Mar
31
Some things never change
Filed Under General | Leave a Comment
This little YouTube video suggests that while the world around us changes, very little changes in the schools. I don’t know if the criticism is quite fair. I don’t teach French, or History (or Computers) the way I was taught, but I guess that can’t be said for anyone. Whatever the case, the video is clearly deeply cynical and fairly amusing.
Mar
28
How much are you worth?
Filed Under Musings | Leave a Comment
Internet websites seem to be fabulously expensive with Facebook recently valued at well over a billion dollars, and Microsoft bidding tens of billions for Yahoo. So have you ever wondered just how much your site is worth? Well, this website suggests my blog is worth $564.54. A Not So Different Place which I think is a pretty good blog, by contrast, isn’t worth anything. It doesn’t seem fair, does it?
Apparently the price is based on my rating at Technorati where we find that there are two blogs that link to mine, and 34 that link to A Not So Different Place. It still doesn’t make sense.
The only clear difference between our blogs is that I have my own domain (befuddled.info) while A No So Different Place has a subdomain of Blogger (anotsodifferentplace.blogspot.com). This, apparently, makes my blog marketable, and A NotSo Different Place unsellable.
Of course, my blog is written by one person. Without me, there is no blog. So can you really sell Befuddled for $564.54? No, because without me, whatever worth my blog may have disappears. My blog is my ideas, my quirky reactions, and, in a nutshell, what I think.
Internet website pricing just doesn’t make sense.
Mar
26
An embarassment of riches
Filed Under History, Social Studies | Leave a Comment
Do you ever have your students find out that somewhere in the past someone made ten dollars and then the kids wondered what that would be worth today? Well, a long time ago I discovered a Canadian site that would help figure out how much something in the past would cost today after inflation was figured in. I’ve recently discovered two sites that will do that for American history
The Inflation Calculator will allow you to figure out the effect of inflation with amounts as far back as 1800 while the Cost of Living Calculator only goes as far back as 1913. The two sites come up with slightly different results for the same year and the same amount of money. I’m not completely sure why since they both seem to be basing their data on the same information from the U.S. Department of Labor, but maybe I’m missing something there.
Even with the slight variation, it’s nice to have both sites available in case one goes down. It also lends a voice of authority to papers your students may right if they can cite two sources for their currency conversions.
Of course, none of this can really show that today we have a standard of living that no one would have dreamed of 50 or 100 years ago. Straight currency updating doesn’t quite factor that in, and I can’t conceive of a website that could take that into account.
Mar
24
Let me just say that I have the greatest respect for the Dutch. I have been steeped in Dutch Canadian culture since I was young enough to crunch a King peppermint so I know about the Dutch reputation for being thrifty. Some would uncharitably say that a Dutch Canadian could grasp a penny so firmly as to leave it gasping for air. The truth is only that we folks of Dutch extraction have been brought up to appreciate the value of a dime, let alone a dollar. In contrast with that, I’m a computer teacher. Everything in the world of computers is fabulously expensive. You need newer and newer computers, faster and faster software, and all sorts of cool devices to plug into your computer if you’re going to make it all work well. This all costs money, and, well… my inner Dutchman rebels at the idea.
So what do I do? How do I get my students doing fabulously cool things with less and less money? How do I resolve that ongoing war between my thrifty Dutch character and my computer geek nature?
It can be done… if you’re careful.
Make old things last longer
Most schools that are older than five years have several (and often dozens of) old computers stored in a backroom somewhere. They’re there because they’re too slow for the computer lab and nobody wants that old junk in their classroom. What if you could do something useful with those old machines? It’s possible.
Now here’s a crazy idea. Disconnect the hard drives in those computers, Take out those noisy cooling fans. Download some software from www.publicwebstations.com and burn it to a CD. That CD will replace your computer’s operating system; everything your computer needs to know will be on that CD. Now pop that CD into your computer’s CD drive, connect your computer to your school’s Internet connection and suddenly your old, useless computer is a sparkling new Internet station. Since your computer doesn’t have a hard drive, there’s no place for viruses to be saved. Since it has no fan there’s nothing to make noise. Sure, this new Internet computer may not be fast enough for your computer lab, but you could put a few of these in a classroom and run a mini-lab. These are remarkably stable and quiet. Some computers set up this way have been known to run continuously for two years without any crashes.
But, wait, I can hear your objection: “I need to do more in my class than just surf the Internet.” I know. Read on.
