Funny Blog Post

This is yet another blog that I read from the Common Craft. I thought it was sort of funny. Also someone posted a comment and a link to this article. I just thought that with the technology we have today, you'd think airport security would be a little tighter. Check it out...but not if you're flying anywhere for the holidays!

PowerPoint Presenter Option

I was looking for an option that was free in lieu of buying the Adobe Presenter software. I found iSpring. It has a lot of the same features. I haven't got to check it out, but I have heard of it before. I will let you know more later in the month- I will be trying it out for use in my classroom.

Google Operating System on the way?

An article on the Boy Genius Report states that there are signs showing Google may be working on it's own operating system. Recent net traffic from Google headquarters shows about 1/3 of Google's employees are accessing the web with an operating system that has had it's identifiers removed. Whether this is a sign of Android coming to desktop, an all new OS or Google just playing with our minds remains to be seen.

Holiday E-Cards

It is that time of year, and I have not found a more fun site than http://www.elfyourself.com/. After I picked myself up off the floor from laughing, I had made a card of my kids and I dancing in elf suits. OK, maybe I've been hitting the holiday e nog to hard, but this was funny, I don't care who you are. give it a try and I"m sure you will be the hit at your next get together.
Enjoy,
Bill

Thinkfinity!

Thinkfinity is an educational resource provided by the Verizon Foundation and all materials are absolutely free. There are eight resource providers shown below that are currently affiliated with Thinkfinity - each image is a link to that tool. All of the tools allow you to search for lesson plans by state standard, by grade level, by interactivity, etc and most of the lessons offer interactive media resources and some even have primary sources digitized for viewing. Such incredible resources! Link directly to Thinkfinity or check out sites of interest below:

Instructional Gaming Presentation Resources

Here are some of the resources I used for my November 13th presentation.

Discovery Education Hidden Message Puzzle program (Classroom Resources tab) retrieved from http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/ on 2008-09-10.

Soapbox: Learning to Play to Learn - Lessons in Educational Game Design retrieved from http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050405/zimmerman_01.shtml# on 2008-09-12.

Games in Education Video retrieved from http://www.seriousgames.org/ on 2008-09-12.

Teaching Facts and Concepts with Online Games podcast Kapp, Karl retrieved from http://iit.bloomu.edu/dit/pages/podcasts.cfm on 2008-09-12.

The Effectiveness of Instructional Games: A Literature Review and Discussion.pdf, Hays Robert T., Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division retrieved 2008-09-14.

Casual Games and eLearning for Adults breeze presentation Kapp, Karl retrieved from http://breeze.bloomu.edu/casualgames3/ on 2008-09-24.

NASA - A Great Website for Educators and Kids Who Love Science, Math, and Technology!

I found a terrific website for anyone who is interested in Science. NASA has a website that features video clips geared to kids K-5, 6-8 and 9 to 12th grade. They are short, 5 to 10 minute video clips that are designed to inspire kids to learn more about science, technology, math, and engineering and are free to every student and teacher in the country! There are over 220 NASA eClips that range in topics (K-5) from What is a Tide, What is Weather, Digging in Moon Dirt, and The Math Behind How Gears Work. For 6th to 8th graders the topics cover subjects such as Lunar Habitats, Hurricane Hunters, Scale Models and Ratios, and Solar Power on Earth. Ninth to twelfth graders can learn about Space Food, How Global Positioning Systems Work, NASA and NASCAR, and Invention of the Doppler Radar. There are also videos for the general public such as how NASA technologies help archeolgists discover ancient artifacts in the NASA 360: Episode 4 video. I watched a few and they are fascinating and I learned a lot like there are always 24 satellites circling the earth but 12 only available to you (for GPS) because the other 12 are on the other side of the world! And the new applications that scientists are finding out that GPS is useful for that it was never designed for! Curious? Go check out the site, there is something for everyone!

Copyright-Friendly Resources.

I just want to remind everyone that there is a wiki listing copyright-friendly resources. A colleague and I began this wiki to prepare for a presentation about Digital Media Ethics.

Please check it out and better yet, join it and add some of your own favorite resources. Pass it on, I'd love to see it grow.

The wiki also contains information about Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons. It's worth checking out for the video clips alone!

http://digitalmediaresources.wikispaces.com/

YouTube for toddlers and preteens

There has been a lot of debate about time spent in front of the television and determining how much computer exposure is good or bad for children. I'm not completely leaning one way or the other but I do think that television and internet exposure can be a viable educational tool, if and only if it is monitored and limits are put in place. One website that has become increasingly popular is YouTube it offers a wealth of video resources and people have become famous from their postings.

One problem is that there is no filter and a 9 year old doing an innocent search on YouTube could see some pretty controversial and inappropriate results. With this in mind totlol was developed for the 13 and under crowd.

Here's an excerpt from the website "Totlol is a video website designed specifically for children. It is community moderated. It is constantly growing. It is powered by YouTube. All videos were submitted, screened and rated by parents. The selection is huge and if you like, you can participate too."

