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Textorizer is a program that allows you to make pictures formed with text. It is best described by the sample images below. Although there are many versions around, the only one that is continuing to supported is this one.
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Visual bookmarking service
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Here are some add-ons for Facebook and Twitter, which can solve common user problems. But, it should be noted that these add-ons require you to download Greasemonkey and many are not compatible with every web browser.
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A world of music.Millions of songs on your computer, on your mobile and available offline. Brought to you ad free.
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Thounds is a recorder for your music thoughts that your friends will complete with theirs.
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A new study from security firm Barracuda Labs provides some interesting insights into the state of the Twitterverse. Unfortunately for the microblogging startup, the stats say that most of its users aren’t very active.
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The #1 site for free, fast image hosting
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Cleverbot learns from real people – things it says may seem inappropriate – use with discretion, and at YOUR OWN RISK
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Download royalty free music from The Music Bakery featuring professional studio musicians and plenty of real acoustic instruments, impeccably-produced by our gifted team of award-winning composers.
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We've partnered with Google to offer our entire 137-year archive for free browsing. Each issue appears just as it did at its original time of publication, complete with period advertisements. It's an amazing resource that beautifully encapsulates our ongoing fascination with the future, and science and technology's incredible potential to improve our lives. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
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A fun and social way to attach digital content to real world objects.
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Kids in the Know is an interactive safety education program for increasing the personal safety of children and reducing their risk of sexual exploitation.
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How to create a WordPress blog
Monthly Archives: March 2010
Internet Safety
I was in an internet meeting yesterday and brought up the Windsor Star to make a point and this story was leading the headlines.
http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Windsor+nabbed+porn+bust/2666566/story.html
This morning, on the site, a news report from Global National appears.
Global National video: Child porn bust, Windsor man among the dozens charged.
Sometimes, the regular teaching in the classroom robs time, and use of technology can be so seamless that there may seem to be a sense that all is right with the world. Unfortunately, this is a real sense of false security. This news report just reminds us so powerfully that we can never let our guard down. The answer is that the issues need to be discussed often and regularly. Even if you’re not using the internet in your studies, the message still has to be delivered.
Whether or not it’s part of a particular classroom is not the point. Just like we talk about healthy and active physical living, we need to be constantly talking and bringing for ideas about healthy and safe internet use. You may not use it in the classroom today, but you know that your students are using it at home and many “on the way home” via mobile devices.
In Ontario, all publically funded schools have access to “Passport to the Internet”, “Reality Check”, “Air Dogs”, and “Mirror Image”. Online there are many other resources as well. Have you checked out “Kids in the Know“?
I have a number of resources tagged “Internet Safety” on my Delicious site. I would encourage all readers to please share by adding your favourite resources to this message. I’ll add them to the internet resources so that they’re all in one spot.
Thank you.
Social Bookmarks:
links for 2010-03-10
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The Readability Test Tool provides a quick and easy way to test the readability of your work. It is the most flexible readability software for assessing readability formulas.
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Gunning Fog, Flesch Reading Ease, and Flesch-Kincaid are reading level algorithms that can be helpful in determining how readable your content is. Reading level algorithms only provide a rough guide, as they tend to reward short sentences made up of short words. Whilst they're rough guides, they can give a useful indication as to whether you've pitched your content at the right level for your intended audience.
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This free online software tool calculates readability : Coleman Liau index, Flesh Kincaid Grade Level, ARI (Automated Readability Index), SMOG. The measure of readability used here is the indication of number of years of education that a person needs to be able to understand the text easily on the first reading. Comprehension tests and skills training.
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Curious about how complex your documents or Web pages are to read? You don't have to get a team of experts to generate your readability score: you can just use readability.info to analyze the characteristics of your writing and ascertain a multitude of readability scores. By comparing the readability score of different documents (or Web pages) you can better hone your writing and make sure that you aren't creating overly complex sentences and paragraphs for your audience.
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Analyse text content using our free text analysis tool which gives you statistics about a text including word count
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This text analysis tool provides information on the readability and complexity of a text, as well as statistics on word frequency and character count. It can be of assistance to translators when calculating quotes for clients.
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Readability assessment attempts to assign a grade to a sample of writing. Most formulae calculate this using some combination of the number of sentences, words, syllables, and letters. Popular reading formulae are Flesch Reading Ease, Fog Scale Level, SMOG and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. There are hundreds, but the top few are considered reliable in figuring out the reading level of your writing. This in turn helps you target an audience.
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My readability formula SMOG estimates the years of education needed to understand a piece of writing. SMOG is widely used, particularly for checking health messages. Because I dropped reading research to become a clinical neuropsychologist decades ago, I did not know how popular SMOG had become until I recently Googled SMOG formula and got half a million hits!
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We know that great teachers are eager for growth and development. They need the time and tools to do their jobs effectively, and they deserve ongoing support on the implementation of Taxonomy
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Image of a well-educated young person
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In this documentary, the founders of Adobe Photoshop – John Knoll, Thomas Knoll, Russell Brown, and Steve Guttman – tell the story of how an amazing coincidence of circumstances, that came together at just the right time 20 years ago, spawned a cultural paradigm shift unparalleled in our lifetime
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The #1 free social productivity tool for Google Apps.
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Resources for Schools
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Here we offer lesson plans created and contributed by teachers who've used them successfully in their classrooms and web-based teaching resources created as part of the ECHO projects abroad
Environmental Stewardship and Really Good Things
Last night was the first opportunity to meet up with my university students after their second practice teaching placement. Just like the return from their first placement, I devoted almost an hour for them to decompress and share their insights from their time out in the “real world”. It’s amazing to see the difference in their perspective of our profession. After the first time, they noted that they were inwardly concerned about their position within the classroom. They saw a real disconnect between their thoughts and the day to day realities of the classroom. After all, they were just trying to fit in.
The second placement is completely different. Undoubtedly, they can’t wait to get away from three hours of bad jokes from me. More importantly, they have more time where they’re expected to teach and so they take more ownership of the class. Personally, I found it really rewarding when I asked them if they had used any of the tools, techniques, methods, etc. that we’ve done in class at the university and to hear that they had.
The new Ontario Curriculum documents had a section in every course devoted to Environmental Stewardship. As a province, we’re coming to grips on what that looks like in the classroom. This group took what we’ve been using in class and turned it into positive things. They had students working on projects collaboratively on wikis, tests were given in Google Docs (to a person, they turned their noses up at traditional bulk testing practice…you know the ones where you waste a sheet of paper coding bubbles so that they can be machine read both for environmental and pedagogy reasons) These were but a couple of the examples that few forth. The wiki approach, of course, opened a world to embedding content into the resources and projects being given to their classes.
I really liked their attitudes. They felt good and confident about their developing abilities and seemed to take great pride sharing their skills not only with the students, but with their associate teachers. I really like their perspective too. They embrace the new technologies and they embrace the whole notion of respect for the environment at an impressive level. They’re going to be great assets to any school district smart enough to offer them jobs.
Social Bookmarks:
links for 2010-03-09
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Since Google Earth was first released, a variety of people (including myself) have looked for ways to use it for gaming. While it will never be a true gaming platform, there are still some fun choices out there to play with. Here are a few of the best:
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This test will check a mail server IP address against 147 DNS based email blacklists. (Commonly called Realtime blacklist, DNSBL or RBL). If your mail server has been blacklisted, some email you send may not be delivered. Email blacklists are a common way of reducing spam.
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Design your own CSS sheets with this online generator.
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SuperPower: Visualising the internet
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EssayRater is a writing support tool that proofreads your texts and protects you against: Plagiarism Spelling errors Poor word choice Poor grammar Punctuation mistakes
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Welcome to the MoOM. The galleries are updated continuously, and new exhibitions are hung each quarter.
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I'm Big John, and here I attempt to describe and demonstrate some of the bugs found in web browsers, and to show advanced CSS methods that work across all browsers.
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Layout, share, and publish any rich media in your own zooming web spaces with complete creative freedom. It's like using InDesign – only it's free and online.
Deep Understanding
I had an interesting read and reflection on Peter Skillen’s blog yesterday. A recent post “Deep Understanding & the Issue of Transfer” really resonates with me and I’ve been mulling over his words ever since I read the entry.
In one posting, Peter has been able to convey to me the essence of successful use of technology. Now, I don’t use terms like constructivism or connectivism for a couple of reasons. First, just the terms seem to polarize people and their thinking. Secondly, I see people using them in all kinds of scenarios that just don’t make sense to me. “In my constructivist classroom, we skyped with so and so”. And, the point to this exercise is… “Well, my students are connected to other…” And, the point to this exercise is… I keep waiting for the answer. Did we learn something new? Did we compare cultures? Did we exchange anything other than a couple of minutes for the sake of doing something? Seriously, is the fruit hanging that low?
Later on, there was a response by Colin Jagoe to Peter’s original post “When will I use this again?”. I answered, “Never, but that’s not the point, you’re working your brain to make it better able to solve problems that you WILL encounter later on.” I love it and says so much.
For me, I fear the effects that the point and click world can have. I shiver when I hear some of the tripe that passes as wisdom. “It’s not about the technology; it’s about the teaching”. Who are we kidding? It’s about the understanding. It’s about applying concepts in new contexts without having to learn something new. It’s about connecting the dots. If you’re bringing technology into the learning, then it needs to be a dot that is just as critical as any other component.
