I have been experimenting with a variety of open source applications during the last few years. The ESU is currently running Moodle (Learning Management), Elgg (Community Building & Blogging), WordPress MU (Blogging), phpESP (Survey), and Gallery (Photo Storage). The whole open source community is very intriguing to me. The creators of this software are willing to share what they have developed. There are open source options for nearly any application you may currently be running on your MAC or Windows machine.

The open source environment has now moved into the course development arena. One of the first items I became aware of is the Free-reading.net site. Free-Reading is an “open source” instructional program that helps teachers teach early reading.

The long term success of the open source environment requires the contribution of a large community of people. The technology is in place to allow anyone that has an interest to become an active contributor.

The fear of students’ use of social networking sites, such as MySpace, is eliminating what could be a valuable learning opportunity. Student use of the internet in general, and specifically social networking, continues to grow. I recently became aware of a couple of wonderful resources to help adults understand digital kids. Wesley Fryer has created a wiki devoted to internet safety and social networking for parents. A recent PBS broadcast, “Growing up Online”, is also available to view online. If schools are going to be to be given the opportunity to use these valuable learning tools, teachers, parents and school policy makers must understand appropriate uses of this technology.

The new International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) technology standards for students give educators a great model for using technology for teacher and student learning. What I found most interesting about what they had designed, is that the call for technology operations and concepts is the final standard. I’m guessing that this was done intentionally, but from a technology trainer’s perspective, this was a brilliant move. I did a short presentation for one of our member districts last week, and asked “what do you think is more important to a student’s future success, content knowledge or the skills listed in the ISTE technology standards for students?” To a person, they said the ISTE standards. This should give us some direction. How do we modify our current courses to equip students with the skills identified in the ISTE standards and still meet the current accountability requirements that are in place?

I did not post any new entries during the Christmas break, but I did spend significant time reading, listening, and watching posts from some of my favorite edu-bloggers. One thing that was common to nearly all sites, was an optimism that web 2.0 tools can have a positive impact on teaching and learning. Another similarity was a lack of specific curriculum references, but numerous references to 21st century learning skills and information-communication-technology literacies. These topics, plus the “Right Brain” and “Flat World” issues that impact education will be my focus as the new year begins. My hope is to build active learning environments for students and teachers in the ESU 13 region.

The video below was created using an open source video capture application called Camstudio. There are a few issues that will have to be addressed if we plan to expand the use of this technology beyond a select few. The default file type of AVI generates a huge (20MB per minute) file. I have not had time to explore other video settings that may help this situation. One recommendation I saw was to use the divX codec to compress the file. I have not been able to make this work at this time. The other issue is playing the AVI file on this Wordpress mu site using anarchy media plugin. You can start the video, but have to double click on it to go full screen. If you do not go to full screen, you will only see a small section of the video.
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Second Life is an online 3D virtual world created by Linden Labs, and was originally launched in 2003. Second Life provides an online world for users to play and interact in, allowing residents to create their own virtual spaces. Recently there have been numerous examples of the educational opportunities that can be realized within this environment.  Sean FitzGerald and Jo Kay have created a  Second Life in Education Wiki that has a wide variety of resources for any educator interested in exploring Second Life.

Online learning has recenty seen dramatic growth at the middle/high school grade levels. Michigan became the first state to require high school students to take at least one online course for graduation. ESU #13 is planning to incorperate online and hybrid courses into the current two-way interactive schedule. Over the last two years the ESU #13 Moodle site has become fairly active. It is currently being used to supplement face-to-face course, but planning for actual online courses is scheduled to begin this week. An email was sent to member schools seeking teachers that might be interested in beginning to use online courseware. With the rapid growth of online course delivery at the post-secondary level, students should be given the opportunity to participate in this type of learning environment as part of completing their secondary course studies.