WebQuest PPT

This is the Introduction to WebQuests Powerpoint. Download this file if you are in the course and would like the original PowerPoint while you build your WebQuest. Here is the link to the Powerpoint

If you run into problems, your first stop should be Bernie Dodge's webquest.org. Almost any question can be answered there.

The assignment for the WebQuest itself can be found here.

DigitalConnectionsBootCamp

I saw this on Twitter and thought that I might pass it along. Western Nebraska Community College is holding a two day boot camp for $70 in Scottsbluff. It looks like a good overview of Web 2.0 for teachers new to working with these technologies. More information on this here:

https://sites.google.com/site/edtechbootcamp/background

iPad2 screen mirroring.

The first iPad did not allow for the use of a cable to mirror what was on the iPad screen to a monitor, TV, or projector. The iPad2 does support this. That means that any content that you want to show in can be displayed directly from the iPad. All that you need is an iPad to VGA, or iPad to HDMI cable. Both can be had for little cost (30 something) from Apple. Here are links to the products:

Apple VGA Cable
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC552ZM/B
Apple Digital AV Adapter
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC953ZM/A?fnode=MTc0MjU4NjE

Of note, these are only supported fully by the iPad2 and the iPhone 4s.

Some iPad apps for web curation.

In a course that I am taking right now, one of the videos talked about curating web content. The idea is that there is far more information coming in everyday from the web than we can possibly access and make sense of, let alone use. Given that as a baseline, there needs to be some means of controlling the quantity, type, and purpose of what we do have time to read and interact with.

I think we can all relate to this. We visit specific web sites and social networking sites for specific types of information.  Sometimes the sheer quantity of information presented makes it difficult to sort through in order to find what we want specifically. As they say "there's and app for that". Here are some links to applications that might help with this web induces information overload. 


Below are some links to several alternatives that I found this morning. I will be updating from this list and others in the coming days my experience with the best (at least for my purposes).

From the Apps in Education blog
http://appsineducation.blogspot.com/2012/01/10-ipad-apps-for-web-curation.html 

For a little more info on what specifically news aggregators are, have a look at the  Wikipedia definition.

Open Source Digital Signage - Xibo

I have had a chance over the last few weeks to investigate digital signage for the first time. I'm in the process of putting up a digital display in the UW/CC portion of the hallway to display news and student information related.

I did a great deal of research on this topic before deciding on a product. Xibo in the end seemed to meet my requirements, which were open source, not limited or in any way evaluation grade, and easy to learn to operate. Xibo met these criteria for me.

Installation was fairly easy. To be honest, I would have preferred to use the software on an Ubuntu Linux server, but time was fairly limited, and I had difficulty getting all of the dependencies and permissions dealt with. To be fair, a large part of that is how infrequently I work with the command line anymore. So I built the server on Windows Seven. Since this was to be a dedicated machine, I also installed the Xibo client on the same computer.

The major requirements are simply a LAMP or XAMPP server and the software itself. Check the Xibo documentation on the site listed below for more details. There is some minor configuration to do in order to make sure that the software can access directories needed to read and write files. There are also clients (where the content is displayed) for Windows and a Python-based client that purports to have additional functionality.

So far we have not placed the display in the hallway, so this is really simply an introduction. I expect to have the actual display installed in the next few weeks. I will post again once I have the completed design for the screen output and the display is mounted and activated. I should have some more detailed observations then.

Xibo has so far proven to be fairly easy to install, easy to administer, and especially easy to create layouts that allow the designer to designate screen areas to display everything from video to news to RSS, all with little or no previous knowledge. Check it out: http://xibo.org.uk/

Running OpenSUSE from a USB Stick

I'm currently sitting in a hotel room in Casper, WY waiting for a phone call, and thought I might have a look at the new openSUSE 12.1. More on why I am sitting in a hotel room later. 

At first I had decided to burn the openSUSE ISO file to a CD. After my my first attempt resulting in a particularly attractive coaster resulting from a check sum error, I thought I might try something different. I had a 2GB USB drive (compliments of a Musicians Friend freebie) in the bottom of my bag. So why not try something new? How about a USB based boot of the openSUSE 12.1 Live Disc? While I had been aware of this method of booting an OS, for some reason I had never tried it.

The first step, after downloading the ISO file from openSUSE, was to do a quick search on how to proceed. The search on USB Boot openSUSE yielded this link: http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Live_USB_stick. A quick scroll down on the page and I had my answer to installing.

1. First download the SUSE Studio Image Writer (there are Windows and Linux versions, but no sign of a GUI based OSX version, at least on this page) and start it.
2. Insert your USB drive/stick into a port on your computer. (at least for me this was a critical step, the Image Writer does not recognize the stick if it is inserted before starting the program under Windows 7)
3. Use the Image writer to navigate to the ISO file you downloaded.
4. The USB drive should be available through the lower dropdown in the Image Writer. Make sure that you choose the correct usb device if you have multiple connected, as the Image Writer will overwrite anything on the target USB stick.
5. Click Copy to write your ISO to the USB drive/stick. At this point your probably have enough time to go grab a beverage before the task is completed.
6. If all went well, you should see a simple dialog box that says “success” (how is that for minimalist?) once the process is completed.

Booting from your USB drive

This next is intentionally vague. What worked on my HP laptop may be slightly different on your Lenovo, Compaq, Acer, or what have you. The basic idea is that you want to tell your computer that it needs to boot from a USB device. That particular task is almost always (well, always as far as I know, but must put a caveat in there just in case :-)) handled by the boot menu that you have access to when you boot your computer. In my case, I hit F9 at system startup to get into this menu. You may have to look this up for your computer. Whatever the keystroke, you should see a menu that allows you to boot from the Hard Disc, the DVD-ROM, Network, and USB Drive. Of course at this point you choose USB Drive. After you select this, you will see the openSUSE boot screen.

A couple of observations: First of all, WOW!!! Booting from USB is incredibly fast compared with relying on a CD-based boot. I had the openSUSE KDE desktop up and available in less than a minute. The speed gives you better functionality. Opening applications is almost as fast as with a normal hard drive install.

Finally, the speed, at least on this older HP 6510B 2.0GHz with 4gig of RAM, and a USB 2.0 stick was more than acceptable. In fact I'm writing this while running from the stick. I can see this as a real option if you want to run an alternative OS, let's say for instance Skolelinux or Edubuntu, in a school computer lab currently using Windows.

Virtualbox is amazing

I've finally broken free from Mac and Windows for the most part. I'm still using Windows 7 primarily because of Expression Web 4. The mini is now long enough in the tooth that I don't enjoy using it. Far too slow being a core duo 1.66.

I am now using Suse Linux 11.4 on my notebook. I decided that it might be nice to maintain some compatibility with Windows, especially the older games, so I downloaded Virtualbox and installed it on Linux. I then installed Windows 2k in a virtual session. After everything was said and done, it worked very well, and is simple enough for most with a passing understanding of an operating system to install.

I can see a use for this on Windows 7 as well. I have a version of W7 that does not contain backward compatibility with XP. Using Virtualbox, one could install XP without losing the extra functionality of W7, and still have access to software that will not run well (if at all) on W7. Altyernately, it is a means of allowing Mac users who own a copy of Windows to have access to Windows software without having to invest in Parallels other proprietary products. I'm a believer.

http://www.virtualbox.org/