Randa Siegle, Technology Coordinator at Target Range Public School in Missoula, has been named Montana’s Outstanding Technology using Educator of the Year. Randa, who has been fascinated with technology ever since she was a student in Brady, Montana, learning to use a manual typewriter, now teaches students and other teachers to use today’s technologies: digital cameras, scanners, and computers connected to the Internet.
Randa began her teaching career as a business education teacher in Kremlin-Gidford on the Hi-Line. Ten years ago, she was hired at Target Range to teach keyboarding on IBM typewriters. The next year, the typewriters were replaced by a network of computers. At that point, Randa started networking with other teachers who had similar positions and sharing experiences. This allowed everyone involved to add to their knowledge base about computers.
"I learned that you can’t be afraid to try. You have to sit down and teach yourself and not expect to be spoon-fed," Siegle stated.
Today, Randa coordinates technology activities in one of the states most technology-enriched schools. All of the classrooms are wired to the Internet. The school, which has an enrollment of a little less than 500 students, houses two computer labs and has an inventory of over 100 computers. She teaches computer literacy classes to students in grades K-8; provides inservice training for staff and administration; and instructs adult education classes in various software applications.
Target Range’s home page, which was designed by Siegle, offers a variety of information, including more than 100 photos of western Montana through the years. That address is http://target.k12.mt.us/trhome.htm While this site contains information for Target Range students and their families, it also provides virtual field trips to Montana for students in other parts of the country who can’t visit our state.
Randa’s work has had far reaching effects for both students and teachers not only in Montana, but also throughout the Northwest, and probably across the country. Congratulations, Randa on being recognized for your hard work!
Recommended Reading from the Office of Educational Technology
Linda Roberts, Director of the Office of Educational Technology and adviser to the Secretary of Education, gave attendees of TELED numbers to reflect upon during her keynote presentation, October 30th in New Orleans, and an update on technology initiatives at the national level. "Eight out of ten schools in the United States have access to the Internet, but that does not mean that teachers currently have the skills and the knowledge to integrate emerging technologies into the curriculum." One of the major concerns in education today is that teachers are not being properly trained to use technology and integrate it into their curriculum. Another concern is that we do not have enough documentation on the impact of using computers as instructional tools to continue justifying the expenditure on equipment. This concern was voiced in "Technology Counts," Education Week, November 5, 1997, Vol. 17, Issue10.
Major sources for statistical data, the National Center for Educational Statistics and Quality Education Data, report that over 90% of the K-12 schools have computers. The installed base is evenly distributed between Windows, Macintosh, and older computers that are either Apples or DOS-based. For more information on current educational statistics, visit the following sites:
National Center for Educational Statistics
www.nces.org
Quality Education Data
www.qeddata.com
The National Education Plan, Getting America's Students ready for the 21st Century: Meeting the Technology Literacy Challenge outlines the vision for the future, the four pillars for implementing technology effectively in schools, and a plan of action. The four pillars of this plan are:
- Modern computers and learning devices will be available for every student
- Educational software will be an integral part of the curriculum
- Classrooms will be connected to one another and the outside world
- Teachers will be ready to use and teach with technology
For the complete plan, call 1-800-USA-LEARN.
In order to insure that this plan becomes a reality, the President has included $75 million for teacher training in the FY 1999 budget. To accomplish this integration of technology into our schools, technology was highlighted in three of the nine new initiatives that were introduced this year. These three include: Preparing tomorrow's teachers to use technology; Increasing community access to technology; and Learning online, any time, any where. For the latest information about these initiatives, visit www.ed.gov/Technology
The last recommended publication is the Educator's Guide to Evaluating the Use of Technology in Schools and Classrooms. To obtain a copy, email edpubs@inet.ed.gov or visit www.ed.gov/pubs/edpubs.html Happy reading ! !
Most of us are accustomed to and downright expect our computers to make sounds these days. Gone are the times when our machines made the occasional "system beep" to prompt us or to alert us to an error. Now we can hear full surround-sound effects emanating from our desktops as we surf the web or do our word processing.
The path into multimedia has created almost as many sound file formats as we have graphics file formats. Each has its advantages and disadvantages and in this column I would like to clear the static, as it were, and look at some of the more popular and useful types of sounds that we can listen to and create on our own.
