An Educator's Guide to Twitter

I am newly intrigued by Twitter, slowly figuring it out, dipping my toes in, but not yet ready to jump. This is an excellent guide if your interested in getting started: An Educator's Guide to Twitter

Ferlazzo - “Film Education” Looks Like An Excellent Resource

Film Education is a UK site with tons of study guides and other resources on how to integrate movies into any curriculum. It also has some neat online activities.

I’m adding it to The Best Places To Find Theatrical Movies On Science, Math, & History."

Ferlazzo: “The Complete Dropbox for Educators”

I’ve previously posted about the great app Dropbox.

If you ever have any questions about how to use it effectively, Jeff Thomas has created The Complete Dropbox for Educators for you. It’s the ultimate Dropbox reference guide.

While I’m at it, here’s another much less complete guide that’s focused on How to Use Dropbox with an iPhone or iPod Touch.

The Learning Network: Looking Back at 2010: Teaching Ideas

The Learning Network: Looking Back at 2010: Teaching Ideas: "Our 'Farewell, 2010' news quiz and a collection of other 2010 retrospective puzzles, articles, images, essays and videos - along with ideas for using them in or out of the classroom.

Larry Ferlazzo: “A teacher’s guide to using audio and podcasting in the classroom”

A teacher’s guide to using audio and podcasting in the classroom is a nice overview of applications to use in the classroom, including videos. It was created by Kit Hard.

I’m adding the link to both The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English and to The Best Places To Learn Web 2.0 Basics.

Thanks to Mariel Amez for the tip.

The Best “The Best…” Lists On Technology — 2010

by Larry Ferlazzo

The Best “The Best…” Lists On Technology — 2010: "

I’ve posted many “The Best…” lists this year, and I thought readers might find it useful if I highlighted the ones specifically relating to technology. Here are my choices for The Best “The Best…” Lists On Technology — 2010:

The Best Sites Where Students Can Upload PowerPoint Presentations To The Web
The Best Sites For Beginning iPhone Users Like Me
The Best Ways To Create Online Video Playlists
My Best Posts Related To Twitter
The Best Third-Party Twitter Apps That Don’t Require Your Password
The Best Web Applications That Lets Multiple People Upload Their Photos To One Place
The Best Applications For Sending Online Video Messages
My Best Posts For Tech Novices (Plus One From Somebody Else)
The Best Sites For Learning About The History Of Technology
The Best Tools For Cutting-Out & Saving Portions Of Online Videos
The Best Online Applications For Creating Panoramas
Not The “Best,” But A List… Of Online Video Editors
The Best Sites To Learn About The Internet
The Best Resources For Learning About “Word Clouds”
The Best Sites For Online Photo-Editing & Photo Effects
The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2010
The Best Applications For Creating Free Email Newsletters
The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2010

The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2010

by Larry Ferlazzo

The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2010: "

This annual post is always the most popular one of the year. You might want to visit previous editions:

The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2009
The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2008
The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2007

(You might also find The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2010 useful)

In order to make this list, a site had to be:

* accessible to English Language Learners and non-tech savvy users.
* free-of-charge.
* appropriate for classroom use.
* completely browser-based with no download required.

It’s possible that a few of these sites began in 2009, but, if so, I’m including them in this list because they were “new to me” in 2010. You might also be interested in exploring the 530 other “The Best…” lists that I’ve posted over the past three years.

Here are my choices for The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2010:

Twenty: Sitehoover is a new application that lets you create a personal homepage showing thumbnail images of your favorite websites. You can also organize them into separate “folders. It can be very useful to students doing research, or identifying their favorite language-learning site.

Bit.ly’s New “Bundles” Are Perfect For Internet Scavenger Hunts

by Larry Ferlazzo
Bit.ly’s New “Bundles” Are Perfect For Internet Scavenger Hunts: "

Bit.ly, the wildly popular application that shortens url addresses, has just introduced “Bit.ly Bundles.” All you have to do is copy and paste several url address into the box on their site, click “Bundle,” and it will give you one url address that shows screenshots and descriptions of each of the url address you pasted in — in one url address. You can add your own descriptions, as well as rearrange their order. The only negative I see is that, in order to use it, you have to actually register with the site (which takes seconds). You don’t have to register if you just want to use their regular shortening service.
This kind of feature makes it ideal to create Internet Scavenger Hunts, with teachers listing questions they want teachers to find on each website.

I’m adding it to The Best Places To Create (And Find) Internet Scavenger Hunts & Webquests, where you’ll find similar applications to use that don’t require registration. Bit.ly’s advantage, though, is that it is probably more financially stable than these others and is more likely to stick around. I’ll also be adding info on this new feature to my description on Bit.ly on The Best Ways To Shorten URL Addresses list. Thanks to TechCrunch for the tip.

The Learning Network: Resources | Teaching With and About Technology

The Learning Network: Resources | Teaching With and About Technology: "A collection of resources to help teachers and students think through questions about how technology is changing the classroom and the world.

"

The Learning Network: 55 Questions for Students

The Learning Network: 55 Questions for Students

via NYT > Education by By KATHERINE SCHULTEN on 11/16/10

A list of 55 Student Opinion questions we've asked since the school year began. Invite your students to come and post comments on any of them!

MovieClips Gets Even Better

MovieClips Gets Even Better

via Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... by Larry Ferlazzo on 11/9/10

MovieClips, which is on several "The Best…" lists, including The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL, has recently added a nice addition. You might remember that it allows you to search for short clips by all sorts of themes, in addition to creating montages of them.
Now, according to TechCrunch, MovieClips:
…recently added "related clips," which recommends similar clips to users in search. So when a user searches for a particular clip, he will be exposed to a wall of 100 related clips "related by" actor, movie, action, mood, setting, theme, director, prop, cinematographer, and many more categories.
And, best of all, it's not blocked by our school's content filters!

