What I’m Learning: Tools at Schools

This is just too cool.

Tools at Schools:

“Design studio aruliden, together with Bernhardt Design, conceived Tools at Schools as an initiative to teach eighth graders the value of design as a problem-solving tool at The School at Columbia University. Forty-four eighth grade students were immersed in the entire design process, from research to ideation to 3D modeling and ultimately launch. What started as a simple effort to get involved in the community grew into a much larger realization that design has a role in the classroom. Their success was not only in their concepts, but in the awareness each student gained in the process. The result was a collaborative vision of today’s classroom – designed for kids by kids.”

(Via .)

AddALL Ebook search

A friend of mine was looking for a way to comparison shop for ebooks. This is what I came up with, and although it is bare bones it seems to work really well.

AddALL Ebook price comparison – MetaEbooks.com:

“Meta search 30+ ebook sites with one click “

From ClassroomBlogging.com – Streaming Media on a Mac

Blogging in the Classroom Streaming Media:

“Part One Streaming a webcast using Ustream.tv The following instructions ( adapted from this blog post by Alec Couros ) will guide you through the process of setting up your computer as well as streaming an audio production using Ustream or other streaming media site. Install Camtwist, Linein and Soundflower. and the Voice over the Interent Program (VOIP) Skype. All these programs are available for free on the Internet. The next step is to setup your preferences for your computer for each of the 4 applications.”

Junkyard Jumbotron (from MIT)

This is killer technology

Junkyard Jumbotron:

“The Junkyard Jumbotron lets you take a bunch of random displays and instantly stitch them together into a large, virtual display, simply by taking a photograph of them. It works with laptops, smartphones, tablets — anything that runs a web browser. It also highlights a new way of connecting a large number of heterogenous devices to each other in the field, on an ad-hoc basis.

The Junkyard Jumbotron is designed by Rick Borovoy, Ph.D. and Brian Knep at MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media.”

Screenfly — Test Your Website at Different Screen Resolutions

I found this tool today. Not much to say other than it works incredibly well.

Screenfly by QuirkTools — Test Your Website at Different Screen Resolutions

BuddyPress Courseware (Using Buddypress/WordPress as an LMS)

Hmm… I’m not sure if I would go as far to try and make WordPress into an LMS, but it looks really interesting (and easier to use than Moodle in a lot of ways).

BuddyPress Courseware User Handbook:

A Learning Management System addon for BuddyPress social network in a box

Useful Resources for Learning to Build Mac Apps | Mac.AppStorm

I have just started to learn how to build Apps. Here are some great resources and tools to make it happen.

Useful Resources for Learning to Build Mac Apps | Mac.AppStorm:

“Cocoa Dev Central: Intro to C

Before you dive into Objective-C, it’s helpful to get a solid understanding of C. Cocoa Dev Central has an awesome walkthrough that will teach you the specific areas of C that are relevant to working with Cocoa. In other words, this tutorial is specifically targeted for people looking to take their first step in learning to program Mac applications.

Apple’s Intro to Objective-C
It’s always a good idea to go straight to the source. Apple has a ton of support for both new and experienced developers and really seeks to make the entire process as easy as possible. This guide will serve as a basic introduction to Objective-C and Cocoa application frameworks. Also be sure to check out Apple’s thorough Getting Started Guides, which cover a range of topics for new developers.

Cocoa Dev Central: Learn Objective-C
Cocoa Dev Central, the same folks who wrote the intro to C above also have a super basic introduction to Objective-C. If you’re already familiar with other programming languages, this might be a good place to start.”

Backup your entire Flickr account to your hard drive

I looked around for a tool to do this for about an hour last night. This was the best way I found because it can run in the background and if it gets interrupted, it will pick up where it left off. Just open up terminal and run the script.

dan/hivelogic-flickrtouchr at master – GitHub:

“A Python script to grab all your photos from flickr and dump them into a directory, organized into folders by set name.

Original author is Colm MacCárthaigh.

Changes include tweaks to download full-size original images and improvements in handling UTF8 file and photoset names.

Run it like this:

mkdir FlickrBackupFolder

python flickrtouchr.py FlickrBackupFolder

You’ll be prompted to authorize with Flickr, and then the magic happens.”

Google+: A collaborative Document

This Google Document is pretty much everything you will ever need to know about Google+. It has been written by hundreds of people all around the world and it is quite exhaustive but easily approachable. I highly recommend it as a starter’s guide, or as a way to figure out how to get the most out of Google+

Google+ Tips and Tricks – Google Docs

edReformer: Build, Buy, or Borrow A Digital Future

I vigorously agree with this statement. The other ones on the list are good guidance as well.

edReformer: Build, Buy, or Borrow A Digital Future:

“5.Open Education Resources can be fueled by $5,000 worth of professional development. They can be implemented with $500,000, and can be scaled with $10 million. They goal is not to create super online tests, but to create innovation with assessment.”