Did YOU create primary sources this week?

This was the best poster that I’ve seen for a long time.  It was on the wall at the North Carolina Museum of History.  I would normally have missed it because it was on the inside wall of an exhibit that I was touring.  The exhibit was “History in Every Direction: Tar Heel Junior Historian Association Discovery Gallery”.

I grabbed my phone and snagged a copy of the poster.

The poster starts with “What if”…

• the Lost Colonists had blogged?
• Wilbur and Orville Wright had Tweeted?
• Blackbeard had created a Facebook page?

… and finishes with some suggestions.

I’m thinking of my Teacher-Librarians friends who are on the leading edge of teaching students how to search and find the truth.  I’m thinking of all of my teacher friends who are working to have students using cutting edge technologies.

Wouldn’t this or something similar or more personalized be worthy of a significant place on your Learning Commons or 21st Century Classroom?

I really like the red start in the bottom corner “What might help a future historian discover your story?”  I think it pulls it all together nicely.

Powered by Qumana

OTR Links 02/29/2012

• 5 Blogging Tools to Make You More Productive

  Face it: There’s always too much work to do and not enough time. That’s why the time you invest in creating shareable content must be cherished, guarded and used wisely. Whether you’re a freelancer, a marketing manager or blog just for fun, managing your time will help you write quickly and more often. Productivity doesn’t come naturally to most people, though. But luckily there are tools that can help.

  tags: blogging tools

• AskGeo | Latitude and Longitude to Time Zone Conversion Web API

  AskGeo provides a simple, fast, and accurate Interactive Map, Web API and Java Library for finding out the time zone information for a given location (latitude and longitude). It’s simple: you give latitude and longitude and the API returns the unix (Olson) time zone ID (e.g., “America/Chicago”, “Europe/London”), the Windows Standard Name for the time zone (e.g., “Pacific Standard Time”, “Central European Standard Time”), and the current offset from UTC.

  tags: api latitude time longitude zone geo timezone conversion

• iTranslate4.eu Translation

  Your input is translated by several translation systems. Different translations may help you comprehend the text better.
  To help us, please mark the best translation by clicking on the star below the translation.

  tags: translation

• Linux computer the size of a thumb drive now available for preorder

  FXI is preparing to launch the Cotton Candy, a tiny computer that looks like a USB thumb drive. The device, which can run either Ubuntu or Android 4.0, has a dual-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A9 CPU, 1GB of RAM, and a Mali 400MP GPU that allows it to decode high-definition video.

  tags: linux computer thumb drive

• How Are Wikis Really Being Used in the K-12 Classroom?

  Social media usage at the K-12 level has exploded over recent years, with some 40% of teachers saying they use blogs or wikis in the classroom. More social media, so the argument goes, means better communication, more collaboration, more learning opportunities. “In K-12 classrooms,” to borrow the Portlandia punchline, “you can start a wiki and just call it 21st century learning.”

  tags: wikis being classroom

• Chrome now easily opens email links in Gmail, thanks to some HTML5 magic — Engadget

  The next time you open up Gmail in Chrome keep an eye out for the prompt above, which uses HTML5 to finally close the gap between the way Google’s browser handles mailto: links and its popular email service.

  tags: chrome opens email links gmail thanks html magic engadget

• iLearn Technology » Blog Archive » Wordia

  What it is: Wordia is a site that has been around for a little while, I recently took a look at it again and was pleasantly surprised with the updates. Wordia is game-based platform that helps expose students to a variety of words and vocabulary. 

  tags: technology blog archive

• Google Rewards You For Exploiting Chrome

  Google is giving away a million bucks to those who can successfully hack Chrome

  tags: google rewards chrome

• Apps in Education: Apps for Grading Assessments

  Apps for Grading Assessments
  Using rubrics and providing student’s feedback via the iPad has not been an area that has received a great deal of attention. This is, however, starting to change. I have recently spoken to a number of teachers who have developed apps that will allows teachers to use the iPad as a viable way of assessing student work. Some of these apps actually do more than just mark work. Check out the list and see if any would work for you and your students.

  tags: apps grading education assessments Ipad assessment Edchat

• Microsoft teases transparent 3D desktop interface – Neowin.net

  Innovation, it seems, is alive and well at Microsoft. In the last few hours, we’ve taken a look at two projects from Microsoft Research – make sure you check out both Illumishare and the Holoflector; now, Microsoft’s Applied Sciences Group has shared a video of another project that combines Kinect technology with a transparent OLED screen, to create a transparent 3D desktop interface.

  tags: microsoft desktop interface net

• Microsoft Kinect Games Grocery Shopping at Texas Whole Foods | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

  Last month, Chaotic Moon Labs’ Board of Awesomeness was one of the stars of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It’s a motorized skateboard tricked out with a Samsung tablet and Microsoft’s Kinect so that it can be steered by hand gestures and voice commands. But it turns that the Moon Lab had more on its mind than just skateboarding.

  tags: microsoft kinect games grocery shopping texas foods wired enterprise com

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