Soft Reset #19: Dale's Applications

Soft Reset #19 has been posted! In this episode of the podcast, Dale Ehrhart joins Tony and Mike. He is a preservice teacher who has taught himself how to program for the Palm Operating System. He shares his insights into programming and tells about some of the over one-dozen software applications he's developed, including Double Digit Multiplication, Observe, Change Counter, and Jumbler.
Show Notes:

• Tony's Tip: When downloading from your browser, you may have to change the extension of the software download by taking off the ".txt" extension.
• Mike's Tip: Programs that involve more than one part can be tricky to beam.
• Dale's Applications can be downloaded here. Keep checking this page for new software and videos!
• The videos on Dale's page are hosted on the free and filtered service TeacherTube.
• CamStudio: Free Windows screen recording software.
• Tony's blog posting about using HandDBase for observations.
• Programming Software: Small BASIC, Basic 4 PPC, PDA Toolbox (for Palm), Palm OS Developer's Page.
• Email Dale with application ideas: dehrha02@yahoo.com.
• Visit Soft Reset's Discussion Forum to discuss the show
• Email Tony and Mike at softresetpodcast@gmail.com.

This is a sample what it looks like in the programming environment.

Enjoy the show! Click an icon below to listen or subscribe.

More and More Podcasts

I've posted a new special episode of Soft Reset: Pod People #5. Like Pod People #1, #2, #3, and #4, Pod People #5 is filled with segments by educators who participated in one of my podcasting workshops. Because time was short, the segments were hastily recorded but they contain some great information. The first half of Pod People #5 has five segments, each reviewing a different podcast. The second half is filled with tips that participants learned about listening to and creating podcasts.

Looking for new educational podcasts? Scholastic Instructor Magazine listed ten of their favorite podcasts in their March/April 2007 edition. The list includes Wild Animal Chronicles, Children's Fun Storytime, Poem of the Day, and The Science Show for Kids. I'm proud to say that second on the list is Radio WillowWeb, the podcast for kids and by kids that I developed for Willowdale Elementary School.

Another resource for educational podcasts is Karen Fasimpaur's new show, Karen's Educational Mashups. She describes it on her blog:

This podcast is a compilation of excerpts from podcasts and other free audio and video content of interest to educators. Shows will air twice a month, and each show will focus on a different topic. Some will be focused on content for students, while others will feature professional development content for administrators and teachers. Our first show is on history-related content. The second show will be aimed at library media specialists (and everyone who loves books).

With over 1,000 educational podcasts listed in iTunes, Karen's podcast is a great way to learn about podcasts. Another way to learn about more podcasts and podcasting is fellow Nebraskan Dan Schmit's KidCast: Podcasting in the Classroom podcast. Currently Dan's podcast is sponsoring the 2007 KidCast Podcasting Awards. The contest is divided into categories that focus on specific types of educational podcasting. The deadline is April 30th and results will be announced May 15th. To enter, fill out the form on this page.

Remember, you don't need an iPod to listen to podcasts. You can listen right in your browser, iTunes, or other portable player. The video, Uncle Seth - You Don't Need an iPod, (posted on YouTube in September 2006) makes that point very clear with a catchy song.

Canadian Handhelds Video

Dean Shareski has posted a great video on his Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech blog. It's called The PA Palm Project: Students and Teachers Learning Together. The video begins with the narration:

Step through the doors of grade eight classrooms of Mrs. Dalgarno and Mr. McIntosh and you'll witness a learning environment that looks and feels different from many others.

Twenty-five eighth graders at a school in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada are equipped with Tungsten E2 handhelds and keyboards. Their original focus was writing, but students are using the computers in other subject areas as well. The video is divided into five segments: First Reactions, Making Learning Easier, Efficiency, Student Engagement, Unexpected Outcomes, and The Future.

In First Reactions, one student explains, "Like getting presents at Christmas, I felt really excited." In Making Learning Easier, the teacher explains that learning to write is much easier because of the word processor. Editing in particular is much quicker. Dalgarno explains in Efficiency that with handhelds, she is able to get through three lessons in the time it used to take her for one. Students can enter their writing much more quickly on a keyboard than by handwriting, saving lots of time. In Student Engagement an eighth-grade boy gives an example of how motivating the handhelds are:

Most kids in our class, they, like some of the people who didn't really come to school because they didn't want to, they are coming because of the technology.

An Unexpected Outcome was that communication among students increased. They are more like to share their notes from their handheld because they are digital and can be beamed or sent to others instantly. Students didn't tend to share their paper-based notes.

