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We’ve heard from a lot of teachers that it can be frustrating to work with on one PBwiki with many students at one time. PBwiki doesn’t allow more than one editor on the page at one time – and the page that is being edited is ‘locked’ to other users.
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Drawing a blank on how you might use a blog in your own classroom? Here's a list to jump start your creativity. By no means is this list exhaustive; there are as many ways to use blogs in education as there are to use paper.
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Interactive White Board resources
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Welcome to TeacherLed.com. This site aims to provide teaching and learning resources to make the use of the interactive whiteboard in the classroom easier and more productive. Interactive whiteboard resources are categorised on the left. New interactive whiteboard resources are below.
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# Write some lines of a story
# Send it to your friends
# They add some lines to the story and forward it -
The list of Web 2.0 Applications will grow as the 101 Web 2.0 Tutorials project evolves. The links will become active once I have posted a new tutorial. You might also want to look at HISD Quick Tips where I have some short screencast tutorials for students, teachers and staff at Hereford Independent School District.
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This website is about how to find the best content online for learning.
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A short explanation of what makes the World Wide Web work: browsers, packets, servers addresses and links.
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I present to you a manifesto of done. This was written in collaboration with Kio Stark in 20 minutes because we only had 20 minutes to get it done.
Monthly Archives: April 2009
links for 2009-04-14
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We’ve heard from a lot of teachers that it can be frustrating to work with on one PBwiki with many students at one time. PBwiki doesn’t allow more than one editor on the page at one time – and the page that is being edited is ‘locked’ to other users.
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Drawing a blank on how you might use a blog in your own classroom? Here's a list to jump start your creativity. By no means is this list exhaustive; there are as many ways to use blogs in education as there are to use paper.
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Interactive White Board resources
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Welcome to TeacherLed.com. This site aims to provide teaching and learning resources to make the use of the interactive whiteboard in the classroom easier and more productive. Interactive whiteboard resources are categorised on the left. New interactive whiteboard resources are below.
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# Write some lines of a story
# Send it to your friends
# They add some lines to the story and forward it -
The list of Web 2.0 Applications will grow as the 101 Web 2.0 Tutorials project evolves. The links will become active once I have posted a new tutorial. You might also want to look at HISD Quick Tips where I have some short screencast tutorials for students, teachers and staff at Hereford Independent School District.
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This website is about how to find the best content online for learning.
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A short explanation of what makes the World Wide Web work: browsers, packets, servers addresses and links.
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I present to you a manifesto of done. This was written in collaboration with Kio Stark in 20 minutes because we only had 20 minutes to get it done.
People who use Facebook are Dumb
That would appear to be the message in this article in China View this morning.
Or, at least, they get lower marks.
I think someone needs to tell those students who were in my Computer Science class at the university this year. They used Facebook as a meeting place to stay connected with each other and their friends. In the process of th
eir collaboration, they worked together and put together some of the most amazing and creative materials that I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying.
According to the report, students who use Facebook could score up to a full grade less. You mean they could have been even better?
I’ll be interested in reading this report when it’s released. Questions that I’ll be looking for would include what kind of assessment and evaluation practices are used. Are the practices modernized and up to date or are students expected to spend the same amounts of time in the stacks, regurgitating works of others? Does this report include results from all years at university?
This report will tickle the fancy of many news outlets depending upon its content and how it’s released.
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links for 2009-04-13
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CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the U.S. and worldwide. Using an open-content, web-based collaborative model termed the “FlexBook,” CK-12 intends to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality educational content that will serve both as core text as well as provide an adaptive environment for learning.
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Soon your computer and electronic gadgets could be much smaller, faster, cheaper, more reliable and even greener thanks to a new form of computer memory technology called racetrack.
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When it comes to the type of applications iPhone owners use most, ones for checking the weather trump games, music, news and everything else.
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Search Twitter – numerous ways to work with results
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While many stakeholders are involved in developing policies on the use of Web 2.0 technologies in K-12 education, new research suggests that teachers are the most important group driving adoption.
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Students in high school, or college kids without embedded math knowledge, take note: Microsoft's Live Search can solve math equations with variables.
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This Website holds a collection of the Song 99 Bottles of Beer programmed in different programming languages. Actually the song is represented in 1259 different programming languages and variations. For more detailed information refer to historic information.
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Soon after, he sold his business to the advertising giant TMP Worldwide. It expanded into Monster.com, a website that in 2000 generated more than $500 million, marking the beginning of the end of newspapers' near-monopoly on classified ads.
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Blogs in Education – Submission for a forthcoming STRIDE handbook for The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). See related handbooks here.
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Never edited video before? Never fear. With Adobe® Premiere® Express, make videos that rock in minutes. All you need is a web browser and Adobe Flash® Player, which you probably already have on your machine. And best of all, there's nothing to pay or download
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Well, we kinda felt the time has come for the first Inspired Release. In the same time, we saw many of our readers blog’s are using too generic icons for their Twitter widgets, so we came up with a brilliant idea – why not ask our favorite artists to draw a bird icon in their own style for you guys to have something fresh on your blog?
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Twitter has become a powerful tool for community organizers, marketers, and others who want to share and receive information in a fast, friendly environment. It’s no wonder, then, that teachers have also found success on Twitter, using the tool to connect with students, share information with parents, and find useful resources
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One of the highlights of October's Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco was the emergence of 'Semantic Apps' as a force.
Move to Romania
If you’re looking for the highest quality Twitterers, then you may wish to move to Romania. Web resource Twitter Grader has ranked countries by the quality of its Twitter using folks. The results are in and the best are from Romania.
How does it work? I haven’t a clue! Somehow, they’ve devised an algorithm that attempts to rank twitter users by their quality. According to Mashable, here’s how it’s done…
Twitter Grader bases your score on the number of followers you have, the power of this network of followers, the pace of your updates, the completeness of your profile and “a few other factors.”
Now, based upon the total number of users that can be identified by locations in their profiles, here are the top five countries.
The numbers should be anywhere between 0 and 100. Romania, with fewer folks using Twitter has a whopping score of 67.65.
By drilling through, you can even determine who the best folks are from Romania.
It’s fun to poke around and see what’s happening where and with whom. Like good statistics, if you play around long enough, you can make it say anything that you want. I’m the tops in Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada, beating out six other people. Talk about yer granularization.
Seriously, though, is there more than entertainment value to this? In a world where students are connected 24/7 to Web 2.0 resources, we could be using these statistics as hooks to the importance of building networks and being of value to others in the quality of resources and the quality of writing/communication. This article is a good read. If the point is to set yourself ahead of others, then it’s important to be able to market yourself. It’s a skill that will be important in all pathways for students.
In a world where text messages are dominating, the skill set to be an effective communicator is important. Can resources like Twitter Grader play a part? Let’s make a concerted effort to get those Canadian results moving upward!
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links for 2009-04-12
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Utility to backup your Twitter data.
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The following list of ICT tools was crowd sourced from individual educationalists and not companies when the question ‘What Indispensable ICT tools do you use in education’ was asked and is not meant to be exhaustive in any way.
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The following list of software was crowd sourced from individual educationalists and not companies when the question ‘What software do you use in education’ was asked and is not meant to be exhaustive in any way.
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Twitter guide to quality of tweets by country
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Your desktop doesn’t have to be a boring graveyard for lost and forgotten files anymore! Transform it with BumpTop. Create the desktop that suits your needs and style.
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Today one of our favorite sites, Twitter (Twitter reviews), was hit with a particularly nasty exploit: one that could infect users simply by visiting a friend’s profile on Twitter.com.
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Source code behind Twitter malware of April 2009
Add-ons
I get a lot of comments about what my browsing experience looks like. Recently, I lent my laptop to a friend who had his broken and he came back with a comment that I had too much “stuff” in my Firefox desktop. Could be, I thought, but he should have seen what it looked like when I used Flock as my preferred browser.
