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How Google Glass is going to innovate Education

 

Innovations in education has always been a little stagnant, while we see new inventions and developments in all other fields, educational innovations are very less. People have always stuck with the known, tried, tested and traditional methods in case of education. But recently, we’ve seen a boom in this field too. More and more people are now paying attention to the almost obsolete methods of teaching and striving to make some development in the educational system.

Google has always been known for innovations in almost every area they could get their hands onto, and it is soon to launch its flagship product ‘Google Glass’. And the tech-savvies say, it’s going to revolutionize the current educational trends. How? Let’s read.

Google Glass is touted as the next big thing in portable technology. Poised as an eyewear and doing a plethora of things which don’t require any taps or navigation, it responds instead to voice commands, taking pictures with a wink, taking commands for search, share content, video recording, detect objects in front of you and look up related information like directions or maps. etc. The possibilities are endless though among all the possible consumers of Google Glass, the device has the potential to bring exciting new possibilities to teachers and students alike.

• Admit it, Google’s Search is phenomenal. And the Glass will allow the student/teacher to stay connected to an interactive environment featuring online tools all the time. This could pave way to a leap into the future of educational system. Teachers as well as students can refer to topics related to their studies on the go. No fiddling through phones in the middle of the lecture; all you have to do is speak and voila…your search is done!
• Students can record their lectures in real-time for future reference. The time saved on scribbling notes could be remarkable.
• Google Glass could help students to create visually-rich projects and presentations. Students can shoot relevant videos and images with a wink. The same can be integrated onto their presentations via Google docs.
• Learning new languages and speaking them could be done on the go with Glass coupled with Google’s own Google Translator. Google Glass would be able to present text based translations in real-time.
• Teachers could use Google glass coupled with facial recognition to take attendance and could be used to generate Student Information System. Just by looking at the student you will get access to his/her student records with details of academic and non-academic performance, attendance etc… Creating students reports, schedules and class timings for students is only the tip of the iceberg.
• Distance learning could be made a lot easier than before with Google Glass. Webinars and such can be streamed directly onto your Glass than your smartphone or laptop so that its easy to be accessed anywhere, anytime.
• The Glass could be used to set timetables for students along with information regarding the halls where classes will be held with details on professors to take the classes.

http://www.google.com/glass/start/how-it-feels/index.html#video=dj-video

Google Glass in Education: The other side

While all this could be a boon in the education system, there are some cons of having Google Glasses at Schools/Colleges.

• You must keep in mind that electronic devices are still prohibited for students in most schools; though, this is changing very fast. Students could misuse the Glass in a lecture in ways unimaginable. The distractions a smartphone causes in a classroom are well known, students wearing Google Glass will bring about a whole new level of the same.
• There are many restaurants and business concerns already banning the use of Google Glasses as well as apps like instagram. This could also happen to Google Glass, being banned at all major concerns/colleges/universities.
• Not to mention a certain invasion of privacy.
• Like with any electronic device, prolonged usage of Google Glass can cause health issues mainly damaging eyesight.
• Lastly, too much use of social media and on the go availability may harm your personal life.

 

How Google Glass is going to Innovate Education

Padlet ‘Use to break the Ice, Brainstorm and sharing ideas”……

http://padlet.com/  (early known as Wallwisher) gives you a blank wall, and you can basically put anything you want on it, anywhere. Simple, yet powerful.

It basically empowers people to express their thoughts on a common topic easily. It works like an online sheet of paper where people can put any content (e.g. images, videos, documents, text) anywhere on the page, together with anyone, from any device.

POWERFUL?

This is why Padlet is simple, yet powerful:

• Easy-to-Use

 Simple interface, double click to add posts (or double tap for touch screens), drag and drop, auto save, etc.  WOW!  

• Instant Collaboration
  Everyone’s activity can be seen on the wall instantly. Page reloads is history.

• Multimedia

You can add any kind of file/links – videos, images, documents. You can paste links (URLs) to (YouTube) videos (view-able from the wall). Can drag a document from your computer. Can take pictures with your computer devices.  

