Summer Mid-Atlantic Conference

There'a a great summer conference opportunity in Salisbury, Maryland. Here's the info for the 2007 Mid-Atalantic Handheld & Emerging Technology Conference!

The Mid-Atlantic Handheld Conference (MAHC) is pleased to announce that we have expanded and grown into the Mid-Atlantic Handheld & Emerging Technology Conference (MAHETC)! This growth and expansion is a result of input from past conference attendees and the conference committee’s desire to meet the needs of local, regional, and national educators. Visit the conference website at: www.seaford.k12.de.us/mahc

This year’s conference will take place on the campus of Salisbury University (Maryland) on July 25-26, 2007. The main focus of the conference will continue to be handheld computers but there will also be sessions showcasing emerging technologies. Please note: this is a full 2-day conference with both days offering attendees keynote addresses, half-day hands-on workshops, concurrent sessions, and door prizes!

Some of the highlights of MAHETC 2007 include:

• Sessions, workshops, and keynote by Tony Vincent
• Sessions, workshops, and keynote by Karen Fasimpaur (K12 Handhelds)
• Sessions & workshops by Mike Curtis
• Conference wiki – http://mahc.wikispaces.com
• Cool Door Prizes
• Lunch provided with registration!
• Network with innovative educators

Session and Workshop Topics

• Handheld Computer Sessions
• Vodcasting (video podcasting)
• Podcasting
• Educational Gaming
• Wikis and blogging
• Response Pads
• Mobile Technologies
• Network Technologies

We also invite you to submit a proposal to present at this year’s conference. This is a great way to share your wealth of knowledge to other educators who are integrating technology to increase student achievement! Presenters also receive a gift card from BestBuy and their registration fee is waived.

For more information on submitting a proposal and general information about MAHETC 2007, visit the website at: www.seaford.k12.de.us/mahc

We look forward to seeing you in July,
MAHETC Planning Committee

Grammar Game

Leading Step's Grammar Games: Constructor is a new Palm application and you can download a free 15-day trial.

In game mode, students answer questions to earn puzzle pieces. The questions are completely customizable. Constructor is programmed with hundreds of sentences and students tap specified parts of speech in those sentences. Constructor allows you to specify a "Game Plan" that includes the types of questions and what kinds of sentences that will be used. Game Plans can be as simple as finding nouns in simple sentences to as complicated as identifying the kind of infinitive in sentences with predicate nominatives. The teacher can set a Game Plan on her handheld and beam it to student handhelds. Because it's so flexible, Constructor can be used in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms. In addition, Constructor is set up to support up to eight users on one handheld. The users' answers are tracked and can be reviewed. Games can take some time to finish, as students may answer up to 80 questions to win up to 50 puzzle pieces. It's nice that there's always a help icon for students to tap for helpful grammar information.

Constructor retails for $14.95, but if you plan to purchase more than 10 licenses, you can contact the company to receive a bulk discount.

Digital Video Productions

Making videos can be wonderful learning experiences. Although the process is most times more important than the final product, there are many tips and tricks that can really help videos shine.

If you're producing digital videos, you're probably using Apple's iMovie. The audio podcast, iLifeZone Episode 18, explains a lot of ins and outs of digital video you should know. Much of the episode is spent talking about shooting the video and many of the tips apply to Windows Movie Maker as well. If you don't have time to listen to the 40 minute program, check out iLifeZone's detailed show notes.

Earlier this month I presented the workshop Make Marvelous Movies at the Minnesota TIES conference. There are a lot of good reasons to make movies and so many great ideas for student-made videos. I showed plenty of example movies during the workshop to demonstrate the video concepts I was teaching. Several of the examples came from videos I have made in the past few years with students, including Explorer Interviews and Character Counts Clips. You can read about some of the information from the workshop in this handout.

Once a video is complete, there are certainly a number of options for sharing it. It can be played for an audience, put on school web site, posted to services like Google Video, or exported to a format for handheld computers and iPods. I like to export my videos as MPEG-4 (.mp4) because this is a standard format that can be played by many software applications and devices. And like audio productions, video productions can be put into an RSS feed and become a video podcast.

