Tools for Schools - Management
From nswccWiki
Workflow Tools for Teaching and Learning
Workflow is basically “getting things done”, but of course with the least possible amount of resistance, error and reworking. A more complete definition and discussion can be found at: Wikipedia. There are a number of good tools that can be applied to describing and managing teaching and learning.
A Wiki in one file- aka a 'Story in one Chapter'
The latest offering of a well written and well designed wiki (source in one PHP file, with a separate css file, and separate PHP config file) can be found at pawfaliki-0.5.2. The whole source package is about 100kB (expanded). It would make for a good "plug-in" to a site or for the base of a HSC student project. This just goes to show that Ward Cunningham's vision is still viable.
Mindmapping - Planning
FreeMind located at Freemind's Homepage
MyMind located at Sebastian Krauss' home page a remarkable piece of software. As the saying goes: It only does one thing but does it well. MyMind constructs graphical representations of linked items- initially edited in an outline form. The graphical representation can be saved as a web image map making it very useful for constructing site maps for web sites. The image maps can be created with hotspots with attached urls. It has a relatively simple to use interface, that takes a bit of work to effectively use, but is well worth the effort.
Activity Scheduling - Planning and Managing
Gantt chart/Scheduling software is very useful in schools for just that, scheduling and resource allocation. Savvy businesses have been using these tools for years. Schools need to learn how to adapt and adopt these tools for planning and management so they can become more responsive to the needs of a dynamic organisation. The major challenge is to first transform "corporate knowledge" into "shared knowledge". The second challenge is to transform that shared knowledge into "dynamically re-configurable knowledge"- using electronic systems.
OpenPlanning’s - Sheduling Software (Gantt Charts and More) located at https://www.sharedplan.net/ ConceptDraw Project by Computer Systems Odessa allows you to “organise and manage projects with clear, attractive Gantt charts, WBS charts and MindMaps. Share your projects across Mac and Windows.”
AEC Software's FastTrack Schedule allows you to “View Project Details in Timelines, Calendars, and Graphs”. FastTrack Schedule is scriptable using AppleScript.
The freeware project GanttProject 2.0.9 is a well developed application. They have done a lot of work to make it easy to install and use on a Macintosh. They have changed the app engine and consequently there has been a considerable improvement in user interaction response.
This is really, a must have, free application for any workgroup wanting to improve their productivity. It is eminently suitable for use in schools to replace the "on the wall whiteboard calendar" and more. Using a Gantt chat application provides you with much better granularity, recursive detail, resource scheduling, sequencing... I t is also Microsoft Project document compatible and can export XML for display on a web browser.
Journaling - Work Organising
Journler is Philip Dow’s remarkable shareware product that could have been designed specially for teachers. It is extremely useful as a teacher’s daybook (and more). It’s strengths include automatic multiple organisation of files into categories- great for collecting lesson documentation, an embedded web browser and the ability to script its operation using AppleScript. For example you could have an AppleScript (written by someone) installed that can be called from Journler’s AppleScript menu, that creates a new lesson template. This could be used to organise lessons. In a high school setting where there are multiple classes taught, it can automatically categorise lesson plans into class folders, and automatically sort them into chronological order.
iGTD, implements a version of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” concept discussed at Wikipedia. This is similar to Journler but with a different emphasis.
Evaluation (Markbook) - Spreadsheets
Microsoft Excel located at http://www.microsoft.com/mac/ Excel is scriptable using AppleScript.
Downloading viewing/ listening to APodcasts(Audio) and VPodcasts(Video)
There’s a great Podcast download manager/viewer called Miro It's now at version 2.02. It can manage downloads: ie. start-stop and load-balance simultaneous down. It is open source software- with a .dmg installer for MAC OS X. It is also “limited space on disk” friendly. It can be configured to NOT touch the last 1Gb or 2Gb...etc. of your hard disk drive... You can then organise your downloads and copy them to a folder and put them on a CD-ROM for use in the classroom. Would be great for collecting Podcasts and managing them for later streaming across your Intranet. Miro also has a Guide, and you can easily set up libraries etc.... Well worth an extended look.
