Off The Deep End

Typeit!

2010-10-18T13:16:00.000-07:00

On of the complaints I hear from foreign language teachers from time to time is about typing accents and special characters. Our SWIFT page is one example where you can't type them. This website, Typeit, allows you to type special characters until your little heart is content and without keyboard combinations! Once you have said what you need to say in French or Spanish, you cut and paste your text into your Swift page, word doc, or what have you. Very cool!

Not only would this be useful for teachers and students doing their day to day homework, but it would also be handy for kids quoting a foreign author in a paper. Or, for writing to parents.

Thanks, yet again, to Free Tech 4 Teachers.

Universal Leonardo

2010-10-12T11:27:00.000-07:00

This site, Universal Leonardo, is a beautiful way to explore the many, many accomplishments of Leonardo da Vinci. The site was originally set up as an adjunct to a museum exhibition, which is now closed. You can explore his paintings, drawings, and his writings. One of the features I liked best was the magnifier that appears with his drawings and paintings. With it, you can more closely examine his work.

This would be a terrific way to introduce students to the breadth and depth of Leonardo's works and curiosity. It would also be a good place to send students as they are studying the Italian Renaissance as it not only has works by da Vinci, but some of his peers as well.

A New Way to Lecture

2010-09-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

Today's post is about a nifty handout I found thanks to Kathy Schrock's "Sites of the School Days" email. The publication, called "A New Way to Lecture, Using Web 2.0 to Create Interactive Lectures With Your Students." It describes 14 Web 2 tools that can be used instead of PowerPoint (that's so '90's!). Some, like Prezi, Glogster and Animoto, I have used. Others like Weebly and Sliderocket I haven't seen before and I can't wait to play with them! The brochure is embedded below.

Open publication - Free publishing

Get Smart!

2010-06-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

Summer time is always such a busy time for teachers--despite what the general public thinks we do during our summers "off." Most of us take classes, work on curriculum and/or do a lot of lesson planning. Many of the NWS classrooms either have or will be getting SmartBoards during the summer, so I thought it would be useful to put together a list of online SmartBoard tutorials that you can use to get yourself prepared for next fall. (Sheesh!)

The following is a list of 9 sources that can help you get ready for the fall and using a Smartboard. Whether you're an experienced user or a total novice, you'll find lots of new ideas in these sites. And why 9? It just seemed less daunting than 10.

1. Download the SmartBoard Notebook 10 software (Windows) (Mac) to your home computer so that you can play with it. Because we have the boards, you are licensed to install this software on your home machine. BE FOREWARNED: it is a huge, gigantic, gynormous download and will take a good, long while to download.

2. Two-minute tutorials This is a fairly lengthy list of quick tutorials from Smart on single tasks. Creating objects, using the Gallery, using the page sorter and the like are part of this page plus a list of the official Smart workshops and what they cover.
http://exchange.smarttech.com/forum.html?url=/default.aspx
3. Teacher Tube Smartboard Videos This is a listing of the Teacher Tube how-to videos that people have posted. One a novice user might find useful is "50 Things We Love About Smartboards."

4. Teachers Love Smartboards is a nice site with some ideas about integrating the boards into your practice. They have some for-fee tutorials, but they also have several complimentary ones for you to try, as well.

5. Florida Diagnostic and Learning Services has a nice list of tutorials, some from the Smart site, others developed by independent users. There are several articles about how to use your board to improve student engagement, many templates and lesson plans.

6. Get Smart with Smartboards is a website and podcast series. Harvey and Jim, the series hosts, have done a series of podcasts in which they talk about how they use the boards in their classrooms and then they provide the resources they have discussed on the website. The podcasts are useful and entertaining.

7. Wichita Public Schools Smart website has hundreds of lesson examples, sortable by level or subject. There are lots and lots of ideas here.

8. Smartboard Lounge Loads of tutorials, templates and lesson ideas. This site is also home to Smartboard 101 and :60 second tech.

9. The SmartExchange is a forum for teachers who use SmartBoards, sponsored by Smart. Lesson ideas, how-to's and troubleshooting are just a few of the things you'll find on the forum.

Presenting...Something Other Than PowerPoint

2010-03-26T14:50:00.000-07:00

Hi, everyone!

For this session, I will be teaching mostly from this page. It's just easier to have everything in one place, plus it's a sneaky way to get people to read this blog.

The first non-PowerPoint resource we will be using is Prezi.

Presenting...Something Other Than PowerPoint on Prezi

Let's look at MovieMaker, Photostory.
Wallwisher is a tool more for discussions, but we should look at it, as well.
Tilt-Shift Maker is an interesting way to use photographs in your presentations and lectures.

Web 2--An Endless Source of Entertainment and Education

2010-03-26T14:49:00.000-07:00

Mostly, this post is going to be about links, links, links. There is so much out there on the Interactive Internet for both productivity and time-wasting, that I'm mainly interested in showing you different things you can use and then letting you just play with them.

To narrow this session down, I began by asking myself what Web 2 tools I use most and which ones I just would not want to give up. Then, my phone buzzed and it was a new message from Twitter. Hmm....that's a really good place to start.

