I have long been a HUGE fan of OneNote.  It may be one of the most under utilized tools for educators and students!  Take the chance to see what it is all about with this free webinar next Tuesday 1/20 from 4-5:30pm Eastern Time.

OneNote and Education : Get a Free Copy of OneNote 2007 – Tuesday, 1/20/09 Webinar – “Get connected and collaborate in your Classroom with OneNote”.

If you are an educator and attend the live session you will get a FREE copy of One Note!  That is awesome!  Here is the schedule of what they will be covering!

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Get tips on how OneNote can help you organize class materials and class work, create collaborative work environments, and share workspaces. In this webinar we will cover:

– Getting Started with OneNote

– How to get organized with OneNote

– Organizing class materials & class work

– Creating collaborative work environments

“Covered software includes Visual Studio Professional Edition, XNA Game
Studio, Expression Studio, SQL Server and Windows Server.”

From the article:

The Microsoft patent details a “unique monitoring system” that includes wireless sensors that read “heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement facial movements, facial expressions and blood pressure.” Further, the system would “automatically detect frustration or stress in the user” and “offer and provide assistance accordingly”. If the system picked up an increase in heart rate or facial expressions suggestive of stress or frustration, it would tell management that the employee needed help.

We had a group do some stuff with biometrics in our HCI class this past semester, but this is way out there… what do you think?  Scary or Useful?

Could be useful in education.  Having a system like this would allow a teacher to monitor a class and pinpoint those who need help.

There are a lot of nice features in the new version of Office.  I had a chance to try out the new reference tool as well.  Although I still prefer Zotero, it is still pretty nice and many people will love it.

What about you?  What do you like/dislike about Office 2007?  Anyone had a chance to try out Mac’s Office 2008 yet?

Roles:

• Collaborative Solutions
• Portal Solutions
• Content Management Solutions
• Search
• Forms Solutions
• Business Intelligence Solutions

This class was more of a workshop so I didn’t have much time to type out stuff as we went through it. Suffice it to say that there are a LOT of options, including easy creation of Blogs and Wiki’s. This product makes it really easy to create and customize all sorts of information with click and drag, or simple select.

Microsoft is going a long way toward creating easy configurable products with many, many customizations for users. I only wish more Educators could afford products like this…

If you check out Mac’s ‘Introducing the iPhone‘ webage you will see that it is a typical smart phone with e-mail, calendar, SMS, photo, music, and internet support. That in itself isn’t too exciting. Most smart phones come with that now a days. What people are really raging about is the interface, but I mostly just chalk that up to eye-candy. What can the iPhone REALLY do for educators? Here are three features that I believe will impact education.

1. Multi-Touch Display

By far the most promising technology is the multi-touch display. In this case, it is the technology that will make the difference, especially in the long run. Multi-touch displays are not a new technology. (Apple’s explanation of how it works.) I heard somewhere that people have been working on this since the 80’s and recently Microsoft announced their similar “Surface” computer. What is unique here is the mass production of a multi-touch device. The iPhone will be the first multi-touch device in the hands of millions of people.

When I first came across this technology it was in a TED presentation by Jeff Han. At the very beginning of his presentation he said he was excited. He went on to explain why:

I really, really think this is going to change the way we interact with machines from now on.

He was absolutely right. This new interface will allow people to interact with the computer in a much easier and more human-like manner. This is going to be the jumping off point for a whole new generation of computing. As more and more data becomes available on computers this will be the first technology that will help us to better manage that information.

From a mobile perspective, it has always been a hassle to use a mobile device. Perhaps the multi-touch display will be the missing link for actually using a mobile device in the classroom.

If you have not seen the “This is How” commercial for the iPhone, take a look, it will give you an idea as to the interface.

2. Widgets

Most computer users are already familiar with the wonderful world of widgets. Widgets are most easily categorized as mini-applications. They can be anything and everything from simply displaying the weather and RSS feeds, to fully functional translation devices. There are literally thousands, if not tens of thousands of widgets out there. In the Information and Reference categories for Macs alone there are over 300 widgets… not a bad start.

