Free literacy resources

I am working on creating some sight word videos from the word lists at FreeReading. (If you haven't seen this site, it is a phenomenal resources for early literacy.) Before I crank out more of these, I'm looking for input from early literacy teachers.

* How is the music? Too distracting or ok?
* How is the timing?
* Does the "pointing finger" idea work?

Any input anyone has is appreciated. I'm hoping to produce a whole library of these to match the FreeReading lists over the next few months. The intent is that they could be used on the web or on mobile devices, such as Palms, PSPs, etc.

Free interactive math ebook

Here is another free resource from K12 Handhelds. This is a good example of the interactivity that Mobipocket provides that we like so much.

This ebook can be used on Palm or Pocket PC and includes problem sets for:

- integers (adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing positive and negative integers),

- algebra (simple one- and two-step problems), and

- fractions (simplifying, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions).

Enjoy.

New Dropairs Games

There are some new Pair Boards available for Dropairs from K12 Handhelds. These include some early elementary games (matching letters, numbers, colors, rhyming words, telling time, counting money) and upper elementary/middle school games (fractions/decimals/percents, geometry, algebra, inequalities).

Thanks to NorthGlide for making this software available free of charge, and thanks to the teachers who suggested ideas for these games.

Webquests for March Madness

We have created three webquests for the March Madness NCAA Tournament. These are available as offline versions using Plucker, so you can use them on handhelds that don't have Internet access. They are also available as regular web versions.

Free, open online course - Mobile Multimedia

Here is another free, open, wiki-based, online professional development course: Mobile Multimedia: Podcasts, Mini-Movies, and More on Handhelds.


This one covers finding, using, and creating multimedia resources for differentiating instruction with students.

In case you missed it, another earlier free, open, wiki-based, online professional development course I published earlier was Hands On: Using Mobile Technology to Differentiate Instruction. There is some overlap between these courses, but also some very different content.

Stay tuned for more of these. I am becoming a believer that wikis like these are a great professional development tool, because they extend learning beyond a f2f workshop. And because these are free and open resources, you may use them for whatever purposes you'd like, including using them for workshops at your own schools and districts. Please also add to them. (If you're about this, make your additions in the Discussion tab.) I hope they are useful.

Technorati Tags: metc08 metc2008 metc

Black History Month

February is Black History Month.

There is a free curriculum unit on African American history available from K12 Handhelds. It includes an interactive ebook, a virtual field trip, and more.

Also, my mashup this month features audio from black history, as well as some great music. Give it a listen, and make sure to check out the free offer for a lucky listener on the site.

Also, on the mashup page is a list of multimedia resources you can use in your own classroom. Many of these are open, sharable resources that you can use with students to create your own mashups or other multimedia projects.

Libraries are a great source for ebooks

Most public libraries have audio ebooks, and an increasing number are carrying electronic audio and text ebooks that you can download from a web site and use on mobile devices. I've been seeing many that have ebooks in the Mobipocket format. Below is a list of just a few.

Moipocket is a great format (much more usable than PDFs) because it works on the desktop, as well as on Palm and PPC. It also supports instructionally beneficial features like highlighting and adding notes.

If you haven't visited your public library's web site lately, check it out!

Also, my next mashup will be on audio ebooks, so stay tuned for that.
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Here are just a few libraries that have Mobipocketebooks:

NY Public Library
Naperville Public Library
DenverPublic Library (They also have "eFlicks." Cool.)
Greater Phoenix Library
King County Library System (WA)
San Jose Public Library
Hawaii State Public Library System

You can look here to see if this is offered in your area.

Free Kids Dictionary Project

For a long while, many of us have seen the need for a free kids dictionary that could be used on mobile devices. Since none seem to exist that are at a kids' level and are "kid appropriate," I've always had an idea to make my own, but haven't done much about it.

Now that's about to change! With my recent growing interest in the Open Education movement and mass collaboration, I'm going to start a collaborative project to create such a dictionary. Most likely, this will be on a wiki platform, like Wikibooks.

The focus will be on having simple kid-appropriate definitions targeted at a grade 5-8 level. Everyone will be able to contribute, and we'll be looking for lots of help!