Twitter is a microblog site. Basically, you can send and receive messages of not more than 140 characters, or the same length as a text message. Whohoo, you say. Why do I need one more way to get text messages when I can barely keep up with the ones my kids send me? Professional Development. Put another way, Twitter is a really, really effective way to grow your Personal Learning Network. I know very few of my Twitterverse face to face, but they are all people I learn from, some on a daily basis. Let's take a look...

A term you will be hearing more and more often is "cloud computing." No there's isn't some nefarious plan by Gates and Jobs to turn the ionosphere into a giant mainframe. Cloud computing refers to internet-based applications and storage. Google Docs are a great example of computing in the cloud. This blog is a great example of computing in the cloud. I don't have to have anything installed on my computer to create content and what I do create gets saved somewhere in the cloud. Another really nice example is Windows Live, something you may have noticed is being integrated into Hotmail.

And, now for something completely different: Matzoh Ball

For your edification, or to figure out what your children are saying in their texts to you NetLingo

Here's a paperless way to publish student work in journal form; Youblisher

One for the "Wow" factor and a terrific illustration of how technology can make the distant become immediate. Panoramic tour of the Sistine Chapel.

There's been a lot of talk about the various Google toys. One that hasn't gotten a lot of press but is a nice survey/collaboration tool is Google Moderator I've created a Moderator discussion that I'd love to have your feedback on.

Other Interactive Internet sites you might find useful:
Flikr Photo sharing social network. Can be searched by copyright permissions.

Snagfilms Watch documentaries for free. Very high-quality films, many foreign.

SafeShareTV Enter the URL of a YouTube video you want to share and watch it without all the advertising.You can also crop out inappropriate content.

Scriblink Online interactive whiteboard. Great way to collaborate, and that's not just for classrooms.

Voo2do Shareable to-do list. Assign tasks, add tasks, delete them when they are complete.

Art for Smarties

2010-03-09T11:09:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I posted anything. I'm not really sure why, but I just haven't. Life in the lab has been busy, I guess.

Today's resource is a really, really fun one: Art applications that would work really well for an Interactive White Board. The links are from a blog I just discovered, The Whiteboard Blog. Today's post has 12 links to fun and useful art applications. These would be terrific for use with an IWB but, they're just plain fun anyway. One of them, This is Sand I have actually posted to my online activities page. The kids are fascinated by the Falling Sand game and are always looking for new versions to play.

Another one of the links from The Whiteboard Blog goes to Bomomo, an abstract art creator. There's something hypnotic about controlling the bouncing balls to create pretty pictures!

March 29 Professional Development Survey

2010-02-02T13:36:00.000-08:00

Please take a couple of minutes and fill out our survey. Thank you, everyone!

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Visualizing The World

2010-01-25T12:59:00.000-08:00

While reading the "Horizon 2010" report, I came across a reference to Worldmapper. Worldmapper is a "visualization too that redraws maps based on the data being displayed. For instance, on a world map showing population, countries with more people swell while those with fewer people shrink." (Horizon 2010 report, New Media Consortium and Educause Learning Initiative, 2009.)

I poked around on the website and, it's pretty interesting. For example, the map depicting deaths caused by infectious and parasitic diseases, Africa and the Indian subcontinent are giant bulges and Europe and North America appear almost emaciated. These maps are very interesting and could be the source of some enlightening discussions with your classes.

For Francoise (and others!)

2010-01-19T13:50:00.000-08:00

At the social networking session on Friday's prof dev day, one of our administrators asked if there was a Reader's Digest for web 2 applications. I responded that it's people who do what I do: surf the web, play with the toys and read, read, read all day. However, what I didn't tell him was that I have a couple of resources that do function a bit like the Reader's Digest for me. The many times aforementioned Free Tech For Teachers (source of today's post), Wes Fryer's "Moving at the Speed of Creativity" and "Digitzd"are among my favorites.

So, to today's topic, Youpublisher. Youpublisher is a free, online service that turns your pdf's into online magazines. Very cool, and a fantastic way for students to publish their work. Francoise, one of our French teachers, has her French IV students do a literary magazine, and we usually find a way to put it up on the web so parents can see it. This takes it one step farther! Even better, she can embed the code into her SWIFT page and parents can read the publication right there.

Come to think of it, our Journalism teacher was asking about something similar just the other day!

Copyright and Fair Use

2010-01-06T10:46:00.000-08:00

Thanks, again, to Free Tech For Teachers and it's wonderful author Richard Byrne (@rmbyrne on Twitter) for bringing to my attention a very good presentation on copyright for educators done by Wes Fryer. I've embedded it below, but here are a couple of suggestions to add to your RSS feed, and/or your Twitterpeeps: If you don't subscribe to Free Tech or Wes' blog, At the Speed of Creativity you are missing out of some really good resources. Wes' slideshare presentation runs close to an hour, but it well worth listening to.

View more documents from Wesley Fryer.

Whitepaper: Educational Networking

2009-12-16T13:44:00.000-08:00

Steve Hargadon, a consultant for Elluminate, has been in my PLN for a couple of years now. He started the Classroom 2.0 Ning to get teachers networking and using a social network for their own learning. Now, he has produced a whitepaper called, "Educational Networking: The important role Web 2.0 will play in education." In it, he argues that technology reall hasn't changed education up to this point, but with the advent of the interactive web and social networking, we are beginning to finally see the changes that people in education had been expecting to happen when computers first entered the classroom. It's a quick, but informative read!

Educational Networking: The Important Role Web 2.0 Will Play in Education

Alice in Web 2.0 Land

2009-12-15T11:11:00.000-08:00

I love the web! I love the fantastic things that people create and share on the web! I love the fact that my PLN isn't limited any longer to the people I have face to face contact with.

So, why the love letter to the Intertubes, you might ask? This brilliant take off on Lewis Carroll's poem, "Jabberwocky," that's why. This comes from Steve Wheeler's blog, "Learning with 'e's" and is a list of a bunch of Web 2 tools woven into poetry. Amazing!

Who said learning has to be dull?

2009-12-09T10:37:00.000-08:00

Some of my favorite moments in the classroom are the ones when students are excitedly engaged in a task and they don't even realize they're learning. I recently collaborted on a project with one of the Middle School humanities teachers about the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Repbulic and the murder of the Mirabal sisters by his regime. My favorite overheard conversation happened last week when one of the students was trying to see the issue from the standpoint of the Trujillo government, and she said, "I see why he would think the Mirabals were bad but I hate myself for saying it!" Magic!

So, today's post is a site that I think teachers and students will have fun with. Using the customizable templates on ClassTools.net students or teachers can create online, interactive games for just about any lesson you can think of. One of our Spanish teachers thought the drag and drop Dustbin Game would be a perfect way to practice vocabulary. It would be even better on her SmartBoard!

For Robert

2009-11-24T10:08:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I sent out this link to our science department. It's to a very nice online game from the Minnesota Museum of Science about human cellular biology. This morning, Robert, one of the science teachers here emailed to say that they had just finished their cell unit last week. A day or two late and apparently a dollar short! I told him I would put the link up on the blog so that next year when he vaguely remembered that there was some sort of website that I sent out, I could say, "Yeah, I think I saved it somewhere."

Here it is! http://www.smm.org/tissues/index.php

Hittin' 'em Where They Live- Constitution Study Aids

2009-11-09T10:59:00.000-08:00

Teaching is a funny business. On one hand, you want to be a professional and be thought of as a trusted source. On the other hand, you want to be able to convey information in a form that is meaningful for your students. Some teachers are young enough to even be credible while talking to the kids in "their language." Some, like me, would just look silly to the kids.

Having said that, I still think it's useful to sometimes let the kids create projects using the language and forms that are meaningful to them. I'm not a giant rap fan, but the format does have its' uses, as in this "Bill of Rights Rap." Our seniors just completed a unit where they had to memorize all of the articles of the Constitution and be able to apply them in certain situations. Next, they move on to the Bill of Rights. This video could serve as a useful study guide, in a format that they can easily memorize!

Other useful study tools would be the online games from the US Supreme Court. These games, apparently, have been a pet project of Sandra Day O'Connor, former Supreme Court Justice. Our middle schoolers really love "Do I Have A Right?"

Thanks to Oswego98 for sharing the rapon Twitter and rmbyrne for sharing it on Free Technology For Teachers

The Art of the Inaugural Speeches

2009-11-03T13:42:00.000-08:00

I've written about Wordle, a word cloud generator, before. I think it's a great tool, and one that students can be very engaged in using. Thanks to TechnologyInEd for tweeting this!

This word cloud gallery, from Governing Dynamo is a collection if Presidential images and word clouds made from each President's inaugural speeches. One activity that came to mind as I played with this would be to have students look at the word clouds of the speeches of a particular president or era and have them generate a list of issues they think were important at that time. Once they've come up with a list of issues to research, they could create presentations (using Prezi, Animoto, Glogster or any of about a thousand other tools!) to give to their classmates about what they have discovered. A much more engaging way to learn about, say, the presidency of William Henry Harrison, or the events immediately preceeding the Civfil War than to simply listen to a lecture.

A caution about Wordle: There is some inappropriate content on the site which students may come across. I would give the kids a link to a specific word cloud you want them to look at or to the cloud generator. I would not have them search it on their own.

Animated Bayeaux Tapestry

2009-10-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, I admit it, I love history and always have. That's probably why I was a history teacher until I got this job. I'll admit it, I love educational technology, too, and when you can find the two together, it's bliss. Today's offering is the Bayeaux Tapestry, animated, from Open Culture's YouTube Channel. The story picks up about half way through the tapestry at the appearance of Halley's Comet and just before the Norman Invasion. My family went to Hastings several years ago, which gives the whole thing a totally different perspective. Enjoy!

Death to Dull Powerpoints!

2009-10-14T14:26:00.000-07:00

A colleague came to the lab yesterday to tell me about this really fantastic presentation he had seen another of our colleague give in class. The presenter had used a tool I'd read about, called Prezi. Prezi lets you create slides, zoom in on key points, emphasize ideas, and animate your text. Here's one I did. To run it, click the left and right arrows or hover over the word "More" and select "Autoplay."

Frequently, people complain about having to sit through PowerPoints presentations. None of us likes to have a presenter read, word for word, the text on the slide. Yawn. Just let me read it--I can read faster than you can speak!

