Showing posts with label ebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ebook. Show all posts

Friday, June 27, 2008

Sites that Caught My Eye Today 06/27/2008

Posted by ultralitemp3

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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Notes from Google Teacher Academy

Posted by ultralitemp3

Notes from Google Teacher Academy

Note: I took these notes in Google notebook and exported them to Google docs and after they were formatted, I posted to blogger from Google docs.

Google Teacher Academy

Teachers Going to Google :) Home - Teachers Going to Google :)
This is what many of these teachers feel like -- 250 applications for 50 spots here. I wish everyone could come! 5 different countries - Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Phillipines, 56 people in the room.

Chris Walsh - Introduction - Google Teacher Academy

Chris Walsh Google for Educators Site - http://www.google.com/educators/gta.html This is about the innovation that Google brings to the table to the classroom. Note from Vicki: I agree with this totally, I use a method in my classroom called 'Google Led Socratic Teaching" Google has created an atmosphere that promotes innovation -- Note: Bicycles are everywhere, most people are casual, microkitchens, decor -- it is a really cool environment. Microkitchens - they are everywhere. Find just about anything you could ever want to eat. They do this on purpose -- feed people well if you want them to work well. ("Partake of the chocolate river" They had more applicants than any other teacher academy every. They have over 200 Google certified teachers around the world.

Mark Wagner - Innovation Connection

Leading the innovation connection. Speed dating for geeky teachers. - 30 minute activity. 2 minutes - to think up an innovation that you've done in education but NO technology. (Gather with teams) - Team names are after 19th century innovators. http://sites.google.com/site/gtaresources Cool ideas:
  • Teacher that adopted a stream/ watershed behind the school -- cleaned it up w/ class and the salmon run came back -- used to educate the whole school.
  • Stereophone w/ pvc looped sound of reading to the student's ear to help find commas, etc. -each one cost 15 cents apiece.

Cristin Frodella, Program Manager - Google Teacher Academy

Focus on the user and all else will follow -- Part of their culture.

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.

3. Fast is better than slow.

4. Democracy on the web works.

5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

7. There's always more information out there.

8. The need for information crosses all borders.

9. You can be serious without a suit. **I love this -- Jeans, t-shirts, shorts -- very relaxed. (I like that.)

10. Great just isn't good enough. **Very academic place -- get "graded" every single quarter - OKR (Objectives and key results) -- gets graded every quarter. Based upon "grades" for how they get paid. (WOW! I like this.)

. Good advice for students and teachers too. FOCUS ON THE STUDENT AND ALL ELSE WILL FOLLOW. Innnovation is something that works also outside of technology. She actually said that althought they are teaching Google tools, they encourage us to innovate w/ whatever tools do the job. (Wow!) I love the objectives of Google Teacher Academy -- to inspire us to be agents of change but also to give feedback to Google - help us to make a community of excellence. "Creative education leaders who understand their local needs and can spread innovation as a recognized expert." Our responsibilities: I. Professional Development

By February 2009, lead at least 3 professional development activities on ways that innovative tools can be effectively used in the classroom or school.

Examples include:

  • Hands-on Workshop
  • Peer Coaching Program
  • Large Group Presentations
  • Online Learning Events & Modules
  • Weekly Podcast Program
  • Weekly Blog Posts
Complete Action Plan Tracker
  • Three Activities You Plan to Lead
  • Intended Audience
  • Intended Results
  • Demonstrates the concept so that other GCTs might implement it
  • Utilizes at least one Google tool
  • Serves a specific educational purpose
  • 30 minutes for "rapid prototyping"
  • 30 minutes for sharing
Pair up w/ a peer to work w/ the action plan. Google, Google Teacher Academy

Chris Walsch - Google Search & Personalized Information

90% of peoplethink that Google Search is what it is all about http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ - Link to every product that Google Has
  • Advanced search -- copyrighted authors tend to do pdf's -- so you can go in advanced search and search for pdfs - http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en - We need to teach students to search by file type.
  • You can search within a domain - UCLA - education science ucla.edu and search powerpoints from there.
  • do an order of operations lesson - type in a long math problem and google will add parentheses in there for you -- can discuss this
  • define: and the word -- Note: I use this ALL the time in my "google led" socratic teaching.
  • Search bar is no longer a place to find websites -- it finds INFORMATION
  • Google 411 - http://www.google.com/goog411/index.html#utm_source=us-et-more&utm_medium=et&utm_campaign=GOOG-411 - Call 800 GOOG 411 (1-800-466-4411) About GOOG-411 Google's new 411 service is free, fast and easy to use. Give it a try now and see how simple it is to find and connect with local businesses for free. It will answer with a text message.
  • Talks and shares iGoogle Note: We teach all of our teachers to use igoogle, it is a great entry level igoogle page. Also if you do hosting w/ Google -- you can create customized igoogle pages for your school.

