Mallorca Technology Class

Today’s big lesson was on educational games. There are some great templates for games that are already to use such as Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. One 3D simulation program that is a new rage is Second Life. I am thinking of using this program in my Geometry class. I would be the only one logged on and it would be shown through the projector. But we could creat shapes that are hard to draw and then be able to walk around them. Here is an example of a cone that I constructed in about 10 seconds.

Yes, my current identity in Second Life is a woman. If you are going to have a second life why not make it something different.

I can imagine how in the future the world wide web will be 3D. It will be like the next generation of GUI’s. If you wanted a journal in a library, the search could be done by virtually going into the library and looking for the journal. It would be the same process as searching now but with a 3D representation. Awesome!

Photoshop is truely amazing. There are hundreds of fun tools that can be applied to photos. Repairing “torn” photos or using the “liquify” option are some of the best. The hard thing as a beginner is to remember where all the options are located.

Here is a photo I was playing with, I call it Sunshine Moeball.

We have also been watching a documentary on the history of the personal computer. I find it fascinating the battles that raged between Apple, IBM, and Microsoft. It is amazing how revolutionary an idea such as a GUI (graphical user interface) was for personal computers. We have also been learning about all the benefits of Web 2.0. What will be the next big idea?

Today was about playing. I have been playing with Google Earth, which is amazing. I would be interested in having a discussion with teachers and brainstorm ideas for lessons using Google Earth.

So far I have used it to visit some of the cool places that I visited on this planet of ours. Check them out at My Cool Places.

I also played with adding a YouTube video to my post. So check this video of my celtic band: Tengo La Suerte. Of course you will need to plug in to hear the music!

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/hElCQMtepCk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

It is interesting to see how having a new big idea and some luck can have huge returns in the computer industry. Today we watched a documentary on the history of the personal computer. It is incredible how much money the Apple computer company made off the idea of simple packaging all of the components of a computer together into one computer.

Currently my school is using Chancery for a student database, Moodle for course management, Atlas Rubicon for curriculum mapping, and TurnItIn for academic integrity. I think a big idea for school management systems is something similar to what The College of New Jersey does with their SOCS program. SOCS is an umbrella program that includes all the separate programs into one. Then teachers only need to log on to one program instead of several. I can see a real market for an umbrella program such as SOCS for K-12 education.

Today I learned about Wikis. What an amazing application of web-based software. Wiki is free software that can be downloaded and allows a group of people to collaborate on a project. For example, this past year I had each student create an individual notebook that expanded each item of the IB Math SL syllabus. For this upcoming year, I am going to have the class create a syllabus notebook together using the Wiki activity on our school Moodle site. I am interested to see how it works. Ideally it will be more interesting for the students and less work since the work is being divided up.

We discussed Wikipedia in class. It is amazing how many articules have been contributed and from so many sources. We have come a long way since Aristotle wrote down all the known knowledge of the western world in 400 pages.

I’m sure you have suspected your nerdy friends making jokes about you in Klingon. Well now you can laugh at their ignorance while you talk about them in binary. Sure it might take awhile to learn and even longer to say a sentence, but I’m sure the chicks will dig it! Here’s my name in binary: 01001010 01101111 01110011 01100101 01110000 01101000.

Fun eh!

01100010 01111001 01100101

The word in the technology class is that smartboards are out and projectors are in. The projector is cheaper, portable, and has tons of applications. The smartboard provides an interactive aspect that may be useful for primary kids but is not worth the expense for older students.

I was also interested to learn about document cameras. It looks similar to a traditional overhead projector, but as a camera attached above. It will display worksheets, student works, and countless other items on the wall via the projector. I think this is a fantastic idea tha I would like to pilot this next year.

I really am enjoying learning about the past, present, and future of technology.