Lincoln Tech Update

News announcement regarding the ability to download books online:

“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.

skramstad EdTech

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

News:

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.

skramstad EdTech

News:

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.

skramstad EdTech