Learn By Doing

A Lifelong Learner Shares Thoughts About Education

  • Today I am working with Google Apps collaboration using MS Office tools on the front end: multi-person, simultaneous editing to the Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint application.  I have some files and assignments that I can’t simply convert to Google Docs but need the benefits of web-powered collaboration: online backup, view only web sharing, file revision history and as I don’t have Office 2010 or Sharepoint, this is an amazing alternative.  Give it a try.  Check out the full range of the tool.

  • It is the time of year when the “lists” come out, what you should have done in 2010, what you should do in 2011, top technologies, and on and on.  I am reminded that all too often the trick to the lists isn’t doing everything, but selecting ONE action that one can take that deep down solves an immediate problem, allows for a change in direction, and is interesting to YOU.

    My choice was to move my storage to the cloud as much as possible.  I have been using Dropbox and loving it for over a year now, but finally moved all of my Documents and Photos up to the service and have setup Selective Download folders for my school machines to that personal material is not placed on those machines.

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  • Mozilla Drumbeat Keynote on Web Education

  • Remember when the students would only post on Facebook, these rock!

  • Questions I ask myself: Would I be brave enough to try these in class?  Would they work in a secondary school environment?  While I don’t know the answer, I think I might try them in a professional development environment.  They are both in “beta” in a very real sense.

    TextTheMob

    The easiest and most entertaining way to collect feedback from your audience:
    Project polls or message boards on a large screen, have everyone send their input via their cell phones and see results instantly!

    Wallwisher

    … a new way to communicate, using Post-its on a web wallboard.  This one is not ready for primetime.