School Tech News Archive

People power can come down mighty hard on Microsoft

(Friday 28th September 2007)
"Imagine if, in the early part of last century, you had to have a special Remington reader to read anything produced by a Remington typewriter. It would not have been tolerated. Nor should we tolerate it now." Are software developers exploiting antiquated copyright laws? (From the Canberra Times)

ITSC 2007

(Thursday 27th September 2007)
Register online now for the Innovative Technology Schools Conference, a unique professional development opportunity for educators from around the Asia-Pacific region, to be held in Sydney from 10th to 14th December 2007.

Office:Mac 2008 Preview

(Thursday 20th September 2007)
Take a pre-release tour of Microsoft's Mac Office 2008, due for release early next year.

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.0 (Mac)

(Wednesday 19th September 2007)
The long awaited update to CCC has been released by Mike Bombich. Includes an improved Scheduler for server backups. (Mac OSX 10.4 required.)

ArtRage 2.5 (Mac/Win)

(Tuesday 18th September 2007)
Paint with oils, sketch with pencils, sprinkle glitter, and more. Or paint with gold leaf, silver foil, and other metallic colors. Load photos as tracing images to help students recreate them as paintings. Starter Edition is a free download.

Comic Life for Windows (beta)

(Monday 17th September 2007)
Bring a new dimension to classroom literacy studies with this popular software, previously only available for OSX.

Otford Cycling for 1 to 1

(Monday 10th September 2007)
In July 2008, a group of teachers and parents from Otford are planning to cycle 1500km along the Gunbarrel Highway, to raise funds to provide a laptop for every student in their school.

Southern Stars 2007

(Friday 7th September 2007)
Lots of photos from last week's very successful event.

Convert Tube

(Friday 7th September 2007)
Download videos from YouTube and convert to mpg, mov, mp4, etc.

New iPods Available

(Thursday 6th September 2007)
Check out the new iPod Touch, similar to the iPhone. With it's built-in wi-fi and web browser, how relevant will our "filtered" school networks be in a couple of years time???

Commonwealth Investing In Our Schools Program Information

(Thursday 6th September 2007)
Funding for the most recent Investing in Our Schools program grants has been approved. This site provides details of all school projects that have received funding.

What's New in iWeb '08

(Wednesday 5th September 2007)
iWeb '08 includes a number of new features that will be welcomed by schools for use in developing their school intranets, most notably the facility to retrospectively change themes mid-project, and the ability to paginate photo albums. (You can pickup a free copy of the full iLife '08 at the Apple Connected Classroom presentation in Sydney on September 20th).

Out of Otford

(Wednesday 5th September 2007)
Out of Otford? Only for a little while! Peter is back at the Otford PS chalkface now, but his blog tells some of the story of his recent travels around the world, checking out how schools are using technology to support the curriculum in other countries.