Case in point — yesterday morning was a particularly high moment for me. @kellypower was over for a visit and we were discussing how we were about to change the world, or at least our little part of it. Into the middle of our conversation, I get a “house on fire” interruption. It seems that we have some vendor guests who are having computer problems. Using my best management skills, I ask a couple of questions to determine the importance of this interruption and promise to help out in 15-20 minutes.
Well, it turns out that they have “a Powerpoint” (is that even a noun?) that they want to use but Microsoft Powerpoint isn’t on the computer connected to the SMART Board that they’ll be using in our computer lab. I see the fear and the deer in the headlights look when I try to explain that OpenOffice will do the trick and decide to avoid the inevitable argument and quickly download and install Microsoft’s Powerpoint viewer. But, that was the beginning of the problem. There was also a Quicktime move that wouldn’t play because we didn’t have the latest version of Quicktime installed and Quicktime downloads are blocked on our network. So, I emailed the file to myself and went back to my room to convert it to FLV and then post it on my website so that they could view it in a browser. “Oh, that sounds like a good idea – we should get our developers to do that.”
Now, it’s not like I’m a genius or anything. Ask anyone; I just continue to press keys like a Skinnerian rat until something good happens. Seriously, though, as a student and teacher of computer science, I’m able to see the dots and connect them. For me, this is the understanding that helps me get through a day of problem solving. I hark back to Colin’s original quote and he’s nailed the concept. By staying aware of where the world and technology is headed, I can transfer the old learning to the new contexts. Shouldn’t we all?
Peter continues in his blog to talk about the research and opportunities to help students with these concepts. Inevitably, with Peter, we end up with a discussion of Logo and the benefits of learning how to program. It should come as no surprise that I’m a big fan and believer in his words. I like his thoughts about transference. Even with the Skype example above, there are opportunities to see beyond the phone call. Are they taken?
It’s a sad state of affairs when I take a look at programming as a discipline. Over the years, we’ve seen the importance of programming decline in the eyes of the decision makers. I think that many buy into the point and click and good things happen without understanding why notion. How often do you hear “Kids today are so insightful; they can do anything”. Really? I think that, if you truly peel back what you see with technology use, you’ll see an apple just hit them right in the forehead. I think, more than ever, that we need to incorporate programming and complex systems into our educational environment. The world isn’t getting simpler. It’s more technological and complex than ever. These skills, and even more importantly, these deep understandings are crucial.
Social Bookmarks:
links for 2010-03-08
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You've got plans. Spread the word.
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23 Interesting Ways to Use Google Earth in the Classroom . England Teacher, Tom Barrett started it, several others around the world have contributed to it.
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This site provides a simple bookmarking service. We follow your twitter feed, and whenever one of your tweets contains URLs, we add them to your delicious.com bookmarks. Optionally, bookmark URLs in @replies to you. We'll even add a delicious tag identifying the sender if you like.
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Are you being fooled? I designed the Awareness Quizzes to challenge some of the false information floating around about difference and equity in the United States and the world.
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The basic search.twitter.com functionality is fine for searching things that are being said about your search terms. The advanced search function offers more ways to slice and dice the stream, but still leaves some room for improvement as it only searches what’s being said and where. From a marketing standpoint who is saying it might be more useful.
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Devoted to the art of making movies without using movie cameras, the Disposable Film Festival found the perfect poster child in Memoirs of a Scanner. The short film came about when three University of Southern California-groomed filmmakers used an HP photo scanner to shoot 300 live-action scans that were then strung together with an audio track to tell a tale packed with alienation, sex and violence.
Frames
It has been quite a while since I’ve been so excited about the mass appeal of a newly licensed software title by the Ministry of Education.
But, Frames 4 is such a title.
I really like a piece of software that engages the imagination by allowing students to create multimedia productions. When the resulting product has so many applications, it becomes all the more attractive.
The titles falls into the area of digital story telling and it’s the perfect platform for many of the types of projects that we’ve created over the years plus even more.
Of course, claymation and/or stop frame animation have been such fun and engaging story telling activities for students. We’ve created many a production in workshops and they continually turn up in classes in the form of web page videos or productions on CD-ROM. They’ve even been known to be used in graduation vides.
There is a certain contemporary attention to being able to create videos with the popularity of websites like YouTube. Frames 4 has you covered in that area as well. For the next great 3-4 minute video, it’s the perfect authoring environment for students of all ages.
We had a great introduction to the program at the February CIESC meetings. While I tried to keep everyone on task, the program was so intuitive that the group was off and flying with minimal assistance. There were some great productions at the end.
