Category Archives: Applications

Skype call to Rob Waddell in Valencia

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Last night we had a bit of a highpoint for our podcasting and Skyping endeavours- through one of our Appleby parents we made contact with Rob Waddell, Olympic gold medalist and now grinder on Team Emirates New Zealand yacht in the America’s Cup challenge in Valencia, Spain. Image

Children had prepared fat questions to ask and we had all gathered back at school at 7pm on Monday night.

In order to overcome the problem of feedback when Skyping to a larger audience I plugged a splitter into the headphone jack and had one pair of headphones in one socket and speakers into the other. Perfect!

To add a little spice to the session TVNZ had got wind of it and were filming in Appleby, NZ while a second crew were filming in Valencia.

Rod proved to be an excellent spokesperson for Team New Zealand and had an easy rapport with the children.

You can view an edited version of the call on our podcasting page.

And to top it all off we made it onto the nationwide TVNZ six o’clock news tonight. How’s that for being globally connected with a rich, real authentic context!

Microsoft Photosynth

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You have viewed Sir Ken Robinson‘s inspirational TED talk and here is another ‘WOW- look at this‘ from TED Talks. The idea is that the collective images from Flickr or wherever are compiled into high resolution images that enable a three dimensional model. I liken it to Google Earth for photos. You can zoom in in high definition. An absolutely awesome idea. You can zoom in on images, e-magazines etc and see fine detail without pixelation. Watch the six minute video and see it for yourself.Image

“Photosynth creates breathtaking multi-dimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectations. Dive into a freefall and watch as the speck becomes a high resolution image. Photosynth might utterly transform the way we manipulate and experience digital images.”

Way cool!

Firefox 2- the next generation

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Some time ago I recommended people try Flock as a web browser but Mozilla Firefox has recently released Firefox 2 which has some pretty good features as well and is quicker to load than Flock. Image

Because it is a re-write you won’t get it by just updating the first version of Firefox. You will have to download it but before you do those of us who speak the Queen’s English should click on the ‘Other Systems and Languages’ link just under the green download icon. That will take you to a download for English as it should be written with centre, favourite, theatre, colour etc all spelled correctly.

Again as you first open up the programme it will import all your previous bookmarks, passwords and settings to make the whole process seamless. Being an Apple girl though I nuked the old Firefox icon in the dashboard and put the new one there instead. Don’t know if that was needed but did it all the same!

There are two really great features with the new version…

Firstly it puts links to your Delicious in the top toolbar which you could always do yourself anyway but is now done automatically through an add on.

And it spell-checks by putting a wriggly red line under possible spelling errors just like when you are in Word (plus the right mouse correction suggestions) when you are writing a blog post or comment or anything Web2.0 which is great for child bloggers!!!!

Speaking of who-my class of eight/nine year olds just started blogging with David Warlick’s Blogmeister blogging tool this week and they love it. I am having to check my approval tool often for new posts or comments from children and parents. The children are thrilled that they have their own password and can securely blog from anywhere. It isn’t as visual as Blogger but we are loving how we can all blog at the same time with our own accounts. Thanks Tom and Jody for their encouragement to give it a try.

If you know of any other add-ons or features of the new Firefox could you let me know through the comments.

Microsoft Software Agreement

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At the very end of last term all NZ schools got a memo from the Ministry of Education informing us that we had to remove Microsoft Office from all our Apple computers as the Microsoft School Licence Agreement had expired and was not going to be renewed.

Computerworld published an article today about it and I felt compelled to make comment.

On two matters really….

Firstly I looked for the comment link at the bottom of the article so that I could say my piece. I have been reading too many blogs in the holidays I think!!!

Secondly having to remove Word and Excel will be no loss to my eight year olds. I am not so sure about Powerpoint but as long as we get an Apple’s iWork all will be sweet in that respect.Image

The loss of Office in itself, may well be a blessing in disguise and further encourage people to go the Web2.0 tools as a replacement. We have already had a play with Writely- now Google Docs. Yesterday I helped a fellow teaching colleague with using RSS, Delicious, Bloglines, Gmail, Blogs etc. I didn’t take my computer with me as I had all I needed residing on the net in secure locations. Which computer I accessed the information from was irrelevant. In saying that I am still very much an Apple girl with its simplicity of use and the seamless inter-connectivity of applications.

As long as we have the required, supported, ubiquitous internet access then I’m all for it.

Flock Web Browser

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Get FlockA few months ago I downloaded Flock as an alternative web browser to Mozilla Firefox and it has been sitting there for awhile not really being used. I had also downloaded a video from Screencasts Online Show Number SCO0057 (It’s 50MB but very handy to help get the best from the browser). The video better explains all the features of Flock that you might not notice at first glance. It is cross platform so works on both PCs, Apples and Linux. With the school holidays on I have had a little time to have decent look and it is great. It has some really great features with all the functionality of Firefox and more!

1. The first thing is that you can import all of your old bookmarks, settings and passwords etc directly from Firefox or Safari on an Apple. I should have migrated and stuck with it when I first imported my settings from Firefox as you can’t import after the first time but Flock is working on that functionality in a future update and once that is able to be done I think I will make the permanent migration.

2. When you use the in-built search button it gives results in a similar way to Apple’s Spotlight- with results returned from your own bookmarks, recent history and on-line searching. Yahoo is the default search engine but you can add others as well.

3. To integrate Flock with Flickr photos go into Flock- accounts and services and log in to your previously set up Flickr account. You then will be able to view your Flickr photos right there within the browser by clicking on the PICS button.

To use them just drag them into a blog or web-based email like gmail that you are writing. No html needed. Flock does it for you! Great for adding photos if you are using David Warlick’s Blogmeister with children.

You can also upload photos to your Flickr account from right inside Flock. If only I had known this before spending US$19.95 for a plug-in for uploads from iPhoto!

4. All of your Delicious bookmarks are readily available from within Flock as well. Go once again to Flock- accounts and services and enter your username and password for Delicious under Favourites sharing. When you intend to bookmark a website you can enter and tag it locally on your computer and/or add it to your Delicious social bookmarks, either shared or not shared, whichever you prefer.

5. You can blog directly from within Flock. Again go to Flock- accounts and services and this time authenticate your blog. Then go to File- new blog post and away you go. You can drag your Flickr photos onto the blog post in either a small or larger format. Then publish right from within Flock.

If you want to quote another piece of text from a blog, highlight it, right click (Option-click if you don’t have a right mouse) and go Blog This. When you do so it indents the text, puts quote marks in, puts it in your blog post and inserts a link to the original post. Cool eh! Useful if you intend to refer to someone else’s blog post.

6. You can do a similar sort of thing with web snippets. In the bottom right hand corner of the Flock interface there is a little clipboard icon. If you click on it it opens a toolbar along the bottom into which you can drag photos or highlighted text that will stay there until you want to use then at some later date. Very useful for things you use repeatedly.Image

7. There is also an RSS reader built into Flock. Again you can import your RSS feeds from an aggregator like Bloglines by exporting in OPML format and importing into Flock. Or you can build your RSS feeds as you find them on the net. You generally know if something has an RSS feed because there is a little orange square with radio waves coming from it in the URL address line.

The idea of RSS is that you can subscribe to a large number of blogs, podcasts or wikis and see updates without having to actually visit each site individually. It is a wonderful time saver for those of us who follow a number of blogs.

To subscribe to a new RSS feed just click on the little orange icon and it will take you to the in-built RSS reader and click on SUBSCRIBE.

I think Flock is a really good alternative to Mozilla and integrates seamlessly with Flickr, Delicious, blogging and RSS. What do you think?