Month: March 2004

Looking for a simple way to prepare basic web pages? Try EZ SiteMaker.

TechTV article describes this free software and provides a video description.

Here is a product recommendation. One of the most difficult aspects of creating your own video is the sound. For example, if you are collecting material in a classroom setting, you will find that the sound carries the most useful information and is also most difficult to capture.

A wireless mike (a remote mike the sends a signal back to a receiver connected to your camera) helps a great deal. We have good luck with the Sony WCS-999. Search online and you should be able to find this product for $100.

Our local paper, the Grand Forks Herald, ran a front page article on use of technology in the Grand Forks Schools. I frequently reference articles from “major pages” (NY Times) so I thought I should give some screen time to a local resource.

Cindy and my writing has been purposefully based in our direct and indirect association with teachers in Grand Forks (I am the one with the indirect associations). We tend to be aware of things happening on the national and international stage through reading and travel, but we “experience” locally. Our local district is large enough and forward thinking enough to expose us to a diversity of perspectives and applications. Context is an important theme in education. When we promote learning activities, we feel more confident in our understanding of the context within which applications were implemented when we know the teachers and schools.

Information about the Grand Forks Schools can be found at their new web site.

It appears TechTV has been sold (Yahoo News). I wish I knew if this was a good or a bad thing.

Business Week Online offers an analysis of Apple’s position in education. Most readers of this blog are likely participants in the formal process of education and Apple Computer has long depended on this market for survival. This article evaluations trends in this commitment.

Andy Carvin’s listserv (WWWEDU) carried a description of a Washington Post article describing the generation of web sites by kids age 6-17. The article contains a statistic provided by Grunwald Associates claiming the existence of 2 million sites and predicting that 6 million would exist by next year. The exact reference for these data was not provided (I am aware of a 2000 survey and the existence of new data available for $7000 – I assume to those making business decisions about technology in education).

By the way, the Washington Post article is availabe for viewing – you may have to register.

GEM, a project of the U.S. Department of Education, is an effort to provide access to online educational resources through a common Gateway.

This is not a unique idea, but little is known about the effectiveness or valued features of such sites. Now, an effort has been made to conduct an evaluation – see Evaluation of GEM.‘