Thursday, June 30, 2011

More of Jaycut


This is a great video I found on the Jaycut website.  It is nine minutes long, but it is really worth the time if you want to learn how to about how to do their free equivalent of Movie Maker.  The best part is that you can start on one computer and then go to another one to finish.  

More of Jaycut


This is a great video I found on the Jaycut website.  It is nine minutes long, but it is really worth the time if you want to learn how to about how to do their free equivalent of Movie Maker.  The best part is that you can start on one computer and then go to another one to finish.  

Monday, June 27, 2011

Jaycut

This afternoon I spent several hours at the Google station at the ISTE conference.  Part of that time was spent working with one the people whose job it is to improve Chromebooks for educators.  He showed me Jaycut which is basically a movie maker online that is free.  Students can put their own videos on it, pictures, audio, image and slides.  You can also create a narrative of your own film. I also noticed that Freetech4teachers.com also has a segment on making videos using Jaycut which is on page 24 - 31

Friday, June 24, 2011

Facts on King Tut and Movies on Mummies

One of the new things I have learned to do on the cloud is to take screen shots without downloading them.  If you use pixlr.com, you can crop the photos and then save them to Picassa or other places where you might have your pictures.  One of the new things I have learned to do on the cloud is to take screen shots without downloading them.  If you use pixlr.com, you can crop the photos and then save them to Picassa or other places where you might have your pictures.

The screenshot above is one of some facts on King Tut.  You can see the entire picture here as well as some short videos on mummies.

The screenshot above is one of some facts on King Tut.  You can see the entire picture here as well as some short videos on mummies.  

Fun Facts About the Great Pyramids


I have had the great fortune of twice seeing the Great Pyramids.  Above is a super video which I will use next year on information about them.  It is only 90 seconds, so it is the perfect length. 

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Bloom's Taxonomy Via Google

Yes, I have a few days of vacation sandwiched in between shuttling my kids to all their summer sports.  I just found this great picture of all the ways you can carry out student learning via online tools from Google.  Go here to see a bigger version of Kathy Schrock's picture.  Definitely take a look at the close up as it is amazing what you can do to enhance your students' learning via the Internet.  Each picture can be clicked on and will take you to the site where you can create it.  

100 Chromebook Tips

Okay, so perhaps not all of you are jumping to get the Chromebook by Google, but I just got mine in the mail yesterday.  If you are into "the cloud," it is a cheap ($500 for the version that gives you 100 mgs of free access a month and it obviously has wifi).  It turns on in less than 10 seconds, and I quickly found an app that lets me split my windows so I can see two screens (which is big with me).  It is a bit slow occasionally and you can't get Netflix (which my kids will care about) although that is coming, but if live on the cloud as I do it is 1/3rd the price of the Macbook Air (although you can't manipulate the screen as you will be able to do when it comes out in a few weeks).  For my money it is also forcing me to do the few things I wasn't doing online (screen capture of pics and how to movies) on the Internet.  Yes, I know I am ahead of people who still like to put their files on their computers, but the Chromebook is where we will all be in a few years.  FINALLY, if you do purchase it, I found this lengthy document explaining how it works.  

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Twitter


I just found these "Howcasts" which has a nice video on how to use Twitter.  I know I have given you information on Twitter before, but please know that it is not just about what people are doing at any one time.  I actually delete people who do that.  I use it because I want to get a lot of education ideas quickly.  Here is mine.  Click on the ones you like and you can follow them.   

Monday, June 20, 2011

Complete World History Course

Are you a new teacher and struggling to find lesson plans for Ancient or modern world history, well here is a great resource. It starts with lesson plans for every era through the modern one.  It also has a link for national standards as well as themes and a glossary.  The site created by San Diego State University is perfect for new teachers. 

Friday, June 17, 2011

A Little Plug!

This week Education Week has an article which gives me a few paragraphs and I owe you all a lot for it since your continued attention to this blog is what drew the author to interview me.  Above are two of my students working on a project I had my government students complete with another teacher's US ones.  Early next week, I'm going to post the experience and let you all see the results - since all the kids had to complete their work in a digital format. 

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Toppropa (European Map Skills)

People who know this blog and interact with me on a more regular basis always want to know where I get my ideas.  My Twitter feed is one place where I get ideas, but another is my RSS feed on my igoogle page. One of my feeds comes from The Pursuit of Technology Integration where I found Toppropa which is a way to identify map parts in Europe.  For example you can test your knowledge of rivers, lakes, regions, mountains, bodies of water or even things like monarchies and volcanoes. 

77 Web Resources


I love going to the site FreeTech4Teachers and will be going through the resource above to see what more I can add to my repertoire.   The resource above is for content delivery, not social studies content, and has many many excellent resources.  You can see a full blown version of it here.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

e-books


Two years ago I had the opportunity to pilot online books w. our students and now thanks to some innovative county leaders, we are, as a county, mostly going to e-books next year for our high school social studies classes.  When people ask me why I would want to do so, the video above is one good example from a company called Inkling which works w. McGraw, Pearson and other textbook leaders to produce interactive e-books.  Even better the e-books come with a ton of ancillaries such as links, video, and other "tools in a box" one can teach with interactive ideas using nothing other than the e-book. Throw in the Internet and you are talking about an amazing way to teach.  Also, you can see a competitor of Inkling, called Kno that has some of their own amazing wizardry on their single and double tablets as you can see below. (Thanks to Kleininspiration for the heads up on Inkling)

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Overview Videos


This comes from Bill Gates' site and has lots more in math, science, etc.  It does have about 10 15-18 minutes videos (see one above) on European history that would be good for review.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Searching This Blog and I'm Offering A Tech Course This Fall

When I first thought of this blog (and if you are new to it, remember there are three: government, US and world and the links are in the upper right hand corner), I was happy just to be able to get a few posts up (total on all three) each week.  Now I just looked at combined there are 1900 posts in the last three years. So if you are new or want to look for help in your class be it content or technology, just go to the search engine in the upper left hand corner and you should find lots of good things.  In fact, not to be conceited, but I use it all the time as I obviously can't remember all of the posts. 

By the way, if you are in or near Fairfax County, VA, I will be offering a 10 week course on Tuesdays in the fall at the Leis Center (Falls Church) on integrating technology into the classroom with the aim of having you learn by doing how to use all the tools I will show. 

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Delicious!
One of the questions I get is how do I find my resources. Well delicious.com is one of the ways. While many people save their bookmarks directly on their computer and others use google, I use delicious. It is great because 1) you can access your bookmarks on any computer anywhere in the world. 2) You can click on a link and see other people who have also saved it. From there you can see what they have found. If you look at the video below this entry, I found it by doing just that. 3) If you want to block others from seeing you (perhaps you can't remember your login codes), you can do just that. Try it and look me up.

Friday, June 3, 2011

School's Not Out For Summer Here


I still have my students until June 20th and then 10 days later start my with my online summer kids, so if you like this blog, you can come here all summer for ideas.