Podcasting Notes

Last month Dan Schmit, podcaster, author of KidCast: Podcasting in the Classroom, and fellow Nebraskan, posted his keynote presentation from the iPod and Podcasting Users Conference in Carrollton-Farmers Branch, Texas. Here are my notes from viewing Dan's video podcast:

• According to some market research, there are about 65,000 podcasts and 4.5 million active listeners. By 2010, this number of active listeners is expected to be 56 million.
• Dan sees three ways to use podcasts in education: curricular supplement, professional development, and academic expression.
• Dan teaches preservice teachers. Besides writing a paper, these students must also turn the paper into a podcast discussion of what they learned.
• Dan recommends making students specialists when it comes to classroom podcasts. Some are sound engineers, some are email checkers, and others are publishers.
• Teachers need to design podcasts so that they can be maintained over time. Many classrooms start a podcast but then are unable to keep them going.
• 80% of podcasting is working with content and 20% is spent on production.
• Use rubrics that measure what you value in a podcast. Again, content should be more important than production value in the evaluation.
• Odeo is a podcast directory. It also lets you record and post podcasts right from inside of your web browser.
• Gcast allows you to podcast from your mobile phone.
• Although you can use iMovie and Movie Maker to make videos for video podcasts (sometimes called video blog or vlogs), Dan likes Vlog It! (Windows, $29) and Videocue (Macintosh, $40). These programs include teleprompter and greenscreen features.

Dan shares over 20 innovative strategies and models for educational podcasts:

• Sound Seeing Tour: Take portable recorders on fields trips. The podcasters describes what they are seeing, thinking, and feeling as they move through museums, habitats, historical sites, etc.
• Daily Reporter: Each student takes a turn telling about the school day or special school event.
• Student Almanac: Students pick a day in a given month and create a listing of facts about that date. They could include famous birthdays, historical events, weather observations, etc. Episodes can be recorded ahead of time and then posted on the proper date.
• Process Streams: Record a movie of what's been written on an interactive whiteboard. Examples include diagrams of processes and steps to math problems.
• Study Guides: Students make unit review for tests and quizzes.
• Sound Stories: Acting out student-written stories and dramas. Dan suggests making these serial episodes so listeners have to tune in again to see how the story unfolds.
• Poetry Slam: Create original poems and record them expressively. Publish them separately or as collections of poems.
• Our View: Students participant in a round table discussion about a classroom topic or news story. Opinions are shared constructively.
• Today in History: Students are assigned a day each month to tell about the historical events that took place on that date. Students research context, events, and implications.
• Lost in Time:Quiz show where students describe a date or event in history without giving it away. Listeners email their guesses for the date.
• Add It Up: Students design mathematical puzzles with hints. Listeners can email their answers to the podcasters.
• Where in the World: A global podcasting quiz show where students post hints about where they live. Listeners email their guesses. Check it out in iTunes.
• Word of a Day: Students select a new word to teach others. Students could go to people to see if they know what the word means and how to spell it.
• Book Talk: Review books in a podcast.
• Spelling Bee: Publish your weekly spelling list as a podcast.
• Pod Pals: Create a podcast for students in a partner school. Send episodes back and forth to get to know each other.
• Pet Talk: Everyone loves to talk about their pets. Students can talk about topics like pet selection, habitats, care, and training.
• Career Talk: Record job shadowing experiences. This could be organized through a school's guidance counseling office.
• Liar's Club: Student listeners are the fact checkers for this podcast because the episode contains factual information and some inaccuracies. The following episode addresses the inaccuracies of the previous show.
• Sport Stats: Connect sports statistics to what they mean to coaches, athletes, and fans.
• Sign Casting: Video podcasting for the hearing impaired.

To download the two-part video podcast, subscribe to the KidCast podcast. Or, view the videos online: Episode 33 and Episode 34.

Soft Reset #17: Mobile Internet

Soft Reset #17: Mobile Internet is now online. There are a growing number of tools to make the Mobile Internet a friendlier place. In Soft Reset #17 Tony and Mike discuss using the Web on handheld computers and mobile phones. Searching, blogs, news feeds, bookmarks, and homepages are the topics. Although the focus is WiFi connections, accessing the Internet through Bluetooth is also addressed. Be sure to listen for the intro and outro voice--it's someone that knows Mike very well.

