Recent Finds and Fun 2013-09-30

Posted on 30 September, 2013

Mozilla Webmaker

Mozilla Webmaker seems to have improved a lot since I last looked. In Doug Belshaw’s Things I Learned This Week newsletter, recently, he pointed out that thimble now supported JavaScript, I went over to lok and found that the site now lists your productions:
Search – for johnjohnston. I knocked up a couple of quick JavaScript examples: 5Dogs & flipcard, the later being an old one.

OpenShift

OpenShift by Red Hat, this is pretty amazing:

OpenShift Online is Red Hat’s public cloud application development and hosting platform that automates the provisioning, management and scaling of applications so that you can focus on writing the code for your business, startup, or next big idea.

What that means is you can easily and cheaply (first 3 free), set up websites with applications. It is pretty geeky for a teacher but there are plenty of instructions, and they work.

I gave it a quick test last week and managed to get a ‘server’ up and running with etherpad is short order: Etherpad Lite. Not sure what I’ll use that for, but I can delete it and start something else if I get to the max of 3 apps.

Slightly more useful, on an email list I am on someone asked how, using iPads, could a set of pupils construct a resource with a map and pins with images, text and video. I though this could be done with
WordPress a plugin and google maps. OpenShift allowed me to test this very quickly:

Set Up a new app
Installed WordPress
Added the MyGeoposition plugin
Added some posts and used the plugin interface to add positions to these posts.
Knocked up a quick google maps page to display the blogs RSS, which now had geo info.
Added that to the blog

Here is the blog and the map.

OpenShift made it practical to turn a bit of simple blue-sky thinking into reality.

I am not suggesting that everyone should dive over to openshift and start playing. You need a slight friendship with the terminal, at least have heard of ssh and git (I’ve used ssh a we bit setting up the piratebox and a raspberryPi, heard of git). If you do, the possibilities for trying things out are wide open.

An Invitation to EDUtalk at the Scottish Learning Festival

Posted on 23 September, 2013

john

#edutalk. #slf2013
If you going to the Scottish learning festival this year I would like to invite to contribute to EDUtalk.
EDUtalk is, among other things, an open to any contributions podcast.
Glasgow, Glasgow City, Scotland

This audio file was orginally posted to AudioBoo(m) with the mobile app. It has been downloaded and posted here since audioboom no longer supports free accounts.

An Invitation to #EDUtalk at the Scottish Learning Festival

Posted on 23 September, 2013

john

listen to ‘An Invitation to EDUtalk at the Scottish Learning Festival ’ on Audioboo

If you going to the Scottish learning festival this year I would like to invite to contribute to EDUtalk.

EDUtalk is, among other things, an open to any contributions podcast. EDUtalk started at the Scottish learning Festival in 2009 when David Noble and myself invited any of the attendees to submit audio to a podcast SLFtalk (lost when posterous stopped). We were trying to provide alternate sources of information and reflections about the festival and make it as easy as possible for people to both contribute and listen to the contributions of others.

This year given the ubiquity of personal mobile devices is even easier to contribute to EDUtalk.

Here are three simple ways:

Audioboo an application for both iPhone and android, Audioboo allows you to record short segments of audio and upload then to the Audioboo site. If you tag the ‘boo’ #EDUtalk they will be brought in automatically to the EDUtalk site.
Just record some audio on anything a computer on smartphone whatever you got. Then you can email it to audio@edutalk.info and we’ll take it from there. There are usually a few computers on the floor at a SLF that are connected to the Internet many of these will have built-in mics it should be pretty easy to record something there and email it to edutalk.
Another app you can use is a ipadio, this is an app like audioboo – available for android and iOS to record audio and sent to ipadio. Again if you tag it #edutalk we’ll pick up automatically and post it to edutalk.

So what do people talk about. You could talk about a session you been to. A keynote. You could talk to a colleague or friend.

You can have conversations with anyone about anything educational, at the coffee bar , in a quiet corner. it can be about whatever, educational, topic you like. Your thoughts we want them.

With the huge changes going on in Education this is a chance for us to join in the conversation, to talk across boundaries, of local authority, of hierarchy and think about what really matters today.