Saturday, December 25, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
What I've Found on the Web This Week (weekly)
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Welcome to Vimeo Video School
Vimeo Video School is a fun place for anyone to learn how to make better videos. Start by browsing our Vimeo Lessons, or find specific video tutorials created by other members.
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lino is a free sticky & canvas service that requires nothing but a Web browser." -Alternative to Wallwisher - Cheska Lorena
Offers some project management tools that Wallwisher doesn't and lets you pan around your canvas. - Dianne Rees -
Network of classroom and student blogs organized to help promote the commenting on and sharing of student writing and learning. Gives educators a good audience of commentators for their students
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Top 10 sites for Creating Digital Magazines and Newspapers by David Kapuler
While creating digital magazines or newspapers can be done in a word processor, there are dedicated sites that elevate this art to a whole new level.
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Students: Win $10,000 with 100 words | tweentribune.com
"100 words could win you $100 – or $500 – with a 100-word essay about technology."
Saturday, December 11, 2010
What I've Found on the Web This Week (weekly)
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Free Technology for Teachers: 10 Ways to Create Comics Online
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Sequence of Inquiry Cycle | Digital Is ...
- I really like the sequence you presented. It will be helpful as
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Group Conversations Around Images, Documents, and Videos | Digital Is ...
- The first step is the play step. And I believe that play is an essential step for students learning new technologies. This step gives students free rein to explore the new tools without having "serious" work to accomplish. This stage allows for students' natural curiosity to take over and test the limits of the technology in a really low-risk setting. And I found out that when I skipped this step or moved through it too quickly, I noticed students will still want to play when I actually want them to do the serious work.
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Welcome to "Googlios" where free Google tools meet ePortfolios.
This site is intended to be a collection of resources for those interested in using ePortfolios in Education. -
Digital storytelling from soup to nuts
"many digital stories are personal narratives used for sharing with friends and family, others can be created to offer insight and knowledge about a cause, a topic or a memorable figure. Communicating a message through story can be a powerful way to educate, encourage thought and initiate change"
Saturday, December 4, 2010
What I've Found on the Web This Week (weekly)
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Tools and Resources Supporting Effective Search - CPS TechTalk
Google Certified Teacher Lucy Gray recently published the slides from her presentation Tools and Resources Supporting Effective Search. The slides offer some great tips about using many of Google's lesser-used search tools. View the presentation below
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A really simple site for creating comics
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Free Technology for Teachers: Animate Text with Wondersay
- Wondersay is a simple tool for creating animated text displays. The animated text displays you create with Wondersay can be embedded into a blog post or wiki page.
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An East Oakland Odyssey--Literature Circles
A teacher made site as a literature circle resource
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DigiGogy: BLOG SLAM! (Another update to "Is Anybody Asking the Kids?")
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Welcome to Aviary--an image editor that can be embedded on a website
Aviary, a free image editing and sound editing service that I've featured on Free Technology for Teachers a number of times in the past, recently launched a free image editing tool that you can put into your own website. Aviary's HTML5 Photo Editor can be embedded into your own website.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Seven Ways to Build Your Own Educational Games
There are hundreds of places to find educational games and quizzes on the Internet. That said, sometimes you still cannot find quite what you're looking for. In those cases you're better off creating your own games. Here are seven good tools you and your students can use for creating games.
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35+ Free online Image and Photo Editing Tools @ Techie Blogger
35+ Free online Image and Photo Editing
Saturday, November 27, 2010
What I've Found on the Web This Week (weekly)
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A livebinders collection of creative commons resources. It's Awesome!
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Education Reform is Re-establishing, Redefining and Retooling : 2¢ Worth
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Free Technology for Teachers: Three Ways to Cut, Mix, & Mash YouTube Videos
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Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction - NYTimes.com
"Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning."
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Teaching the Ten Steps to Better Web Research
A slideshow demonstrating students' limited understanding of how to search the web, with links to articles and strategies for teaching students how to research the web.
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The Top 10 Reasons Students Cannot Cite or Rely On Wikipedia
Includes important info anyone should know when using Wikipedia as a resource. Also contains info on how the site should be used.
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Worlds End, Worlds Begin: Living in a Story-Rich, Idea-Poor Universe
Comments:
Thought-provoking ideas regarding education, information "delivery," and the role of teacher. - Debby Smith
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
significance of the move from a time of information scarcity to a time of information superfluity.
stories served, from the outset, as a primitive storage device
writing is a prosthesis for memory,
What we don't do naturally--and what we need teachers for--is to turn outward and become residents of a universe that does not revolve around the individual.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
What I've Found on the Web This Week (weekly)
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Windows : Premium Laptops - BestBuy - Annotated
- Entertain yourself with this laptop that features MediaSmart software for
instant access to music and movies. The high-definition 14.5" LED BrightView
display and Dolby Advanced Audio let you do it all with stunning visuals and
immersive sound. One year of security software included
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Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation | Video on TED.com
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http://techhappy.wordpress.com/sites-for-kids-2/
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Freeplay Music, Broadcast Production Music Library, Free and Mp3 Music Downloads, See Usage Terms.
