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This is a guide to the activities and displays you will find at the Human Body Gallery at the museum. Click on the numbers to see images and a short description of each of the topics
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How to do almost anything in Math
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A Linux Twitter client.
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Some ideas for calculations in Excel
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You need to prepare a dynamic application letter and resume. You need to research the company. And you need to present a confident image and develop the ability to answer tough questions on the spot.
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Empowering girls and building self-esteem through award-winning books and book "kits"
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Solve mathematical problems with Google's built-in calculator function. Simply enter the expression you'd like evaluated in Google's web search box and hit the ENTER key or click the "Google Search" button.
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AddThis is a free way to boost traffic back to your site by making it easier for visitors to share your content.
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When using photoshop brushes a handy technique is to create layers and add brush marks and then rotate or flip the photoshop layers. This can offer several more variations to each photoshop brush.
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Since my attempts at capturing web developers’ hearts and minds by publishing fundamental research have failed miserably but my thirst for attention continues unabated, today I will once more shout at iPhone developers. That’s proven to work.
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So, when the powers-that-be requested that our students write book reports, I just had to jump in – or rather, I was volunteered. In any event, there I was convinced that therewas something better, another way that would be interesting to 6ththrough 8th graders. And so I began to list all the things I could do after reading a book.
Monthly Archives: February 2010
Digital Story Telling
The big game has come and gone. The game was pretty exciting and there was a deja vu moment for Vikings fans when we saw an interception by the Saints to put the brakes on an Indianapolis drive. It’s a definite that a single play doesn’t make or break an entire game but an interception sure lets the air out of a rally.
For many, the big thing was watching the commercials. As I indicated yesterday, for many Canadians, watching the US commercials is not an option as CTV has its own broadcast rights for the game. But, living this close to the US border opens options for us, including watching television on the local affiliates and CBS broadcasts on Channel 62-1 so that’s where I viewed the game. After all, I want to be part of the conversation at work today.
As well, I indicated that there would be a number of hashtags that I would be following on Twitter. i was following #Colts, #Saints, and of course, #SuperBowl. During the game, I also noticed a couple more that kept popping up – #sb44 and #BrandBowl. It was #BrandBowl where the comments about the commercials were posted. Interestingly, there was a lot posted about the Google Advertisement with people wondering pre-game and during the first half if they had missed it!
The commercials were very interesting, to be sure. I enjoyed watching the making of the body bridge. You can see all of the commercials here, if you are interested. What’s interesting about the commercials is the quality and obviously money spent on the production. My favourite was the Budweiser commercial with the pony bonding with the calf in youth and reuniting as grown-ups.
But, then there was the Google advertisement. It was simple and demonstrated what Google does best – search. If you had another case of deja vu, the presentation was much like “The Maching is Us/ing Us”.
Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us – WeschWeb2v2
Great stuff. I can watch this video over and over again. What it does is tell a great story. Ditto for the Google Commercial.
NFL Superbowl XLIV – Google: Parisian Love (NFL Commercial)
Then, the teacher in me kicks in. This is easily replicable in the classroom. After all, it’s just digital story telling! How?
- Write the story/script. This is always the most difficult part. But, the Google Commercial “Parisian Love” and “The Maching is Us/ing Us” are excellent exemplars.
- Head to Google and do some dry runs on the types of searches that will do what you need. It will be a combination of the content in the drop down boxes and search results. Since anything can (and usually) appears, you might want to ensure that Google’s Safe Search option is set to on.
- Keep track of the search terms for later use.
- Ready to go? You’ll need a screen capture utility to capture the moment. A great utility is the Jing Project‘s capture utility. If you school computers are locked down so that you can’t install software, there are some web based solutions that do a nice job. Check out Screencast-o-matic.
- Capture little parts of your movie. You don’t and shouldn’t attempt to put this all together in one sitting. Use your tools to capture the video clips for your movie.
- Need some inspiration? Check out this free resource from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano about digital story telling.
- Put your video clips together. You have lots of options here. Ontario educators have access to the Ministry of Education’s licensed Adobe Premiere Elements. But, you could use Windows Movie Maker or iMovie just as easily. Aviary.com is a web based alternative if you have to go that way.
- You’ll need some music. Head over to any of the many free music download sites for some copyright friendly background music. Here‘s a place to start. You may wish to bring the music into Audacity to edit it for effect.
- Export your movie and you’re good to go.
What a great concept for digital story telling! The results can be as professional as students and your chosen tools will take you.
Oh, and it helps if you can type quickly!
