Recent Sightings

These are from my bookmarks on del.icio.us:

• Software / Technology
  • Quick-R is a help site for those using the R statistics tool instead of SPSS/SAS.
  • Hippocampus is a homework and study help site with multimedia resources and course materials.
  • Road Ready Teens is a program that includes a free driving videogame. See this article.
  • First look at Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron - the nest version of Ubuntu due out soon
  • A report on open source video editing in Linux.
  • Skype 2.0 for Linux has been released.
  • New Classroom-Friendly Mini-Notebooks from HP
  • Another great video on using and developing 3D educational worlds with Edusim in (Croquet-based) Cobalt. Here is more info on the Croquet-based Cobalt application used, and see also this tutorial for building a simple world in Croquet by Matt Schmidt.
  • A video preview of Alice 3.0, the 3D programming environment
  • Bionic Arduino - incredible course/workshop on creative uses for the Arduino microcontroller board.
  • Adobe Photoshop Express Online - an online version of the image editor. I haven't tested to see if it is any better than Picnik or other editors.
  • More info on the next version of Java (update 10) and the new java plugin. See the article: Are Applets Back?
  • OpenOffice.org and MS Excel: What's the Difference? - There are some little differences that may get you, especially the use of semicolons instead of commas for passing parameters to functions. You get a cryptic "#NAME?" error if you use commas.
  • Mahara 1.0 has been released - an open source electronic portfolio tool that integrates with Moodle
  • On the quest for better screencasts - an interesting idea to make screencasts searchable and seekable via subtitles
  • An overview of the samples that come with the Netbeans Java IDE.
  • Amberjack is a free tool for creating guided tours of one or more websites.
  • A new pdf book on the Scala programming language that runs on the java platform: Scala by Example
  • Yahoo Announces Open Search Platform - Google discontinued their API for using their search engine from 3rd party apps long ago, so this is welcome.
  • The Best Tools for Visualization
  • DJ NativeSwing: JWebBrowser, JFlashPlayer, JVLCPlayer, JHTMLEditor
• Sites / Articles
  • The call for papers for the 2008 Open Education Conference has been released. The submission deadline is May 30th.
  • Multimedia Authoring Tools: The Quest for an Educational Package
  • Video Research in Education describes a free pdf report from NSF on using video in educational research, which also was the basis for the book video research in the learning sciences.
  • Grounded and Transferable Knowledge of Complex Systems Using Computer Simulations with links to the netlogo models used
  • States’ Data Obscure How Few Finish High School
  • Celebrating Seymour (Papert) - an article by David Shaffer on Seymour Papert's legacy
  • Numbers Guy: Stanislas Dehaene and Number Sense
  • So Much for the Information Age - an interesting commentary at chronicle.com
  • Educational Technology Magazine (pdf) special issue on open education resources
  • The Truth According To Wikipedia - a video commentary on Wikipedia (via Larry Sanger)
  • Becta Emerging Technologies for Learning Report
  • A MacArthur series on Digital Young, Innovation, and the Unexpected
  • An interesting article on Places to intervene in a system
  • Multimodal Learning Through Media: What the Research Says - another positive lit review from the metiri group
  • Cognitive Phenomenology: Marriage of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science
  • Computational Thinking and Thinking About Computing - presentation with interesting examples of computing in everyday life by Jeannette Wing
  • Computer Science Enrollment is Going Down
  • From Java Platform Improvements to Better Teaching
  • Robotic drumstick keeps novices on the beat
  • The proceedings of the Tangible and Embedded Interaction Conference have been made available. See also the Symposium on Haptic Interfaces.
  • Fritzing - a physical prototyping tool