doug - off the record

What we can learn from Blogging Awards

dougpete — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

The 2011 Ninjamatics Weblog Awards were announced yesterday. I had accidentally found out about these through a random Twitter message. The goal of these awards is:

What?
The Canadian Weblog Awards promote good weblogs of all genres from across Canada year round through regular interviews, articles, and the nomination, judging, and an award process that culminates with the announcement of the top three weblogs in each category on January 1st. The Canadian Weblog Awards are about quality not popularity, so there is no public vote. Each weblog is judged by a volunteer jury against a set of criteria.

When I first investigated this, I was surprised that there was no category in Education. At the time, I recall a message from @Schmutzie that education wasn’t included and she explained why. I can’t recall the details but she did reflect further and created the category. I was very pleased and so added nominated some of my favourites. At the same time, someone was kind enough to nominate this blog and I found out yesterday:

“If you are getting this email, your weblog was nominated in the Ninjamatics’ 2011 Canadian Weblog Awards over the last year. It has made it through two rounds of judging by our jury using our ten criteria to come to this:

Your weblog is a winner in the Ninjamatics’ 2011 Canadian Weblog Awards!”

Cool.

We’re invited to grab a badge – the internet is all about badges, so here goes.

So, there we go. Hmmmm. The first one kind of looks like an old-style Toronto Maple Leaf logo!

Now, I don’t think anyone blogs for awards. I don’t think that anyone feels that they blog without being influenced either. It’s the interaction and feedback that you get from visitors to the blog and their comments on the blog and other Social Media that makes it worthwhile. After all, what’s the point of blogging if nobody reads it or interacts with it?

But, there are a few things in the bigger picture that I’ve learned from this.

1) There are some really good Canadian Blogs. I think many of us get locked into reading just one particular genre. What Ninjamatics has done for me is expand my horizons in what I read. Just look at the categories. It’s so cool that they are also in both official languages.

Best Weblog About Activism & Social Justice / Activisme et la justice sociale • Art & Photography/ Art et photographie • Arts & Culture / Arts et culture • Best Designed / Meilleur design • Best New Weblog / Meilleur nouveau blogue • Best Written / Meilleurs textes • Business & Career / Affaires et carrières • Comics / Bande dessinée • Crafting / Artisanat • Disability • Education / Education • Ex-Pat / Expatriés • Family & Parenting / Famille et enfants • Fashion, Style & Design / Mode, style et design • Feminist / Féminisme • Food & Drink / Cuisine et breuvages • French Language / En français • General Interest / Intérêt général • Group Weblog / Blogue collectif • Health & Wellness /Santé et bien-être • Humour / Humour • LGBTQ / GLBTQ • Life / Mode de vie • Lifetime Achievement / Prix d’excellence pour l’ensemble de son œuvre • Media & Journalism / Médias et journalisme • Nature & Gardening / Nature et jardinage • Placeblog / Placeblogue • Podcast & Vlog /Podcast et vlog • Political / Politique • Pop Culture & Entertainment / Pop culture et spectacles •Religion, Spirituality & Philosophy / Religion, spiritualité et philosophie • Science, Technology & the Internet / Science, technologie et Internet • Sports, Fitness & Recreation / Sports, condition physique et loisirs • Travel / Voyage • Writing & Literature / Écriture et littérature

2) Along with the categories comes the realization that there are a lot of very talented people doing online writing. For every blog author, there are reasons for why they do it. I would suspect that no two have the same reasons.

3) Finally, and it’s the educator in me that is impressed with this. The results are determined objectively. There’s no voting where you can pick and plump your friends. Instead, there is a set of criteria that the jury uses in its determination. It’s an area that I know that people have difficulty when students blog. How are they to be evaluated. In this case, Ninjamatics has laid out its criteria here.

Design

Usability and accessibility — Is the website user-friendly and easy to navigate for people of all abilities?
Functionality — Do all of its components function properly?
Interactivity — Are a comments section and author contact information available? Are its interactive components (including comments, audio, video, etc.) effective and functional?
Aesthetics — Is the website pleasing to look at? Is its design original?

Content

Originality — Is the content original and creatively expressed?
Intelligibility and clarity — Is the content well-written? Are the content’s messages clearly and effectively delivered?
Currency — Is the content timely? Is the weblog updated on a regular basis?
Transparency and authenticity — Is the author’s purpose and realness both trusted and apparent?
Attention to detail — Has the content been edited for spelling and grammatical errors? Is the content arranged for ease of consumption?
Engagingness — Is the content interesting? Does it contain broad appeal within its genre?

