thoughts from ISTE 2011

Here are some of my observations and thoughts from the recent ISTE Conference.

Links I came across:

speakwisdom.com
ischoolinitiative.com
https://web.kennesaw.edu/etc/byot check out the lawyer's presentation
 

manning.com/ceder/
nextvista.org videos for students (Rushton Hurley)

Met at the dinner reception:
http://www.fcps.edu/ChesterbrookES/qrcodes.htm

Free children’s audiobooks:
http://talesfromtheforest.co.uk/stories.html

Google Apps Education Training Center
http://edutraining.googleapps.com/

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration kids games
http://games.noaa.gov/

JASON Science
http://www.jason.org/public/whatis/start.aspx

Open Education Resources
http://www.k12opened.com/wiki/index.php/Learn_About

Topics I was interested in:

game-based learning
3D design/printing/CNC
student-owned devices
citizenship / online identity
science data collection

programming/computing science
girls in science/tech
flipped instruction
sturdy headset for language labs

distance/asynchronous/blended learning
assessment
asynchronous/flipped professional development
Administrators as technology leaders
open source
robotics
libraries
online collaboration
just-in-time teaching (versus just-in-case)
open content
student media creation (and portfolios)

bringing technology to #ISTE11

We've had some discussion in my office about what technology to bring to the ISTE conference. Here are my thoughts and what I'm bringing.

• iPad (or other tablet) for attending sessions
• with audiobooks, books, and videos
• laptop or netbook for writing and Skype/Google Talk
• iPod Touch for walking around at night, and probably for the plane rides
• also with audiobooks, books, and videos

Calling home:
Skype - for video calls between computers, iPad 2, iPhone, TVs, etc
Google Talk - free calls to Canada and US phones from within Gmail, free video calls to computers

And I'm leaving my phone at home, since even with a US plan it's still about $40 for 40 minutes and $30 for 0.01 GB of data.

While I'm at #ISTE11, I'll be posting to Twitter (@misterhay) and this blog.

amusement park accelerometer data

I collected some data with my phone accelerometer using the app AccDataRec. I've graphed all three axes on each of the spreadsheets in this Google Docs folder.

The best one is the Flying Galleon. I cropped off the messy data at the start and end so it's a nice sinusoidal curve.

Feel free to share and use these however you'd like.












This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

setting up Moodle Language Lab

Moodle Language Lab is an activity module developed (and being developed) by Campus Saint-Jean and Oohoo.biz that:

replaces the traditional cassette tape language lab. There is a module for students to record themselves and teachers to review and grade the work. This version also includes a class monitor. So, if a teacher uses it inside the classroom, he/she can monitor student progress the same way they used the traditional language lab by listening to live streams of the students, responding live to students, giving a thumbs up and so on.
It also offers an integration with the Moodle WYSIWYG, allowing recordings to be done virtually in any activity or resource wihtin Moodle. This feature has been used in our classes throughout the past year. For example, we had an oral forum instead of a written forum. Professors would leave spoken messages in the grade book.

It requires three programs running on a server (on the same server or separate ones):

1. Moodle 2.0.x
2. Red5 Media Server (version .8)
3. Palabre XML Socket Server edit: Palabre is no longer needed

Here's how you can set up the three parts of Moodle Language Lab on a Windows server. The process will be similar for other operating systems.

Red5

1. Download version .8 from code.google.com/p/red5/ (I recommend the ZIP file, and 1.0 RC1 worked for me)
2. Unzip the files into some folder (not publicly accessible)
3. Install Java, if it's not already installed, and make sure your JAVA_HOME variable is defined
4. Run Red5.bat
5. Go to http://localhost:5080/ to test that Red5 is running, and click "Install a ready-made application"
6. Install the oflaDemo
7. Make a note of the server's Internet-accessible IP address (or FQDM)

Palabre

1. Download the source files (Windows installer didn't work for me), untar into some folder (again not a publicly accessible folder)
2. Install Python (2.7 or so)
3. Edit the Palabre\etc\palabre.conf file, these are the two lines that I changed
• ip = 
• alloweddomains = 127.0.0.1 moodle.______.ca #put your own value(s) on this line
4. Run Palabre.py
5. Test by running one of the Palabre clients
6. Make a note of the server's Internet-accessible IP address (or FQDM)

Moodle (this is just pasted from the Developer's readme file)

1. copy all folders (filter, mod, lib ) into the appropriate moodle(root) folder.
2. Login to Moodle with admin rights.
3. In the Site Administration block, click on Notifications. This will setup the database tables for the languagelab module
4. In the settings block, select Site administration -> Plugins -> Activities Modules -> Manage activities -> Language lab -> settings
5. Enter the IP address or the FQDN that you noted previously in the appropriate fields and save changes.
6. You're done. Go into a course, turn editing on and add a language lab activity.