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links for 2010-02-07
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8 Reasons to Wake Up Earlier
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This guide was written especially for educators, who want to teach 21st century skills, such as collaborating, communicating, and connecting, through digital storytelling
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The perfect online stopwatch
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A cool threeD realtime avatar buildier.
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Make your life easier and impress clients by using mocklinkr to deliver your static mockups as a link-up and clickable website.
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The web's first ever real-time, fully collaborative outliner. Create and share outlines in your web-browser now…for free.
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OH SNAP!! Google had one of their Streeview camera cars parked in front of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt right here in Berlin. We put a GPS tracking device it and are following it right now!!!
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While Apple may have pulled out of the event, the Expo remains the biggest annual gathering of the Macintosh, iPhone and iPod software and accessory industry. It's a meeting of minds, and we'll see a huge number of Apple fanboys (and girls) in San Francisco next week.
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Education Guardian: special report on how to build up confidence in teaching and learning maths
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Customizing our Blogger blogs is now easier than ever. Aside from the hundreds of pre-made templates available for us to simply upload to our sites, there are innumerable tutorials helping us design more beautiful and interesting sites. Yet some Blogger users look beyond these simpler design features to construct stunning original Blogger designs.
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Watch 12 years of the best Super Bowl Ads
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It's that time of year. Watch the game. See the commercials. Find the commercials online. Or maybe you skipped the first 2 and are just going straight online to watch the ads. Well view freely, because we have the 2010 commercials in our annual YouTube Ad Blitz contest.
Watch the commercials here the minute they air on Feb 7th. When the game ends, we'll let you vote for your favorite 2010 commercial until Feb 14th. The winning ad will receive ultimate video glory with YouTube homepage recognition.
Super Bowl Sunday
As I write this entry, there are about 12 hours to go until kickoff. It’s a huge media day if you’re into media and understanding all that’s going into things. In fact, in so many ways, it seems like the game itself is secondary to everything else. Most definitely, the game lost much of its appeal for me when the Minnesota Vikings were eliminated but I’ll still be glued to watching the game. This old offensive coordinator is looking for a really close, high scoring game. I’m not a fan of either team but have a real appreciation for Payton Manning’s ability to read a defense and run an offense.
But, back to the media. The SuperBowl is a huge media day and companies spend the biggest of bucks to buy advertising time on the show. Or, not. There are reports of advertising that was rejected by CBS and the huge soft drink company Pepsi is spending its money on Internet advertising instead of television. That’s hugely interesting to me and provides an interesting alternate focus to advertising and coverage of the game. But, as we become more connected, internet presence and social media is so important. With digital media, the content lives on long after the game has ended. Let’s just hope that, unlike the Grey Cup, and the NFL Championship game, that decisions made by officials don’t make a significant impact on the outcome.
From a Canadian perspective, the advertising angle is interesting. Because of regulation, we will not see the US broadcast of the game. In this case, CTV owns the television rights and so all CTV channels will carry the same feed and the CBS channels on cable or satellite will also have the Canadian feed. This includes CTV’s way of funding which is by selling advertising to Canadian sources. How many times did we see the Canadian Budweiser commercial last week during the championship finals?
Internet and social media combine to really enhance the football experience. We’ve already established that having a back channel and chipping in or following the conversations really draws you into the game more than any other thing. In my Seesmic Desktop Twitter browser, I’ve already got searches open looking for “SuperBowl”, “Colts”, and “Saints”. I’ll be yet another armchair quarterback live during the game.
There are those who really want to watch the US SuperBowl advertising. On Monday, it may well be great fodder for lessons on Media Literacy. If that’s you, YouTube has you covered with a separate channel devoted to the advertising. Check it out at: http://www.youtube.com/adblitz
This advertising phenomenon has been around for years. Do you want to check out the last twelve years of SuperBowl advertising? If so, http://www.superbowl-ads.com/ may just be the ticket for you. In the current days of Tivo, it’s a major coup for advertisers to create advertisements that are more interesting to some than the game itself. And, of course, what would such a collection be without the Apple 1984 commercial.
So, if you need to contact me tonight, you know how to do it. Tag a tweet with #SuperBowl and I’ll see you!
Social Bookmarks:
links for 2010-02-06
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Winter is a season of clean and awesome beauty. But some absolutely wonderful winter phenomena remain hidden from our eyes. Luckily macrophotography reveals some miracles.
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Welcome to WordItOut
Simply enter some text and create your word cloud!
Customise many settings
Share your word cloud (or keep it secret!)
Embed it on your own website -
Audio books and stories read aloud by real people for free!
Choose low-bitrate or high-bitrate MP3 files to suit your disk space and bandwidth capabilities. Read How to Listen to learn more
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Developed for teachers and students, we find the best science interactives and resources in the world.
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You are just about to make your point, bringing your dynamic and well-prepared speech to its exciting climax, when you open your mouth to speak and hear a horrible croak instead of your usual voice. Frustrated, you clear your throat, and try again, but you sound like you are speaking underwater this time!
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Google Code Repository is a section of Google that, just like SourceForge, allows developers to upload their code for others to use under license. The repository was launched in 2006 and after searching through its archives, I found a number of interesting scripts and other goodies that would be an asset in any website owner/website builder’s arsenal.
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Today we're giving you another way to understand this period in time – by exploring a new set of historical aerial images, taken over European cities during World War II, via the historical imagery feature in Google Earth. They can now be compared directly to images from the present day.
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Looking to make the switch to Google Apps? Here's ten ways Google Apps will benefit your campus.
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An award-winning FREE interactive digital storybook destination. Classic children’s stories brought to life by TV star Kathy Kinney as Mrs. P.
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The internet catalogue for students, teachers, administrators
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Your guide to becoming a confident and effective speaker
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We’re winding down another week, and I’d like to add to your weekend distractions by sharing a list of new Twitter tools that recently launched. Give them a try and come back to share your thoughts.
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Pegshot is a photo/video service that enables friends
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Two-way Instapaper.com sync for your ebook reader
Statistics Prove…
It’s a Saturday morning and I’m sitting down to do some of the maintenance that I do to this blog. It’s not that WordPress requires a lot of work, but more and more blogs are getting hammered by spam. As I’ve mentioned before, WordPress uses Akismet to catch the stuff so that you don’t have to read the silliness that comes through or possibly get phished onto another website.
So, I’m clearing out the junk but the WordPress Dashboard provides all kinds of other information. Things like “How did people find your blog”, etc. are kind of interesting and “What search terms did people use” as they were searching and ended up on your blog. Every now and again, I give these a skim just out of morbid curiosity. I have no delusions that I’m going to change the world with my blog. I do it as a hobby and it’s my take on the 365 day projects. I try to post something daily and it’s an avenue for me to record my thoughts and I appreciate the feedback that I get from those who take the time to comment.
On the statistics screen, WordPress displays a graph of the traffic that made its way to your website on the various days. I typically have about 150 visitors a day to the blog which is kind of cool. But, this past week, there were a couple of spikes.
So, I took a look back and the two days had the following posts.
So, I guess the conclusion should be, and the statistics show, that “People Like Wordles”? The first one was taken from my February Newsletter as I wanted to have a blog copy of it and the other was just messing around with a Wordle and Adobe Photoshop Elements. Who knew? Thanks to those who retweeted and visited the post.
links for 2010-02-05
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You have years of relational information at your fingertips. Now you can learn from it.
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From Windows 3.1 to Windows Vista, the Windows operating system has taken many giant leaps. And while Vista received a lukewarm reception from some users, Windows 7 is likely to be remembered for addressing those criticisms.
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Safari AdBlocker is the only 64-bit ad blocker built for Mac OS X 10.5 to integrate directly into Safari, for minimum disruption to your browsing experience
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eLearning for children grades k-6
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Have a file you don't know how to open? Think you need an expensive piece of software to open it? Chances are there is a great free program that's just as good as the expensive one, and you'll find it here.
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There is no shortage of companies that follow popular design trends to appeal to a mass market. Much more rare is the breed of company that actually sets design trends. Today we’ll examine the techniques of a company that occupies the top of the design food chain: Apple.
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Google Apps helps you save time and cut costs. Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Sites, and more – available "anytime, anywhere", for free.
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This tool allows you to do the following:Capture your Google Maps offline and store them as images on your hard drive
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Google Apps Security Whitepaper
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This site is now home to a major collections of free online programs, tools, and resources for teachers using web pages, including the Automatic Drag-and-Drop Activity Maker. Also try the great NEW by-interest MENU SYSTEM (on the left, directly below).
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Create your design in less then 5 minutes Upload a photo of your garden Define climate and soil conditions We'll hint you best plants Create visualisations for 4 seasons
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During the 1980s and 1990s, technology resources were precious. Programmers would eke every byte out of available storage space – nothing was wasted. When it came to early online networks such as Compunet, deathly slow modem speeds meant efficiency had to be the watchword of the day. Uploaded programs would be compressed to within an inch of their lives to ensure they could be downloaded as quickly as possible. Interfaces were fast, obvious and efficient, to ensure no one’s time was wasted.
An Embossed Wordle
Last night, I was just messing around with Adobe Photoshop Elements and Wordle and came up with another what I would call cool effect. Wordle, we know, creates spectacular visualizations of words based upon frequency within some text. Working on a notion, I found a way to create an embossed effect to a wordle. I’m really proud of it and so would like to share what I did with you.
I needed so text so I just went to my blog from yesterday and highlighted some text. Then, it was off to Wordle.net to create one. I used the Grilled Cheese font, horizontal layout, and then chose a brilliant colour combination. Wordle calls this one yramirP. (Figure it out)
A great Wordle in itself!
I captured the Wordle image and brought it into Adobe Photoshop Elements.
Next, select the entire Wordle, copy it, create a new document (Elements makes it the exact size), and paste the image. I’ve now got two of them!
In the second one, from the Enhance Menu, select Adjust Color and then Remove Color. (CTRL+SHIFT+U) I then choose the background magic eraser tool and click in the black background area. Elements chooses the black area in the background and deletes it.
Yeah, there remains some black in the open areas but that really isn’t going to matter. Because we’ve removed the black background, it’s now transparent. Select the entire image and then copy it.
Head on over to the first image and paste it.
Make sure that the second image is on top of the first. You may have to drag the layer upwards in the layers window.
And you’ve got it! How’s this for an image to impress?
The result is a nice Wordle, really nice Wordle, with a very nice embossed effect. You can then flatten the image by exporting it to a JPG or other image for use in your webpage or wiki. The brilliant colours in that theme display very nicely giving the effect.
And, if you’ve had students do this, they’ve learned about Wordle, copying. pasting, combining two images, one image enhancement effect, layers, file types, backgrounds, and more. Hopefully, they’ll now be inspired to work with the effects to see what other interesting things they can create.
Thanks, http://www.wordle.net
Social Bookmarks:
links for 2010-02-04
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Scratch is designed with learning and education in mind.
As young people create projects in Scratch, they learn many of the 21st century skills that will be critical to success in the future: thinking creatively, communicating clearly, analyzing systematically, using technologies fluently, collaborating effectively, designing iteratively, learning continuously. -
Battery University is an on-line resource that provides practical battery knowledge for engineers, educators, students and battery users alike. The papers address battery chemistries, best battery choices and ways to make your battery last longer.
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2010 is the year social media and the Super Bowl are officially converging.
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This is the challenge with flash cards in an ensemble setting because you just can’t get the flas big enough for larger groups. I solved this problem using Prezi. You can view my prezi file at the following address:
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Ten ideas to help revitalize education using ed tech
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In November 2009, Apple launched a feature dubbed iTunes Preview, which essentially enabled people to see what music is available on iTunes from their Web browser without the need to fire up – or install – the desktop software program.
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Fancy knowing what your name is in Japanese? Simply type it in below and let us do the work.
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With Apple launching its iPad it has become clear that ereading is going to be a serious business in coming years. To me iPad currently is nothing more than a GIANT iPhone which Apple would use to sell Books on the same lines as that of iPod, remember the iTunes store?
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Below you will find 10 great online applications to schedule your future tweets and keep your account updated regularly.
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Catalog Card Generator – build your own nostalgic library cards
How People are Posting
If I asked you the question “How are people posting to Twitter?”, I would expect to get answers like “through Tweetdeck” or ” by going to the Website”. If I would press the issue and ask you to name all the ways possible, how long would your list be? 10? 15?
Last night, I went to download the latest copy of the Spaz Twitter browser and to see what was going on at their support site. Spaz was one of my very first Twitter browsers and I’ve always had a liking to it. It has a pleasant “new messages” tone and the most beautiful display of any that I’ve used. It’s also open source which I’ve found impressive.
As I was poking around the website, I came across this page. As you probably have noticed, every message that comes from Twitter contains the name of the application that posted it. You’ll see messages like “7 minutes ago from twitterfeed” or “1 minute ago from popurls”. On this page, statistics for how people are posting to Twitter are available. It’s interesting reading. You can check the last hour, last day, last week, … all the way to all time.
You’ve probably got a suspicion that your 10 or 15 guess from above may be a little short. Hah!
Not even close!
It’s a fascinating list to waste away a great deal of time looking to see what’s popular and what’s not.
I think after a while, and with your group of friends, you might think that what you’re doing is the same as everyone else. Not surprisingly, going to the web and using the actual website is the number one way of posting messages, but look at all of the other options. Some are clients; some are websites; some are robots.
It’s so interesting to peruse. It’s a indication of the popularity of the service and also serves as a testament to the legions of programmers that continue to do great things.
You may find your next client in that list.
Social Bookmarks:
