Weekly Tech Tip - Vocaroo

In this week's tech tip I show you how to podcast using Vocaroo. Vocaroo is a slimmed down uber simplified online tool that takes all the complicated steps out of podcasting. It allows you to record audio on their website, once done it automatically generates a unique URL and embed code for your recording. Could be a convient tool to use with students. I also walk through some recent changes I have made to the Digital Backpack and Online Teacher Technology Training.

Weekly Tech Tip:

Vocaroo

Digital Backpack

Online Teacher Technology Training

Link Stew:

Industry Makes Pitch That Smartphones Belong in Classroom - This NY Times article discusses a pilot project, sponsored by the cell phone industry, to test the effectiveness of mobile technologies in the classroom. (Take with a grain of salt since the study is not unbiased). Their preliminary findings are showing some improvement in student math scores.

'The Objective of Education Is Learning, Not Teaching' - Interesting article reflecting on the purpose of education and the value of different teaching/learning styles. Asks an important question, "Is learning necessarily a product of teaching?"

A Colorado school district does away with grade levels - The Christian Science Monitor reports that a large Colorado School district (10,000 students) is doing away with grade levels in favor of a pure standards-based curriculum where students move along at their own pace.

WIZLITE - Tool that lets you highlight webpages and share them with others (like Diigo without the ability to add comments)

Education Week: Grants Available - Huge list of education related grants.

Twitter for Teachers - Fantastic resource to introduce teachers to Twitter

The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises - site that tracks Obama's ability to keep his campaign promises.

Jeopardy Labs - "allows you to create a customized jeopardy template without PowerPoint. The games you make can be played online from anywhere in the world. Building your own jeopardy template is a piece of cake. Just use our simple editor to get your game up and running."

Top Documentary Films - Vast online collection of quality full-length documentary films.

Additionally,

After school on Monday, March 23rd in the ITV room there will be a meeting for all interested high school teachers (Elementary teachers are welcome too) to consider WETC sponsoring a Project-Based Charter School within a School. I want to stress that right now this is just an idea but the idea potentially could mean close to $500,000 in state and federal grant money for our school which is huge considering the state of our economy. I have created a slide show that explains the ins and outs of this idea. If there is support behind this idea and we get all of our ducks in a row this school could open by fall of 2010. The idea behind this charter school is antitetical to the conventional view of charter schools. Typically charter schools have served as competitors to the traditional public schools. In this case the charter school and the traditional school would be mutually beneficial partners. If you are interested in this please fill out the interest form. If you have strong feelings one way or another please add your comments to the blog post.

Project-Based Hybrid Charter School Within a School Presentation & Interest Survey

Diigo & Twitter

Tech Tips:

This week I have been playing around with a new tool that has grand implications for education and especially for research called Diigo. This tool is a great tool both for teachers and students. It allows you to highlight and annotate web pages, tag them, and see what other Diigo users have annotated on those same websites. I have wanted to play around with this tool for some time but until this week was not able to because of filtering issues at school. Therefore, this week's tech tip actually comes from Clay Burell (an education blogger at Change.org):

Diigo Screencast

Another tool that until today we had filter troubles with is Twitter. You may have heard of Twitter, it is referenced a lot in the media. Twitter is one of those tools that is so simple it's implications are grand. Twitter is what we call a microblogging platoform. That is, you post text to your Twitter account in what are called "Tweets" that consist of 140 characters or less. You can choose people with Twitter accounts to follow, you can search Twitter for the occurance of certain words or phrases. You can create a hash tag for users to use to establish an online discusssion. The possiblities are really wide open for how you can apply it in your classroom. To illustrate/demonstrate the power and usefulness of Twitter Will Richardson @ Weblogg-ed posted a fantastic video a couple weeks ago:

The News According to Twitter

Link Stew:

Teacher Magazine: Education chief: Schools crucial to recovery - Interesting article related to the the economic stimulus package

Classroom Architect - Online tool that helps you arrange your classroom.

A $10 Laptop in India - This story has been getting some buzz lately. Evidently the Indian government has put out a challenge to produce a laptop that can be sold for under $10. While they have yet to produce such a device some optomists see this as a very real possiblity in the near future (just look at where calculators went from the 1960s to today) while skeptics point out that you can't even buy the components to make the screen for $10. Still, an interesting story to watch. What will happen in our classrooms in 5-10 years when laptops (or other portable internet enabled computing devices) are as cheaply acquired and widely available as calculators?

whspr! | Get Emails Without Revealing Your Email Address

Save The Words - fun and interesting way to learn obscure English words

Brewster Kahle builds a free digital library | Video on TED.com

Free Bingo Sheet Generator - This is a great online tool for creating custom Bingo cards. It allows you to enter words or if you are tech savvy it lets you enter html which allows your cards to have pictures, videos, or any other embeddable object.