• Embeddable
  You can embed a wall in blogs and other websites (How?).
• Privacy 

You are empowered to keep the wall(s) private by adding password lock or specific email addresses. You can also moderate posts, by requiring approval by one of the moderators before they show up on the wall for the other readers.

• Exporting
  You can export your Walls to PDF, Excel, and CSV formats with a single click.

• Customized URL

Every wall has an unique URL that you can give out. You can now also customize the ending of your URL to your Wall (E.g. http://padlet.com/wall/myawesomewall) or your Domain URL (E.g. http://myawesomewall.com ).

• Notifications
  You can get e-mail notifications on updates to your wall, or subscribe to them via RSS.
• Design & Layouts

You can easily spice up the backgrounds with all sorts of cool designs and images. You can change your layout to ‘Stream’ to view group discussions more structured (linear chat like format, with time-stamps of when someone commented).

Check out Padlet’s user guide (Knowledge Base) to discover more.

FOR LEARNING?

What about Padlet for learning and teaching?

While you don’t need brains to use Padlet, you might need to stretch your imagination to realize how easy and powerful this tool could be to empower and energize collaborative learning experiences. Here are some examples on how Padlet can be used for:

• Ice breaker to get to know one another (Participants/Students upload photos of themselves and then write one or two sentences for others to get to know them better).  
• Brainstorming ideas, problem-solving, decision-making, or solutions.
• Q&A sessions before/during/after a lecture or class.
• Noticeboards or making course announcements.
• Bookmarking and curating resources or video playlists. 
• Group/Class/Community Discussions.
• Adventure and travel maps (field trips). 
• Developing a website. 
• Etc.

Let’s not stop there, why not explore Padlet as a potential tool for organizing a student’s e-portfolio.

Actually, if we stretch our imagination even further, we could perhaps use Padlet even for an entire class (or even course) from the lecture (or lesson) to the assignment (Full Article):

1. Lesson/Lecture/Tutorial
   Researching, collecting and curating content for your lesson does not have to be a tiresome task across folders, sites, emails and links.
2. Group Discussion
   Use Padlet for a group discussion before/during/after a lecture (or class).
3. Feedback
   Your lecture is coming to an end and you want to take check the students’ understanding of the subject or topic.
4. Assignments/Projects

Students can work individually or as groups using Padlet. For example, each group sets up a wall that discusses or visualizes their project, which can later be made available to the other students when completed. You can even make it a competition!

Whether you want to use Padlet for everything in online learning is probably a bit extreme, but no doubt this tool can be used in many creative ways to engage learners and have some fun while learning takes place.

http://padlet.com/wall/rn8kev2hoi

http://padlet.com/features

A public health agency in Finland is using an interesting approach to shock teens into not smoking

A public health agency in Finland is using an interesting approach to shock teens into not smoking.

Benefits Of Moodle For Teachers And Learners

Moodle is another superb e-learning system, or web-based interface, that enables us to set up a wide variety of education resources. The name is an acronym for Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, and it was created out of difficulties experienced with other commercial systems.

You only need the ability to teach your courses using the text, images, or other media including audio and video. Consequently teachers with no technical skills can set up the site and enable their students to access the course materials, and also to share and interact with others. An additional reason for the popularity of Moodle is its social constructivist approach, whereby it deliberately sets out to enable users to have control of their learning environments, rather than having ideas imposed from above in a top down approach, like most teaching. The idea is to enable students to have more choice about how they learn, so that they can customise the site on their own computers.

One major benefit of Moodle is its enormous economy in terms of time and resources. Instead of having classrooms filled with worksheets, books, and audio and video cassettes, all these can be supplied electronically. This vastly reduces the numbers of CDs, photocopies and other physical supplies that have to be generated, though students can access these whenever they require.

Because of its ease of use, Moodle is excellent for distance learning, but it is really designed to work best with face to face classroom teaching. Although it certainly saves paperwork and time for teachers, the more important reason why teachers like to use it is that it enables students to learn more independently – that is, have more control over their learning – and also more co-operatively. For instance, classroom teachers are able to enhance their teaching with supplementary activities that the students can find online, and also provide links to sites that are relevant to the lesson being taught.

