The K-12 Open Source Classroom

Bringing Open Source (Free and Free) into the Classroom

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Android Podcasts

Jul 25

Posted by admin in OSS Applications, open source | 1 Comment

Android

CNet's Android Atlas Podcast Provides Good Information and Discussion

Now that I will finally join the Android, I need to catch up on all the goings on.  I recently starting to listen to CNet’s Android Atlas podcast (http://www.cnet.com/8301-19736_1-20011416-251.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=AndroidAtlas). I always listen to Buzz Out Loud, starting my day off with them each morning in the office.  I started to listen to Android Atlas now with Jason Howell.  Howell also runs the Buzz Out Loud podcast, so a familiar voice.

I look forward to hearing more (and will probably go to back episodes) from this podcast and will search for others.  Gotta get up to speed!  If you use an Android phone, I would definitely encourage you to download, listen from the web, or listen from your phone to this podcast.  Lots of good info on apps, upgrades, hardware, and more.

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Google Doc’s PDF to Editable Text OCR

Jun 29

Posted by admin in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Google OCR

Google Doc's OCR Scans .pdfs!

Yes, this is one of those huge things for educators.  Ever find a .pdf document you wanted to edit, but did not either want to recreate the document or could not recreate it?  Well, Google Docs now allows you to upload any document and its OCR (optical character recognition) will turn the image into editable text.  Pretty cool!

So how well does it work?  As well as you could hope.  It obviously will not translate the formatting, so if you try to convert a document with tables and all types of formatting, you will lose all that and just receive a great big paragraph with text.  So that would bum some out, but if you have a multi-paged .pdf, and all you want is to digitize the text, upload and you’re set!  Or maybe you found some documents, whether important personally or professionally, simply scan them, save as a .pdf, and upload.

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Google’s New Music Service..

Jun 5

Posted by admin in OSS Applications | No Comments

Google Music

Google Soon To Release iTunes Competitor?

Drumroll please…in the style of Microsoft’s naming conventions, Google will name their new music offering…wait for it…Google Music!  That, apparently, is the buzz this week.  Google will provide an alternative to iTunes, with all indication they will name it Google Music.  I could care less about the name, just as long as we will see some new, feature-rich competitor to iTunes.  I LOATHE iTunes.  Unfortunately, we still need to use it for the iPod Touch.  Yes, I know we can put on Linux OSs onto it, but at this point I decided not to.  I will be very interested to see what Google does with this.  We already see how much of an impact Android has made on the mobile phone market (September will be here soon for me!), so this, hopefully, can provide a strong competitor to iTunes.

Some things left unanswered:

  • how will Google Music integrate with Android and other Linux OSs
  • how will we in education utilize Google Music, as I assume Google Videos and Google Shows will soon follow

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image from: dotcomconfessions.com

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Google Apps for Education

May 12

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Google For Education

Google Apps For Education, Not Open Source, But an Increasingly Popular Option

Apparently the entire state of Oregon just recently announced that their entire state will switch to Google Apps for Education for their K-12 schools.  While not forcing schools to do this, they are publicizing potential cost savings at $1.5 million, so how long do you think the Oregon taxpayers will let schools use their existing solutions.  I would venture to say those cost estimates are low.  In our district alone, with renewing licenses, additional storage space, and more, I estimate we spend $25,000 a year on maintaining Exchange, for now.  I say for now, as we begin to move to Google Apps for Education as well.  We expect to deploy this fall, but we already have it set up on our domain.  We needed some solution for student email, and while we do not have immediate plans for Google to take over our Exchange, I do think eventually it will come.

Very interesting product though, or line of products.  Google Apps gives a district email, online collaborative details, chat, and webpages that a school system would not need to host.  Saves time and money there.  Definitely nice to provide those 21st Century tools that allows for 21st Century skill work, such as collaboration.  While I do not quite see Google’s reasoning for giving it free to schools, schools definitely continue to jump on board.  Here in NC, I know of about 5 K-12 districts fully deployed and many more in the process or contemplating it.  NC State University also recently announced they would move their email to Google.  Interesting.

Makes me wonder how long it will take for school systems to consider other free and open source options.  Think of the savings of an entire state who moves to Linux.  How about no more $50.00 per license of MS Office for moving to Open Office.  With the next two years being the very difficult years for public education, I would not be surprised, and would be very happy to see this happen.

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Ubuntu 10.04–First Thoughts

May 9

Posted by admin in OSS Applications, hardware, open source | No Comments

My Desktop

My Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop, and Yes, I 'Switched' to the Purple Background...

After being at the marathon last weekend, I spent today upgrading the home computers to Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx.  The largest buzz from the upgrade came from the buttons (close, minimize, maximize) moving from the top, right of a window to the top, left of a window.  As you can see in my screenshot, I already used gconf-editor to move them on back to their right place.  I do like them rounded, except Google Chrome, which kept their default buttons.  I guess that’s a little sad, that a major upgrade (10.04 becomes the default Long Term Supported version) and all we can say is it looks like the Ubuntu team (or Mark Shuttleworth) wants to move Ubuntu more and more to Mac.

In years past, I dreaded ‘upgrade day’ for my Dell Inspiron E1705.  Every time, I would lose networking capabilities, at least at first.  That darn Broadcom card.  With some script magic, eventually I would get it, but I would usually spend at least a day working on it.  This time, I thought I would try it first, and low and behold–worked perfectly.  So I did not doubt my Dell XPS 400 desktop would go as smoothly.  NOT!  As it upgraded, I noticed some message about Grub, but I clicked through it without reading carefully.  It rebooted, and sure enough, it froze at boot with a Grub error.  Argh!  So, I grabbed a Live CD and eventually reinstalled Grub.  No problems.  Then on next boot, I made it through Grub, and it forced a disk check, which took FOUR HOURS.  Argh part deux.  Finally, I made it in, and now no networking.  At least wireless communication.  About a year ago I put a Linksys Wireless N card in this as we move this desktop around at times.  I can ‘see’ the wireless networks, but I just cannot connect to them.  So right now, I draped a nice, blue network cable across the floor.  Argh, the return!  Hopefully, that will be resolved soon.

Social Networks

Where My Social Networks (Facebook, Google Chat, AIM, etc) Would Be, If I Was Social...

So overall, Ubuntu 10.04, being a LTS, does not seem too different from Karmic.  Some icon changes, I like the blue and green icons for .docs and .xlss.  Ubuntu really seems to be forcing social networking on us, with the panel for social networking.  You can bring in all your Google Chat, Facebook, and others into this one panel.  I guess that’s ok, but I do not really use that much.  I do like what they want to do with their online storage, Ubuntu One.  Similar to Dropbox, but for Ubuntu.  Basic 2GB of storage free, but they continue to work on integrate Gnome features, such as Tomboy Notes, to the syncing.  Definitely does help when working across different computers.  Their Ubuntu One Store now sells music, with the premise of wanting to sync those tunes across machines as well.

Definitely some good features.  We never see anything earth shattering with an LTS release, so I think they probably will introduce some new things with 10.10.  Only a few months left…

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