Anyway, here's my first post. It's a bit more "techy" than most of my posts - geared more towards the tech people than the teachers. Teachers - read it! It's all free software that you should be pushing your tech department to be using. 8 months ago, I was approached by my principal and technology director, and informed that my school would be going 1:1 with netbooks in the third quarter. After looking at different hardware options, we eventually settled on the Dell Latitude 2100 netbook.We liked this model because it has nearly full-size keyboard (it's very easy to type on). It's also got a decent screen, and really good battery life. It's got a rubberized exterior which proved to be good at absorbing it's share of bumps and bruises. The white light which indicated wireless activity, as well as the nameplate on the battery proved to be nice extras.

At any rate, it was time for me to look at the software packages that I would be using for the implementation. The computers, by default, ship with Windows 7 or with no operating system (I think Dell may also have a variety of Ubuntu Linux). I wanted something easy to support, easy to use. There is also an open question about sustainability. Purchasing a license for Microsoft Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2007 (now 2010) would add approximately $100 to the cost of each machine. So, now I was on a quest - could a 1:1 program be implemented, which only uses free or open source software. The answer is a resounding YES. The program was a huge success, and the software worked exceptionally well. So, here is a list of software which is completely free, easy to use, and works well (along with some tips and tricks):

Operating System: Ubuntu Linux: Netbook Remix

UNR is a variant of the Ubuntu Linux distribution which is designed for use on Netbooks. Instead of a desktop, there is a large, menu-driven interface. It's very easy for students to navigate and find things, and ditches the need for desktop icons, etc. All of your open applications are neatly stacked along the top, along with volume controls and wireless. When put before students, they grasped the navigation and use of the system pretty quickly, and were in to applications before I finished explaining it. The only thing - make sure they know how to close programs (the "X" on the tab), and how to get back to the desktop (the very first icon in the upper left corner). Once you have linux installed, go to System and Synaptic Package Manager. Install the following tools which you will need:

• openjdk-jre (Java runtime for Java apps)
• flashplugin-installer. This is the plugin you will need for Adobe Flash Player (enables YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu, and Flash-based websites)
• edubutnu-secondary and edubuntu-tertiary (adds a bunch of educational programs including KStars and Kalzium)
• openssh-server (this is only if you know what you are doing with Linux. Openssh will allow you (and only you) backdoor access to the machine, so you can pull files, do some basic monitoring, etc)
• VLC is the most awesome media player ever. It plays every media file you will throw at it. If you are going to be using a FLIP camera, this is a must.
• gimp is a free program that functions like PhotoShop. It's really powerful, probably too much so for everyday use, but your graphic artists will really be able to get a lot out of it.
• PiTiVi is a video editing program to edit videos created on a FLIP camera or other source. It's too resource intensive for netbooks, so if you are using Netbooks, I'd recommend the web-based JayCut instead.
• Scribus is an open source Desktop Publishing program. There isn't anything for Linux that gives you the "comfort" of MS Publisher or Apple's Pages, but this is the best of the litter.
• gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg, gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad, gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse, gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly, gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse. Despite these ominous sounding names, these are a great set of plugins, allowing you to play a wide variety of different media types your students may encounter.

Monitoring Software: iTalc

One of the "must haves" for a successful 1:1 program is the ability to monitor and remotely control student laptops. None of the commercial alternatives have Linux versions. However, iTalc is a free alternative which (for the most part) works just as well. Using iTalc, you can monitor, remotely control, and remotely lock student computers. You can also remotely lock student computers, though this doesn't always work. The one thing that you need to plan for. You need to generate encryption keys (both a public and private key), and copy this key to each additional computer where you install iTalc (this can be done in your image). The iTalc wiki can tell you about this. Also, there is no "discovery" function, so you need to name the computer something which can be easily distinguished by student. Linux tip: you can rename a computer by editing the file /etc/hostname as an admin user. I named each machine the ID number of the student who was issued the machine. This slowed turnaround time on switching out computers to students (I had no "ready spares"), but made it easy for teachers to set up and to identify which laptop belonged to which students.

Other Learning Tools

• Google Earth: Goes without saying. On netbooks, it's a bit choppy, but there are great lessons to be had with any subject area here.
• GeoGebra is a great alternative to Geometer's Sketchpad. It has all of the features found in GSP, and even a few that aren't.
• Skype is a great tool for instant communication. Some teachers are still antsy about using this tool, but there is certainly potential for it's use in the classroom.
• Alice and Scratch are two tools to teach computer programming. If you teach computer programming these are great tools to use. If not, this is still a good choice for interested students.

