Adobe's Storytelling site

Adobe, the makers of Acrobat, Photoshop etc..
have a great section on their web site discussing digital storytelling and it's use in the classroom.
It is even in the process of collecting and will be posting shortly digital stories created by students.

The only thing to watch is that they focus on their software (some of which is quite expensive). But many of the ideas can be transfered to less expensive alternatives.

Adobe Storytelling

the misuse of the term podcasting

While reading looking at the use of podcasting in education I have noticed there is a lot of confusion as to what podcasting is. While there is a lot of good educational uses out there a lot of the site I have come across mix up or confuse podcasting with downloaded digital audio or video files. Which also reflect on of my biggest pet peeves the current practice of the high tech marketing people tossing out a new name to a new version of an old product and marketing it as a brand new creation or misusing a term.

Podcasting is a form of broadcasting, much in the same way radio or television a work. In the case of podcasting, the video, audio, or text file is broadcast directly to a computer and not to a Television or Radio. Using podcasting (Note if Apple gets it way we might not be allowed to call it that much longer) in the classroom is fundamentally no different then having them watch a Television programme or listen to a Radio broadcast in class only they happen to be able to do it on a computer and are not set to a fixed time.

Digital Audio or Video files are essentially the computer equivalent of Video tapes, DVD, and audio tapes. Using a computer to record a story, lesson or assignment and then letting students download it from home (Assuming you have your own web server) IS NOT podcasting since there is no broadcasting going on, it is a misuse of the term. When a software programme saves the podcast as a file it is the exact same thing as recording a programme off your TV with a VCR and really not podcasting either.

a Good article on what podcasting really is

Internet safety

I found the results of the 2001 survey on internet usage very shocking, I would have guessed the numbers to have been much higher. Before becoming a Teacher I worked for a short time as a web designer and from that experience I can't stress enough how true the following comment is "because those who prey on children circumvent
the safety features of the filtering software much as virus writers attempt to defeat
virus protection software."

The designers of a lot of pornographic site make their money by advertising and not the x-rated content, so they have lot of different way to trick children and adults into finding their sites.

One very simple way to trick search engines into displaying their site. Is to print lots of common search terms on their web site (Disney, Pop Groups, Movie titles, Actor/ess etc...) in the same colour as the background of their site. This way the search engines will find the site but won't be seen by the the viewer. (try searching for Disney and sex in google and you will get 3.7 million sites)

While the solution might seem to be use one of the filtering software. Filter programs work by looking for text which contains terms is has listed as inappropriate and blocks those sites. The web designers of these site has several tricks to get around this. The most common way is to not to use normal text on the site but instead create all the word and save them as an image.

you should also check out this site it tell people how to bypass filtering software. It's one of many sites online telling the determined person how to get around all the preventions measures that get put in place.