Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Google Applications Feedback

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” -George Bernard Shaw

There are a lot of things I like about the Moodle program. I am excited to learn more next week. There are a lot of things I like about the Google Applications as well. Once I did more research I became more relaxed about the security and storage issues. It makes sense I believe to let experts do what they do in this world. I think these two "hosted" tools could be a great mix for our programs here at Hamilton...Another thought is how do we recognize this in Hamilton? Are we utilizing our stakeholders wisely in their areas of expertise? How can we become more efficient by being ever mindful of this great charge! I hope this opens some discussion on the blog...

I'm going to post any links I can find featuring institutions using Google. Please take a look!

Google References...Maybe we could actually call some of these places....

The University of Notre Dame and the Catholic Church are not widely known for being overly aggressive when it comes to change but check out their experience....They Saved $1.5M right off the bat in IT savings....

Notre Dame Goes Google

Monday, March 15, 2010

Organized Links

Thanks to Nate Alkire for organizing all of the links that the four of us on the north end of the building got out of the MACUL Conference. If you have anything to add we would love you to join the diigo page and add them ore we can add them for you! It is great to see all of the raw ideas out there!!!

Diigo Page

Mac Classroom Management Software

Keeping a digital classroom on track.

In any classroom, it can be hard to tell when students are learning and when they’re lost. That’s especially true in a classroom full of computers. Students may be looking at the screen, but are they looking at the right material? Are they falling behind?
Automator

Apple Remote Desktop lets a teacher or lab manager observe, guide, and control each student’s activity — right from their own computer. They can keep individual students on task or walk them through complex problems. They can use text chatting to interact with a single student or a project team without disrupting what everyone else is doing. They can choose any student’s screen and share it with the whole room. Or they can simply drag and drop assignments and handouts to any or all of the computers in class.

Teacher’s Helpers, a free set of Automator workflows, do even more to leverage the power of Apple Remote Desktop in the classroom. They let teachers easily trigger all kinds of actions on their students’ computers, from launching an application to opening a web page to locking screens.

Monday, March 1, 2010

ONE West Michigan School's Approach

I am not sure if we are ready to follow this approach but this is interesting reading...

Full Technology Integration

Thursday, February 25, 2010

What can an iPad do???

iPad Features

Make sure you check out the accessibility section of the features description.

Description of NETbooks

Taken from Acer Website

Netbooks
PRICE RANGE: $279 - $549
Content Consumption
• Consume Content, Collaborate , Email/IM
• Surf the Internet & View Content
• The ‘Basic Mobile’ Experience
• Load Productivity Applications
• Young Learners Primary Mobile Learning Device
• Secondary portable computing device for educators,
students, business and enterprise consumers
System Highlights
Screen Size : 8.9” – 11.6”
Weight : 2.3 lbs – 3 lbs
Hard drive capacity: 160 GB
Battery Life: up to 7.5 hours
Integrated Optical Drive: No
Wireless Networking: 802.11b/g
Operating System: Windows XP Home/Pro
Processor: Intel Atom

Description of NOTEbooks

From Acer Website....

Notebooks
PRICE RANGE: $399-$1149
Content Creation & Consumption
• Full Connectivity, Manageability & Security
• Use Web 2.0 tools to edit/post content on social media and
academic networks
• Load & Manage Multiple Applications
• Surf the Internet while Managing Other Content
• Modeling & Visualization
• Mobile Media and Gaming Device
• Primary mobile computing device for educators, students,
business and enterprise consumers
System Highlights
Screen Size : 12.1” – 17.3”
Weight : 3.5 lbs – 7.1 lbs
Hard drive capacity: > 160 GB
Battery Life: up to 8-10 hours
Integrated Optical Drive: yes*
Wireless Networking: 802.11b/g/ Draft N
Operating System: Windows Vista Basic/Business or XP Home/Pro
Processor: Intel or AMD Single/Duo

Device Ideas

Please share your comments on hardware or software you would like to see considered in our decision making process.

Welcome!!!

Here is the blog. If you have feedback or things you would like to see, please let me know. I think we should start conversations about devices and then move into some application ideas. Please comment under the device post!