In part two, we'll look at file storage, imaging, and configuration options for these computers! Stay Tuned!

And to make matters worse, PowerPoint is far from perfect.  It depends on text, makes demonstration of relationships nearly impossible, doesn't travel well, and makes embedding Web 2.0 content really, really difficult.  It's clear we need something better.  One of the possible tools is Prezi (www.prezi.com).  I'm not sure it's the cure-all, but it's certainly a noteworthy alternative.

Prezi doesn't use slides.  In fact, it uses one large canvas.  You emphasize parts of the canvas by setting Prezi to zoom in to different parts of the canvas.  See this example that Prezi posts on how to use some of the features of Prezi:

If you click the "Play" button in the presentation above, you'll see that you can go forwards and backwards through the presentation, like a PowerPoint with spinny effects.  However, the greatness in Prezi lies in the third button, the one that looks like a little target.  Click that, and you can see the entire canvas - the entire presentation - at one time.  You can see how the elements connect and are sequenced.  You can also double-click elements to zoom in, and use your mouse to move around the presentation (an awesome interactive whiteboard tool, btw).

Here is an example from a student at my school:

If you step through the presentation, you can see each step individually, along with a picture (yay digital cameras). However, if you click the target, you can see Mitosis as a repeating process. You can see at a glance how the different phases connect, and can zoom back in to any one. You'll also notice that vocabulary, interesting facts, and works cited are part of the canvas, but not part of the presentation flow.

Prezi has a learning curve to it. They have about ten minutes of sample videos on how to use it. The user interface, while logical, is completely revolutionary. If you don't take the time to watch the videos, you are going to have a hard time using this tool. But the advantages are numerous. You can embed your YouTube videos directly into your presentation. You can also include hyperlinks, embedded Web 2.0 content, graphics, and more!

However, once you know what you are doing, there is a lot of power here. Use it wisely

It's incomplete - some years are missing (like 1776), and some only have a few issues.  Some copies are damaged and hard to read, and the full text search doesn't work too well.  You also need to remember that there was no telephone or Internet.  When things happened, it took a while for them to get in the paper.

All that being said, there are some pretty incredible nuggets in there.  Take this from July 11, 1777:

"All white male inhabitants....shall take...the following oath...I ______ do swear, or affirm, that I renounce and refuse all allegiance to George the Third, King of Great Britain, his heirs and officers, and that I will be faithful, and bear true allegiance, to the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as a free an independent state, and tha I will not at any time do, or cause to be done, any matter or thing that will be prejudicial or ingerous to the freedom and the independence thereof."

It's really cool primary source material, certainly, and great discussion starters for classrooms or for research papers.  Take a look, leave anything useful that you find in the comments.

North Carolina Newspaper Digitization Project

The decade according to 9-year-olds from allison louie-garcia on Vimeo.

I know I'm supposed to be providing cool tools for you to use after Christmas, but I couldn't resist posting this.  I've seen a lot of decade in review stuff over the past few weeks.  I think it finally dawned on people that "hey, the 2000s are over in a few weeks".  It's fitting that I found this video referenced on Gizmodo, and I think it underscores the need to change the way we teach. 

We can look at the big news things from ten years ago:

• Nobody had ever heard of Al-Quieda, and nobody in the United States gave terrorism a second thought.
• We were not at war.
• We were in a time of economic prosperity.

But, what I find more amazing is the way communication in society has changed in the last ten years.  Ten years ago:

