Vialogues, States with Online School Initiatives, Culturally Situated Design Tools.  This past weekend I attended (and presented at) Teachers College Educational Technology Conference. My presentation (click here for Prezi) was about a project using mobile phones to leverage opportunities for formative assessment in a math class. Below is information about a couple of interesting projects/resources/tools.

Some folks from EdLab at Teachers College have built a really nice interface that supports asyncrhonous dialogue about videos (user uploaded or linked from YouTube).  It is a nice way to engage in commenting and idea exchanges without worrying about outside chatter that may happen on the regular comments section of YouTube. A nice feature is that you can easily attach comments to specific time codes, and during the course of playback the relevant comments become highlighted as their time stamp is crossed.

This group produces an annual report on US online schools and state supported online school initiatives, broken down by state. I haven't had a chance yet to read the whole report, but I do like how they make some of their infographics readily available.

A group at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have been doing research on tools that they have developed to connect mathematical concepts to the cultures of particular students.  The tools themselves can be a little tricky to get used to, but I really like how each subset provides the cultural information, classroom activities, and the tool itself.

It never ceases to amaze me that Google Sketchup (now on version 8) is a completely free tool. For those who have not heard of it, Sketchup is software that allows you to create 3-dimensional designs. What I like most about it is that its extremely accessible to novice users but is sophisticated enough to do some very impressive modeling.

This year, I'll be working with 7th grade math students who have been asked to come up with new designs for water bottles that use minimal material but hold a lot of volume (they are studying 3D geometry). They will use Sketchup to create several mockup designs, and then will create a physical prototype using the design they are most satisfied with.

Last year, I used Sketchup to create a model of a renovated technology center in my school, starting with nothing but the floor plan provided by the architect leading the redesign.

I found Kerkythea earlier this week when exploring different plug-ins for Sketchup.  Kerkythea is a standalone image renderer that has a tool in Skethcup that allows you to add lighting points (sun light, lighting fixtures, etc.) to create pretty amazing renderings of the relatively plain looking Sketchup drawings.  It has a bit of a learning curve, but there are some decent tutorials out there. I don't really quite know what I am doing when I use the program at this point, yet I was able to make a pretty awesome version of the photo above in a matter of minutes while following a tutorial from the Kerkythea website.