I suppose it may be a little cluttered but it works well for me. My goal is to have quick and easy access to everything that I do online without having to wander all over the place to get what I want done. It’s also an attempt to make things safer and quicker for the time that I spend online.
My Desktop
You start with Firefox and then make it your own by adding appropriate add-ons.
So, it’s been a while since I listed my favourite add-ons and some have changed. Here’s some of what I’m currently using.
- NoScript – Plugin that lets me have control over scripts that are run from the webpages that I visit. It’s intrusive in the beginning but does protect from one site injecting its code into another. Academically, it also provides great insights about just what happens when you visit a website.
- AdBlock Plus – Coupled with a subscription service, advertisements are blocked and don’t appear on websites that are visited. It does result in gaping holes in webpages where the advertisements would normally appear but speeds up the browsing experiences and cuts down on annoying animations and sounds.
- Shareaholic – As I visit resources, I find that I want to share them with myself and others. This add-on lets you quickly and easily share what you’re looking at with your friend on Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo! Buzz, and more.
- Download Helper – When you visit a website and would like to have a copy of the media embedded without a great deal of work, this add-on lets you snag a copy for your personal purposes with ease.
- Minimap Sidebar – Have you ever gone to a website to find an address and then have to head over to your favourite mapping website to find the location? Not with this add-on. Just drag the address to it and it will be plotted on a map in a sidebar for you.
- Delicious Bookmarks – Absolutely these are a requirement if you keep Delicious bookmarks online. One click brings up a dialogue for the current page and then files the link away for future reference.
- PDF Download – Rather than allowing my browser to handle any PDF files that I find on the internet, I turn control over to this add-on. It gives full control over online document handling.
- Evernote – This is a terrific utility if you’re having memory problems <grin> or use multiple devices. With an Evernote account, you can send memos, weblinks, and more to the account for use later on. So, if I’m somewhere without a computer, I’ll just make a note to myself on my iPod and send it to Evernote for attention later when I’m at a computer.
- Greasemonkey – If you don’t like the way that a website works, use your own script to change the behaviour of it. Seems kind of bizarre but is very helpful at times.
- Colorful Tabs – I actually grabbed this add-on for its attractive appearance at first. Each new tab in Firefox has its own colour. Then, I read the documentation and found all kinds of uses for it. For example, you can colour tabs by domain so that you can head to a tab based upon a pre-defined colour.
- Customize Google – By itself, Google is a great search engine. However, with this add-on, you have more control over many things that you’d have to work at without it. For example, repeat your search on another site? Add directly to Delicious. Set sticky preferences.
- Finally, Cooliris. Once you’ve tried this add-on, you’ll never search the same way again. Cooliris bring up a 3D wall of images that lets you rapidly preview images without going through the traditional page by page approach. If you visit their website, you can even figure out how to create your own Cooliris enambled page. I did so with the pictures from our Student Photo Exhibit.
There’s more, but this is a good start. I didn’t even get a chance to share weather (Forecast Fox) or startup pages (Fast Dial). Perhaps in a future post.
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links for 2009-04-11
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This site provides a series of online textbooks covering electricity and electronics. The information provided is great for both students and hobbyists who are looking to expand their knowledge in this field. These textbooks were written by Tony R. Kuphaldt and released under the Design Science License.
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a place where everyone is invited to join an open, ongoing discussion – no art degree required.
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OS X is a brilliant and fast operating system, but like all computers, Macs can slow down the more you bung them up with data.
That's why we've put together this huge collection of tips to help keep your Mac lean and fast.
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Will our grandchildren century grow up knowing how to pluck the answer to any question out of the air, summon their social networks to assist them personally or professionally, organize political movements and markets online?
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This gallery lists JavaScript visualizations built on the Google Visualization API. Some of these have been written by Google, and some have been written by third parties. Links below point to instructions for and demonstrations of each visualization. (Links to third-party visualizations will take you off the Google site.) To learn how to use JavaScript visualizations, read Using Visualizations.