• There was no iPod (was introduced in 2001).  Now, over 220 million have been sold, along with countless other devices.  Ten years ago, people were making mix CDs - CDs with only the songs individuals wanted to listen to.  Now, people load their iPods with the songs they want, and nobody carries around a portable CD player.
• Google is only 2 years old.  Nobody had ever heard of it, but it was just starting to catch on.  They only had 8 employees.
• There was no Wikipedia, that wouldn't come until 2001.  Now, Wikipedia has over 14 million articles in 240 languages.  Google and Wikipedia are where students tend to start when looking something up.  And it didn't exist when these 9-year-olds were born.
• There was no Facebook (not until 2004).  It started with one college, then spread to more and more colleges, then high school, and the world.  Facebook now has more than 350 million active users.
• There was no Twitter (not until 2007).  Now, there are over 16 million unique tweets EVERY DAY.
• Cell phones could only *gasp* make telephone calls.  If you were lucky, you got one when you started driving, but you couldn't use it any other time, because it was too expensive.  You had, if you were wealthy, 300 minutes per month, no unlimited night and weekends (or unlimited anything), you paid several dollars per minute if you left your hometown, and cell phones were either Analog or Digital/Analog combinations.  Intercarrier text messaging (sending messages to people regardless of their carrier) was becoming increasingly popular.  In 2000, 17 billion (just shy of 3 per person on Earth) text messages were sent the entire year.  By the end of 2008, that number had jumped to over 1 trillion (for those keeping score, 149.43 per everyone on the planet).  Almost all of that usage in the US is by people under age 35, with a majority of that being teenagers.
• Wifi was new.  The first Wifi network was created at Carnegie Mellon in 1994.  The Wifi Alliance, which created the standards that we now use today, was created in 1999.  Places with wireless were on the bleeding edge in 1999, and wireless cards were available only as add-on cards to laptops.  Now, wireless is commonplace, almost ubiquitous.  Almost all new laptops are Wifi capable, and even the Fast Food places have Wifi available to their customers.

I'm sure there is more, if you can think of any, leave them in the comments.  We've all seen the Did You Know videos, but when you think of the ten-year span that we have just ended, the videos don't really do it justice.  I hear in workshops all the time that kids today don't live in the same world as we did when we were kids.  Forget that.  These kids don't live in the same world as they did when THEY were BORN!  It's my job to try to keep up with all of this, but I still have trouble.  I hear my students talk - something happens, the first thing they do is record it and put it on YouTube.  I am fully capable of recording something with my cell phone and putting it on YouTube, but even still, it doesn't occur to me to do that.  With our students, it's the first thing they think of.  When they are trying to do something, like bake a cake, I search on Google for cake recipes.  They go to YouTube for step-by-step with video.  These are high school students, aged 15.  Back in 1994, when they were born - there was no YouTube, or high speed internet, or Google, or anything else.  So, it's not even fair to say that they have grown up with it.  It has grown up with them. It has evolved and changed and matured alongside them.  As they are ready to explore new technologies, new technologies are being developed for them to explore.  I was at Thanksgiving a few weeks ago with some family friends.  Their kids are all aged six and under.  I had my digital camera, and was taking pictures (which I did upload to Facebook).  As soon as I took the picture, one of the three-year-olds walked up to me and said "Can I see the picture?".  Looking at a picture on a digital camera immediately is commonplace to me, and to many of us.  However, this struck me for some reason.  This three year old is growing up with an immediacy of access to information that nobody EVER has before.  Even the nine year olds.  Any information, digital media, recipe for cake is at her fingertips.  It's immediate.

I often think about the difference between the two major terrorist attacks of the 2000s - 9/11 and the London subway bombings.  After the London bombings, we saw immediately cell phone pictures of the death and destruction.  It was horrific, because we saw what they saw, exactly.  It was like we were there, and we could see events unfold in all of it's terrible glory.  During 9/11, there was none of that.  How much worse would it have been if people had seen first hand inside the buildings, if the activities on the planes had been recorded, if we could see individual first hand accounts, lots of them?  How would that have changed our perceptions of the events that unfolded, our reactions and thoughts?  How would these kids, who remember 9/11 only by stories told to them by their parents, and books in the library, how would they see 9/11 differently?  I don't know, but it is most certainly food for thought.

So, I'm supposed to be talking about teaching, so I ask the question - what does all of this mean for teachers?  First of all, how can teachers possibly keep up with the way students communicate when the way students communicate changes between primary school and high school?  We are entering an age where students have access to all of the knowledge of the human race, instantly, and immediately.  It is important that we make sure that they can sort through these facts, make judgments, and assimilate new information (yes, it remains important for kids to KNOW things in their memories).  Just as the retrieval of information is faster, the dissemination of information will be faster too.  We will be required to teach students more information, faster, and earlier than ever before.  What used to be high school math is now taught in fifth grade, and that's only the beginning.  But at the same time, we will be dealing with a group of students who can process information faster, if for no other reason than they will have to in order to survive.  If you think it's hard for us to keep up - imagine what it must be like for them - they have to keep up, and usually a few steps ahead of us, just to maintain the status quo for their age group.

