Post-Christmas Sales

I enjoyed Christmas and it was finally warm enough. I enjoyed the cricket at the MCG (except for the result) and I kept away from the shopping centres. (I really don’t like the crowds). I next have a week at the beach then the tennis. I’m not sure when I will be on the computer again. I hope everyone else has a happy and safe New Year!

 

 

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Useful site/links

• Over 30000 books to read on your iPhone. Free. TextOnPhone can only be viewed using iPhone and iPod Touch. More than 30,000 books and novels viewable on your iPhone and iPod for free ,

• Issuu – You Publish Issuu is the place for publications: Magazines, catalogs, documents, etc. It’s a site where you can become the publisher. It is free (and fast and easy) to upload a document. You can comment on thousands of great publications.

• chillintime » home A wiki that offers ideas and tools that might be useful to students

• 5 Reasons to Install Google Desktop Today This download combines the power of enhanced web and desktop search with the utility of Google Gadgets

• Idea : Docs for Teachers – Google Docs Help Center Different ideas for using Google Docs in the classroom.

• Smarter Surfing Starts Here An American ISP’s site that gives great info about teens and surfing

• Voicethread for Educators – Voicethread for Educators A Ning group that is “Looking to create, build and keep resources for people using http://voicethread.com in their classrooms. “

• MPR: Podcasts: Grammar Grater Grammar Grater™ is a weekly podcast about English words, grammar and usage for the Information Age.

• Twitter for Librarians: The Ultimate Guide | College@Home A good guide on using Twitter. Also has great general Twitter links.  

• Library Media Study Resources! 

• Mathematics in Movies This is a collection of movie clips in which Mathematics appears

• Teacher Training Videos created by Russell Stannard The videos on this site were created for teachers to help them to incorporate technology into their teaching. Just click and a video will open and take you through how to use that technology.

• Adobe – Digital School Collection Teacher Resources The projects and assessment methods provided on site are from the Teacher Resource DVD that currently ships with the Adobe Digital School Collection and the Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 7 and Adobe Premiere® Elements 7 bundle. 

• The Connected Classroom Creative Commons Image Search 

• TRAILS: Tool for Real-time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills  TRAILS is a knowledge assessment with multiple-choice questions targeting a variety of information literacy skills based on sixth and ninth grade standards. This Web-based system was developed to provide an easily accessible and flexible tool for library media specialists and teachers to identify strengths and weaknesses in the information-seeking skills of their students. 

• Info Literacy on the Internet wiki A wiki about the following four topics for educators concerning information literacy on the Internet: copyright Basics, plagiarism ID & prevention, validity of a Website and resources for research. 

• How to Design and Publish Your Website with Nvu (thesitewizard.com) Nvu is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web editor based on the built-in Mozilla Composer web editor that comes with the Mozilla Suite. 

• Web Design Tutorials This site shows you, step by step, how you can create your own website from scratch.

• 2008 Student Technology Surveys « David Gagnon An interesting article comparing student use of technology with that of their teachers. 

• 5 Twitter Applications and Tools that Made Me a Better Twitter User in 2008  A list of 5 tools that have enhanced theuse of Twitter in 2008.

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

2008: my top 10 tools/sites

Uploaded to Flickr 21092008 by mugley

I closed the library doors for the last time last Friday evening. This is my last job to do on line for 2008. I was thinking about my top 10 whilst I was cleaning out a room where we have been storing our display materials. We have been given some new cupboards to replace the storage place we lost just on 12 months ago. Hands-on is sometimes therapeutic and necessary in the library. I took about 850 fiction books off the shelves a week or so ago. The books were old copies, and no longer read, and would have been picked up by our computer system but the well-loved but tatty copies need to be looked at. We need to work out what needs to be replaced from this group and some are part of series, so if they can’t be replaced, the whole series may as well go. I have been able to find good replacement series titles in local second-hand shops.

Anyway back to to top 10:

1. SearchMe:  I introduced this to students earlier this year, along with a few others of a similar ilk. Both senior and junior students really took to SearchMe very quickly.  SearchMe is a search engine that allows you to view the web pages your search has turned up before opening them. The other really significant aspect is their “Stacks.” Students liked the click and drag options to store information they have found and the ability to share it with others. I wrote 2 posts about using it, in early July and a few days later. These have been the most viewed posts and although there have been few comments I believe that this search engine has proved popular.

2. Diigo (and Delicious): The social book marking tools have become very important to me. I wrote about Diigo, and why I like using it, in detail in an earlier post. I have really found the group sharing a great boon to me.