As well as the core provision, Moodle has a large number of optional modules. For instance there is an inbuilt Chat module that is designed as a tool for students working in groups, meaning they can discuss an issue or question prescribed by the teacher – the discussions can be saved and reviewed by the teacher later. There is also the Lesson module, by which the teacher can produce a series of lessons each ending with a question. Students can progress to the next lesson after answering the question correctly. This enables students to spend as much time as they need on lessons they find difficult.

Virtually all educators acknowledge that Moodle provides a highly cost-effective solution for all types of learning, both individual and classroom-based, and throughout the age spectrum. However it has also been found to have a steep learning curve. It is really essential to ensure that learners engage in the most appropriate way from the start, both with the content, and with the platform itself, if they are going to benefit from it.

Where Does Windows Store Temporary Files and How to Change TEMP Folder Location?

Whenever we talk about free-up disk space on Windows PC, we always suggest to clear “TEMP” folder. Deleting all files and folders present in “TEMP” folder might provide you a decent amount of free space.

You might be wondering what is this “TEMP” folder and why is it created by Windows? “TEMP” folder, as the name suggests, is used to store temporary files and folders which are created by Windows services and many 3rd party software programs. Since the files and folders stored in Temp folder are temporary, its absolutely safe to remove them.

Now the question comes how to access this Temp folder to clear its content. There are 2 Temp folders present in Windows OS:

• Temp folder present in C:\Windows folder
• Temp folder present in Local Settings folder for each logged-in user

First “Temp” folder which is found in “C:\Windows\” directory is a system folder and is used by Windows to store temporary files.

Second “Temp” folder is stored in “%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\” directory in Windows Vista, 7 and 8 and in “%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\” directory in Windows XP and previous versions. This folder is different for each Windows user i.e., each logged-in user gets a separate “Temp” folder. This “Temp” folder is used by 3rd party programs to store their temporary files for example, temporary downloaded parts of files by your download manager software, etc.

To access these 2 “Temp” folders, you need to use following commands:

• TEMP
• %TEMP%

You can run these commands in RUN dialog box or start menu search box. When you run TEMP command, it opens system “Temp” folder stored in C:\Windows directory and when you run %TEMP% command, it opens the user temp folder stored in “%USERPROFILE%” directory. You can learn more about these kind of environment variables using following tutorial:

List of Environment Variables in Windows XP, Vista and 7

Today in this tutorial, we’ll show you how to tell Windows to use a single “Temp” folder for both system and user temporary files so that we don’t need to open 2 different folders to free-up disk space.

We’ll also learn changing location of “Temp” folder from C:\ drive to some other partition. The reason behind changing the location is very simple! First, it’ll not eat valuable disk space of our system drive. Second, we’ll not need to worry about clearing content of Temp folder regularly to free-up disk space on C: drive. It might also speed up your system a little bit.

So without wasting time, lets start the tutorial:

1. Right-click on Computer icon on Desktop and select Properties (or press WIN + Pause/Break keys). Now click on Advanced system settings link in left side pane. (You can open it directly by giving sysdm.cpl command in RUN or start menu search box)

2. Now click on Environment Variables button. It’ll open a new window which will show a list of all environment variables defined in your Windows.

There would be 2 different sections:

• User variables
• System variables

You’ll see TEMP and TMP variables listed in User variables section. The System variables section will contain a long list of various environment variables along with TEMP and TMP variables as shown in following screenshot:

3. Now to change location of TEMP folder from C:\Windows\Temp to other partition, first we’ll need to create a new TEMP folder in the desired partition.

In this example, we are going to move TEMP folder location to D:\ drive, so we’ll create a new folder “TEMP” in D:\ drive. Please note that you can use any name for the new folder, its not necessary to have TEMP as its name.

Now you can double-click on the TEMP variable present in System variables section or select it and click on Edit button. Now type location of new TEMP folder (which is D:\Temp in our case) and click on OK button.

Repeat same step for TMP variable as well.