Educators, and others, will begin to use the widgets and build others that can easily be added to the iPhone thus capitalizing on the mobility factor.

3. iPhone Applications and a Fully Functional/Easily Browsable Internet

Several weeks ago Steve Jobs alluded to the iPhone being open to third party applications. Today Webware mentions that that is going to be possible with the fully-functional browser.

Athough I normally have quite a bit of vision, I admit I only know at this point that this is going to be important and that this is going to open the flood gates of creativity. Imagine harnessing the power of a multi-touch display in a test. Allowing students to more naturally interact and manipulate the test and then send it back to you over the air, anywhere.

A fully-functional browser, and most importantly, easily-browsable internet will finally allow rich multimedia, and navigation that has been impossible before. Up till now, browsing the internet on a mobile device was terrible. And if the page wasn’t formatted in mobile format, forget it. Now students and teachers can really interact with the internet, and best of all manipulate it.

Yeah, but…
As it stands right now, there is no high speed internet over the cell signal (G3), but there is built in WiFi. All I have to say to that is… don’t worry, this isn’t the final product. We all know things are going to be added on and prices are going to drop.

That brings me to my second point, and perhaps most relevant to education. Price. Right now it costs $499 for a 4GB model and $599 for an 8GB model. That is awfully pricey for an educational tool, and it certainly going to be a long time before most of us educators get our hands on one, let alone enough students to design lesson plans around having one. But I would like to point out that the new Microsoft “Surface” devices are going to cost around $10,000. Even if you could only afford one per school or organization, you would have a multi-touch display that could be shared among a lot of people.

Other Thoughts:

So what am I missing Apple enthusiasts? How could you use the iPhone in education? Maybe we could start a contest to see who could come up with the most creative way to use iPhones and see if Apple won’t supply a bunch for a class. Do you think it is going to live up to the hype?

Features:

1. Users – A complete list of users is shown on the right hand side
2. Note – Double click on a user and send them a note.  (Note: does not function like a chat screen… only one way.)
3. Share your entire desktop or just one program with the whole meeting – each participant can share their desktop too, but only one at a time. You can also give control of your desktop to any participant! 
4. Attach “Handouts” – The rest of the meeting can open a copy and edit a local copy (will not affect the original). 
5. Ability to connect directly with a projector with an IP address (not shown above).

Set-up:

Setting up a meeting or joining one was super easy!! 

• Start up Window’s Meeting Space
• Click Start New Meeting (or join a meeting already in progress – shown on sign in screen)
• Give your meeting a name and a password and hit the little arrow button.

After you have started the meeting you can invite others via e-mail.  The invitation will include a small attachment that the participants
only need to double click to join.  You can also invite people directly if they are in the local network.  They just accept the invitation and join in.  Nice!

Pro’s:

• Easy and fast to set up a meeting and connect with other’s around you.
• Works both in an online environment or just connecting computers together where there is no network connection.
• Great way to share files with a class in real time.
• You can’t beat the collaboration ability!  The response in instantaneous!  No lag.
• FREE!  Need I say more!

Con’s:

• Only supports up to 10 people at a time. 
• No voice support, so another option (Skype… Skypecast?) would have to be employed for those not in the same room.
• No integrated Chat options… although the note is a beginning.
• When sharing program the content on everyone else’s computer goes blank when you navigate away from the shared program.

Educational Uses:

• The best and most obvious use would be in a classroom.  If you had a small class and you wanted to share a presentation, but didn’t have a projector you could just all meet there and present.  Not only could you present, you could share documents and the whole class could share content they found with each other!  Great for a lab class!
• Document Collaboration.  Have you ever tried to huddle around one monitor as several people tried to edit a document.  Just log into the meeting room and edit the document together.  (Con, only one person can have control of the mouse, but all could see it).
• Small Group Projects.  Have students inside of a class set up their own meetings and collaborate on a project.
• Remote Assistance.  Although this is probably not what it is meant for, you could set up a meeting and send a student an invitation.  They could then share their desktop and give you the control if they need help configuring something on their computer. 
• Remote Class.  Although it would be hard without the audio integration, you could certainly set up a remote classroom and conference call (using Skype or another program).

