Louise von Randow: Thinking ICT

Edcast and Searching

June 10th, 2007

Simon has posted the second part of Ian Jukes presentation over at his blog. Click here to have a listen to the second episode of Edcast. Thanks Simon!

I’ve enjoyed reading all the comments about the previous post of the Ministry of Education’s Microsoft Agreement, or lack thereof, in the case of Mac schools. Keep ‘em coming! You may enjoy listening to this podcast from National Radio recommended by my brother-in-law about the agreement.

I have been wondering about the idea of using Parallels on a Mac and Vista as a way to get around the licensing agreement. Are Mac schools eligible to get Vista for free from the Ministry? If so, would they then be able to get the PC version of Microsoft Office to use at school? Is this just getting too convoluted? Parallels doesn’t cost that much and there are other reasons to run it on a Mac network, such as, using MUSAC. I have Parallels installed on my machine and have been waiting to get Windows up and running (I’m still trying to decide whether to do XP or go Vista). It’ll be good being able to access both platforms.

The podcast mentioned above also covers the use of other types of search engines, including Quintura. Quintura for Kids looks really cool. They describe it as a “visual find engine”. Along those lines there is also Grokker which is worth checking out. Both are good alternatives to using Google and work by presenting the search results in “clouds” or as a “map”. Both also have the option of the listing search results in the standard kind of way.

While Google has become all encompassing, I don’t believe that it serves our younger students well as a search engine because it’s particularly text heavy. In the past I have used Yahooligans quite successfully because it’s visually more interesting to students and the content is more tailored their needs/reading levels. You have to watch out though because it does have the latest “cool” stuff on there e.g. movies, games, and the search tool is somewhat secondary.

And in a last, unrelated thought, webcams are a mixed blessing. It may feel as though winter is upon us but the lovely folks at the Metservice aren’t able to share any beautiful snowy pictures of the ski-fields just yet. Poor Cardrona and Whakapapa look a bit… forlorn. Let’s pray for a cold snap before the school holidays!

Entry Filed under: Edcast, Education, Grumbles, Podcasting