The most porpular and recently added videos are listed, you can search for videos and there's also a section where parents can screen videos awaiting approval. There are fun videos and loads of educational videos. For all of you "school house rock fans"...Yes it is there! I hope you'll take a moment to check it out and if you know anyone with children please share this resource.

http://www.totlol.com/index.php

Gamequarium

Gamequarium

Here is a really neat resource of educational videos for younger learners. Gamequarium was a link I found after reading an article about IT Specialists and the first word that would come to mind is "cute". However, it is very comprehensive and has icons on the top of the page that indicates what videos you can watch (there is a sombrero that represents Spanish videos and a piano icon that you click to learn to play the piano. These links take you to multiple resources of videos located on the Internet.

Don't get me wrong, I've seen many sites like these, but they really emphasize the video, or technical component of the resource. So if you're an educator who teaches younger students, check it out!





http://gamequarium.com/

More Good Free Programs

I know it's not my week, but I was reading the post below about free anti-virus programs and thought of some other great free apps. These are for opening .zip and .rar files as well as compressing files to .zip. These tools can be very useful when operating online. Despite broadband becoming more common, most mail programs still place restrictions on attachment sizes. The programs are Cam Unzip, which allows zipping and unzipping of files and ExtractNow, which allows you to decompress .rar files. I hope these help people out, I've been using them at work for months and haven't had any problems.

More Mathematical (and other) Resources

While I was working on my lessons for the blackboard project, I felt it was necessary to include resources for students. Everyone has been providing such great resources, but I’m beginning to wonder: If we provide our students with so many resources, will they use them or will they be overwhelmed? I narrowed a list to six resources for mathematics and included a quick statement about what they include. Then if students want to add more, they may. For those of you that would find mathematics resources (there are other subjects in some as well) of use, here is my list:
http://www.mathwarehouse.com – provides interactive tools for practicing prerequisite skills (algebra, geometry, etc.)
www.purplemath.com – includes examples and easy-to-understand explanations on a variety of mathematical topics.
http://www.hippocampus.org/?gclid=CM6l65_gw5YCFQNfFQod3Wt1wg – multimedia source for calculus topics (lessons to watch and listen). There are other subjects at this site as well.
http://mathforum.org/math.topics.html - from Drexel University, this encompasses a wide range of mathematical topics at a number of levels. All sorts of goodies in this resource.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ - “ the web’s most extensive mathematics resource”. This site is a bit more technical and may be hard to understand at times, but it really does have almost everything.
http://free.ed.gov/subjects.cfm?subject_id=186&toplvl=33 – breaks math down into the five areas that the PSSA tests on: Algebra, Data Analysis, Geometry, Numbers and Operation, and Measurement. Calculus IS on there! You have to search around for what you want, but Algebra will lead you to a calculus application. This is a really comprehensive source. Not all of the links are equally engaging, so again, hunt around. This site also provides other subject lessons and activities.
I hope you find these useful! I’m actually going to use a few of these and other topic-specific sites this week in my calculus class. These resources are free, so we only need technology that will support it – and we have that.

Professor Google

I am planning to research a new topic or some interesting information or facing problems related to any subject first thing that strikes my mind is “Google”. Quickly type in the key words and can get lots of related information or possibly solutions to my problems. I have thank God and the Google team for being so kind by helping lots of people like me.
Search engines are by themselves great sources of information with almost providing or implying to the resources needed in learning. From a student perspective I can say almost 25 percent of the students across the world rely on Google for their solutions. Its great source of information if tapped properly an individual can take maximum benefit from this vast store of knowledge.
Thanks again Google team for providing such a powerful search engine. Keep going with your good work.

143 Free Learning Tools

I found this website when I was researching information for my Centra presentation. It has 143 sites that you can visit to tap into everything from free authoring tools, photo editing, storytelling, quiz makers, etc. Hot Potatoes is listed here as well as EclipseCrossword.
The website is:
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dg46x272_2103d58wg2d9

Wetpaint - a free wiki and website tool!

Yet another great resource has been found! Its called Wetpaint!click on the logo to get to wetpaint.com

Wetpaint.com is a site that allows users to create wiki's for educational or personal purposes. Currently Wetpaint hosts over a million different wikis built by variety of different users, from individuals to small organizations, clubs, interest groups, educators and anyone who has information to share! Topics vary in the same wide range with their creators.

Wetpaint was started in 2005 as an idea of a group of friends thought "why not make it easy for groups of people to share information, experiences and build social communities around anything they want?" Their motivation for this emerged, as one of them was suffering from cancer and they were looking for information online on how other people coped with a similar situation.

Some of the cool Wetpaint features include:

• Easy 1-2-3 creation
• Many facilitating tools for content creation and collaboration
• Public and private sites
• Onsite messaging
• Addressbooks
• Automated links
• Templates for different site types
• Site search
• RSS feeds and email notifications
• Personalized profiles
• and most of all IT'S FREE!