As you can see, considerable thought has gone into the design of the evaluation. There’s lots, maybe even too much, but there’s a great deal of takeaway from the criteria to think about. The only thing that’s missing is feedback on the evaluation so that we could improve on our efforts.

I would encourage you to wander around and take a look at the blogs that have been identified. There’s some really good stuff there that make for interesting reading and maybe you’ll find something new to follow.

OTR Links 02/01/2012

dougpete — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:30:56 +0000

Twitter Sentiment – A Sentiment Analysis Tool

Twitter Sentiment allows you to discover the sentiment for a brand, product, or topic.

tags: sentiment analysis tool
feed2PDF

Convert an RSS feed to PDF File

tags: feed pdf
Web Archive of 250 Million Website Screenshots – Screenshots.com

Find screenshot history for any website

tags: screenshots
Unroll.Me – The easy way to remove email subscriptions

The easy way to remove email subscriptions!

tags: email unsubscribe
Airgile – Agile Team and Project Management Software

Plan and track the evolution of your projects and tasks, ensuring compliance with deadlines and budgets. Airgile simplifies team coordination, allowing you to manage the tasks and to increase the productivity of each employee.

Airgile is available online in the Cloud, with affordable plans adapted to different business sizes.

tags: management project
New Google app shows how much of a website’s content is “above the fold” | UX Magazine

New Google app shows how much of a website’s content is “above the fold”

tags: google app shows much website content fold magazine
25 Reasons Why Google Hates Your Blog : @ProBlogger

Your blog is a good read. Everyone says so.
Although “everyone” is really just people you already know. Like your Mum.
So why isn’t your blog being found by other people? The millions and millions of people hungrily consuming blog content out there in the global online space we call the Internet?

tags: blog google blogging
Are You Applying for the 2012 US Forum? – Computer Science Teacher – Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson – Site Home – MSDN Blogs

Are You Applying for the 2012 US Forum?

tags: applying forum computer computer science science teacher thoughts information thompson site msdn blogs
Better than Twitter: The TeachMeet Movement – Blog – HappySteve

Okay – the best professional development strategy for teachers is, without doubt, getting connecting in a Personal Learning Network, in any form. Twitter has proven remarkable for teachers in their ability to reach out and connect, in very real and authentic collaborative learning relationships. For years now my motto has been “if I can get a colleague onto Twitter, they’ll never be the same” (like me!!)

tags: movement blog teachmeet
Codecademy Becomes A Platform: Now Anyone Can Write Programming Tutorials | TechCrunch

Codecademy Becomes A Platform: Now Anyone Can Write Programming Tutorials

tags: programming
Twitter users beware: Homeland Security isn’t laughing — Tech News and Analysis

Planning to make a joke on Twitter about bombing something? You might want to reconsider: according to a report from Britain, two British tourists were detained and then denied entry into the U.S. recently after they joked about destroying America and digging up Marilyn Monroe.

tags: users homeland security tech tech news news analysis
The Stupid Things You Do Online (and How to Fix Them)

The Stupid Things You Do Online (and How to Fix Them)

tags: stupid things online how to fix
What Schools are Really Blocking When They Block Social Media | DMLcentral

What Schools are Really Blocking When They Block Social Media

tags: social media blocking social media schools
Educational Technology Guy: 10 Tech Skills Every Student Should Have

Earlier this month, I wrote “10 Important Skills Students Need for the Future.” After reading a few articles about specific tech skills, I thought I write what I think are the 10 Important Tech Skills Students Need.

tags: edtech skills technology edchat tech education
Linux: A Getting-Started Guide | PCWorld

Are you fed up with Microsoft Windows and ready to give Linux a try? Here’s how to get started. This guide for Linux discusses who the Linux OS is right for, what you need to get started, and how to turn your Windows PC into a dual-boot computer so you can have the best of both worlds–Linux and Windows.

tags: linux guide pcworld
[Phoronix] Ubuntu 11.10 vs. Mac OS X 10.7.2 Performance

After delivering benchmarks last week that were comparing the Intel Sandy Bridge performance of Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” vs. Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” when it came to the Sandy Bridge OpenGL graphics performance, here’s a comparative look at the performance of Ubuntu 11.10 against Mac OS X 10.7.2 from the Intel Sandy Bridge-based Mac.

tags: ubuntu mac mac os x os x performance
Ubuntu on the Dell Mini 10 (3) « mok0′s world

A few people have asked if the psb X driver is stable running under jaunty. It is indeed… rock stable. So now that’s established, let’s move on to something else.

