I am appreciating BeyondPod (podcatcher/RSS reader for Android) even more now that I'm trying to find something equivalent and also free on iOS (for iPod/iPhone).  I'd be thrilled to get your recommendation. I want an app that will provide offline access to the text, images, and audio of all blog posts (including text only posts with no media) to which I subscribe using RSS.  As I research more, this app seems to be neither an offline RSS reader (no audio for most of those) nor a podcatcher (posts without an audio/video attachment do not show up) but a combination of both.  BeyondPod does exactly that.  (I've personally paid for the app because it was a good podcatcher for me, but the free version did all that too.)

I have what I thought was a great idea to enrich New York City walking tours organized by a history teacher at my school. Students are asked to prep for these historical tours and, for some of them, have the responsibility to teach about a site on the tour. In the past, paper visual aids have not worked that well as they are either to large to carry around the streets of NYC or to small to be seen by everyone in the group. Also, some students might want peers to listen or watch a small clip of audio or video as part of on-site presentation.  Smartphones and the iPod touch seem like the perfect, highly portable, and pretty ubiquitous devices (for our older high-school students) allowing consumption of this information while standing at a site. A blog with a public RSS feed seems like an easy way for students to publish and distribute their presentation.

As students will be using their own personal device for this, I intend to find and recommend free apps for Android, iOS (iPod/iPhone), and Blackberry since these are the platforms most students will have, and I don't want to require students to buy anything if I can avoid that.  (For the few students who don't have one of these devices, pairing up will be fine.)  

So, what offline RSS reader/podcatcher for iOS or Blackberry do you recommend?

During a recent presentation to parents at my school by Dr. boyd, she highlighted the fact that the default privacy of socializing for many teens is now pubilc due to online social networks being a major way to socialize. For many adults now and most adults when we were kids, the default for communicate was private or at least semi-private.  When socializing without online networking tools, you have to actively work to communicate to a really large group of people (by speaking louder than anyone in the room for example). Dr. boyd pointed out that young people mostly want to socialize with their actual friends and real-life acquaintances.  (By friends, I don't mean the definition used by social networks.) A Kid's' intention is rarely to share everything with the world.  However, the social networking tools that have given kids the chance to hang out with friends (despite over-scheduling and offline safety concerns that restrict hanging out in person) don't work like face-to-face conversations. While it is possible to communicate somewhat privately on sites like Facebook, it actually takes work to make those conversations private.

While reading the Education Week article "Science Shared on Online Communities", this text gave me an idea:

While researching an exhibit on the theory of relativity, Mr. Friedman reviewed professional and amateur websites on the subject. “Some of the amateur sites were terrifically good; they’d invented better analogies for some concepts than the professionals, … but I also came across sites that looked just as good, with animation and graphics, but that were completely wrong,” he said.

Mistakes or bad science online can stay up for years and get top search billing, he noted.

“Science is self-correcting; it can take a few years or a few centuries, but we tend to correct our mistakes,” Mr. Friedman said. “Will that eventually happen with the Internet? I don’t know. We don’t yet have a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for things on the Internet.”

A variety of grade book choices in Google Apps EDU Marketplace now exist. Maybe this is a solution to the loss of InteGrade after our switch to Whipple Hill SIS? The change to Whipple Hill as been great overall, but some teachers are still looking for a better electronic grade book solution.  The one provided by the WH SIS is many steps back from InteGrade, which we used to license when we used Pearson's SASIxp Student Information System (SIS) because that is how teachers submitted term grades and narrative comments.  Teachers who wanted an electronic grade book to track day-to-day work then had easy access to use those features if desired.

Since electronic grade books are not required at D-E, most teachers who want to use them have higher than median expectations for features and the interface.  Some who used InteGrade in the past have reluctantly gone back to just a personally created spreadsheet because we don't have better choices to offer as an institution.

Maybe one of the Google Apps Marketplace options might be a good fit. Some free include LearnBoost, Engrade, and ThinkWave Gradebook. Does anyone reading this have any experience to add for any of them? (Also, I haven't looked into their business models to understand why they are free so any input on that will be appreciated too.)

In addition to the standard grade calculation options, I'd like to see the ability for teachers to share assessment grades and feedback to individual students at the teacher's discretion. The integration with our Google Apps for Education domain would hopefully mitigate the complication of students needing to create individual login accounts and provide a Single Sign On feature.

P.S. In Whipple Hill's defense regarding the Podium grade book (offered in WH's SIS product), there is potential once more development is focused on that aspect of the SIS. The fact that posted assignments can be automatically added to the grade book today with no more work than clicking a box or two is nice.  Also, the potential for teachers to use the grade book as a way to share individual feedback on student work is great for those teachers who want that.  (This is not a universal teacher desire.)  However, seemingly small things like the inability to turn of the running, numeric, cumulative average has resulted in leaving that feature off for our entire school. Also, after having used the grade book myself for a year and a half, I can see other issues that stand in a teacher's way. Time may be the solution for this as the company does continue to evolve their overall product and listen to user feedback.

As part of the Future of Education series, Steve Hargadon recently conducted a one-hour interview with Alfie Kohn on December 16, 2010.

Some of the interesting points Mr. Kohn raised include:

• Standardized tests do not assess real learning and actually get in the way of teachers making classrooms into what they sh ould be.
• Homework is generally inappropriate.
• Good teaching and good parenting is hard work.  Both should be a collaboration between children and adults. Relinquishing some control as a teacher or parent is more difficult than authoritarian methods.
• Current teacher preparation needs more emphasis on pedagogy versus content.

On his Blue Skunk Blog, Doug Johnson predicted the following technologies will be around in five years:

• Social networking tools and bookmarking sites 
• Course management software
• E-mail
• Blogs and wikis
• Word processing spreasheets, presentation and drawing programs
• Online productivity tools
• Digital cameras, still and video - perhaps merged - and editing software
• Portable computing devices (netbooks, laptops, tablets, smartphones)

Hmm, 2016...

I'm not sure about course management systems (CMS). While they will not be gone then, they might be on their way out in their current form. I could see CMS being replaced by social networking tools, wikis, document collaboration systems (e.g. Google Docs) or all three depending on a teacher's needs. Traditional CMS seem much like  traditional classrooms that are teacher-centered. If education continues to evolve toward more student-centered pedagogy than teachers will need tools to facilitate students' creation and publication of content instead of a place to just post homework and teacher supplied resources.

If social networking tools, wikis, and doc collaboration systems advance to more easily integrate with student information systems for easy student roster and section management then there seems to be little or no need for a traditional CMS. There will always be a need for teachers to distribute information to students, but that could be handled in the collaborative tool alongside student created work. It might be a great way to model for students too.

Image Source

Google Lit Trips are a neat way to use the Google Earth application (free from Google here) to enhance the study of literature. While I've seen references to Google Lit Trips for a couple of years, I had not taken a detailed look at any myself or tried to create one until recently.  With interest increasing among some teachers at my school, it has become a priority for me to learn more about the technical details.  Therefore, I went a web searching and pinged my PLN to get started.  I'm certainly not even close to an expert on this, but I do know how to create a Google Lit Trip now.  Here are resources I used to get started: