While searching around for some highly-rated Web 2.0 tools, I ran across two that caught my eye. They are completely unrelated to one another - unless you consider that one was bought by Intuit for $170M and the other was almost purchased by Google for $500M. The sites in question are Mint and Yelp.
Let's start with Mint. Though I haven't gotten brave enough to try it yet, Mint touts itself as the "best free way to manage your money." Apparently, you plug in your banking account information (accessed via 128-bit SSL on the browser and encrypted credentials stored by 256-bit AES) and the software does the rest. It's a read-only view into your finances, whereby the software creates charts, graphs and suggestions regarding money management. The concept is pretty interesting and it seems that Intuit saw some value there as well.
Yelp appears to be a clearinghouse for local business reviews. It has compatibility with most mobile phones and allows users to search for local restaurants, dentists, entertainment, etc in various cities. Yelp users write reviews and this gives the site a very 'local' feel to it. The site appears to search your IP address and change your default search city to one nearest the location of your registered IP address. Business owners can create Yelp accounts to offer discounts and can purchase ads from the site.
I'm new to these sites and thought I'd feature them - perhaps some of you are regular users of these tools... Take care!
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Monday, December 28, 2009
"Financial Football"
I saw this featured in an eSchoolNews article. It's an interesting partnership between the New York Comptroller, Visa and the NFL. All of the details are in this press release.
The link to the game is here and I naturally had to try it out. It's very informative. I'm all for anything that will give our youth an increased knowledge of money management and financial skills.
Since it's licensed by the NFL, you get to choose from actual NFL teams. I tried the 'college' version, which times your answers and allows you to choose from easy, medium or difficult questions. Each correct answer earns you appropriate yardage based on the difficulty of the question. An incorrect answer allows the opposing team to attempt the same question, leading to a sack or lost yardage if they answer correctly. Four downs, extra points, kickoffs and field goals are all part of the game. Very cool, educational and it kept my attention.
The state of New York has a more general money management site here.
The link to the game is here and I naturally had to try it out. It's very informative. I'm all for anything that will give our youth an increased knowledge of money management and financial skills.
Since it's licensed by the NFL, you get to choose from actual NFL teams. I tried the 'college' version, which times your answers and allows you to choose from easy, medium or difficult questions. Each correct answer earns you appropriate yardage based on the difficulty of the question. An incorrect answer allows the opposing team to attempt the same question, leading to a sack or lost yardage if they answer correctly. Four downs, extra points, kickoffs and field goals are all part of the game. Very cool, educational and it kept my attention.
The state of New York has a more general money management site here.
Monday, December 21, 2009
OET webcast equipment
Each month, our staff travels to a different school district to conduct a webcast. They share information with school districts about any number of technology topics. I regularly get asked about the components used during our technology webcasts. I'll do my best to give some details in this blog entry.
We use Windows Media Services, part of W2K3 SP1, on the server side. Our folks recommend 2GB RAM on the server and plenty of disk space for video archiving. We hook our camera up to a workstation that has either a USB or firewire port, at least 1GB RAM and we use the Windows Media Encoder software on that workstation. We also use Wirecast software. This is a fee-based product, but a product like this is a worthy addition if you intend to produce or edit your webcasts after recording. This software is what we use to add the "email questions to..." banner at the bottom of the screen. We also use this for some of the "upcoming webcasts" slides and items of this nature.
As our webcast operators have told me, the audio quality requires more effort than does the video. The camera we use for the webcast is a decent camera, but no different than what you might already have in your own school district:
We use three microphones made by Audio-Technica. The model we use is the U851a. I turned one upside-down to get this photo, though I'm pretty sure they perform better right-side up. :) To the right, there is a picture of the power sources for each of the three microphones. This was during setup and each of these three feeds will eventually be plugged into an audio mixer.
The particular mixer we use is an Azden FMX-32. I'll include a few different views of this product, but we're essentially running the three microphones to each of the three channels. Each channel has its own volume, etc. I'll also include a picture of the side of this mixer. There are different sources and types of outputs and you wouldn't use them all, but this mixer would need to be connected to an audio source on your webcast workstation. Pictures below of the top, back and side of our particular audio mixer:
I'll go ahead and include on picture of the side of the workstation. In our case, we use a PCMCIA-based firewire connection. We could use the firewire port built into the workstation or we could even use a USB-based connection. The PCMCIA connection is known to work and perhaps provides a more physically stable connection, as the last thing we need is to drop that connection during the webcast.
I'll include one final shot of the camera we use, with the external microphone attached. This camera also has an internal hard drive. According to our recording staff, this would give us an absolute worst-case scenario whereby we could still maintain and save a production. The external mic is also an audio source (in case the mixer/mics fail) and the internal hard drive of the camera is also recording the webcast (in the event that we lose connectivity to the server, our stream fails, etc).
I'm not an expert on webcasts and I don't necessarily endorse any of these products over any others, but I did want to take some time to show the specific components we use for our district webcasts. I hope this is of some benefit. Take care!
We use Windows Media Services, part of W2K3 SP1, on the server side. Our folks recommend 2GB RAM on the server and plenty of disk space for video archiving. We hook our camera up to a workstation that has either a USB or firewire port, at least 1GB RAM and we use the Windows Media Encoder software on that workstation. We also use Wirecast software. This is a fee-based product, but a product like this is a worthy addition if you intend to produce or edit your webcasts after recording. This software is what we use to add the "email questions to..." banner at the bottom of the screen. We also use this for some of the "upcoming webcasts" slides and items of this nature.
As our webcast operators have told me, the audio quality requires more effort than does the video. The camera we use for the webcast is a decent camera, but no different than what you might already have in your own school district:
We use three microphones made by Audio-Technica. The model we use is the U851a. I turned one upside-down to get this photo, though I'm pretty sure they perform better right-side up. :) To the right, there is a picture of the power sources for each of the three microphones. This was during setup and each of these three feeds will eventually be plugged into an audio mixer.
The particular mixer we use is an Azden FMX-32. I'll include a few different views of this product, but we're essentially running the three microphones to each of the three channels. Each channel has its own volume, etc. I'll also include a picture of the side of this mixer. There are different sources and types of outputs and you wouldn't use them all, but this mixer would need to be connected to an audio source on your webcast workstation. Pictures below of the top, back and side of our particular audio mixer:
I'll go ahead and include on picture of the side of the workstation. In our case, we use a PCMCIA-based firewire connection. We could use the firewire port built into the workstation or we could even use a USB-based connection. The PCMCIA connection is known to work and perhaps provides a more physically stable connection, as the last thing we need is to drop that connection during the webcast.
I'll include one final shot of the camera we use, with the external microphone attached. This camera also has an internal hard drive. According to our recording staff, this would give us an absolute worst-case scenario whereby we could still maintain and save a production. The external mic is also an audio source (in case the mixer/mics fail) and the internal hard drive of the camera is also recording the webcast (in the event that we lose connectivity to the server, our stream fails, etc).
I'm not an expert on webcasts and I don't necessarily endorse any of these products over any others, but I did want to take some time to show the specific components we use for our district webcasts. I hope this is of some benefit. Take care!
Monday, December 7, 2009
Science education - effective use of video!
One of the biggest challenges we have in the K-12 environment is to keep kids interested and on task. Depending on how it's used, technology can be either a great help or great hindrance in the quest to maintain interest and stay focused on learning.
Video-related sites like YouTube can be of immense value in this quest. The University of Nottingham has some really interesting science content in the form of YouTube video clips arranged around specific topics.
The first site of theirs is "The Periodic Table of Videos." Pick an element on the periodic table and you'll find a brief video explaining the element or giving facts about it. Go ahead - learn why we can't live without Molybdenum in one minute! :)
I also like their "Sixty Symbols" site. These are longer videos about various symbols related to physics or astronomy. I'll confess that I knew nothing about Schrödinger's cat (do you?)and clicked a link to a video explaining the experiment. Would you rather hear someone talking about a cat in a box or read some material on the paradox of quantum superpositioning? Exactly.
I'm not a science guru, but I find these videos very interesting and I think it's a great illustration as to how well-created video clips can be used to enhance (or change instruction as we know it.
Video-related sites like YouTube can be of immense value in this quest. The University of Nottingham has some really interesting science content in the form of YouTube video clips arranged around specific topics.
The first site of theirs is "The Periodic Table of Videos." Pick an element on the periodic table and you'll find a brief video explaining the element or giving facts about it. Go ahead - learn why we can't live without Molybdenum in one minute! :)
I also like their "Sixty Symbols" site. These are longer videos about various symbols related to physics or astronomy. I'll confess that I knew nothing about Schrödinger's cat (do you?)and clicked a link to a video explaining the experiment. Would you rather hear someone talking about a cat in a box or read some material on the paradox of quantum superpositioning? Exactly.
I'm not a science guru, but I find these videos very interesting and I think it's a great illustration as to how well-created video clips can be used to enhance (or change instruction as we know it.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Wallwisher
Sometimes the easiest tools are the most useful. I'm not sure if that's the case here, but Wallwisher is an easy tool that some school districts might find useful. It's an online Post-it note collection place. A public refrigerator door (of sorts)!Much like a blog comment or message board, this would be a place for users to quickly give their thoughts on a topic or answer a question. I can add a note of my own to a created 'wall' and move the notes around as I see fit. When I leave and return to the wall, the notes are arranged as I left them. However, another user may have arranged the notes differently and the notes will appear to that user as he/she left them.
I could use it to take my own meeting notes or make reminders to myself. I could pose a question to a class of students and ask them to each post a note to the wall with their answer.
There are several ideas for its use and the cost - $0 - is just right for many districts.
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