I really want the Dell to be a “mini-laptop” so I originally installed the ubuntu-desktop package. But I’ve felt that the response was a bit sluggish. The menus were just a few fractions of a second to appear, they kind of “rolled” on instead of just appearing etc. Not much, but enough to make it annoying.

tags: ubuntu dell mini world
Learn common PC hardware terms

Learn common PC hardware terms
If you haven’t shopped for a computer for a while, the following list of terms used for common PC features and functionality can help you make sure you get everything you need in your new PC.

tags: hardware terms

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Curating Groundhogs

dougpete — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

It’s pretty hard to keep a secret on the internet when you’re transparent. That came to bite me this morning. I’ve been working on something and had a couple of people uncover what I was doing. One actually tweeted about it.

So, I guess I’ll have to come clean with it.

One of the big events in primary classrooms is Groundhog Day. All kinds of activities happen in classrooms and crafts, drawings, songs, science, etc. all make the day for the big event. I’ve always maintained a list of resources for this day that I update. This year, I thought that I would migrate the otherwise boring website to one of the online sites that I’ve been using to curate things. But, which one?

I was just monkeying around when Tim happened to stumble on it. He must have been looking at my Scoopit account and noticed that I had this work in progress. It’s a collection of my resources for Groundhog Day – scooped. But, I don’t think he’s seen the others! I’ve also started to curate the same resources at Pinterest and LiveBinders. I was looking for the best possible scenario.

Scoopit
This was one of the sites. I have the Scoopit bookmarklet stuck in my bookmarks bar and adding resources was just as easy as going to the page and bookmarking it. Scoopit identifies images on the page as well as a short descriptor. To use it, just click the title and you’re at the target site. For this purpose, Scoopit did a nice job although one of the sites wouldn’t allow the bookmarklet to work.

Pinterest
Pinterest similarly has a bookmarklet for finding and bookmarking resources. You get to choose up front which of the images will be the face of the pin. Rather than the two column format of Scoopit, Pinterest takes a pin to wall approach so that none of the sites are lined up. It’s an engaging approach. Sadly, Pinterest absolutely requires an image on the page in order for the pin to work. So, not all of the sites ended up getting pinned. But, find a story that looks good, click it, and you’re there.

LiveBinders
LiveBinders takes a different approach. Instead of giving you one of the catchy images on the target website, you get the entire website embedded in the binder. The URL is presented at the top and a click leaves the LiveBinder and takes you to the actual website. Since the actual website is embedded each time, everything that I wanted to include appears in the binder.

In all three cases, there are more resources than would fit on an entire computer screen. Well, unless you had a big honking screen, I suppose. Scoopit and Pinterest scroll up and down to see all of the resources. LiveBinders requires that you click the navigation arrows to move left and right unless you organize the tabs by categories. I suppose I could have all the Wiarton Willie’s in one tab, the Punxsutawney Phil’s in another, science in another, arts and crafts in another, and so on.

LiveBinders also has the advantage of the presentation mode so that you can visit the sites and not lose the curation page. That’s handy if you are browsing your way through everything.

Anyway, all three did a nice job of bringing them together into one spot. Feel free now to use or share with anyone who might take advantage of the resource this Thursday.

OTR Links 01/31/2012

dougpete — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:31:00 +0000

Twitter

Forgot your password?
Type your email address or Twitter username below to reset your password. Learn more.
If you’ve been using Twitter via SMS only, complete signup by clicking here.

tags: twitter reset password
What do I do if my Twitter account is hacked? | Naked Security

Many Naked Security readers email our tips email account every day asking for help when their online accounts are compromised.

