Author: grabe

An article in the Education section of the Christian Science Monitor outlined how history faculty members and grad students are using eBay to locate artifacts for their research. By accident, I had just made a similar discovery myself. eBay happens to be one of button bar options in the new Safari browser and I clicked it out of curiosity. While stumbling around, I ran into WW II memorabilia and was interested because Cindy is working on a history grant focused on primary sources. The prices were prohibitive for our purposes, but the items available were reminiscent of a multimedia project I once did called “Grandparents’ Attic. Someone was selling a World War II scrap book. This material is out there everywhere. I would rather see grandchildren ask their grandparents about such things and use what they learn in classroom projects.

I experience frequent situations in which I must capture part of the screen for use in a document or presentation. I knew what to do in the old days (OS 9 on the Mac). Command-shift-4 would allow me to select the part of the screen I wanted and save the selected area as a PICT file on the hard drive. Now I use XP and OS X and things aren’t so easy.

As far as I know, XP allows only Alt-printscreen. This captures the entire screen and allows this stored image to be pasted into an application (Paint) for editing. The clipping has to occur in the “paint” application. I know there are products that offer options, but nothing that is built in.

OS X is not much better. Command-Shift-4 – will save a selected area, but the file is PDF. What am I supposed to do with PDF files. Command-shift-control-4 (definitely a two hand move) saves the selected area to memory and a second application (e.g., Preview) can be used to save the contents of memory as a desired file type. OS X does come with the “Grab” utility. Command-shift-A and an area of the screen can be saved as a TIFF. Again, I have to open a paint program to save as PICT or JPG. I still like the old OS 9 system the best.

Looking for good utilities ……

If you have not experienced QTVR, here is your chance. Those associated with the Harry Potter movie have created some online examples. Make sure to explore for hot spots.

I have always felt there were opportunities for using this type of technology to provide improved educational experiences and I have observed a view simple examples. I happen to come across this non-educational example and thought it might at least make a good illustration.

Jamie McKenzie of “From Now On” fame has started a new web site protesting the fundamental principles of “No Child Left Behind.” The web site, titled No Child Left, will offer articles and cartoons pointing out the “unproven and untested” principles on which the new political agenda is based.

Ezedia is a company in Winnipeg, Manitoba (just up the road from here), that creates great and inexpensive multimedia authoring environments. They have been working on an interactive Quicktime authoring system for some time and this product was released at MacWorld.

EzediaQTI creates Quicktime movies but you have to “think different” to understand exactly what you can create. If you have had experience with hypercard (my all time favorite), Toolbook, or HyperStudio, think in terms of the book/stack that you create (cards, buttons, text, images, movies). Quicktime has similar capabilities (frames in the movie serving as pages) — there just hasn’t been an easy to use authoring environment. Until now. The really cool thing is that Quicktime is well suited to web delivery. So it will now be much easier to create interactive experiences for the web. The price – right now educators can get it for $69. Regular price looks like $100. Trust me on this one — you need this product.

I created a very basic demo last night. The Quicktime component does not have to be this small. The movie within the movie is something I happened to have available.

I watched Steve Jobs do his semiannual MacWorld online (with 50,000 other Mac fans)

OK – there was no tablet computer. So I was wrong. The only new hardware annouced were upgraded powerbooks. Very cool and powerful – but pretty pricey for the K-12 crowd we work with.

Here are some topics that may be of value:
1) The free copy of OS X for educators has been extended. Go to the Apple educators site.

2) There is a new lite version of Final Cut Pro – Final Cut Express for $299 that may of value to those wanting to do digital video but find the full price for Final Cut Pro to be too high.

3) Both iPhoto and iMovie have also been upgraded. iMovie has a new enhancement described as the “Ken Burns effect.” This provides a way to use a still image for pans, etc.

4) Apple now has its own browser – Safari – free, fast, and some nice bookmarking features.

5) Apple also released a new presentation tool – keynote – inexpensive and powerful (I will have to give it a try).

Maybe, the tablet computer will be announced next time. 🙂

MacWorld is this week and mac types always look to this convention for new announcements. If you are interested, you can watch the keynote tomorrow online (9 Pacific Time). The game is always to predict what the new products will be. I am betting on a pen-oriented, tablet computer (prehaps iNotepad). The Wintel world beat Apple to announcing such a product about 6 months ago. Apple included a pen input system (Inkwell) in OS X and this would make little sense unless they were moving toward some type of hardware that would make use of this method of interaction.

I think tablet computers (something like PDAs on steroids) will eventually be part of K-12 and college education. This will be the device we carry to class and that will be used to study ebooks.