3. Flickr (and the tools for searching and using the images.) This has been a great source for finding CC images and using them in a variety of different and interesting ways. I am greatly indebted to those clever folk who create these tools and share their work with the rest of us. You could do a top 10 Flickr tools! Search tools such as FlickrStorm, FlickrLeech,  CompFight and FlickrCC make it so easy to find images as does TagGalaxy.  The photo sets from various people and bodies have also been fantastic sources for digital images. A great source of information for those in schools is the Diigo Group, “Flickr in education.”

4. Life/Google Photo archive.: This is an amazing resource that chronicles life since the 1860’s. I discussed it in a post in November. I have been back to this site quite a number of times since I discovered it.

5. Europa Film Treasures: This is an archive of historical European tools. (My Post on it) Again I love the social history part of this. I studied film many years ago as part of my degree and have always found the medium fascinating.

6. Audacity: the free tool that enabled students to create radio interview podcasts in response to their literature circle class reading. This tool has been used for a number of things but the one I had the most fun listening to were the podcasts our student produced, and their enthusiastic response to the class work.

7. Google has so many products. I guess the next one I like is Google maps. I used this for the first time when I was following the Tour de France. Since then there have been all sorts of projects that have used its capabilities. Diigo has another group that called “Google in Education” that is worth a look.

8. WorldMapper is a wonderful collection of world maps that allows viewers to see various types of information in a graphic way, i.e. as a map

9. Silobreaker: It is a useful search engine tool that you can use to find information about a current news topic. It is a very slick way to aggregate the entire Web’s information on a topic into one page. You also have the option of an advanced search to narrow the search down.

10. WordPress: The blogging platform I use. I know that people are saying the Twitter is the “now” tool and blogging is old hat. I was reading a blog the other week that talked about both. To paraphrase, it said “Twitter is a way of connecting, but blogging is more than just connecting, it is also about reflection. The two are complimentary to each other in the circle of learning.” I believe this to be the case. It does not have to be one or the other. In fact I could not put onto Twitter everything in this post, but I can make others aware of my post and they can decide whether or not to read it and or comment further.

So there it is my top 10 for 2008. There are others that I like and next year it will probably change but all of the above are worth a look.

Useful Sites (weekly)

• COVERITLIVE.COM – Home

• Custom Sign Generator Widgets – Thousands Of Web 2.0 Image Generators

• 25 Tools

• educationalsoftware » Flickr

• Don’t Void Our Voices: A Plea for an End to Blocking Online Content | Edutopia

• matnonline / Photo Sharing to Support Student Achievement

• Welcome to BrightKit – BrightKit

• CJOnline / The Topeka Capital-Journal – K-State survey delves into cyberbullying

• DIGITAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS: Tools and Technologies for Effective Classrooms

• Wordle with Teeth: U of Quebec’s Vocab Profiler | Beyond School

• Thinkfree Boundless

• I Love That Teaching Idea! 

• Bubble Comment

• Dropbox – Home – Secure backup, sync and sharing made easy.

• Integrated technology lesson plans

• Moodstream™ by Getty Images An innovative application using Getty images. You can specify the particular mood/ambience that you want to convey and the images, videos and music from the Getty Images Media bank are put together to reflect that mood.

• Learn Online : Writing and Grammar on WiZiQ with Nellie Deutsch – Teachers 2.0

• Literature Circle Wiki – Tears wiki

• Free Technology for Teachers A review of free technology resources and how teachers can use them. Ideas for technology integration in education.

• Pew Internet: Future of the Internet Summary of Pew Report on Web 3 that outlines key trends. from a survey of internet leaders, activists and analysts shows they expect major tech advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online access, voice-recognition improves, artificial and virtual reality become more embedded in everyday life, and the architecture of the internet itself improves.

• j2e.com – home page Free website/wikispace that allows word processing collaboration on documents online. It allows for synchronous publishing in a kind of hybrid manner – word processing, desktop publishing and webpages and has several tutorial videos about how to use it.

• teachingwithFlickr » home A wikispace about using Flickr by Michael Coughlin. Flickr is a social media tool that has, as its primary purpose, to provide an online space where people can upload and store their photos and videos. It also offers great potential for teaching.

• WebTools – Disrupting Classroom A sharing, collaborative ning for educators who support social media as a way to engage learners and promote 21st century learning skills.

• Nice Translator – The fast, easy to use online translator Translate into multiple languages all at once with this easy-to-use translator.

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

Typealyzer: checking my blog writing style

One of the forum discussions on our PLP Ning is entitled: What does your blog writing style say about your personality?

I did the test using Typealyzer. This tool analyses the writing style in your blog. I don’t know if the content is analysed or the tags but it is entertaining and faster than answering all the questions on the Myers-Briggs survey.