Streaming Audio - Recording Internet Radio
iNet Stream Archiver - Playing Internet Radio through iTunes and recording
An excellent shareware application for streaming internet radio sources is iNet Stream Archiver. In it's shareware form you can stream and/or relay internet radio casts uninterrupted for up to 30 min. Now here is the interesting part. You can listen to a stream using iTunes (while you are automatically recording several streams in the background). Of course will you have an appropriate broadband connection and you will not violate copyright. If after 30 min you just reconnect the stream it will go for as long as you wish, but you cannot choose another stream.
AOL Radio - Playing Internet Radio
AOL Radio 2.0b for Mac is a relatively small application requiring Mac OS X 10.5.2+. It's free and it is too easy to use. What does it do? It connects you to one of over 200 internet radio stations so you can listen to your favorite kind of music. It sits in the background while you work. If you are listening to a music stream and you like the current song/tune, you can hook into either iTunes or AOL Music to purchase the music. AOL Radio 2.0 b for Mac maintains its presence on the dock via an icon of the album art of the currently playing music. You will need a broadband connection. Still in beta but very promising. Yes it does have a (rudimentary) AppleScript Dictionary.
Try AOL Smooth Jazz from the Jazz Genre or Relax Trax from the Lite Sounds Genre or the New Age stream from Lite Sounds. Not your style, then try the All Metallica stream from the Metal Genre.
Be prepared fro some CBS-US advertisements and news updates.
Converting .FLV video files to iPod .mp4 format
.FLV files are everywhere on the internet- especially where the average person seems to want to post something for other people to remember them by. Most are uninteresting (I must be restrained here), but occasionally you come across a gem. iTunes and iPods do not like this format. However a shareware application called iSquint will easily convert .FLV files to .mp4 files for uploading to your iPod. The following formats are supported: .avi .dv .mpg .vob .3gp .asf .wmv .flv.
Roxio 'Crunch'
Roxio Crunch is another application that uses a very similar interface to Roxio Toast. Crunch will convert a large number of video file formats directly to iPod format. It is literally a drag, drop and click operation. it will even put the transformed file in ITune's video file folder ready to be Synced with you iPod.
Wakee, wakee- A Mac as an alarm clock
Aurora 3.3.5 from Jonas Witt is an application turning your Macintosh into a half-way decent ;) programmable alarm-clock. It can easily link functions of iTunes with an alarm clock. Vers. 4.0, that requires a payment to continue to use after 14 days, incorporates additional functionality such as linking to Elgato’s eyeTV.
With version 3.3.5... it’s freeware and still available
You can set a number of ‘events’. Your can get your computer to wake from sleep, or turn itself on and off according to settings. For example, every week day at 6.00 am you could have your Mac automatically turn on and select a random iTunes playlist, gradually increasing the volume, and then automatically switch itself off after 1 hour.
Aurora also has the ability to launch an application on a set event. If that was an AppleScript- saved as an application, almost anything is possible. For example you could wake up your favourite TV program and have the weather spoken to tell you the most appropriate clothes to wear for that day’s weather at a particular location.
Smultron - Editor
This is an excellent text editor with all of the usual text editing functions and more. It "knows about" programming languages. It can intelligently check the syntax of a large number of languages. A short list of languages it knows about are: XML, AppleScript, JavaScript, ASP-Visual Basic, C, C++, CSS, HTML, Java, PHP, Python, Ruby, SQL...
One of the most useful features of any code editor has got to be code word colouring. I never knew how useful it was until I began using Dreamweaver some years ago. Similarly when speed is a premium in scripts, Smultron can convert space sequences to tabs, and remove whitespace between last character and end of line. It can conveniently have open multiple files at once so that you can swap between them with one click.
Dreamweaver, for example, is a better IDE than Smultron for Web based page design but Smultron is free.
