtual conference done in real-time is a really innovative way to discuss current topics with different people over vast distances. Be sure to listen and watch Stephen Downes webcast on Elluminate from this conference.

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Ontario Teacher Tools

I wrote a few of these tools while experimenting with PHP during the summer. They help teachers to create Long Range Plans, Rubrics and an Expecatation Generator that are based on the Ontario Curriculum Expectations.

Ontario Teacher Tools The Long Range Plan and Rubric tools are wizards that guide you through the process of creating LRP’s and rubrics.

I am hoping to create a way for teachers to share and save their LRP’s and rubrics in the next iteration of the project, through mysql.

The Ontario Curriculum Expectation generator creates a checklist for a project, assignment, unit tracking or whatever you can think of. ENJOY!

February 25, 2005 | | Comments Closed

OnCore and eduSource Speculations

According to Stephen Downes, OnCore is a learning object metadata standard similar to CanCore but originally used by TV Ontario to catalogue video resources, I am assuming in the Curriculum Resource Bank. The OnCore standard seems to be the RSS of choice for sharing LO in the new Ontario Education Portal for OKNL (eduSource).

(Brian Sutherland’s Journal) The RSS-LOM assigns the creator the responsibility to assign metadata to LO’s. When I am searching through the meta-data in the portal I hope that there will be some sort of keyword tracking system that attaches my search profile with what I find. Say I am searching for slope LO’s for Grade 9 Mathematics. The search results will not only be based on the keywords and data added by the LO creators, but on those who searched on the keywords previously and what they had downloaded.

I am also wondering here what the final DRM for eduSource is going to be. I hope that something along the lines of Creative Commons licensing will stick, but I’m not sure what stance OKNL will take with Ontario school boards who might not want the DRM that eduSource offers. Will it be take it or leave it.

February 21, 2005 | | Comments Closed

Canada Planning to Licence The Internet to Schools?

I read this article on thestar.com (Must Be registered User). It talks about the federal governments proposal of a “lawful access� initiative to allow real-time interception and monitoring of all internet communication.

The article begs the question
- Is this Canada or a totalitarian regime? You will not like the answer. This article also points to implications that educational institutions that will have to pay millions to purchase “extended licenses� for content that is freely available on the internet.

The Minister of Industry, together with Liza Frulla, his Canadian Heritage counterpart, are also reportedly about to finalize new rules that may reshape the availability of Internet content to educational institutions. Acting on the recommendation of a parliamentary committee that was chaired by Toronto MP Sarmite Bulte, the government may soon unveil a new “extended license� that would require schools to pay millions of dollars for content that is currently freely available on the Internet.

One word – Yikes!

February 19, 2005 | | Comments Closed

Alan November and Jennifer Evans

The two keynote speakers from the Leading Learning conference have keynote webcasts available on the confernce website. I’m not sure how long they will be on there?

Alan November and Jennifer Evans shared some great ideas and stories at the conference. I particularly enjoyed Alan’s open discussion around blogging and the idea that every family should have a blog. I would be happy to see every school in Ontario with a blog or at least experimenting with online publishing at the very least.

He had alluded that blogging was only temporary so I had probed him on the topic. “It will pass like everything on the web.� He referred me to the research of Christopher Tan in South Australia who is developing a tool called Knowledge Community that “help students and teachers improve the quality of their collaboration and ability to solve problems.� It seems to be a combination of collaboration tools that includes blog-like components.

February 16, 2005 | | Comments Closed

Leading Learning Conference 2005

I really enjoyed the first annual Leading Learning Conference at York University this year. There were many great presentations. I came away with lots of great ideas. I found the conversations in the halls to have been just as stimulating as the sessions. It is great to see what other boards, companies and educators are doing in this emerging field.

February 15, 2005 | | Comments Closed

Jybe Firefox Extension

I tried out the shared browsing power of the Jybe firefox extension. Also available in other flavours (IE). Jybe allows you to browse websites together with a friend or a group of friends. It links your browser with theirs, has a chat area, and is generally cool for a bit of a guided web tour. You can switch leaders so one person does not have to be in control. What is really neat is the shared presentation/application feature. PowerPoint or any other office document can be loaded into a session and then discussed via chat. It is a tool worth adding to your elearning arsenal.

February 13, 2005 | | Comments Closed
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