Monday, December 8, 2014

Insight / Video Games / Hour of Code

Will try this all once again - gotta love power failures...
 
Farionics / Insight - Some of you may not be aware of Insight being available on computers in the labs and library. It gives you the ability to observe student activity/viewing on those computers.  When logging onto the teacher computer in the labs, you may be prompted for a password... (ask in the library) enter the password  - caps are necessary.  Click the little white icon in the bottom right hand corner of the screen and you should have a display of all the computers. If not & you have little locks on the screens - you have entered the password incorrectly.  No worries, go to administer and exit Teacher Console.  Login again by going to Farionics Insight Teacher in the start up menu.  This is a powerful piece of software, you may block software/web sites, poll the class, set up tests, share monitors, and send messages.
 
 
Video games are not such a bad thing.  They encourage and develop creativity, sharing and communication.  Give these articles a look.
 
 
 
Minecraft, which has an educational version, is also highly recommended.
 
 
 
Next week is Hour of Code - a global initiative to promote computer coding for all. 
 
 
 
 
Might be a good idea for an activity on December 19th.
 
 

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Inspirational Eduation TED Talks

First of all a couple of exceptional TED Talks to take a peek at  - Dealing with students and creativity.
A  video from Eric Sheninger http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwrLVvORugw
For commentary on this talk and  how much school has to change see: http://esheninger.blogspot.ca/
And second a classic education video by Sir Ken Robinson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
Also a list of the 10 Best TED Talks of 2014 for Educators :
http://www.edudemic.com/10-best-ted-talks-of-2014-for-educators/  Take a look around this site, it has lots of excellent links on technology, use of Ipads, and apps for your phone...
Just a couple of additional notes;
1) Having trouble opening/printing a student file - It is probably an incompatible file type that our version of Windows/Office cannot deal with.  I suggest having the student save their files at home as an .rtf file (rich text format).
2)Trouble with opening one of our Mac Laptops to windows.  Simple enough, hold down the option key (the second key on either side of the space bar) while holding down the power key as well.  You may have to hold the power key down for a considerable length of time for the laptops to boot up. And then click on the Windows Icon (or the Mac Icon if desired).
Also while USB drives are excellent for transporting files, they do occasionally crash.  You cannot back up your work often enough.. You might also try cloud storage services such as OurCloud or Google Drive to back things up.
Library notes are archived on the HERH Library Blog at http://herhlibrary.blogspot.ca/
Tim

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Twitter

Twitter - My favorite Social Media Tool !!
 
Twitter is the tool for Educational PLNs / Professional Development.. I know many just cannot get into it, but believe me when I tell you it is very useful.  It is not just a chat medium, Although it can be hampered by the 140 character limit, much can be learned from those few characters - primarily those few characters are a link to current awareness tools such as news, magazines, weather, sports & yes  last but not least - educational blogs & experts.  The education field has been an early adopter of Twitter & there is a lot out there... No need to reinvent the wheel.   Conversations are also hosted at various times on Twitter dealing with various groups under hash tags such as #edtechchat  and #1to1ipadchat
 
So watch the linked slide show & watch these two short videos - give it a try!
 
 
Twitter can be accessed on the web, and through various twitter based apps on your cellphone.
 
For more information see me in the library.
 
Library notes are archived on the HERH Library Blog at http://herhlibrary.blogspot.ca/
!
 

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Streaming Video & TeacherCast

Hi there,
 
Having trouble with streaming video (YouTube, Vimeo, etc) at HERH.  Former school computer technician Rick Negus has provided us with a solution.  Youtube downloader
 
1) Copy the file youtube downloader 4.7 from our shared drive to your flash drive.
2)Open the link/video you wish to copy.
3)Open the downloader - you may have to copy the video link to the downloader.
4) Check where you wish to save the file (best bet is your flash drive.  )
5)Hit download.
 
With luck - your video will be saved to your flash drive.. Use VLC for best playback results.  Further instructions are available in the folder you copied. This app is also available in IOS and Android.  If you need help with this please feel free to drop by the library and ask for assistance.
 
With that in mind, Heather Mumford has provided me with an excellent movie streaming site called Snagfilms.  It offers many excellent documentaries and biographies (including the films - One Week Job & Supersize Me, and various National Geographic features)  For best viewing results the Chrome Browser is recommended.  http://www.snagfilms.com/films/
 
Looking for an excellent site to learn new ideas for education/professional development - TeacherCast (A Place for Teachers to Help Other Teachers) could be the answer. It offers podcasts & video on the very latest in the education field from discussions with  prominent educators, to hints and advice on using technology & various apps in your classroom.  Give it a try...!!
http://www.teachercast.net/  Apps are also available for you IOS and Android devices.
 
May be followed on Facebook or on Twitter at @TeacherCast
 
 
An archive of these tips, video sites, etc is maintained on the HERH Library Blog at http://herhlibrary.blogspot.ca/
 
 
Tim Brown
Librarian
Hants East Rural High
Milford, NS

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Chronicle Herald Online & Khan Academy

A couple of quick hitters for this PD week.
 
We have access to the Chronicle Herald online for individual or class use.
 
The username is:  brownt@ccrsb.ca 
Password:  123456
 
A demo/instructional video can be found by clicking on the white question mark in the red box along the top of the page.
 
Another excellent site is Khan Academy.  An extensive collection of videos is available, broken down into individual skills for most topics including Math, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Economics & Computing.  Accounts may be set up to track usage, and/or to reward students with "badges" for achieving various learning objectives.
 
 
Apps for Khan Academy are available for IOS and Android.  Khan Academy is very popular with those who are using the Flipped Classroom: a popular (fairly new) technique used by many educators where students learn their content/skills  at home using videos, classroom time is then used to further discuss this content rather than lecturing.  Check it out here:
 

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

OURCLOUD, Eduportal & TED

For those who might have missed it, two important  NS Department  education links to setup.
 
The first being The Ednet Cloud located on NS Department of Education servers is an online drive where one can download and upload documents & create or share documents between students & teachers on various devices including laptops, desktop, tablets and phones. It is also available as an app on Apple IOS or Android - called OwnCloud.  It provides up to 2 GB of storage space.  Here is the link to login to your account, using your ccrsb email address & password.  https://ourcloud.nspes.ca   For further information check out this site for instructional videos http://dvl.ednet.ns.ca/ourcloud-video-series
 
The second Department of Education site that is very valuable is Eduportal - a one stop site that provides many valuable resources from an Online Video Library (10,000 video clips on many topics), Teacher Webspace, Shakespeare Online, EBSCO databases. Moodle, and access to OurCloud.  To setup an account you will need your teacher number.  The setup page is https://edapps.ednet.ns.ca/eduportal/Login.aspx.
 
For excellent thought provoking videos, TED and TED-ed are beyond reproach. The TED video site has established quite a name for itself with insightful, intelligent, concise 18-20 minute videos on a variety of topics keying on the fields of technology, education and design. Recently the website surpassed the total of over 1 billion views.

Seeking to educate and develop a younger audience. TED-ED was born to achieve this goal and has already surpassed 10 million page views. Web addresses are www.ted.com and ed.ted.com/

Apps are available in IOS and Android for TED