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Showing posts from November, 2008

Microsoft Office OneNote

If you're like me, you hate to use paper and try to conserve by using as little of it as possible. I've been using that great PDD notebook that Robin Racoma illustrated, but now I'm running out of room...if you're in the same situation, this is a great time to try out a digital notebook program. In an attempt to improve efficiency and effectiveness I've been playing around with the Microsoft Office OneNote program. I use it to take notes for meetings, phone calls, or simply do research. Some of you may have even seen the icon under the Office folder, but never had time to explore it. I've been using it since I got my new computer because it was already installed. One may say, "I use Word to do all my note taking." OneNote allows you to do more than just write text. In addition to allowing plain text, it also allows you to add graphics and images where and however you want. It gives you a free form canvas (just like my trusty PDD notebook), to

Parent Guide

Aloha käkou, Here's the document I mentioned during yesterday's staff meeting that NACOL ( North American Council for Online Learning ) created. I think a good marketing tool may be to do a customized version to give to parents of potential `Ike Hawai`i students. One question that the marketing consultant asked me was, "Besides culture and credit, why should students take your courses?" I had previously mentioned that we marketed our courses as being culture-based, which may not be a big need for our target audience in the D.O.E., and that a challenge we encounter is that not all schools give core credit for our courses, which is a need for our targeted Hawaiian learners. So besides culture and credit, why should they enroll in our online courses? I think if we can make a convincing argument, based on research, to parents that distance learning skills will be valuable and even vital for their child's future success in any endeavour, then we may be able to open up

Geotagging

A "wouldn't it be nice" idea that's been around a while is the ability to tag a map with images that are linked to more information about the site. Kelly C suggested it as a way for students to share knowledge about a cultural/historic site or the geographic area they live in with classmates. (right, no addresses!) There are now cameras and even storage media that embed latitude and longitude into images as they are shot. But you don't need fancy new toys to do this. I tried Flickr's geotagging map and it's fun and supereasy. Want to try it? Log in to Flickr http://www.flickr.com Sign in as " techedine " password " wist101 " yea, corny. Click the " You " tab then the " Your Photostream > Map " or Organize > Your Map links. Click the Satellite link in the upper right. Cool view! (you may need Google Satellite downloaded). Images along the bottom of the screen with colored dots have already been droppe