That’s it. It’ll change the location of TEMP folder in Windows.

4. Now we’ll ask Windows to use a single TEMP folder for both system and user temporary files. We can do this by either deleting both TEMP and TMP variables listed in User variables section or edit the variables and set their values to the same folder which we used for system variables in step 3 i.e., D:\Temp folder.

Once you delete both variables in User variables section or set their values to new TEMP folder path, it’ll tell Windows to use a single TEMP folder to store all temporary files and folders created by Windows as well as 3rd party software programs.

5. You’ll need to restart your system to take effect.

Believe me guys, setting user TEMP folder to same as system TEMP folder is one of the first few tasks which I always do after doing a fresh installation of Windows. Having separate TEMP folders is quite annoying to me. What about you?

 

Hot Potatoes…build a teaching website; includes crosswords, gap-fills, cloze tests, matching, multiple choice and jumbled exercises.

The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is freeware, and you may use it for any purpose or project you like. It is not open-source. The Java version provides all the features found in the windows version, except: you can’t upload to hotpotatoes.net and you can’t export a SCORM object from Java Hot Potatoes.

ownload Hot Potatoes for Windows from here:

• Hot Potatoes 6.3 installer (Hot Potatoes for Windows 98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/Vista, version 6.3).
• Hot Potatoes for Linux users running Wine (version 6.3). This is a zip file containing the folder structure of the Windows version of Hot Potatoes. You can extract this to create the HotPot program folder without running the setup program if you prefer.

Download Java Hot Potatoes:

• Download Java Hot Potatoes which will run on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux or any computer running a Java Virtual Machine. To install and run Java Hot Potatoes on Mac OS X:
  1. Download the file javahotpot61.zip from the link above.
  2. Unzip that file on your computer, you will have a folder called JavaHotPot6.
  3. Drag the JavaHotPot6 folder to the Applications directory on your computer.
  4. Open the folder and double-click the JavaHotPotatoes6 application icon.
  5. Trash the javahotpot61.zip file.

     Tutorials

     • Standard Tutorial for Windows
     • Example exercises created with Hot Potatoes 6
     • Tutorial for the Masher program
     • Windows Help File in PDF format
     • How to write good multiple-choice questions
     • How to write good multiple-select questions
     • How to make a multiple-choice exercise function like a traditional test
     • How to play MP3 files using Flash
     • SCORM 1.2 in Hot Potatoes
     • How to make shuffling questions in JCloze
     • Hacking Hot Potatoes: A detailed workshop with ten examples
     • Hacking in Hot Potatoes: A little knowledge brings a lot of power
     • How to edit the source files
     • Documentation of source files and placeholders

FET Free Timetabling Software

FET is open source free software for automatically scheduling the timetable of a school, high-school or university. It uses a fast and efficient timetabling algorithm. It is licensed under GNU GPL.

Usually, FET is able to solve a complicated timetable in maximum 5-20 minutes. For simpler timetables, it may take a shorter time, under 5 minutes (in some cases, a matter of seconds). For extremely difficult timetables, it may take a longer time, a matter of hours.

Features

• FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later. You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it

• Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala), sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)

• Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also semi-automatic or manual allocation

• Platform independent implementation, allowing running on GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports

• Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)

• Import/export from CSV format

• The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV formats

• Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students (as separate sets)

• Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0% (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight percentage)

• Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more memory):

  • Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60

  • Maximum number of working days per week: 35

  • Maximum total number of teachers: 6000

  • Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000

  • Virtually unlimited number of subjects

  • Virtually unlimited number of activity tags

  • Maximum number of activities: 30000

  • Maximum number of rooms: 6000

  • Maximum number of buildings: 6000

  • Possibility of adding multiple teachers and students sets for each activity. (it is possible also to have no teachers or no students sets for an activity)

  • Virtually unlimited number of time constraints

  • Virtually unlimited number of space constraints

• A large and flexible palette of time constraints:

  • Break periods

  • For teacher(s):

    • Not available periods

    • Max/min days per week

    • Max gaps per day/week

    • Max hours daily/continuously

    • Min hours daily

    • Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag

    • Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of days per week

  • For students (sets):