The Internet has unexpected value to replace your software
If you need to create a document, build a spreadsheet, make a PowerPoint style presentation, or even work with a database and all you have is an Internet connection, have I got good news for you. You need to visit docs.google.com, and www.zoho.com. These two sites have decent online word processors, spreadsheets, and capable imitations of PowerPoint. Zoho’s database functions are really remarkable. These sites may not be good for a full-length essay with footnotes, but they’re great for shorter and less formal work. Because they’re online, work done on these sites is accessible at school and at home which means students won’t be able to use the excuse that they forgot to bring their homework. It’s even possible to share a document so two students can work on a project together.
If you need photo editing, try Picnik.com. It does all the basics of cropping, resizing, and rebalancing your color photos for free. If you need to practice typing skills, you could experiment with www.Keybr.com. The list could easily go on. Odds are good that whatever you want is out there somewhere.
Use free software
Free or open source software can often be incredibly good. Some good-hearted souls have designed some remarkable products and then simply given them away. These pieces of software are easily commercial quality, but they’re yours for free provided… Well, actually there’s no strings attached. Just give credit if you change the product, and don’t try to make money off a product someone else is giving away. I’m currently typing this article using Open Office, a free office suite given away by Sun Microsystems. I’m using the word processor, but I could also be using a spreadsheet, database, or even a PowerPoint style application. All of it is free.
If that’s not enough, edit your pictures using the always free Gimp which some claim is every bit as good as the very expensive Photoshop. Record and edit audio presentations with Audactiy. It’s not quite as nice a sound editor as Garageband which comes packaged with Macintosh computers, but it’s free and it’s really very good.
Don’t pay for the fancy add-ons
If you’re creating documents like reports, or audio or video presentations, you need to throw in pictures or sound effects. If you buy these, they’re extremely expensive. However, there are great places to find all kinds of pictures you can use for free such as those at Wikimedia Commons or Morguefile.com. If you need sound effects for something, there can be no finer place to look than soundsnap.com. This site has thousands of sound effects and music clips that are all free to use for whatever purpose you want. None of this will cost you a penny.
Maintain control
If you have your students working online, at some point they’re going to need e-mail. A lot of parents are very nervous about their children having e-mail at school. They’re scared their kids will do something stupid, or come in touch with someone they shouldn’t. If your students are using e-mail, as their teacher, you need to be in control of it. To be in control, you need to be in charge of your students’ e-mail accounts.
If your school can’t afford to give the students official school mail, there is another way. Visit Google Apps. Google, everyone’s favorite search engine, will set you up with their e-mail, G-Mail, plus their online word processor, and spreadsheet. Using Google Apps, you get to assign the students their accounts, login names, and passwords. Since you’ve given out the accounts, if anything goes wrong, you can also shut them down. You can keep your students safe and out of trouble.
As a really neat bonus of Google Apps, the students are all automatically part of each others’ contact list making collaboration very easy. If you need to suspend someone’s e-mail for any reason, as the administrator, you can. What does all this cost? Well, Google charges you nothing, but they do require you to have a domain name to use for this and that can be had for as low as seven dollars per year from a registrar like 1and1.com or www.domainsatcost.ca.
Buy what you need, not what they say you need
With two of my classes we tried recording sound clips to a particular website. Before we could do that, we needed microphones. If you believe a lot of the salesmen we needed $20 or $30 mikes in order to get decent recordings. The thing is, we didn’t want “decent” recordings, only ones that were good enough to be clearly understood over the Internet. We weren’t recording a CD, we were adding comments on a website. Cheaper equipment was a much better choice. Some of that equipment even came from dollar stores. That leads to the next suggestion.
Shop around. Shop online.
Once you know approximately what you want to buy, watch the websites of the big stores. In Canada, places like FutureShop, BestBuy, and The Source all have their store stock listed online, You can tell the current price and even if a particular location has what you want in stock. You want to watch the websites of the major electronics retailers because you need to find out what a fair price is, and also because the price of electronics varies wildly from week to week. I have seen a flash drive cost $70 one week, $25 the next, and $60 the week after. There’s no rhyme or reason to the prices, so take your time and shop around.
Get help
Believe it or not, you’re not alone. There may not be anybody else in your school who wants to do more with your computers, but there are thousands of teachers around the world who want to do just that. Go online and find them. The social network site Ning.com has a discussion area called Classroom 2.0. Currently over 4,000 teachers and other people connected with education are members of this group. If you have a question about how to get students in your class using computers, someone in that group has the answer and is willing to share it.
Using computers in your class can be done well, and can be done fairly inexpensively. You need to be creative. You might need some help with the technical geek end of things, but if you’re not afraid to ask, and eager to learn, there’s always someone willing to help out. Do it well and do it for less. Why not make your inner Dutchman happy, too?
This was originally published in Reformed Perspective.
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