A recent blog entry from the folks at Bitstrips for Schools indicate that they haven’t been sitting idly by with their great product. It’s got even better. One of the more requested items that I get is the desire to be able to upload their own images. It’s now possible.
Just head on over to the Art Library and the Images tab and you’ll see the option to upload your images.
Now, what can I do with this? With the launch of the iPad in Canada last Friday, there was a great deal of discussion over the weekend about who had one and who didn’t. What a great opportunity for classification. I head over to my Seesmic Desktop and do a little cropping and offer the following. Here’s my latest scorecard.
Now, I know that there are a couple on the right that are wavering but that’s OK. I can save the document online and move people from the right to the left in a heartbeat if needed!
And for my friend Kelly who complains that there isn’t a big enough selection of women’s shoes… Make your own!
Video Streaming
Air Video can stream videos in almost any format to your iPhone and iPod touch. You don't need to copy your videos to the device just to watch them.
Live Conversion
If the videos in your collection are not in format supported by iPhone, Air Video will convert them on fly*. You don't need to wait until the entire video is converted. You can start watching it almost immediately!
Welcome to the Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon, CAPL, the source for authentic images for language learning. As a language teacher and learner, I always seek to connect language, culture, and meaning. This site represents my interest to not only write about language learning, but provide concrete examples.
Take control of your video with the new features and extras in Tooble Pro! Now you can download videos from a ton of different video sites in addition to YouTube, plus you can download the audio from any video and turn it into an mp3.
Quickly find the best teaching resources, homework help and educational websites for use in the classroom. Great Learning Games and Interactive Whiteboard Resources
Generate an anonymous alias that will forward to your real email address. It will automatically be deleted after either your set time or message limit has been reached
This "Learning With Gaming for Educators" online course will explore how learning can be enhanced and supported through the effective engagement of learners in playing and creating computer games
Search engine expert Danny Sullivan vented some of this frustration on a private mailing list the other day. He gave me permission to reprint his remarks here. Danny was responding to a discussion of a Washington Post story about online privacy that started out with concerns about how information posted online is routinely being discovered and used against people in legal cases
Dozens of companies use acronyms or initials in their names, but how well do you know what the abbreviated letters mean? Let's take a look at the etymologies behind a few abbreviated company names.
tinytags is for generating a little tag graphic with text on it. After you make your tag, you can download it to your computer or save it to Flickr or ImageShack with a single click.
The situation in the Gulf of Mexico continues to lead the news with stories about the attempts and lacks of success in capping the well. The incident has also become incredibly political in nature with hearings and visits to the site by the American president.
If only the energies and efforts could be channelled towards finding the solution. The owner of the well, BP, is taking all of the pressure for this; I hope that other oil companies are helping find a solution as any incident could have happened to them and there will undoubtedly be new rules and regulations implemented as a result. It behoves all to come to a resolution as quickly as possible.
When things like this hit the news, it has huge implications in the classrooms world-wide as teachers and students try to come to an understanding of what has happened. Using television and other news sources is a traditional place to turn, but the internet does provide a forum for innovative and unique ways to learn and acquire a deeper understanding of the situation.
Here are some resources that I found particularly helpful.
Size of the area affected. Part of the problem with traditional maps is the inability to show relative sizes. Areas towards the poles seem to be larger than those near the Equator. How do you put this in perspective? I investigated and blogged about Paul Rademacher’s mashup yesterday. Here, he allows you to overlay the spill on any part of the world. Put it on your community where you may be more familiar with distances so get a true appreciation.
In this CNN report, an explanation of one of the methods to try to cap the well is explained. In times like this, news reporters turn to experts who have a reputation for being a resource to assist with the report. In this case, Bill Nye has been consulted.
What about the rig itself? How did this incident start and where were the flash points that led to the situation? The Wall Street Journal provides this interactive object to let you explore the areas of the rig detailing The Final Moments. There was an unfortunate loss of life in this incident and that is also covered here.
BP itself provides a couple of resources that explain what has happened and how they are attempting to find a solution. This animationshows the concept of “Top Kill” which was seen as the solution to stopping the flow of oil. A remotely controlled vehicle provides streaming video from the floor of the gulf. A collection of BP’s responses appears here.
ESRI provides an animation that illustrates a timeline of the incident. Starting from April 25, you can see how the oil has spread to endanger the coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi, and how it’s projected to affect Alabama and Florida.