Then after we have a critical mass of words, we'll download the content and convert it to a variety of platforms, including Mobipocket for handheld use and probably some kind of offline desktop format. We might even do a skinny version for mobile phones.

If you are interested in working on this project, stay tuned for more details. We'll be getting a prototype and perhaps a mailing list together for this soon. And whatever we come up with will freely usable by anyone.

New OER search tool

ccLearn is working with the Hewlett Foundation and Google to create a new “open education web-scale search."

The ccLearn group is devoted to the support of open educational resources. These are educational resources that are licensed in a way that they can be freely shared and used by others.

This new tool should offer much wider access to all the great open resources already out there. Hopefully, it will also increase awareness so that more people consider open licenses for materials they write and publish.

ccLearn

Creative Commons today announced the formation of a new division, ccLearn. This group is "dedicated to realizing the full potential of the Internet to support open learning and open educational resources" and has a stated mission "to minimize barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials — legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers."

That's very exciting. If you've heard me speaklately, you know that I am a very big advocate of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. I believe that this movement coupled with massive collaboration has the opportunity to reshape education by providing valuable resources needed to differentiate instruction.

Stay tuned for more info on this as it develops.

Animal Alphabet

As a part of the fun I'm having contributing to Wikijunior (part of Wikibooks, offering free, open content textbooks), I've taken an animal alphabet book there and made video and ebook versions of it.

They're available for viewing and download here.

There are versions for the desktop, various handhelds, iPods, and even a Mobipocket ebook version. (One of the not-fun things about creating video is all the format issues. I think we've put about everything up here, but let me know if anything's been missed.)

If you haven't ventured into the world of contributing to wikis, Wikijunior is a great place to start. (Try the Human Body book or Ancient Civilizations.) The more people who contribute to these free "copyleft" resources, the better they will be. If you're not sure how to start, try something small like fixing an error or just adding a couple sentences. It's a lot of fun!

Differentiating Instruction with Mobile Technology

At NECC last week, I presented a session called "Using Mobile Technology to Differentiate and Enrich Instruction." The ISTE folks had wanted to podcast the session, but I wasn't crazy about the legal agreement they were using. (It wasn't Creative Commons and gave pretty extensive rights to Apple.)

So....I created my own digital version of this session for folks to download:

Audio only (MP3)
Video version (streaming, for viewing in a browser; loads faster, but lower quality)
Video version (WMV, 320x240, for Win download)
Video version (MOV, 320x240, for Mac download)
Video version (M4V, 320x240, for ipod download)

If anyone is interested in a higher resolution version to share with folks who weren't able to attend, email me, and I'll try to send you a CD.

For those who are interested, I audio recorded this with a very inexpensive Olympus WS-100 pocket recorder. I edited the audio in Audacity and brought it all into Windows Movie Maker for editing. The visuals included exported jpgs from my presentation slides and screen-capture videos made with Camstudio. I used HandShare to create the Palm movies (which is the same software I used to present). Creating the whole thing took about 4 hours.

It was a lot of fun making this and was a good way to reflect on my own style of presenting (and hopefully refine it for upcoming events).

I hope this is a useful resource for you all.

Free "copyleft" visual resources

Every day, I am becoming a bigger advocate for copyleft licensing options for content. Copyleft licenses lets the creator maintain ownership (and copyright), while allowing others to share the content under terms specified by the creator.

If you are looking for images to use in presentations, copyleft content offers you a legal option for free content. If you are creating content, consider sharing it with others under a copyleft agreement.

My newest podcast features a sampling of great copyleft visual resources, like clip art, photos, and video. (If you missed it, the last show was on audio resources.) Both of these shows were really fun to produce (and a lot of work to edit, but that's part of the fun).

