Tips from your TIS

In July of 2007, Jane Hart, head of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technology, asked experts about their top 10 productivity and teaching tools. You can look at the 2007 list as well as contribute to the 2008 Tool List at the following web site.

http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html

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.

Groupwork. It can be a powerful learning experience for students, but a headache for teachers to manage. So much so that I was often tempted to avoid assigning group projects rather than develop new ways to keep students interested and individually accountable. Yet, many companies depend upon results from teams of people working in distant places, and even more so as the world becomes smaller, technologically speaking. Teaching these life skills may be almost as important as teaching our content.

Wikis are a large part of this new global collaboration trend. Many of us may know of Wikipedia, but this extraordinary example is only one of many wikis online. In fact, many teachers are now using wikis as tools for group work in their classes. Lee LeFever and the Common Craft Show provide a good introduction to this Web 2.0 tool. As you watch this short 4 minute film, be thinking about how this tool could be used to redefine groupwork in your classroom.

With a wiki, students can add and modify content to pages you set create. They can have discussions, ask you questions, and post new resources. And, an added managerial bonus, every change a student makes is recorded, easily viewable from their profile or the history of a given page.

Group results, individual accountability.

Two popular hosting agencies for wikis are WetPaint and Wikispaces. Each are now offering ad-free versions of their commercial wikis, with settings that keep your students’ identities and work secure. WetPaint hosts its own education support page and Wikispaces is offering its premium services to K-12 educators free of charge. Visit these sites or contact your technology integration specialist for more information about using wikis in your classroom!

If you would like to view examples of wikis created in each of these wiki providers, I recently created this wiki with a group of elementary teachers in wikispaces, and WetPaint is highlighting this teacher’s work with 9th graders.

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

You may be interested in taking a look at this CrossWord Puzzle generator.
It allows you to
*import your own word lists and clues
*save word lists
*save PUZZLES (to use from year to year or class to class)
*Make multiple puzzle designs from one word list
*Print your puzzle
*Insert into your webpage-with INTERACTIVE features–GREAT FOR
PRACTICE)
*Choice of giving your students the WORDS or CLUES only (great for
vocabulary words and spelling)
*Saves in a variety of formats
*Having students create clues gives teachers another option for project/assignment

It is called ECLIPSE CROSSWORD. It can be found at
http://www.eclipsecrossword.com/

Ever try to explain something over the phone? It just doesn’t compare to actually showing someone what they should do — it isn’t as effective as being there.

When I would introduce students to a task I wanted them to complete with the computer, I sometimes felt stuck with a similar dilemma. If I explained it to them in the computer lab, many would be off task, distracted by the computer. Yet, if I explained it to them in my classroom, often I was required to use a chalk board and then some would inevitably forget what they should do. What if there was a way for me to record my audible directions, visually demonstrate the required steps, and provide those directions at the click of a button?

Jing makes this possible.

The Jing Project has created a tool that allows you to take pictures of anything that is displayed on your screen. It can also take video, capturing sound from a microphone (often embedded into your machine if you are using a laptop). What sets Jing apart from other screen capture tools is that it can …

1. Store the image or video on a remote server space, and
2. Create a link to that image or video that you can easily include on your web page or in an e-mail.

This means that you don’t have to worry about e-mailing large videos to people and that the videos you create are easily shared with others.

In the scenario above, if I was going to have students complete a number of activities on one or two websites, using Jing I could record myself navigating to those activities and dictating directions. I could put a link on my web page and direct the students there for directions. Their first task when they get to their computers would be to listen to my directions, as I take attendance.

Jing can be used to share anything you can see on your desktop. Here’s a link to their online tour.

For those of you who don’t know, MIT has offered free online classes and resources through OpenCourseWare since 2002. Now they’ve opened it up to secondary schools with their “Highlights for High School” section. Their aim is to bolster high school STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education through free and open course materials, from complete curricula and syllabi to videos, lecture notes, and animations.

Telling a story, in English or a foreign language, is a learned skill. It requires fundamental language skills and creativity. If you’ve asked students to add visual elements to those stories, perhaps you’ve felt some frustration as students concentrate more on their drawing abilities and less on the words that they use.

Kerpoof is a Scholastics website that allows students to create scenes or stories that can be e-mailed or printed. It uses drag-and-drop flash animations that remove the painstaking time students spend sketching and erasing. Students can walk in with their written stories, choose their scenes, drag characters and props to the appropriate scenes, add text boxes and dialog bubbles like those found in comic books, and print out their final products.

Scholastics also provides a teacher resources page with application ideas and lesson plans. Some Kerpoof sponsors, like the Butterfly Pavilion in Broomfield, Colorado, and Northwest Trek in Tacoma, Washington, have sponsored scenes of real places. In these scenes, students can choose pictures of flora and fauna native to those areas, creating accessible reviews of predator-prey patterns or prompting discussions about different environments.

Kerpoof offers a unique educational resource, whether it be to students sprucing up their stories or teachers leading class discussions.

ePals is now offering SchoolMail, Schoolblog, and In2Books free for schools. These services were formerly available only via a subscription. Further information can be found in the article below from THE Journal.

http://www.thejournal.com/articles/21246