Us as instructional design students and professionals can really take advantage of a tool like Wetpaint. As we are stepping out of the shelter of the University it is extremely advantageous to have a website or online porfolio to portray our accomplishments and show off our work. Creating a personal wiki, like Wetpaint, can be an easy and affordable option to get your name out there. Rather than paying for a domain name and a server and spending hours writing html and css codes (Dr.Doll, Please don't get mad...), a free and easily editable wiki sounds like a tempting idea! So, check it out! ;)

Educational Simulations

After presenting the multimedia principle, I couldn’t help but search for more applications of useful simulations. I found http://www.techtrekers.com/sim.htm. This site looks like it has a bunch of great links for interactive tools, and it does, but you have to search for them. This is a common misfortune of which I warned fellow teachers when we were creating webquests: a resource or site that you find now is not necessarily going to be there when you use the webquest.
At the time of my search, these were a few interesting resources that were working:
Math and physics applets (9-12) This site contains java applets that are designed to help students visualize important concepts in mathematics and physics. Applets include simulations and demonstrations of sound waves, membrane oscillators, and vector fields.
http://www.falstad.com/mathphysics.html
The learning equation (9-12) This site presents 15 applets for exploring mathematics topics in geometry, trigonometry, and probability. Each applet has detailed directions for use and suggestions for exploration. http://members.shaw.ca/ron.blond/TLE/index.html
Calculus (11-12) This site contains interactive java applets that demonstrate concepts from calculus. The page has three main sections that cover topics concerning limits, derivatives, and integrals. http://www.ies.co.jp/math/products/calc/menu.html
ExploreMath.com (8-12) This site features interactive activities designed to help students visualize and explore a spectrum of major mathematical concepts from elementary algebra through pre-calculus.

Multimedia Presentation Resources

Resources and References from the Multimedia Principle Presentation:
Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R.E. (2008). E-Learning and The Science Of Instruction (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.
http://www.elearningguild.com/pdf/2/091002DES-H.pdf

Images courtesy of:
http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/edu/safety/tornadoguide.html
http://www.essdatarecovery.com/tornado.asp
http://skydiary.com/kids/tornadoes.html
http://www.ies.co.jp/math/products/calc/applets/heihen/heihen.html
Google Images
http://www.workingsimulations.com/new_lexicon/tourdesktop.html
http://esminfo.prenhall.com/science/geoanimations/animations/Tornadoes.html

UEN (Utah's Education online)

In writing a piece for my wiki project, I cam across a unique and interesting site for K-12 learning. The Utah Education Network (UEN), has an area on their website, which is dedicated to various grades. The initial portion of the site is broken into 3 general grade levels (K-2, 3-6, and 7-12). As you select the grade level, you are presented with the subject topics for that grade level, such as Math, Science, Technology etc. After selecting the subject the student is then presented with a tabled format list of games that could be categorized further (i.e. Science might be broken into Earth, Chemistry, etc.).

Each of the games is in one of three formats; flash, shockwave, or java. They load pretty quickly and can be fun. Yes, I've played several and was quite addicted. I'm from the gamer 1.0 generation and if I had this type of learning back in my day (did I just say that), I would have done much better in school. All kidding aside, this site really has their curriculim layed out well. I've book marked it because I found several brain teasers (soduku, tower of hanoi, cryptograms, etc.). I think as long as the site is maintained, students will find it engaging and enjoy their learning. Go ahead and try it, go to the site and see if you don't get addicted in a good way! Their site is located at http://www.uen.org/News/article.cgi?category_id=2&article_id=1352.

Web 2.0 Brainstorming

I truly was trying to search for some more interesting research for this week's blog, but I always seem to find more interesting tools for teaching instead. They must catch my eye!

I found a resource similar to Inspiration- it is called bubbl.us. For those of you who are not familiar with Inspiration, it is a concept mapping tool that you can use for various activities in the classroom including brainstorming, notes, diagrams, and what ever else you can think of.

It is worth checking out: Bubbl


Even better is the second resource that I found called Mind Meister. It is a collaborative online mapping tools, similar in nature to Bubbl. It is like a Wiki in the sense that you can edit the map as a group simultaneously to produce one topic. How cool is Web 2.0 getting! Awesome!

Check it the demo on the webpage before you sign up: MindMeister

More Free Tools

This blog seems to be undergoing a bit of a trend in open source software and things available via creative commons. I thought I'd share some interesting tools I've been reading about recently- all of them free.

Csounds: sound design, music synthesis, and signal processing for Mac, Linux, and Windows.

Plone is open source content management that easily allows you to organize web content for group projects and communities.



Plumi is a little piece of software that works with Plone, once you have Plone up and running.
Plumi allows you to create your own video sharing site! Currently, developers are even working on functionalities that will allow users to upload and download to/from Plumi sites using mobile devices.




For Chris Davis, in response to one of your previous posts- the Open Clip Art Library. This library is user supported- submit your own clip art and contribute to an archive of Creative Commons images, or download clip art when you need some.



Not really open source software, or creative commons assets, blip.tv is a really interesting site that provides learning and hosting resources for web shows and web storytelling. Newbies can learn the craft, and the more experienced web show producers can hone their craft. Free accounts are available, and their tools are good for Windows and Macs.


If you've never been to the Internet Archive, you simply have to go. Home of the Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive is a huge, digital library that is dedicated to providing access to all sorts of digital collections.