Use a Template: Creating a blank PowerPoint with all the slides empty with the information you wish them to include is sometimes necessary.  Unless you want to spend a lot of time repeating directions in terms of creating slides, adding textboxes and inserting pictures, having a blank template will allow students to focus more on the content and less on the PowerPoint software.

Gather Research Ahead of Time: Students should never start a PowerPoint without their notes and writing completed ahead of time.  If they have not written out anything, they will likely copy and paste straight from the Internet without properly giving credit or putting it in their own words.  With the content already written down, students will have to rewrite it in their own words as they create their slides.

Questions or Storyboards: To focus students’ research on their topic, they should have a number of research questions they are expected to answer.  This provides necessary structure for our students when they visit the library or computer lab to research.  You can check their understanding and the completion of their research by their hand-written notes in response to the questions.  If time persists, they should even create mockups of their slides by filling in blank slides, sketching what they intend to write on each slide and the images they will choose.  You can create three blank slides and print them in Handout form and make copies for students (See attached.)

Presenting their PowerPoint is as important as its creation: Students should be expected to present their PowerPoint presentation in class whether in groups or on their own.  Emphasis should be placed on presenting without reading from the PowerPoint; in fact, students should not use full sentences or paragraphs on the PowerPoint, but short bulleted points in PHRASES.  PowerPoint slides are intended as a visual aide for a presentation, not in substitute for the presentation.  They should select images that best illustrate the ideas in their speech or presentation.

Emphasize Good Slide Design: Sometimes there is a temptation to make students create a large number of slides in their PowerPoint.  It is preferable to have students create three to five quality slides than 7-10 mediocre slides.  If you have samples of previous PowerPoint presentations, you can show them good and poor examples of slide design.

Well Designed Slides = Short Concise Phrases on Main Concepts, Representative Graphics/Images, Easy to Read Text and Colors, Photographs are Sized Properly/Not Blurry.

Encourage the Tech-Savvy Students to Experiment and Help Others: Some students are comfortable using PowerPoint and we should encourage them to apply advanced features of the software, including animation, slide transitions, and narration.

Download Word Document

Blogger
Blogger allows students to journal online. Each post appears on the top of the stream, and students can embed images and video. Blogger supports and encourages student writing and creativity. Informal writing and reflection about any topics.

Books
Google has scanned thousands of books online, and made them available for reading. Though few people want to read on their computer, with new mobile devices, reading books online becomes more appealing.

Calendar
The ability to create a calendar and share it with multiple people allows for easier collaboration. You can have multiple collaborators and updaters. Google Calendar syncs with many mobile devices.

Chrome
Chrome is a zippy fast new web browser like Internet Explorer and Firefox. If you are frustrated by the bloat of IE, you may want to give Chrome a spin. Free download.

Desktop
Desktop is a software application you can download and install on your computer, which indexes all your files and documents, making it easier to search and find what you are looking for. It’s a great option if you are still using XP.

Documents
Google Documents allows you to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online for sharing and collaboration. You can have multiple authors and publish them online for easy viewing. Great for students. Avoids the need for having a flash drive and creates a digital portfolio of assignments.

Earth
If you have not tried Google Earth, you are missing out on one of Google’s most compelling products. It allows you to see the Earth in 3-D. Google Earth is a software application you download and install on your computer. You can zoom in and focus on locations on the earth. It is Google Maps in 3-D. Creating lessons and supplementing lessons with Google Earth will be well worth your time.

Finance
Google Finance allows you to create online portfolios of stocks and track their performance over time. You can download the portfolios to Excel and perform comparisons. Great for an economics class.

Groups
Google Groups supports a private or public online discussion forum. It allows you to post topics for discussion and members to reply. You can also post information and documents for easy access to all members. Great for extracurricular classes and groups.

Knol
Knol is Google’s version of a Wiki. It is an online repository of information about a topic. You can create a knoll about any topic and any member of the Knol can edit pages and make updates. It is great if you are creating a guide or a handbook that might often change or require updating. (For example, you can have a Knol for Everything You Need to Know About Graduating)

Maps
Kids love Google Maps. They can spend endless free time exploring the maps due to its interactivity and visuals of places they are familiar with. If you can create an assignment using Google Maps, you will receive definite kudos with your students.

News
Google News searches the web for the top stories from other websites and creates a news page. Great for getting multiple articles on the same topic.

Picasa
Picasa allows you to create and share photo albums. You can upload them online or download software to your computer. You can create public and private libraries.

Reader
Google Reader allows you to subscribe to the top stories of many websites using a technology called RSS. Each day new stories are automatically fed into the Reader. Google Reader is great for educators, helping them to follow their favorite websites in one place regarding news, education, interests, etc. Students could also follow their own favorite websites, supporting non-fiction reading and articles. Great for researching a topic.

Scholar
Google Scholar searches for scholarly articles on a topic. Though valuable, most of the articles are written at a college or post-graduate level.

Sites
Google Sites is a website creator for the non-technical. It requires no knowledge of HTML. Educators or students can easily create new pages, edit the content, and add images and visuals. You can even share and have multiple editors.

Sketchup
Sketchup is a software package that you can download and install and it allows for basic 3-D modeling. Great if you are working with geometry students.

Timeline
Google News Timeline allows you to search for stories about a topic/person over a number of dates. Great if you are writing a research paper that requires covering a large number of dates.