Google, Google Teacher Academy, search

Google Maps, Google Earth, Sketchup, and Sky - Jerome Burg

Stimulate ideas http://sites.google.com/site/gctalmanac/ My computer crashed - lost the rest of these notes! ;-)

Mark Wagner - Docs

Like the comment feature in docs - leave feedback but it won't be printed. Each collaborator can get a color Preso - http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=ddnctvgt_170cbskvf68 Doc about Docs Can you share a document w/ a mailing list -- YES -- so we could create a listserv for the class -- CHECK - invitations may be used by anyone. So you can invite them. That is a great thing! (Just remember anyone can add themselves who wants to.) I like this. E-mail collaborators - it becomes a list serv itself. (I love this feature - it is a great one.) Can you change ownership of a doc? He says when you go to delete it you can. Can translate your do -- but you can make a public page -- tranlate a webpage - http://translate.google.com

More Google

custom Search Luci - Lets you just search specific sites Custom Calendars Terry - give you access - timebridge -- will work with www.jott.com will also put on the calendar Specialized search Devery - blog search, book search, news scholar, special searches -- multiple ways to search blogs (note: you can also subscribe to these rss feeds) -- see where the books are available (NOTE: some teachers are using this to work w/ their card catalog search) -- search news Picasa - Jim - rss feeds -- put into igoogle -- photo sharing -- pictures on igoogle Can embed to the website. Youtube & video - Nicole - www.getmiro.com - go out and search video tags www.vixy.net - www.zamzar.com -- piclens add in -- wonderful. -- moya software Groups -- threaded discussions - post files -- post hyperlinks -- make pages -- common folder for files Sketchup - 3D artistry program -- pull objects from google earth -- WOW! -- (I want to share this with my students) - compare pyramids to the parthenon -- create models of their room or classroom - label pieces of the item and draw it out. Place back into google earth when done -- put own new pyramid into google earth. California's 4th grade standard - missions - compare and contrast different missions. Gtalk -

Google in High School Journalism

Esther Wojcicki - Just joined the board of Creative Commons - created 5 media programs in grades 10-12 -- completely self supporting - kids go out and get ads. (real journnalism) 4 programs recognized for excellence. 4 classes that use docs for their journalism -- more than 400 students that take journalism at Palo Alto high school. 4-6 editors in chief - section editors, page editors, everyone is a reporter, business staff, advertising staff (create ads) 2005 winner of two webby awards -- http://voice.paly.net -- 30 kids that work on that website. They also have a newspaper -- The Campanile -- Columbia Corwn winner and National Scholastic Press Hall of Fame - Top 1% of the countryfor many years. -- National Scholastic Press Paecmaker - Verde Magazine -- Viking Sports Magainze - June 2008 They use docs to create all of these things. Advantage of Docs -- easy to use and collaborate w/ other students - revision easy to locate, easy to organize documents, easy to find a document, saves automatically -- great for teaching journalism. -- Cool Prior to using docs they were in constant crisis w/ disks and problems. I left it at Dad's house and this weekend I was at Mom's house - tough. Great b/c you can comment on the article right away. Submit online and in hard copy as well but they do lose it in hardcopy -- easier to read in hard copy -- so they print it out when it is time to get it together. The other advantage of docs - online peer editing. They work on it at all times of the day -- can see when they were online working on this - she's seeing work and editing at all times of the night and day. How do you get such high quality writing? She says b/c it is easy to access and they can work when they are comfortable. Can download and save it as a word file later on -- Adobe InDesign requires to save it as a word file. However, within the next 6 months - in design will allow the files to come straight from Google Docs. So, all students have an online portfolio - just type name into search bar -- they have Google sites -- she can see what every student has done for the entire year. -- In the docs account.-- if you want credit, you have to share it with her -- the teacher. They have an online porftolio -- revisions history -- and how many revisions they have made -- showing a doc that has 173 people looking at- advantage of publication is this quality (see the foxfire information -- similar format.) Note to self: What about a magazine or website covering technology w/ my students -- write in google docs, share and cover technology. Hmmmm. Sample assignments for beginning journalism -- cool information. How do you label all these documents so you don't go crazy? Students name documents by their class period, first name and last name. 2Brown, Catherine: Pizza REview -- then you can alphabetize by class name -- (I WANT TO DO THIS) -- again -- standardizing tags -- I am starting to do this, it is such an important practice. ***Standard tags for assignments, etc. are very important -- having some naming standards -- she has hundreds of students and it is a necessity -- I agree totally!!!! They can click on contacts and share -- I think they are in google sites which makes it easier to do things. (Note to self: I am putting on my list to give each student an email this year from grades 6-12 -- that will be so helpful.) They critique each others work -- you can see if they do == the comments don't print. It really makes a difference. It helps students do really great work, that is why she likes docs. Mag comes out 12 x per year -- website is updated every day. 2 sections to the paper. Have a professional printer -- send it and ftp it to the printer -- fricky parts press in union city journalism, googledocs, Google Teacher Academy

