Group items tagged

Many campuses have decided to outsource email and other services to "cloud" providers. Berkeley has joined in by migrating student and faculty to bMail, operated by Google. In doing so, it has raised some anxiety about privacy and autonomy in communications. In this post, I outline some advantages of our outsourcing to Google, some disadvantages, and how we might improve upon our IT outsourcing strategy, especially for sensitive or especially valuable materials.

"When was the last time you changed your email password, your Facebook password, or your online banking password? Hopefully, you're not using the same password for all of your accounts. If it has been a while since you changed your passwords, think about doing so as part of digital spring cleaning. The videos below provide some guidance on creating strong passwords."

Classtools is a tool for educators to make their own educational games, which can be shared via email or embedded in a web page. There are 15 easy-to-use templates, which make game creation easy. There's also a selection of premade games, which teachers may use with their students

Soundtrap allows you to make music online, from any device, with your own instruments or the virtual ones on the site. The free version offers 5 projects, many loops, instruments and sounds as well as other features. It works on Mac, Windows, iPad, Android tablets and phones, Linux and Chromebooks. It allows you to start, edit and collaborate on your recordings and, being cloud-based, wherever you are. You can collaborate with others and share your music on Facebook, Twitter and SoundCloud, as well as Spotify and iTunes. You can sign in with Office 365, Google, Facebook or an email account. There are premium options with more features and fewer limits.

Facebook is moving back to its roots in education with this morning's big announcement of custom groups for schools called, not surprisingly Groups for Schools. While I'm dubious about how, if, and why individual teachers may want to use the service… it'll be great for entire schools who don't have the budget or resources to build their very own online community. So here's the deal: Facebook will let you have an area of the site where anyone with your school's or district's .edu email address can get in and participate. It's basically the same model that Mark Zuckerberg used to launch the site many moons ago.

"Nowadays, I get the same feeling of dread when I open an email to see a Microsoft Word document attached. Time and effort are about to be wasted cleaning up someone's archaic habits. A Word file is the story-fax of the early 21st century: cumbersome, inefficient, and a relic of obsolete assumptions about technology. It's time to give up "

EduClipper is the latest in a string of Pinterest clones, true (See below), but Bellow's experience in education - in the classroom and with professional development - should give him a leg up in creating a tool that'll work in classrooms and that'll work for teachers. EduClipper lets you build clipboards into which you can post links, images, videos and documents and upload files to share with others. These clipboards can be private or public - that's a key dfferentiator between eduClipper and its competitors- clipped for one's self and/or shared to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Evernote, and Edmodo or via email.

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your queries.

Tag My Doc (Beta) is a time-saving web service that uses QR Codes to share documents. Tag My Doc has a basic free service (and a few paid plans) that enables you to share your documents in real time with anyone and everyone who is interested in it. It is a huge time-saver because it saves you from emailing people individually.

Automatically execute actions to files when they are added to Dropbox, e.g. Convert file, email, upload to google docs, etc. very similar to if this then that ifttt

Joe Dale posts an iPad idea/tip each day.  He normally posts a 1 - 2min audio clip that contains a useful tip on how to perform a certain function or use a particular feature of your iPad.  So far all the tips and tricks have been really good. If you subscribe you automatically get an email each day with a link to the idea/tip.  If you are interested I recommend you subscribe so you dont miss out on any of his idea/tips!

"We all love free apps, but it's hard to track when apps go on sale, and whether they're worth the trouble. Here's a trick for keeping track of on-sale apps, and making those sales last forever. We've shared a few tools that help you track app sales, but they can be a pain. A lot of the apps that go on sale aren't very good, and while you can make a wish list, this doesn't help you discover new apps at all. Of course, we occasionally share cool apps in our Dealhacker posts, but what if you could get automatic email notifications for cheap, good apps whenever they went on sale? Here's a method-inspired by this Reddit post-to make that a reality."

An easy-to-use, free tool. Go to the main page and sign in using your Facebook or Twitter account. Once logged in you can click on record and start talking . You have up to 30 seconds of recording length so you may need to prepare a script. When your audio message is ready Qwips generates a URL for you so that you can use to share your messages. You can embed it on your blog or share it with others via email. You can also use your audio message as an image caption.

Track student behaviour in class with this online points award system. You can email a report to parents at the end of the week. Can also track absences on this system. Awesome and free!!!

"Sharing data is hard. Emails have size limits, and setting up servers is too much work. We've designed a distributed system for sharing enormous datasets - for researchers, by researchers. The result is a scalable, secure, and fault-tolerant repository for data, with blazing fast download speeds."

Useful tips from a classroom teacher. "Using forms in Google docs lets anyone create forms quickly and share those forms via email, embed them into a webpage or blog. If you are a teacher, you can create formulas that allow you to have these forms graded in minutes. The formula part is a bit challenging, so I wrote this article to talk about how I recently created a final for one of my classes."

"Could there be a less expensive Google Glass competitor coming soon? GlassUp aims to give customers an alternative to Google's connected glasses with its own pair of augmented reality specs. Italian company GlassUp was recently added to crowdfunding site Indiegogo and has already raised nearly $25,000 (of its $150,000 goal). Similar to Google Glass, the eyewear works with your smartphone and makes it easy to see emails, text messages, Facebook updates and news right in front of your eyes. Its maker, Gianluigi Tregnaghi, says he created GlassUp two years ago - before Google ever announced its Glass product."

"I was wrong. One year ago I left the internet. I thought it was making me unproductive. I thought it lacked meaning. I thought it was "corrupting my soul. It's a been a year now since I "surfed the web" or "checked my email" or "liked" anything with a figurative rather than literal thumbs up. I've managed to stay disconnected, just like I planned. I'm internet free."

"The education sector is just beginning to experiment with, develop, and implement wearable technologies, though the potential applications are significant and vast. Smart jewelry or other accessories could alert students working in chemical laboratories to hazardous conditions, while wearable cameras can instantly capture hundreds of photographs or data about a user's surroundings on an offsite geology dig that can be later accessed via email or other online application."