I always use the 6-6 rule. No more than 6 bullet points per slide, and no more than 6 words per point. This forces me to summarize succinctly and it requires me to know my material well. Guy Kawasaki, a venture capitalist, has the 10-20-30 rule. I'll let him tell you about it.

Origami in Math

2009-10-07T11:43:00.001-07:00

Any one who knows me know that Mr. Math and I are not very good friends. In fact, we barely have an acquiantance, which is why it seems odd to be posting a video about math. This beautiful, 2-minute film is about the mathematics of origami and is worth the time just to see the fantastic creations that can be constructed out of paper! I may need to go home and pull the origami books out of the kids closets!

(To view this full screen, right click on the video and select "Full Screen.")

Learning on the Sly

2009-10-03T15:46:00.000-07:00

I spent a fair amount of time this week working on my Online Activities page. The kids at my school aren't allowed to play computer games, but there are some really, really good learning activities online that I think students should be allowed to do. Besides, we don't really have a playground for the younger students to use after lunch, so they flock to the lab to "play" games. The reason I spent so much time working on the page this week is that several students had suggested new activities, so I wanted to look at them and then update my page.

One of the new activities was suggested by a colleague. It's the game page from the US Supreme Court. I know. It sounds like a major yawn, but the 6th grade is crazy about these games. They are fun and very educational, although I suspect some of the kids like to be able to go home to their lawyer parents and correct them. :)

Another new addition to the page is a library of physics activities. Physics Games has dozens of activities that are fun, and teach the principles of physics at the same time. Some of the older middle-schoolers love these activities, not realizing the great lessons they are learning about the physics of a trebuchet!

Finally, this set of activities comes from one of my Twitterpeeps, samorra. Edheads has several beautifully designed games that teach all sorts of lessons: learn how to resurface a hip and learn human anatomy, help the state police investigate a serious car accident and learn all about the physics of high speed crashes, or, build a cell phone and learn all about where the materials used come from and their impact on the environment.

I love the internet!

In Defense of Twitter (or, why I Tweet)

2009-09-27T15:44:00.000-07:00

A colleague recently asked me why I use Twitter and how I could possibly have time to read tweets and do my job. I told him that I see Twitter as a part of my job. You see, not only should we be using the applications the kids are so we understand what they are doing, but Twitter is an integral part of my Personal Learning Network. I don't have personal friends or family in my Twitterfeed, but through the feed I am connected to hundreds of educators all over the world. From them, I learn about issues in education, helpful tools, effective techniques and much, much more. I depend on my PLN for information about new trends and applications, too.

I follow several dozen people on Twitter. That could mean that I could spend a lot of time reading the tweets (they're limited to the number of characters that a text message can handle-140). I don't really. There are several folks that I know have really great things to say and I have their posts sent to my phone by text. The rest I check in on a couple of times a week. Who are my Twitterfaves? rmbyrne, kjarrett, jennyluca, and dwarlick. All are experienced and respected educators who are doing the same thing I do: trying to improve education by encouraging effective use of educational technology in our schools.

The Wonder Wheel

2009-09-25T12:43:00.000-07:00

Earlier today, our librarian and our Chinese teacher were working on a small project for one of the Chinese classes. I've recently won over our librarian to Clusty a search engine that not only brings back fewer and better hits than you usually get from Google, it also suggests related searches. Clusty and I have been search partners for several years now, but the librarian has just discovered it, too.

So, while the two teachers were working on the Chinese project and talking about using other search engines than Google, I remembered seeing the Google Wonder Wheel sometime last spring. It took me a while to find it again, but once I did, I started playing with it and I have to say, it's pretty interesting!

So, how do you get to the Wonder Wheel? Type in a search term, and when the results page comes up, you will see "Show Options" at the top of the page. Click on that and a menu appears with other ways to conduct your search. Wonder Wheel is one of those options. The wheel would be a useful tool for visual learners, plus it has some nifty related search terms that you might not have considered!

Another slick tool in the "Show Options" menu is the Timeline. This shows a nice timeline related to your search, and would be very useful to a student doing research, to help get an idea of the progression of events.

Great tools, Google!

Fun WIth Photos

2009-09-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

Today's nifty web tool is called Tilt-Shift Maker. Despite what it sounds like, it is not a ride at the State Fair. It's actually an interesting tool to edit photos with. You adjust where you want the sharp focus to be placed and then the rest of the picture is in soft focus. It's really an interesting way to draw they eye of a viewer to a particular detail, and students could certainly use it in photos they make for lab journals, geography or history projects, or even for illustrations of their creative writing.

The website does allow you to change the width of the sharpness window, adjust the sharpness of the focus and to smudge the soft focus parts of your picture even more than the default.

You have to love all the great "toys" out there these days!

Back in the Saddle, Again!

2009-09-18T10:26:00.001-07:00

After a three-month hiatus, it's time to fire up the old blog and get writing! There are a lot of things to share, but to keep from being too overwhelmed, I'm going to share just one.

