Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

Et tu, Brute? Ancient Rome comes to Google Earth

Read Write Web has some exciting information about a new mashup between Google Earth and theUniversity of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH).

Google Earth will feature a new layer, 'Ancient Rome 3D,' which is based on the IATH's 'Rome Reborn' model and which displays a 3D model of the city as it existed in 320 AD.

Overall, the Rome Reborn project recreated detailed models of over 6,700 buildings and monuments in the city, including some, like the Coliseum, which also feature highly detailed interiors. The new layer also adds a lot of new placemarks with historical information geared towards students.

Google For Educators announced a curriculum competition in conjunction with the release of the new Ancient Rome layer. Educators who create the most interesting curricula based around the Ancient Rome 3D layer will receive new Mac laptops, classroom projectors, and a digital camera.

Related Resources

• Juicy Geography
• National Geographic Society > My Wonderful World
• Geography 2.0: Google Maps Mash Up Mania
• Yahoo! Map Mixer

Microsoft to Embrace OpenID

TechCrunch is reporting that Microsoft (finally!) has seen the light and will begin rolling out the integration of OpenID into their network of cloud services. Sayeth the DasCrunch:

"Login standard OpenID has gotten a huge boost today from Microsoft, as the company has announced that users will soon be able to login to any OpenID site using their Windows Live IDs.

With over 400 million Windows Live accounts (many of which see frequent use on the Live’s Mail and Messenger services), the announcement is a massive win for OpenID. And Microsoft isn’t just supporting OpenID - the announcement goes as far as to call it the de facto login standard."

In other news, Yahoo! has announced that next week it will launch their open platform application. According to VentureBeat, the Yahoo! Application Platform (Y!AP) will "make Yahoo! more useful by giving third-party applications a way to plug into and link Yahoo services and user data."

Related Resources

• Azure: Microsoft's New Cloud Service
• Microsoft & Google to Join Open Content Movement
• Open Publishing: Oprah, Suze & Penguin
• On the Web, Even the Most Secretive Companies Eventually Embrace Openness

Mashup Edu: Research on K-12 New Media Literacy

I am pleased to announce that the book chapter that I co-authored with Dr. Mercedes Fisher, "Pedagogical Mashup: Gen Y, Social Media, and Digital Learning Styles," has officially been accepted for publication in the Handbook of Research on New Media Literacy at the K-12 Level: Issues and Challenges, to be published by IGI Global later this year.

Dr. Fisher and I wish to thank the co-editor of the book, Professor Subramaniam at the National Institute of Education at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, for his hard work and direction during the writing and peer-review process.

In addition, we appreciate all the members of the peer-review committee for their feedback, suggestions and collaboration on this chapter. It's been a wonderful experience to work with members of the international education technology/media community.

We've saved the links for all the resources and references cited in the book chapter over on the social bookmarking tool delicious, which you can find here: http://del.icio.us/mashup.edu

Related Publications by Mercedes Fisher & Derek E. Baird

• Making mLearning Work: Gen Y, Learning & Mobile Technologies
• Social Software & Online Learning Design
• Social Media & Digital Learning Styles

Google Docs, Education & Student Privacy

Online writing tools like Google Docs, Adobe Buzzword & Zoho are amazing free tools that are used by many educators. But who owns your online documents? Are there any laws or issues that you need to be aware of before using these tools in your classroom?

According to a post on the Open Sky Media Blog, "while your personal computer may not care about your tastes in fiction, the web service you choose to write and/or host your documents just might."

For example, did you know that the Google Docs TOS state that "“you give Google a worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through the Service." Moreover, Google Docs further stipulate that "students must be 13 or over to use Google Docs."

Why?

Because Google, like every other corporation that is providing an online service to students, must comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The law outlines how and what types of personal information may be collected and when and how to seek verifiable consent (written permission) from a parent or guardian. The law, despite it's quirks, is designed to protect the privacy of minors.

To be clear, Google is doing exactly what they are required by law to do. As tween site Imbee found out, failure to comply with COPPA can cost a company millions of dollars in legal bills and fines. If you do decide to use Google Docs in your classroom, be sure to obtain written permission from your students parent or guardian. Failure to do so could put your school and career in jeopardy.

To be clear, I'm not trying to knock Google Docs. It's a great product. My intent is to make sure that educators are aware of the issues. It's important that you, as the teacher, know all the associated issues and legal requirements associated with using this tool before using it in your classroom.

Related Resources

• Imbee.com Settles COPPA Violation
• Google Docs in Elementary Schools
• Collaborative Writing via Skype & Google Docs
• Making Across the Country Feel Like Across the Classroom

Get Lively with Google Labs

Look out SecondLife, Zwinky and Yahoo! Avatar Towns, here comes Lively, a new service from Google Labs.

