Google buys Jotspot

It seems Google just acquired jotspot. I had never heard of jotspot before. After a little searching it seems to be a pretty powerful wiki, much more than pbwiki. Of course they closed the registration, but you can put in your email address to be notified when it opens back up. I also found a link to a video tour of the site from google's cache, look at the bottom of the page. I must say I am impressed.

Some of the features are sharing documents, group calendars, and spreadsheets. If you have gmail, you already have 2+ GB of storage space. Could this shape up to be the interface or front end of Google's office suite or Gdrive.

google

Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0

While I was doing some reading over the weekend I ran into this blog. This is the most comprehensive list of web 2.0 tools for education I have seen. It is actually a three part series. Part one focuses on organizing, grade books, resume building, and research. The focus is not just teachers, student web 2.0 strategies are also mentioned.

Part two looks at online office applications including word processing, presentations, diagrams, spreadsheets, and calendars.

The third and final part focuses on "real world" educational scenarios in blogging, photo/video sharing, podcasting, and wiki's.

Be sure to check out the comments too; lots of good links in there.

Image from http://www.francispisani.net/

web2.0 education k12

Science Podcasts - Gotta Minute

So you want to use podcasts to help your students learn science. But don't have time to listen through all the podcasts to see if they are worth while? Check out Scientific American Magazine. They offer a daily podcast called 60-Second Science. These are quick reports and commentary from the world of science. It only takes a minute!

These would be great for warm ups/bellringers or as a catalyst to journal writing. They are high interest as well, at least IMHO. The most recent (10/27) 60-Second Science podcast discusses vampires of New England.

You can listen to these podcast from their homepage or subscribe to them in iTunes (iTS link). Also published is a weekly Science Talk podcast (iTS link), where scientists and journalist discuss the latest developments is science and technology The homepage also features a blog, videos, and a place at ask a scientist a question.

science podcasts education k12

Scary Stories

"To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality." From The Premature Burial by Edgar Allen Poe

Google's Book Search has made a collection of some of the greatest classic scary stories. You can find them at www.google.com/scarystories. The Legend of Sleepy Hallow, Dracula, and Frankenstein are just a few of the stories you will find. Because this is Google, you can search every word in each story. Plus, some of these books are in the public domain; look for the download button to save and print.

Tech Tags: google reading

Persuasion Map

The website Read Write Think offers a ton of free online student materials to support literacy learning. A cool one is The Persuasion Map, an interactive graphic organizer that lets students map out their arguments for a persuasive essay or debate. Student can do this on a computer and print it out. My only advise, make sure it printed before they close it; you cannot save these to work on later.

Principal Blogging Project

If you know of any principals interested in blogging please share this link--- http://principalblogs.jot.com/WikiHome
Original post here.

Technorati Tags: principal blogging

David Warlick's Keynote is Online Now!

The Keynote for the k12OnlineConference is online now!
http://k12onlineconference.org/

Technorati Tags: k12online06 k12online

Links from Newsletter Oct. 13th

Google for Educators
http://www.google.com/educators/index.html This is a wonderful resource! There are teacher guides to 12 Google products, examples of how educators are using them, and lesson ideas. You can also subscribe to the Google Teachers’ Newsletter on this page.

Web 2.0 Applications
Back to school with the class of Web 2.0 Part 1 Compilation of Web 2.0 applications. Red arrows indicate ones particularly suited for education.

Resume Tool
http://www.emurse.com/ Create resumes online or upload an existing one. Provides distributing tools and will keep track of who has seen it. You can also make your resume password protected or choose not to show personal information.

Color Palette Generator Tool
http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/ Enter the url of an image and get the color palette (the 6 digit number beside the color is the Hex Value – this can be entered in Frontpage when you go to More Colors – you will see the top field asks for a hex value – type in the 6 digits and you will have that color!).

Just for Fun
http://www.sr.se/P1/src/sing/#

Links from Newsletter Oct. 6th

Learn something
http://www.internet4classrooms.com/on-line.htm Technology tutorials.