Cheat Sheets -the Good the Bad and the Ugly
Geek type students are all aware of "cheat sheets" for games. What is interesting is the concept. There are now available "cheat sheets" for computer maintenance purposes. For example there are sheets for: Regular Expressions, PHP, CSS, SQL Server, (World or Warcraft), ASP/VBScript, MySQL ...Check out addedbytes.com.
NetLogo 4.0.4 released
Free! NetLogo is a very souped up version of LOGO. It is cross platform (Mac and PC). It has a large and interesting library of model programs covering many curriculum areas. A chance to see how relatively simple programming can enhance student learning. It even has the ability to embed System Dynamics models. You can run the applications, or you can tinker with the applications, or you can write your own applications.
A Logo, by any other name...
ACS Logo vers 1.4f from Alan Smith is free to download and use. It is a reasonable implementation of the standard Logo with many enhancements such as generating vector graphics, Quicktime movies, speech and music. It packs quite a lot into it's 1.9 MB .dmg file. if you are into LOGO then this is well worth a look.
The medium is the massage, when the whole web site is not nearly enough...
Site Sucker? is a Macintosh application that automatically downloads Web sites from the Internet. It does this by copying the site's Web pages, images, backgrounds, movies, and other files to your local hard drive. Just enter a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), press return, and SiteSucker can download an entire Web site(from Site Sucker Home page).
Site Sucker has been around since the days of Mac OS 7. Nuf said, its free, works really well and is AppleScript-able!
Not sure about what you could do with the huge amount of files you could end up with, but it is useful. It does have some limitations like ignore embedded javascript.
Schoolhouse 2.2 - managing school work
Logan Collins’ Schoolhouse 2.2 shareware application is one of several that would be of immense value in monitoring/organising school work- especially for post primary school students and teachers. It uses the now familiar 3 column window design of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Schoolhouse 2.2 is designed to manage school assessment work and does it very well. The central objects are: daily, weekly, monthly and term views of the database it manages. Entries relate to assignments, notes and their various stages: complete, incomplete etc. Notes can be exported as RTF, Word, or plain text. URLs can be embedded as well as tables for additional formatting capabilities.
Assignments can be assigned names: priority, start and due day and comment. You can also assign partners and attach files. You can send packages of project files using Mail. And directly from Schoolhouse you can open Mail to send a query about the assignment. It will also manage displaying you progressive grades (as a percentage).
Assignments and notes are bundled into courses. Whenever information is updated a backup is made. Folders can be added and renamed, as well as smart folders that have automatic attached filter capabilities. For example a smart folder can be easily configured to automatically “acquire” any assignment that is due in the next 3 days, or based on other criteria such as the name of a partner.
This program is also a control centre for managing other applications. It does not contain an AppleScript dictionary, unfortunately. As an interesting aside this application used to be able to “Classcast” ie. send these packages of information to another copy of this application. This functionality was removed for various reasons. What it would do is allow students to publish their work, and subscribe to their work. When I first saw it, I thought that this had some interesting possibilities- but alas not in the latest shareware version. Schoolhouse 2.2 has not be updated since 2007. There is a short but well designed .pdf introductory guide.
Growling for attention
Growl 1.1.4 (soon to be updated) is an interesting application - well more of a set of components that works within the Mac OS X to provide system wide alerts and notifications. It installs in the System preferences without a restart required. I guess it is something you will either like or dislike. It can be intrusive to have a notification pop-up seemingly out of nowhere, but then my work style is very different from many. There is a lot of control over how the alerts are shown on your display and application alerts can be enabled or disabled from a Preference Pane.
However if you like to work in an accelerated time-warped environment, (some people think having your computer watch for new e-mail every five minutes is exciting) then Growl may be for you. Growls can come from events posted by any of a large number of applications that are Growl aware. As you may guess they are mainly social networking tools, and productivity tools.
And yes, it has AppleScripting capabilities, which means that the possibilities are endless. It also is able to notify remote computers across a network.
