Educational Technology

I’ve been thinking a ton about educational technology (to be fair, this is pretty much a constant). Educational technology is different from consumer technology. This leads to interesting practices, beliefs, and practices.

I had an interesting discussion with one of the smartest people I know (my wonderful wife). The discussion revolved around how much teachers develop materials and skills. Technology is now one of those skills. Whereas when we were trained as teachers, we learned to create materials that weren’t technology related, those same skills/ideas are now necessary around technology use.

Open Source

Logseq

Logseq is an open-source, privacy-first, knowledge base. It works on Markdown, which is what I normally write in. (Markdown is plain text that leverages a couple of special characters to create stylized text). I first installed Logseq a couple months ago. However, I had issues with it syncing correctly across devices. Syncing across devices is crucial for me. However, there was an update, so I took a couple of minutes and tried the sync again. It now works. Syncing is handled through iCloud, so nothing extra is needed. iCloud is encrypted, so the data stays with me. Plus, since everything is written in Markdown, the data can be moved from one place to another without loss. No proprietary formats to worry about.

The thing that attracted me about Logseq is the Journaling feature. Essentially, Logseq has a built-in journal feature where a daily entry is automatically created. This makes it super easy to do a daily journal.

There are lots of other features that I haven’t explored yet. Flashcards are another built-in feature (I don’t really have a current use case for Flashcards though). The other concept noted is Personal Knowledge Management (PMK). PMK is defined as a way of “collecting information that a person uses to gather, classify, store, search, retrieve and share knowledge in their daily activities” It is easy to link things together.

Currently, I use Joplin for collecting thoughts, writing blog posts (like this one), and keeping track of things. Joplin has been a favorite of mine for a while. Joplin also utilizes Markdown. If you are looking for a comparison, Evernote is a good comparison. I actually switched from Evernote to Joplin when Evernote began charging for syncing to devices. I’m actually much happier with Joplin than I was with Evernote. Plus, if Joplin stops being developed, I don’t have to worry about losing anything.

So, currently, I think that I’ll try using both of these with specific purpose. Logseq will be a daily journal. Joplin will continue to be my thought collector.

Wick Editor

  • The Wick Editor is a free, open-source tool for creating games, animations, and everything in-between!

I’ve played around a bit with Wick Editor and it seems very easy to use. I’d love to have a kid start playing around with it.

MOOSE

We have started the process for creating out module.
Our driving question is:

How can I improve the impact my community makes on the environment?

Currently, we’re working on creating the Product that the students will design.

Students may want to utilize one of the following to communicate their learnings with the community.

  • Presentation
  • PSA
  • Video
  • App (Code.org, Scratch, Swift, etc)
  • Model
  • Infographic
  • Create website

I did some work on the site to learn how the site works, and the work got lost.

I’m a bit frustrated by the MOOSE process. I’ll continue on.

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