Embedded Files
Possible Teacher Resources
A friend of mine once said to me "If you can get the teacher out of the classroom, why wouldn't you?". Rather a radical idea but if you stop and think about it, if you can show your students how to learn themselves, then chances are, they'll learn and they'll keep learning. How's that for a result? - Nevyn
Khan Academy is a non-profit organisation with the aim of providing a world class education to anyone, anywhere. It mainly uses youtube style video clips.
Wikieducator is an attempt to make an online text book in all sorts of subjects. There are a number of contributors in New Zealand so the New Zealand curriculum is being covered.
While it might seem less obvious, YouTube offers some great resources. There are tutorials for computer related things, video clips on historic events etc.
There has been some talk about how to teach maths on computers. I found this video clip that offers an interesting perspective:
http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_math_with_computers.html
I also got to thinking about reading. How is it taught? How can a computer aid in the learning of reading/writing?
gespeaker
This can be installed on the netbooks (see installing software). It's a text to speech program. So learners can type in a word they're having problems with and hear it or, use it for spelling. i.e. attempt to spell a word, hear how it sounds, and hopefully be able to fix their own mistakes.
phoNIX
Isn't packaged and hasn't been updated since 2008 and is acknowledged as being in an incomplete state. This could be packaged up if necessary. It has phonemes but it's use in it's current state is probably a little limited. If there is a huge demand for this sort of thing, a programming effort could be started.
For Students
Image Editing
Image editing in Linux is done with something called "GIMP" which stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. You'll find it under graphics.
What can the GIMP do?
GIMP is a really powerful piece of software. It's comparable to Adobe Photoshop. While it does lack in some areas, it's biggest advantage is that it's absolutely FREE! You could install this program on your computer at home and not have to feel guilty that you may be breaking any laws.
So how can you learn how to use this software?
Play with it. Experiment. Find out what the tools do.
Ask someone (Probably the hardest bit about it though, is figuring out the right terms. For example, if you wanted to paste a picture of yourself in front of the Eiffel Tower, you'd have to search for the term, "super impose").
Dictionaries
Why don't the netbooks have a dictionary program on it already? Because they're really hard to get right. They come in different language levels and may turn out to be more of a hindrance than a help. So, it's probably better looking for an online dictionary instead.
The one that struck me as particularly useful was wordsmyth.
Not only does it allow you to pick from 3 levels - beginner, children and advanced, but also provides a list that can be searched through.
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