Wiggley Grooves to Zeroes and Ones
Ever since Thomas Edison invented the first sound recording device, until the advent of the digital world, sound was recorded using the analog method. The first of these devices used a vibrating needle, or stylus, to cut a groove into a soft material, the groove being "analogous" to the shape of the original sound. Analog sound has also been recorded using an optical method on motion picture film and on wire or tape using magnetics. The primary disadvantages to analog methods is that the media used can easily be damaged and imperfections in the playback are common, such as pops from a record or hiss from tape.
Once computers became available, and less expensive, the world of digital sound was born. While sound still starts as an analog signal, it is converted into digital data using a DAC, which is an analog to digital/digital to analog converter, a piece of hardware embedded into the chips of the computer’s sound card. A small understanding of the conversion process will go a long way to improving the quality of sounds that you might make on your own computer.
The Conversion Process
As an analog sound plays, it appears like waves rolling in from the ocean, rising and falling with the amplitude of the original sound, each wave having its own height depending on the loudness of the sound. The frequency at which these waves approach us is also variable and represents the pitch of the sound. The challenge for the computer is to convert these continuous waves into digital data, that is, zeroes and ones. It does this by looking at the sound wave for an instant and recording what it sees as a piece of numerical data. The rate at which it looks at and records the sound image is referred to as the "sample rate" and can be from 11,000 times a second (11kHz) to 44,000 times a second (44 kHz). Other sample rates are also used.
The more often the computer samples the sound, the more accurate a "picture" it will get of the original. As you might guess, going from analog to digital is a "lossy" operation, as some of the original data is lost because it is not sampled, however, the idea is that the human ear cannot detect the missing data if the sample rate is high enough.
One more factor that can affect the quality of the digitized sound is the sample depth, which can be 8-, 16-, 24-, or 32-bit. As the computer samples the sound, it needs to record a number that represents what it heard at that instant. The bit size determines the range of possible numbers that the computer could record: with 8-bit there is a possibility of 256 numbers and with 16-bit there are 65,536. The higher the bit depth, the better quality sound that is produced.
Sound File Sizes
Just like in anything else, sound quality has a price, and when storing sound files this price is paid in hard drive space. If you record at audio CD quality (44kHz, 16-bit, stereo) you will consume your storage space at the rate of about 10 megabytes per minute. Even with the falling prices of hard drives these days, that still adds up to one big file if you let the recording roll for more than just a few minutes.
Cutting the sample rate to 22 kHz will reduce the resultant file size by half. However, the quality of the sound will be reduced as well, heard primarily as a loss of high and low frequencies. Switching from stereo to mono will reduce the file size by half again, a reasonable option when recording sounds such as voice.
Sound File Formats
Once we have the analog sound converted to digital it needs to be saved, just like any other computer file. The format, or file type, in which the sound is saved depends both on the capabilities of the software you are using and the intended use of the file. If the sound is to be used as a system beep on your computer you would use a different format than if the sound is to be delivered as streaming audio on the Internet.
As mentioned earlier, there are many formats available and I will make no attempt to cover all of them. What I would like to look at here are several of the everyday sound file types that you are likely to encounter in your classroom.
Software for Creating Sounds
AIFF The is the Apple Interchange File Format and is native to the Macintosh world. If you are making sounds files on the Mac and don’t know what format they are in, this is probably the one. They can be transferred easily to the IBM world. WAV This is the PC equivalent of the Mac AIFF. Developed by Microsoft and IBM, it is the standard sound file format used on Windows systems. It is also quite popular on the Internet, though compression technologies are superseding it. AU One of the oldest sound type around, it was one of the first file types to be widely supported on the Internet. RealAudio This format has taken the Internet by storm. A special player, free from http://www.real.com, is required. Unlike the three previously mentioned formats, it is not necessary to download an entire RealAudio sound file before you can start listening to it. RealAudio files "stream," that is, they start playing as they are downloading. The price paid for this technology is that the original sounds are usually sampled at a lower rate and the file is then compressed with an algorithm that throws away some of the sounds that it "thinks" that the listener might not care about anyway.
