Comments for RyanCollins.org

Comment on The $50 interactive whiteboard by RyanCollins.org » Wiimote interactive whiteboard success

RyanCollins.org » Wiimote interactive whiteboard success — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:00:59 +0000

[...] home this week, I decided to get caught up on some projects. The big one was working on getting an interactive whiteboard setup going with a Nintendo Wiimote and an infrared pen. This morning, I finally got my infrared pen working. What I did was bought a cheap LED flashlight [...]

Comment on Why do students need email? by Peggy

Peggy — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:57:39 +0000

Great post - I couldn’t agree with you more.

Why is there so much “fear” about students using technology? Email is EXACTLY like paper and pencil! They will need technology tools in their future - we need to help them learn how to make the most effective use of them.

Comment on Why do students need email? by Dave

Dave — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:19:45 +0000

I set up email accounts for all my students with Google Apps. Once a week we go to the lab and communicate via email. I send them an email with links to interactive websites, powerpoints, thier grades, and tons of other great things. It is fantastic.

I get emails from students who would normally be too shy to approach a teacher with great questions.

I have not told anyone about this since our technology director has the same negativefeeling about students and email. I don’t know how to tactfully approach him about this. I hope I can just keep flying under the radar. We’ll see…

Comment on SYSK - Test your SMTP mail server with telnet by RyanCollins.org » Why do students need email?

RyanCollins.org » Why do students need email? — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:12:36 +0000

[...] not going to be able to stop it. A student could simply fire up telnet and use your existing mail server to send email to whoever they want, saying anything they [...]

Comment on Where’s the outrage? by Joe Schiska

Joe Schiska — Thu, 08 May 2008 20:24:35 +0000

You make a very valid point here. We’ve all heard the stories about “my nephew is only 8 and is a computer whiz,” which translates to “knows how to surf the Internet” or “can install a printer.” Great for an 8 year old, but hardly on the level of trying to troubleshoot a random roaming profile issue or intermittent packet loss on a wireless connection.

Sam Orth, former executive director of Ohio Schoolnet, once commented that technology can be a difficult field because “…it’s hard to advocate for something you only see when it’s broken.” I’ve joked with my tech staff that it’s easy for people outside technology to think that it’s natural state is “working” and problems are only encountered when we’ve done something to break it. I think people inside technology may be more likely to think of it’s natural state as “broken,” and it only works because we’re tweaking it all the time.

Comment on Maybe, finally, found the perfect blog editor by Mr.Rcollins

Mr.Rcollins — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:20:34 +0000

Version 2.0 was released on Monday, and it’s the version I used with F3b5. Have you looked at that?

Comment on Maybe, finally, found the perfect blog editor by John Rundag

John Rundag — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:12:15 +0000

I like it a lot too! I learned about it by reading John Schinker’s blog. I have been using it off and on for a few months. I had a few glitches. You pointed one out in a Twitter message!

I did have an issue with the latest version and Firefox 3 Beta. It did not publish, so I hit publish again. It still did not publish, so I copied the post into Wordpress and posted it. I check an hour later and all three were on the site! Hopefully it will work fine when the final version comes out. For the time being, I am using Firefox 2 and Scribefire for blog posts.

Comment on Interactive response systems by Mr.Rcollins

Mr.Rcollins — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 23:59:34 +0000

I’m very excited at the prospect of a $199 wifi iPod Touch. At that price it almost make it a no brainer to integrate into the classroom.

Using Google Docs is also a very good idea. I’ve played around a little bit with the survey functionality, I’ll have to see how well it works on my iPod Touch.

Comment on Interactive response systems by Sark

Sark — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:10:47 +0000

I haven’t tried it yet with my iPod Touch but I bet you could get a real simple system set up with the new survey functionality built into google docs. Obviously with some real knowledge and some time you could build something more functional, but for people with limited programming skills that could work on the fly.

If the rumors are true that apple will eventually be releasing a sub $200 wifi enabled ipod this could become fairly widespread.

Comment on Interactive response systems by Peggy

Peggy — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:08:56 +0000

I’ve experimented with iQuiz Maker for the iPod - works on the Nano as well (http://www.iquizmaker.com/). But I like the idea of the iPod Touch so that you could do stuff in real time via a wireless network.