Google Docs - File Management

As we move forward with our curriculum alignment using Google Docs many of you are likely to find it difficult to locate your files unless you sort them into folders. This week's tech tip is on how to create and use folders in Google Docs.

Tech Tip:





Also, I thought I would share some other bits of interest I have come across this week. Lets call it, "Link Stew."



Link Stew:

Educon2.1 - Last weekend was Educon2.1 in Philadelphia. This was the second annual Educon Conference (or rather unconference). This unconference is quickly becoming one of the biggest events in education in our nation. It is an unconference because there are no formal session presentations. Rather each session is a conversation. While each conversation is led by a facilitator who has the ability to frame the conversation the focus is on dialog. The conference sessions were streamed live this weekend and people were able to attend virtually. The conversation simultneously happend on a backchannel chat window. Sometime this week we can expect the session archives to be posted to this site so people can watch recordings of these sessions. This conference brings together more big name educators and education leaders than any other.

2009 Horizon Report - Each year The New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative collaborate to produce the Horizon Report. The Horizon Report identifies emerging technologies that are likely to have a great impact on technology in the near future (1-5 years). Interestingly, the two technologies predicted to have the greatest impact in the next two years are: 1. Cloud Computing applications such as Google Docs; and 2. Mobile Technologies such as the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Literacy Information: Reading Lists - This is a resource orriginated by an Osseo Area elementary teacher to help collaborate with other teachers to share lesson plans and identify age appropriate books by topic.

The Silent Epidemic - While this is not new (it was published in 2006) I do think it is worth a read if you have never seen it. The Silent Epidemic is a summary of research that was funded by the Gates Foundation that identifies reasons why students drop out of school. It is by far the most comprehensive study ever done on the subject.

Street With a View - Street With a View is a large-scale art project recently done in Pitsburg that utilizes Google Maps "Street View" as it's medium. It is the first documented time "Street View" has been used as an artistic medium. If you are unfamiliar with "Street View," it is a feature in Google Maps that allows you to virtually drive down streets in most major cities (They even drive past Goodhue now). Google stitches multiple images together to create an immersive environment that can be viewed in 360 degrees.

clevr - clevr is a new online service/tool that lets you take pictures from a normal digital camera and stitch them together to make 360 degree panoramas. It is free and worth a look. This tool will also be in the digital backpack the next time I update it.

One of the sessions I am presenting at TIES this year is on building your own personal learning network using web2.0 tools for teacher professional development. This week's tech tip is a 15 minute video I created for the conference that describes how and why this is done and will point you to ways you can build your own personal learning network.

Some of the modules in the online teacher technology training are geared directly for building a personal learning network. They are as follows:

9.1 - Blogs (7pts)

9.2 - Social Bookmarking (del.icio.us) (4pts)

9.3 - RSS (4pts)

9.4 - Power of the comment (3pts)



Building Your Own Personal Learning Network from Carl Anderson on Vimeo.

Too Many Topics This Week for Just One Tutorial

Instead of creating a new screencast I thought this week I would share a buffet (or rather boquet) of things I found this week floating around in the cloud:

1. Technology Integrationist in Chief - How the Obama administration plans to use technology to communicate with citizens
2. YouTube in Speech Class - How Elise Gregory is using YouTube in her speech class
3. Open Source & Education - Interesting panel discussion about open source concepts in education that go beyond software (i.e. Open Office) to encompas a growing culture of teacher created and shared materials, curriculum, and other resources.
   
   
   
   @ Yahoo! Video
   
   
   
4. Leading the Change: Current leadership models are inadequate for disruptive innovations - In this session from the K12Online conference Dr. Scott McLeod explains the concepts Clayton Christensen puts forth in his books, The Innovator's Dilema and Disrupting Class. Whether you read Christensen's books or watch McLeod's presentation the concept of disruptive innovation and how it impacts education is a must read/see/hear for everyone involved in our profession.

Xtranormal

I have been playing around a bit this week with a new tool in the digital backpack called xtranormal. Xtranormal is an incredibly simple site to use for creating animated movies. Their motto is, "If you can type, you can make movies." Watch the following clip that took me just 15 minutes to make:

Flowgram - How Technology Effected The Election