It also means that we are going to have to change the way we teach.  Yes, I know we have all heard this before, integrating technology, less lecture, blah, blah, blah.  But it's not that.  We can still lecture, and good lessons are never overrun by technology.  However, our lectures must be purposeful and thought provoking.  Our use of technology must be purposeful and a means to an end.  We have to deliver the information faster, more efficiently, and on their terms.  Students can memorize information.  They can analyze, process, synthesize and evaluate.  But this is a generation of students who do information on their terms - we need to accommodate this, not because we need to conform to our students, but because this is now life, and we need to prepare them for it.  We need to teach them how to take in information, process it, extract the relevant bits, and come up with a conclusion.  Never before has that been the primary goal of education.  But here we are, the information is there - now we need to teach them the next steps.

Sorry if that went a little long.  This post is intended as a discussion starter.  Please! post in the comments.

• Creating your home page
• Video and pictures in the classroom
• Blogging
• Wikis
• Podcasts
• Collaborative document editing
• Online research
• Social networking
• Cyber-bullying
• Cell phones in the classroom

For each of the tools, you will create something for use in your classroom.  We will also focus on collaborating with other teachers and sharing ideas.

To enroll, log on to http://moodle.technicallyteaching.com.  Create a new Moodle account, click on the course you want to enroll in, and enroll yourself in the course.  Module 1 is available for you to start working on right away.  The official start date for the course is January 15.

This course is FREE and open to all teachers in grades 5-12.  For more information, or if you have questions, email me at mark.samberg@technicallyteaching.com.

• English/social studies: Paste a selection from a book or a primary source document into Wordle to represent the "big ideas" (literally) of the speech.  Take a look at the example below, where I have a Wordle of the Gettysburg Address (click on it for a larger image).
• English teachers: Have students paste their writing into Wordle to look for overused words.
• Guess the Wordle: Great web site with a generated Wordle which you must guess.  Sometimes it's a story, sometimes the words are associated by a common theme, you have to guess.  Monday's Wordle is easy, and they get increasingly more difficult throughout the week.

Other ideas?  Share in the comments.

Facebook began a few years back as a way for students at a single college to network.  Eventually, it expanded to more and more colleges, and now to the world at large.  It seems like everyone who has ever seen a computer now has a Facebook account (except for my parents).  I have one, and I use it to keep in touch with old friends, where time and distance doesn't allow for telephone calls or visits.  High school reunions in the digital age are going to be interesting.  Everyone who I would talk to at my reunion is already on my Facebook, so I never really lost track of them.  Just random food for thought.

Anyway, at the start of the school year, the thought of "friending" a student on Facebook gave me chills.  My Facebook page is pretty benign, I've shown it to my parents and grandparents without embarrassment.  However, I didn't want my students to see that much of my personal life, nor the occasional "my classes really annoyed me today" status post.  However, one day during my planning period, I was reading a blog from a teacher, who said that posting his homework on Facebook, and using Facebook chat to provide extra help to students was working wonders for homework completion.  It makes sense - I spend a lot of time on Facebook.  I have to assume that validation-hungry teenagers would be spending even more time on Facebook.

So, now, with Facebook's new privacy settings, I'm happy to say that it is possible to Friend students on Facebook, but still keep that crazy Saturday night a secret.  All Facebook activity is logged, and if there was ever an issue, Facebook tends to be very cooperative with law enforcement.  Anyway, on that note, here is a screencast on how to "student-proof" your Facebook profile.

A few words of warning first:

1) Don't be stupid - remember that people will judge you not based on what you do, but what it looks like you are doing.  Anything you put where students can see it should be appropriate.  If you write on a student's Wall, it should be AND SHOULD LOOK appropriate.  Also, remember that it's easier to misunderstand intentions in text than in person.  Be careful.

2) You will learn more about your students than you ever wanted to know.  I'm reading a status post by one of my students right now " drunk az hellz".  She is 15.  I really didn't want to know that about this student, and it gets on my nerves.  You have to roll your eyes and move on.  If you are thinking of responding to a post like this, I would ask you to refer to the previous warning.

If you can't see the video below, the original is at http://www.screencast.com/t/j3WmLMdTA

• Examine census data for trends, correlate census data to historical events
• Graph the exchange rate over time
• Use bighugelabs to create a trading card for different countries.
• Go Geocaching with the USGS
• Predict/graph the weather