You can access all of these services by typing the name of the service at google.com.  For example: calendar.google.com or chrome.google.com or sites.google.com.

Voice

Google Voice creates one phone number for a combination of phone #s.  It is still new and not available to everyone yet.

Wave

Wave is the future of email, IM, chat and collaboration.  It’s in the rough stages now and needs some time to evolve into its final product.  Unless you are a tech enthusiast, you will find more frustration than benefit here at this time.

You most likely have seen the “Did You Know: Shift Happens” videos. Version 4.0 is now avaiable. Here’s a link to all the versions in different formats. This could be a cool idea for students in creating their own Did you Know video on a specific topic of research. Help students find interesting statistics and present them in an engaging way.

If you have heard of Garage Band for Mac (an audio editor), you should check out Myna, another option for non-Mac users for working with audio called Myna. Aviary, its creator, also has a free online image editor as well worth checking out. Link

Also news about new IPod Touches with cameras?  I’m sure you should stop by Apple’s site if you are interested.  I’ve always been quite sad that my Touch doesn’t have a camera.  I’m not feeling like I’d buy a new one just for a camera, but maybe there will be a more compelling reason to upgrade my Touch.  We’ll see.

“I’m excited to announce that starting today, Google Books will offer free downloads of these and more than one million more public domain books in an additional format, EPUB. By adding support for EPUB downloads, we’re hoping to make these books more accessible by helping people around the world to find and read them in more places.” — Google Books

I tried the new service out today by stopping by Google Books. It’s hard to tell which of the books are even in the public domain.  It seems that many of the offerings are not available for download (therefore, not in the public domain).  I downloaded Treasure Island, since that was the example book and had to install a third party desktop app to open the EPUB version of the novel.  I chose Stanza (since I’m familiar with the mobile app) and thought I’d try the desktop version.

It opened the book easily enough, but I’m not likely to read many novels on my computer screen.  I have definitely made the switch to watching television shows and some movies on my laptop, but I’ve yet to read any substantial work.  Even reading Anthem recently on the IPod Touch is a slow, occasional process.  (Anthem is downloadable on Stanza, but there is no Download option on the Google Books version.)

It’s worth checking out nonetheless.  Anything free is a good thing for students.

Buildling a Better Way of Understanding Science

Laptops in classroom may not always be a good thing.

Worth Discussing:

Discussion on the question of “friending” students

Blog about the potential of video games in education.

Blog post: Making the case for cell phones in schools.

Software:

Text-to-Speech Plugin for Microsoft Word

Convert PDF to Word for free!

Free program guide to open any file extension!

Web Resources:

Online Flash Card creator

Create posters from a single image for free!

Understanding Algebra by James Brennan.  Online algebra textbook

Read magazines online.

For further exploration:

Connexions

Share photo slideshows.

Create a graph online!

Tips and Tricks:

Increase your influence on Twitter

Tip: Create custom IPhone and IPod Touch webclip icons.

Tip: Add animated GIFs to your Twitter feed

Getting Started with Educational Technology:

Techy tips for not so techy teachers

Podcasts in Educational Technology

New Teacher resources

Informative blog post on using Diigo

For Fun:

Periodic Table of typefaces.

California bill wants Google to blur out schools and churches.  I certainly have concerns about Google’s eye on the earth from above, but I’m wondering if this bill is really necessary, or hysteria over nothing.

Study confirms that TxT SPK doesn’t hurt kids’ language skills.  The tendency for students to write in short hand on their cell phones and IM clients is not all so bad.  In fact, it is like a second language.  It’s more of an indicator of a stronger handle of language to be able to use TXT SPK than not.

Podcasts better than attending class or here.  Those who listened to podcasts of their professors’ lectures scored better than those who attended in person.  Hmm, I find this result hard to believe.  Actually this is only based on one lecture.  Why does Ars Technica even publish a news story like this?

People are becoming better web searchers, using more keywords.

For Discussion:

Control is a Worthless Pursuit and Format bigotry.  Two blog posts raising the constant need for school districts, administrators, and teachers to ban students from certain sites and tools.   We need to provide proper instruction in using these tools, not restrict them completely.  In my school district, many valuable sites are blocked, including YouTube, all email clients, and Flickr.  Instead of encouraging intelligent use, we restrict everything of questionable nature.

Wikis are a great tool that many teachers have little knowledge about.  Here’s a nice post about guidelines for editing a wiki.

Recommendations:

You may have heard of Wikipedia before.  How about Simple English Wikipedia?  A good resource for EL students.  This definition is much easier to understand than this one.

Mr. L’s Math.  A very well done blog for math.  Frequently updated and nice resource.

Typealyzer. Analyze your personality type from your blog’s writing style.  Hmm, this blog turned out to be ISTJ–Duty Fulfillers, and my baseball blog was INTP.

The Ultimate Open Courseware Toolset.  A nice list of resources to check out when time presents itself.

Top 10 tools for your blog or website.

Trap 4 mathmaticians in a room that is shrinking.  Here’s a movie worth checking out.

Just for fun.

Polar clock.   Check out this screen saver. Pointless and unique.

Unrelated to tech:

Glendale schools ban teachers’ personal coffee makers and fridges.  Ironically, I see this article days after our assistant principal confiscated the fridge in my room.