MetBlogger - Information Technology in Education

The School of the Future

Thoughts and Facts about Education’s Future

By: Eric Durrand

Forget everything you thought you knew about education. Forget the three R’s, forget classroom teaching. Forget books, dictations, notebooks. Unless, of course, you mean notebook computers.

 Now that I got your attention: relax. You don’t actually have to forget any of that. Just remember that the three R’s, “Reading, Writing, and Arithmetics” alone will not get your students anywhere in the 21st century. In an age where information is everywhere, new technologies make new skills necessary on a daily basis, and employers are looking for people with the capacity to grow constantly rather than repeat the same activities indefinitely. Given that the three R’s are still crucial, knowledge of the “Three W’s” might be what your students are missing.

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Time for Online Collaboration

With Acrobat, Writely, or Office Groove

By: Eric Durrand 

The concept of a document has been transformed in the past two decades. From printed information that changed very rarely, and was stored at a specific places in care of a specific person, documents have now become media-rich, easily changed and duplicated, and most important of all: shareable.

Document creation and managements suites, together with the advent of broadband internet have brought a wealth of possibilities to our everyday common documents. You can now publish them online in minutes, send them anywhere in seconds, get feedback from co-workers, track changes, and even debate and collaborate in real time online!

Three document management and collaboration solutions, each special in its own right, offer you the possibility to do more with your documents.

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Ready for Windows Vista?

Will the New Operating System Change PCs As We Know Them?

By: Eric Durrand 

After five years in development and two names, Microsoft had finally released a preview version, First Release Candidate version of Windows Vista (used to be: Longhorn). Windows Vista RC1 reveals an almost complete makeover of the Windows operating system, which promises to change the way teachers and students work with their PCs, when the final version is made public, early 2007.

The first rumors of “Longhorn”; a three-dimensional, easily searchable, media rich operating system were floating around the Microsoft sphere since 2001, even before the launch of the current Microsoft Windows XP. Set originally to be launched by 2003, the system is now 5 years in development, which gave Microsoft plenty of time to develop a series of transforming technologies that make the new system truly different from what PC users are accustomed to. 

But does the new system deliver what it promises?

A look at Windows Vista RC1 reveals many new and interesting features, which may have an impact on how businesses, specifically small offices, work with their PCs:

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Data Deletion Done Right

What to Delete, How, and When?             

By: Eric Durrand

We all know at least one of those people who refuse to ever throw anything away. They live surrounded by boxes. Old papers, old clothes, memorabilia from high school, and broken gadgets are all stored somewhere in their apartment, leaving very little room for actual living. Their place is always cramped, but they can always locate that first high school diploma, or that first love poem. Another type of person we all know is the throwaway fanatic: she lives in a clean, organized space – with nothing but the bare necessities that serve an active purpose in her daily life. Occasionally, however, she is overcome with nostalgia for an object, a book, or a photograph long gone. The same things she ruthlessly discarded as unimportant, not useful, and cumbersome – she sometimes discovers had some value after all.

 Humanity, it seems, has always been divided into those who keep everything, and those who throw away everything they can. The two mindsets play an important role in the virtual world of computers too, with data and storage management experts arguing about what should be saved and what deleted, what should be backed up – and what discarded.

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DoS, Vishing, and SPIT – Oh My!

Meet the Dark Side of Internet Telephony

By: Eric Durrand

 

Internet Telephony, or VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), is quickly replacing traditional telephony, as more organizational and home users opt to use their broadband connections for phone communication. The number of VoIP phone lines in the US has grown from 1.8 million in 2002, to 9.9 million in 2005, and is projected to go up to 26 million by 2008, according to a research by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). Providers like Cablevision, Vonage and others turn VoIP to a reality for many, providing quality telephone services for a fraction of the cost, or sometimes for a fixed price.

But not all bodes well for early adopters making the transition into Internet Telephony. As prices of calls plummet, spammers who are used to send millions of junk messages over E-Mail for free, start eyeing the new medium, dreaming of the potential to one day be able to make millions of pre-recorded commercial calls! Experts call this new threat SPIT: Spam over Internet Telephony, and unlike regular E-Mail spam, there is currently no simple filtering solution.

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Firefox Add-ons for Teachers

How to Turn the Firefox Web Browser to a Powerful Research Tool

By: Eric Durrand

In January 2004, only 5.5% of web users have used the Mozilla browser, with almost 85% using Internet Explorer. In July 2006, 25% of web surfers have used Firefox, Mozilla’s latest free web browser, and only about 60% used the various versions of Internet Explorer. The reason usually offered to why so many are moving to Firefox as their main browser is speed, better features (like tabbed browsing), and better security.

But a big part of the Firefox appeal has long been its expandability. Firefox, unlike Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, is an extensible open source product. That means that any programmer who wishes to, can write extensions and additions to Firefox, and release them freely to all users on the Firefox network.

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MS-Word Tips for Teachers

The Little Things That Make a Big Difference

By: Eric Durrand 

Microsoft Word is the most popular word processor on the planet. It’s used by PC and Mac users alike, and has become the standard in most offices and schools. Whether you want to write a paper, prepare reading materials for class, or design a quiz or a test – you are likely to be using Microsoft Word. It’s important, therefore, to know how to utilize this powerful tool to suit your needs.

If you’re like most users, for instance, you’ve been using the mouse to navigate between the many commands in the various menus and toolbars. There are, however, many shortcuts that can save you time and speed up your work: Ctrl+C, for instance, copies the highlighted text into memory, and Ctrl+V pastes it back into the document where you want it. Ctrl+X cuts the highlighted segment, and Ctrl+Z undoes the last action. Ctrl+A selects all the text in the active window, and Ctrl+W closes the current document window.

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Physical Computing in Education

What is physical computing, and what can it do for your school?

By: Eric Durrand

Traditionally, when a company set out to design a computer or a program, the engineers take over, basing the design on what types of hardware and software was available, and what they could do with it. The users, all of us, had to adapt to the demands of the hardware and software: We had to learn how to type on a keyboard, how to use a mouse, and how to open and close windows, save files, etc.

The vision of Physical Computing is set to change all that.

“Physical Computing,” explains Tom Igoe, a professor of physical computing at New York University, “is an approach to learning how humans communicate through computers that starts by considering how humans express themselves physically.”

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The Educational Web

10 Websites Every Teacher Should Know

By: Eric Durrand

The Internet is a rich resource, and using a search engine one can find many great websites. But sometimes, you have a specific needs, and knowing specific resources could save you time and improve your results. In this article we have collected the 10 educational resources websites we believe every school teacher should know and use on a regular basis.

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E-Mail with IMAP

Will IMAP Change the Way You E-Mail?

By: Eric Durrand

In February 2004, Yahoo! Mail had 39.9 million users, MSN Hotmail 34.4 million and America Online 31.7 million, according to industry tracker Nielsen/NetRatings. Since the early days of the Internet, E-mail had been its most popular application. Today, it seems that everyone has their own E-mail account. Despite all that, very few people bother to understand the underlying technologies that make E-mail what it is.

Often, we only notice a technology when it doesn’t function as well as it should; when it no longer delivers what we need; when it needs to be replaced. Such is the case with POP3, the Post Office Protocol that most of us still use to fetch our messages from our provider’s web-server to our own inbox. POP3, it seems, can no longer satisfy the modern user: the tide of spam hits every inbox, and as wireless networks multiply, more and more people expect to access their inbox from everywhere. POP3, a rather limited protocol, does not rise to the challenge of smart management and multiple devices.

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