PowerPoint

Important people

In response to this article:

http://alvintrusty.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/who-is-important-here/

Person 1

Person 2

Person 3

Flickr and Delicious Accounts

http://flickr.com/photos/proftrusty

http://delicious.com/atrusty

Flickr Picture

Who Is Important Here?

If you could choose three people as the most prominent people in educational technology, who would you select? This is the question I posed to one of my classes. I gave no ground rules. We have no text book with a chapter that discussions this. It’s wide open.

Pick three and give the reasons for selecting each.

If you think about this question in a different context, it could be easy to answer. Name the three most important people in the history of American government. In technology, it would be easier to list the three most important people in the world of personal computers or in the development of the Internet.

Educational technology is more obscure. The entry in Wikipedia wasn’t created until 2005, four years after most topics were entered. There is no standard introductory text that is used in edtech. In fact, most of the people I know in this field are self-taught.

It will be interesting to see the names that make the list.

Delicious/Flickr

http://delicious.com/atrusty

http://www.flickr.com/photos/proftrusty

Goodbye Eudora, Hello Gmail

In 1995 I started using Eudora as my main email program. Before that I used PINE on a terminal client. All of my email from 1989 to 1995 fit on one floppy, so a text based terminal program was fine.

Today I get more than a “floppy full” of email every day and Eudora has served me well until last Thursday. That morning I tweaked one of my filters and Eudora didn’t like it. While I was away from the computer, Eudora collected one message 528,000 times. It corrupted my IN.MBX file in Eudora.

I have a backup. I didn’t really lose anything, but the hassle was the last straw. The real problem is the program. Qualcomm stopped updating Eudora in 2006. That same year, the base code was turned over to the Mozilla foundation. The program was “Thunderbird-ized” and renamed Penelope. I switched to Penelope on my laptop. The basic operation of Penelope was drastically different than Eudora. If I was going to do something different, it had to be worth the pain of switching. Penelope wasn’t.

I have six email accounts that I have to check regularly. Eudora did all of them. Every night I backed up my EMAIL folder and that was all there was to it. I can switch to a new computer and take 13 years of email with me just by copying that folder. That’s right… I have 13 years of email. Many times that has been handy.

After looking at several options I decided to give Gmail a try. I have had an account for years, but only use it for my calendar. Now it POPs all my mail from those other accounts and gives me one web-based interface from any computer with a browser. The learning curve was about one day. On Monday I sifted through about 2000 messages. I learned the short-cut keys and added Greasemonkey’s Gmail Macros.

So far, so good. I have about three months of email that made it to Gmail. Those messages consumed just two percent of the space Gmail allotted me. I should be good for eight to ten years given the 6GB limit. I’ll keep you posted on how it works out. Just in case, I have one machine still running Eudora as a backup.

3D Disney on Google Earth

SketchUp has incredible educational potential. Using free tools available from Google, Disney has added a 3D layer over the entire Disney World property. Every building, sidewalk and tree has been drawn in detail. Above is a picture of the haunted house. This is a must-see attraction at the Magic Kingdom. As you enter the building, there are tombstones with funny names and one with a picture of a face with eyes that move. Zoom in on Google Earth and you can see it below. Click either picture for higher resolution images.

Think of the geography, mapping, history, architecture, engineering (the list is huge) projects that students could do with these free tools. Students could recreate a 3D version of the local school, post office, court house and other significant government buildings. Historical locations could also be added.

These locations would have to be researched. Community officials would be interviewed. Measurements would be taken. Students would learn to use the construction tools available from Google and collaboratively place objects in correct locations.

Layers representing different time periods could be constructed. Students could see what occupies spaces once used by historical buildings. This could be a lot of fun… and a learning experience too.