SMART Notebook has become the software of choice for classroom instruction for many teachers. Now you and your students can use those Notebook files online without having to have the software installed using SMART Notebook Express. In the following video I give an introduction to the site and some insight as to how it might be used.
Spring break is finally here and with it hopefully comes some family time, trips and relaxation. Two years ago my family and I went to Disney for 5 days over the spring holiday and, as you might expect, we took some pictures. Nope… we took lots of pictures. Kids with characters, kids on rides, random pictures taken by kids… we had lots of pictures. When we got home I dutifully (under the watchful eye of my wife) went through and looked at the pictures determined to weed out pictures of feet and sky. It didn’t take long before I was kicked off the computer and my wife took over. It didn’t take long before she was frustrated with the way Windows handles pictures and she gave up. We still had many pictures of feet and sky that needed to be taken care of. Additionally, we had some pictures that needed to be cropped down, have the color fixed or sharpened a little bit. I could have spent hours with Photoshop fixing and cropping but what I really needed was a tool that both of us could use to organize and fix our pictures simply and easily.
Enter Google’s Picasa. Picasa is a free piece of photo editing software that you can download at http://picasa.google.com. It’s not on the approved list of software for district computers, but install it on your home computer and see what you think. There’s a little setup at the very beginning where you indicate where on your computer your pictures live. It will do a search of your hard drive and create collections of your pictures based on date taken and folder they were in. Additionally, it has facial recognition software the at is built in that learns who people are so you can search for picutre not only by date, name and folder, but by person as well. The video below will introduce Picasa 3 to you (it’s a YouTube video) and walk you through some of the features.
So, no longer are my pictures quite the unweildy mess that they once were. Now, I just need them to create a filter that will find all the pictures of feet that my daughter takes as we walk.
There are lots of ways to give feedback to students using technology but sometimes the message gets lost in translation. Using Vocaroo you can record audio comments and share them for free without downloading any software. In this video, I walk through the features of Vocaroo and talk about some of the uses you might have for the classroom.
Not long ago the hard drive on my computer crashed. It was D-E-A-D. Being a technology type, I knew it was possible and truly only a matter of time. But, I had gone on my merry way living dangerously knowing that at any moment I could lose it all. It happens, I understand and truly, you should know, it’s not a matter of “if” that spinning disk will forever stop… it’s a matter of when. Hard drives are not meant to last forever and there are lots of reasons that they will crash, but understand that it will crash and any of the videos, photos, bookmarks and files will all go to technology heaven with it. So, let me encourage you to backup your files. It’s one of those things that everyone knows they should do, but life gets in the way and you forget or you remember and put it off. Today might be a good time to change your computing strategy. Here are some backup tips and strategies that just might help you when the unthinkable happens.
Regardless of how you do it, make backing up your files part of your computing routine. Remember, your hard drive will die someday, be sure you’re ready and create your own backup strategy.
I remember when I walked into my very first classroom as a teacher. I had just been hired and the principal took me down two flights of stairs and opened up a darkened room. In a few short months, this would be my new domain. I was excited and nervous but also felt up to the challenge of teaching 7th graders English. During that summer I spent a fair amount of time in that classroom so that on day one, everything would be perfect. And Oh, it was! The desks were in rows, the whiteboard stocked with the standard blue, black, red and green Dry Erase markers and the walls embellished with posters that I was sure would inspire my students to become the writers and readers that I would make them. It was perfect.
Soon the first day of school rolled around and in rolled the kids. No longer was anything perfect. Suddenly I had 150 students that I would be instructing, all of them seemingly put in my classroom to challenge the new 21 year old teacher. I got through my first hour without incident and then, during passing time, my principal came to tell me that there would be a change. I would also be teaching a senior English class as well as a 10th grade class. Suddenly, on the first day or school, as a brand new teacher, I went from having one prep to three with students ranging from 7th grade to 12 grade (one of which was 20 years old, 8 months younger than me). Needless to say, I don’t think I was a very good teacher that year. I spent most of my time trying to stay one step ahead and rise above the chaos of my life.
One of the things that I took to doing that year was making lists. It’s the only way I could keep anything straight. My strategy was to have a folder for each of my classes where I would make a list of things I had to do that day. It’s been quite a few years since that first day in the classroom and my needs are quite a bit different now, but I’m still a listmaker. Instead of folders and paper, I’ve turned to the internet and the myriad of tools available there.
Here are some where I’ve found success.
There are many more task list creators out there. Some, like the ones above, are completely online (which I prefer), but there are also plenty of programs that could be downloaded.
There are so many facets to our daily lives that sometimes it helps to force a little order into the chaos. I have found that lists help me do that. If you have other strategies that you’d like to share, email me. I’m always interested in conversations around getting more done faster.
Cross posted at Tech4Practice.
Sometimes technology seems to make things harder than they need to be. Your computer hard drive might die, a server might be down or for some reason your grades simply won’t save. Unfortunately, none of these things are in your control and, sometimes you might feel very helpless. One of my constant technology frustrations has to do with long URL’s. While that might seem like a pretty simple thing, when I’m trying to find something and I get a url such as http://www.pkwy.k12.mo.us/tis/index2.cfm?goToLocation=homepages/home.cfm&userid=wbass, my eyes tend to glaze over. There’s no way I’m going to remember that and, chances are, I’m not going to write it down either. Even if I took the time to do it, I’m sure I’d miss one the “?”.
