dougbelshaw.com/blog

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I’m delighted to unveil the new edte.ch logo – as you can see at the top of this site. It was created by the multi-talented and, dare I say it, award-winning Mr Paul Lewis, Head of Development at The Roundhouse in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I have the privilege of having very creative people as close friends.

If you’re reading this via your RSS reader and the image in this post doesn’t show up, please do stop by the site. I’m still tweaking the colours of the rest of the site but I’m sure you’ll agree it’s looking good!

Google Earth is amazing. Google Sketchup is even more amazing: 3D models of buildings in the correct geographical location that you can ‘visit’. Google has a 3D Warehouse site where you can view and upload buildings created by users of Google Earth. I, for example, tend to use the Colosseum in Rome when teaching the Romans to Year 7 History classes.

If you’re interested in the types of models that are being created, there’s a great tool called the 3D Warehouse Model Viewer that shows you on a map of the world the most recent, highest-rated, or most popular models that have been created. There’s real potential in these to make education come alive to students. (via Education/Technology)

As part of the drive towards ‘pupil voice’ in UK schools, educators need to have a quick and easy way to get feedback from students. Surveymonkey is a tried-and-tested favourite, but to glean responses from more than 100 people you need to pay a subscription fee. Thankfully, therefore, Zoho – the innovative company in competition with Google Apps – have released Zoho Creator. This seems to be a flexible solution with added bonuses such as automatic email notification and RSS feeds. More at Tim Lauer’s Education/Technology blog.

I’m delighted to report that, thanks to the some pointing-in-the-right-direction by Scott McLeod and generosity on behalf of Ray Fleming (Microsoft’s UK Marketing Manager) I’ve found a UK version of the Did You Know? 2.0 presentation:

If you’d like to download a version for offline version or the Powerpoint to edit, visit Ray Fleming’s blog. He’ll provide you with a link to the music used as well if you ask him nicely via the email address given on the blog post linked to above.

So it turns out that the rumours are probably true and that Google are making a mobile operating system to power mobile phones. No big surprises there – I already use their GMail and Google Maps application on my Nokia N95, whilst catching up with my RSS feed reading through the (mobile) web-based version of Google Reader. I’m pleased to see that the probable manufacturer for such a device would be HTC, maker of the SPV range of mobile phones that go under the Orange brand in the UK. (more…)

SMART Technologies, the company who make the popular SMART interactive whiteboards have relased the free SMART Notebook interactive viewer. This enables content to be shared with any other make of interactive whiteboard. This is going to be very handy for schools who have taken a somewhat ad-hoc approach to purchasing, or for those of us who share resources, as with the historyshareforum. (via it4L)

Unfortunately in education there’s somewhat of a gulf between the world of the teacher and the world of the IT (network) manager. This is where edte.ch come in – to bridge the divide! Those involved in IT provision should not dictate pedagogy either through their actions or policies – implicit or explicit. By the same token, however, teachers should not expect the IT guys to perform miracles or things that can’t be done!

(via: John Pederson)

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Cin Barnsley has an interesting post on Information Literacy entitled Lifting the Fog in which she posts a useful image (above) and video (can’t embed here…)

Update: In a subsequent post, Cin brought my attention to a presentation entitled Literacy Remixed in a Web 2.0 World by Judy O’Connell.

Wikipedia is a wonderful resource that has transformed the Internet. It has been proved to be as reliable – if not more so – than the Encylopaedia Britannica, but nevertheless it has problems. There’s no way that a teacher could let a class loose on the site without insisting they check the information with that found elsewhere. But what other such comprehensive resource can teaches point their students towards?

Enter Freebase. Although only in alpha release, it still has several million articles available to view. According to this tutorial (only watch the first half – the second is for developers) the hierarchical nature and different page structures depending on content make it easy to navigate and use. All of the content on Freebase is available under a Creative Commons license, meaning that students just have to cite the work if they use it in a project.

Experts within the community have great control over the structure of Freebase than ordinary users. Although Wikipedia is ostensibly editable by anyone, new users are prevented from editing controversial and politically-sensitive pages. Freebase has the potential to be an extremely useful tool for teachers, especially when used with other sites such as Wikipedia and the revolutionary ManyOne browser and its digital universe.

(via dkuropatwa @ Twitter)

It seems like almost everyone in the educational community has now seen the Did You Know? video, which shows how the 21st century world is changing rapidly. If you haven’t, spend a few minutes viewing it at one of the locations listed here. Unfortunately, the video is somewhat US-centric. What’s great is that the authors have released the original Flash files, meaning that the community can remix the content under the Creative Commons license. A UK version anyone?