At best, the result can sound like listening to FM radio. At worst, it can sound like listening to an AM radio played over a telephone. Despite these shortcomings, it also allows the streaming of live content, a feature that lets thousands of radio stations feed their signals into the Internet. If you are interested in hearing these radio stations, point your web browser to www.broadcast.com.MPEG Developed by the Motion Pictures Experts Group, the sound file formats that have come out of this organization are quite amazing, especially the latest MP3 variety. Once a sound has been recorded in a standard format, such as AIFF or WAV, it is compressed using a proprietary algorithm that results in a better quality, though slightly larger file than that found in the RealAudio method. The advantage here is that the original file size can be reduced by 90% with virtually no loss in quality. A selection from an audio CD, which might easily be 50 megabytes in size, can be squeezed down to 5 megabytes, making downloading almost a reasonable operation. A special player is required to listen to these files and free ones are available on the Internet in many places for both Windows and the Macintosh (www.mp3.com).
It is this technology that has the recording industry up in arms, and rightly so. Using a piece of software called a CD-ripper, the contents of an audio CD can be moved to the hard drive in a matter of minutes. The resulting files, usually in AIFF or WAV formats, can then be compressed in a batch operation that yields the individual MP3 files. These files can then be placed on a Web page for others to download, a clear copyright violation.SoundVQ Similar to MP3, this competing compression method was developed by NTT Corporation and is supported by Yamaha. Like MP3, a special player is required, which can be download from the Yamaha SoundVQ website (www.yamaha.co.jp/english/xg/SoundVQ/) in either Mac or Windows formats. As of this writing I have not used this file type but have read that it is superior, in some ways, to the MP3. MIDI While this is not a sound file format that is used to record sounds from the real world, it does play back sounds, but of the computer-generated musical variety. MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is the world standard in how we connect musical instruments, such as electronic keyboards to our computers. Rather than storing digital information about the original sound, a MIDI file contains data about what notes were played, their duration, and the instrument that should play them. Compared to other sound formats, MIDI files are very small, typically less than 100,000 bytes.
To record an analog sound you will need, in addition to the microphone or other input device, a program that will let you edit and save the digital sound in the desired format. Like all software, some is better than others and some is more expensive than others. There is some good shareware out there, however, if you want to set up your own professional recording studio, you will need to invest in some of the higher-end packages.
It needs to be said right up front that Windows users have a distinct advantage here. All Windows computers that have a sound card, and that means most machines built in the last 3-4 years, come with sound editing software. This bundled software has limited features, but for the most part will record a sound in a variety of bit depths and sample rates and save the file in WAV or several other formats.
For more features, Windows users might look at CoolEdit 16, a shareware program that is highly rated among the audio heads. It is available from
www.download.com
For Mac users there is just not a piece of shareware that I have found that will do what the most basic audio software can that comes bundled with a Windows system. Mac users will need to spend a few bucks, but the software available is very good. The two packages that will take care of most user needs are SoundEdit 16 from MacroMedia (www.macromedia.com) and Sound Forge from Sonic Foundry (www.sfoundry.com). These programs, also available for Windows, are extremely powerful and have more features and options than I can cover here.
Wrapping It Up
To think that the audio file formats that we have today are all we will ever need is unrealistic. The compression techniques will continue to improve, allowing us to put more data into a smaller space. The ability to push more data through the Internet will enhance our Web surfing. So hop on board and give sound creation a try.
During the member's meeting at MEA in October, three new board members where elected. Bob Gunderson, past MCCE president, was elected to the board along with John Kuglin and Cynthia Denton.
John Kuglin, Director of the Advanced Technology Training Center at the University of Montana, is a native Montanan who is pleased to be home. John spent the first 20 years of his teaching career in Missoula, where he became known for his innovative use of technology in the classroom. He then moved to Denver where he developed three nationally known training centers for TCI, one of which is the Sparkman Center for Educational Technology. The mission of these facilities is to offer customized training to thousands of teachers from across the country.
Prior to coming to the University of Montana, John was Senior Director of Technology at McREL. There he designed a state-of-the-art technology laboratory that will be used to integrate technology into McRELs nationally known work in standards and assessment. Welcome home John!!
