To get started head over to http://edexchange.adobe.com/ and create a free Adobe.com account. After you have authenticated you will be see several different lessons on the front page from others who have shared and commented. As I browsed through the content it seemed like a pretty good balance of the different Adobe software offerings as well as several different skill levels. The site is very user friendly and Adobe has made it easy to find the resources that you need.

You can search by age level:

You can also search by product type, resource or subject area:

I think the strongest part of this service is the networking aspect of it. As an Art teacher or tech teacher you can now have direct access to others in your field. You can even earn points by sharing!

Like every other tool, it’s how you use it. I encourage you to share your lessons with the community so more and more people can benefit from your awesome teaching skills!

What do you currently use to find Adobe resources? Does this site make it easier to find content?

Tools:

Diigo: www.diigo.com

Diigo is a tool that allows you to create bookmarks online and tag them so you can easily retrieve them from any computer or device. You can also use Diigo in the classroom for highlighting articles, notating research information or creating a class group to share resources.

For more information check out this Diigo in the classroom Live Binder

Livebinders: www.livebinders.com

LiveBinders is a way to gather all your knowledge, whether it is website links or files, all into one place for easy, elegant sharing.

Here is a brief overview of Live Binders

Here are some examples of Educational Live Binders

Here is the Ipads in Schools Livebinder

Websites:

Teachercast: www.teachercast.net

Welcome to TeacherCast.net, a place where Teachers help other Teachers.  TeacherCast is designed for both the seasoned teacher who is searching for some great resources as well as the teacher who is a unsure how to start incorporating newly developed 21st-Century skills.

(From http://teachercast.net/our-mission/)

Free Tech For Teachers: www.freetech4teachers.com

Richard Byrne has created a great blog with free resources for teachers to use in the classroom. The blog is updated daily with new information and great tools to use in the classroom.

Miller Center Presidental Classroom: millercenter.org/presidentialclassroom

Welcome to Presidential Classroom, a resource for students and teachers providing insight into historic and current events through teachable exhibits and lesson plans. It creates a unique interactive web experience that will teach students about the U.S. presidency and government.  Presidential Classroom aims to bring history alive for all users. (From: millercenter.org/presidentialclassroom)

Theory:

Digital Differentiation: http://d97cooltools.blogspot.com/2012/02/digital-differentiation-get-wired.html

This article talks about the tools used to effectively use technology as a tool for digital differentiation. Great read!

We also finished up our discussion with talking about Twitter. I showed the teachers several “Chats” such as #edchat, #ntchat , as well as grade level chats like #4thchat #5thchat and #scichat.

To get a Twitter account signup here: https://twitter.com/signup

For information about using Twitter as an educator check out this resource from Edudemic: http://edudemic.com/2011/09/twitter-in-education/

If you have any suggestions for Cyber Monday or tools you share with your staff please let me know!

Thanks

TJ

Bit.ly, one of the first url shortening services, has now added “Bundling”.  Bundling allows you to take your links and put all of them on one page that looks like this:

Fur.ly lets you create a list of url’s and it creates a shortened url that you can give to your students. When they click on it, a bar will come up with a dropdown of your links that looks like this:

weblist.me allows you to mix several different types of media like websites, text, pdf’s,video and share all of them with an easy to use link.

Unlike fur.ly weblist.me allows you to edit your lists. A cool feature of weblist.me is the “dashboard” that it provides you with:

How could you use these in the classroom?

You could create a list at the beginning of the semester with links to web based resources that you will use in class like Progressbook, Accelerated Reader, The school website, your Personal Blog, etc. Take this one step further and create a QR code that you could post around your room or on your website.

Use weblist.me and have the first file be a document that has your webquest on it with steps in order to complete.

How do you plan on using these tools?

Thanks

TJ

Recently I was talking with my girlfriend who is studying Nuclear Medicine at the University of Findlay and she showed me all of the note cards that she creates for her classes. She goes through hundreds of note cards a week (25 Credit Hours) and she has to carry them with her wherever she goes so she can study. Me being the technologist that I am says that is a waste of tree’s, money, and time. I thought, there has to be a better way. There is. Cramberry.