I thought it might be a good idea to provide a step-by-step guide to recover from some common attacks people fall victim to, beginning with Twitter.

tags: security twitter hacked password
MentorMob – Learn What You Want, Teach What You Love – MentorMob

Learn Anything For Free!
Organizing the How-To’s of the web, so you don’t have to.

tags: learning playlist education tools
Redolfi – Play music online

Online music player

tags: music player Música reproductor playlist streaming
Best Educational Wikis of 2011

With the announcement of the 2011 Edublog Award winners, there are now two more award-winning wikis in the Wikispaces community. And we couldn’t be prouder!

tags: wikis
Google Chrome: Dear Sophie – YouTube

A father uses the web to share memories with his daughter as she grows up in this video depiction.

tags: google google chrome chrome dear sophie youtube
Path

The smart journal
that helps you share life with the ones you love.

tags: path iphone social app application mobile journal Web2.0
Twitter Upgrades Will Include Analytical Tools

Twitter will unveil a series of new tools in the next few months, including sophisticated analytical tools, according to Erica Anderson, Twitter’s manager for news and journalism.

Anderson said the analytical tools will better help publishers track the reach of tweets sent through the microblogging service. She made her comments Saturday at Columbia University’s social media weekend in New York.

tags: upgrades will tools
Education Week: Europe Seen Leading the Way in Hand-Held Computing

Europe Seen Leading the Way in Hand-Held Computing

tags: education europe leading way computing
5 Signs of a Great User Experience

If you’ve used the mobile social network Path recently, it’s likely that you enjoyed the experience. Path has a sophisticated design, yet it’s easy to use. It sports an attractive red color scheme and the navigation is smooth as silk. It’s a social app and finding friends is easy thanks to Path’s suggestions and its connection to Facebook.

tags: signs great user experience
FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace | ZDNet

FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace

tags: fbi monitor facebook myspace zdnet
12 Ways To Learn In 2012: The eLearning Coach

12 Ways To Learn In 2012

tags: ways elearning coach learning
Announcing the 2012 Free Education Technology Resources eBook from EmergingEdTech | Emerging Education Technology

Announcing the 2012 Free Education Technology Resources eBook from EmergingEdTech

tags: free education technology resources ebook emerging
Crack this: How to pick strong passwords and keep them that way

Crack this: How to pick strong passwords and keep them that way

tags: crack how to passwords keep way
The Ed Tech Blog Carnival 2012 #1 | The Whiteboard Blog

A few weeks ago I asked for educational bloggers to share some of their posts as part of a Blog Carnival. The idea would be that they would write about aspects of technology in education, and I would then collate into a single post that points to them all. Hopefully you the reader will discover some blogs you haven’t seen before.

tags: ed tech tech blog carnival whiteboard
Free iPad Notes – Handwriting, drawing, typing, audio recording and speech to text! | iGo With My iPad

The folks from Nuance Communications, the provider of Dragon voice recognition, have released their free iPad notes app – PaperPort Notes. A notes app that has a little bit of something for everyone. The app is light enough to be happy with it if you where to only use one notes capture method while still offering all the options without complicated endless menus to go through.

tags: ipad recording apps notetaking notes audio
What You Need to Be Successful At Online Education

As online education continues to grow and become a more respectable route to achieving a degree, more and more people are flocking to the internet for their education. However online education isn’t for everyone, and before you jump headfirst into it you need to make sure that you’re fully equipped for what online learning really entails, other than not having to show up to an actual classroom or interact face to face with other students.

tags: online online education education
Educational Technology Guy: 10 Important Skills Students need for the Future

10 Important Skills Students need for the Future

tags: education digital_literacy educon edchat skills
World’s Largest One Stop Shopping for Free Online Courses! : Dean’s Corner

World’s Largest One Stop Shopping for Free Online Courses!

tags: world largest shopping free online courses dean corner
Google, Facebook and Microsoft in Anti-Phishing Alliance

Google, Microsoft, Facebook and more team up to tackle email spam and phishing

tags: google facebook microsoft alliance
Diagnosing a Blue Screen of Death Error in Windows

Diagnosing a Blue Screen of Death Error in Windows

For many years now the famous Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) has been the ultimate indication that something disastrous has happened to make your computer die, but how useful is the information in the BSoD and the respective crash dump file that Windows produces?

tags: blue screen death error windows
Blogging Tips 101: How to Write Less and Post More

Attention time-poor bloggers: You don’t need to slave away for hours to publish regular, high quality posts.
If you feel like you’ve never got enough time to maintain your blog, you’re probably not taking full advantage of your own output.

tags: blogging tips how to post

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Pathetic Internet Speeds

dougpete — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Have you ever noticed that there are some times that I make a blog post and there are no images contained in the posting to spruce it up or to illustrate the point? It’s not that I’m lazy; there are some days that I swear that I have the worst internet service provider. Yesterday was a day when I was bemoaning the fact that modern laptops don’t have built in modems. Even on the worst days, dialup at 300bps was like blinding speeds compared to bad days now.