Nik Peachey,whose teaching and technology blog I read from time to time, has just published a very, very handy guide for using Web 2.0 tools in the ESL/EFL classroom. In his guide, Nik talks about using such interactive tools as Penzu (a free, online journaling tool), and Voxopop. My favorite is Dvolver Movie Maker. Students in my lab have been playing with an earier version of this nifty tool for some time, now, and have always had a lot of fun with it. This upgraded version is much more flexible and allows for many more options in terms of characters and dialogue.

So, how to use these tools in the classroom? Penzu would be a great place for students to practice their writing skills in an environment they are already very comfortable with, the Web. Plus, teachers can read their student's work and comment on it without having to lug around a stack of papers! Save the planet!

Voxopop is similar to VoiceThread. It allows students to record speech, listen to it, and comment on their or others work. It's a very useful tool for allowing students to practice speaking, reading aloud or grammar skills. Similar to VoiceThread, it allows teachers to set up a prompt for students to respond to.

Dvolver has so many possibilities, it almost makes me want to go back to the classroom. You choose your setting, your sky, characters and then type in they dialogue you want. Check out the sample I made!

Making the Thesaurus Cool

2009-06-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

The more I use Twitter, the more I LOVE it and it's not because I can tweet my friends. Frankly, only one of my friends is on it. No, I love Twitter because of the thousands of teachers that are on it sharing ideas and resources. Today's resource comes from Free Tech For Teachers, but Richard Byrne said he got this tool from the Twitterverse.

Called Lekipedia this tool works as a dictionary and a thesaurus all rolled into one. Type in a word, and a mindweb pops up with related words. Hover over one of the words and a definition pops up. This tool would be fantastic for anyone doing some writing, for students working on their English skills or just for someone needing a quick dictionary.

Great Tools for Research

2009-05-29T08:45:00.000-07:00

Today's post is all about research. I have one general tool and one specific to advertising.

First the general tool. I just learned about this today, but I can't wait to show it to kids! Navify is a search tool that pulls articles from Wikipedia, related photos from Flikr and related videos from YouTube. I tested it with a search on Pearl Harbor, just to see what would come up. Sure enough, a good article about Pearl Harbor today, and its history, all kinds of photos (current and historic) and a slew of videos, including film of the bombing, a clip of Roosevelt's "This Day Shall Live in Infamy" speech, and a clip of John Belushi rallying the troops with his "Did we give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor." Good stuff.

The advertising link is to Coloribus. Coloribus is an online archive of advertising from all over the world. Again, good stuff!

Web Pages Made Easy

2009-05-18T08:15:00.000-07:00

Web2 is a handy tool for quickly converting files into web pages. It's free (although your new web page will have some advertising)) and you do not need to sign up. You simply upload your file, click the conversion button and voila! You have an unique URL that you can share with anyone. It's a basic tool, and you have little control over the design of the page but this would be a very handy thing for students who are just looking to get some content onto the web.

An End to Advertising (mostly)

2009-05-04T12:44:00.000-07:00

Tidy Read is a nifty add on for IE, Safari or Firefox that cleans advertising off of webpages and then pops the content up in a nice, clean window. The cool thing is that when the content pops up, the font is nice and BIG, so that it's really easy for, um, experienced eyes to read! It doesn't block all ads on some sites, but it sure makes a lot of sites easier to read.

This add-on could be a nice tool to use in schools where we try not to link to sites that do have advertising.

So Many Tools, So Little Time!

2009-04-24T08:40:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0: Cool Tools for Schools is a very extensive list of Web 2 tools and applications. One thing I like about it is that it's alphabetical, so you can quickly find something if you know the name of it. There are hundreds of links here, to all kinds of tools. There's also a category list, which is helpful if you don't know the name of a site or if you know what kind of tool you need.

This wiki could be a black hole for time, though. There are so many tools on this wiki, that you could spend days clicking on links and exploring them!

Have a piece of Timetoast

2009-04-23T09:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks again to Free Tech For Teachers, I found a really neat timeline maker, called Timetoast. Timetoast allows you to add detailed descriptions of events, graphics and links. Just think of the possibilities! In art, create a timeline of the evolution of modern art with pictures of the major artists or works and links to museums where the work resides. In literature, follow the travels of a character and include a Google Earth virtual tour. So many possibilities!

Give Timetoast a try. It's free.

Free Music Archive

2009-04-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

One of the things that Ed Tech Coordinators and librarians struggle with is getting students and teachers to at least try to abide by copyright and fair use rules. Everyone wants to use music in their videos, podcasts and slideshows, but finding good-quality copyright free music is difficult. Now, you can use the Free Music Archive The FMA has many different genres, and music is curated by a number of people involved in community radio, including Seattle's own KEXP.

Be forewarned: Some lyrics are objectionable in content so this may not be appropriate for middle school and younger students.

It's not just a Google world

2009-04-02T08:38:00.001-07:00

For ages, I have avoided Google as much as I can. It's not that it's not a great search engine, but I prefer to try out some of the other search engines. I have been using Clusty for some time. The idea behind Clusty is that when a user enters a search term, it will come back with fewer hits than Google but it also suggests other search terms and clusters results for those terms along the side of the page. Many is the time I have typed in one term only to find what I really meant in the cluster of alternative terms Clusty provides.

