by Brad Flickinger…..I get at least one of these excuses when I am working with schools while trying to get more tech projects incorporated into the academic planning…
- Young students can’t blog.
- Young students can’t podcast.
- Young students can’t make movies. etc. etc. etc.
The truth is they can.
But does this mean that we throw the idea of doing age-appropriate lessons out the window? No, of course not. We do not ask a second grader to blog the same way that we would ask a high school senior, but they both can blog.
Read the full story, CLICK HERE
by Kelly Tenkely
It is almost December again, which means the beginning of 
Advent. Advent calendars are a fun way to reveal information and “surprises” for your students to look forward to each day in December leading up to Christmas. Last year I thought I would make an advent calendar of my own using Wix. I created a Web 2.0 advent calendar by choosing 25 of my favorite web 2.0 tools for the classroom. Each day you can check out a new one.
Here is another weekly edition of Treasure Chest—82 EdTech Resources You May Have Missed this past week.
Have you ever wondered how to create an animated picture ? If you have here is an answer for you. There are several online tools that allow users to create GIF animations from pictures stored on their computers. Here are some of the best free web tools that can help you create animated GIFs
This year as for the last couple of years, the #1 tool is Twitter. But here are a few observations on this year’s list.
- The list is dominated once again by free, online social tools - and proprietary content development tools continue to decline.
- The top three tools – Twitter, YouTube and Google Docs – retain their positions from 2010.
- Other tools have moved up the list since 2010. This include Vimeo (up 41 places) and Yammer (up 37 places)
- There are 23 new tools on the list this year, the highest placed of which is Google+, followed by TED and Scoop.it.
- Other tools have moved down the list, and some have moved off the list completely. Notably this includes Firefox (which was actually the #1 tool in the first survey of tools in 2007) and Second Life.
If you are interested in a more detailed view of the movement of the tools on the list, take a look at the Winners & Losers 2011.
I’ve also created a Best of Breed 2011 list, which categorizes the tools under a number of headings.
Brief.ly is a state-of-the-art link sharing service provided to you free of charge by Name.ly blogging platform.
The first best places to read about Brief.ly are the following articles describing key features, a paradoxical story of why some smart people are using it, a random link, and the tour page:
» Brief.ly/Features
» Brief.ly/Paradox
» Brief.ly/Random
» Brief.ly/Tour
It was pretty obvious that techie types put this together, but I do have to admit, it works quite nicely. There instructions need to be a little more clear, but it is failry easy because it is a simple process.
Here is one I made: http://brief.ly/i42fma/
This could be very useful when putting together a list of links to use in class with your students.
Boxify.me is a website for sharing files. A super easy way for teachers to share files with their students.
It is also, a good way for students to share files with each other. Each “box” has a private URL. You share your “box URL” and files can be uploaded and download to/from the “box.” It is even possible to customize the URL for the “box”.
I have been using Dropbox to do things like this, but Boxify.me is really much easier!! No account to create, just up load the file by clicking the upload button, and I like the rename feature, you can give the file a unique name so you know what it is!. Wonder why this is FREE! Oh well, I will accept the magic for as long as it is FREE!!
Tools for Educators offers free printable worksheets, printables classroom materials, lesson plan resources, and a host of programs for teachers to use in their classes.
The free printable dice maker is a worksheet wizard that allows you to create dice with pictures, dice with text or printable dice with both images and text.
Check it out: http://www.toolsforeducators.com/dice/
Check out Edutopia’s collection of articles, videos, and resources on cyberbullying, netiquette, and internet safety.
Resources by Topic:
Convert PDFs into stylish page flip books
FlipSnack is an online flipping book software that allows you to convert PDF documents into Flash page flip digital publications. It’s the ideal solution for those who wish to embed a book, magazine, catalog, newspaper, portfolio or any other kind of document into a website or blog.
Once created, you can embed your flipping book collection, download them or share them on social networking websites such as Facebook.
P.S. With FlipSnack you can upload several documents at once, allowing you to embed not only one, but multiple page flip publications in the same Flash widget.
Distractions Begone! Facebook as a Study Tool
The Facebook application Hoot.me seeks to turn Facebook into a study tool for students. The app diverts students away from their wall and news feed and asks them, “What are you working on?” It then connects students with live group-study sessions on their chosen topic. The tool also could prove useful for educators, providing a way for them to hold “virtual office hours” for students, the tool’s CEO and co-founder, Michael Koetting, says.
Instead of the typical Facebook prompt, “What’s on your mind?” Hoot.me asks its users “What are you working on?”
