Tech Jawa > Technology

A few of you may know that I am pursuing a career in Secondary Education-History.  As I have been assigned multiple field placements (Harper Woods High, Madison High and Algonquin Middle School) I have noticed that if students aren’t engaged in the lesson, they are prone to falling asleep (how many of us actually kept our eyes open during history while we were in school?).  So as a new teacher entering the field, I think that a great way to really make history relevant to the students is through TECHNOLOGY.  What a concept, right?

Here are a few links that I thought would be great to place into my lessons.  Let me know what you think.

http://www.mrnussbaum.com/amflash2.htm

http://www.pbs.org/ktca/liberty/

http://www.civilwarinteractive.com/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/world_war2/

Believe it or not many of the people in my education courses don’t want to integrate technology in their classroom.  For instance, I brought up the idea of creating a classroom blog, where I would post homework on a daily basis.  Students would be welcome to post questions on the blog, and parents could have easy access to what their students were doing in class.  Half of the people in my class thought it was a horrible idea, because the students would “probably type in ‘text’ talk” and that such a blog would promote poor writing skills.  Yet shouldn’t students be exposed to blogging?  Wouldn’t that be a great tool to have after graduation?

I understand that everything has it’s pro’s and con’s, but I really think that our youth needs as much exposure to technology in order to compete globally.

Well this is exactly what we were trying to get donations for. I’ve sold some personal property as well, and was able to front some of the cash to purchase the card itself. It should be here, in all it’s glory, on Friday this week, or Monday next week!

We still need donations, so please feel free to keep them coming (go to the “Live” page to find the donate button). We still need more hardware and cabling that is just too expensive for our staff members right now.

Once all is said and done, the setup should follow this flowchat exactly. (Click for a larger view)

Once we continue collecting donations, we should be able to purchase the other remaining components and start streaming our HD consoles and even capturing some moments in HD for posting on sites like YouTube.

I will be sure to photo/video document the unboxing and installation of the Intensity Pro card, and let you all know how it works.

There has been some doubt about it working on my X58 architecture board, but some forum goers have said it shouldn’t be an issue. Blackmagic’s official take on it is “not supported” but the retailer I purchased from allows a 30 day grace period for money-back returns. If this setup doesn’t work, there are other (slightly more expensive) solutions we will strive for. I’m fairly certain this should go off without a hitch  though.

Just came across this handy extension for Firefox and Google Chrome. It takes the advertisements next to your gmail messages and replaces them with any info (social network accounts, location, and job) it can find about the email address your message is from.

It does a good job in the tests I put it through… It’s just a quick install, then you give Rapportive access to your gmail account and it’s off and running indexing content on your contacts. Surely you wouldn’t need this for your most frequent contacts, but when you get other emails from people you’re no so “in touch” with, it helps you become more in touch with them, by listing social networks and other information about them.

At the very LEAST, it’s much more pleasing to the eyes than the gaudy ads that Google serves up, but at the best, it could be an extremely useful communication tool. I can see this being an essential addon for people who do business with others over email. It will allow you to get a quick “at-a-glance” perspective of people, and allow you to quickly and easily check out their social networking accounts.

Pros:

• Quick Install and Authentication.
• Extremely useful information for business partners.

Cons:

• Only supports Chrome/Firefox
• Slow in finding information on a new contact

Other Thoughts:
It’s in it’s early stages, and already a GREAT addon, keep an eye on this, and install it you like the idea at all, you wont regret it.

Overall: Rating:

You can download and install Rapprotive here.