Tom Barrett's Page

Hi Tom,

Apologies for the message out of the blue. I am a Google Certified Teacher, and recently got your name from Mark Wagner. I'll be in Britain in early August, and was interested in opportunities to learn more about what is happening there in the world of educational technology. I've also been told of the National College for School Leadership, which is in your part of the country, yes?

If you have time, please drop me a line; I'd welcome the chance to pick your brain a bit. You can reach me via C2.0, or by e-mail at rh(at)nextvista.org.

Thanks,
Rushton Hurley

Tom, loved your ppt on the many ways to use FLIP cameras in a school. We are sold. But, we're grappling with HOW to get the product off the camera and onto common computers.
Our computers erase and recreate student profiles with each log in. Our computer image currently doesn't have the FLIP software on it, and anything downloaded during the day is erased and the original profile is reset each night. The student's personal drives are not huge, so with all of this, what would be the best, recommended way to download FLIP movies in a manner that alllows students to edit and play with the raw material? We would like to get the video off of the cameras quickly so that other students can use the cameras, but we don't want to lose the ability to edit the projects once the students walk away from the computer.

On my personal computer, I can play with the videos and continue to work on them. What would you recommend for students?

One idea was to encourage students to save it to a large flash drive, but I can not seem to find a way to direct FLIP to save to the flash drive vs. where IT wants to save the project.

Thanks for any help!!!

Tom,

I'm happy to know that you are a member of Classroom 2.0!

I'm a school psychologist, but I also have been a part-time computer student for about 5 years. In early 2007, I worked on projects for my HCI and Ubicomp classes on large touch-screen displays. At the time, I was familiar with the work of Jeff Han, but didn't know about Microsoft's Surface, which was unveiled after the semester ended.

During the course of my research, I learned quite a bit about the history of touch-screen and table-top computing, found Bill Buxton's website, and learned about the interesting research going on at several universities around the world. My project teams didn't have time to build a multi-touch display or table at the time, but I joined NUI group to learn more about it. I later joined Classroom 2.0. It is great to see how both groups have grown.

Due to the current economic situation, I'm working full-time as a school psychologist this school year, so I haven't had much time to work on my projects. I have an HP TouchSmart that supports at least duo-touch, but I don't have access to a table.

I recently learned that a NUI-group member at the RENCI center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is involved with building a multi-touch table system for the Visualization lab at the university where I've been attending.

I'd be interested in learning more about the applications you are developing for education.

Many of the group activities and cooperative social skills games I've developed over the years for students would be greatly enhanced using table-top computing.

I've taken a couple of courses in game design, so I'm also interested in how this technology can be used for educational games.

Take care,

Lynn Marentette

Hi Tom,

With your interests in online learning I recommed you take a look at Wiziq's virtual classroom and authorstream's web based power point viewing platform.