Here's another search engine that I like. Triplify gives you the top hits from Google, Yahoo and MSN and then ranks them by applicability. I'm not totally crazy about the black and neon design, but I still think this would be a very good engine for students to use.

Science Made Fun

2009-04-01T12:49:00.001-07:00

This website, from the University of Colorado, has loads of engaging and fun simulations and demonstrations for all of the science disciplines. What a great way to get students involved in experimenting with science without the mess!
http://phet.colorado.edu/index.php

Xtranormal?

2009-03-31T13:31:00.000-07:00

I found this really cool movie maker today. Called "xtranormal" this application is so easy to use and to customize. You type your script into the script area of the page, and your character will read it back for you. You can add music, change the background sets and change characters. Camera angles, facial expressions and postures are also easy to change.

Here's my movie.

The Breathing Earth

2009-03-31T09:04:00.000-07:00

Just a short post today. I found this site courtesy of one of the folks I follow on Twitter. The Breathing Earth gives nearly real time info about the state of our homeworld in terms of birth/death rates and CO2 emissions. This would be a great start to a conversation with kids about global climate change.

Research and the Read/Write Web

2009-03-30T10:36:00.000-07:00

There has been considerable gnashing of teeth at my school over student use of Wikipedia. Some of our teachers absolutely forbid its use, only to have that be the student's first choice in research tools. I, personally, think that it should be used and that teachers ought to be using it to teach information literacy, but that's just me.

One research application that I have found draws its information from Wikipedia. EyePlorer is a visual reference tool that allows you to set your search term and then it displays related terms in a circle around your original term. Hover over one of the related terms and information from Wikipedia about that term will pop up. You can then drag the information to your EyePlorer notebook page and save the results of your search.

I think this tool would be a very useful starting point for students, especially younger ones, doing research papers or reports. All too often, students start with very broad categories or terms and get frustrated because they get several million hits in their search engines. Here, they can see what topics to use to narrow their search, and they can save their information. I can't wait to see some of our students using it!

I'd go back to high school if Web 2 was around

2009-03-25T11:48:00.000-07:00

I would! Except for all that awkward teenager stuff. Maybe I wouldn't.

Seriously, though, there are so many fantastic Web2 applications out there that make learning so much more interesting. I found this one today. It's The Periodic Table of Videos. Click on an element and a short video comes up explaining the properties of that element. Where was this when I was struggling to pass Mr. Tikka's chemistry class?

You could be the next Gary Larson!

2009-03-17T09:41:00.000-07:00

Back in the Dark Ages, when I was in junior high, we were required to take a drawing class. Okay, we were drawing on cave walls, and my art didn't survive the millenia. One of my biggest frustrations was that I CAN"T DRAW. I distinctly remember a cartooning assignment where the best I could produce was stick figures while some of my classmates were able to produce drawings that actually looked like something.

So, where was Pixton when I needed it? Pixton is a website that allows you to create completely customizable comics and they actually look like what they are supposed to be. For my art class, this would have been perfect!

Pixton would great in a cartooning class, but because it supports 10 languages, it would also be a terrific tool for language teachers, as well.

One word of caution: I would be very careful about just letting kids surf this site. There are several artists doing cartoons about suicide and death. I haven't looked, but there are likely some other topics being done that might not be classroom friendly, too.

Find your WILD side

2009-03-16T14:59:00.000-07:00

A quick post today. I've been researching all kinds of Web 2.0 tools and toys in preparation for a session I am teaching at Lakeside School. I was checking through one of several resources that have loads of good links to Web2 applications and came across Build Your Own Wild Self from the New York Zoo. This fun, interactive site allows you to create a whole new you from body type to hair, eyes, wings, snouts, tails, everything you ever wanted for your new you!

This would be a fantastically engaging way to teach body part vocabulary in a foreign language class. You can also use it to teach the vocabulary of colors, texture, and even animal names. One of our Spanish teachers can't wait to use it.

Shaping your words

2009-02-10T08:11:00.000-08:00

It seems like every day there's a new web 2.0 site that has a million educational applications. Okay, maybe not a million, and there are certainly some sites that are just plain silly, but I found one this morning and thought immediately of all those 6th grade poetry notebooks out there. We used to do shape poems where the kids had to write their poems in the shape of the subject of the poem. For example, a poem about ghosts would be in the shape of a ghost. You get the idea.

This morning, I found a site that will make shapes out of your text. It's called Festisite and it has just a few limited shapes, but they are fun. Just in time for Valentine's day, you can create a Valentine like this:

How much fun can your students have?

Audiobooks for Anyone

2009-02-09T11:26:00.000-08:00

Most everyone is familiar with the idea of talking books. My mother loves to listen to her talking books while she is knitting or doing chores. Here, at school, we have uploaded a number of books that the kids are reading in class. Even though some teachers resist having students use audiobooks, afraid that they won't actually read the book, it is good pedagogy for students who have reading difficulties or who are not fluent readers of English. Public libraries and audiobook services such as Learn OutLoud have large selections of books and poems readily available.