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The site of the student blogging challenge
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Sept. Students 2010 | Challenge Yourself to Blog
a list of students who are registered for the student blogging challenge this fall
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20-free-screen-recording-tools-for-creating-tutorials-and-presentations/
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
What I've Found on the Web This Week (weekly)
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Web 2.0 in the Classroom: Using Blogs to Promote Authentic Learning in the Classroom
Resources for those educators wishing to learn more about blogging for themselves and/or their students.
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"The NWP Digital Is website is a collection of ideas, reflections, and stories about what it means to teach writing in our digital, interconnected world. Read, discuss, and share ideas about teaching writing today"
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Grapholite features a drag and drop interface for creating flowcharts, organization charts, and more. You can create new diagrams from scratch or use the sample templates provided by Grapholite
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Road To Grammar - Your Road to Better Grammar
365 interactive grammar quizzes
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Modules - Learning Telecollaboratively
"Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0Tutorials and Resources for Teachers"
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https://sites.google.com/site/richardbyrnepdsite/
"Technology alone is not going to rehabilitate our lesson plans. However, when used correctly technology can improve our lesson plans and in turn our students' learning experiences.The pages in the left-hand column will take you to free technology tools and resources that have been reviewed onFree Technology for Teachers."
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An awesome wiki of an organized list of web 2.0 tools for educators.
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Teaching students about Creative Commons and appropriate use of images | The Edublogger
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A sites that allows for searching several search engines for creative commons multimedia...images, videos, music, media
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Creating a Blogging Scope and Sequence | always learning - Annotated
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- Links with analysis and synthesis that articulate a deeper understanding or
relationship to the content being linked and written with potential audience in
mind. (Real blogging). - Extended analysis and synthesis over a longer period of time that builds on
previous posts, links, and comments. (Complex blogging).
- Links with analysis and synthesis that articulate a deeper understanding or
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It’s not like blogging is something new anymore…
Of course, this would be much easier if we had a scope and sequence for
writing to begin with – just a standard format to follow that we could embed
digital literacy skills into at each level (something like this). But, since we don’t have one already in
place, I figure we can start with a basic overview for blogging. Considering I
couldn’t find one to build on when I did a simple Google search, it seems like
something that might be useful to more teachers than just us at YIS.
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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Saturday, October 30, 2010
What I've Found on the Web This Week (weekly)
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http://www.cloud-canvas.com/index.php/
Canvas is a powerful in-browser drawing program that allows users to utilize layers, filters, clip art and other graphics, brushes, textures, and many other features normally found in Photoshop-like programs. You save directly into your Google Docs account or you can export as a .png file onto your computer from the drawing.
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http://mashable.com/2010/10/24/create-your-own-comics/
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Stripgenerator.com - Comic Creating Community
Strip Generator allows anyone, even people who claim they can't draw, to create a good-looking black and white comic strip. To create a comic strip all you need to do is select the number of frames you want then drag characters and objects into those frames. The menus for characters and objects are fairly extensive.
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100+ Google Tricks for Teachers
"From super-effective search tricks to Google tools specifically for education to tricks and tips for using Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar, these tricks will surely save you some precious time"
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60 Educational Game Sites That You’ve Probably Never Seen « Tech:-)Happy
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"Fast and easy capture.Save your ideas, notes, tasks, you name it. It's simple.Access anywhere.Knowcase works on your desktop, phone and other mobile devices.Collaborate with ease.Simple sharing and collaborative editing makes it perfect for teams."
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10 Best And Free Online Video Editing Software
"Free online Video Editing Tools work within your browser to cut and edit videos without having too much knowledge of video editing. They are really very easy to learn and simple to use."
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"Learning is Sharing Find Free-to-Use Teaching and Learning Content from aroundthe World. Organize K-12 Lessons, College Courses, and more."
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Using Technology with Writing - Annotated
- Word Processing enables students to write
freely with the confidence that they will be able to make changes at a later
date easily and quickly.- Word processing with technology...great!
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Study: Half of high school students admit to bullying - CNN.com - Annotated
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- Bullying is just as common at public and private schools
- Violence is much less common outside of public schools
- One in 10 students admit to bringing weapons to school
STORY HIGHLIGHTS - Bullying is just as common at public and private schools
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A how-to guide for how to use Voki and embed it on your blog
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Nude photos and cruel messages, teen digital dating abuse grows - CNN.com
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
What I've Found on the Web This Week (weekly)
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now add free for educational use!