Yesterday was just brutal. I spent over an hour on the phone with technical “support” only to walk away frustrated all to pieces. The determination on her end was that it was just network congestion. Grrrrrr.

How bad was it? Well, a common way to test your network speeds is to use Speedtest.net. I tried to give it a test over the net and here’s what I got!

It’s so slow that I couldn’t even load the test!

Thankfully, the iPad version was a little more tolerant of slow speeds.

Try it on your current connection and please feel sorry for me! Later in February when I host an OTF Webinar, I’ll be doing it on the road. There’s no way this type of connection would be suitable.

At least I can watch the Pro Bowl game without the internet distracting me!

Fortunately, things are better in the early morning hours and that does let me do some reading and online work.

OTR Links 01/30/2012

dougpete — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:31:19 +0000

History Pavillon

You have just entered one of Squidoo’s largest history pavilions. As you stroll through its corridors, you shall find many rooms to quench your thirst for knowledge of the past. This is a 3 storey building and an elevator will take you from floor to floor. In the back of the building, you will find our outdoor amphitheater where you can watch and listen to important historic events.

tags: history
The First Kiss in Cinema, 1896 | Brain Pickings

How Thomas Edison made the kiss Hollywood’s favorite audience-courting device.

tags: kiss cinema brain
20 things that happened on the internet in 2011 [image] – Holy Kaw!

Designer and art director Peter Jaworowski teamed up with SYZYGY London to illustrate and mash-up 20 of the most notable things that happened on the old webs of inter in 2011.

tags: internet graphic things events
Lion Full-Screen, New Tab Page Sneak Into Early Firefox 12 Build

One of the next versions of Firefox, Firefox 12, may feature a series of new interface elements and functionalities that should both appeal to OS X Lion users and introduce new navigation options for those who dont’ want to save their-most accessed websites in a bookmarks bar anymore. As first noted by ExtremeTech, an early version of a proposed new tab page design snuck into a nightly version of Firefox; per Mozilla’s multiple channel releases, users of Firefox can test different versions of the browser, which range from Nightly to Aurora, Beta, Stable, and those uploaded directly to Mozilla’s FTP servers.

tags: lion tab page firefox build
How Apple Can Solve Its China Problem | Cult of Mac

Apple is on the brink of becoming the poster child for worker abuse. Journalists and rights organizations are starting to draw attention to the enormous contrast between Apple’s quarterly billions in profits, and the desperate plight of abused workers in China.

tags: apple china problem cult mac
Your next laptop could have Microsoft’s Kinect built into it | ZDNet

Microsoft is finally delivering on its promise to bring Kinect to the PC with official support, but most people would probably assume it would be most useful with a desktop. Nonetheless, it appears that the motion-control technology could also show up on portable systems,

tags: laptop microsoft kinect zdnet
Free lightweight Anti Virus Software – Microsoft Security Essentials | ESX Virtualization

The Microsoft Security Essentials is free for use on genuine Windows systems.
The Microsoft Security Essentials is free anti malware software which can be found on this page here. As said it’s free if runs on genuine system. As I was pleasantly surprised that the soft is quite lightweight, getting few dozens of Mb in the taskbar….

tags: free lightweight anti virus virus software microsoft security essentials virtualization
Infographic: Hollywood’s long war on technology – Boing Boing

Infographic: Hollywood’s long war on technology

tags: infographic hollywood war technology
Firefox Support Ending for Windows 2000, Windows XP Pre-SP2

If you’re one of the few Firefox users still on Windows 2000 or still using Windows XP without Service Pack 2 or later, Firefox is going to have to say goodbye. Yesterday, Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler announced that Firefox team is moving to a newer version of the Visual Studio toolchain. Once Mozilla moves to Visual Studio 2010, they won’t be able to build for Windows 2000, XP RTM or SP1.

tags: firefox support ending windows windows xp
Five Steps to Starting a Class Blog in 2012 | Integrating Technology in the Primary Classroom

Five Steps to Starting a Class Blog in 2012

tags: steps starting class blog integrating technology primary classroom
Textbook of the Future: The challenges | ZDNet

This month, Apple dropped a bombshell on the academic community by introducing iBooks Textbooks and iBooks Author. In combination, the two create a compelling framework for re-engineering the textbook in electronic form for K-12 students, permitting for rich color educational content and possibly an entirely new textbook ecosystem that could be made accessible to tens of millions of schoolchildren.

tags: textbook future challenges
8 Things Teachers Do To Cause Boredom — Smart Classroom Management

When students get bored their minds drift.