Up and Coming
http://k12onlineconference.org/ Online free conference Oct. 23-27 and Oct. 30-Nov. 3

Subject Areas
http://arcademic.altec.org/ Online games for basic math, language arts, vocabulary and thinking skills.
http://medtropolis.com/VBody.asp Virtual Body (English and Spanish versions).
http://www.goodcharacter.com/ Lots of information on character education.

Blogs
http://www.lifehacker.com/ “Lifehacker recommends the software downloads and web sites that actually save time.”
http://www.parenthacks.com/ "a collaborative weblog of practical parenting wisdom”.

Just for Fun
http://www.jacksonpollock.org/

K12Online 2006 Conference

Spread the word! Download a flyer here.

Google Donates Sketch-Up Pro and Google Earth to Maine 1:1 Program

This is way cool - imagine the uses...

Combination of Google Earth and the new Sketch-up Pro to redesign communities and placement of new buildings.

From Tim Lauer's Educational Technology blog.

Why Kid's Blog - from 2 Cents Worth Blog

Why Kid's Blog

Take a student to workshop post

Read the post here: http://weblogg-ed.com/2006/take-a-student-to-workshop-day/
Great idea for terrified-of-technology teachers and administrators!

New Free Book on Web 2.0

Called Coming of Age "The book provides a set of stories, describing the ways in which Web 2.0 technology can be used in schools, particularly as a way of supporting social, collaborative learning, and a more individualised curriculum." from http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/

You can Download the book here

Publish Your Own Book!

Great article in the latest issue of Technology & Learning about online sites that allow you to publish your own book.

I especially found interesting:

...possible applications for education: student portfolios, teacher-made lesson books, family history projects, PTA recipe books, class photo albums, and literary journals, to name a few.

see article here

Some of the sites listed in this article are:
Kodak
Apple iPhoto
Xlibris
Blurb
Lulu

Flat Classrooms

David Warlick has started a new series of posts and a wiki on Flat Classroom Learning Engines. It is incredibly interesting stuff and a way to address some of the ideas and issues brought up in Flat World. I am intrigued by his ideas but always come back to how do we make this change? How do we take our classrooms from the traditional methods and move them towards the future. I believe that we need to setup a trial site of some kind to do this - a classroom or an entire school (yes I KNOW I'm dreaming here). If we don't show that this method can improve performance on high stake testing I do not think it will gain a following until it is too late!

Some of the interesting quotes from these posts:

"It's more important how we learn than what we learn."

"The teacher could rely on gravity to support the flow of curriculum down to the learners. But as much as we might like to pretend, we (teachers) are no longer on top of the hill. The hill is practically gone."

Google Maps Mashup Shows Census Data

This is way cool: http://65.39.85.13/google/default.htm

Saw this on Life Hacker "Just put in your address and you can quickly see the population, income, and housing statistics for your area in a 1, 3, and 5 mile radius of your home."

You can zoom in and get very detailed with this! Great!

NCAECT Luncheon Speaker was AMAZING

I was so impressed with Deneen Frasier Bowen's presentation The Natives are Restless at the luncheon at NCAECT. I think it was probably the BEST presentation I have ever seen at a conference. She addressed everyone in the audience. She did not alienate "digital immigrants"... she encouraged everyone to see how important it is to create a dialog with our students - the "digital natives".

See a webcast of The Natives are Restless at http://www.kidzonline.org/necc/agenda.asp

Find out more about Deneen Frasier Bowen at her website http://www.actwith.com/

Truly - a very powerful speaker!

Categories: ncaect, bowen, natives,

Gabbly.com

Became aware of Gabbly.com after looking through links in del.icio.us. The site allows you to type in www.gabbly.com/ in front of any exsisting website and then a chat window will appear. We have now blocked it.
Look at these:
http://www.gabbly.com/yahoo.com
http://www.gabbly.com/google.com

Web 2.0 Resources

Found some great sites to take some of the confusion out of Web 2.0 and how to keep everything together. Really liking www.suprglu.com great site for linking your blogger blog and the many and various feeds from your Web 2.0 life.

My Web 2.0 Links