Here’s YALLTWLT from the 2005 Open Source Business Conference. Lessig’s talk is “Clearing the Air About Open Source” and he doesn’t pull any punches. (Download the talk from IT Conversations.) If you’re interested in supporting an environment of technological innovation then you need to be aware of the issues that Lessig is talking about.
Monthly Archives: May 2005
Podcasting with Audio Hijack Pro
Hugo has found a series of podcasting tutorials published by the creators of Audio Hijack Pro, an all-around great audio tool for the Mac. Making a podcast is on my list of things to do someday, and these tutorials are just in the nick of time.
Blog on the move
I’ve been hosting The Savvy Technologist on my own server in my basement for quite a while now. (Don’t tell Comcast.) But the time has come to move to a new host with a speedier upstream Internet connection. With any luck the transition will go smoothly and no one will notice. *fingers crossed*
Easy image editing
Terri Osland, my colleague at Hopkins High School, discovered a handy application that will find a place on our one-to-one laptops next fall. ImageWell is a tiny little program, but it has a bunch of handy features:
Drag images in and out of the well, resize, crop, shape, rotate and add a watermark, border, or drop shadow. No need to launch multiple applications to add text, labels, arrows, circles and squares to your image. Add a thought cloud or talking balloon. A few simple clicks, copy, paste, and send them off to your web server instantly. At the click of a button the image is sent and a handy URL is copied to the clipboard. Just like that, it doesn’t get any easier!
The software only works on Mac OS X. It’s free, but not open source.
Introducing Creative Commons
It’s clear that some people don’t quite get Creative Commons yet. See Lawrence Lessig’s recent post about an article in Billboard magazine for proof that there’s more education to be done. (Assuming that the misunderstanding is an honest one and not motivated by blind allegiance to the RIAA.)
Creative Commons AU has produced a short animated video [link, 13.3 MB] that captures the essentials of Creative Commons licensing. Maybe you or someone you know could benefit from getting a better sense of how Creative Commons works and how it can be used to promote sharing and collaboration.
Choosing a Content Management System
Do you need a content management system (CMS) for your school or district Web site? Absolutely. In a world where Plone, Drupal, Mambo, and many other free and open source solutions exist, you would need to convince me that you shouldn’t use a CMS. It’s clear to me that individually maintained Web pages just don’t cut it anymore. By utilizing a CMS you can:
- distribute management of Web content to the persons and groups that are most responsible for it
- instantly improve your site’s design by utilizing one of the many templates that are typically provided with the CMS software
- gain immediate improvement in your site’s accessibility, usability, and standards compliance
- make your site searchable
- easily add blogging, wiki, and many other interesting features that will encourage collaboration (instant RSS!)
- improve access to information for everyone in your community
Adopting a CMS can be a daunting process. Do yourself a favor and check out the CMS Matrix and OpensourceCMS Web sites. They provide side-by-side comparisons of all of the most popular solutions and will help you get a sense of the scope of features that a CMS provides.
Anyone have any feedback on a particular solution that they’ve used? Post about your experiences (good or bad) and recommendations in the comments.
SMART goes wireless
I’ve commented several times in the past about my reservations with the SMART Technologies family of interactive whiteboards. I think they’re too expensive and too small. Most recently I posted about the GTCO SchoolPad, a bluetooth-equipped, SMART Board alternative that interfaces wirelessly with a computer and projector. The teachers who have tested the SchoolPad have really liked it, and all of them prefer it to the standard SMART Board.
Not to be outdone, SMART has announced their own wireless “slate,” the AirLiner WS100. I haven’t had a chance to see one in person because the units are backordered, but I saw a good demo of the SMART Notebook software today which can be installed anywhere in a school that has a SMART Board. The software will also be used with the AirLiner. The cost of the Airlier is very competitive at $489 for educational institutions.
I’d say that SMART has jumped back into the lead with this AirLiner product. It’s about $200 cheaper than the SchoolPad and the software seems much more powerful than the SchoolPad’s Interwrite software. Given our teachers’ reaction to the SchoolPad, I’m sure that the AirLiner would be a huge hit with them. At $489 I could imagine buying an AirLiner for almost every classroom that has a projector.
The SEAC blog
Few parent communities are more involved with their local schools than the parents of special needs students. Our Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC) has just started using a blog on our Hopkins server to communicate about upcoming workshops, seminars, camps, and other resources of interest to special needs students and their parents. Like the vast majority of blogs, the conversation is mostly one-sided, but the SEAC bloggers are an enthusiastic bunch, and I suspect that things will get more interactive soon.
This kind of blogging is a great way for a school to engage with its community. The members of the SEAC group are doing all the heavy lifting here. I merely created the blog and gave one of the members a 30-minute WordPress intro.