Here is a list of copyleft sources to look at:

Clipart
* Open Clip Art Library [Note: This site is in transition, but this art is also downloadable from other sites.]
* Wikimedia Commons

Photos
* Wikimedia Commons
* The Open Photo Project
* morgueFile
* Stock.XCHNG
* Flickr
* NASA
* Library of Congress

Video and animation
* Wikimedia Commons
* NASA's Earth Observatory [lets you build your own custom animations]
* Internet Archive

Music
* ccMixter
* Wikimedia Commons music
* Internet Archive (wide variety of stuff here, not all copyleft)
* Partners in Rhyme
* MusOpen

Spoken word
* Spoken Wikipedia
* Library of Congress
* Voice of America
* Internet Archive (wide variety of stuff here, not all copyleft)

Sound Effects
* The Freesound Project
* Partners in Rhyme
* US Fish and Wildlife Service (animal sounds)

Search engines for other copyleft content
* Creative Commons
* Wikimedia Commons
* Common Content
* ibiblio

At some point in the future, I'll do another podcast on copyleft-licensed educational resources. Hope you enjoy!

Free audio resources you can use

The next episode of Karen's Mashups is up, and this is my favorite show so far! In it, I highlight a variety of sources for "copyleft" audio content that can be used free of charge in your own podcasts, movies, PowerPoint presentations, etc. The post includes links for all the sources used plus more.

The next show will feature similar copyleft visual content (photos, clip art, videos). I'm also presenting a session called "Using Mobile Technology to Differentiate and Enrich Instruction" at NECC. This presentation will include how to create and use this kind of content. If you're at NECC, stop by and say hi!

Video proliferation

I love the recent explosion of user-created video content that's going on in the world. It's creative, thought-provoking, and empowering. I've also written previously about the great potential of video to help differentiate instruction and enrich student learning.

However [rant coming]...the wide variety of video formats, codecs, etc. is driving me crazy! The more time I spend with video, the more time I spend with conversion tools and help pages about what device and software use what format and what codec, and the more time I spend mumbling about why this *%#%&*(# video won't play right.

One tool I've found really useful for this though is Zamzar. This is a free online converter that works not only with video, but also with images, docs, and audio. One really useful thing this tool does very well is to convert videos from YouTube and TeacherTube, so that you can view them on a variety of devices such as iPods and handhelds. You just upload the video (or a link) and select the format you want. Then they email you a link for the converted file. (They do seem to have some DNS problems with their email system, but I've found it works well with gmail accounts, so if you have problems getting an email, try that.)

As with all web-based content, make sure to watch for copyright and attribution issues. And with all Web 2.0 services, you should read the Terms of Service.

And for those who are curious, the name is a take-off on Gregor Samsa, intended to connote transformation. :)

Google tools rule

If you haven't started using Google's Web 2.0 tools, check them out! They let you create word processed documents, spreadsheets, and more in a browser -- no Office suite required. A really cool side benefit of these tools is that you can access your documents from any browser and even collaborate on documents with others. Oh yeah, and they're free.

I was initially pretty skeptical [my normal frame of mind] about the potential of Web 2.0 type tools to replace Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Now that I've used them though, the idea is growing on me.

With the recent announcement of a forth-coming presentation (read: PowerPoint-like) application, this suite suite will be adding a piece we've all been looking for.

Another critital piece that is apparently in the works is the ability to sync documents to the desktop for offline use. This is a pretty important piece for schools (many of which still don't have 100% reliable connectivity) and for those of us who spend a lot of time on planes.

Every time I'm in a school and hear a kid telling some variation on the "the-computer-ate-my-homework" story ("My document was here and I have no idea what happened to it," "I forgot my USB drive," etc.), I think about the potential of these tools. Pretty exciting stuff. And did I mention that they're free? :)

[Image credit: Image courtesy of Google Inc. GOOGLE is a trademark of Google Inc. ]

TCPMP video player

TCPMP is a great free mobile audio and video player for Palms that we've recommended in the past. You may have noticed that the old web page for the TCPMP hasn't been up lately.

Apparently, like other projects, TCPMP's CoreCodec group has branched off to create a commercial product. We haven't evaluated the commerical product yet, but we suspect it has some useful features. (Money coming in tends to help product development.)

If you'd still like to use and download the old free Open Source version though, we now have a link to it on our site that you can use.

If anyone knows more "scoop" on what's going on with the Open Source version TCPMP (is anyone still maintaining it?), please post your comments.