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Friday, April 25, 2008

38 Birthday presents from CoolCatTeacher to you!

Posted by ultralitemp3
Happy Birthday to Me! Wow! Your twitters, skypes, little e-mail notes and more have really made today special. In addition, my family was wonderful and my amazing husband sent me flowers. Although I still have a stack of grading from here to Qatar - I had a good day.

So, I thought that today, I'd give 38 presents to you for you to open and enjoy. One for each year of this amazing blessed life the good Lord has seen fit to give me.

All of these are free and so so cool! I challenge you to pick a present today, open it in my honor, and let me know what you think!

  1. Songbird - This is THE cool opensource alternative to iTunes and it is connected with Skreemr, the music search engine.

  2. Timebridge - This scheduling system plugs into google calendar or outlook and lets you invite people to a meeting, select four time alternatives, and then it books the meeting time that everyone can attend and puts it on your calendar. It reminds them and it rocks!!

  3. Get Atomic Learning Free for 3 months -- I'm copresenting in a webinar with Atomic Learning and Technology & Learning on Monday. If you register AND attend at 4 pm EDT, you will get 3 months FREE from Atomic. This will give you not only the seminar I did for them on Web 2.0 but also, the one that is coming out soon about how to flatten your classroom.

  4. Diigo - This cool tool has transformed my bookmarking, blogging, sharing, and twittering. Install it, set it up to send to your delicious account. Join the educators group (getting close to 400 members) and ad4dcss groups -- when you send things to the group, make sure you select at least one of the tags that "pops up" (these are from our tag dictionary.) Also, go to tools and set up a nice little daily autoblog based upon a tag you specify. (Some just put the tag "blog" for everything they want to go to their blog that day!)

    To get the most out of it, you definitely should use firefox and install the cute little bookmarklets. This is a definite tool for those writing papers!

  5. Zoho Notebook -- This notebooking service completely and utterly rocks! Zohonotebook gives you the ability to EMBED video and web pages as well as snag notes from many places. It is an amazing tool! (Check out some of the pages I demoed in a workshop a while back.)

  6. Google Forms - Google spreadsheets has a cute little tool hidden in the Share tab, the ability to create a form. We're using this for the Horizon Project managers to submit their weekly reports. It is so fast and easy and a great way to pull information into a spreadsheet. I even have my national honor society students entering their service time for me into the spreadsheet.

  7. Firefox - If you're still stuck in Internet Explorer, you simply must try firefox. Give yourself a present! The plug ins are incredible. My favorites are: the diigo plug in, technorati tag plug in,

  8. If you're in Princeton come to a free Conference next Friday, May 2nd - Can you tell, I love free? I like to do work with people who provide their services to the general public and openly share information. This conference on Friday is chock full of amazing speakers and I'm going to enjoy being on a panel with some of them to talk about Flat Classroom.

  9. Twitter - Again, try this one. Some say they don't "have time for twitter" or don't "get it." Just sign up, add me as a friend, and then go in and see whose talking to me, add some who sound interesting and then reply to their messages by saying @theirID -- so to reply to me, you'd say @coolcatteacher -- You may just find yourself conversing daily with some of your heroes.

  10. Hulu.com - I've been beta testing this beauty which lets you watch all kinds of TV shows. Now, you can watch too!

  11. Mogulus - Do you want your own 24/7 TV station? You can do it here. Schedule things to play. Merge videos from other places on the Net. Very cool.

  12. AFI Screen Nation - The Amazing American Film Institute has a new site where your students may upload video and be evaluated by REAL producers, actors, and directors in Hollywood. Their curriculum is totally amazing and I use the videos that come with my united streaming account to teach digital film & movie making. I love the AFI digital storytelling curriculum and highly recommend it.

  13. Toondoo - Make cartoons. This continues to be one of my perennial favorites for cartoons.

  14. Ning (for VIDEO sharing) - I LOVE Ning in the classroom and just found a super cool new feature. If you upload video to ning, it automatically converts it to the most compressed, appropriate version for the web. You may then embed the video anywhere else. This is solving a lot of our access problems for the horizon project b/c schools just unblock the Ning and have access to all of the movies!

