Application: VuRoom: Instant Video Collaboration for Skype

I’m not a huge user of the Skype service, although I know of schools and individuals who do. As a tool in education, this service is becoming more and more necessary. That’s why I was pleased to see the advent of VuRoom. Simply put it’s a plugin multiple party video conferencing tool for Skype. ViVu, the makers of the program, say that the quality of the video feed is high. The key features of the VuRoom are

• Multiparty Video Conferencing
• Invite Skype contacts
• Invite anyone with a browser and a telephone
• Share slides, video and desktop
• A personal ViVu folder
• Compatible with both Windows and Macs

Currently there is a 15 day free trial on offer, however there is a cost of $9.95 a month for continued use, which would mean that anyone you want to collaborate with will need to subscribe to the service as well.

Unless you’re a hardcore Skype user, and before shelling out the $10 per month look at other alternatives such as TokBox, where you can simultaneously video chat with up to 20 people for free.

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Thanks for your support this past month.  The Hub once gain topped over 500 hits, with March looking to be another good month.  Below are listed the top 10 posts that people found useful for the month of February. You’re able to now subscribe to The Teacher’s Hub via RSS, or now via the Feedburner email link.

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Today thanks to @clifmims being in my Twitter feed, I was pointed in the direction of The White House blog.  They are fielding responses to the question, "What does a 21st century education mean to you?"  I wonder what your answers will be?  Is it fairer education?  Is it technology in education?  Is it the quality of the teaching profession and the wages that should be paid?  Perhaps there is even a question of funding or equality of resources?

You can find the official post here.

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Today is World Maths Day. To find more information about it and how you can sign up, participate in a world record and do so by using technology, it’s not too late to participate. You can register at www.worldmathsday.com and find out more about how you or your students can participate.

World Maths Day was designed to encourage school and student participation in a fun and engaging online maths event.

Make sure you’re a part of it before time runs out.

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You may have noticed the Finding Dulcinea widget (scroll down) advising that it was on this day that Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a single basketball game.

On March 2, 1962, Philadelphia Warriors center Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points against the New York Knicks, setting the NBA single-game scoring record. Wilt Chamberlain was one of the most dominating forces in the National Basketball Association, “a player of Bunyanesque stature who seemed to overshadow all around him,” writes NBA.com. In the 1961-62 season, his third professional season, Chamberlain averaged a record 50.4 points a game with 25.7 rebounds a game.

In order to capitlise on this achievement in your classroom I’ve compiled a list of five maths activities (World Maths Day tomorrow) that you can use in your classroom.

• Half Court Rounding: ” Round the number at the bottom of the page. Then, click enter. If you are correct, your character will make the basket. If you are wrong, he will miss. Try to get the highest score possible in 90 seconds.”
• Math Hoops: All word problems use whole numbers but the problems range from single step addition to multistep equations. There are also problems that require students to interpret remainders. Students who answer 5 questions correctly get a chance to play some basketball.
• Using Mean, Median, Mode, and Range through Basketball: The students will be able to calculate the mean and range. Students will also be able to recognize median and mode by viewing statistics.
• Basketball Debate: explore the meaning of average (or mean) and relate these concepts to real world experiences (Author – Michael Naylor)
• Article – Math Used In Professional Basketball: “Take out the sports section and go to the pages on basketball. Look at a game with a box score. A box score will list all the players on the team and the points they scored. The box score can be put into a list to calculate mean, mode, median, and range. ”        

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A colleague of mine just sent out a reminder to all staff about the Easiteach website (http://www.easiteach.com.au). Here you can find support for your board, and a lot of pre-made lessons. Unfortunately this list hasn’t been updated since December 2008. Even so, it’s well worth a look if you use Easiteach in the classroom. Thanks Nathan for the reminder!

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Original article can be found here.

THE Education Minister, Julia Gillard, has flagged the possibility of sending in inspectors as part of a second wave of reforms to fix underperforming schools.

Speaking at the National Press Club yesterday, Ms Gillard said she would examine ways to provide the support and scrutiny necessary to drive schools to improve, which could include ”physical inspections” or ”quality audits”.

”I believe that you’ve got to have the doors open,” she said.

”Gone are the days when we could have teachers in classrooms with the door closed. I obviously want to see a debate about what more we need to do.

”This may involve external assessment and inspection of schools, and it will certainly involve strengthening school-based performance management of individual teachers.”

Ms Gillard also promised the government would introduce identification numbers for all school children, to help track the progress of individual students between different schools, school systems and states.

She said the ”unique student identifier” would allow governments to evaluate the performance of schools and teachers ”with full rigour”. It could also be used to develop a measure of the value schools add to students, which could be published on the My School website.

But the announcement drew immediate criticism from the Coalition. The Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, suggested the scheme was a national identity card by stealth.

”I think that children should have names, not numbers. And I’m concerned about any proposal that seems to commodify our kids,” he said.

But Ms Gillard said Mr Abbott was speaking before thinking.

”The reason we need the number is so as a government we don’t need the names. The number is a privacy protection.”

The opposition education spokesman, Christopher Pyne, suggested hackers could gain access to the results and use them to bully children.

The Australian Education Union federal president, Angelo Gavrielatos, said the idea raised serious issues about privacy and the ethical use of student data.

As an interim measure, Ms Gillard said she had asked the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which is responsible for the My School website, to investigate how student progress could be measured using existing national testing data.

”With the co-operation of education authorities, and without identifying individual students, it should be possible to link national testing records so that student progress can be identified from year to year once the 2010 national tests have been taken,” she said.

Ms Gillard also announced that the national curriculum, which will be released on Monday, would require the explicit teaching of grammar in every year from kindergarten to year 12.

The draft curriculum, in English, Maths, Science and History, will be available for public consultation at the website www .australiancurriculum.edu.au.

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Application: TwitCard

As Twitter becomes more and more embedded in society, new applications will continue to be developed for it. I’m not too sure about this one yet (I think it’s a little gimmicky), but thought it was appropriate to mention it as there are so many educators out there who are now using Twitter. Twit Card is website that allows the user to simply input in their Twitter ID and create an online ‘business card’ extracted from their profile.

I’m not sure of the exact potential, but I think there’s options for web page badges, or even conference name tags. Other than that, I am honestly struggling to find too many more applications for this resource.

Let me know if you’ve come up with any yourself.

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Kevin Cummins over at EduGalaxy has flagged a great table that compares the current blogging platforms submitted by Dodie, one of his readers in his forum section. The original article is here, the forum section is here and Dodie’s website is here.

You can find a link to the table here.

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