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"The Digiteen™ Project is a global hands-on project for middle and early high school students, (typically Grade 6-9, 11-15 year old) which was founded by Julie Lindsay (now in Beijing, China) and Vicki Davis (Camilla, GA USA) in 2008. This project studies digital citizenship with students researching current topics, writing a collaborative report on a wiki, and performing and documenting offline action educational projects to promote effective digital citizenship at their local schools. The purpose of the project is to educate on and promote effective Digital Citizenship and responsible online choices as well as immersing students into an educational community for learning and collaborating."
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Cacoo - Create diagrams online Real time collaboration
Cacoo allows you to draw shapes, type, and drag and drop elements of your diagram. One of the unique aspects of Cacoo is that you can also upload images to include in your diagrams. The collaborative aspect of Cacoo is that you can invite other people to contribute to your diagrams. Cacoo allows you to chat with your collaborators in real-time while you work on your diagrams.
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Memoov - Animation Studio online
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- Whether you are an amateur or a pro you will be able to satisfy all your needs
with Soundation — a powerful online sequencer with real time effects, virtual
instruments and a fully integrated Sound Shop
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Braineos | Flash card quizzes to make your brain happy!
Braineos is a newer entry into that market that you might want to take a look at. Braineos provides users with a platform to create their own flashcards or study flashcards created by others. Braineos provides users with four ways to study their flashcards' contents
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What is this ?
BlogBooker produces a high-quality PDF Blog Book from all your blog's entries and comments.
Archives can be generated from any blog running on WordPress, LiveJournal (and derivatives) or Blogger.
The whole process takes about 3-4 minutes, depending on the size of your blog.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Teaching Digital Learners to Learn Digitally
Technology is the performance enhancing substance of my learning, even though the process is as natural as it gets. My own curiosity is what drives me. No goals, standards, or objectives. There is no final product I intend to produce, and no intended stopping place for my inquiry. I'm experiencing learning in its most raw of states: learning for the sake of learning. I don't think I've been this engaged in the process since I was five.
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I was standing in the hallway with my students the other day during the middle of fourth block, the time when I take the class to the restroom and stand quietly in the hall while I wait for students to come out. Like most other days, I was using this quiet time to think. I was contemplating the way I go about learning in my own life conflicts with how learning is done in school. Considering if, why, and how I could teach my students to learn like I've been, and also wondering if they, perhaps, already were.
The first students came out of the bathroom and leaned against the lockers across from me, and I let my curiosity break the silence. "If you could learn about anything, what would it be?" I asked one of of the girls.
She looked up at me. "Huh?" she asked.
"Absolutely anything," I told her. "If you had complete freedom to learn about anything in the world. Anything that you were interested in and wanted to know more about....what would it be?"
She was silent for a moment, a perplexed look growing across her face. "I don't know," she said hesitantly.
She looked at the ground, and I could tell that she was still thinking, so I waited. Looking back at me, she said again, "I don't know....I guess that I've never really thought about that before."
By this time the rest of the class had joined us. I walked my students back to our room and resumed class, but I couldn't help but keep thinking about the exchange I just had with this student. Her response to me, I decided, was completely unacceptable.
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We live in a society of immediate and instant access to just about any information, anytime, anywhere. As I've seen first-hand, this reality changes the face of learning dramatically, and I'd say it's for the better. Discovering how to learn with digital tools has sent me down a path where I have been able to grow as a learner on a scale I had never before experienced. If I were asked the same question I asked my student in the hall the other day, one that addressed what I would like to learn about, I would have more to say in response than my questioner would have time to listen.
But when I asked my student this question, she didn't quite know how to respond. And she wasn't the only one. The group of students around her looked equally baffled by what I had asked. I'd bet that none of them had really thought much about the their own learning.
To me, this just didn't seem right. As a teacher, I want to cultivate in my students love for learning and the skills they need to continue to grow as learners long after leaving the walls of formal education. Actualizing this vision, of course, comes with challenges, but the digital world today provides a tremendous opportunity to make this happen.
In his last post, David Warlick identified a "vast chasm between the world that we are preparing our children for, and where we are preparing them." I can see this, too. The 13 and 14 year olds I teach have seamlessly integrated technology into their own lives. Many have amassed hundreds of friends on social networks and can engage in simultaneous conversations through texting. They are, as characterized by many, digital learners, and we are preparing them for a life in a digital word. Technology must play a role in how we teach them. But, if enabling students to become life-long learners is also the goal, then it's not enough for the focus to only be on integrating it into learning. Students also need the chance to learn how to learn with it.
So, that's what I'm going to teach them to do.
