Kamehameha Schools Distance Learning (KSDL) Owau

As we've been developing the third course in the A`o Kumu series: Ka Hua - E-Learning for Educators, there have been many resources that we've come across and included in the course that I'll be sharing in my next couple of O wau postings. The first resource is the Speak Up survey. We included it in the course to provide participants with a "bigger picture" of what a large cross-section of students, parents, teachers and administrators are saying about three key trends: mobile learning, blended/hybrid learning and e-textbooks . This may also be a useful resource along with our KS survey when working with campuses on developing hybrid courses. It provides data on how students would like to see these key trends expand in the future and what they'd like their ultimate school to look like which are good points to consider when we are researching and deciding on delivery methods for hybrid learning resources and also for the delivery of our own courses. Here's...

I just got my Google Educator Newsletter and this archived Webinar caught my attention. Some very practical uses for classroom teachers. From using Google Docs for collaborative lesson planning with grade level colleagues, to using Google Chat to have a virtual guest lecturer in your classroom, to giving your students a formative assessment through Google forms. The assumption is that students would have access to computers and the Internet on a regular basis (not necessarily the case in all schools).

Don't you just love PowerPoint? However, based on research when you have a presentation with slides and a voice you lose 55% of your audience (referenced from Present.me ). Well, Present.me has created a product that is free ( but you have to pay if you need more than 10 minutes of recording). Present.me is a web service that lets you create effective presentations through your PowerPoint files. What makes this site unique, is it lets you add a narrative to the presentation. Once you upload your PowerPoint, you can record a narrative through your webcam and microphone as if you were presenting the slideshow. The final presentation then appears with your webcam recording on the right and slides on the left. A filmstrip view of the slides is also given on the bottom of the presentation. Click on this presentation to see a sample.

The flowchart created by blogger David Wees which can be found at his blog.

Smash Cards is a new service offering augmented reality flashcards. Smash Cards is still in a closed beta. The purpose of Smash Cards is to add value to the flashcard experience. Here's how it works; a student holds a flashcard up to a webcam and images matching the words on the flashcard. The goal is to provide students with a visual reference to aid in recall. Watch the video below to see Smash Cards in action. Something to think about for our A'o Makua program. Now that is really bringing learning to a new level.

As we had our operational planning the past two days I thought more about what resources are out there that provide training for some of the basic things to make them grab-n-go. However, when it comes to learning some of the technology program they may not always be something you can grab some knowledge and move on. So, here are a few sites that provide us with tutorials (for FREE) and were pretty engaging. Free Office 2007 Tutorials This site was very clean, web 2.0 looking and easy to use. They feature tutorials for Word Excel PowerPoint Access MS Office They have many more and all created by the Goodwill Community Foundation . To see more, I highly advise you to take a look. As we start planning, we should start to use those online tools for our brainstorming activities. Here is a new one called Spider Scrib . This does the typical mind mapping, but allows you to collect, connect, and share by adding events, location maps, and more. Here's my last little tidbit. Have you e...

I'm behind in my post about the IOC 2011 so I'm turning it into our discussion topic. I attended a couple sessions and need to return for the archives. There were separate sessions to discuss communication, field work, content delivery, and assessment. The assessment session I attended focused on Poll Anywhere (which some of us are familiar with from Dorothy's demo) and DoubleTake. Doubletake is a mobile video sharing system designed specifically for students to use with their courses. Using the DoubleTake mobile application, Students can capture, share, and watch videos from virtually anywhere using their smart phone. One of the "wow" factors for me was actually not the app itself but the way they are leveraging their existing computers on campus to process the video on the back end (they describe it on their Web site as "Supercomputer meets cell phone"). The last session of the day was an App party. Participants and presenters rounded out the day with...