I’m sure this is just the beginning.  What other ideas do you have?  How will you/have you used Microsoft Meeting Space?

My Introduction to Memex

I first heard about this intriguing device about six months ago in a lecture given by John Oberlin (Associate Chancellor of Information Technology at UNC) specifically for our staff.  Today my ‘real’ memory was jogged by an article published on our University’s research site. Here is a picture of the device as it stands right now.

Potential and Pitfalls

When I first heard about this amazing device I was intrigued, but also a little scared.  To be able to go back and search through EVERYTHING that has happened in life could really be a useful tool.  I did however, ask about the ramifications of having EVERYTHING you said to everyone else recorded.  I know there are some things in my life I would rather not have remembered.

We are already often challenged with managing our “online identities.” Many people can not get jobs because of some of the silly things we did back in college that show up in search results or on social networking sites.  A variety of websites have popped up like claimID that provide tools for managing the positive things about us, and hopefully moving the negative things further down on the Google search results. 

Conclusion

I must say I am still intrigued about the whole “memex” idea… but a little wary.  What do you think?  There are obvious amazing uses for education.  For one, teachers won’t have to be trained to record themselves and post it online.  Each student could do that for themselves.  What other possibilities do you forsee?

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Technorati Tags: memex

On the other hand, I have been using Vista and the Office Suite for several months as my primary machine and have not had any significant problems. I left the meeting trying to reconcile my experience with what I had just witnessed. I decided I was going to look for what was different/good about the upgrade.

All I.T. people tell you Vista is more secure, and it does have a multitude of security features that make it more safe, but an every day educator cares more about it working and functioning that how safe it is. I decided to look at specifically at how the upgrade to Vista helps us out as educators? What specific traits does it have that would be make it advantageous for us to upgrade to Vista? What added functionality will help me educate better? Here is my list:

1. Organization
   There is no question that the biggest reason to upgrade has to be the added search capabilities. Since installing Vista on my machine I no longer use the cumbersome start menu to get to programs. I just click start and type in the program I want.
   Microsoft (taking a lesson from Google Desktop) has now created an indexed catalog of your computer so you have instant search results that include inside of documents. Great for finding that paper you wrote 5 years ago.
2. Instant Information
   Vista has a built in Gadget and Sidebar Engine that let’s you add little modules to your desktop with real-time updating information about ANYTHING. Time, Stocks, Calendar’s, anything! Yahoo and Google both have these already, but they take up a lot of resources and slow down your machine.In an awesome move Vista has added native RSS feed capabilities to Outlook and their integrated Gadget’s. As I discussed in an earlier post, this added feature is a must have for any educator who needs to keep up on current events and happenings!
3. Collaboration
   Collaboration is a must have as a good educator. As educators we often need to share files with students or colleagues as we work on programs. If we are not comfortable using an online program like Google Docs then Vista gives us the added capability of sharing a folder in public space.Vista has a new ‘Meeting Space‘ feature that allows users to create a space for up to 10 users to meet and collaborate in real time. I have not been able to test it out yet, but a software like this would be great for meeting with your class or between students working on a project.
4. Backup
   There are added protections to help you not lose data. You can read about them all here in detail, but my favorite is the windows backup and previous versions of documents that are available should you accidentally change something you didn’t mean to.
5. Multimedia
   Vista has added functionality to the photo manager, media player, movie maker and media center. As video becomes more and more prevalent in education, users will need ways to edit those easily.

This is just a short list of some of the improvements Microsoft has made to their windows platform. You can read a whole lot more on their Vista website if you have interest.

Disclaimer:
I realize that most of these additions are already available on through second hand software or on the Mac. (There has even been discussion about Microsoft just copying Mac’s.) That being said, there is something to be said about integrated technology. 90% of our campus used Windows, so it is going to happen.

Homework:
What other added functionality do you see as benefiting the academic community?

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Technorati Tags: microsoft vista, office 2007, microsoft education