Integrate Technology Effectively
Tony and Patrick are back for another tight show! We talk about weather, an upcoming project and of course some quality talk about educational technology. Sit back, relax and enjoy and don’t forget to subscribe to us on your favorite podcasting app.
I’ve seen this news story a few times this week and thought I’d weigh in. These are articles and videos about a video horror game known as Poppy Playtime. It is developed by MOB games, you can get it on Steam and it’s pretty popular right now. The gist of the game is that you are trapped in a toy factory and the toy Poppy is hunting you. You need to solve puzzles to escape. There is tension, poorly lit rooms, eerie music and noises and, of course, jump scares. Check out the trailer below.
There’s not a lot of blood or gore and I don’t think there is any real language either, but parents.com is sounding an alarm. They are saying that it . . . is . . . scary for children.
A horror game, designed to scare the player, may be scary for children. Hmmm.
I think parents should know what games their kids are playing and decide if it is appropriate for them or not, but articles like this is plain old fear mongering. We’ve seen this before with Slenderman, Five Nights at Freddy’s and many, many more.
With a little bit of research (watching some YouTubers play the game) parents will know if it is appropriate for their kids or not.
The bottom line is do your own research and sit down and talk with your children or students about this game and see what they say. One thing I can be sure of, is that this game will not be the downfall of humanity or even the education system.
Tony and Patrick are back again! Here we talk video games, new dogs, passwords and how not to get your school smacked down by copyright claims. Check out the show notes below and as always please subscribe to us with your favorite podcasting app.
Let the poop jokes fly as everyone in your party gets dysentery and die on route to a better life in Oregon. All joking aside – this is a classic game of people seeking. Click the “power button” and play a little retro game that helped students learn the hardships and the difficulties of traveling westward in 1848.
Thanks to archive.org for hosting and keeping this gem alive and available for all to enjoy!
Tony and Patrick are back with another great episode. Learn the many names of Bumpercar Crumplezone amongst some other fantastic info as we talk and rant (a little about technology.
Welp that was quick. Not too long ago I wrote about the Choice Eliminator 2 add on for Google Forms. This Add on allows you to put limits on how many times a choice can be made and then it will eliminate that choice from the form. Think about people signing up for appointments, you only want one person at a time – this (in theory) could achieve that.
The bad news is that Choice Eliminator 2 is no longer available 😦
I am not sure the reason and the developers website doesn’t really have any info about it as well. My thought is that Choice Eliminator 2 has been replaced with Choice Eliminator Lite (also made by the same developer). So I thought I’d take a quick look on how that works and whether you can count on it.
This is pretty easy. First, open up a new Google Form (this only works in Google Form, not Docs, Sheets or Gmail). In the top right hand corner you will three dots next to your account icon, click that. A drop down menu will appear and you select Add-ons.
A new window will appear and form here you will srarch for Choice Eliminator Lite. When it comes up click on it.
After you click on it, you can read its description and scroll through its images and more. Most important of all you can click the Install button and this will make the Add-on available to all of your Google Forms. Don’t worry though, it is not active until you start using it with specific forms, so it is not going to mess up anything you’ve already made.
When you install it the first time, it will ask for permission to do some actions. Go ahead and approve those and now you are ready to start using it.
Before you start using Choice Eliminator Lite, go ahead and create your form. Here is a sample form I quickly threw together.
Just like Choice Eliminator 2 you will get a Take Note!!! box that pops up. This basically tells you to use drop down menus instead of Multiple Choice questions. More on that later.
You have very limited options here. You can either till it to Eliminate Choices or not. I imagine if one choice is selected it will disappear from the form. So, there is no way to assign a limit to each choice, for example if you wanted to allow three choices for my 4:00 meeting, then this Add-on will not work for you.
OK – now that is done, let’s test it out.
The heading says it all. Don’t just trust it is set up and working, always test it out before opening it up to the public.
To test it out I had it loaded the form link in a Chrome browser and then another in Microsoft Edge and finally another in Firefox. I wanted to test how long it would take to remove an option.
The good news is that it is pretty quick to process and remove the option. It only took a few seconds. Even if the someone took a time and another person picked that time, it would return an error for the second person and ask them to pick another time.
On the other hand, if they made the same choice within a second or two, then it is a good chance that it would allow both of those answers through. The only service I’ve ever seen that reliable limits is using the Form Ranger Add-On but that is not as easy to set up.
If you used to use Choice Eliminator 2 because you could allow certain quantities for specific questions, this cannot do that. This will let someone make one choice and that is it. For that purpose it is fine, it works well enough. For something more robust that lets you put different limits on different questions, then you need to use Form Ranger. I made two posts about it (Part 1 and Part 2). It does take a little bit to set up but it will absolutely work.
Tony and Patrick are back for another great show. We talk about snow, printers, and a bunch more. Check out the talking show notes below and as always, you can subscribe to us with your favorite podcasting app.
Tony and Patrick are back to celebrate the Bengal’s win and talk about the education job market and much more. As always you can subscribe to us using your favorite podcasting app.
I saw this article on BBC and it made me a little angry – not going to lie. The title is How hologram tech may soon replace video calls. This article is posted on the BBC a reputable news site that is pretty respected around the world. This article was published in their business section.
The tech itself is pretty impressive. A person sits or stands in front of a camera with a white back drop and their image is beamed (with nearly no lag) to a 7 foot tall rectangular box anywhere in the world that shows the person in 3D. It looks good – check out their YouTube video below.
It’s neat right? So why am I angry with this article? Well it presumes that this technology may very well replace video calls. What a load of crap (sorry for the harsh language). This technology will never make it into mainstream businesses, homes and certainly not schools.
I am perturbed because it feels like the BBC is trying to get you excited about an idea that is not feasible (at least right now). They sound more like a commercial for Portl than an actual news report. They are more wowed with what it can do as opposed to what problems can it solve.
On top of all of that this company is pretty sketchy. When you head to the Portl website (https://www.portlhologram.com) and start to poke around you see some weird things. Like a new product called the M by Portl (https://www.portlhologram.com/m). They have a very nice video you can watch below.
What looks sketchy is the “Reservation” screen. check out the screenshot below.
So, your $100 gets you a spot in line and . . . ?
But hey, this company was highlighted on a reputable news source so we should trust that they are on the up and up.
I am not saying this is vaporware. I know they made the Portl Epic (the big 7 foot tall booth). It works, it is pretty cool, but it does cost about $60,000 for the Epic and who knows how much for the M (if it ever ships or even ships with all those features). They did make it but it’ll never sell and certainly not to schools and certainly won’t be for everyone to use everyday.
These articles present this vision of the future with emerging technology today, but they don’t talk about the feasibility of it. Why does it cost so much now? What will it take for the price to come down? Who else or how many other people are working on this type of technology (not something similar)? There is no questioning, no probing, just reporting what the company says. As a person who hears a fair number of sales pitches, this article feels like that and I don’t appreciate it from my news sources.
I was super excited with Magic Leap and everyone slurped up their sales pitch without even being allowed to see or try their project. Then when they did get to try it out it failed to even come close to the hype that was generated around it. This is the same thing and I just wish that
Sorry for the rant – I am just tired of good news sources either getting duped by dubious companies or simply pushing their dubious products on their readers.
Technology in the Classroom 