What’s on my eduPod?

I have been experimenting with an iPod Touch since buying one second-hand over Easter. Not for music, videos or podcasts particularly — more for education apps. Many thanks to @morethanmaths and @ianinsheffield who have individually collected loads of appropriate software and shared via delicious and their blogs. I have added a few gained through word of mouth and also on advice from the nice folk at RM.

So what’s on my eduPod? Well here goes:

• MissSpell
• iReviseLite
• Sudoku
• Units
• Math Tutor lite
• Convert units
• ePuzzle
• Falling1
• iFormulas
• Frac Factory
• Hangman lite
• Math drills lite
• Heads Tails
• Freddy Fraction
• Guess my age
• Coin toss
• Basic Math
• Arithemetick
• 24lite
• Algebra1
• Algebra
• Impossible
• Accelastudy
• Wikipanion
• VocabLab LE
• Flashcards
• Wikipedia
• TCT lite
• Stars
• French LE
• Spanish LE
• Italian LE
• Pi Cubed lite
• Planets
• Sketchbook X
• Stars
• Open Culture
• Number line
• Molecules
• MathMagic LE
• Google Earth
• History Maps
• Formulas Free
• Math Tasks
• Expedition
• Civ Rev Lite
• Brain tutor
• America lite
• Louvre
• Free Grammar
• ArtLite
• Animoto
• TanZen Lite
• Audiobooks
• Blanks
• PopMath Lite
• Jazz Sculptor
• Storykit
• Whiteboard
• Stanza
• Classics
• Evernote
• Reeder
• Strip Design
• Comic Touch
• ClearTune
• Early reader
• Drum kit lite
• Cooliris
• Freesaurus
• Dictionary
• MiniPiano
• MotherTED
• PocketCAS
• GCSE Maths
• Indicommons
• Mental Maths
• Pop Art
• RAG – Random Activity Generator
• Soundlevel
• Shakes and Spell Free

There are a lot of fun, ‘game’ apps amongst this lot but the most amazing thing is that despite there being a lot of math based games, my two kids have fought to get their hands on the iPod. The motivation for my older kid to get higher scores than her sister is brilliant! Yes, novelty plays a big factor (the same would be true for a maths or literacy game on the Nintendo Wii) but it’s also amazing to watch them take to the simplicity and interactivity of the iPod.. almost naturally. I’m not sure of class sets to do ‘serious’  learning; but maybe as an extra class tool (like a dictionary or atlas) he eduPod certainly may have it’s place. By the way, all but a few apps were totally free – the most I paid for an app was 59p. A big plus includes the free updates, the wifi web browsing and oh yeah, you can play audio and video on it too.

Latest Ubuntu OS for edu netbooks

I have  been playing with different OSes for a Samsung NC10 netbook for a while now to see if there really is an optimum for this scale and format.  I blogged before (here on this site) on this and found the Win XP OS more than adequate and familiar to most despite Canonical/Ubuntu’s special netbook remix.  The latest development is the overhaul of the Ubuntu OS itself, so I installed the FREE full version of Lucid Lynx rather than even try a netbookized flavour. So I have used the Ubuntu 10.4 beta for the past two weeks as my main laptop, and it’s outstandingly brilliant!

Yes, I know the geeks out there always love new Linux releases. This one is different, even if doesn’t achieve world OS dominance and possibly even world peace! Why? Because at last it looks good, it’s easy to use and install and provides a refreshing alternative to Windows. It may not be as flashy as Win 7 or OSX but provides a few fancy screen effects of it’s own.

My preoccupation is for netbooks as educational tools (not textbook replacements, just a resource that can be accessed and used as easily as a dictionary or atlas). So a netbook OS must be reliable and fast booting, user-friendly and familiar, easy to fault find and install familiar apps or alternatives and most import of all: provide Internet tools.

Ubuntu 10.4 has a great looking new interface; gone are the brown hues of the Human desktop to be replaced by grey/black gradients rather like elements of Mac Snow Leopard. As you can see in this screenshot, Open Office 3.2 is part of the install and looks simple and great even on a 10 inch screen.

Firefox browser is also part of the package and I found the wi-fi almost an instant connection. Lots of other pre-installed apps are easy to add to via the Applications | Ubuntu Software Centre tool. Chromium (aka Google Chrome), Skype and the Photoshop alternative digiKam are merely clicks from use. The 75 specialist educational tools (and pre-configured educational desktop) can also be installed directly and without restarts from this toolset.

 

Installing Adobe Air to utilise Tweetdeck provided a little bit of a challenge; online advice said to use Terminal and paste a bit of code. I wanted to avoid this as it could be off-putting for newbies to Ubuntu.  The easy solution was to use BBC iPlayer’s Air installer then go to the Tweetdeck page and pow! Worked straight away.  Any other cons? Maybe the battery life isn’t as optimised as under Win XP… my usual 8 hours is reduced to 4.

If you really want the speed and ease of Ubuntu but the look and feel of Win XP there is even a desktop environment that mimics that but probably infringes a few copyrights!

Everything works… and fast. And it’s FREE.

Tubeway resume graphic

Inspired by Doug Belshaw’s attempt to represent his CV as an underground tube map and some other examples of this graphical exercise here and here – above is my second attempt! My first one looked a bit like a spider’s web on LSD… I tried to hard to relate the node points to geographical references. For this one I just went with a simple spiral. One thing I did come to realise during the fun of making this map is the continuity in things; skills keep developing and major cross-roads in life are simple ‘station’ changes – not so unrelated after all.

Feel inspired to have a go? Have a look at NY or Paris metro and contemplate on Cezanne’s quote: “We live in a rainbow of chaos”… don’t forget to share your results.

Whatsitallabout…. Alfeeee

This is my first entry as I set up my Blog.
Why do I Blog? The reasons for doing this relate to my career – as a tutor, I have lots of (welcome) holidays at the end of half and full terms. Students tend to carry on with coursework during these holidays and I direct them to my web space. However, I have come to realise that, unless I give them my phone number, they can’t keep current with advice or latest info. I intend to attempt to set up an RSS feed to a podcast to do this. I haven’t done it before but it can’t be that hard can it?