Lively is a virtual world that allows you to create an avatar and then use it to chat and hang out in 3D virtual rooms that can be embedded anywhere on the Web.

You can also, just like the popular Yahoo! Avatars, get clothing, create and decorate your own virtual room and hang out with friends. Avatars and virtual worlds are a huge business, especially among the tween set who, not only love to create avatars, but also love to spend their parents real cash on virtual goods.

Right now, most of the items at Lively are free, but I'm sure that product placement and fee-based items will be showing up rather quickly.

This seems like a natural extension of the Google advertising machine, so it will be interesting to see what impact Lively has in the land of digital self representation (avatars) and if Google is able to topple the popular virtual worlds like created by Linden Labs and Yahoo!.

Related Resources

• GirlSense Joins the IAC Tweendom
• Tweens: A very tough crowd
• TechCrunch on Virtual Goods
• Moshi Monsters: Virtual World
• YPulse > Tweens

Adobe, Acrobat & Buzzword

Today Adobe launched Acrobat.com a new suite of web-based services that includes, Buzzword, an online word processor that will--especially in the education 2.0 community--go head-to-head with Google Docs.

According to the Acrobat blog the new Acrobat Suite is comprised of three distinctive applications:

• Adobe Buzzword for creating and reviewing documents together.
• Adobe ConnectNow for holding full-fledged online web conferences/video conferencing with up to three people.
• The Acrobat.com organizer for sharing 5GB of files with others online, including the ability to convert 5 documents to PDF and embed your documents in blogs, wikis or other web pages.

Buzzword is compatible with MS Word and also allows you to export your document as a RTF, PDF or MS Word file. It also includes many features to allow for easy web-based collaboration such as real time editing, version control and a slick interface that allows you to easily insert and scale pictures in a Buzzword document.

One of the issues we faced on Yahoo! For Teachers was creating a rich text editor that was easy-to-use, compatible with MS Word and easily allowed users to insert and manipulate images in a document. I spent some time this afternoon playing around with Buzzword and I have to say that I'm pretty impressed with what Adobe has put together.

One feature that I didn't see (and if anyone finds it, let me know) was a Creative Commons plug-in (similar to the one in MS Office) that automatically inserts a CC license into a Buzzword document. I feel that the inclusion of this type of plug-in would provide teachers with an opportunity to discuss copyright and digital literacy issues with their students. I also believe that a CC plug-in for Buzzword would provide a boost to the open educational resources (OER) movement.

As education continues to move towards the web, these types of collaborative tools will be increasingly important. It's clear that Adobe has spent a lot of thought into this product and the result is an impressive suite of free tools that will surely be popular within the education community. This type of virtual collaborative environment also appeals to the digital sensibilities of Gen Y students.

The Acrobat suite of tools are very impressive and just may well provide the first real peek into the 21st Century classroom.Side out: Adobe.

Game on.

Related Resources

• Acrobat Blog
• Google Apps
• Mash Up EDU: A New Digital Pedagogy

Google Launches Geo Education

Today, as part of their celebration of National Teacher Day, Google for Educators launched the GeoEducation micro site where you learn how to use Google Earth, Google Sky, Google Maps and Google Sketch Up in your classroom.

They also announced that they will hold the next session of  Google Teacher Academy at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California on June 25th.

Related Resources

• Yahoo! Teachers Doc > Landforms Vocabulary
• LearnHub > Communities > Geography
• LearnHub > Flickr + GeotaggingEDU

Atomic Learning: Google Docs Tutorials

Atomic Learning has just released a series of new tutorials on Google Docs. The series is free and available until 25 May, 2008.

Google Docs is a free Web-based word processing program that allows users to keep documents up-to-date and allows selected individuals to update files from their personal computers. Google Docs have gained popularity among educators and corporations for its convenience.

Personally, I find Google Docs a little awkward to use. Sure it makes sharing and collaboration easier, but I find it lacking in some of the more robust features found in Microsoft Word.

Microsoft has recently launched a new product called Office Live, which allows you to easily share files and collaborate with your colleagues via the web.

I've been using Office Live Beta for about a month, and although it needs some tweaks, I've really enjoyed being able to use the programs I already know, use and depend on (Word, Excel, Publisher). I'll post more on Office Live in the next couple days.

Related Links

• Atomic Learning
• Atomic Learning > Google Docs
• Video: Google Docs in Plain English
  
• Office Live
• Microsoft Word Tutorials

AdSense, NonSense

So, here's the scoop.

I signed up for a Google AdSense account so i could put ads on my RSS feed. I didn't add any AdSense code to TypePad, but for some strange reason, I now have ads on my blog.

I contacted Google and they are stumped. I put in a SOS into the fine folks at TypePad and I'm sure they will have an answer for me when they get back from the holiday break.