Show Notes:

• Tony's Tip: WiFi connections eat up battery life. Turn it off when not in use.
• Mike's Tip: Don't have a WiFi enabled handheld? There are WiFi expansion options for most handhelds.
• The Mobile Internet is a collective term for websites and services that are formatted for the smaller screens of mobile devices, like cell phones and handhelds.
• eSchool News ETS Poll.
• Thunderhawk and NetFront browsers ($).
• Wapedia.org, the mobile version of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia anyone can edit.
• Mobile Answers.com - Dictionary, Encyclopedia, and much more.
• Enter a web address and let Google format the page for a mobile device: www.google.com/xhtml.
• Search blog posts with mobile.technorati.com.
• Skweezer.net also formats any site to a handheld-friendly format.
• Bloglines RSS aggregator has a mobile version.
• Use TinyUrl.com to make long web addresses much shorter.
• Mob5.com let you set up a free handheld-friendly homepage, complete with text, images, and links. Go to mob5.com/softreset on your handheld for mobile web links.
• Winksite.com also lets you set up a mobile homepage. Winksite has more features, including RSS feeds, forums, chat, and surveys. However, it doesn't let you include images or text formatting like Mob5.com does. Go to winksite.com/vincent/hand on your handheld for the mobile version of Learning in Hand.
• Bluetooth Access Point Review.
• Visit Soft Reset's Discussion Forum to discuss the show!
• Leave a voicemail for us to play on the show! 206-333-1942
• Email Tony and Mike at softresetpodcast@gmail.com.

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

.Mac Podcast Packs

Users of Apple's GarageBand 3 (part of iLife '06) are familiar with its built-in "podcast studio." The studio is complete with pre-made jingles that you just drag-and-drop into a GarageBand track. With so many podcasts made with GarageBand out there, you might start to notice that those same default jingles are used in many podcast episodes.

Subscribers to Apple's .Mac suite of services ($99 per year) can download dozens of additional jingles for free. Just log in to your .Mac account, click Member Central in the list along the left side of the page, and then click Free jingles + voiceovers. Listed are jingles in nine different categories, including Alternative Rock, Blues, Cinematic, Country, Electronic, Jazz, Rock & Pop, Urban, and World. There's over 800MB in free music for podcasts! Downloads from .Mac's Member Central are usually available for a few months. If you are a .Mac member, download them soon before they disappear.

Unfortunately, you have to install each of the .Mac Podcast Packs separately, but once they are installed, you have access to great podcasting music. Just choose Show Loop Browser from GarageBand's Control menu. Many of the jingles have different lengths, depending on your needs.

Also included are 17 professional voiceover tracks by Joe Cipriano. You're sure to recognize his voice as he's done voiceover work for broadcast networks like ABC and FOX. His recordings are short segments like, "Now, welcome back to the show," and "Coming up next in our show..."

With the 136 new sound files included in the .Mac Podcast Packs, your podcast can have jingles different from the defaults everyone else is using.

One Laptop Per Child Project

The "Children's Machine" (also called "2B1") is about to go into "test" production any day now. Also known as the $100 Laptop or OLPC (One Laptop Per Child), it is expected to actually cost $140 dollars. The computer will be sold to governments who are willing to adopt a one laptop per child policy. Countries like Brazil and Nigeria and states like Massachusetts and Maine are committed to or extremely interested in the project. The 2B1 will not be available for retail purchase, at least for a while.

The 2B1 has a keyboard but can also function as a handheld tablet. It's been designed specifically for education to have a low price, long battery life, and free software. It uses the Linux operating system, includes Wi-Fi, an SD slot. Like Palm handhelds and Pocket PCs, the 2B1 does not have a hard drive. Instead, it uses flash memory to reduce power consumption. In fact, the specifications for this computer closely resemble that of a handheld.

Recently a demonstration of the operating system for the OLPC has been posted to the Web. Click below to view the six minute video.

