Lincoln Tech Update

I’ve resurrected an old student programming project from one of my students four years ago to create an online CAHSEE practice test in English and math.  I am posting 25 questions per week and students compete against teachers (not literally) online in a Jeopardy game format.  Questions come from your standard CAHSEE practice book, but allows for a little more fun interaction in preparing for test like questions.  Anyone can log in and play as a guest at http://www.lincolntigers.org/challenge.

skramstad Updates cahsee, testprep

Over the last month here’s a number of valuable sites worth exploring in more depth.

Literacy: Adolescent Literacy, literacy resources for parents, teachers, and students.  Including classroom strategies list and research articles.

College/Career: Interactive 3D and maps-based college search site at Egiate.com

College/Career: Google offers scholarships for minority and special needs students.

Science: University of Utah has developed an interactive website for learning and teaching genetics with animations and simulations.

Science: The journey of Darwin online.

Social Studies: Interactive website on the Lincoln Memorial.

Social Studies: You can now find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts at Google Scholar.  Link

Teaching: Outline your classroom floorplan with Classroom Architect.  For those who don’t use Easy Grade Pro.

Teaching: Good video created by the Art Institute of Chicago preparing students for a museum visit.  Link (YouTube)

Research: 100 Google Tricks that will save you time in School

Research: Search images and see their interrelatedness to each with Google Swirl.

Learning: WatchKnow — Videos for Kids to Learn from – Scouring the web for the best of YouTube and other video sites

Learning: Word Ahead — Vocabulary Videos.  Another way to learn vocabulary.

Learning: A list of 20 virtual field trips for students.

Technology: Why is the My Computer Running so slow?  This question comes up all the time from computer users.  Here’s a list of popular software to help clean up your computer and get it running smoothly again.

Technology: Google OS – the next big thing from Google.  Good video for beginners to understand operating systems, browsers, and the future of computing.

Technology: The three easiest ways to blog.  Posterous.com, Tumblr.com and now TypePad Micro. And a review of all three.

Creativity: Guide to Tapping into the World of Comics

Reference: World Clock – a clock that tells what’s happening over the passage of time.

Art: Artnatomy: Anatonical basis of facial expression learning tool.

For Fun: Autocompleteme.com shows the bizarre searches of Google users.

skramstad Updates

Moodle Tutorials: Very excited about seeing this site: MoodleTutorials.org.  Moodle is such a great open source project for online course development and really needed more tutorials in using its functionality.  Sure, it has its limitations, but it is a convenient way to run a class online without knowing HTML or web design. Link

Twitter hyperventilation. So much talk about Twitter in the news these days.  Sure, most of it is hype.  It’s been popular for some time and now it’s been caught in the media’s attention and everyone has an opinion.  It’s another online tool / resource and nothing more. It’s great for following updates of specific people and groups, but like any service, not every one is using Twitter and can only follow people who are into promoting their “brand.”  There is something a little egotistical about Twitter in that you have to feel like you have something worth saying that the general public would care to follow.

Articles I’ve seen just this month:

Twitter Handbook for Teachers

How to Demo Twitter

100 Tools for the Twittering Teacher

Six Ways You Should Be Using Twitter

To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Do Only Twits Tweet?

Finding free images online without using Google Images is always a challenge.  A nice post of possible places to go to find photographs to use in different projects.  Link

Morguefile.com is good for photographs.

Also finding free music to use in video creation and projects.  Music Archive might be an alternative.  Link.  The problem with free music and image databases is the quality of the photographs and music requires lots of searching to find anything worth using.  I like to buy those 30 CD clipart and photograph packages when they are in a bargain bin as opposed to trying to find anything worthwhile online.

Software picks:

Top Five Malware Removal Tools. I usually use Spybot Search and Destroy.  If I have to use Hijack This, it usually means I have a serious problem, and a time consuming effort to remove it is probably necessary.

You can read tons of magazines online at Zinio.com.  I like the resource, but I can’t imagine reading magazines online in the same way I can’t read novels online.  The web has always been for short reading spurts.  Nothing more.

Best ways to download videos from YouTube:

Very simple solution.  Use PWNTube. Link

All in One-Video-Bookmarklet.  Link

Ten tried and tested internet tools for teachers. Good blog post of Web 2.0 tools for teachers.  I confess I only have used Diigo and WordPress.  I like the possibilities using Edmodo, a way of communicating with classes, posting notes, calendars.  Looks more promising the Google Groups, and no installation required in Moodle.  Some of the tools look promising, and I plan to investigate more later.

Google Timeline is a nice way of viewing news about a particular topic.  Try using a name of a famous person or sports team and see every story in timeline view.  Link

Also worth checking out:

Here Be Dragons: An Introduction to Critical Thinking.

skramstad Updates

Screencasting Gluttony: Many screencasting options.  Jing Project. Screen Toaster. Skoffer: One Click.  Screen Castle.  Which one is really the best option?   I have no problem with installing software if the tool is useful and provides me options for saving into different file formats and uploading easily to a web site.  I’ve preferred the Jing Project up until now.  I’m also planning to pay the annual $15 fee for the Pro version.

Firefox Add-ons: Prefer to use discretion when adding Firefox extension due to the loading time of Firefox.  Here’s a list of the top 10 extensions.  Can’t say these would be on my list.

IPhone Information: Dictionary.com now defines and pronounces words on IPhone OS.  This is a nice feature.  There are words I still mispronounce like “queue” and “distribute.”  Link.

Also, I’m real excited about the possibilities of Read It Later adding content to the IPhone OS, allowing you to archive interesting articles and then sync them for reading offline.  Since I have a Touch, I sometimes want to read when I’m not near a wifi connection.  Great solution if it works.  I might also try out Evernote for this as well.  Link

Free! Free! Free: Finding music for students to use in their videos is always a challenge with the strict licensing laws.  Our film teacher has the students write to the recording industry for permission to use popular songs in their movies, and they get rejected or receive no reply.  The new Free Music Archive might offer an alternative for finding music to use.

I’m also planning to try using annotated pages using Diigo.  Check out a sample page here annotated.  Annotated article about Ask the Dust, a great book.  Will also have to try out Glogster.

Two quick tips for the IPhone/IPod Touch I learned on accident: Hold down top button and click home button and it will take a snapshot of what’s on the screen and saves them into your Photo folder.  If you double click the home button, it pulls up the last played song, video or podcast.  Funny how I stumble upon these things (sure wasn’t in the instruction manual, or if it was, I didn’t read it.)

For Viewing:

Film School for Video Podcasters.  Link.

For Discussion:

Should colleges host email for their students?  Read

skramstad Updates

Only viewable outside the District firewall, sorry.

skramstad Updates information