Friday, January 29, 2010

Weekly Tech Tip: Beginners Guide - Social Networking for Educators

While Myspace & Facebook are still largely taboo in k-12 schools social networking has recently made a huge splash for Educators. There are many social networks that have been created in the past three years designed specifically for teacher professional development and educational research. This week's tech tip introduces you to a few popular networks for teachers.

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Want to build your own social network, try these platforms:


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Friday, January 22, 2010

Weekly Tech Tip - Terms of Service and Age Restrictions

The new online tools are great and can have exponential application for teaching and learning. However, one thing we need to be aware of when using online tools and services with students (especially those under 13 years old) are age restrictions found in the terms of service. Federal COPPA law requires us to gain parental permission to use many of the tools I have in the Digital Backpack with students. Many tools, however, do not have any age restrictions, do not collect any student information, and are completely safe and appropriate for students of any age. I have added a new feature to the Digital Backpack that indicates these age restrictions found in web service TOS agreements. This week's tech tip walks you through this new feature of the Digital Backpack. For a list of tools from the Backpack that don't have any age restrictions click here.

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Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Weekly Tech Tip - Downloading and Converting Online Video

Since we recently (temporarily) blocked YouTube at school it poses a particular problem for teachers who rely on it for content. There are ways to get around this by downloading the videos before and after school or at home. In this week's tech tip I show you two different methods of doing this. I also built a new teacher training module on this topic that includes these tech tips and links to the necessary tools.

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How to Download and Convert Online Video Files using Desktop Tools from Carl Anderson on Vimeo.



Download and Convert Online Video using Online Tools from Carl Anderson on Vimeo.



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