Xtranormal | Text-to-Movie

How cool is this? I'm thinking we could use it to make parts of our lessons more interesting and/or give kids a chance to show their learning through this...

Xtranormal | Text-to-Movie

Guess the Google: A game you'll love to hate!

Guess the Google: A game you'll love to hate!

via Angela Maiers Educational Services by Angela Maiers on 10/17/10

OK, I am really mad at my friends, Doug Pete and Alec Couros, for sharing the link to this wonderful distracting game with me over the weekend!
Guess-the-google is an addictive guessing game based on Google's image search.



Here's how it works: You get 20 images and you need to make the connection between them with just one word.  It sounds simple, just imagine what "keyword" would be used to match all the images. The objective of the game is to be the fastest and most efficient at making that connection between search terms and Google's results.(That's where it gets fun!) The game does requires version 9 of the Flash player. (You can get the latest version here.)
This could be a great brain break for your students as well. Give it a whirl, and you can be mad at Doug and Alec with me! :-)

“7 Fantastic Free Social Media Tools for Teachers”

Anyone using any of these?

“7 Fantastic Free Social Media Tools for Teachers”

via Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... by Larry Ferlazzo on 10/16/10

"7 Fantastic Free Social Media Tools for Teachers" is the title of a Mashable post earlier today.
Most of the sites highlighted won't be new to readers of this blog, but it does give a good overview of each one.

The Tempered Radical - Google's Wonder Wheel ISN'T Gone! - The Tempered Radical

Awesome research resource!

Google's Wonder Wheel ISN'T Gone! - The Tempered Radical

EduBlogger - A Googleaholic’s Guide to all things gmail

Some good reminders about using GMail to the max as an educator:

A Googleaholic’s Guide to all things gmail: "

Much of my day is spent dealing with considerably more emails than the average person!

Perhaps I know too much about Gmail and Google Apps Mail to be healthy?

But also means I’ve got cool tips to help you gett more out of your gmail account….or make you want to set up a gmail account!

What is Gmail?

The Gmail+ method that every educator should be aware of!

Perhaps one of the coolest reasons why educators need to know about gmail is the gmail+ method.

Educators often don’t want their students to use their own email address for creating online accounts. Unfortunately most websites require users use unique email addresses.

The gmail+ method provides the solution!

How it works is you create one gmail account for your class.

For example, mathiscool@gmail.com or room16@gmail.com.



Then you use your one class gmail account with the gmail+ method to create each student account.

Gmail ignores any letters and numbers you add after a + sign and sends all emails to the one account while the web site where you are setting up the account thinks each is a unique email.

So for example, you might use mathiscool+seanp10@gmail.com, mathiscool+davep10@gmail.com and so on for creating their usernames and gmail will send all emails to the class gmail account mathiscool@gmail.com


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Tween Teacher - Blogging with Middle Schoolers: Frontloading and First Steps

Blogging with Middle Schoolers: Frontloading and First Steps: "
So I just finished introducing blogging to my middle school classes. They are hooked, as each year before them was hooked. I use it as a substitute for Reading Logs, that dreaded love-of-reading killer which causes eye rolls in many a Language Arts class. Rather than simply log the quantity of books, perhaps embellishing with a short summary or bibliographical entry, I have them discuss quality.

The discussions are rich, organic, and run themselves. All I needed to do was have the patience to set it up right. So I’ve pulled together some steps that I’ve been working on for the past couple of years that help introduce students to the art of blogging without neglecting the science of building community and collaboration.

Middleweb: VisuWords

VisuWords: "

If you're familiar with Visual Thesaurus, you'll have some idea of how the VisuWords online graphical dictionary displays information about a word or phrase you enter into the database. VisuWords uses color-coded connections to indicate relationships such as "is a part of" or "opposes" and parts of speech, such as "nouns", "verbs", or "adverbs". Mouse over synonyms to see pop-up definitions and an example of the word in a sentence. The no-membership-required website uses Princeton's WordNet dictionary and provides simple tips on how to get the most out of the display.

"

Middleweb: Edutopia's Back-to-School Web 2.0 Guide

Edutopia's Back-to-School Web 2.0 Guide: "

Edutopia boldly goes where many teachers still seem reluctant to journey with these updated back-to-school suggestions for integrating Web 2.0 and social media tools into daily classroom instruction.Start the year with tools that pack a lot of visual interest, like VoiceThread or Glogster. Experiment with Twitter, Edmodo or (gasp) texting. You'll find links to resources for incorporating "everything from infographics to citizen science projects." Sound like fun? Download the free PDF.

"

NYTimes Learning Network - How to Use It!

As you know, I love The Learning Network and the direction they are taking. Here is their guide to using it this year:

11 Ways to Use Our Blog This School Year

By KATHERINE SCHULTEN

Kevin Van AelstOn Mondays we publish lessons on cross-curricular academic skills, like this one from last winteron learning how to search the Internet effectively. The image above is from the Medium columnthat inspired the lesson.

Teachers and administrators often ask us if we have a handout they can give to their colleagues to tell them about The Learning Network.

Well, we’d love it if you’d photocopy, post, e-mail, tweet or otherwise pass along this page, because we’re summarizing briefly below everything we offer — including several new features we added this summer.

And if we haven’t thanked you lately, let us do that now: our blog is almost a year old, and it’s been successful in ways we never imagined — all because of the students, teachers and parents who post here daily. Please help us keep the conversation going!

Read More! http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/11-ways-to-use-our-blog-this-school-year/?partner=rss&emc=rss