The state of Florida now has a reasonably large collection of audiobooks. From what I can tell, Lit 2 Go has a couple of hundred, mostly public domain, books, stories and poems. The best part is that these are free (unlike Learn OutLoud or iTunes). The database is searchable by author, genre or title, too, making it very easy to use.

PIcture this

2009-02-04T08:06:00.000-08:00

One of the things that I am constantly harping on is copyright and the ethical use of images harvested from the internet. In this new world of free access to so much information and so many images, it's hard for students to realize that the pictures and information that they have at their fingertips actually belongs to someone. It's harder still for them to come to grips with the idea that they need to give attribution to that owner when they use something.

This morning I opened my daily email from Free Tech for Teachers and found a link to Photol This website has over 150,000 copyright free stock photos and the only catch to using them is that you can't sell the originals . That's it. Free. Copyright free.

After reading the About page on Photol, I got curious about who the owner is. I used Whois to find out that the owner is in China and that the site has been up for several years. Whois is a valuable resource for anyone doing research and the site is something we ought to be encouraging students to use more often!

Play "Cash Cab!"

2009-02-02T10:47:00.001-08:00

For trivia buffs, Discovery Channel's "Cash Cab" is heaven in a taxi. The idea is that unsuspecting cab passengers get into a taxi and the driver asks trivia questions. For each correct answer, players win money. It's a fun show to watch (or to participate vicariously in).

Now, you can play! Or, even better, you can play it with your class. "Cash Cab Games" is an interactive site that allows you to choose a character and then play the actual games played in the show. This would be an entertaining sponge activity for middle or high schoolers and one that I will recommend to teachers looking for something to do on a Friday afternoon.

Happy New Year!

2009-02-02T09:21:00.000-08:00

Late, I know, but Happy New Year, anyhow.

It's been a long time since I added anything to this, but I've been finding some really interesting things lately. I joined the Free Tech For Teachers blog feed and I get something interesting and helpful nearly every day. The great thing about this blog is that the person who writes it starts with a cool tool that he's found and then gives some classroom applications for it.

One of the things that came through on this morning's post is Password Bird. Password Bird asks you three questions and then generates a password that includes letters and numbers. I'm going to use this next year during lab orientation so that kids who are having a hard time thinking of a password can get one that is strong and safe.

Another interesting tool (this one from Kathy Schrock's fabulous listserve) is Slideshare. This tool allows you to upload slide shows you've created, it then generates a script based on the text on the slides and allows you to share your show with anyone. The education side has a bunch of shows on all sorts of topics that you can download and edit for use in your lectures.

That's it from the lab for now!

Joining the Community

2008-08-21T08:21:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about teaching in the 21st Century is the way that technology allows us to be a part of a larger community through newsgroups and listservs. I have gotten so many good ideas and useful tips from the ed listservs that I belong to. That's not to say that my inbox isn't cluttered, it certainly is, but the nuggets that I get are worth the clutter. One of my favorites is Middle-L, a listserve for middle school teachers.

Another one of my favorites is a huge listserv that educators from all over the world subscribe to is WWWEDU. On this list, you'll find educators at all levels discussing everything from technology in the classroom to curriculum development and classroom management. "We Do" is so big that it has its own sessions at NECC!

Another great place for teaching ideas is the Education World weekly newsletter. ED World's website is crammed with teaching ideas, how-tos, and information, and not all of it is tech-related. I also subscribe to Blue Web'n a site sponsored by AT&T, chock full of well-designed lesson plans. They grade the websites they find and will only send out the ones that are of the highest calibre.

For everything from using a document camera to getting stains out of my clothes, I turn to Kathy Schrock. She's the Ed Tech goddess. She's been a teacher for a gazillion years, and has been an ed tech leader for just about that long. You can subscribe to her "Sites of the School Day" news letter and almost every day receive a quick tip or a link to a high-quality website.

There are loads and loads of ed sites out there--join at least one and become part of the worldwide education community!

TechTeacher #3

2008-08-20T13:09:00.001-07:00

Gabcast! TechTeacher #3

Netflix for Books?

2008-08-18T14:29:00.001-07:00

One of the education blogs I read is the "Infinite Thinking Machine." The folks who post to this blog are educators and power users of technology, so there's always something useful on the blog. I was scrolling through the RSS feed I have set up for ITM and discovered this post on finding sites for kids to search and comment upon books, much like Netflix does for movies. I thought what Wes Fryer, the blogger, had to say about the three sites he's found was interesting. The comments that folks have left him were equally interesting. Have a look!

It works!

2008-08-18T12:37:00.001-07:00

I love it when technology does what it's supposed to do even though I don't know what I'm doing!

I set up my Gabcast account to embed in this blog, not being very sure that it would do what I thought it would do. I recorded a podcast, and when I went to view the blog, the podcast was there! Miraculous! Click on the icon to listen to the pearls of wisdom, or scroll down the page to ignore the podcast.

Gabcast! TechTeacher's First Try #2

In Defense of the Wiki

2008-08-18T10:22:00.000-07:00

Much of the attraction that Web 2.0 applications is that these tools allow for very powerful and meaningful collaboration. The theory is that none of us is as smart (or dumb, depending) as all of us. Wikis are perfect example of how a community can be created and wisdom and knowledge shared without ever physically meeting the other members.

