To Learn Twice

Here is the tip I promised you on del.icio.us. Besides having an incredibly cool name del.icio.us is an awesome tool. It is a social bookmarking service. "A What" you say... Here is the skinny: You can create an account at http:// del.icio.us You can then start saving your bookmarks there You can then retrieve your bookmarks anywhere in the world Big deal - right? Wait there is more: Once you have your bookmarks you can choose ones to share with your friends - like mine http://del.icio.us/hthiele You can also search other's bookmarks for good stuff - instead of trying to find the best sites on your own For example - lets say I wanted to find the best sites on literacy. I could go and search for literacy on google and sift through the 45,700,000 results that are found. Or, I can go to del.icio.us and do the same search and find the sites that other people have deemed good enough to bookmark. They key to all of this is tags. Tagging is a term you should be fa...

It has been a busy day, so this one is going out late. David Jakes turned me on to this site through his del.ico.us account . If that last sentence made no sense - don't worry - I'll describe del.ico.us tomorrow morning. Anyway, the site I want to tell you about is http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html This list has been compiled from the Top 10 Tools lists of over 100 learning professionals (consultants, analysts, developers, practitioners, academics, etc). This is a great spot to go to and look for things you don't know about in technology. Take a minute to click on the link of something you aren't familiar with and peruse it for a little while. Don't worry you won't wast your time - they are the top 100 after all!

So, you want to use great photos in your presentations, powerpoints, movies, whatever. You could also crawl through flickr - but the quality there isn't always the best. Sure, you could just steal stuff off of google images , but you don't want to break copyright laws. Plus you would like to teach your students how to be responsible when you have them do similar projects. Where can you find this stuff? Well, you want to look for sites that offer royalty free stock photos. Stock photos tend to be of a better quality and resolution. There are a bunch sites out there that sell stock photos and carry free ones like: http://www.fotosearch.com/ http://everystockphoto.com/ http://pro.corbis.com/ But you don't want to spend all day bouncing between sites looking for good free stuff. So where do you go? http://yotophoto.com/ Yotophoto is now indexing well over a quarter million Creative Commons, Public Domain, GNU FDL, and various other 'copy...

Today's TechTip is by request. I have had several teachers of the past couple of days asking for the best way to do a timeline on-line. The best site I have found for a truly graphical timeline is http://xtimeline.com/ Here are a couple good examples of what you can do with this technology Pregnancy Timeline http://xtimeline.com/technology/Pregnancy-Timeline Timeline that describes week by week the changes in a woman's body as well as that of the baby during pregnancy. The History of Video Games http://xtimeline.com/entertainment/The-History-of-Video-Games This is the history of video games. The information is taken from US Public Broadcasting System (PBS) "The Video Game Revolution", and from a timeline on Infoseek by Amanda Kudler. Adolf Hitler http://xtimeline.com/biography/Adolf-Hitler:-From-unknown-to-dictator-of-Germany Adolf Hitler: From unknown to dictator of Germany A history of Jazz Albums http://xtimeline.com/culture/A-History-og-Jazz-Albums...

I don't know if you have been following this story - but it is pretty interesting and gives us a clear idea of what our kids are able to do when we let them use their talents... http://www.techlearning.com/blog/2007/08/be_afraidvery_afraid.php http://iphonejtag.blogspot.com/

The Educator's Desk Reference: http://www.eduref.org/index.shtml - here is what they say about it: The Educator's Reference Desk builds on over a quarter century of experience providing high-quality resources and services to the education community. From the Information Institute of Syracuse, the people who created AskERIC, the Gateway to Educational Materials, and the Virtual Reference Desk, the Educator's Reference Desk brings you the resources you have come to depend on. 2,000+ lesson plans, 3,000+ links to online education information, and 200+ question archive responses. In other words one-stop shopping for great stuff on-line for integrating technology and information into your classroom.

My Grandfather always used to joke that a computer was nothing more than an oversized calculator (in a way he was right). Did you know that there are a bunch of awesome calculators on-line and you probably type words into one quite often? Here are 3 cool calculator tools: 1. Google Yes that is right - Google! If you type something in the search bar as a calculation and click search - the first results back will be your answer. You can do this for just about any math - including conversions (sorry factor-label method lovers). Here are directions. 2. http://www.calcoolate.com/ Very Cool. Does calculations, conversions, and keeps a history of your calculations. Real nice for teaching students to follow their steps in calculations without carrying around rolls of calculator tape. 3. E-tutor Graphing calculator - Those TI's are pretty expensive. Get your graph groove on for free!

Happy 1st day of school! As we go into this year I will be sending out Technology Tips on a pretty regular basis (a few times a week). Some of these will be cool websites or tools you can use. Most will be helpers or ideas for the classroom. Every so often they may just be good stuff to know. Either way you can be assured that I will be delivering a daily dose of geekiness. Past tech tips will be available at my blog . Here is your first installment... I want to introduce you to a couple of concept-mapping sites. Both of these sites allow you and your students to build mind-maps which take large difficult concepts and break them down into smaller manageable pieces. Here are some websites that have great examples or discussion: http://www.lifeclever.com/6-illuminating-concept-maps-you-should-know-about/ http://members.optusnet.com.au/~charles57/Creative/Mindmap/ http://www.mind-mapping.org/article_main.php Anyway back to the cool tools... The 2 most popular si...

David Jakes del.icio.us account turned me on to this awesome website within TED (I can't believe I didn't stuble on it myself with my TED crush lately) - Top 100 websites you gotta see and will probably be using.

I stumbled upon this today: http://free.ed.gov/ Some great free resources and has a rss feed so you can keep up with the changes.

I read about this company this morning - they have developed a wireless product that creates a wireless mesh from access point to access point. They can communicate up to 150 feet indoors and 750 feet outdoors. They are small and the company provides software updates for the life of the product. Big Deal for Schools? Yes - Here is why - Each access point can be set up to offer a secure and open internet connection. What if...schools worked with local businesses and homeowners to create a wireless grid? The school provides the bandwidth - the business buys the access point and agrees to host it on top of their building. The community works together to provide free wireless to their students everywhere in the school boundaries. Talk about eliminating the digital divide. Mange your network over the web with Dashboard , the simple control panel for the Meraki system. Keep track of dozens or hundreds of network users, set bandwidth limits, brand your network, or optio...