Xbox 360 tool control mat

Inspired by a blog post about making tool control mats with a CNC router, I made a "tool" control mat for a video game club's shelf.

Using Inkscape I imported a vector drawing of the 360 gamepad by grumbel on the Open Clip Art Library as the basis for the outline of the controller, resized it to the dimensions on the Wikipedia page, and made 12 copies of it (since that's how many controllers the club owns).

The slots for the games were just rectangles using the dimensions from another Wikipedia article. I discovered that I had to convert these objects to paths (under the Path menu in Inkscape) before I saved the file as a DXF file (or PDF file, depending on which CAM program you're using).

I converted the drawing to G-code for a 1/2 inch end mill as a roughing pass, thinking that I'd then do a finishing pass with a smaller bit, but decided that it was good enough after the first pass. I milled it from two inch thick extruded polystyrene foam (Styrofoam), then cut it down to size on a radial arm saw (which explains the mistake you see on the side in this last photo).

Not bad for my first successful CNC project, if I do say so myself.

Edit: I also published this an an Instructable.

CAD CAM CNC routing workflow

After experimenting with many different programs for CAD (3D design) and CAM (turning that design into code for a CNC router), I've come up with a good workflow using easy and free tools:

• Google Sketchup
• guitar-list.com Sketchup plugin for converting a model to an STL file
• FreeMill
• Mach3 (which was included with the CNC routing table)

The process that works for me is

1. design a 3D model in Sketchup
2. export the model to an STL file using the guitar-list.com plugin
3. load that STL file into FreeMill
4. generate the toolpath and post it to a G-code text file
5. import the G-code into Mach3 and run it on the CNC machine

Hopefully this will be simple enough for students to start designing and cutting things.

notes from the tablet symposium

I recently attended a Tablet Symposium hosted by the ATLE (Alberta Technology Leaders in Education) where a number of vendors presented their current or upcoming tablets. While there we added information to a specifications spreadsheet, and what follows are my personal impressions from that symposium, in the order that the presentations occurred.

HP
WebOS is very cool, and I think they will be a major player. Good integration with their smart phones, similar to RIM. I'll be interested when these products finally come out. I really like their inductive charging.

Toshiba
They seemed to say, "We'll also be making tablets in the future, both Android and Windows."

Asus
Eee Pad Transformer is awesome. $400, decent specs, and a keyboard dock that turns it into a laptop and doubles the battery life. My favorite of the event. The Slider and MeMO look decent too, but I'm not interested in their Windows 7 tablet, even though it's available now.

RIM
Integrates with your BlackBerry, works without it too. Committed to the seven inch size for thumb typing and portability, which I like.

Dell

I'm not impressed with the Dell Streak 5 and 7. Android 2.2 and relatively low resolution makes them seem like big phones. The convertible Inspiron Duo netbook/tablet is not bad if you're wanting a Windows netbook anyway.

Samsung
The current Galaxy Tab is overpriced and not competitive any more, there's not much information available about the attractive upcoming Android 3.0 tablets.

Acer
Android 3.0, Windows 7, decent specs, not much information on price or availability.

Motorola
The Xoom is nice, good specs, Android 3.0, cheaper than the equivalent iPad, and available now.

So if I had to rank my favorites, off the top of my head based on my impressions, I'd say:

1. Asus Eee Pad Transformer
2. Motorola Xoom
3. HP TouchPad
4. BlackBerry Playbook

A number of the things we saw were pre-production, so don't hold me to this list, but I just wanted to write some quick off-the-cuff remarks.

---
Edit: One of my colleagues wanted to add that although his overall impression was positive, it would have been beneficial for us to have more play time with the devices, rather than just passing them around the room. He also wanted to note that he too was impressed with the Motorola Xoom and the Asus Eee Pad.