Next week, my students will be starting what I will tell them is their Digital Inquiry Project. I've spent quite a few hours thinking about and planning it out, and while this project most likely won't go as I've planned (new lessons seldom do with 8th graders....for better or for worse), I know that we're on the brink of something incredibly important. I'll speak more about this plan in greater depth in a later post, and of course, I'll be blogging about the lessons we are all learning along the way.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
What I've Found on the Web This Week (weekly)
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PBS Teachers — Resources For The Classroom
HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes is a groundbreaking 60-minute documentary that examines representations of manhood, sexism, and homophobia in hip-hop culture. It is a “loving critique” of certain disturbing developments in rap music culture from the point of view of a fan who challenges the art form’s representations of masculinity.
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Channeling the Flow : 2¢ Worth - Annotated
- But in thinking about a recent post if mine, comparing students to learners, it
seems difficult (to impossible) to be a learner in a learning
environment that virtually ignores the information flow. -
We teach in closed environments, from stale textbooks, and too often we seem
more focused on what we can block with our networks than what we can light up
our classrooms with. Our curriculum is paced and pixelated, and based on
pedagogies that may well be increasingly irrelevant to today’s learners. - However learning culture can lead to teachers who are engaged in personal
learning adventures.
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Cedar Grove looks at one district's use of uniforms - NorthJersey.com
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The site of the Great Blogging Challenge
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Interactive Folio: Romeo and Juliet - Annotated
- Here you’ll find quite simply the most interactive and sophisticated version of
Romeo and Juliet ever created: use it as a study guide and teaching
tool. Read the play, read its English source texts, read critical materials on
the play, explore Shakespeare's vocabulary, and experience a full range of
multi-media associated with the play.
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YouTube - Enter Kazoo Man: Metallica Enter Sandman performed on KAZOO by Mister Tim (multitrack)
Just because it's funny.....
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Lori Gracey’s 60 Websites: Information - Annotated
- here is a list of the 60 sites that I scarfed off the Twitter feed hashtag
#TECSIG. I highlighted in red the ones I think are a little more interesting
than the run of the mill:
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The Answer Sheet - A different vision from a different superintendent
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To use Incredibox just head over to the website, select the English or French version, then start mixing sounds by dragging from the menu to the "people field." Every time you add a new sound a new person appears in the screen. Click a person to delete the sound he represents.Thanks to David Kapuler for sharing this link. Applications for EducationUnfortunately, there does not appear to be a way to download the sound loops you create on Incredibox. That said, it could still be a good resource for students to use to experiment with rhythms and sounds in an introduction to music course.
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Miss W. | Challenge Yourself to Blog
Tasks for the Great Blogging Challenge
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Draw on any webpage. Share your ideas. - MarkUp
Markup.io is a free service that enables you to quickly draw and write on any webpage. Markup.io operates as a bookmarklet in your browser's bookmarks bar or toolbar. Once you have Markup.io installed just click it anytime you're viewing a webpage to start drawing and commenting on that page. When you're done marking a page you can share it with others by clicking publish
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Adflip provides one avenue for examining the rhetoric of ads from across the last 50 to 60 years in the United States. This might be done by choosing a general topic, such as automobiles, and picking apart the use of image, word choices, and other advertising strategies that also connect to the zeitgeist of the times
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
What I've Found on the Web This Week (weekly)
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CEO Whitman flunks home economics - CNN.com - Annotated
- Now that she has cluttered a controversy over an undocumented housekeeper by
making excuses, refusing to admit mistakes and blaming opponents for her
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Here’s My First Five Tips For Writing Better Blog Posts — What Are Yours? | The Edublogger
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is a Google Map featuring 3D panoramic tours of more than 1400 locations around the globe. The Vista name comes from the 3DVista products used to construct the 3D panoramic images shown on the map. Click on any placemark on the map to be taken to a collection of 3D panoramic images of that location. In some cases there is sound to accompany the panoramas.
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features two sections; Brainy Flix and Brainy Pics. Brainy Pics is comprised of images that demonstrate the meaning of a word. Most of the pictures are submitted by students. Brainy Flix is comprised of short videos that illustrate the meaning of words. Just like with Brainy Pics, most of the videos are submitted by students
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"Bring Words to Life! Wordia - the authorative online textual dictionary, where you bring words to life through video!"
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"Free Online Visual English Dictionary and Thesaurus!"
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Stupeflix Studio - Video creation made easy
Create
Remix
Share
Impress
Make a video -
Cool site for teacher and student web resources.
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In Digital Age, Does Handwriting Still Matter? - The Juggle - WSJ
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Teaching with Technology in the Middle: Rethinking Student Blogging, For Real
Blog post about my latest attempt to bring blogging into my classroom.
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"How-to video: Diigo -- the social bookmarking Web 2.0 application" One of the best diigo overviews/tutorials that I've seen
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.