And while some settle on daydreaming, tile-counting, and general inattentiveness, other students are drawn to more…ahem…destructive pursuits.

tags: things teachers boredom classroom classroom management management
Why Every Entrepreneur Should Self-Publish a Book | TechCrunch

Why Every Entrepreneur Should Self-Publish a Book

tags: books publishing self-publishing

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Keeping Tabs on the Blog

dougpete — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

There are probably a lot of ways to do this but I think that it’s the responsible thing to do when you’re a blogger. You need to keep tabs on what’s happening on and around the blog.

WordPress has created a Google Chrome extension that does a nice job of that.

Once installed, it just sits in the browser and checks for any activity. If something happens, a little badge with the number of events appears on the icon. That’s a visual to let you know that something has happened.

Prior to this, I would admit that it might be a while between checks to the WordPress dashboard. Now, it’s addictive to look and hope to see a notification!

But, there’s more than just that.

The extension includes a “Press This” button if you’re interested in blogging on a particular page. Plus, if you visit another blog, you’ve got the option to follow that it right in the extension.

If you’re a Chrome user, it’s a very useful extension to have. Download it here.

I keep thinking that I would go in and add all the Ontario Educational Bloggers to it but that list has grown so much, it would take a Herculean effort. But, if I was having a class full of students blogging, I should be able to monitor everything right in one spot while I go about everything else that I’m doing on the web.

OTR Links 01/29/2012

dougpete — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 05:31:33 +0000

15+ Pinterest Boards Teachers Should Be Following #edchat | Secondary Solutions

15+ Pinterest Boards Teachers Should Be Following #edchat

tags: pinterest edchat teachers
Ideas to Inspire

Inspiring ideas for your lessons, contributed by teachers around the world!

tags: ideas lessons Web2.0 teaching learning presentations writing primarypad
Interesting Ways | edte.ch

The Interesting Ways series continues to be a great example of crowdsourcing good quality classroom ideas and it has been a privilege connecting with all of the people who have taken time to add an idea.
It is remarkable what can be achieved and created together if you give people the right way to do it. Thanks for all the help so far.

tags: interesting crowd-source Web2.0 Tools googleapps Google classroom resources ways
Explore thousands of images from DK’s picture library – Free Clip Art – DK Books

Explore thousands of images from DK’s picture library. Perfect for illustrating homework, school projects and generally being creative.

tags: clipart photos resources dk copyright education clip art Art
Author and Illustrator Birthdays | Through The Looking Glass Children’s Book Review

Here you will find a list of authors and illustrators who are celebrating their birthday this month. Please use the search feature to find titles created by these authors and illustrators.

tags: authors birthdays author illustrator library illustrators literature reading
Skylink Learning Theater

Learning Theatre – Reading, Math, Science, History, Music, Guidance, Staff Development

tags: resources elementary learning science history guidance math reading
21st Century Education Blogs | Scoop.it

21st Century Education Blogs
“Great blogs by innovative and influential leaders in education”

tags: education blogs scoop
Machinarium

Machinarium is point and click adventure game by the makers of web games Samorost and Samorost2.

tags: game flash machinarium gaming design adventure Fun inspiration
Skillshare

Join us! Start learning and discover unique classes in your city.

tags: education learning social Skillshare teaching classes sharing technology
Aurasma – The world’s first Visual Browser, bringing the physical and virtual worlds together

The World’s First Visual Browser, bringing the physical and virtual worlds together.
Aurasma is a free app that lets you discover, create and share amazing virtual content, integrated into the real world.

tags: augmentedreality apps aurasma AR iphone augmented mobile reality
4 Best Google Chrome Extensions for WordPress | Tech18

4 Best Google Chrome Extensions for WordPress

tags: google google chrome chrome extensions wordpress tech
Best free Mac cleaner, Mac cleanup software, Mac cleaner freeware for Mac OS X hard drive – EaseUS CleanGenius Official Website.

Enjoy a Clean and Healthy Mac in Seconds

tags: free mac cleaner cleanup software freeware mac os x os x drive official website
http://www.smriders.net/assets/pdf/BYOT-FAQ-Manualv2.pdf

St. Marys City Schools is committed to prepare all students and teachers to maximize learning by fully integrating
relevant technology into academic content to acquire, share and evaluate information, achieve media and
technology literacy, and maintain a safe and ethical environment

tags: www net assets pdf
Google Music: 7 Things You Should Know

In contention with online music stores like Apple iTunes and Amazon MP3, Google has finally and officially launched its very own Google Music last Wednesday. At first glance, this cloud-based service seems pretty similar to what Apple and Amazon has to offer with their online music storage. However, there are a few subtle differences between Google Music and the rest that might eventually place the former on top of the competition.

tags: google music things know
21st Century Science Teaching: Getting students beyond formula hunting strategies | Powerful Learning Practice

In AP Physics (and many other science studies) the journey to find an answer to a problem is the most important component of the learning process – not the answer itself. Our need to make sure students think deeply about the subjects they study is one key reason The College Board AP Program is undergoing revisions of several courses and exams in history, science and world languages.

tags: science 21st scichat physics
WorkHub

Turn your free time into money, doing digital tasks on your computer or your mobile phone. Anytime. Anywhere.

tags: tool service time working
Breaking Down Apple’s Billions

It’s no secret Apple, one of the most valuable public companies in the world, is making major cash off today’s tech gadgets — but how much?

tags: breaking down apple
A World With No Keyboard And No Mouse | Six Pixels of Separation – Marketing and Communications Blog – By Mitch Joel at Twist Image

It’s all about to change again… it’s all about to get even more complicated.

There has been a tonnage of content produced to analyze the value of Siri (the voice-initiated personal assistant that was introduced with Apple’s iPhone 4S). Along with Siri comes a nascent and emerging new way for people to navigate and engage with content: the voice. That’s not all. While our kids were futzing around with their Nintendo wii or Xbox Kinect, we may have missed another way to navigate and engage with content: kinetics (or natural gestures).

tags: world keyboard mouse pixels separation marketing communications blog mitch joel twist image
3 Ways To Keep Students Focused Amid All The Gadgets | Edudemic

How can we keep students focused on schoolwork with all the electronic temptations surrounding them? By engaging the students completely with our lessons, keeping students actively involved in their learning, and reflecting on our practice to avoid blaming the technology or kids’ short attention spans, in my opinion.

tags: students technology gadgets
Millions Download New Trojan Discovered in Android Market

Symantec has discovered a new Android botnet that is still thriving in the Android Market and has already been downloaded several million times this year.

tags: millions download trojan android market
Canadian teens put a (Lego) man into space for just $400

It was probably a rather small step for Lego but it was certainly one giant leap for a Lego man when he was launched into space by a couple of Canadian teens recently.

tags: canadian teens lego man space
Understand Your iPhone’s Serial Number | Cult of Mac

Did you know that your iPhone’s serial number says a lot about your device? It isn’t just a random string of digits. It reveals the factory in which your device was built, the year it was manufactured, its unique identifier, and more. Here’s how to decode your iPhone’s serial number.You can find your serial number either on your iPhone’s box, or in the About menu within the Settings app. If your device is connected to iTunes on your computer, you’ll also see it on the Summary page.

tags: iphone serial number cult mac
Microsoft Kinect Could Make Its Way to Laptops | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

The ability to control a Windows desktop with a simple hand gesture could become reality sooner than we once thought.

tags: microsoft kinect way laptops gadget lab wired com

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Your school doesn’t need a webmaster

dougpete — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Ever since there was an internet, there’s been a desire for schools to have a website. And, roughly a month after that, there were dated websites. For many schools, having a website was something that was created and done. Fini. A volunteer goes to a workshop on Dreamweaver or Frontpage and then enthusiastically pulls together a webpage or, hopefully, a website for the school. There might be an announcement of an upcoming basketball game or a fundraiser and it draws the educational community in to get the details. Your website URL appears on the district’s directory, on school letterhead, on the sign outside the building, and anywhere you can post http:www.heywegotawebsite.ca.

As the basketball games or the fundraiser becomes a memory, for many schools, it still remains posted on the front page of the website. Why? Typically, webmaster is a volunteer job done with the very best of intentions. But then, life gets in the road. Time can’t be found to make the necessary changes to keep things current. Or, the website was created as a project for a course. Or, the website was created by students for class marks. Or the eager teacher transfers schools taking the necessary skills with her/him. Or, … I’m sure anyone at a school level can fill in their own blanks.

