QR Codes

Greg Kulowiec, [http://kulowiectech.blogspot.com/] a technology promoting history/social studies teacher is planning to try using QR Codes in his classes. This effort is the latest in his efforts to make the most of modern technologies to enhance the learning experiences for his students.

QR Codes are a two-dimensional “bar code” that many cell phones (with built-in cameras) will automatically decode. 2-D coding systems like QR Codes were originally built for industrial applications because they have a much greater capacity for information than the standard UPC codes we are used to seeing on boxes in grocery stores.

This QR Code says:

MOSSSIG – Open Source Software in Schools
Contact: algot.runeman@verizon.net
http://mosssig.wordpress.com

(There is actually only one line of text and no line breaks in the code. The line breaks are shown here for ease of reading.)

You can try out QR Coding yourself. I made the above graphic at:
http://nfggames.com/system/qrcodegen.php

You can decode the graphic yourself on line, too. First download the QR Code graphic from this page or another you find after some Web searching, and then submit it for decoding.
http://zxing.org/w/decode.jspx

Are you experimenting with QR Codes?
Do you think they might be useful?
How about labeling for your technology assets?

 

Scratching an Itch

The MassCUE Conference for 2009 is over. Some part of me wishes it were still going on, but then sanity kicks in and I am glad the three days have passed. I look forward to the ghouls, goblins, ghosts and superheros who will visit in costume tonight for Halloween.

I’m dressing as Norm Abram, master woodworker, plaid shirt, toolbelt and all. I won’t be alone. Popular Woodworking has encouraged it. (Thanks for all the years of New Yankee Workshop, Norm!)

Gillette gave us a great venue. The conference was full; 1300+ over two days got to see speakers, keynotes, demos, vendors and the Patriots practicing on the field both days!

Several of you came by the registration table where my volunteer assignment put me (and I enjoyed immensely). It was great to see you and I was glad to be able to speak with several of you.

Share your tales of the sessions here because nobody could get to all of them. I sneaked away from the registration table long enough to attend the session on Scratch given by Mitchel Resnick of MIT.

Programming as a creative activity has been around since BASIC hooked me in on my TRS-80 back in the 1970s, and LOGO was great for kids, too. Scratch is another step in the right direction because it abstracts the tedium of typing correct programming syntax and lets a student concentrate on the creative structure instead. Scratch is very visual and embeds the programming effort in an effective envelope that allows a person to imagine, create, test, share and rework. The on line storage at the Scratch servers makes projects by others into tools for exploration and development. If your posted project inspires another user to experiment on your work, the result automatically shows the development sequence, giving credit to each contributor, your original work and that of your collaborator.

As a result, a community of effort can develop around a project with several people making contributions to create projects that have input from many, even when the contributors are scattered around the globe. Scratch may be to students and schools what open source is to professional programmers. Time will tell, but Scratch may be a path that leads young people into the culture and community of sharing/collaborating and and contributing. It could help to produce the next generation of open source programmers.

Scratch is available for download from http://scratch.mit.edu/ and is available for both Windows PC and Macintosh. A Linux version is in beta and can be downloaded for Debian/Ubuntu systems.

 

MassCUE Conference

MOSSSIG is a special interest group of MassCUE. Next Wednesday and Thursday are going to be fun. This year’s conference [you can download a copy of the session schedule] is at Gillette Stadium where the Patriots football team play their home games. There are conference rooms that are a part of Patriots Place, which is best known for the new retail shops and CBS Scene.

If you have registered to attend, I hope you will look for me at the registration area or CUE Central. I would love to get the chance to talk to you. Unfortunately, if you have not registered, it is too late. The conference is a big success, full for both days. I cannot recommend attempting to show up for a walk in registration, either.

The conference is co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Superintendents (M.A.S.S.) and that, along with the new location may explain the crowd. Superintendents control who gets to go to conferences in Massachusetts. Perhaps co-sponsoring gave the “go ahead” to sending more this year than ever before.

Open Source has some sessions, too.

Wednesday
Google Docs/Netbooks/Moodle
Sugar
Using Moodle to Build PLCs
Free Tech Tools in the Math Classroom (Scratch)
Moodle in the Elementary Classroom
Software that Costs Little and Gives a Lot!
Thursday
Thinking Creatively with Scratch
Outside the Box with Moodle!
Open Source Opportunities
MITs Imagination Toolbox
Moodle, STEM, 21st Century Skills and Local Leadership

Of course there are many other sessions to attend, too. Good luck making your choices.

 

Ownership

When you put down money at the counter of your software retailer or open the package from the vendor who ships software to your district, who owns that software? If you read the license terms, it would appear that the owner is NOT you or even your school district. The terms of the license generally have language which offers you a non-exclusive USE of the software, but not ownership.

A court battle is under way, pitting a man named Timothy Vernor  who sold (by way of eBay) older versions of Autodesk products which he legitimately aquired.

Well, a federal district court in Washington state has ruled that when you buy shrink wrapped software you own it, at least in your ability to then sell it used.

Free software goes the court decision one better, of course. The GPL and similar licenses only limit the ability to lock up the software in any proprietary way. Once free, always free. I think I like that better all the way.

 

Wordle and Word Power

CCAttribution License http://www.wordle.net

This image was created using the Web site
http://www.wordle.net

Thought the software behind this image, and the site itself, are not open source, the results you create are licensed using the Creative Commons Attribution License. You are free to use the image in any way you want.

The images are created on-the-fly and randomly based on text you paste into an on-screen form. Once the image is created, you can choose to modify it in several useful ways, you can get it redrawn with new color choices, fewer words, change case, orientation (vertical, horizontal, mix, anywhichway).