In The Future Mr. McIntosh says that the handhelds are a stepping stone to giving a computer with internet access to every child. [Though I say the handhelds are already computers--we live in a world where we use different kinds of computers at different times and locations for different tasks. And many handhelds already access the web wirelessly.] Mrs. Dalgarno tells the viewers that they are just at the beginning of the project. They are currently doing old things in new ways. In the future, she hopes to have students doing new things in new ways. She says they can do this once they learn more about more Palm software.

The 6 minute 32 second video is hosted on YouTube. The Prince Arthur Palm Project has its own blog if you're interested in learning more.

tonyvincent.info

Just as I emphasize with blogging and podcasting students and teachers, I myself always consider my audience and purpose when writing for this blog. My audience is busy educators and my purpose is to help teachers do their jobs. So I purposely don't overload this blog with frivolous details.

I spend a lot of time traveling, working with teachers, and experiencing the web. There are little tidbits I'd love to share, but this blog isn't the place. I've used several new web tools to publish another blog at tonyvincent.info:

Tumblr
Tumblr lets you set up a very simple blog. There are no frills like comments and advanced formatting. Blogs at Tumblr are called tumblelogs and you can start one for free. Tumblr has a really neat feature: you can have it automatically post items from any RSS feed. The folks at Tumblr even make it easy for you to point any domain name at your tumblelog. For $1.99 you can buy a name at registrars like GoDaddy.com. I've been waiting for a place to point tonyvincent.info and now I've found it. Like many blogs, there is an RSS feed and a scaled-down version for mobile devices.

Twitter
Twitter has been described as "microblogging." It encourages its users to answer the question What are you doing? You can answer the question on twitter.com, with software, through an instant message, or by a text message. Each entry can be no longer than 140 characters, making everything short and sweet. You can make friends on Twitter and have their entries forwarded to you with the same options as you have to post. Here is my Twitter page where you can become my friend and follow my updates. Twitter provides an RSS feed for each of its users, allowing my Twitter updates to be automatically posted to Tumblr.

Digg
Digg is a social news site where the users vote (called digging) on the top stories. Most articles posted on Digg are technology related. When I "digg" a story, it is placed on my user page and in an RSS feed that is posted on my tumblelog.

del.icio.us
del.icio.us may have a strange web address, but it's a fantastic social bookmarking site. You can store your bookmarks online to be accessed from any web browser. You can also share your bookmarks with others, which makes del.icio.us a great way to discover new things on the web. My del.icio.us bookmarks can be found here. An RSS feed allows my tumblelog to be updated each time I add a bookmark.

My tumblelog at tonyvincent.info brings together many pieces of my online life and is a much more personal blog than this one. It won't be as useful to you as this blog, but it will be updated much more often, thanks to RSS.

Say Aloha to Our City Podcast

I've posted the newest episode of Our City Podcast! Sheltered Bay is by third graders at St. Andrew's Priory School in Honolulu, Hawaii. Students from the all-girls school did an outstanding job. I've already listened to the episode twice and I know I will give it a listen again soon. Why? It it one of the best I've heard! It is extremely informative while also entertaining. The girls' voices sound loud and clear. The music and sound effects compliment what's being presented. At 12 minutes, it ends before my attention begins to wander. Bravo, I say!

With 19 Our City Podcast episodes currently online, we're building quite a library of audio by kids from cities all over. I encourage elementary and middle school teachers to use Our City Podcast in their classrooms. I've got ideas for using Our City Podcast in the classroom:

• Groups of students listen and discuss different episodes. Have the groups report back to the class what they learned.
• Set up a listening center with a different episode each week. The center could be a computer, iPod, handheld, MP3 player, or a CD player (burn the podcast to CD using iTunes).
• Play an episode for the class while they work on an art project.
• Write feedback about the episode and email it (the page for each podcast lists an email address for the teacher).
• Listen to two episodes and compare and contrast the cities in those episodes.
• Listen to decide which city you would want to visit. Tell why.
• Which city would make a good home for you? Tell why.
• Which podcaster do you think would make a good friend for you. Tell why.
• Compare the information given in the podcast with the city's Wikipedia entry.
• Find landmarks mentioned in an episode in Google Maps or Google Earth.
• What information or segment would you add to one of the episodes?
• Produce your own Our City Podcast episode. Resources are available.
• Offer some of above as extra credit opportunities.

If you aren't an Our City Podcast subscriber, click here to subscribe with iTunes. Episodes from cities around the globe will be automatically delivered to your computer as they become available.

Save & Convert YouTube Videos

Perhaps you checked out the video I posted yesterday. It's hosted on YouTube, the free video sharing service owned by Google. YouTube offers no way to download video as they'd prefer you to visit their website each and every time you want to view a movie. If you do manage to download the video to your desktop, YouTube videos are in Adobe Flash format (.flv), which requires special software for playback.