Cynthia Denton has been the Community Networking Director for Network Montana and the Project Director of the Reach for the Sky Project, which is centered at the University of Montana, Montana State University, and Western Montana College of the University of Montana. The goal of the Community Networking component of Network Montana is bringing communities online using a mentorship model. Reach for the Sky also uses a mentorship structure to bring teachers and schools online in Montana, Idaho, Utah, Oregon, and Washington.
Cynthia serves on the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Task Force for Telecommunications for Montana and also manages the Montana Telecommunications and Distance Learning Symposium for Governor Marc Racicot and U.S. Senator Conrad Burns. The Symposium is an integral part of the Montana Telecommunciations Advisory Council of which Cynthia is a member. Cynthia has a BS and MS in Business, a MS in Health, Physical Education-Wellness, and is a retired K12 Business and Technology, distance education, and adult education teacher.
Bob Gunderson, well known among the MCCE membership, teaches computer science and math at Polson High. He is a tireless presenter at MEA and responsible for the success of our T-shirt production and sales. We're glad to have your continued support, Bob.
(In this, the first of a series of articles that will appear in this newsletter, we will look at what it takes to build interactive web pages using CGI and Perl. If you wish to try this yourself you will need access to a web server that allows you to run your own CGI scripts. Some network administrators and Internet Service Providers are touchy about letting users do this because of security issues. I suggest running your own web server, although I will not be covering that topic at this time.)
Today, interactive and dynamic web pages are all the rage, and the future. Gone are the old static web pages where nothing on them ever changed, giving the visitor no reason to return. Today, web pages can be built "on demand," creating a unique and personal experience for the user. While this technique is being used extensively on commercial sites, there is plenty that we in the education world can do with them as well. This includes delivery of online content, administration of tests, and the collecting and distribution of database information.
In this article, the first in a series, these interactive techniques will be examined in ways that will give the reader some idea of what is going on "behind the scenes" on a typical web server. We will first get an overall picture of the processes used and follow that with some tips and tricks that can allow the reader to try some of them on their own server. I promise to keep this series as simple as possible.
Serving up a Web Page
We first need to look at how a web page is served up to a user, something that most of us have experienced but have little knowledge in how it is done. The user accesses the web through an Internet Service Provider (ISP) with a program called a browser, such Netscape’s Navigator or Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The browser communicates to other computers on the Internet using a system of rules, or protocols, that govern how the dialog will take place. These protocols make it possible for PCs, Macs, and Unix platforms to coexist transparently on the same network.
You do not need to understand the nuts and bolts of the various protocols, but some knowledge of their use will, hopefully, make CGI’s place in the scheme of things more apparent. Some of the protocols used on the web include:
TCP/IP - Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol.
This protocol handles the transfer of data between computers on the network. It breaks big chunks of data into little chunks of data, attaches an address to them, and sees that they are sent to the proper location. Along with routers (a type of hardware) TCP/IP functions like a postal system making sure that packets of data are picked up and delivered to their proper addresses, in this case, IP addresses.
FTP - File Transfer Protocol.
This protocol is used to move a file, for example, a complete program, from one place on the network to another. This is commonly used to load web pages on a web server from a remote location.
HTTP - HyperText Transfer Protocol.
Like FTP, this protocol handles the transfer of files on the network, but is specifically used for sending and receiving documents on the World Wide Web. The protocol translates various document types into a common format for transmission and translates them back to their original form when they are received.
CGI - Common Gateway Interface.
This protocol deals specifically with data that a user may enter into a form on a web page and how it is passed to a processing program on a web server.
So, let’s see how these protocols might work together. Let's say you are looking at one web page and see a link to another page, such as to Yahoo. When you click on that link a request is sent to Yahoo to send you their web page. Yahoo’s web server then reads the HTML document that makes up their page from their server’s hard drive, along with any images the document contains, and sends them to you using the HTTP protocol to control the format of the document and uses TCP/IP to make sure that it only goes to you. When your browser receives the information from the web server, it formats it to your monitor using the instructions embedded in the HTML document.
Aren’t you glad that this all happens without your assistance? It is a marvel that something this complicated can work so well.
Pages Go Interactive
It is the function of CGI to move data that a user enters on a web page to an external program for processing. Most of us have seen an example of this when we use a search engine on the web. After you enter a keyword into the text box and click on the search button, your keyword is moved to web server, where CGI governs how the keyword is passed to the program that performs the search. CGI is also involved in delivering the search results back to your browser.
