Tips from your TIS

If you are a user of Google Earth or have thought about using it in your classroom, it might be time to download the newest version released just a few days ago.  Google has added some tremendous features to Earth with this beta version.  Not only are there 3d buildings created in Sketchup, Street View in which you can get a street level view of many places, and Sky where you can explore the stars, Google has added a touring feature in which you can record a “tour” as a video for playback later as well as have your kids record themselves and narrate the tour.  For more information or videos detailing these new features go to http://earth.google.com

Additionally, there is now historical imagery included which allows you to move back in time to see changes in landscape locally and globally.  The final new feature includes being able to explore the oceans including 3D shipwrecks.  It’s all very cool.  

In Renee Boyd’s, History of St. Louis class, students are participating in a global project in entitled, “Greetings from…” Postcard Geography. The main goal of this project is to share famous landmarks, locations, or unique aspects of your home state or region. As a part of her class, Boyd’s students research a historical St. Louis neighborhood and create a presentation to share with the class. This year they are taking their presentations outside of the classroom and sharing them with the world by including them in a Google Map that is used by students and teachers worldwide and currently has over 30,000 views with feedback coming as far away as Australia asking for more resources on St. Louis. In addition, Boyd’s Anthropology class will also be sharing their spring semester research in the same manner.

For more information about the Postcard Geography project, visit http://sites.google.com/site/postcardgeography/Home.

To view the Google Map, visit http://snurl.com/4jvf3.

AVerMedia Technologies, the company who makes our document cameras, is offering a $5000 scholarship for a 2009 Senior.  

The AVerMedia scholarship will be awarded to a 2009 graduating High School Senior entering an accredited four year college. $1250 will be paid each year to the graduating winner, over the course of four years. The first payment will be made upon proof of college acceptance and enrollment.

For application details and criteria, visit their website. 

If you use Blogger with students in your classes you are aware that there is a Navigation Bar at the top of the screen that will take the viewer of the site to the “Next Blog”.  Unfortunately, “Next Blog” is any blog that uses Blogger in Google’s vast database.  Therefore it’s important that, as educators, we remove that bar from your blog.  To do that, follow these steps.

• Go to Blogger
• Click on Layout
• Click Edit HTML
• Scroll down the very bottom of the code
• Copy and paste the following code right BEFORE the </body> tag at the bottom

<style>
#navbar-iframe
{height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none;}
</style>

Once you’ve done that, click “Save Template” and you’re set!

Happy Blogging!!

Starting next week I will be offering a salary credit class (1 full credit will be earned through this class) based on the K12 Online Conference, a virtual conference with presenters from across the world.  The class will meet 3 times from 4-6.  The other sessions will be on your own with participation in a Moodle discussion forum.  Finally, participants will create their own virtual “presentation” in response to or inspired by one of the sessions that they watched.  These presentations will then be posted to NotK12OnlineConference.org to be viewed by others.  I will be available to help with the technical side of the presentations as well as working on generating ideas for them.  The idea behind the class is to engage in the greater conversation about education and look outside Parkway for teaching strategies and instructional practices.  Many of the sessions will focus on using technology in the classroom but they are not limited to that.

This class is not in PEERS yet but will be soon. If you or someone you know is interested in participating, please send me an email and I will let you know as soon as it is posted.

Session Dates:
Session 1 – Oct. 29th, 4-6 at River Bend
Session 2 – Nov. 4th, 4-6 at River Bend
Session 3 – Nov. 11th, 4-6 at River Bend

Here is the class description from PEERS.

This class will be based around the K12 Online Conference that has been held during the month of October of 2006 and 2007 and now again in 2008. We will be using the website http://k12onlineconference.org/ as a basis for the content of the class. The K12 Online Conference is an online offering of presentations created by educators and centered around new applications and new technologies. It’s a way to address both teachers’ needs as well as the opportunity to connect to an online network of professionals that can be drawn upon for future professional development activities.

There will be three face-to-face sessions of this class. In between each of these sessions, participants will be expected to engage two sessions from the conference, for a minimum of 6 face-to-face hours and six online conference hours.

Each participant will write reflection and keep a log of the sessions attended. The final face-to-face session will be a facilitated discussion about what was learned, the benefits of the conference, and the next steps for those involved in terms of taking their learning back into their classrooms. Additionally, participants will create their own digital presentation in response to or sparked from one they saw on the K12 Online Conference. These presentations will be submitted to the NotK12OnlineConference (http://notk12onlineconference.org) for use by others.

The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This FREE conference is run by volunteers and open to everyone. The 2008 conference theme is “Amplifying Possibilities”. This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of October 13, 2008. The following two weeks, October 20-24 and October 27-31, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog (this website) for participants to download and view. Live Events in the form of three “Fireside Chats” and a culminating “When Night Falls” event will be announced. Everyone is encouraged to participate in both live events during the conference as well as asynchronous conversations. More information about podcast channels and conference web feeds is available!

If you’ve been looking to create an interactive timeline for your class, you might want to take a look at http://www.dipity.com.  With this online tool, you or your students can create your timeline, making it public or private to suit your needs.  All timelines are categorized and there might just be one there to suit your needs (They say they have over 20,000).

Enjoy.

Welcome back everyone, I hope you had a fabulous break. I have three things for you today, a keyboard shortcut, a website and a Firefox add-on.

When you are working on a PC there are many times that you might have a number of windows open. With all those windows open sometimes taking your hands off your keys, finding the mouse, and then finding the window takes time. One way to switch between windows is to use the “Alt” key and then hit “Tab” to cycle through the open windows. Each time you hit tab, it will switch to the next open window.

Now for the website, if you have ever wanted to take a video off of YouTube or wanted to convert a file from one format to another, here’s a free online option for you. Let me introduce you to Zamzar. With Zamzar you can convert images, video, audio and regular document files. It’s not instantaneous, and you’ll have to wait until you receive an email to go back and download it, but I’ve had great success with the files that I have converted. Just to be clear, there are many things/sites that it won’t convert so be patient and do some experimenting.

The final item for this post is for Firefox users. Mozilla Firefox is an alternative browser to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. While there are some sites that you must use Explorer (including some of the district applications), if you’re interested in using Firefox you can ask your CRS to install it for you. Visit the website for more information. However, Firefox is not the tip here; once you have it installed there is an add-on called Auto-Copy. This copies any text that you highlight in your browser to the clipboard ready to be pasted. This can be used for URL’s, or other text that you want to copy alleviating the keyboard shortcut or Edit –> Copy mouse commands when surfing the web.

Again, welcome back and have a great second semester.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a long time and after receiving yet another email reminding me of it’s existence, I’d like to introduce you to the world of FreeRice.com. This website is a vocabulary quiz of sorts and for every word you get right, the sponsor that is currently advertising on that page donates 20 grains of rice through the United Nations as a means of ending world hunger.

Now 20 grains might not seem like a lot, but that’s for each word answered correctly. This program was started on October 7, 2007 and so far 10,604,716,470 grains of rice have been donated.  So go ahead, increase your vocabulary and give the gift of food this holiday season.

Just wanted to let everyone know that the TIS website is up and running. From this site you’ll be able to find out your TIS’s schedule, ask us a question, find resources and browse through our frequently asked questions. You’ll even be able to find interesting articles and see the latest headlines from this blog. Come join us.

http://www.pkwy.k12.mo.us/tishomepage