Read the full story, KQED.org/Mind/Shift blog
How to model technology use in the classroom
Veteran teacher Heather Wolpert-Gawron offers 20 tips for using and modeling the use of technology in the classroom. Teachers should involve students in setting up new technology, use digital tools — such as document cameras, videoconferencing and interactive whiteboards — throughout the school day and use tech-inspired vocabulary, even when talking about offline activities, she writes.
Read the full story: Edutopia.org/Heather Walpert-Gawron’s blog
A ten-year teaching veteran and a California regional Teacher of the Year, Heather Wolpert-Gawron’s musings on educational policy, curriculum design, and daily school life can also be read at www.tweenteacher.com.
Embedr is a free service that lets anyone create a custom playlist of videos from the top video sites on the web. Now start building that playlist of the best Vince Carter slam dunk clips that are spread throughout YouTube, MySpace, Vimeo, DailyMotion and more. » Learn More About Embedr
Knotebooks is more than just a community to share math and physics knowledge. It’s intuitive technology and a disruptive idea that makes learning science simpler.
Anyone can contribute. Everyone can learn.
Search
Browse for lessons composed of the best physics and math multimedia on the Web.
Remix
Keep the parts you want, swap the rest out for better explanations, easier material or even video.
Share
Save your custom-built library, then collaborate and share with classmates and colleagues.
Large districts face challenges implementing school technology
Large urban school districts face complicated challenges when implementing new classroom and school technology. In Boston and Chicago schools, educator buy-in proved a crucial component to the success of districtwide technology programs. Meanwhile scalability and ensuring new technology programs are implemented equally throughout hundreds of district schools also are concerns in large districts.
Read the full story at T.H.E. Journal
Richard Bryne of Free Technology for Teachers has a great post today GLEAN Information Literacy Tools.
“From the same folks who bring us the Boolify Project comes two other useful tools for teaching information literacy skills. The GLEAN Comparison Search engine is a tool that allows users to compare search results for “positive” and “negative” perspectives side-by-side. For example, if I search using the term “Libya” I will be presented with lists of positive and negative terms. Clicking on those terms will change my results and give me quick comparison options.”
Read the full story, CLICK HERE
This post was originally published last year as 10 Blogging Tips for Students and Teachers.
As I regularly help students and other teachers set up their blogs, I find myself giving lots of little tips that I have picked up on my own blogging journey.
My list of tips keeps expanding and I thought it was timely to republish an updated version of this post.
Many of these ideas have originally come from some of my blogging “mentors” such as Linda Yollis and Sue Waters.
Here are 10 15 Blogging Tips for Students and Teachers
Read more, CLICK HERE
A friend, Jane Frank, an amazing teacher and Apple Professional Development trainer showed this to me and it is just so darn cool. It is also very, very useful. I do tons of professional development, but most important, I teach technology to pre-service teachers and this little trick, just helps me in class. I demonstrate how to do things in class and this little mouse locator really helps my students find where I am asking them to look on the screen.
It is called Mouse Locator by 2 Point 5 Fish. 
Of course it is FREE. I am always looking for FREE. There is a little app you download and then you choose from a gallery of icons or you can even create your own!! Of course. I choose an apple logo, but there are tons of images. You can set how quickly it shows and how long it stay on the screen. Extremely useful, especially for teachers.
Many schools across the country have rules about tech in the classroom, but they’re not the rules you might think. Teachers instruct students to take out their smartphones, to power up their iPads, and to log in to Twitter.
Technology’s role in the classroom has been widely debated: does it simply feed an addiction to a mobile lifestyle, or does it give otherwise shy students a way to find their voices? A national survey released in April by Pearson Learning Solutions found that only “2 percent of college faculty members had used Twitter in class, and nearly half thought that doing so would negatively affect learning,” reported The New York Times. However, at the same time, a recent survey by the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth found that “98 percent of higher ed institutions are on Facebook, and 84 percent are on Twitter,” said InsideHigherEd.com.
Read the full story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/21/high-tech-schools-innovative-tech-in-classroom_n_925450.html#s326592&title=iPads
Name: Kevin Buran
Profession: 6th and 8th Grade Science Teacher
Location: Carmel, California
School: Carmel Middle School
I use Evernote, Everywhere:
I love…
- ScanSnap Scanner for scanning in worksheets and student work
- JotNot for taking snapshots of my daily itinerary and saving them instantly to Evernote
I use Evernote for..
I first heard about Evernote about a year ago, but have become an avid user much more recently. Here are just a few of the ways that I use Evernote for teaching:
