I recently wrote about Mapbuilder.net. Andrew Bidochko’s great web tool that makes it very easy to create a Google or Yahoo map. I noticed this morning that he has added a new batch geocoding and map creation tool to the site. He has enabled a feature that allows you to upload a comma delimited text file of addresses that are then geocoded and plotted on a map. The example noted here is a map I created of schools within my school district, Portland Public Schools. After the initial batch process, I then went in and changed the map markers to denote the different types of schools in the system. Blue indicates elementary schools, yellow middle schools and red denotes high schools. The Mapbuilder.net interface also makes it very easy to add description information to a marker including hypertext and graphics.

Mapbuilder.net is a very impressive tool and a wonderful example of a web tool that has immediate application in an educational setting.

Technorati Tags: google maps, Map Builder

Gizmodo has a story about a “video” stamp issues by The Netherlands. The stamp uses a technology called lenticular printing. The printing company web site describes the the process:

The material is made up of tiny ridges or lenses (hence the name “lenticular” printing). We take raw images and process them through a computer algorithm, which matches the lens surface of the lenticular material. When the two work together it enables the image to be replayed back to you.

I saw some examples of this week at school. Several students gave away Valentine cards that utilized this technology. Kind of reminds me of the animated newspapers in the Harry Potter movies…

Technorati Tags: lenticular, stamps

Amazon PDX Linky: is a Firefox Greasemonkey script, based on the LibraryLookup tool by Jon Udell. It adds two links to a book page from Amazon based on the ISBN. One link looks up the book at the Multnomah County Library and the other looks up the book at Portland’s Powells Bookstore. Powells has several locations in Portland and once at their site you can find new and used copies based on store location. Kind of nice when you simply don’t want to wait for it to be shipped.

Technorati Tags: Amazon, Firefox, greasemonkey, Multcolib, PDX Linky

Outsourcing Your IT 2.0:

Tom Hoffman discusses the recent announcement of “Gmail for your domain.” Tom makes some good points about why this might look attractive to some school districts, if not their IT departments. He also points out another issue that I was getting at. The abysmal user experience on most school district systems.

He is concerned about adwords and such and so am I. It would be nice if Google would allow a district to use the Adword technology to push educational related links based on the content of the mail. For example when reading an email that mentions your term paper topic, the sidebar would not be full of ads, but rather links to resources. Well we can wish right… I mean if they can get rid of these images in the Chinese version of Google, they can certainly make sure the links that show up in a kids mail message are appropriate.

Technorati Tags: Gmail, Tom Hoffman

This morning I visited the National Center for Education Statistics‘ Build a Table page. This is a web tool that allows you to build a table of data from various reports and download it in tab delimited or Excel format. (This is a very nice feature and I wish that the student information system that my school district purchased had this basic functionality… but that’s for another post.)

I used the tool to create a listing of schools within my school district. I then dumped the data into Batchgeocoder and created a KML file that displays the location of each Portland school in Google Earth along with the phone number and street address. Am wondering if there is a KML to Google Maps conversion tool out there. Would like to be able to display this information in Google Maps off of a link on my school web site. Parents and staff are sometimes looking for the location of various schools and programs and this would be a nice feature to add to our site.

portlandschools.kmz

Technorati Tags: Google Earth, National Center for Education Statistics

Big mail on campus -

San José City College (SJCC) has embarked on a technology improvement program, and for the first time will be offering student email accounts. That’s where we come in. We’re testing a new service with the school by hosting Gmail accounts with SJCC domain addresses (like student@jaguars.sjcc.edu), plus admin tools for efficient account management. Massive storage and features that tame the most unruly inboxes, like powerful mail search, conversation view for messages, and a fast interface, make Gmail very handy for students. Together, we’re pleased to provide this channel for better communications and a stronger community for all 10,000 SJCC students.

Technorati Tags: gmail

Reinvention Chapter 2—”I Quit”:

Will posts about his decision to leave his school district position and strike out into the Web 2.0 world. One bit of advice though, I think I’d tell my wife first before mentioning it to Steve Dembo, Jon Pederson, Tom Hoffman and 1000 other folks…

Good luck Will…

Technorati Tags: Rubber Chicken, Will Richarson