Bob Kaehms's blog

Virtual calculator

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:13:51 -0700

I found this site while doing some work for a client. This seems
to be a great alternative to requiring students to buy calculators:

Here's a scientific calculator:

Alice Teaches Programming

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:47:45 -0700

My daughter recently sent me a link to Randy Pausch's last lecture,
a well known and inspiring talk that is circulating the internet.

For those who may not have seen it yet, and don't know about Randy,
he is a wonderful educator that has been involved with Virtual Reality since the early 90s, inspiring a generation of innovation.

While I've linked to the talk below, I think a very interesting project that has been created under his guidance, and should be underscored, is the Alice project, that uses a 3D environment to teach students programming.

See www.alice.org for details.

Moodle Scaling issues and benchmarks

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 10:42:22 -0800

Recently one of the teachers that I am supporting with moodle wrote me to inform me that moodle had failed miserably during a class quiz.

She enjoys it so much that she has made it central to her classroom management. However, my initial assumptions for supporting Moodle were to use it in a asynchronous mode - mostly for posting class notes, and providing a space for students to work from home.

For those of you that want to skip this article, the general consensus is that for realtime class activity of 30-40 students,
you should consider finding a computer with at least 4 gig of memory. Moodle can be a memory hog. For the rest of you, read on.

Classroom 2.0 Lightening talk slides

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 03:00:51 -0800

I am writing this from a school 2.0 web conference, where I just gave a simple lightening talk. Literally ran in off the bus (BART), 5 minutes before the talk... ran down the street the wrong way to realize that the front door was right at the BART station.

Not sure how the talk went, but it was fun meeting so many teachers that understand the importance of collaborative learning.

One interesting new tool is a new product for realtime online collaboration that has an interesting use in the classroom... "view", spelled "vyew".... http://vyew.com/content/

Tim O'Reilly on Web 2.0 and Open Source

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:22:17 -0800

This is a very insightful interview with Tim O'Reilly
on Web 2.0 and Open Source. His insight is remarkable.

http://audio.edtechlive.com/OReilly.mp3

Solution for todays school?

... smaller class size where students can interact
more fully with adults, and not technology.

In terms of the value shift of commodity software,
his insight is that the shift is towards more valuable
databases. In essence, companies are learning to harness
our collective intelligence.

Final thoughts for teachers... have fun, and do what you have passion for. For students... find those teachers who are passionate about what they teach. Doesn't matter what it is, but you will learn more and enjoy learning, when the instructor brings a passion into the classroom.

CoSN K-12 Open Technologies

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:22:07 -0800

According to CoSN K12:

Open source software, open standards and open hardware are poised to make a profound impact on K-12 education. The convergence of web technologies and a new spirit of collaboration in the education community makes this an exciting time to get involved.

They have set up a web site to help with open source and open content. Information can be found here.

http://k12opentech.org/cosn-k-12-open-technologies

Survey Shows U.S. Teens Confident in Their Inventiveness;More Hands-On, Project-Based Learning May Be Needed

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:59:29 -0800

According to a press release distribted through the ACM,

http://web.mit.edu/invent/n-pressreleases/n-press-08index.html

"The Lemelson-MIT Invention Index found that more than half of American teens (59 percent) do not believe their high school is preparing them adequately for a career in technology and engineering. The disparity is more pronounced among some groups historically under-represented in these fields. Nearly two-thirds of African-American teens (64 percent) and teen girls (67 percent) believe they are not prepared in school for these careers.

Examples - Whirlwind Wheelchair Project

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:09:47 -0800

While this project doesn't directly mention open source, the
model of continual refinement of a project in an ongoing fashion
certainly fits the general design practices associated with
open source. This is a wonderful example.

Examples - Open Source Cars

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:05:18 -0800

I'm presently looking for examples of open source principals
applied to other projects. Here is an open source car project:

Green PCs and the TreeMark...

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:35:27 -0800

While researching those Everex Linux PCs being sold through stores
like WalMart, I found this:

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8508116370.html

A very nice article on the low power consumption of the chips used
in the PCs. The company coins a cleaver marketing metric, the
"TreeMark" benchmark.

EA donates an early version of SimCity to OLPC

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 23:51:58 -0800

There has been a lot in the news lately about the pullout of Intel
from the One Laptop Per Child project. While reading through all
the related opinions and activities, I found this little article.

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2203140/ea-donates-simcity-olpc-project

"By gifting SimCity onto each OLPC laptop, EA is providing users with an entertaining way to engage with computers as well as help develop decision-making skills while honing creativity," an EA statement said.

Sounds good to m

MentorNet For Engineering. How about for K12 Infrastructure?

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:36:03 -0800

I saw an email news item float through my email today from the ACM.

From the email:

" According to one member of the MentorNet Board of Directors, MentorNet could become the next Facebook. However, transforming a mentoring network into a true social networking platform will require significantly more resources than MentorNet currently possesses. Through the generosity of current members of the MentorNet community and continued partnership with entities such as ACM, though, the organization could realize its goal of becoming the go-to place where protégés and mentors can meet virtually to share ideas and help one another succeed in fields related to engineering and computer science."

Looking for a little inspiration?

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 09:26:23 -0800

Many teachers now use Inspiration mind mapping software.
http://www.inspiration.com/productinfo/inspiration/index.cfm

It's a wonderful tool for classroom brainstorming and outlining,
and definitely worth the money.

However, if you want to experiment with a similar tool, from
the open source world, try Freemind.
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/FreeMind_0.9.0:_The_New_Features

I tried it out briefly this morning, and found it a reasonable
solution. I particuarly liked the fact that I could point it
at a directory on my hard disk, and it would draw an initial

LINA | What is LINA? (something for the technically inclined teacher)

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 09:22:06 -0800

I saw this this morning while looking for some
open source imagery for a talk I am giving.

http://openlina.org/whatis.html

What makes this interesting is that it will allow
you to experiment with a lot of the linux environment
right on your native operating system. This might
provide a nice entry point for those who wish to
learn about linux gradually, without having to convert
their operating system of choice.

Home built interactive whiteboard

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:42:52 -0800

Found this while doing some research for a project. Very cool!

Johnny Lee's description of "Low-Cost Multi-point Interactive Whiteboards

We need more projects like this. If you know of any, send me a
link.