Search YouTube for more OLPC videos and check out The OLPC Wiki for more information. The project looks promising and will have implications for all learners as governments realize that students deserve these kinds of learning tools.

Can eBooks Help Reluctant Readers?

Kathy Schrock wrote a two-page article about eBooks in the current issue of i.e. magazine from SMART Technologies. E-Readers: Can Electronic Books Help Reluctant Readers? starts on page 10. Certainly the answer to the title of the article is a resounding yes!

Kathy mentions Dr. Terry Cavanaugh's book, The Digital Reader: Using E-books in K-12 Education. The book is full of advice and resources for teachers. It offers a list of five strategies for high school teachers to support reluctant readers. Though, these strategies can surely be used for all readers. Kathy briefly explains the strategies:

• Offer a wide range of reading materials.
• Use pre-reading techniques.
• Incorporate large-print materials.
• Engage multiple modalities.
• Teach important vocabulary.

Kathy summaries why eBooks are great for students: "The use of electronic books and the myriad of features available, can be of help to all students. The ability to access reference material while they are reading, highlight text with a virtual highlighter for note-taking and studying, and create a side note within the e-book to come back to later, are all key factors that enhance student's reading ability."

You can download the Autumn 2006 edition of i.e. magazine in PDF format. You can have a paper edition mailed to you by subscribing for free here.

Mobile Learning Redefined

Steve Dembo from Skokie, Illinois posted the presentation Mobile Learning Redefined as part of the 2006 K12 Online Conference. Here's the description of Steve's 43 minute presentation:

Students are bringing their cell phone, iPod, Palm handheld, and PSP to school and we respond by forbidding their use or treat confiscation. However, these are the tools of the new generation and educators must change and consider how to utilize and embrace these new online learning tools. In this session you will learn about how video can be brought to handhelds and phones, how to create websites designed for portable devices, and how the mobile internet is making information more accessible than ever. You will explore what students are using and how these tools can be harnessed to support good teaching. You may even learn how to convince your principal you need a handheld!

Here are some of the highlights:

The March 2005 Kaiser Foundation Report found that of 8-18 year olds, 9% own a laptop, 12% own a PDA, 37% own a mobile phone, 53% own a mobile gaming device (like Sony PSPs and Nintendo DSs). All of these devices can access the mobile internet. Schools are putting out big money to provide learning tools to students. Steve suggests schools use the tools "students are hiding in thier backpacks."

Steve details the capabilities of the Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, mobile phones, and PDAs. It's amazing what these small and inexpensive devices can do! Steve notes that most schools are banning these devices.

What can you do with the technology your students already have? Steve shares these examples:

• CellFlix Festival - Video from a cell phone was edited on a computer, and then final product viewed on a phone. The time limit was 30 seconds. This makes for very focused digital story telling. Check out the website. Steve shows an example of the human life cycle in 30 seconds made by a student. With mobile phone cameras, you have more cameras so that not as many students have to share camcorders.
• Mobile Web Search - You can search the mobile internet with slimmed down versions of popular websites (Google, AOL, and Technorati).
• Mobile Web Reference - LookWayUp.com for definitions, Answers.com for encyclopedia access, and LangToLang.com for translations (one word at a time), ConvertIt.com for measurement, currency, and time zone converters, Google Mobile Maps gives you the same images from Google Earth on your mobile phone, Wapedia.org gives access to the Wikipedia,
• Semacodes -Semacode reading software is required. Use your mobile's camera to take a photo of a semacode (which is a three-dimensional bar code). The semacode is read and then the software launches a website on your mobile phone. This is much faster than trying to enter a URL using a phone's keypad. Steve tells about a palace the uses semacodes to link to Wikipedia entries about the features and history of the palace.
• QuizFaber - Create simple multiple choice quizzes on the internet that can be taken on mobile phones with QuizFaber. You need a Windows computer to make the quiz.
• United Streaming - This is not a free service, but many teachers have access to an account. Most of the website works fine on a mobile device. The videos won't stream, but the images, articles, and quizzes from the website work just fine.
• Photos to Go - Flickr is free for up to 100 photos. There is a mobile version of Flickr.
• Mobilicio.us - Mobilicio.us is the mobile version of del.icio.us for keeping bookmarks. Type your bookmarks on a desktop computer and then access them on your mobile device. Del.icio.us mona is a program you can download for a mobile phone that allows you to bookmark from your phone itself.