NPR has provided a resource showing the impact on the environment that this incident has had and will continue to have. Time provides a photo essay illustrating the impact on the “Critters of the Oil Spill”. The imagery is sickening but does detail the horrific effect this has on the wildlife of the area.
Boston.com is known for its publication of incredible images documenting the news. The Gulf of Mexico accident is no different. Images of the area and the impact on wildlife and peoples can be found here.
This is a disaster of incredible proportions. When curiosity needs addressing, the internet does respond with images, documentation, and animations to assist. Used judiciously, they can support student understanding that goes beyond the quick clips on the evening news.
I’m incredibly happy that Google has added the option to search over SSL by going to https://www.google.com/ — note the “s” in “https.” I’m writing this blog post in a hotel right now because I’m in Europe for a week doing a series of tech talks, but I could just as easily be working down at local Dublin cafe with an open WiFi hotspot.
If you’re going to nick TwitPics, it pays to read the small print first.
That could be a salutary lesson for the Daily Mail, currently facing a bill of almost ten times the going rate after lifting a professional photographer’s pics from the web and then attempting to claim that as they were "in the public domain", they didn’t actually need to be paid for.
A PC Pro reader was left startled after a customer support company rang his grandfather to tell him there was a virus on his PC, and then tried to charge him £185 to remove it.
One Russian blogger has paid a visit to the modern Russian nuclear plant. Normally it is forbidden to take photos there, but they have made an exception for him. So now we have a rare chance to see what’s inside of the Russian most modern power plant.
Eszter Hargittai, an assistant professor in Northwestern University’s sociology department, has discovered that students aren’t nearly as Web-savvy as they, or their elders, assume.
I’ve been quiet about the Gulf Oil Spill but have been sickened by the images that come through on the news services. A new mashup puts the size of the oil slick into perspective. It’s a mashup of imagery of the size of the spill onto Google Maps.
In the image below, I’ve asked it to overlay on Windsor, Ontario.
The image stretches from west of Lansing to east of Chatham and from Sarnia in the north to Pelee Island in the south. In terms of distance, it’s an hour to drive from Windsor to Chatham and an hour and a half to two hours to get to Lansing.
This really puts the size of this into perspective for me.
The world needs more lerts. Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
It does lead in to the concept of being alerted to things that are happening around you in the digital world. Just who is talking about you? Where is your identity being discussed? Who is saying good things about you? Who is saying bad things about you? Even paranoids have enemies.
Sure, you could go searching for such things but if you know me, I’m all about automating anything that I can. Some call it lazy; I call it getting the technology to work for me.
Google provides yet another service with great functionality.
It’s called Google Alerts and it’s like having a research team working for you constantly.
The concept is ridiculously simple.
Determine the search term that you want found, tell Google Alerts what to search (everything is nice), how often and then provide an email address to search the results.
I can’t help but wonder what this functionality would have had when I was taking university courses. You search the stacks; you search the electronic resources that you know of. But that’s the extent of it. Imagine being able to search everywhere automatically.
So, humble person that I am, I have a daily search for “dougpete” and get the results sent to me. Some folks would call it “monitoring their brand” – I’m not that deep – it’s just keeping an eye out for what’s going on.
It does have a serious use as well. I recall a discussion with @rmbyrne when we were presenters at the Teacher2Teacher Conference earlier this year. Richard is the blogger behind the excellent Free Technology for Teachers resource. He’s used this resource to track down someone who was reposting his content without permission.
So, if you have anything to monitor – your content, your name, your school, your business, your research topic – you name it – create yourself a Google Alert (or more than one) and stay on top of things automatically.
Every time you create or upload your own original children's ebook from now until June 30th 2010, you'll receive one entry in our drawing to win a free (16GB Wifi) iPad!
Businesses and schools are moving to Google Apps in droves, and they're able to switch more seamlessly with the help of tools to move old email, contacts and calendar data from legacy solutions to Google’s cloud.
Now the possibilities truly are endless. By popular demand, students can now add their own photos to comics, or choose from thousands of copyright-free images in the Flickr Commons!
View the complete list of competencies, and take the first steps toward incorporating them into your professional development and hiring practices. Learn more.
There are many advantages to using the iPod Touch in the classroom, and no more so than when teaching Language Arts. These Apple iPod Touch apps would be great additions to any English classroom, and best of all, they are free!
