WM paint program

I've been working on a geography unit for handhelds and have been looking for a good Windows Mobile paint program with flood fill, etc. for activities with maps. I'd found one: PocketPicture. This is free Open Source software. Depending on the version of Pocket PC you're running, you may also need to install the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework.

Digital recording enhances student learning

This story from the Des Moines Register has some great ideas on ways to use digital recording as a way to enhance student learning.

I am always surprised by how many people I run into who think that using anything other than good old fashioned pencil and paper is somehow "cheating." If kids aren't achieving well with paper and pencil, but can succeed with computers, keyboards, digital recorders, or other tools, we ought to give them every opportunity to use these tools.

While most school tests are still paper and pencil, this isn't a very real world way to measure achievement. In the business world, people are much more frequently called upon to communicate through computer-generated reports, PowerPoints, and oral presentations. We should be doing more to help kids be successful with these types of tools or other tools that match their own styles.

African American History Month Resources

In celebration of February as African American History Month, K12 Handhelds presents a FREE handheld curriculum unit on African American history. This unit includes an ebook with historic photos, profiles, a timeline, a linked glossary, and more; a virtual field trip to significant sites in African American history; web clippings of profiles, first person accounts, and more; a quiz, and even a handheld calendar of historical events for every day in February!

If you have these materials already, make sure to download the new interactive ebook in Mobipocket. It includes quizzes embedded right in the ebook.

You can download this now here.

Audacity tips

Over the holiday break, I did a lot of recording in Audacity for a reading practice series of videos we're doing, and I picked up a few tips that might be helpful to those of you who us Audacity:

• The Noise Removal tool in the Effect menu is a good way to get rid of that slight background noise that you can often hear during narration.
• To select multiple tracks, just drag up or down, and make sure they are highlighted. (This is especially useful if you want to export just a portion of something out to an MP3 file, but want all the tracks.)
• If you have a lot of tracks, name them to keep track of what is what. To do this, click the triangle next to "Audio Track" at the left of the track.
• There's nothing like some fun music to liven up what can otherwise be pretty dull content!

Curriki

Open Source content is all the rage and provides a great resource for educators worldwide. I've been thinking recently that there is a real opportunity for some kind of curriculum wiki -- a place to gather all the great curriculum resources that people develop and are willing to share. And just when I'm thinking of this, here is one.... Curriki.





Curriki is a new resource that provides free Open Source lessons, assessments, resources and textbooks. This site is hosted by Global Education and Learning Community, a project of Scott McNealy and Sun Microsystems. They've assembed a heavy hitting team of managers and advisers for this project.

The service is brand new, and so the offerings at this point are a bit spotty. The great thing about wikis though is how quickly they can grow and prosper. So consider this an invitation to submit your favorite lesson plans and resources. I'll do the same.

BBC podcasts

If you're looking for some interesting new podcasts to listen to or to share with your students, BBC has a wealth of materials available.

For current events, having students examine one topic from various perspectives (BBC, NPR, CNN, Fox, etc.) is an interesting way to study bias and to develop media literacy skills.

The Big Toe Radio Show has some great young children's programming, including audio ebooks.

5 things about me

I've been "tagged" by Tony Vincent to share five things about myself that most people wouldn't know about me. (This is a sort of a bloggers game that is going around.) Here goes:

1. I've been a vegetarian since I was 12 years old. (A very strange thing to do in Ohio back then. I read "Charlotte's Web" one summer, and that was it.)

2. One of my favorite childhood memories is going to Cincinnati Reds baseball games with my dad. We went on week nights, and the games often went very late, but we always stayed to the very end.

3. I taught school for two years in Africa. It was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life. I expect that at some point, I will go live overseas again. (If you're looking for a way to shake up your life, I highly recommend it.)

4. In younger days, I have parasailed, gone hang gliding, and jumped out of a plane. (See, I'm more fun that I seem. Or at least I used to be...)

5. I have climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. It was unbelievably hard.


It seems that a lot of blogs I read regularly have already participated in this, but I'll see what I can do about tagging a few more people.