It’s one thing for a corporation to have a dynamic website. They have the resources to hire someone or a team or to farm it out. That’s typically not so for schools; having a webpsite is a desirable thing and becomes a volunteer job. There are some who do a great job as volunteer. You will see some great websites but others, not so much.

How can we fix this? It’s not really a hardware or a software problem. You can go out and implement the best open source content management system or buy the best commercial one but that’s just going to move the problem to a new platform. You could hire a webmaster. Yeah, right. Or, you could rely on so and so’s husband, because “he knows computers”.

I would suggest that there’s a better way. You don’t need a webmaster much. In fact, if you look at your existing website, there’s probably a lot of good material that needs to be there and is valid from the first of September to the end of June. You know, things like bell times, exam days, professional learning days, parent/teacher interviews. Those types of things could be installed once and maybe even be a project for a summer AQ course. Or, just share a template from another school. Instead of their purple and yellow colours, change to your red and white, change the school logo, and you’re good to go. Unless someone holds them up side by side, they are two different sites for all intents and purposes.

It’s the dynamic day to day content that is the challenge. If we remove the webmaster from the mix for any of the reasons above or other, how can it be done? That’s where the webmaster replacement steps in. You don’t need a webmaster; you need a community manager.

The rest of the content can be created daily or, in fact minute by minute, with the right social tools.

Consider all of the great social media tools that are your fingertips. More and more teachers and classrooms are using the independently – why not bring in your community manager to make it work for you. In addition to the static things that you’ve already posted, leave some room to;

incorporate your class, student, and teacher blogs into the mainsite via RSS. A link takes the visitor to your content;
incorporate your class wikis or indeed a school wiki in the same manner. Unlike a webmaster who is the sole guardian of the password and content, build a learning resource with everyone contributing;
use Twitter widgets devoted to each classroom (even with their own hashtags) and every class can update the world 140 characters at a time;
got some great pictures from an assembly or other event? Encourage the audience to take the pictures and post them to Twitter with your school/class hashtag instead of waiting until someone needs to clean out the school camera and finds them;
need to post notes from a meeting or a guest presenter? Embed a Coveritlive session and post your notes as they happen. You could even do a play by play of a basketball game this way;
got some bandwidth? Consider live streaming and recording graduation so that all can enjoy.

The list goes on and on. There’s a not so subtle shift happening. Instead of updates happening when the webmaster can get to it or even if she/he can find and talk to the right person, it’s posted the minute that it happens. Everyone, principal, teacher, student, parent, can be content creators to show how vibrant and dynamic the school is.

Imagine, no more dead websites.

OTR Links 01/28/2012

dougpete — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 05:30:44 +0000

Computer Programming Code Of Ethics

This article attempts to enumerate the key points of proper conduct for Computer Programmers. Much of this is based on the Code Of Ethics of the now defunct International Programmers Guild.

tags: computer programming code ethics
40 Secret iPhone Features and Shortcuts | iPhone.AppStorm

There are lots of things that you can do with your iPhone, sure, but we’re willing to be that there are a few more that you either don’t know about or haven’t used before, particularly with all of the additions in iOS 5. Did you know you can put in typing shortcuts similar to Text Expander? Or that you can make custom vibrations for each person? If you didn’t — or just want to brush up on your iOS trivia — hit the jump and find 40 top secret, ultra-cool tips for the iPhone.

tags: secret iphone features shortcuts
The Teacher Report: 5 Components of a Great Lesso… – WeAreTeachers

Last month, we sat down with a panel of teachers to learn more about their best lesson ideas. Since then, we’ve read through hundreds of lessons and talked to dozens of teachers to help narrow down exactly what makes a lesson great. And, while there is no one factor that makes a tried-and-true lesson work, we did find five commonalities that seemed to be woven through all of our panelist’s favorite lessons.

tags: teacher
50 new tech tools you should know about – CNN.com

New mobile apps, services, social networks and other digital tools pop up so frequently that keeping up with them is a nearly impossible task. Just when you think you’re up to date, something newer and hipper comes along.

tags: apps tools
Microsoft researchers find new type of stealth malware – 26 Jan 2012 – Computing News

Security researchers have uncovered a new type of malware that appears to be benign as it is downloaded, potentially fooling security software, but which morphs into malicious software once it is on a user’s compute

tags: microsoft researchers find stealth malware computing news

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.