Frames 4 made the January installation deadline and so should be available now or soon in our elementary schools. Give it a shot; you’ll be glad that you did.
To help the cause, look for a couple or workshops in the PD Calendar, available through BookIT, at the end of month.
The rest of the March 2010 GEC Computers in the Classroom Newsletter may be read here.
links for 2010-03-07
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CO2FX is a web based multi-user educational game which explores the relationship of global warming to economic, political and science policy decisions. The game is driven by a systems dynamics model and is presented in a user friendly interface intended for the high school user.
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Microsoft offers free tools to help engage students in a variety of subject areas—from art to music to science and beyond. Teachers can use these interactive tools to encourage self-directed learning or to create fun, dynamic group projects.
The tools are simple to download from the Web. For the most part, they don’t require special training, so you can start using them quickly and help your students do the same. -
To help teachers engage students in a variety of subject areas – from art to music to science – Microsoft is providing free software and online tools,* step-by-step instructions, videos, and teacher guides. Beyond learning about access to free tools, the teacher guides also will help educators get the most out of the software they use every day.
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This multimedia resource includes interactive math activities, print activities, learning strategies, and videos that illustrate how math is used in everyday life. The resource addresses the following mathematics topics: Fractions
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It creates a link to a YouTube video where you set the start time.
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How can a little flour, water, and paint become a fantastic hands-on geography project? With salt dough maps, that's how!
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iRubric is a comprehensive rubric development, assessment, and sharing tool. Designed from the ground up, iRubric supports a variety of applications in an easy-to-use package. Best of all, iRubric is free to individual faculty and students. iRubric School-Edition empowers schools with an easy-to-use system for monitoring student learning outcomes and aligning with standards.
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Our vision is that starting a web conference should be as easy as clicking a single metaphorical big blue button. As an open source project, we believe it should be easy for others to embrace and extend. And while web conferencing means many things to many people — our focus is to make the best web conferencing system for distance education.
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Discover thousands of public domain books
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Video games are quickly approaching Hollywood movies in terms of budget size, and often surpass then altogether. In the early 90s, video game budgets were around $100,000 — when Doom was released in 1993 it had cost $200,000 and was touted as one of the most expensive games at the time. Today, that barely covers one month worth of production
Another Player Coming on Board?
If If you check out my computer, you’ll find more than one web browser. There’s the standard fare that comes with Windows (Internet Explorer) and the Macintosh (Safari). For the most part, I don’t use those browsers on a regular basis. Like many people, I have moved to a browser with more customizability so that I have things all in one place. In my case, currently, that means using the Chrome/Chromium browser. You’ll also find Firefox/Flock as well as Opera.
Each one of these browsers reflect innovation and a customization for working the way that I want to on the web. I’m looking for that quick browsing experience that does it all for me. Key to this is powerful search functionality, tabbed browing, and plug-ins that the I can do virtually everything that I want to inside the browser. I can be a little fanatical about this but there’s nothing quite like showing someone the new features in IE8 or Chrome 4 and hearing the comment “I didn’t know a browser could do that”.
In so many ways, I’m really intrigued with the Opera browser. I’m a real sucker for reading speed comparisons between browsers like this one and this one. Could it really be the “fastest browser on earth?” It sure sounds impressive. Of additional interest in the newest release, 10.5, are mouse gestures as indicated in the change log. Hmmm… Do I really need a magic mouse if the browser has gestures built in? Hmmm… I love reading change logs.
That’s why, when I read this article, that I got so excited. Opera for the iPod / iPhone? This is exciting news. It’s not that Safari for the iPhone or iPod is a bad browser. It’s a staple for the device and gets you where you want to go. You can add bookmarks to give you some additional functionality – I have a bookmark to Diigo and Instapaper which are crucial for how I work on the web. I like being portable but there’s nothing like having a full screen when looking at a web page or the ability to use Flash when needed.
To date, I do have some alternative browsers installed even on the iPhone. I have the Mercury browser and the iDroid Mini. They both give the same faithful rendition of the original webpage but with some enhancements that interest me.
Safari browser
iDroid Mini
Mercury
Above, you’ll see screenshots of my blog in mobile format. There are some interesting innovations in “the browser” that you’ll note. Safari does a great job but valuable browsing real estate is taken up with title and status bars. The iDroid Mini increases the viewable area and adds tabbed browsing at the bottom. Safari has its own take on what tabs should look like; this is a little more traditional. The Mercury browser does its very best to give you even more reading room with transparency navigation superimposed on top of the webpage.
It’s exciting to think that Opera might enter this market as well. What enhancements will them bring to the portable browsing experience? Every new player raises the standard for the others. Who win? Generally, it’s us with more power in the palm of our hands.
Social Bookmarks:
