http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve Insights Into Educational Technology Sat, 20 Mar 2010 22:52:28 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en We deployed a live streaming server recently. With relative ease, any school with a webcam and a microphone can broadcast live video throughout their school. This is a great new tool, since this doesn't require any expensive hardware (just a webcam and a microphone), and right now it's fairly simple ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/live-streaming-now-available/ I don't know why some teachers take exception to calling virtual worlds "games." Every time I've referred to Second Life as a "game" on Twitter, I receive a flurry of replies insisting "Second Life is NOT a game" and "You really think Second Life is a game???"  I think it's ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/considering-virtual-worlds/ My first memory of an educational technology was using the BASIC programming language in first grade. There were only a few Apple IIe machines, and the nearest ones were in the next classroom, so the teacher sent us over in groups of 5 or 6 at a time to work ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/my-first-memory-of-an-educational-technology-basic-on-an-apple-ii-computer/ The school district's Links of the Day was created by importing bookmarks from social bookmarking tool Delicious. I wrote a script using the PHP PEAR library. It's an extension of the PHP scripting language -- which is pretty popular for web sites -- that includes a way to connect to ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/featuring-links-on-your-site/ Google recently launched their Google Squared service. In their own words, "Google Squared takes a category and creates a starter 'square' of information, automatically fetching and organizing facts from across the web." Do I see myself using Google Squared very often? Probably not. But can it be useful in some circumstances? ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/google-squared/ The Moodle logs contain some great data on user activity. Awhile ago, I put a page detailing some statistics on WSD Online, our own Moodle server. You can find that page here: http://www.weber.k12.ut.us/index.php?page=moodle-statistics Here's a few MySQL queries you can use on your own Moodle server to get some statistics on ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/some-simple-mysql-queries-for-moodle/ I've noticed a few differences in how our teachers and students use Moodle. The details may vary, but in general a teacher will log in, maybe upload a PowerPoint document, and if they're adventurous they'll set up an online quiz, and possibly a forum. A student, on the other hand, logs ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/turning-students-into-teachers-with-moodle/ Last month, in the first week of August, the Weber School District Technical Services Department hosted the second annual BrainBlast conference. BrainBlast is a time of year when we techs get to feel like rock stars, and the whole thing was a resounding success. The keynote speakers were excellent, the ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/brainblast-2008-survey-results-and-musings/ I received an email from one of our teachers a few days ago, expressing concerns over someone outside our district who linked to her blog. This isn't the first time I've received an email like this, so with her permission, I'm posting her email here, followed by my long-winded reply ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/breaking-out-of-the-shell/ A magnitude 6.1 earthquake this morning off the coast of Vancouver Island was not felt on land, despite being the biggest yet in a swarm of quakes that have hit the region this week. This latest earthquake was reported at 5:37 this morning, centred 152 kilometres west-southwest of Port Hardy ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/tracking-earthquakes-with-google-earth/ The blogs have been a fantastic tool for Weber School District. I didn't expect such rapid growth and usage of them since we launched them in August 2007. If you're a district employee and haven't used your blog yet, I encourage you to do so. It's a great way to ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/new-features-weber-blog-statistics-and-improved-search/ A police officer gave a presentation at an assembly at Windsor High School in Colorado. His objective was to teach the kids about Internet safety, and to do this he showed the students how posting pictures on Myspace can be dangerous. Students and parents at Windsor High School are outraged after ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/using-myspace-to-teach-internet-safety/ I was looking through some old files from last year, and found a document I'd written about my attendance at the WebBuilder 2.0 Conference in December 2007. I wasn't blogging back then, and this was originally intended to be an email to my boss with some ideas on the future ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/my-vision-nine-months-ago/ I'm at the Classroom 2.0 Workshop in Salt Lake City today. I'm covering the events and sharing my thoughts below in my liveblog. Introductory Session Social Networking Session A Survey of Great Google Tools Session Web 2.0 Smackdown! VoiceThread, Slideshare, Jing & Others http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/classroom-20-workshop/ Every year for the past few years we've been introducing something "new" and "big" in the Weber School District. 2006 was the year of our shiny new portal, MyWeber. In 2007, the teacher blogs were the huge hit when we introduced them at our first BrainBlast conference -- which itself ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/whats-the-next-big-thing-at-wsd/ For: Teachers Type: Technology Ideas for the Classroom Many teachers don't realize the benefits that can come from student blogging. These teachers may even have blogs themselves, use them in creative ways, such as communicating with other staff members and parents, delivering interactive content for students, and so on. So why wouldn't ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/why-teachers-should-encourage-students-to-blog/ I never expected to take part in NECC 2008. It was good fortune that a few months ago I came across a K12 Online Conference presentation from 2007, where Jeff Utecht was spontaneously contacting educators on Twitter and using Skype to interview them as part of his webcast. I'd learned about ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/a-virtual-attendee-of-necc-2008/ As I demonstrated earlier, TwitterLocal is a great tool to receive updates on events happening around the world.  The recent flood in Coralville, Iowa shows another example of how people can stay connected and receive ground-level news from the people affected.  One Coralville resident used Twitter to start up a ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/twitterlocal-in-coralville/ A great voice thread with educators discussing the growing importance of digital media literacy in our schools. http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/81/ PicLens is a great eye candy tool for web browsers, and can turn any collection of videos and pictures on a site into an engaging, dynamic presentation. It comes in two flavors: the non-browser plugin version and the browser plugin version. It also lets you search for videos and pictures ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/piclens/ More and more universities are joining up to offer a variety of course materials through the OpenCourseWare project, and Utah State University is now one of the partner institutions involved in this laudable venture. This site is made possible by funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and visitors ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/utah-state-university-joins-opencourseware-project/ Technical Level: Beginner Type: Practical Applications Yesterday Business Week ran an article about how Twitter has impacted how people communicate. Twitter is a "microblogger." Microblogs are short text updates; similar to blogs, but shorter and without the "frills." There are other microblogging services such as Jaiku and Pownce, but Twitter is ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/monitoring-current-events-with-twitter/ Technical Level: Intermediate For: IT Professionals I've been working on a live streaming server for all our teachers. I've had this Icecast server sitting here for about two years now, not really doing anything. I've been using it occasionally to give live piano performances to a virtual audience, but I've been waiting ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/update-broadcasting-live-from-the-classroom/ Technical Level: Beginner Type: Technology Ideas If you've never heard of thin clients, maybe this analogy will help. Let's say you have 5 computers in your house. One day, you decide to yank out all the hardware from each computer. Disk drives, RAM, and processors go flying. Then you stuff all ... http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/the-thin-client-advantage/ http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/ahead-test/