Cramberry is an online service that allows you to create note cards on the cloud and have them with you wherever you are. It’s easy to get started, head over to Cramberry and sign up for an account. There are 2 options for subscription, a free version that allows you to create 30 notecards a day, or a paid option ($9 a year) to create an unlimited amount of notecards. After you signup, you can get started creating your own notecards or browse others. A quick search for “Organic Chemistry” yielded over 63 pages of notecards.

Cramberry’s intelligent studying algorithm tracks your progress and chooses flash cards you need to study. So you will always be studying the things that you have trouble with the most.

Mobile- Cramberry offers an iPad / Iphone application that will sync your flash cards from the cloud onto your device so you can have them with you wherever you are. Studying on the go!

How can we use this in K-12? Wouldn’t it be nice to create a set of note cards for the information that you have deemed important? Cramberry will help your students not only study the correct information but also study efficiently.

Follow @cramberry on twitter for future updates!

Do you know of any similar products that have helped you study? Let me know!

Thanks

TJ

Recently I was told that a school would not allow access to Google Docs and they would not be moving forward with Google Apps for EDU. Why? I have no idea. The teacher was frustrated because she saw all of the educational benefits that Google Docs provided as well as the 21st century skills that our students need.

I started looking around and I found a couple of tools that although they do not do everything that Google Docs does, you can still bring in cool tools to help facilitate 21st century learning.

Collaborative Document’s- There are many activities that you can do with your class with collaborating on the same document. For ideas check out this pdf or “32 ways to use Google Docs in the classroom” or here. Like I said some places do not allow Google Docs, a tool that I found cool is iEtherpad. “EtherPad is the only web-based word processor that allows people to work together in really real-time”- From ietherpad.com. IEtherPad will allow you to have your students join your “Pad” and collaborate in real-time. You will be able to see who is editing what because the users type in there names and what they type is in a different color. Also built in is a chat function so you can have discussion while you are working on your document. Taking it one step further, have your students create a document with several words that describe a story that you are working on and turn there words into a Wordle. For Wordle Ideas see my previous article “Quick Tip: 50 Ways to use Wordle’s in the classroom” There is also and Ipad app that I think this is a very useful utility that us quick and easy to setup and use. Follow Ietherpad on twitter for updates and news @ietherpad

Interactive collaborative whiteboard- Sometimes you may want to make a diagram or collaborate with a blank slate. A great tool that I have found for this is Scriblink. “Scriblink is a free digital whiteboard that users can share online in real-time. Sorta like pen and paper, minus the dead trees, plastic, and the inconvenience of being at the same place at the same time.”- From Scriblink’s Website. Scriblink allows you to Save Your Board for future use and also allows you to send files and attachments. Like the about page says it is a very convenient and easy to use utility that will allow you to collaborate in real-time.

Have any other tools that you have found to collaborate in realtime? Let me know!

Thanks

TJ

I learned quite a few things today that I didn’t know about Google search. Google is constantly changing and adding new features to all of there product lines. Today we are going to focus on a couple of cool things that will help you leverage your search results and use Google Search as a teaching tool. Let’s take a look!

Wonder Wheel- Wonder wheel is a way to display search results in a “Spider Web Style” and narrow down search results in a graphical way. To get started type your search into Google, scroll down and click “Wonder Wheel”

You will now see a web with different subtopic’s that deal with your main topic on the left. On the right you will see search results that deal with your original topic. Click on a subtopic and your web will narrow down and your search results will also narrow.

How could you use this in the classroom?

1. Teach students how to search, show them how the results change by  narrowing down what you search for.
2. Speaches- are your students choosing a very broad topic to present on? Use the “Wonder Wheel” to narrow down topics.
3. Brainstorming research topics.
4. Differentiating instruction- this gives you a visual representation of data or a topic that you are working on.

Timeline- Google Timeline Search takes the data that you are searching for and places it in a timeline that you can narrow down just like the “Wonder Wheel”. To get started, type in your search on Google, scroll down and click “timeline”.

When you click on timeline, you will see a chart with dates and blue bars.

The size of the bars is the increase in news and data that occurred that year. Clicking on a bar will narrow down your search results.

Below the bar you will see search results by date.



Advanced Search- Google’s “Advanced Search” allows you to make educated searches in order to find the information that you truly need instead of a barrage of information that you don’t need. Google advanced search can be accessed by clicking “Advanced Search”You will now see a page with several different drop down boxes.

The three things that I have circled are the key points of using Google Advanced Search. Lets take a look at these options.

