Douweosinga blog has this great tool that allows you embed how many states you have visited or how many countries world wide you have visited as well. I can see using this as geography project or as a math project where you use the numbers from all the students in a statistical analysis.




visited 19 states (38%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

The Downside to iPhones

How many people that have iPhones think about what would happen if they lose or have their phone stolen?  Do they have safegaurds in place to protect against the data that is stored on their phone?  I think this is one of the most overlooked aspects of smart phones is that we do not take precautions against in favor of quick and easy access.  If you are keeping personal information stored on your iphone, like being signed into web applications for easy posting, what could a person do if they had access to your iphone?  Is your work email set up on your iPhone without a password to access it?  Do you have apps installed that would help track your lost or stolen iPhone?  Most people I have a feeling would say no and have never thought about this ever happening, but the bigger question should be not if but when it will happen to you or someone you know.  Below are some links to some articles that everyone that has an iPhone should read in case you are unfortunate enough to lose or have your iPhone stolen espeically if you use it to access senstive information.

Here are some article to read incase it does not turn up - I would call the phone company as soon as possible.  How well they work, I do not know but know but if you have lost your iPhone or want to take precautions, this could help.

lost-iphone-lessons-learned

how-to-recover-from-a-lost-or-stolen-iphone

what_do_if_you_lost_your_iphone

lost-your-iphone-fear-not-video

what-happens-when-your-iphone-gets-stolen

6-ways-to-find-track-lost-stolen-iphone-free

six-things-i-learned-from-losing-my-iphone-3g

http://db.tidbits.com/article/10359

Why is technology important in schools?

Those that are in the field of education and more specificly educational technology were we work with teachers on integrating technology know that sometimes it is hard to quantify to a teacher about the usefulness of how technology can improve and enhance your classroom experience for thier students and themselves.  I have a co-worker who stated that basically "we need to enlighten teachers that technology should be the new way to do things instead of just one more thing".  If technology is just "neat" or is "one more thing" then what added value does this bring to the classroom for a teacher who is already short on time?  This is where having a wide array of choices but knowing exactly what might enhance a classroom is essential.  I will be doing a day long session on 20 sites that teachers should know and a large portion of that is developing a PLN (Personal Learning Network).  I could ramble on but one of the better post I have read on the value of a PLN can be found here in an article called "The Value of Educational Technology"  written by Dave Andrade. 

Teaching A People's History is a wonderful site that a History or English teacher could use to enhance their lesson plans on a given topic.  Teaching A People's History has detailed lesson plans in PDF format for a wide range of topics and time periods that will push students of all abilities to critically analyze a given topic deeper and in meaningful ways that are not always apparent.  One unit I looked at was on the Potato Famine that decimated Ireland.  After presenting the facts and extended reading, it asked students to start to think about what were some of the problems that led to such a preventable disaster.  At the end of the unit it laid blame not just on the English landlords but the farmers as well as the church.  If you would like to learn more about the Howard Zinn Project of Teaching A People's History, please read the Frequently Asked Questions.

Skype An Author

Skype an author is a terrific site for classroom teachers, mainly at the elementary and middle school level, where teachers and students can do a video-conference interview session with the author. The first 15 to 20 minutes are usually free as it is a meet and greet session with the author, but longer sessions can be arranaged for a fee, usually for an hour interview is around $100 to 300 dollars and some are willing to work with Title One schools for a discount. They have a list of authors that you can search and see what they are willing to do. This may well be worth the price for a classroom teacher to bring an author alive to their students that without Skype or other technology could not be done 5 years ago.

If you have never used Skype it is a wonderful technology that allows people to communicate using voice, chat, or webcams (video-conference). Other technology can also do similar things, but Skype seems to be the most popular.

Wavy Graffiti

Graffiti Generator is a neat little online app that anyone can make their own graffiti. You have 7 different fonts to work with on making your logos. There is no embed ability that I discovered so you will have to take a screen shot and upload your photos to your website and embed them that way. Who has not wanted to be their own artist with such neat flair. Below is a sample of what I may use to spice up the banner across the top of my blog.

The Choices Program

The Choices Program was shown to me by a social studies teacher I work with here in Fairbanks and found it to be a very useful website for teachers teaching current events. They have detailed lesson plans that include extended reading, video segment links, and additional websites for even more resources. They add about one new topic a month and have topics that focus on US and World Events. They also have other lesson plans that you can pay for if you want the complete lesson plan for a given topic, but they do give you a wealth of information without purchasing anything.

Wordle - I have a dream

Wordle has gotten a lot of press over the past year, but like any new tech tool it takes the brain a few laps around the pool to figure out how to use the tool. So after playing with and reading how other teachers have been using this interesting tool in their instruction, I thought wouldn't it be great to see how some watershed moments of history look like in Wordle. So I choose to use the speech, "I Have A Dream" by Dr. King as my example. This and many more speeches are all can be found at a website called American Rhetoric It would be interesting to have kids think about what key words they found important and then compare it to what Wordle generated. If there are differences then discuss what they are and place in context some of the words that really pop out in the Wordle.

I picked up one trick that I found very useful, was to use ~ to combine words. If you notice the phrase "I Have a Dream" is together so to use this trick you would need to turn it into "I~Have~a~Dream" anywhere in the text that you choose to use. It does take a little more time, but for phrases that should be together it makes for a more powerful Wordle.

Tabbloid

Tabbloid is a neat tool for creating a pdf of your rss feeds. So if you have a some great math rss feeds but have teachers that are not inclined to to subscribe to rss feeds this would be a great way to introduce them to a wealth of information without having to set up an rss reader. The layout looks great and will arrive to in your inbox on your email. You do not need an account so even your students could set up their own tabbloid from rss feeds for current events, topics they are interested in, and much much more. Give it a try and see if you like it.

National Novel Writing Month

Even though the month of November is almost over, this site has a great challenge that could be used at any time for an English teacher. There are two sites, but they both have the same goal in mind, write the majority of a novel (50,000 words) in one month.
The first is the National Novel Writing Month also known as "NaNoWriMo".They provide you inspiration with help hints, forums to ask questions, and a Young Writers Program as well.
The Young Writers Program has a similar site as well but with it geared towards teenagers instead. They have games and suggestions on how to get rid of writers block.
This would be ambitious for any teacher to have their students write this much, but they could easily adapt this exercise across a semester or year.