Make sure you capture the image(s) you like because it won’t necessarily be much like the next redraw. You can save the image to the Wordle site, and if you do, anybody else can make use of the image you saved. You can post the link which is automatically generated on site.

The text used to generate this image is the U.S. Declaration of Independence, but you can use any text you want, making it suitable for discussion starters in your classes. Paste in an article and get students to begin analysis of the importance of terms that appear. The bigger the word, the more times it occurs in the text.

Thanks to this site for making me aware of Wordle.net:
http://h30411.www3.hp.com/discussions/viewTopic/p/topicId/51053/Wordle.htm?messageBoardId=700&webPageId=1002100&order=Recently%20Updated&flags=&posterId=&viewSelect=&forum=Lesson+ideas+(6th-8th+grade)

 

Symbolic but still Significant

Software patents are silly. A math statement, also known as an algorythm is an idea, not a physical piece of property. Tomorrow is a protest day. Join in.

Join in!

http://stopsoftwarepatents.org/

 

Art of Community

Jono Bacon is a long time Linux activist from the United Kingdom and currently works for Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu. He is their community manager.

He has written a book about communities in the context of groups that share common goals like support for or development of open source software. The book has been recently published, and is currently on my to-be-read bookshelf (one sadly sagging from the weight of volumes there). However, Mr. Bacon has taken the extra step of getting his publisher to agree to an unusual thing. The book is also available for free.

http://www.jonobacon.org/2009/09/18/the-art-of-community-available-for-free-download/

Even if you are not a part of the writing or support of open source software, you may be reading this blog because you are part of the education community. You may also be part of the group MassCUE, for which this blog represents a special interest group. MassCUE is Massachusetts Computer Using Educators with a strong community.

Since you don’t have to pay for the book, you can certainly afford to read it. Go to it!

 

Advanced Degree – Can it be Free?

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in education, it is a household name, even if you only say the initials MIT. Everybody knows what university you mean.

If your undergrad or advanced degree were from MIT, you and your parents would be proud.

In the past few years, MIT has innovated once again by opening its courses to use on line. If you have the interest, you can “take” an MIT course without paying tuition. You won’t get a grade on a transcript, but you will get knowledge from a world class professor.

Now, a person has decided to document her effort to get education without the tuition. Lisa Chamberlin has an M.Ed, and now she wants to get a PhD but is going to see if it can be done in an unusual way, on line, outside the university walls, without the tuition.

She has just started. I intend to follow her blog as she progresses. I hope you will, too.

http://openphd.wordpress.com/

Additional Open Courseware links that might be interesting, if sometimes controversial:

• http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
• http://www.ocwconsortium.org/
• http://www.jimmyr.com/blog/1_Top_10_Universities_With_Free_Courses_Online.php
• http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north748.html
• http://blog.okfn.org/
• http://scienceblogs.com/commonknowledge/2009/08/open_data_its_about_interopera.php
• http://open.ems.psu.edu/

 

Abandonware and Orphaned Software

In the years since 1974, when I started to get seriously involved with computers, there have been many programs that have met my needs. Many, if not most, have disappeared. That’s not a big surprise; the computers for which they were written are long gone, too. However, most of the programs have been replaced by newer and mostly better versions. My computing needs have been met nicely. I don’t use Applewriter any more, but OpenOffice.org does what is needed…quite well, thanks.

However, there have been really nice programs that have just dropped off the grid. Either the company that owned the copyright went out of business or the company was bought out and the new owner didn’t support it. The software was buried, abandoned, orphaned.

Maybe the software didn’t sell millions of copies. Maybe it was niche software that teachers used for a lesson or so, but didn’t get used all year long, making it hard to justify for lab set or site license purchases. Some of these programs also didn’t fit the standard curriculum sequences. They were definitely not drill-and-kill software, though.

I miss some of these programs, for sure. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Rocky’s Boots – a logic puzzle “game” my students really liked. The program allowed a student to explore some practice rooms and eventually construct logic “circuits” that caused a boot to kick a target object. Higher order thinking skills and some basic understanding of logic and even the fundamentals of computer logic circuits were the result. Good stuff.
• The Factory – another high order thinking skills program challenged students to develop “products” through a sequence of punch and stripe “machines” in an assembly line.
• Bannermania – In a time of dot matrix printers, getting good-looking signs wasn’t easy. Bannermania made wonderful banners, signs, posters in color (if you had it), and even worked very well on laser printers to make signs on overlapping pages that aligned easily.
• HyperCard – the original card stack with hyperlinks programming environment. Apple Computer included it as part of the base software of early Macintosh computers. Students could easily create the buttons, connections to other cards and do their own graphics. We did a haunted house project that was loosely based on the “adventure” game idea. My students loved it. HyperStudio took over the educational market primarily because it added color and sound when Apple gave up on HyperCard development. Macintosh and Windows users can apparently get a freeware tool called HyperNext. (I’m going to check it out and will report on my experience…Have any of you used it?)

Do you have similar good memories of software we no longer have available?

What are the programs you used that you most miss today?

Wouldn’t it be great to have a modern version available?

Is this one of those opportunities that an open source software developer can take to fill a void?

One example of such an “adoption” is the creation of Pingus, an effective work-alike for the very popular Lemmings game.

What missing software tools would you like to see some developer create for education?

 

Web-Based Educational Tools

This post is really just a link to the good work done by someone else, but if  the link is new to you, then you deserve to know about it, right?

http://mashable.com/2009/09/07/web-apps-teachers/