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Educational Technology Integration Matrix

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

I came across the Technology Integration Matrix today. It’s a resource created to ‘support the full integration of technology in Florida schools’, but is great for any department, faculty, or school that wants to analyse where it is with integrating educational technology.

It reminds me of the ‘Apple Schools of the Future’ programme in the 1990s, which observed teachers’ classrooms changing fundamentally due to the integration of computers.

Five levels of technology integration into the curriculum are defined:

  1. Entry – The teacher uses technology to deliver curriculum content to students.
  2. Adoption – The teacher directs students in the conventional use of tool-based software. If such software is available, this level is the recommended.
  3. Adaptation – The teacher encourages adaptation of tool-based software by allowing students to select a tool and modify its use to accomplish the task at hand.
  4. Infusion – The teacher creates a learning environment that infuses the power of technology tools throughout the day across subject areas.
  5. Transformation – The teacher creates a rich learning environment in which students regularly engage in activities that would have been impossible to achieve without technology.

It’s well worth a read – you can download the PDF to print out for your own use here.

Wixi: a bizarre yet useful free file-sharing / web-desktop hybrid

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

I stumbled across Wixi today. It’s a combination of desktop operating system, file-sharing application and personal file repository. It reminds me of EyeOS with which I experimented a year or more ago. It’s currently supposed to be in invitation-only beta, but you can sign-up using this page and get unlimited storage!

Wixi desktop

Once you’ve created your account and logged-in, you can create folders and upload your media to the site. This can then be tagged and set as ‘private’ or ‘public’. If you set, say, some video as ‘public’, it can be streamed (but not downloaded) by visitors to your Wixi profile page. You, however, as the owner of the content, can both stream and download it no matter where you are. Wixi does not require any special software to run, other than a web browser (currently only Firefox and Internet Explorer).

Although I experienced a few minor and not-too-irritating bugs whilst uploading, I’ve found it a great (free!) service so far. I’m stumped, however, as to how they’re going to deal with potential copyright infringement law suits. A quick search for ‘DVD rip’ brought up a whole host of films uploaded by other users that I was able to add to my Wixi page and stream (full-screen!) almost immediately:

Wixi - films

Wixi is definitely one to keep your eye on, especially as you are able to embed widgets to share your content in blogs, wikis, etc. I’m certainly not recommending this one for educational uses. I think this one’s for personal use only… 😉

Give it a spin, and add me as a friend – I’m on there as dajbelshaw. 😀

THIS is how technology can enhance learning

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

I can remember last year seeing a prototype of an alpha of a proposal for something at a university in the US. It was showcasing live 2-dimensional ‘real’ physics simulations. It was amazing, but not available for us mere mortals to play with.

I’m delighted to say that today, via the wonder of popurls, I came across a video showcasing a freely-downloadable piece of software called Phun that allows you to do the same! Have a look at it, a thousand words of mine wouldn’t do justice to the simplicity, elegance and intuitiveness of it:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H5g9VS0ENM&w=425&h=355]

It’s currently available for Windows and Linux with a Mac version coming soon. You can grab it as a free download here! 🙂

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