  15. Intel Mashmaker - This lets you mash together all different types of websites and I am enjoying working with it. There will be some things I share soon. This is supposed to be a lot like Microsoft PopFly, which I've not tested yet.

  16. Skype - This is another MUST have APP. If you haven't tried it yet, get over there and take a look.

  17. Classtools.net - Embeddable graphic organizers of every kind for your wiki or blog. I Adore this site and use it all the time in my classroom.

  18. Wikispaces -- This is my stable, well supported, wiki darling. One look at the horizon project wiki will tell you why.

  19. Gmail - With the most robust spam filter anywhere, the ability to filter like a fiend, make folders, and import all accounts into one place, this account is a dream come true. Even if you use another service, you can enable pop on that account, set up a gmail and pull all of your accounts into one. And if you use firefox, they have a better gmail firefox extension from lifehacker that is a must install!.

  20. Gcast - I'm really enjoying podcasting from my cell phone -- just a lot of fun!

  21. FriendFeed - A cool little service that I'm really beginning to enjoy to help me follow just a few people.

  22. Technorati Watchlist - A must use for bloggers watching those responding to their work and just to follow the things you want to know more about. The RSS from the search for your blog belongs in your RSS reader.

  23. PhotoBucket - THE place I put my private photos. I like Flickr, but somtimes I just want to make a really cool flash page for my website or do something neat with photos, and photobucket has more robust tools for my photos than I've found other places.

  24. Big Huge Labs for Flickr -- This has some amazingly hilarious Motivational Poster makers and just about everything you can imagine for your photos. Make monster posters, make labels, make anything. If you have photos, this is THE place to PLAY!

  25. Feedburner is a must use for any serious blogger or school Webmaster. You can burn the feed to feedburner, which will let you move your feed from place to place without losing readers! You may also use Feedblitz to e-mail your blog posts to anyone who is "afraid" of RSS. Feedburner has so many other features that serious bloggers will appreciate.

  26. Statcounter - This is my favorite place to track links, traffic, and more. Just a very reliable, accurate site.

  27. Google Reader -- My RSS reader of choice for linear, sequential RSS reading (down the page aggregation), Google Reader now lets you download google Gears and read your RSS offline!!!!

  28. Netvibes - For single page aggregation, I use netvibes as my RSS reader although my home page starts up with iGoogle, I go to netvibes. Their new Ginger version allows you to publish your pages and share with others. I teach my students this handy RSS reader for their Personal Learning Networks.

  29. EdTechTalk - Although I co-host a show here, I always get pumped when I listen to these shows. Do yourself a favor and take a listen.

  30. Creative Commons Searching - This is THE place to look for images, graphics, and audio. It is a must use for students!

  31. 4Info.net - I get the weather texted to my phone each morning. Every time a Georgia Tech football or basketball game ends, I'm texted the score. You can have stock tickers, rss reminders and more texted to your phone. It is amazingly cool.

    When I shared this in Maine, one guy jumped up and yelled, "I LOVE YOU!!!" It is that useful!

  32. Newsmap - When I want to take time to read the news, this is what I use. I adore NewsMap. I teach my students to use it to get abreast of what is happening in the world. If you have 1 minute to read the news, go here.

  33. Classroom 2.0 Live Conversations - Steve Hargadon is hosting these amazing sessions. Simply excellent. Another place to "get pumped" and have some great ideas.

  34. My year long PD IS the K12 online conference -- Go back and watch some videos (I love Silvia Tolisano's presentation). I believe that you should consider requiring teachers to view at least one of these presentations and "report back" to the group.

  35. Cool Cat Teacher Wiki - All my presentations, handouts, archives, and STUFF are there. I love to get out sometimes and when I do, I want to capture it.

  36. Slideshare - I LOVE this slidesharing site. It is very useful.

  37. VoiceThread - If I could pick ONE tool for elementary ed, this is it, hands down.

  38. My blog - OK, I know this is ME and you're already here. However, really, I don't know which is more the gift, your gifts to me in the form of comments, links, twitters, and e-mails or my being able to share with you what I'm doing. If you're able to live life a little better, make it through when you're at your wits end, and learn something that improves your life, then I've done something.

And although this post took me three days to write, I'm still leaving the date for this past Friday.

And for those of you who've sent me e-mails. I will get caught up, I promise. Something has happened because I had my e-mail down to zero a week and a half a go and now have over 600 emails! I'm trying not to drown!