So there you go. The scoop.

Mashup Edu: A New Digital Pedagogy

Dr. Mercedes Fisher and I just finished a new book chapter titled "Pedagogical Mashup: Social Media, Gen Y and Digital Learning Styles" that will be published early next year. I'll have more details in a future post, but in the meantime I wanted to share the bounty of resources we culled together for the article.

We've saved the links for all the resources and references cited in the book chapter over on the social bookmarking tool del.icio.us, which you can find here: http://del.icio.us/mashup.edu

If you have any questions, or know of a great Education 2.0 resource that we should include, let us know!

Related Articles by Mercedes Fisher & Derek E. Baird

• Making mLearning Work: Gen Y, Learning & Mobile Technologies
• Social Software & Online Learning Design
• Social Media & Digital Learning Styles

TutorLinker: Connecting Knowledge

Don Hazelwood, one of my Flickr peeps and teacher friends, recently shared a link with me via the social bookmarking site del.icio.us for a company called TutorLinker.

TutorLinker is an interesting concept that connects tutee's and tutors via a zip code Google Maps mash-up. The results are displayed on the map and tutee's can easily locate a tutor to teach them just about anything. The tutors have a profile page that displays their hourly rate and areas of expertise.

Right now the service is currently available in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Don't fret, TutorLinker has plans to launch soon in Western Europe. I'm hopeful that the U.K. and Ireland are on the "to be launched" road map soon.

What a fantastic idea.

As far as I can tell, this is a win-win situation. Students in need of some extra help can easily find subject matter experts, and the tutors (many who are professional educators) are able to connect with students who need a little extra help. And the teachers are able to be paid for their expertise. Brilliant!

TeacherTube: Video Community for Teachers

TeacherTube, the latest service joining the Web 2.0 education boom, is burning up the edu 'sphere with rave reviews. As the name suggests, this new service is YouTube for teachers. TeacherTube also has community features via TeacherTube groups. I think this is a brilliant idea, and frankly, one that educators have been wanting for a long time.

However, moving forward, I think it will be interesting to see how well TeacherTube is able to scale and keeping up with growth. They will also face the same challenges that all other educational providers have in terms of site blocking by school administrators, user abuse, as well as the 100 pound copyright gorilla.

The TeacherTube community has created, uploaded and shared a lot of great content. For example, you can find anything from (via site or tag search) professional development tutorials on PBWiki, to a Google Earth Tour of the life of Anne Frank and her family.

Another great feature is the ability to attach support materials (handouts, worksheets, teacher notes) right on the same page as the video for other teachers to use.

TeacherTube also "plays nice" with other forms of social media by providing you with a link and/or HTML snippet so you can easily embed a TeacherTube video directly into your class website, wiki, or blog.

Fantastic!

Related Resources

• Teacher Tube Tutorial > Uploading Video
• YouTube > K-12 Group
• Jumpcut > Yahoo! Teachers Group
• Points of Viewing Children's Thinking
• YouTube in MyClass

Maps + Wiki: Wikimapedia

Wikimapedia is a Google Maps/wiki mash-up that your students can use to explore geographic features like the Great Salt Lake, illustrate where the Battle of Gettysburg was fought, get a birds eye view of the Great Pyramids in Giza, look down into an active shield volcano in Hawaii, or give students learning French a virtual tour of the City of Lights!

You can even embed a Wikimapedia snapshot into your own class blog or website. It's easy peasy! Thanks to Noel Jenkins for the heads up on this fantastic resource!

Teaching Toolbox: del.icio.us

This is a fantastic tutorial on using del.icio.us in the classroom! Social bookmarking tools like del.icio.us or MyWeb 2 are a great and easy way to find those hidden threads of community knowledge. Give it a try--soon you'll wonder how you lived on the web with out it!

Video originally uploaded on YouTube by jutecht on March 8, 2006.

Geography 2.0: Google Maps Mashup Mania

WikiMapia is a "wiki meets Google Maps" mashup intended to be used as a digital geographic encyclopedia reference tool. In its current incarnation, WikiMapia is a little rough around the edges, but keep this site on your list of potential teaching tools.

Here's how WikiMapia works: Key landmarks, such as Rainbow Arch in Utah, the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy, or the Pyramid of the Moon in Mexico, are identified on the map. Each landmark has a Flickr type notation (this is the wiki part) which anyone can edit or contribute information related to that landmark.

Placeopedia is an open source mashup of Google Maps and Wikipedia. Using this site, students can connect existing Wikipedia articles with their corresponding location on the map, and then make use of the community generated database to "browse, use, or syndicate the whole lot."


Web Resources

• Digital Geography
• Google Maps
• National Geographic Society > My Wonderful World
• GeoYacking Powered by YackPack