  Steve summaries his presentation by saying, "It's not about the new technologies... It's making use of what they [students] already have in their pockets."

• Podcasting - You can podcast from most devices with a microphone. Gcast.com allows you to call a phone number to leave a message. The audio is published to the web as a podcast instantly.
• Mobile Blogging - "Moblogging" is updating your blog from your mobile device. Most services have a way for your to email or text in your entry. To read blogs on your mobile phone, there's LiteFeeds. Steve's favorite (as is mine) is Bloglines, which renders just fine on a mobile device.
• Mobile Homes - Winksite.com provides a home page for your cell phone with customized content. You can include calendars, blogs, polls, articles, and more. It's quite complicated but provides a lot of features. Mob5.com has very few options but the web pages look very slick on a mobile phone.

Steve's Mobile Learning Redefined is a Windows Media File that is 43 MB in size (so be patient as it downloads). The presentation has great visuals and examples. Steve has supporting links listed at the end of this post. From your mobile phone, check out some of the links at mob5.com/teach42.

Newsfeeds & Podcasts on Pocket PCs

The Wolverhampton Local Authority in the U.K. has been using Pocket PCs for a few years. They call their project Learning2Go and the students and teachers involved are doing amazing things with their tiny computers. Recently Learning2Go started a blog and podcast. Although the podcast is available in iTunes, Wolverhampton learners can use FeederReader on their Pocket PCs to subscribe to the blog and podcast. Here's the description of FeederReader from its website:

FeederReader is a full-featured RSS Aggregator with podcast listening and watching ("podcasting" or "podcatching") and enclosure support, running on Windows Mobile. It is designed for downloading and reading RSS feeds on Smartphones and Pocket PCs without the assistance of a host computer. You can update the feeds when the device is connected to the internet (i.e. through a LAN or Mobile Phone) and read them while offline.

Learning2Go has posted video tutorials to show how to manage feeds in FeederReader. FeederReader is available for download and requires free registration. Once installed, you can subscribe to newsfeeds and podcasts. Besides the Learning2Go feed, try subscribing to the Our City Podcast feed. New episodes have been posted this month!

Extra Graffiti Strokes Reference

Just as they post manuscript and cursive alphabets for student reference, many handheld-using teachers post Graffiti 2® alphabet and number references in their classrooms. I created a PDF that anyone can download, print, and cut out. Posting the Graffiti 2 strokes with the alphabet reference classroms already have is great for students. They don't have to access the help screen or fumble for handouts; it's only 60° head turn away.

The PDF I've provided only has letters and numbers. Chris Cuppett, a technology integration coach from Wicomico Schools in Maryland, has made a document with 18 more Graffiti 2 strokes, including many for punctuation and mathematics. You can download it here. Chris sent me some photos of how he posts the Graffiti strokes outside of his office. Click for larger photos. (Chris is author of the new book, Handheld Applications for the Classroom, FYI)

Free Math Software for Pocket PCs Offer

SUMS Online offers software that is used in over 700 schools in the United Kingdom. The software consists of many math activities in Adobe Flash format. SUMS software works on Mac, Windows, and Pocket PC computers. Check out the sample activities SUMS offers in The Playground. SUMS activities are correlated with U.K. curriculum. The company is in the process of making their activities more U.S. friendly. Unfortunately, the software doesn't have built-in management or progress tracking. But, the software does offer valuable practice with interesting activities for students.

In fact, SUMS will give the first K12 school to apply from each recognized USA school board area a free two-year subscription to their online service (value $160 per year) along with free use for two years of the Pocket PC versions of the software (value $1 per handheld per year). Contact David McAll (david@sums.co.uk) at SUMS Online before Dec 31st 2006. The free offer will be the "Americanized" versions of SUMS activities, though you can see the U.K. demos in The Playground.

Full Disclosure: I work independently from any company. I do not receive money from the products I write about on this site. The exceptions are my book and other books linked to from this site through Amazon.com.