    • Not available periods

    • Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)

    • Max gaps per day/week

    • Max hours daily/continuously

    • Min hours daily

    • Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag

    • Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of days per week

  • For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:

    • A single preferred starting time

    • A set of preferred starting times

    • A set of preferred time slots

    • Min/max days between them

    • End(s) students day

    • Same starting time/day/hour

    • Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and flexible constraint, useful in many situations)

    • Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)

    • Not overlapping

    • Max simultaneous in selected time slots

    • Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities

• A large and flexible palette of space constraints:

  • Room not available periods

  • For teacher(s):

    • Home room(s)

    • Max building changes per day/week

    • Min gaps between building changes

  • For students (sets):

    • Home room(s)

    • Max building changes per day/week

    • Min gaps between building changes

  • Preferred room(s):

    • For a subject

    • For an activity tag

    • For a subject and an activity tag

    • Individually for a (sub)activity

  • For a set of activities:

    • Occupy a maximum number of different rooms

COMMON MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF “FREE SOFTWARE” AND “OPEN SOURCE”

The term “free software” is prone to misinterpretation: an unintended meaning, “software you can get for zero price,” fits the term just as well as the intended meaning, “software which gives the user certain freedoms.” We address this problem by publishing the definition of free software, and by saying “Think of ‘free speech,’ not ‘free beer.’” This is not a perfect solution; it cannot completely eliminate the problem. An unambiguous and correct term would be better, if it didn’t present other problems.

Unfortunately, all the alternatives in English have problems of their own. We’ve looked at many that people have suggested, but none is so clearly “right” that switching to it would be a good idea. (For instance, in some contexts the French and Spanish word “libre” works well, but people in India do not recognize it at all.) Every proposed replacement for “free software” has some kind of semantic problem—and this includes “open source software.”

The official definition of “open source software” (which is published by the Open Source Initiative and is too long to include here) was derived indirectly from our criteria for free software. It is not the same; it is a little looser in some respects. Nonetheless, their definition agrees with our definition in most cases.

However, the obvious meaning for the expression “open source software”—and the one most people seem to think it means—is “You can look at the source code.” That criterion is much weaker than the free software definition, much weaker also than the official definition of open source. It includes many programs that are neither free nor open source.

Since the obvious meaning for “open source” is not the meaning that its advocates intend, the result is that most people misunderstand the term. According to writer Neal Stephenson, “Linux is ‘open source’ software meaning, simply, that anyone can get copies of its source code files.” I don’t think he deliberately sought to reject or dispute the official definition. I think he simply applied the conventions of the English language to come up with a meaning for the term. The state of Kansas published a similar definition: “Make use of open-source software (OSS). OSS is software for which the source code is freely and publicly available, though the specific licensing agreements vary as to what one is allowed to do with that code.”

The New York Times has run an article that stretches the meaning of the term to refer to user beta testing—letting a few users try an early version and give confidential feedback—which proprietary software developers have practiced for decades.

Open source supporters try to deal with this by pointing to their official definition, but that corrective approach is less effective for them than it is for us. The term “free software” has two natural meanings, one of which is the intended meaning, so a person who has grasped the idea of “free speech, not free beer” will not get it wrong again. But the term “open source” has only one natural meaning, which is different from the meaning its supporters intend. So there is no succinct way to explain and justify its official definition. That makes for worse confusion.

Another misunderstanding of “open source” is the idea that it means “not using the GNU GPL.” This tends to accompany another misunderstanding that “free software” means “GPL-covered software.” These are both mistaken, since the GNU GPL qualifies as an open source license and most of the open source licenses qualify as free software licenses. There are many free software licenses aside from the GNU GPL.

The term “open source” has been further stretched by its application to other activities, such as government, education, and science, where there is no such thing as source code, and where criteria for software licensing are simply not pertinent. The only thing these activities have in common is that they somehow invite people to participate. They stretch the term so far that it only means “participatory” or “transparent”, or less than that. At worst, it has become a vacuous buzzword.