Online math tutoring in Spanish

Hotmath, Inc., a San Francisco based company, is now offering online math tutorials in Spanish (Business Wire). Looks like a 3-way race between English, Spanish, and Chinese for the dominant language in the world.

Flickr for low-level EFL students

Aaron Campbell has an excellent 6-paragraph article on using "Flickr for low level EFL students". Flickr is an online photo sharing tool. Aaron points out that setting up a gallery and profile is an authentic language activity that can, unlike in a closed traditional classroom, lead to conversations across the world.

15-year-old bilingual author

Maria Vilchis, an ESL 8th grader in New Jersey, plans on becoming an author in both Spanish and English (Miguel Juarez in Tri-Town News).

Sandvox, a new web publishing tool

Sandvox is a new web publishing software tool for Macs (OS 10.4.3) \that's beta now but soon to be released. Alwin Hawkin's brief but enthuasistic review led me to download it, and, yes, it's beautiful! From the site:

Sandvox, for Mac OS X. "Dig in" and download our Beta today.

Sandvox: A powerful, playful new website creation tool, for Mac OS X (version 10.4.3 "Tiger" required). From Karelia Software — the developer of Watson®.

Instant Gratification. Sandvox makes website creation elegant, intuitive and fun. It's the Macintosh way — the way it should be: drag and drop content, watch your site take shape as you create it, and publish. Sandvox makes it easy to keep in touch via the Web with friends, family and customers.

Express Yourself. Sandvox will help you be more creative on the Web. Small business owners, show your customers your latest products and services. Authors, publish your stories. Photographers, share your libraries with the world. Families, keep your friends up to date with more than just a holiday letter.

There's More to Life than iLife. Sure, iWeb looks cool and similar to Sandvox in many ways, but it's just a toy. Can you afford to tie yourself to .mac? Not everybody wants, or needs, a .mac account — especially businesses who need their own domain name. iWeb has very limited choices for designs or pages; Sandvox will be extensible. iWeb provides no opportunity for custom HTML content when your needs demand it; Sandvox fits the bill. If iWeb isn't quite enough for you, then dig into the Sandvox.

Some of the features you can see at the website are drag-and-drop web assembly, pagelets, podcasts, video, and photo integration, and more.

Burned CDs don't last long

I thought burned CDs lasted longer, but it's likely only 2 years, possibly up to 5 years maximum. See John Blau's article in Computerworld.

The legality of taking and publishing pictures

For those interested in the legality of where you can take photos, what you can take them of, and whether you can publish them on the web, Andrew Cantor (Cyberspeak) has a good article: "New digital camera? Know how, where you can use it."

ESL student earns title of "world's best speaker"

An Israeli student earned the title of the 'world's best speaker' while competing in her second language of English.

Jan. 09 - A University of Haifa philosophy student, Anat Gelber, has earned the crown of the "world's best speaker" in her case, in English as a Second Language (ESL). She gained the title at the world rhetorical championships held in Dublin last week Gelber, 25, had previously twice gained the designation of "best ESL speaker in Europe," in 2003 and 2005. A graduate student, she had honed her oratorical skills as a member of the University of Haifa Rhetorical Society for the past five years. This debating club, set up only eight years ago, is considered one of the most successful in Israel. On the way to the title, Gelber was forced to deliver fiery speeches in English - not her native language - on such topics as the situation in Pakistan, atomic energy, the right to fertility treatments, animal rights, and illegal immigration. "In order to succeed in a competition like this," she explained, "you need not only speaking ability but also extensive knowledge and a mastery of everything that is happening in the world today."

Podcasting in the classroom

Wesley Fryer (via Stephen's Web via Miguel Guhlin who speaks of the urgency in corporating technology in the classroom) has an excellent introductory article on integrating podcasts into the classroom. He concludes,

We need to get serious about educating today’s digital natives for the digital knowledge landscape of the twenty-first century. In many ways, the traditional, “transmission-based” educational model of the past is insufficient for the needs of today’s learners and employers. Classroom podcasts can provide engaging opportunities for students to develop desirable skills as digital storytellers and cutting-edge communicators. The price is right, and the benefits are plentiful. Isn’t it time you and your students started a classroom podcast?

For language learning, podcasts are a good tool for students to practice and revise a presentation.

Diigo: social bookmarking with annotation

Diigo (via Tim Lauer) is a new social bookmarking/annotating tool.

Diigo is about "Social Annotation", a superset of social bookmarking. We believe that the social annotation service provided by Diigo can really enhance your experience for online browsing and interactions, and for information gathering and sharing.

As Tim Lauer says, diigo looks like del.icio.us except that it provides better capabilities of annotating bookmarks. This would be good for students as they do online reading and research.

50 Fun Things to do with your iPod

Kottke has a list of "50 Fun Things to do with your iPod."

Wikis in a middle school classroom

Clarence Fisher (of Remote Access), a middle school teacher, writes about how his class is "Wikifying Knowledge" about ancient history. He writes,

As we return to our study of Egypt this week, our wiki will become an active space again. Over the previous unit, as students used this tool for the first time, we learned a great deal about collecting and shaping knowledge. Students learned that they had to be active researchers, collectors, and designers of knowledge. They were interested in the fact that something written by one of their classmates could be added to, edited, and re - shaped by others. This was a new revelation for many of them. Starting to use this tool again this week, it first of all will be interesting to see if the kids still retain this understanding of using a wiki as a learning tool.

But he wonders:

But there is no original information that goes in to this space, it all comes from other spaces. So the question rises: is there any reason to use a wiki if we are using it only to collect information? Is it any different from taking regular notes on paper?

He responds affirmatively that there are some differences, differences of 24-hour accessibility, a public audience, and:

because the wiki is a space that anyone in our classroom can contribute to, it becomes much more then a single set of notes, it becomes an evolving, communal collection of our knowledge and understanding that grows in depth as our understanding does.

Using a wiki in this way also forces students to determine the importance and validity of information. Over the last unit of study, students were forced several times to confront the fact that they had posted information online that was not completely correct. They were forced to revise what they had written and re - think their understandings. Sorting, validating, and exposing overwhelming amounts of information is a skill that simply cannot be demonstrated or practiced using text that is not electronic.

I can't improve on what Clarence has already said, but I'd like to rephrase it. It is the interactions among the students and the recursive nature of re-visiting information that confronts them with contradictions between an individual's understanding and that of others, contradictions that lead them to reflect and re-construct their understanding, which in turn leads to a better understanding that is retained much longer.

It's important to realize that the teacher is a crucial element in wikis being used as more than a collection of information. As Clarence concludes,

although using a wiki to collect information can seem to be simply taking electronic notes, it can be a lot more.

JAlbum: free web photo album

JAlbum (via Education Weblog) is a photo web album generator. From the site:

This gallery software makes web albums of your digital images. JAlbum aims to be the easiest to use and most powerful tool in this category - and free!

With JAlbum, no extra software is needed to view the albums, -just your web browser. Unlike "server side" album scripts, JAlbum albums can be served from a plain web server without scripting support. You can also share your albums on CD-ROM.