My friends at Inspiration have asked me about what teachers in Australia are currently doing with Kidspiration and Inspiration. They are interested in publishing a few paragraphs about what people are doing and links to their files if you want to share them. If anyone at MICTi is interested or know of someone who is drop me a line ASAP. Many thanks in advance. cheers Greg E: gregalchin@mac.com
Clippings
I am a Project Developer at a City Learning Centre in North London who is currently delivering on a Masters course called the Transformation Teachers Programme. We currently have 35 teachers on the course, who come from 10 secondary schools, 4 special school and also involves a number of National Strategy consultants. The participants have all been challenged to investigate, through classroom based action research, how teaching and learning can be transformed enabled by digital media and the use of Web 2.0.
We decided to give the staff kit comprising of a Mac Book partitioned to provide both Mac and PC environments, a digital camera and tripod and a selection of software. As approx 90% of the group had never used Macs before, there was a real sense of excitement and concern when they got the kit.
We have established individual blogs for each participant so that they can blog their journey through the project but have also set up a number of blogs to draw out the experiences of the group. Our Apple Mac Blog will seek to explain how the macs can be used creatively in the classroom - the important element here is that these teachers are all so new to the Mac that it is refreshing to see how easy they are finding the transition from PC to Mac. There is also a blog to draw out possibilities for Assessment for Learning. Both these blogs are in their infancy but we are keen to establish international links to be able to both share our experiences and benefit from other peoples ideas so please visit the blogs and add comments or posts as you feel fit.
Hello everyone, some of you may know me from around the schools etc in Western Australia or on mailing lists such as Maced.
It was suggested I join to try and also provide some technical questions and knowledge base and if your reading this and haven’t join yet I urge you to, this could be a great resource for schools around Australia and the world!
Very briefly I’m not an older person, quite young and have only worked on schools for two years, (previously 13 years of education mind you!) but I hope I can still provide some input, so mind my spelling and grammar!
That’s all for now but I hope that I can expand in the nearing future!
The Huckleberry mirror is a nifty tool for any MacBook or MacBook Pro doing the same as many educators have been doing with their iSight cameras. The MacBook screen effectively becomes a huge LCD with an Intel processor.
Consisting of an acrylic mirror and two durable plastic mounting brackets, Huckleberry for MacBook is placed above the screen to reflect the built-in camera’s field of view. Instead of filming yourself, it will now film what’s in front of you! The new Huckleberry II for MacBook Pro uses two mirrors to provide a full 180 degree change in camera direction.
Educational uses For Huckleberry:
Capture movies direct iMovie HD.
Create stop-motion/clay-mation video in iStopMotion.
Scan your media with Delicious Library.
Take pictures in Photo Booth.
Welcome to AusMacEd - this is our official launch post to the group blog.
Good luck to all AusMacEdders and may the force be with you 
As promised I’ve been working on a multi-user blog for Australian educators using Macs and iPods (and iPhones). The goal of AusMacEd is to bring our vibrant discussions about the huge potential of Apple based solutions in Australian education out onto the internet in a pro-active and web2.0 manner. So this is a personal invite to be the first to the *LIVE* launch of http://ausmaced.org.
I intend to let the Maced list know later this weekend. If you think there are any issues or ideas that need discussing related to the launch please contact me. In the meantime if you have the time and inclination please make a post and comment to get things kickstarted. As they say on Windows click to “ start”
If any of you are interested in joining a voluntary AusMacEd moderation and administration team of the website please do let me know. Recently I began a new role in the Curriculum Through ICT section of WA’s DET so I may be a little pushed for time in the next month as I get my head around the new position.
Some background. The idea of ‘AusMacEd’ for came about for these reasons:
There are some problems with the caching of pages and some non-parsing of the archives, such that some AusMacEd pages simply won’t load. My suspicion is this is related to the live archives and Wordpress’s caching technique. When I have time I will get to the root of the issue.
Meantime, thank you for your interest and check out these links of interest:
- Why Apple in Education?
- A mirror for built-in iSights to create MacBook/Pro video camera.
- MCE OptiBay Hard Drive for MacBookPro - up to 420GB HD!
- 50% of new Mac buyers are switchers
- Why are Macs becoming more popular?
- Run Windows and Mac side-by-side with Parallels
Back soon
There are many educational websites that become handy, like for writing rubrics, or doing worksheets that come in handy.
Can anyone list some!
Welcome to the internet Aus Mac Ed.
This is a test of the image upload function - this is a rough design of the AusMacEd logo.
“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” Steve Jobs 2005