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In this article tripwire magazine provides one of the most comprehensive Twitter Toolboxes available. Twitter is becoming increasingly popular and I guess that the main reasons for this is the openess and simplicity of Twitters solution. A lot of Twitter Tools are available today and you can find most of them in this article with short descriptions and illustrations.
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Twit-O-Matic is packed full of reputation & traffic building goodies. Here's some key features:
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When you think of Facebook, it’s not likely you consider it a productivity tool. But the truth is that there are a variety of ways to use Facebook for both learning productivity, and a number of apps that can help you do so. Read on, and you’ll find some wonderful Facebook apps for productivity and learning.
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In short, a woman named Sandie had been talking on Twitter about killing herself. She sent a message to Demi, who alerted a larger audience, which then got in touch with local police who found her. As of this writing, Sandie is apparently in custody and okay.
Blogging Types
I haven’t read a better article about the blogging experience than the one that I read yesterday here. The entry tries provide insights on the different ways that people blog. It’s a good read and makes you think about what makes one blog stand out over another.
Now, these are considerably different from those tests that you’ll find on Facebook. “What kind of shoe are you?” or “What decade are you?” are in my Facebook news feed right now. Geesh.
In this entry, Skellie identifies five different blogging types. I think that the descriptions are pretty apt and, while I didn’t identify with the blogs cited as examples, I was able to classify my personal regular reading habits immediately. It also confirmed exactly why I’ve stopped following some blogs, even those of people I work with.
Each of the five blogging types have identified pros and cons and I can fully understand each in the context of the blogger behind the keyboard.
For me, I would like to think that I’m a type 2.
2. Every Day, Without Fail
Practitioners: J. D. Roth, Darren Rowse (et al.)
Description: These bloggers have to be admired for their tenacity. They will not accept anything less than a new post every day. You’ll often find that bloggers who can master this habit are destined for big things.
I do my best to ramble on about something every day. It results in two entries virtually every day. First, I have my latest findings from my delicious account scraped over. That’s easy. As I find web resources of interest, I bookmark them and they’re automatically posted as a new entry using the blog tool from delicious themselves.
The second entry is usually an opportunity for me to flesh out something that I’m thinking about. I do have a regular routine of reading news feeds first thing in the morning and either comment immediately or think about it on the drive into work where the blog entry is already formed in my mind. It’s just a matter of converting it to words. That way, I keep (and share), some topics that I’ve thought about or have worked on. It really formalizes the process for me.
The shortcoming of this type of entry is that they tend to indeed be short. Unlike the great Canadian novel entries that some write, I hope that they’re meaningful and directly to the point. My philosophy is that blogging shouldn’t be a novel with all of the facts fleshed out. I think that the best part of blogging encourages the reader to engage and think about the topic de jour. It’s even more powerful when it motivates the reader to share a comment or two.
If you’re looking for a research source, there are better avenues.
I really liked this entry. The five types of blogger are nicely fleshed out and it gave me some things to mull over – and the inspiration to create this entry!
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links for 2009-04-10
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By studying some of the bloggers I admire I’ve realized that there are five dominant content ’strategies’ they use, and that each one is very different from the others. This is good news, because it means that there is (mostly) no right or wrong way to do content. I’ll talk more about that ‘mostly’ caveat later.
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The following are 10 of the most extraordinary and creative uses of Twitter updates. These amazing updates have made the news, pushed the boundaries of what the status update can do, and have even fundamentally changed people’s lives.
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It was bound to happen and we got to say, it's pretty to look at: load Street View at a scenic location, take a screen-shot at every click, then run 'em through an image editor.
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The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials.
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As a SciCom 5 member, you can do your part by answering a new clue package every week. Each package contains a series of fun and educational puzzles and trivia. With each right answer, you improve your standing in this elite group of science savers. You can also stay tuned for video updates from Jamie coming every few weeks.
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Here are the Top 250 People that are the Coolest, Most Influential or Neatest on Twitter.
They also are very-very likely to Follow you back!
