Ready for the next generation of textbook creation that utilizes good pedagogy? Imagine a living, breathing, dynamic textbook that offers different assignments for each individual based on their learning styles, allows for student-created work to be posted and featured based on accuracy/creativity votes and having students all around the world discuss content and share resources in real time through an integration with Google's new social networking service Google +. Imagine all of this in a new dynamically changing interactive living 21st Century textbook ecosystem.
Brain Mannix would like to use the Blackboard/Collaborate platform as an engine to bring students and teachers around the world together to make this happen. Check it out!
This app gives the ability to turn your iPad into a personal IWB! Allows you to record voice-over whiteboard tutorials and share them online. You can also drop images from your photo library and write on/around them. To see examples, go to ShowMeApp.com. Makes me wish I had an iPad2 to try it out :)
The ultimate freeware encryption program, TrueCrypt is loaded with powerful features that users concerned with protecting data from prying eyes will find robust and comprehensive.Some use this with Dropbox to protect certain files or all their files.
Enter the Group is a new free service offering collaborative project management for groups. Enter the Group features a calendar, messaging, and file sharing for your group members. If you want to keep your project just between friends, you can create a private group. If you want the whole world to see your project, you can make a public group. Users can also login using FB login/passwords.
I'm interested in checking out the possibility of virtual classrooms and using it to manage PBL projects. This might be a good tool for SISUHSD's emphasis on PBL.
1st Google Education On Air conference with many educators presenting on a wide variety of topics. The video recordings of the sessions are found by clicking on each link. Most presenters have additional links to resources and you can add them to your Google+ connections.
Some cool tools to edit video online - some will allow downloading in different formats after the editing is completed. This makes it easy then to upload into Prezis, Schooltube, or Google Docs, and then share the videos.
When TED launched its educational website for younger students last week, I think teachers everywhere realised they had to up their game. The 3-10 minute videos are designed to encourage curiosity and show how the world works using compelling animation and the audible explanations of a gifted teacher. Even if you're not in high school, the videos are sometimes fascinating, sometimes kinda strange, but generally very cool. Here are some of the best videos that are designed to amaze and challenge your brain.
Have you given up Outlook and now miss sending Word docs as attachments? Here is some freeware that allows you to do that - AFFIXA. Here are some instructions and a link to the free download. When you send to email, it will put your Word doc in your Gmail "drafts" folder.
Good look at the pros and cons of Cloud storage and 15 free tools to give any teacher more than enough storage. Many of these tools allow you to access files on computers and mobile devices that sync with each other, so you have the same version on every device. I have almost all of my files in cloud storage. My favs are Google Docs, Dropbox, Box, and Sugar Sync. I'm going to try another - Docuter (http://www.docuter.com/) that has 25GB of free storage.
This is a helpful, easy to read guide with videos on Evernote, a tool for teachers and students to bookmark, record voicemails, take text and voice notes, upload pictures, docs, PDFs and files, and capture images and information on the web as well as as a software download on your computer or as a plugin for your browser and also as an application for your mobile device. My goal this summer is to begin to maximize the my use of the tool, as I love being able to use it on my computers and mobile devices.