A wiki is a webpage that can be edited by any member of the community. Wikipedia is the most well-known example, and despite the reputation that it has, it is still the most powerful example out there of shared community knowledge. Numerous studies have been done, and despite what people think of it, it is as reliable as the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica. One of the reasons for that is that there are so many people reading and editing the pages at the same time. Another reason is that Wikipedia staff are constantly monitoring the pages and vetting the changes nearly as soon as they are made by a user. That's not to say that at the moment you access a page there may be an inaccuracy, but it's pretty fair to say that others are checking the facts and trying to keep a page current.

Having said all that, there are countless wikis out there that organizations, groups or even individuals have created for all sorts of reasons. One that I just found (thank you, PNAIS TechDirectors listserve!) is the ISTE Independent Schools wiki. The purpose of this wiki is to allow teachers and tech folks who work in Independent Schools to collaborate, share ideas and solve problems. Here, you'll find lesson plan ideas and support from others who teach in independent schools all over the country. What a great idea!

Word clouds and such

2008-08-11T10:43:00.000-07:00

I love my listservs! I get so many good ideas from the communities of educators that are members of such servs as WWWEDU and Net-Gold. Today's gem comes from WWWEDU.

One of the things we'll be talking about at Camp is tag clouds. Tags are key words that you can apply to items posted on many Web2 applications like de.licio.us or Flikr, or even this blog. The tags make searching for a specific item easier. Tag clouds are a graphic way of looking at the tags of an item, and they are set up so that the most frequently used tags are larger than the lesser used ones. Wordle is an application that allows you to cut and paste your own text or the text of a blog or even a de.licio.us user's tags and create your own tag, or word, clouds. You can then save the picture to the gallery, or print it. Here's the cloud I made using the text of the first three posts to this blog. What makes this tool more useful, I think, than TagCrowd, is that you have three different options for the source of the cloud and you can customize it by changing the orientation, altering the shape and changing the color scheme.

Big deal. So I can make pretty pictures out of the text of my blog. What's educational about that? Well, something like this would make a great introductory scaffolding activity for reading. Let's say that you teach Earth Science and you have a new chapter you want the students to read. Type the text of the introductory section into Wordle, create your cloud, and show it to the kids. The largest words are going to be the ones the students will need to make sure that they understand. But, the activity also highlights the major vocabulary for the entire section. Better yet, have the students make their own word clouds.

Or, you're working on writing a paper with your class. Have the students cut and paste the text of their paper into Wordle and they can see for themselves if they are over using a term, or under utilizing a specific term that is important to their theme.

A great tool for ELL students as well as students who struggle with reading and writing!

Digital Booktalks

2008-08-06T08:47:00.000-07:00

A short post this morning. I was reading my school email and one of the posters to a listserve I belong to does a website called Web English Teacher. Today, she sent a link to a site she uses for some of her literature students, Digital Booktalk. These are short videos, some shot by students, that discuss a particular book. The site has all the tools students would need to create their own booktalk videos. I checked their list of books, and was going to suggest a couple that we use, but decided that would make a really powerful project for, say, the 8th graders to create for "In the Time of the Butterflies." It would also be a really useful tool for the ELL kids to use as a prereading exercise, too!

Getting Ready For Camp Wannabeateki

2008-07-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

I've been struggling for several weeks now to organize the activities for Camp Wannabeateki. In the past, Camp has been taught from a static web page, and I never thought it had much pizzaz. After listening to a couple of podcasts lately, one by David Warlick about how a science high school in Philadelphia uses Web2 technology, and another one from Teachers Teaching Teachers, I realized what the problem is: There's so much happening in Web2 that every time I start to think about Camp, I find something new. Good Grief!

So, here's what I learned about today: Gabcast and VoiceThread. Gabcast is a service that allows you to record your phone calls. Okay, that sounds really creepy, when in fact, it's a tool that could be used for recording interviews, random musings, or a podcast about some really interesting place you're visiting. It's super easy to use: you call Gabcast, enter your channel number and your password and start talking. You can download the sound files into Audacity for editing, or publish on the fly. VoiceThread allows you to upload video, images or artwork, and then you can record your thoughts, a story, music, whatever sound you want to be a part of your VoiceThread story. As a sample, I added comments to this VoiceThread I found on the Classroom 2.0 Ning. You can use your Gabcast recording for your VoiceThread story! So easy and so amazing. I think the kids are going to be really excited about both of these great new tools.

I'm off to go find more new toys to play with!

A Word About The Title

2008-07-21T11:18:00.000-07:00

My goal for this blog is to share ideas, resources and the occasional musing about education. There are plenty of other education/technology blogs out there, so why does the world need one more? Well, my hope is that when the folks at Northwest see what one of their own does with blogging, they will want to think about how they can use blogging and all the other Web 2.0 tools out there in their classrooms. Further, I hope that, once in a while when I go off the deep end and immerse myself in something new, some of my friends will be there with me! Hence, the title: many of the Northwest folks have already witnessed my willingness to jump in. Maybe I can get them to jump, too.

Or, as Sir Ken Robinson said, recently, "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you never come up with anything original." To see the entirety of his comments about how education is killing the creativity of the human mind, click here.