uMapper - More than Just Maps

After reading one of my favorite blogs Free Technology for Teachers and his post about uMapper. I started to realize that the geodart game could be used for more than just maps. You can upload any image that you want to and create ballons on your image and create a random study aid for your students or have your students create them for themselves or classmates. So I decided to do one for the first 20 elements for the periodic table and included pictures on two of them. You can do either text or pictures but not both. With text you can add hyperlinks to other web pages as well. Have fun creating games to use for your students to study for your next skills assessment.

Image Stamper - Stay Copyright Left

Image Stamper is a sweet tool for those that use flickr for images for presentations as it allows you quickly keep all the important information you need about a particular photo. What is the license of the photo, who the author is, when did you first use it in case the license changes, and you can tag your photo with important key words for searching your database of stamped photos for later.
For me this tool instantly became a favorite of mine as it allows me to quickly save pictures to database that is searchable and not saving each photo as it own bookmark. I put a lot of presentations together and this will save me a ton of time when it comes to finding, storing, saving all the important information that I need from the image.

ABPI - Resources for Schools

ABPI - Resources for Schools: "ABPI Resources for Schools website provides curriculum related resources for use by teachers and their pupils. The resources have been developed by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry and many link topics studied in school to their application in industry and in research."

Sometimes it feels like the UK is far ahead of us when it comes to an online resources for students, parents and teachers to use to help learn material. Here is a wonderful website that has interactive animations on a variety of science and health topics.

Teachers there are a lot of links to explore as well that can be found under the title useful links to even more science based websites.

Teaching to the Test

School Testing - leads you to the cartoon that I can no longer embed.
See Cartoons by Cartoon by Jimmy Margulies - Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com - Email this Cartoon

I am really glad that we as district have not reached this point yet. School should be more than what you know at a snapshot in time. Test should just be a gauge of what you know and don't know yet and should enlighten the teacher, student, and parent what the student still needs to work on before the end of the year. This is where tests that are objective based instead of chapter based would help everyone learn how to become "learners" and not "cramers" when it comes to the skills that are necessary so that no student is "Left Behind". Parents may think that schools are just teaching to the test, but that is where we as teachers need to find ways to showcase what we are doing in schools is more than just wrote memorization. I will be working with teachers on displaying examples of students work online so that anyone can see how creative students are today.

BioVisions

BioVisions

I learned about this site by watching a video on Ted TV by David Bolinsky on animating a cell for Harvard's BioVisions website. The website BioVisions was highlighted by ABC news and is available for viewing at their website which you can click on above. It last eight minutes and brings a dull lifeless picture of the cell to life and will allow your students a better understanding of how a cell really works. By clicking on the name "David Bolinsky" it will take you TED's website where you can see viewers comments, see a transcript of the speech, and learn more about David as well. BioVisions also has some other resources as well for aspects besides just biology. I have not tried out any of the other resources as of yet.

FREE PowerPoint Twitter Tools

FREE PowerPoint Twitter Tools | SAP Web 2.0:

"There are currently three tools:
* PowerPoint Twitter ticker bar
* PowerPoint Twitter feedback slide
* PowerPoint Twitter voting"

This has some unique potential to make your PowerPoint presentations unique as you can embed live twitter feeds, have twitter feedback on one slide or even do a twitter poll. The best part of this is that it is currently free. The worst part of this is that is currently blocked most districts firewall due to social networking issues.

More Google Products

More Google Products

Tips for creating documentaries

A list of resources and tips when shooting video for a documentary.

in reference to:

"This wiki is created to provide you with useful tips and resources to guide you through the production of documenting your school. If you have any questions or concerns, please refer to the discussion tab at the top of this page and leave us a comment. We'll be happy to get back to you as soon as we can."
- ALASmedia - ACOT 2 Documenting Wiki (view on Google Sidewiki)

World War 1 Resource

This site has some wonderful resources on the First World War. Photos, Poetry, Podcast, and much much more. Most, if not all of the material here are free to use since they should be in the public domain.

in reference to:

"The First World War Poetry Digital Archive is an online repository of over 7000 items of text, images, audio, and video for teaching, learning, and research.

The heart of the archive consists of collections of highly valued primary material from major poets of the period, including Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, and Edward Thomas. This is supplemented by a comprehensive range of multimedia artefacts from the Imperial War Museum, a separate archive of over 6,500 items contributed by the general public, and a set of specially developed educational resources.

Freely available to the public as well as the educational community, the First World War Poetry Digital Archive is a significant resource for studying the First World War and the literature it inspired."
- Welcome | First World War Poetry Digital Archive (view on Google Sidewiki)

Creating an E-Portfolios

In this day and age, students should have an online presence when they leave high school. However, most students online presence basically consist of social media sites such as Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, etc. But what if students actually created an online portfolio that trumpeted what they have created and accomplished during their high school and college days. This is a great starting point on how to create an E-Portfolio for students using Google tools.

in reference to: Official Google Docs Blog: Electronic Portfolios with Google Apps (view on Google Sidewiki)