I was engaged with something yesterday when my new mail notice went off and when I checked, it was a message from Computer Science teacher Peter McAsh. Peter always has something interesting to say and always takes his students for a ride at the lead edge of the wave. He had something to say but, because he doesn’t have a blog, decided to send it via email. It’s an interesting insight and so I offered him the spot of guest blogger for today and he accepted. Below are his thoughts.
As you know, I don’t have a blog, nor do I wish to start one at this stage of my career. This has been rolling around in my head and I was wondering if you’d comment on it, blog about it, ignore it, whatever you feel is appropriate.
I was watching @willrich45 (whom I greatly respect) give a keynote at http://www.onlinelearning.humber.ca/etc2010/ this morning. There was a discussion about college-level students lack of digital literacy skills. This brought to mind, for me, again, the concept of, what I call (perhaps incorrectly) parallel skill development. The college-level students have digital literacy skills that are comparable to elementary-level students. Digital literacy skills develop in parallel. As the skills required for digital literacy evolve, the students acquire these skills (directly or indirectly). Skills, such as collaborative researching, are new to Grade 3 students as they are new to Grade 11 students, as they are new to post graduate university students; and to educators! We are all in this together and our skills develop daily; I know mine do and this is year 31 in the biz of education, but that’s another story…
So, what do you think? Please share your thoughts with Peter.
The 2009 Young Adults' Choices list is the 23rd that U.S. teenagers (Grades 7–12) have helped create. This project began in 1986, funded by a special grant given to the International Reading Association (IRA), and is supervised by the Association's Literature for Young Adults Committe
This tool will help you to understand your energy profile and estimate your carbon footprint. It shows you how different choices can result in energy savings and a smaller carbon footprint.
Found this nice piece of infographic that explains almost in detail everything about the social media channels, all in one comprehensive, brief picture. 10 social media channels are illustrated here including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Linked In, Digg, Stumble Upon, Yahoo Buzz, Reddit and Delicious, where the possibilities and non-possibilites with characteristics of each channel are explained.
Join thousands of schools around the country taking part in the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Math-A-Thon® program during the spring 2010 semester. For more than 30 years, Math-A-Thon has successfully helped students improve their math skills and helped raise millions of dollars in the fight against childhood cancer and life-threatening diseases.
Back in October 2009, Billie Hara published a wonderfully detailed ProfHacker post titled, "Responding to Student Writing (audio style)". There, she provides a few reasons why instructors might compose digital audio in response to student writing.
From neurons to brain wiring, Dr. David Walsh gives an easy-to-understand tour of children’s and teens’ brain development and the impact of experience on the “wiring’ of their brains
Here are some collections of information about the interplay between music and mathematics. I have collected a bibliography of such items as they float past me in cyberspace, and I went hunting for references in the reviewing journal Mathematical Reviews for mentions of music. In addition I am interested in a few other specific topics.
WordSteps is a place for people to learn foreign words and keep their vocabularies in fit condition. Here you can not only enlarge your vocabulary, but you can also track your progress and recall the words you could forget.
These grids originated as the result of a district initiative in the Deniliquin CAP District coordinated by Allan Barton, Principal of Oaklands Central School. The schools involved in the initiative were Oaklands Central School, Barham Public School, Moulamein Public School, Berrigan Public School, Wakool Public School and Mallan Public School.
Students are introduced to Wikipedia, the user-edited online encyclopedia, and given an overview of its strengths and weaknesses as a research source. They are taught how to evaluate the reliability of a Wikipedia article and then attempt to improve an existing article.
It hit with a big splash and a number of us jumped in to experiment. It was neat; it was funky; it was different. But, after the initial buzz, I’ve been just waving to myself at times to stay on top of the new enhancements.
In the beginning, I got my invite from a Twitter user who I’ve never met in person but was following me. From there, I got my invites to send out and quickly ran out but Google was good enough to give me more and more. I’ve got one left but now that you no longer need an invitation to join, I may just hang on to it as a keepsake.
Yesterday, I read this article that has given raise to some curiosity on my part. It’s from the folks at ReadWrite Web and talks about how to use Google Wave for Live Blogging. It’s an interesting concept and I may give it a shot the next time to try to do some live blogging.
I’m still puzzled with the lack of uptake in my own realm. It may well be that it’s one of the most powerful applications in the entire Google suite but my little world tends to gravitate to other applications to do those tasks. For example, I think of Coveritlive rather than Wave when I’m thinking of live blogging. Collaborating on a concept? I’ll move to a shared Google Doc or any of the great applications of Etherpad that are available.
So, I struggle with this. Where does it or should it fit into the big scheme of things?
