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+ Sue
LeBeau at http://www.suelebeau.com/index.html, accessed 3/1/08. There are
a tremendous number of resources for teachers, students, parents, and
Administrators. Her major foci are elementary and middle school resources -
for subjects including technology.
+ 4Teachers.org
at http://www.4teachers.org/, accessed 3/1/08. The home of perenniel favorites
Rubistar and Quizstar. Though funding has been a worry, the site is up and
racing into the future.
+ OpenPD
at http://openpd.wikispaces.com/, accesed 3/9/08. Online professional
development using synchronous and asynchronous Web 2.0 tools. Sign up at
Wikispaces and request to join.
+ ePals
at http://www.epals.com self-described as "The Internet's largest global
community of connected classrooms! Safely connect, collaborate and learn using
our leading protected email and blog solutions for schools and districts." It
is an excellent site right up through 12th grade.
+ Thinkfinity
at http://www.thinkfinity.org/. "Thinkfinity.org is the cornerstone of Verizon
Foundation's Literacy, Education and Technology initiatives. Our goal is to
improve student achievement in traditional classroom settings and beyond by
providing high-quality content and extensive professional development
training. This free, comprehensive digital learning platform is built upon the
merger of two acclaimed programs Verizon MarcoPolo and the Thinkfinity
Literacy Network."
+ Photoshop
from Adobe now has an free online version at
http://www.photoshop.com/express/. They provide a basic editor and two gigs of
storage online.
+ "Timelines
Online are available at http://www.xtimeline.com. Self-described: "When we
developed the timeline tool, our friends thought of many ways to creatively
use the timeline. Some of them thought the timeline could become a great
public service, a resource for history education and for debate over current
issues. The ability of these timelines to entertain and educate convinced us
that other people would enjoy our timeline as much as we do. And that's how
xtimeline came to have a home of its own. "
+ I got a real kick out of PocketMod
(3/29/08). Check it out at http://www.pocketmod.com/ I
made a scad of these little booklets out of single 8.5×11 sheets of paper. As
craft-challenged as I am, I whipped them right out. The developers explain:
The PocketMod is a new way to keep yourself organized. Lets face it, PDAs are
too expensive and cumbersome, and organizers are bulky and hard to carry
around. Nothing beats a folded up piece of paper. That is until now. With the
PocketMod, you can carry around the days notes, keep them organized in any way
you wish, then easily transfer the notes to your PDA, spreadsheet, or planner.
The PocketMod is a small book with guides on each
page. These guides or templates, combined with a unique folding style, enable
a normal piece of paper to become the ultimate note card. It is hard to
describe just how incredibly useful the PocketMod is. It’s best that you just
dive in and create one.”
+ How about Twitter? Send messages of no
more than 140 characters to a list of friends - each message is a 'tweet'. You
can find it a http://www.twitter.com.
+ Try Pandora at http://pandora.com.
It is a unique take on the webcast. go their blog at blog.pandora.com.
I found it to be quite enjoyable. Give it a chance. It is based on "The Music
Genome Project".
+
ALPS - " Active Learning Practice for Schools
is an electronic community dedicated to the improvement and advancement of
educational instruction and practice. Our mission is to create an on-line
collaborative environment between teachers and administrators from around the
world with educational researchers, professors, and curriculum designers at Harvard's
Graduate School of Education and Project
Zero. The ALPS site is as wide as it is deep. Each of the three regions
within the ALPS site has it own resources for cultivating active learning
practice in schools. But rest assured the ALPS site is unified in its
educational philosophy and vision: that students must be active, engaged, and
thoughtful participants in their own education. Each region offers a wealth of
pedagogical terrain to explore."
+
iReading + iWriting + iThinking + T/n = L3 is still probably the best
single portal for Information Literacy. Th site is so rich as to to bedazzle
me.
+ I am featuring Matt Cronin's review from
his blog chronobits.com - "I am a huge
fan of Plasq program Skitch. The versatility
of this program has been documented across the web, so I won’t detail it here.
It was the usefulness of Skitch that led me to try out Doozla.
Doozla’s a vector design program for kids. It includes premade pictures to
color in; think of a 21st century coloring book. It also has a great feature
to uses the webcam to import a picture (a la a PhotoBooth-type interface). It
looks like it would be a great program for the kids to use for school. My only
gripe is the proprietary file format that only works with Doozla. I can bring
up a print screen and export it to a pdf and then convert to a jpeg, but
where’s the fun in that. I’m striving to have the work the students create at
school be in the most open / available format possible. For now Doozla,
doesn’t pass that test.
Update:
I just received an email from Mathieu at Plasq. Doozla is preparing some
export options for their next release 1.2.0. It seems they are aiming for some
of the same functionality as Skitch, but with a more kid-friendly interface."
+ Take a look at Animoto
- Compose your own video with still pictures and your music or music you can
use free on the site. The company is being really aggressive about education.
They are offering school codes to make an unlimited number of 30 second
videos. Mrs. Z and I have an all-access pass to make videos of unlimited
length.
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