Links and Coffee

With the school year in full swing and the grind of my last grad class my post have been far and few between. Here are a few links that are worth a second looksy:

Tagul - create your own custom tag clouds
"Rules of Thumb" for Educational Innovation - a look at Alan Weber's book from American Cultures 2.0
Domo Animate - create animations - the Kids will love this!
Scholastic Vocab Quiz Maker - You add the words, they make the quiz
Spezify - a visual search engine including pictures, headlines, and twitter updates

Staff Developer for a Day + Links

I have been going round and round with my school based Staff Development teacher on the proposed track for our S.D. meetings this year. I want to use this precious time during the school day to collaboratively create practical lessons, projects, etc.. that engages our students. The proposal is to read articles and write reflections, I agree that there is value, but its just not practical and feels like a homework assignment. If we want our students to think creatively we must be creative, why not use this time to be creative? Here is a few of the most recent sites that I have been looking at.

My day of Staff development would include the following:
13 Fantastic and Fun Image Generators - create your own
Wiffiti - make your own real time Wiffiti Wall
My English Images - great for your ESOL or RELL students
Revolutionary War Animated - a great resource for 8th grade Social Studies
Masher - create your own mashup using video, audio, and music clips
Map Puzzles - teaching geography
Learning Menus - A huge resource of menus used as extension activities
Designs for Democracy - the new exhibit at the National Archives
Tessellation Creator - easy to use on your interactive whiteboard

A few quick facts to chew on: (read more here)

• Google announced that it has indexed 1 trillion web pages.
• Facebook now has 300 million users - almost as many as the population of the United States.
• Youtube has 70,000 videos being viewed every minute of every day.

Start of School + Links

Back at it! After giving my "Cool Tools" presentation last week to staff I saw a fair amount of technology being used as we grind through the first few days. Wordle seems to be the the most popular so far, along with Animoto videos. I also have an administrator who is going to use one of the new technologies at each staff meeting to re-enforce the importance of technology in the classroom. I feel that the presentation was successful in opening some eyes to the simplicity of the technologies and their implementation into their curriculums. Time will tell.

A Few Links to chew on:
Wiffiti
12 Free Social Studies Resources
My English Images
NEA Top 20 B2S Resources

Links and Coffee

Sites worth a second look:

War Animated - a look at animated battles and the events that caused them.

First Day of School - Start with problem solving from Copy/Paste

Twitter lists - Who should I follow?

Engaging with Cell Phones Even in Districts that Ban Them - from Tech and Learning

The Texting Effect

I saw an excellent presentation at this year's NECC from the boys from the Committed Sardine on the influence of digital technologies on brain development and its effects on adolescent skill development. The presentation cited the research from the book IBrain by Gary Small who ironically will be part of Steve Hardogen's Elluminate Sessions Thursday. The purpose of the post is an article that caught me today, Texting May Rewire Young Brains that dealt with the negative effects of texting on adolecent brain development and also cites research from IBrain. It makes me wonder how research and publications like this affect the debate on the use of cell phones in education and whether increased errors will steadily become an overlooked side effect of speedy communication. As teachers we see these effects daily, but I look at them as lazy writing not a learned pattern. What do you think?

Socialnomics

I spotted this earlier this week on elearning technology and was very impressed. We have all seen Did You Know, but I really enjoyed how this was put together.

check it out!

Cool Tools

I've been working on a presentation of "cool tools" for my staff during pre-service week. I want to show them tools that will be easy to incorporate and infuse technology into their lessons or projects that will engage students. I picked a few of my favorites that they can easily be incorporated through the Promethean boards and mobile labs.

Images
Spell with Flickr - create words with Flickr images and then cut and paste them to your board
Geo-Greeting - create words using images from google map

Web 2.0:
book r - digital storytelling with picture search
Wordle - create customizable word clouds
Capzles - create timelines
Glogster - create interactive posters using multi-media
animoto - create customizable video using a group of images
makebeliefscomix - create short comic strips
Scriblar - free interactive whiteboard

Other
Crappy Graphs - create your own graph
Newsmap - visual news search
The Differentiator! - objective creator

from prezi.com

ActivInspire Module 5 - Customize your Toolbar

ActivInspire Module 4- Navigation and Presentation

ActivInspire Module 3 - Resource Library

ActivInspire Module 2 - Working with Text

Promethean ActivInspireTraining Modules

I have created a series "How To" ActivInspire training modules for the new Promethean software. I've started with the basics and will move to more advanced modules throughout the year.

Module 1 - Basic introduction to ActivInspire's interface and toolbar.

One Foot in the Water

I've been standing at the edge of the edu-tech blogisphere for a long time, reading and lurking, and sharing the occasional comment on a thought-provoking article, but I think it's time. After coaxing from fellow classmates, co-workers, and friends requesting that I share more of my ideas and resources and after reading the post Never Question your power on Blogush it's time I get off the edge and jump in. So here goes!