Mobile Desktop for Teachers

Linux logo at techiwarehouse.com

Seagate portable hard drive at seagate.com

For all of you out there who are stuck with a desktop at school and want to be able to access your information and files at home, here is a good solution. Many people use software in order to access their desktop at work or at school. There are many programs out their that can do this, like TeamViewer, but what about those teachers who want something a little more concrete. Sometimes the software to view your desktop at work is just to slow, or maybe you do not even have an internet connection. So what can you do? How about if you could take your whole desktop home with you! You can do this with the help of a mobile external hard drive. In my particular case, I have used the Seagate FreeAgent. This a wonderfully small and mobile external hard drive that can easily hold over 300 GB of memory. If you have one of these wonderful machines, you can simply put your entire operating system on them! This works perfectly with Linux Ubuntu, a free operating system with thousands of free programs and software that fits your needs. The database for the free programs has hundreds of educational tools. So what happens when you install Ubuntu on to your external hard drive? Well, this means that you can run your desktop or laptop straight from the mobile external drive! Some of you may be asking what you do about files you need to save or programs you need to download and run? Simply stated, the hard drive with the operating system on it will save files onto it just like it would a normal computer. All of your files, programs, and everything else will be able to go with you. So basically, after you install the system on to your hard drive, you can run it on any PC desktop! When you are at school plug it into your computer and use it throughout the day as your main work computer. When you go home, simply unplug the hard drive and take it with you. You can open it up on a computer at home and it will appear exactly how it did at school! Below I have attached useful links for those wishing to pursue this further!

Go here to find a Seagate external hard drive
Go here to get the Ubunu operating system. It is FREE!
Go here to find directions for installing Ubuntu on to your external hard drive

Userful MultiSeat

Logo from www.userful.com

Sometimes teachers are hard pressed for money and funding in their classroom. This can be difficult when a teacher wants to educate students in technology or press them to do inquiry based learning and work on the computer. Many schools try to get by this funding problem by purchasing cheap and out of date computers. But there is another way! This is through Userful MultiSeat by Linux. This program allows the teacher to turn one computer into several independent computer stations. This allows students to get computer access without using a separate system. Essentially the only extra items you need are the monitors, keyboard, and mouse. With the Userful MultiSeat students are given access to their own interface and can use different programs independently from one another without even using an extra computer. So with this program, you can get a full working order computer lab with just a fraction of the cost. The best thing is that most of the programs are free. This is because Userful MultiSeat is a Linux based system!  Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfu5GSS664Q for more information. Here is the link to the website: http://www.userful.com/products/userful-multiseat-linux.  Go Linux!

An idea

Rome: Total War from gamespot.com

Who ever said that video games could not be used in the classroom. You do not see many teachers utilizing video games in classrooms these days, but I think that it would be a great resource. There are several games out there that accurately depict information and events that students could benefit from. This is particularly true in the social studies and history areas. Xbox 360 has several educational games that students could benefit from. A great example of this would be a game that the History Channel produced called Civil War. This game has accurate weaponry, accurate scenes, information from real historical battles, and it even shows how many of the battles took place. There are also several other games that the students could benefit from on the Xbox 360, including flight simulators. There are several other games on different devices as well, like computers. There is a particular game for the PC called Rome: Total War. This game can be found at http://www.totalwar.com/rome This game puts a large emphasis on Roman battle formations and tactics during war. The students could benefit greatly from this game as the experiment with real Roman battle formations and weaponry. They can place soldiers, armies, and weapons and experiment with their formations against rival armies. I can not think of a better way to learn about Roman battle formations than through this game. These are only a couple examples of video games that students could benefit from in the classroom and I think that it should be pursued further.

Using technology to create fun powerpoints

One of the most well known and basic presentation formats in schools today is PowerPoint. This can be a great learning tool and presentation mechanism, but how can you make it more fun for the students? There are of course several ways to spice up a PowerPoint a bit more. PowerPoints can be aided by several different tools and resources in order to further student learning. First the educator needs to understand that it never hurts to add more photos and videos into the presentation to visually aid in the students understanding of a topic. This does not have to happen by simply adding a hyperlink to a YouTube video. The teacher can actually embed videos and media straight into the PowerPoint. A great way to do this is to download RealPlayer from www.real.com. At this site you can download the RealPlayer for free. This program allows you to download YouTube videos or other media from the internet for free (as long as you have permission). Once you have the video downloaded you can convert it to the format you want with the RealPlayer converter that comes with the download. From there you can simply embed the video into your PowerPoint. I have embedded a video at the top of this blog that I have used on a PowerPoint presentation before. This particular video was from a presentation I made on Cuba. Another great resource that you can embed into your presentation in order to aid in student learning is an online polling program. This program allows students to answer questions posted in the presentation. The students answer these questions by texting in their answer to the presentation. The students' answers will then appear in the presentation. You find this program at www.polleverywhere.com. There are also many more presentation tools to add to PowerPoint out there on the internet. These are just a couple of them. Have fun exploring!

How polleverywhere works at polleverywhere.com

1:1 Laptop Schools

BCLUW logo at zazzle.com

My former school district, BCLUW, was fortunate enough to become one of the few 1:1 laptop schools in Iowa. I was unfortunate enough to miss this program by about two years. I have however heard great things about it and can only wish that I could have participated in this while I was a student at BCLUW. Being able to do research, take notes, save documents, and even do homework on a laptop, while sitting in a high school classroom, is awesome. This frees the teachers up to be able to explore different and more useful teaching techniques and it also allows them to support inquiry based learning from right in their own classroom as they can promote student exploration of information through the computers. It is also very nice that the students can now reach important article and text databases from the comfort of their classroom desk without moving an inch from the classroom. This could be extremely useful when trying to read up more on a topic discussed in class or for further learning. Visit the BCLUW website to learn more about the school at http://www.bcluw-ia.schoolloop.com/.

Higher thinking technology

Gimp logo at www.gimp.org

There are a lot of technologies and programs out there on the internet. Many of them are excellent sites for student learning and thinking. There are a couple of programs and websites out there that are of particular interest to me as a future educator. Both of these programs require higher order thinking skills and would take their place near the top of most educators thinking pyramid. They are Glogster.com and Gimp. Glogster.com is a website that allows students to create an online poster with images, text, audio, and video that best expresses their view on a topic. Gimp is a creation tool that you can download from the internet. This is a free photo editing tool that rivals programs like Photoshop. This allows students to create and edit photos or media in a way that expresses their learning. In order to edit and change these photos students need to use higher order thinking skills in order to alter, change, or create images. Here are the links to these websites: www.glogster.com and www.gimp.org. Enjoy!  To the right is an example of a glog that I created about the Battle of Actium in Ancient Rome!