FREE poetry resources

As promised, we're making available several poetry curriculum resources for mobile devices (or desktops or laptops) available. You can download them here.

Enjoy!

New podcast for educators

I am happy to announce my new podcast "Karen's Educational Mashups."

This podcast is a compilation of excerpts from podcasts and other free audio and video content of interest to educators. Shows will air twice a month, and each show will focus on a different topic. Some will be focused on content for students, while others will feature professional development content for administrators and teachers. Our first show is on history-related content. The second show will be aimed at library media specialists (and everyone who loves books).

Podcasting is definitely a hot topic in ed tech right now. Creating your own podcast isn't for every teacher, but every teacher can use some of the great FREE content that is already out there to differentiate instruction. This show is designed to help you discover some of that great content and to spark ideas. There are a lot of great podcast directories out there, but this is a different approach to helping you find podcasts of interest to you.

I hope you enjoy this podcast. If you have ideas for future shows or a favorite podcast or other content source that you'd like to see featured, drop us a line at mashups@k12handhelds.com or leave a voice mail at 206-984-2258.

More Open Source Curriculum resources

There are two more new free, Open Source curriculum content resources coming on line:

Schools Without Limts

OER Commons

As these repositories get fleshed out, look for an upcoming review in my blog. In the meantime, if you have a great lesson or curriculum resource that you are willing to share, post it!

Final thoughts on NCCE 2007

Well, NCCE was a great conference this year as always. I consistently find the sessions at this conference to be a step ahead of most other conferences.

I'm on the plane on my way home now, and here are a few thoughts after this year's conference:

- Web 2.0 is quickly evolving beyond just wikis and blogs. The evolution of web-based tools, like word processors, presentation tools, graphic organizers, etc., is moving fast. (See previous post for links to some of these tools.) We may really see desktop software become a thing of the past. And the potential for collaboration with these tools takes my breath away.

- Teachers (and presenters) need to be more aware and diligent about intellectual property and copyright issues. At every event I attend, I continue to see people liberally (and illegally) "borrow" copyrighted music, etc. I also see a lot of this in classrooms. We need to model better behavior for students. There's so much great Creative Commons licensed content out there. Try using that...or create your own...or have your kids create it.

- Podcasting continues to be hot, hot, hot. While I am occasionally frustrated by how much educational technology is moved by fads, I do think podcasting has solid educational applications. Even if you aren't moved to create your own podcast, there is so much great FREE content out there that can benefit you, your students, and the community. If you haven't checked out what's out there, do it today!

- It's time for schools to block less and teach responsibility more. I know there is a lot of pressure from parents and the community, but we can educate them. There is too much great free content out there that is being blocked. Our kids are losing out as a result.

- Educators are the greatest group to work with. I talked to so many people who were enthusiastic and passionate about their work and the students they serve. This is one of the things that makes me really love my job.

Thanks to all of you who attended my workshops and sessions at NCCE. Thanks also to the fantastic NCCE team...Heidi, Adina, Jeff, Randy, Dave, Debby, Glenn, and everyone else. See you all next year in Seattle.
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Technorati Tags: ncce007 ncce2007 ncce07

Free Multimedia Resources You Can Use to Differentiate Instruction

Here are the materials from my session on Fri. at NCCE:




Free resources handouts
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Technorati Tags: ncce007 ncce2007 ncce07

ID3 tag editor

Looking for a good ID3 tag editor for Windows? Check out AudioShell. (If you aren't familiar with ID3 tags, they include metadata that tells your media player things like the track name, the artist, and the genre. That's how your MP3 player can know how to play all your jazz tracks.)

This software is free and includes the ability to add cover art to your file. You can edit single files or groups of files with this tool. Once it's installed, you edit the tags by right-clicking the file and selecting Properties. There you'll see an AudioShell Tag Editor tab where you can edit your tags.

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.

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.

MLK Day Resources

Martin Luther King Day is Jan. 15 this year. Here are some resources related to this great American hero.

Ebooks:

"I Have a Dream" speech

"I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech

Letters from the Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King Jr. Day Anthology
(This includes a variety of essays from various figures in African American history.)