Now consider how great it is when someone sends you a link inside an email and that link is too long so when you click on it you get an error message. Then you can go through the convoluted process of copying, paste and hope. So, how does one get around the curse of the long url? Use a url shortener. You might have seen a url such as http://tinyurl.com/4at7a8c at some point in your internet travels. Tinyurl.com is a url shortening service that turns that long, unmanageable internet site into something that can be easily read. (Or at least a little shorter). That url I might actually be able to write down accurately.
Additionally, that url can be customizable. So instead of http://tinyurl.com/4at7a8c I could actually make it http://tinyurl.com/wbass which is infinitely more memorable.
Now, why would you use this? Let’s look at some ways:
Shortened URL’s can save you time and effort as you navigate the web. If you’re looking for a place to get started, here are some sites that provide this service.
Common shorteners:
There are many more out there, but these three I’ve used at least once.
So take some of the frustration out of navigating the web as you share those links with your students using a URL shortener. If you have a different shortener that you prefer or if you just question why you’d use such a thing, let me know. I’d love to hear from you.
Cross posted at Tech4Practice.
Delicious has responded to all the hub-bub about them shutting down yesterday. While they have assured their users that there doesn’t need to be a mass exodus, this event has reminded me that the tools that we rely on in our daily lives can be gone at anytime. I have backed up all my bookmarks to Diigo but will continue to use Delicious going forward. Or will I? This may be just what I need to move onto a different tool. Regardless, I still think online bookmarking is the way to go. Whichever tool you use, sharing resources is the important piece here.
Read Delicious’s response to the “shutdown panic” here.
The internet is an ever changing place and sometimes those online tools that we might rely on as a part of our daily lives are shut down. It’s unfortunate, but that’s kind of the way it works. A few weeks ago I wrote about social bookmarking. Since August of 2005 I have been using Delicious for my bookmarks. On Thursday December 16th, Yahoo (which purchased Delicious a few years ago) has evidentially decided to shut it down. While I don’t believe there is any “official” word from Yahoo yet, many tech blogs and columnists have “confirmed” it. At this point, I have about 800 bookmarks that I’ve stored and shared that I need to relocate. My current solution is Diigo a service that is very similar to Delicious in that you can save bookmarks through a browser and share them with individuals or the public. The difference between the two is that with Diigo you can also annotate websites so that when you go back and you’re logged into Diigo, you can see the notes you’ve made. Additionally, Diigo has an educators account that you can apply for allowing you to create accounts for your students without having to get email accounts for your students. Finally, you can create lists of different bookmarks and share them in different ways.
A number of news websites have created alternative lists that will give other options for online bookmarking. Below are some of the possibilities as well as some other links to articles outlining uses.
Alternative Tools
Related Articles
The following video will walk you through exporting your bookmarks from Delicious and importing them into Diigo.
Cross posted on Tech4Practice.
Sharing files can sometimes be tough. Many files are too big to share via email and shared folders only allow for those in a specific network to view them. There are multiple services out there that will let you drop a file that can be downloaded but some of them require you to install software in the form of an application or a browser plugin. Up until about a month ago, I was suggesting a service called Drop.io but earlier this year Facebook acquired them and as of December 15th they are no longer hosting files. In looking for a replacement I came across Ge.tt. Gett is a service much like Drop.io which will host files for you. Their approach as listed on their website is
“With ge.tt you can share any number of files, no matter how large, within seconds. Click on select files. Share the files with your friends. Move on – because you’ve simply got better things to do.”
Their goal is to make sharing a file as easy as possible. There are some things to think about though.
Once you’ve decided that this is your tool, it’s as easy to get started. Just click on the “Create Share” button, select your file and then you’ll get a URL that you can then send via email or post on a website that will links to the file.
To learn more about the benefits of GETT you can go to their About page for more information.
Cross posted at Tech4Practice.
Much has been written about the benefits of collaboration in the classroom as a tool for learning. This week I want to share a tool with you that you may or may not know about, that allows students to contribute, in real time, to a text document. The tool is called Etherpad and has been around for a few years now. Last year, Google purchased the company and released the code to the open source community making it available to anyone with a server and the ability to customize the code.
As students contribute to a “pad”, they can see what anyone else is writing at the same time, and it’s in real time. When someone else is typing into this shared document, you can actually see as they actually compose. Additionally, Etherpad also saves the entire history of the document and, but clicking a button, allows you to “watch” the creation process almost like watching a video. All of that is nice but there are other tools that can do that. What really makes Etherpad special is the ability to do all of this without having to create an account. Once the Etherpad is set up, simply give students a link or post it on the web and when they open up that site they will instantly be able to start writing breaking down many of the barriers to online collaboration.
This can also bring up some concerns in terms of who is contributing what content. Each contributor is given a color and their text is color coded. Additionally, students can enter their name on the document (still without setting up an account) and it will correlate their color with their name.
Etherpad does have some limitations. The biggest challenge is the number of concurrent contributors. It all depends on the site who is hosting the Etherpad you are working with. Personally, I prefer a site called ietherpad but with a basic pad (free and without creating an account) you are limited to 16 contributors. However, if you create an account with them (your students still don’t need to), you can keep track of your pads more easily and the number of people who can write at the same time becomes unlimited. Additionally, Etherpad is a text only service, you can include links, but images and videos are unable to be embedded. Another warning that I have for you is that if you don’t create an account for yourself and you don’t remember the URL of the pad, you can’t find it again.
Etherpad can be a powerful tool for writing instruction but could be used anywhere you want students to pull information together. From group research, keeping track of projects and collecting data, Etherpad could be a solution for bringing students together.
Other free Etherpad sites:
Delicious Links