About CForum

January 6, 2006

Location:
Utah Education Network – U of U Campus
Milton Bennion Hall – MBH 202 (Map)

UEN/USOE announcements

    • Laura Hunter: There will be new content coming to eMedia:
      • Write Now: short writing prompts
      • Full length videos from PBS. (Note: these cannot be segmented.)
    • Rick Cline: Pioneer Library Anniversary Contest: Ask a 10 year old
      Students, Library Patrons, Educators and the General public can enter their essay (50 words or less) on how Pioneer Library has benefited them. Top entry for each Pioneer Library partner (Public Library, K-12 Schools and Higher Ed.) will receive a Pioneer calculator and then there will be a random drawing of the winners for an iPod Nano.
    • Rick Gaisford: He is working on getting free licenses of Inspiration for the training labs around the state.
    • Rick Gaisford: Shared the UEN's Veterans' Oral History Resources web page: http://www.uen.org/veterans/
      Every second Monday of the month veterans share their story. Rick is taping the lecture and UEN is posting the audio files. KUED also hosts a Utah World War II Stories web site.
    • Kathy Webb: Gave an update on the Ed Tech funding issue.
      Here is the Public Education Software - Narrative. Kathy also shared that they will probably establish a legislative Ed Tech Task Force this year during the session. 
      USOE's Ed Tech is presenting to the State School Board meeting next Thursday and they are giving them away copies of Thomas L. Friedman's book, The World is Flat. Anything you can do to do outreach to your legislators would be good.

UCET announcements - Kelly Dumont

Local teacher’s super web site and tips - Robert Bentley

EBSCO - What's New? - Brian Paytas

    • Student Research Center: visually more appealing for the students.

      EBSCO Student Research

      Database sources: Magazines, Newspapers, Reference Works and Encyclopedias, Biographies, Radio & TV News Transcripts, State/Province Reports, Primary Source Documents, Photos, Maps and Flags

      • Options to limit your search results to Full Text, Published Date, Lexile Reading Level, and Lexile Reading Score
      • Save search results by using the ADD button to the right of the article.
      • EBSCOHost is still available, but they are getting great feedback on this new interface.

     

    • Kids Search

      Kids Search

      Search by Topics: Animals, Arts & Music, Geography, Health, In the News, Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies and Sports

    • Business Searching Interface

      Business Source

      The Business Searching Interface (BSI) provides an easy way to both browse and search for country economic data, company profiles, industry information and market research.

    • EBSCO Support Site
      • If you have a question on any EBSCO product you can get information here.
      • Online Tutorials and trainings are available.

Lunch

Camtasia and Captivate tutorials - Tim Stack

    Tim and Jared have created video tutorials on the basic skills from their classes. http://www.uensd.org/web_acad/video/index.html

    Tim demonstrated Camtasia, the software program that records his screen and his voice and creates a video. It creates an avi file that he can edit and publish.

    Camtasia Studio: http://www.techsmith.com/

    Negatives: PC only, you can't edit the audio very well.

    Tim also demonstrated Captivate - An Adobe (formerly Macromedia) product. This product also lets you quickly create interactive simulations and software demonstrations.

    Macromedia Captivate

    The video can be saved as a Flash (SWF) file and everything is editable. Or you can save it as Standalone file (Windows executable), or Microsoft Word handouts.

    Recording Modes: Demonstration, Training Simulation and Assessemnt Simulation (The movie stops in the training and Assessment modes until user does something.)

    You can record the audio (for each screen) after you capture them.

    Negatives: This is PC only also and sometimes it fails to capture a screen.

    You can take a UEN course to learn how to use Captivate. The course is called Create Online Video Tutorials offered February 23 & 24 and April 3 & 10.

    Here are some of Jordan School District's tutorials: http://t4.jordan.k12.ut.us/

Favorite Tools and Toys - Ross Rogers

    Software

    SnagIt - screen capture

    Macromedia Captivate - see above

    Picasa 2 - free software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC.

    Photo Story 3 for Windows
    Create slideshows using your digital photos. With a single click, you can touch-up, crop, or rotate pictures.

    Skype - Internet phone calls (You can buy Skype minutes for conference calls. Only 1 cent a minute.)

    Audacity - free audio editor and recorder

    Google Earth

    PDA / Cell Phones

    Treo 700 which runs on Windows Mobile 5.0

    Cell Phones are great in the classroom

    iPod

    The videos that have been added to eMedia recently can be played on the video iPods.

    You can buy a gadget to record audio onto your iPod. Many educational applications there.

    iTunes

    Podcasting

    Digital Camera

    Obvious educational uses in the classroom.

    Kodak EasyShare-one has two lenses - one for telephoto and one normal.

    FujiFilm's newest camera can play games.

    GPS

    The FLY Pentop Computer is a thick ballpoint pen, with a brain. Using built-in software, it reads, and reacts to, certain things you write with the pen.

Blogs in education - Jared Covili

Next C-Forum Meeting
Friday, February 3, 2006 - Tooele School District

Utah State Office of Education - USOE     Utah Education Network - UEN     Utah Coalition for Educational Technology - UCET

For questions or comments contact us.