Resources

In America, the International Society for Technology in Education and the American Association of School Librarians have "competing" standards.

The American Association of School Librarians' Standards for the 21st Century Learner 2007 are grouped into four main categories:

The International Society for Technology in Educational Standards for Students 2007 are grouped into six broad categories:

In short, and not surprisingly, the Librarians focus on literacy and the technologists have more of an emphasis on technology. Both documents are worth reading.

Spoiler alert: the ISTE diagram is prettier, and Simon would hate both of them - but he hates everything.

+ +

If in your country the eyeTV program listings feature functions properly, read no further. Unless you really love macademic.info prose. And then you've got bigger problems, anyway.

eyeTV provides a good solution for Mac users to watch and record television on their Macs. The new version even enables streaming to other devices. Up until last year, a generous programmer, Guillaume Boudreau, provided a solution for the lack of EPG (Electronic Program Guide) support for Canadian customers. However, the solution stopped working when Zapt2It stopped making its data available.

(As an interesting side-note: many Canadians would be willing to pay for this service, but the company makes it virtually impossible to purchase the data from Canada... it is difficult to understand this business model strategy.)

In any event, necessity is the mother of invention. For Canadian users "Makemineamac" suggests this solution for Canadian users of eyeTV. It is abbreviated below:

1. Create an account at Schedules Direct ($20/year).
2. Add a new lineup to your Schedules Direct account by simply selecting the local TV provider you use.
3. Download the free, and fabulous, MacProgramGuide. Donations accepted. (And suggested by macademic.info.)

While this solution is not quite as slickly integrated as the Zap2It solution that the built-in program guide of eyeTV provides, it is a great alternative that involves only one or two additional clicks. Launch MacProgramGuide once you've created your SchedulesDirect account, find the program you'd like to record, and click the little "eyeTV" button at the bottom left of the MacProgramGuide window. Your program will be automatically added to the eyeTV recordings schedule.

Hope this helps with integrating media in your classroom.

And I swear, The Simpsons is educational.

If you have not yet subscribed to the "60-second Science" video-cast... do so now. These are great examples of how teachers can effectively use video for instruction.

I have not tried this kind of video presentation... yet. However, applications like iShowU, SnapzProX, or ScreenFlow are your likely software co-conspirators to get a project completed.

What's particularly appealing is way they integrate the Mac OS, various applications, and the iSight video of themselves speaking. The computer suddenly becomes a complete, and seamless, teaching tool. Great stuff!

Mailwash.

And we're not talking about a suggestion to improve Men's Room hygiene.

If you've ever got to remove line-breaks or those annoying E-mail arrows (">>>>>") here's a simple website for you.

Oh, and for all our sake's, please remember to wash your hands.

Morphx, an application with the Mac educational genetic code of the now defunct Kai's Power Goo, a great, free app for any Mac-using educational institution.

This application does one thing, does it well, and does it easily. It allows you to morph one picture into another.

There are a million-and-one educational applications in content areas like biology, multimedia, drama, art, language... anything. Obviously, it is particularly adept at visualizing comparisons, such as changes, contrasts, symbolism and relationships.

There are few controls, few preferences, intuitive to use, and fascinating, brilliant results. Just read the one-page help. A classic.

And the result below, an example of intelligence-to-ignoramus, handsome-to-homely... you get the idea. (Thanks to Sunit for modelling!)

.

The chart below was taken from the myfirstmac site. For all of us who are constantly getting these symbols confused, a clear chart to help us cut through the confusion (taken from a great post on Mac keyboard shortcuts):

Related to all this, my favourite program to help with keyboard shortcuts is KeyCue. Once installed, holding down the command key will bring up a window with all the possible short-cuts for (almost) all the open programs.