There is software that will download and covert YouTube videos for you. YouTube to iPod Converter is free for Windows users and PodTube is $5 for Mac users. Or, for $15 Windows or Mac users can use TubeSock. Whatever software program you use, you simply paste the web address of the YouTube video you wish to download. The software will pull the video from YouTube's site and then convert it into a friendlier format of your choosing. I prefer videos to be in MPEG-4 format because then I can play them in QuickTime, on an iPod or PSP, or in The Core Pocket Media Player (free) for Palm or Pocket PC.

If you don't want to mess with software, you can use the online service Vixy.net. Like the software options above, you paste the YouTube URL into Vixy's web page. Vixy will convert the video for you and then save it to your desktop--no software required. Don't be fooled by the option that says MPEG-4 for iPod/PSP. Even if you're viewing on a Palm, Pocket PC, or desktop computer, that's your best option. It does take a while for Vixy's servers to convert your video, but you can't beat the price and convenience.

007 Video

I repeated the "Make Marvelous Movies" workshop here at the Northwest Council for Computer Education (NCCE) conference in Spokane, Washington. Just like in Minneapolis, I showed participants ways to film and edit video to make movies better. With just over an hour of work time, one of the groups of four educators created the video below. Although they used only one digital camcorder, they stopped, repositioned the camera, and then continued recording to give the illusion of multiple cameras. The theme of this year's NCCE conference is 007: Agents of Change and the theme inspired the teachers. Check out the two-minute video via YouTube:

Linking to iTunes

There are times when you might want to link to an item in the iTunes Store. Maybe you want to bookmark, email, or post a hyperlink to an item. That item might be a song, podcast, video, or category. Just about everything in the iTunes Store has its own web address. Entering that address into a web browser opens iTunes and automatically navigates to the linked item. For example, clicking this link takes you to the Our City podcast in iTunes:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=104141824

How do I know the web address for the podcast in the iTunes Store? Simple. Most everything in the iTunes Store (including podcasts) is right-clickable (or control-clickable for Mac users). When right-clicked, a context menu appears. Select Copy iTunes Store URL to copy the web address. Here are some examples:

Right-click the Education category from the Podcasts section to get the link for this page.	Right-click the podcast cover art to get the link for the podcast's details page.	Right-click the podcast episode title to get a link to the podcast's details page that will have that particular episode selected.

Paste the copied web address into a hyperlink for the item. Users are redirected to the iTunes download page if iTunes is not installed on their computers.

---

You have probably seen links to podcasts that look like this:

An easy way to make this kind of link (with the spiffy iTunes icon) is to use iTunes Link Maker. You are three easy steps away from getting HTML code to include in your blog or podcast web page:

1. Enter the podcast, song, or album to which you wish to link. Click "Search".
2. Click the arrow associated with a specific link on the page.
3. Copy and paste the HTML link into your web page or blog posting.

When iTunes Link Maker supplies you with the HTML code, it also explains:

The url in the text box on this page points directly to a deep link within the iTunes Store. When a user clicks on it, iTunes will open and navigate to the correct page. The iTunes graphic is included with the code and resides on Apple's servers; all you have to do is copy and paste. If iTunes is not present, the link will automatically take the user to an iTunes download page.

Linking to items in iTunes is very handy. Once your web visitors are directed to a podcast in the iTunes Store, they are just one click away from subscribing!

Exemplary Podcasts Listing

I've added a new tool to Learning in Hand. The new Grazr widget appears on some pages. Grazr is a free service for websites that allows visitors to "graze" selected RSS feeds without the hassle of subscribing. This means you can browse and listen to selected podcasts without leaving Learning in Hand. In the event you'd like to subscribe to a podcast you find in Learning in Hand's Educational Podcasts Grazr, you can follow these directions for subscribing with iTunes.

My goal is not to list every educational podcast under the sun. Instead, I want to list exemplary podcasts so those new to podcasting have a place to start listening. Please help me make this list better by suggesting podcasts to list (or suggestions for podcasts to remove from the list). Leave a comment or email me.

Daylight Savings Time Updates

Clocks will be "springing forward" a few weeks earlier this year thanks to the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Starting in 2007, most of the United States and Canada will observe Daylight Savings Time from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November. This poses a problem for computers, as they are expecting to adjust their clocks in April and October. Companies are putting out updates so that their operating systems will move their clocks forward and backward on the correct dates.

Palm has issued a Daylight Saving Time Updater for it's Palm OS and Windows Mobile handhelds and smartphones. In a classroom full of handhelds, I suggest syncing the DSTUpdater.prc file to one handheld. and beaming it around to all of the other handhelds. Once launched, it's a very quick install. Note: If an updated handheld is hard reset, then the DSTUpdater will need to be installed and run again. This will probably need to be done each fall after handhelds are reset for the new school year.