Thank you all for the kind tweets and messages and I hope you enjoy these presents!

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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

From the mouth of students: They discuss

Posted by ultralitemp3

Following are some comments from students on the Horizon Project


They are making great points. Again, when we involve students in discussions, we get some fascinating answers and points. (They sound a little bit like us!"




  • Unprecedented Force for Change"-Dan Tapscott's Keynote - Horizon Project 2008 - Annotated




  • Student #1 wrote on her blog




    • Dan Tapscott, Horizon Project 2008’s keynote speaker, gave me insight and inspiration for the project. His knowledgeable comments on the baby boom generation were incredible and it amazed me that he decided to make his entire living on the study of the digital generation, the generation that I am a part of.



    • I am a part of the generation that is an “unprecedented force for change,” and we are actively inducing and creating change that will be beneficial and relevant to the world today and tomorrow.



    • I agree that technology must be at the center of this change in order for it to be effective.



    • Enter technology; students can learn from each other by collaboration through technological advances such as wikis, blogs, You Tube, Facebook, and projects such as Flat Classroom and Horizon.



    • Teachers are no longer “transmitters of data,” but active participants in the student’s learning process.



    • with our advanced, technological world, we must not only acknowledge the new technologies emerging but we must gain knowledge on how to use them.



      Student #2



    • If school became an interactive place where both students and teachers put their two cents in: teachers teaching students, students teaching students, teachers sharing ideas and students executing these ideas-school would be great. If we all focus on change and ways to make interactive learning better we could reach so many people! Not only can we interact with each other but we can raise awareness and pose solutions on the many issues regarding education.



      Student #3



    • I really agree with both of what you two are saying, but my question remains, (in an attempt not to sound too cynical): how is this going to happen? I know that Dan Tapscott seeks to view change in the education system, but my question is, how is this going to happen?



    • but the real issue is, in so many places education is rigid and all about regurgitation of information. How do we look past that? Is it a mindset that we need to learn how to transgress, or is it a gradually changing aspect?


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Saturday, April 12, 2008

Student insight from Horizon & another video you've got to see!

Posted by ultralitemp3
A student and I were having just this conversation on Friday. In this student's evaluation of Don Tapscott's keynote for horizon, Sarah H in her blog post "Modern Revolution" says:

"we control our screen instead of watching it as our parents did. Kids around the world use their voices through YouTube, blogs, and wikis. We work together to showcase our opinions on what is happening to the world.

Collaboration is not just a word in the dictionary that we have to recite to a chalkboard. It’s something that we have become accustomed to; it is as natural to us as breathing.

We collaborate daily with our peers, classmates, and sometimes even our teachers. Instead of looking at a list of instructions in a book, we figure things out by learning together.

In the digital age, we do not have to strike in front of the White House. We effect change by telling the world the truth from the comfort of our own homes using the Internet with facebook, myspace, blogger, and so much more."

Sarah's prophetic and insightful words (she's in 10th grade!) really resonate with me as I see one of the latest movies making the rounds. (hat tip Scott McLeod).



And as I reflect on this, I think of Kate Olson's comments on "the cocktail party theory" -- Kate says:

"Now, what inspired me to write this post was first noticing that everyone who wrote ABOUT Jon got more comments than he did, as well as his next post “The conversation is getting away from me…..” (more reflections)

I’m going to do the classy thing and close comments here - go show Jon some blogger love and tell HIM how you feel - he’s the one who started all of this………."

I think that again, Jon is going through the typical feeling of all of this. For example, Flat Classroom project has generated a lot of conversation. I do not control it, I do not try to track it all. I cannot!

The whole mentality of how this thing works is not the idea of someone bringing their favorite toy to school and then hording it in the corner during playtime saying, "Mine Mine!" These conversations are not owned by anyone.

Although O'Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 and Bernie Dodge (did you know he has a blog?) created Webquests -- they'll tell you that their own terms are often misused.

I think that books such as Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything have helped me truly understand the societal dynamics of all of these things.

I don't like the idea of ever closing a conversation on a blog post -- I still get comments on very old posts and it also makes me realize that sometimes I need to revisit a topic.

This is about a new place for conversation and we cannot be everywhere at once! It is about sharing conversation and ideas and if any of us don't like the idea that our things might be remixed or talked about somewhere else, then we need to rethink participation in the blogosphere, that is the way the whole thing works!

I'm planning to rewrite 10 habits of bloggers that win to help newcoming bloggers understand how to track these conversations (using backlinks), and how to know that they shouldn't move their blog and how authorities work, etc.

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Cool Cat Teacher's Cool Sites of the Day! 04/12/2008

Posted by ultralitemp3

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