1. “This Exact Word Or Phrase” this alone will help you only get exactly what you are looking for on Google. This helps to get rid of some of the “Noise” that we sometimes see while searching on Google. This really helps to narrow down what you are searching for and only get quality results.
2. “Reading Level” how many times have you been searching for resources for classes and you think to yourself my first graders are not going to need to know that “Other important legislation involved two measures to raise revenues for the Federal government: tariffs (a policy with long precedent), and a new Federal income tax. “ (Wikipedia) but they would find intrest in a presidential matching game: Reading level search allows you to do just that. Narrow down your search by the reading level. Now you will be able to have just the information that is relevant to what you are teaching. Another option you have is to “Annotate results with reading levels ” which will not narrow down your searches but instead just show you what level the content is.
3. “Filetype Search” why reinvent the wheel? There are so many great resources out there that people have already created. Example: if we type in Science Jeopardy and the filetype to .ppt (Powerpoint) we will get results that are only powerpoints that have to do with “Science Jeopardy” Heres what we find:premade, already created ripe for the picking! This is great to find lesson plans and course content!

Search From Other Countries- sometimes you may be doing an article for a current event that is taking place in another country. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could see what they are seeing when they look for news? Well you can! Lets say there is something happening in Jordan and you task your students to gain information from the locals perspective. Head over to http://www.google.jo (Don’t be scared when you see Arabic) on the top of the page you have the option to translate pages. Type in “News” and you will see the news from the local news sources:This is a lesson in it self Country codes can be found here.

Don’t foret to check out my other article about the “Google News Timeline“. Also a very cool tool.

If you have any other cool Google Tips please feel free to comment or tweet me @tjhouston.

Thanks

TJ

Thought I would share this cool resource I found about using Wordle’s in the classroom. Also don’t forget to look at my previous post about Tagxedo tie the ideas together and let me know what you come up with.

Google Doc <— Click here

Thanks

TJ

While writing an article about Google Search in EDU, I stumbled upon a labs project that is called Google News Timeline.  The about page reads: “Google News Timeline is a web application that organizes search results chronologically. It allows users to view news and other data sources on a browsable, graphical timeline. Available data sources include recent and historical news, scanned newspapers and magazines, blog posts, sports scores, and information about various types of media, like music albums and movies.”

To get started click here.

The next step is to add some queries to your timeline. You can do this by clicking on the “add queries” link.

Go through and click as many or as few sources as you prefer.

Now you can go back to the timeline view and browse through the different events that are listed on the timeline.

How can you use this in the classroom?

This is a great resource if you are teaching a “decades” lesson, this will showcase several different events that occurred on or around a certain date. This is also great for current events and historical events. The timeline gives you the full picture of what was happening during events in history.

Remember this is a labs project, it can either get really good and move forward or it could go away all together.

For more information click here.

Thanks

TJ

Many teachers are starting to use Woordle’s in their classrooms. Today I found a tool that lets you take the Woordles that you already are creating and turn them into images that deal with the subject and content area. The best part, ITS FREE!

To get started head over to http://www.tagxedo.com/

You can add your website or blog URL, a Twitter Feed, a del.icio.us url, News, Search Term,  RSS feed as well as your own words.

You can choose an image that they already have such as a heart, a flower, a cloud, a giraffe, etc.

How can we use this in the classroom? (these suggestions also apply to Wordle they just look cooler)

• Enter words (vocabulary) into Tagxedo and create an image that might appear in a book/topic that you are working on in class.
• Because of the way the Tagxedo images work, the more times you enter a word the larger it is on the finished product, copy a whole paragraph of text or story and discuss why the larger words were used
• First week of class, have your students create a Tagxedo about themselves and present it
• Kids create gifts for parents, grandparents, teachers describing the person
• Create a Tagxedo around a holiday (Veterans Day, Presidents Day, MLK Day) with words that describe the person or holiday
• Create an image of a Historical Character / Author with words that describe them
• Paste student writing into Tagxedo and see what words are used the most. This will help to get rid of the “and then’s” in students writing
• Paste speeches (Gettysburg and MLK) and study and discuss the large words and why they were used. What  point was the speaker trying to get across?

If you have any other ideas feel free to leave them in the comments section.

*FYI you do need Microsoft’s Silverlight which you can find and install here.

Thanks

TJ