Friday, December 18, 2009

JayCut

JayCut is free web-based software that allows users to edit video. http://jaycut.com/

Intel Education - Visual Ranking Tool

Making a list is usually straightforward and requires little thought. But when it comes to ordering and prioritizing items in that list, higher-level skills of analysis and evaluation are put to use. The Visual Ranking Tool brings focus to the thinking behind making ordered lists. Students identify and refine criteria as they assign order or ranking to a list. They must explain their reasoning and can compare their work with each other in a visual diagram. This tool supports activities where students need to organize ideas, debate differences, and reach consensus. For example: Mrs. Ramey and I had our students rank the organelles (plant cell) in order from the most important organelle to the least important organelle. Students had to alsa provide a sentence explaining their reason for an oranelle's ranking. http://educate.intel.com/en/ThinkingTools/VisualRanking

LibriVox & Odiogo

LibriVox provides free audiobooks from the public domain. There are several options for listening. The first step is to get the mp3 or ogg files into your own computer: http://librivox.org/.
Odiogo's media-shifting technology expands the reach of your content: It transforms news sites and blog posts into high fidelity, near human quality audio files ready to download and play anywhere, anytime, on any device: http://www.odiogo.com/.

Combine Multiple PDF Files

Tired of having to organize and email numerous documents? Instead, combine multiple files into one document quickly and easily with Adobe Acrobat Professional (version 8 and 9). http://www.techlearning.com/article/21338

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

21st Century Ed Tech

Informative links on the left allow you to explore this site's extensive resources! A Blog preview below covers new and cutting edge ideas! Ideas you can use tomorrow that are free or inexpensive: http://21centuryedtech.wikispaces.com/

Monday, December 7, 2009

Wolfram Alpha

Today's WolframAlpha, http://www.wolframalpha.com/, is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. Enter your question or calculation and WolframAlpha uses its built-in algorithms and a growing collection of data to compute the answer. For example, I typed in my birthday and Wolfram Alpha provided me with the following information: Events on my birthday, how many days, weeks, years, etc. ago the date was from today, daylight information and phase of the moon. Very interesting...I believe that this site could be used in a variety of educational ways. Let me know if you utilize this site and by what means.

Map Maker

http://www.teacherled.com/2008/06/01/map-maker/ provides web-based software to create maps that are perfect for using with an interactive whiteboard or displaying via an overhead projector. Just scroll down and choose traditional map maker or treasure map maker and you will be on your way.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Google Translator

Did you know that you can read web pages in other languages by using Google Translator, http://www.google.com/options/. Google Docs also translates documents in over forty languages.

Sweet Searching with Google

For better search results, teachers and students alike, visit http://mrssmoke.onsugar.com/3568634. Watch the video for a better understanding of how using the Wonder Wheel option when using Google can save time and provide better results. The website also provides a demo on how to use the search timeline. The timeline allows users to sort results based on when they were published on the web. The video on this site will display at school but if you are unable to see the pictures then I would check out the above site at home.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The Best Social Studies Websites

An article, http://www.techlearning.com/article/14290, I found on Tech & Learning (www.techlearning.com) provides links and short descriptions for the best Social Studies websites.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Interactive Reading Lessons

TV 411 Reading, http://www.tv411.org/reading/, has a dozen reading lessons (Reading Charts and Graphs, Parts of a Newspaper, Reading Maps, etc.). http://unx1.shsu.edu/~txcae/Powerpoints/CauseandEffect.html - An interactive PowerPoint focusing on Cause & Effect.