The external program that processes the submitted data usually resides on the same computer as the web server software, but is not required to. These external programs can be written in just about any computer language, however the most popular are C and PERL. Their purpose is to process the information that was provided by the user and to deliver one of three forms of output: a new document (usually a web page), an error code, or a redirection to another web page.
Forms: Getting the Data from the User
At this point let’s back up bit and look at how the data sent to one of these external programs gets into a web page in the first place. Within the CGI protocol there are several ways to move the data from the web page to the external program, notably the methods known as GET and POST. Both are used extensively on the web, but for our purposes, we will be looking at POST because, although it can add some complexity to the external program, ultimately it is the most flexible. Let’s build a small example of a web page that will ask a user for their name. The user's name will then be sent to an external program that will return a new web page with their name embedded in it.
You can create a web page using any text editor, such as Simple Text on the Macintosh or Notepad in Windows. The web page needs to contain a box into which the user can enter the data. This is done with an HTML tag called <FORM>. The FORM tag supports a variety of input types such as text boxes, radio buttons, check boxes, and a password box. Also included are the SUBMIT and RESET buttons that either send the data to the server or clear the data in the form.
Here is the HTML for the web page that uses the FORM tag to show a text box that prompts the user to enter their name.
<HTML>
<BODY>
<FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="/cgi-bin/echo.pl">
Enter Your Name (FIRST LAST)
<INPUT NAME="yourname" TYPE="TEXT" SIZE="40" MAXLENGTH="60">
<INPUT TYPE="submit" value="Submit">
<BR>
</FORM>
</HTML>
In the FORM tag, METHOD refers to the way that the data will be sent to the server. ACTION indicates what external program will be called to use the data sent by the form, in this case, a program called echo.pl, which is located in the CGI-BIN folder on the server. The first INPUT tag puts up a text box that is 40 characters wide and will accept as many as 60 characters. Also in the first INPUT tag is the variable name that will be associated with the text box data when it is sent to the server. The second INPUT tag puts the SUBMIT button on the page that the user clicks on to send the data to the server.
This HTML document is given a name and saved with an HTM or HTML file extension and placed on the web server just like any other web page. When it is accessed, the user can type their name into the text box and click on the SUBMIT button, sending their name to the external program, in this case one written in PERL called "echo.pl." This external program processes the data, in this case the user’s name, and returns a web page in which the user’s name is used to personalize the page.
You can give this page a try by visiting a web page that I have set up my server. The address is:
http://senior.billings.k12.mt.us/mcce/cgi-series/namer.htm
Coming Next in the Series
In the next issue we will look at the other data entry methods that the FORM tag allows, such as check boxes and radio buttons. We will then take a peek at the external programs that are used to process the user submitted data.
If you are interested to see how I have been using these techniques on my server, visit the following:
Today in History I have 12 databases, one for each month, that contain the birthdays, deaths, holidays, and events for every day of the year. You select the month and day and a PERL program searches the database and builds a web page containing those events. Buzzzword Generator You select three random numbers and the PERL program sends you a web page containing a phrase that is sure to make you sound like you know what you are talking about. Robot-Webcam Page You need to use Netscape Navigator for this page. You should be able to see a streaming video of a walking robot in my classroom. Using the buttons on the web page, you can move the robot and turn the light on or off. Grade Check My students can check their grades online using this page. They need to enter their last name, their student ID number and their period to see the grade. There is a sample student listed on the page if you wish to try it out. Digital/Hexadecimal/Binary Page Counter For my Computer Languages class I built a page counter that reads in three formats. This address redirects you to a page that is generated by Perl. Web Page Evaluation Form I have the students in my Computer Languages class build web pages to advertise their programs for sale. They also evaluate each other’s pages using a form that I have online. I am able to retrieve their data and view it in MS Excel. You can look at the form, but it won’t let you submit it without the proper password. Online Driver’s Education Quiz I developed this page as I was trying to learn how to deliver an objective test online. You get a free account that keeps track of how many questions you have answered and your current score. You can leave the quiz and return at any time. You can practice for the state driver’s test on this page.
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