For example you could obtain an e-mail alert/notification from Mail, and then have growl activate a script to process that mail. While that may be possible with other means, Growl presents a useful, systemwide and consistent interface that is easily managed by the user. Apple could or should embed a Growl like capability in Mac OS X. It comes with an un-installer and it is also free.
And into the Abyss
Abyss Server 2.6 is a web server that has to be one of the easiest to install and use. It is cross platform (that is Mac, Win, Lin) and has a really modest foot print. It is easily configured and is comparable to Apache in its capabilities. The X1 version is free. It is fault tolerant, and will restart automatically in about 1 s. You can throttle bandwidth on a per user basis and set users and group permissions using the easy to use web page based management console. URL rewriting is supported. Most of the common scripting languages will work with it: PHP. Ruby, Python, Rebol, Perl, etc. Well worth a look as an alternative to the more conventional web servers.
A picture - always worth a thousand words
ScribbleScreen 1.4.1 is an interesting light weight application in the category of "it does one thing but does it well", allowing you to take a snapshot of the screen (or any part of it) with a single key stroke and well.., scribble on the window. It is an excellent easy to use tool for screen capture and then interactively drawing on the captured image. I have wanted an easy to use app(let) that can do this for a long time. It may not do much really, but what it does do is really valuable in an educational setting. It only has one AppleScript command with support for multiple screens. The only useful thing it lacks is the ability to save a captured screen image (window). You use the MacOS X built-in Grab application, or the Finder Screen capture command for that. Many (or all) of the available functions are available from a Context menu ("Right Click").
So near and yet so far ...
Proximity 1.5 is a free app(let) in the style of "does one thing but does it well". Proximity will run in the background checking every so many seconds looking for two events: Has a recognised Bluetooth device moved into the near field of the host Mac OS X computer? or Has a recognised bluetooth device left the near field of the host machine? Well, so... !
You have the ability to attach an AppleScript to each event. Now that opens up all kinds of possibilities. Unfortunately it is not AppleScriptable. Basically you link to an Applescript through entering a file name in a text box. Several years ago I acquired a new Bluetooth enabled phone, and a Bluetooth enabled Palm PDA. Back then Salling Clicker (now at V3.5) was the go, doing this and much more. For a modest outlay, Salling Clicker would be the better personal space manager.
It is interesting how we either whole heartedly embrace this personal kind of automation or let it lapse. I may revisit the idea now we are expected to be leading the digital education revolution (DER).
No Fink, but Frink (seriously!)
Frink is a practical calculating tool and programming language designed to make physical calculations simple, to help ensure that answers come out right, and to make a tool that's really useful in the real world. It tracks units of measure (feet, meters, kilograms, watts, etc.) through all calculations, allowing you to mix units of measure transparently, and helps you easily verify that your answers make sense. It also contains a large data file of physical quantities, freeing you from having to look them up, and freeing you to make effortless calculations without getting bogged down in the mechanics".
It may very well be computing language nirvana. I have long felt a need for a language like this one. Ask not what can it do, but what can't it do. Frink's home page is a MUST read in its entirety. You will learn something of interest.
One more Time ...
No one is more governed by timer intervals than those who work in schools. Apimac Timer Vers 6.3.0 is another of those "does one thing and does it well" applications. Apimac Timer manages on screen display of a stopwatch, a countdown timer, or an alarm clock and can display the current time, each in very big print. Apimac Timer can span time intervals of seconds to days.
During the study of science, a relatively common place task is to perform manual reading and recording of data at regular intervals usually of the order of 1 min to 10 min. Outside this range we use automatic data-loggers. The free version is limited in what it can do but is well suited to manage the interval notification for science experiments. Apimac Timer can automatically repeat countdowns, and at the end it can display a message on the screen AND can speak that message. It can also be easily programmed to provide a sub-interval "tick" notification using is a system sound. The PRO version has many more capabilities. Well worth a look.