Microsoft has information about updating Pocket PCs with Windows Mobile here. Desktop computers may need to be updated as well. Here is information for Windows users and Macintosh users.

If you don't update your system for the new Daylight Savings Time rules, it's not the end of the world. You can always manually adjust your computer's clock. Unfortunately, that will involve adjusting your clock up to four times a year. You can manually change the time in March and November and your computer may make annoying changes in April and October (following the old rules).

Despite the confusion it causes, Daylight Saving Time is a great topic for students to explore various science and social studies concepts. Investigating Daylight is a great lesson plan from Microsoft and Daylight Savings Time from WebExhibits is a great resource for students.

Bits & Pieces

It's time again to list many of items that are piling up in my inbox and in my Bloglines feeds. There's a little something for everyone: Palm, Pocket PC, iPod, Mobile Phone, PSP, and podcasting users...

There's a new Google Maps application for Windows Mobile. It's also available for Palm OS. It requires an Internet connection.

Some Australian schools are using the Nova5000 with students. Read about their experiences in the NOVA5000 Australian Trials blog.

Some U.K. schools are using PSP (PlayStation Portables) in classrooms. Read about their experiences in the PSPTeachers blog. They are using the PSP's WiFi connection to deliver RSS feeds to the students. Be sure to check out their cool charging and storage cart. Click on over to this article from Popular Science to learn how to read eBooks and watch videos on a PSP.

Doug Hyde is a library-media specialist at a Wisconsin middle school. His blog, Classroom in Your Pocket, has a useful post about showing video from an iPod on a television or projector.

Karen Fasimpaur wrote about PocketPicture, a great paint program for Windows Mobile. It's free!

The Podcasts for Educators Weblog has a post titled evaluating podcasts. It links to a PDF file for evaluating podcasts for teaching and learning. In the future, the blog will be publishing an evaluation for students and young people to use. Also at the weblog, learn about podcasting through their Online Learning Studio.

Leonard Low posted his Top 10 Freeware Apps for M-Learning on his Mobile Learning blog. His suggestions focus on mobile phones and Windows Mobile devices.

Rolly Maiquez has a couple of blog posts you might want to check out: Useful Palm Handhelds and Language Arts Curriculum Integration Links and Funding Links.

Lynn Lary points to curriculum resources for a interesting lessons using MIT's free participatory simulations for Palm handhelds. Included are materials and handouts for a unit called "Future CSI" and a unit about the Big Fish-Little Fish simulation.

Those of you who are Windows, Palm, and iPod users may be interested in Palm2iPod that sends your contacts and calendar from Palm Desktop to your iPod.

Here are several new freeware applications for the Palm OS:

• SequenceM: Sequencing application for elementary classrooms.
• ClipExtend: Bypass the 1000 character clipboard limit so you can copy and paste larger amounts of text.
• HealthCalc: Calculate BMI, body fat, heart rate zones, and more.
• Pepe Palm Chat: Send text back and forth through infrared.
• Checklist by Paper Trail Software: Create and manipulate checklists.
• Dekses: Puzzle game where you follow the right number order and move the digits to their correct places.
• Target: Game where you make words out of a 3x3 grid of nine letters.
• tejpWriter: Word processor with a surprising number of features. I like that it can export to HTML. The applications is a little buggy, though.
• SimpleChart: Plot up to three columns of data.
• Subscribe to Palm Freeware's RSS feed.
• Dale Ehrhart has produced many free educational applications. Read about them on his Pre-Service Teacher blog.

And here are some freeware applications for Windows Mobile:

• Hubdog: Read news feeds and subscribe to podcasts on your Pocket PC.
• Free PDA Keyboard: Full screen keyboard for easier text entry.
• Pocket Notes: Notebook program with different pen sizes and colors.
• Subscribe to Pocket PC Freeware's RSS feed.

iPod: Criminal Tool

A student at Clay High School in Oregon, Ohio is accused of hacking into school personnel and student files and transferring private information to his iPod. According to the Toledo Blade, the high school junior was charged with unauthorized use of a computer. He was also charged with possessing a criminal tool, his iPod, since it was used in the crime.

An iPod can do more than play music. One of an iPod's many functions is that it can be used like an external hard drive or flash drive by putting it into Disk Mode. A computer doesn't even need iTunes on it for the iPod to show up on the desktop (Mac) or in MyComputer (Windows). Furthermore, you don't even need iTunes to enable Disk Mode. Here are instructions on how to force your iPod into Disk Mode without activating it through iTunes.

Clay High School's student connected his iPod (with Disk Mode enabled) to the USB port of the school's computer. He could then copy or save files into his iPod's memory. Those same files could then be copied to another computer. Fortunately, the iPod with sensitive data was confiscated the same day it was used in Oregon, Ohio's crime.