Collection of MLK speeches
(These are HTML and PDFs, so you'll need to convert them with Plucker or Adobe Reader mobile.)

Audio recordings:

"I Have a Dream" speech

"Remembering Martin Luther King"
(an editorial from VOA)

Self-Suffice & Furyus
(contemporary rap poetry remix tribute to MLK; lots of food for thought in this one)

Images:
(Creative Commons-licensed; suitable for use in student projects)

From Wikimedia

Other resources relating to African-American history are also available here.

Free web server space

Several people asked me about places that provide free web hosting space (so that they can FTP their podcasts there and then link to them in a blog). Here are some places that do this:

GeoCities (part of Yahoo) - free package offers 15 MB of server space and 3 GB/month of data transfer traffic

Google Pages (a new service still in the "testing phase") - free package offers 100 MB of server space

If you have a personal account on Earthlink, AOL, or other ISPs, many of them offer free hosting as well.

Here are a bunch more. Note that I do not have persoal experience with these, so read the details. Many/most free hosting services include advertising, but that probably isn't a big issue if you're just linking to content on a blog.

I hope this is useful. If you have used another free hosting service that you like, please post the info here as a comment. Thanks!

Creative Commons content sources

Gabcast! Mobile Musings #3

Here are some good resources for content that is distributed under Creative Commons licenses:

Yahoo's Creative Commons search tool

Creative Commons - web site and search tool

Wikimedia Commons

Text-to-speech blog-to-podcast tool

I just saw the Talkr tool on Will Richardson's great blog. It takes the text from a blog and converts it to an audio file via text-to-speech. I can see all kinds of applications for this in education to help differentiate instruction for a variety of learners.

Audio ebooks

There are getting to be a good number of sites offering free audio books now. Here are a few:

• LibriVox
• ManyBooks
  (This is also a good site for regular text ebooks.)
• Spoken Alexandria Project
• Telltale Weekly
• Gutenberg: Audio Books Project
• Audio Books for Free

Spoken Wikipedia is also a good source for spoken audio files.

Also make sure to check out your local public library for additional audio ebooks.

Printing without actually printing

I just attended a training on a very useful piece of software, Accelerated Writer, which we are going to be integrating with handhelds in a large middle school project I'm helping to coordinate.

The program requires a great deal of printing (like other Renaissance Learning products), and I found the ability to print directly to a PDF file (rather than actually having to print a physical paper printer) to be very useful. There are a lot of times that I want to see the printout results, but don't actually need the paper and printing to a PDF is the perfect solution.

As a part of the Open CD project, you can download the PDFCreator free of charge. Once you install it, PDFCreator will appear as one of your printers in all programs that print. To use it, just print, choose PDFCreator as your printer, and you'll get PDF file of the results.

This is also a good tool to use to email printouts to someone or to transfer them to a handheld or some other device.

Free Constitution Resources

K12 Handhelds is pleased to make available these FREE electronic resources for Constitution Day*.

These resources include an interactive ebook with embedded review questions, a timeline, a linked glossary, and more; an annotated copy of the Constitution and its amendments; a collection of web resources on the Constitution, including the Constitution in Spanish and French; a quiz; and recorded narrations of the Constitution and its amendments! These resources can be used on Palm or Windows Mobile handhelds or on desktop or laptop computers.

This ebook is a good example of the kinds of things you can do with MobiPocket. This is a great ebook reader that supports high res graphics and works on Palm and Pocket PC. It also has the ability to include interactivity, such as self-checking questions, as you'll see in the Constitution ebook.

We just completed developing a whole series of middle school math ebooks in MobiPocket. They include explanations of how to do various of problems, followed by sample problem sets for students to work right in the book. This is a good way to deliver instruction in small chunks and then to assess mastery as students go through the material.

I see a lot of potential for these kinds of electronic resources -- once you have materials that are better than print and are correlated directly to the standards, then this kind of technology really makes sense!

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* September 17 is Constitution Day. Federal regulations mandate that all schools receiving federal funds hold an educational program related to the Constitution on September 17 each year.