Ed Tech Crew

App Inventor goes to MIT (via Darren Murphy)

Is it possible to be both a wired and unwired educator at the same time? Sounds like someone trying to explain Schrödinger's cat (the cat is both alive and dead at the same time, Google it).  I'm talking about being "an untethered teacher."  Sometimes, we end up tethered to the technology in our classroom.  To me, this is most evident with the interactive white board at the front of my classroom (I've intentionally omitted any particular brand name devices). Fortunately, I've been using AppleTV to untether myself from the front of the room.

Blog post from Angie Harrison outlining some of thinking and prep undertaken when she went with a BYOD project in her Primary school

"Thousands of video lessons covering Internet products you love or didn't know about. Teach and learn from your friends"

"With all these direct applications for learning, it's easy to justify using mobile devices in school. But what real and lasting effect will they have on the "formal" learning equation?" As we introduce mobile learning devices to students, we must avoid a mechanised education horror. It s time to remember the rich and complex nature of learning.

Helpful educators on Twitter submitted some of their favorite mobile learning websites, apps, and resources. Tony Vincent put these submissions into the set of posters that were placed around the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown at Mobile Learning Experience 2012. If you weren't at Mobile 2012 or missed some of the posters in person, they are posted here for your learning pleasure.

"You're a teacher at Park Lake Valley P-12 College, an ICT school of excellence. It is an old school with some amazing new buildings. The leafy suburb of Park Lake is located in one of Melbourne's major growth corridors. The school is in the midst of a process of reinvention, embracing change and facing the future." Sound familiar? Jump into this online game and enjoy!

"Textify.it visualizes images using text. Lots of text. Drag and drop images on to the page to start, every image produces a unique result!"

via @e_gran

"Textorizer allows you to make pictures formed with text." Excoffizer takes a picture and produces a vector rendition of the picture, made of parallel lines of varying thickness.""

via @e_gran

"WhenInTime is a web application that enables its users to create, view, explore, share and contribute to interactive digital timelines on the topic of their choice" ... including timelines composed from data feeds like Twitter

YOUSRC is much more than just a programming language. It is also a site where apps written in ELC can be shared with others. All source code (the human readable code that people program in) is freely available so you can see how people did things and learn from their skills.

Treasure Explorer is a rich educational website where students and teachers contribute socially and engage with Australian history. Treasure Explorer contributes to the National Library's important role of disseminating Australia's cultural heritage, for all Australians. It is an invaluable and creative networking tool for teachers, families and students to share and celebrate knowledge, passion and ideas about Australia. Treasure Explorer also provides an online resource to find out more about the objects, archives and stories represented in the National Library of Australia's Treasures Gallery in Canberra. Treasure Explorer was launched in October 2011. Development of this website was made possible by the generous funding of the Harold Mitchell Foundation.

Google Docs now has 450 free fonts.  And they look good!

"Create your live podcast with Spreaker. It's fun, simple and free." "Spreaker provides you with a user-friendly console to manage voice, special effects, and your music library

Interesting video about the future

"CodingBat is a free site of live coding problems to build coding skill in Java, and now in Python (example problem), created by Nick Parlante who is computer science lecturer at Stanford. The coding problems give immediate feedback, so it's an opportunity to practice and solidify understanding of the concepts. The problems could be used as homework, or for self-study practice, or in a lab, or as live lecture examples."

Infographics made easy All you have to know about creating an infographic with Infogr.am is the data you'd like to include. The site lets you pick from themes, allowing you to then fill it out with data using a WYSIWYG editor:

"Brain Pickings is your LEGO treasure chest, full of pieces across art, design, science, technology, philosophy, history, politics, psychology, sociology, ecology, anthropology, you-name-itology. Pieces that enrich your mental pool of resources and empower you to combine them into original concepts that are stronger, smarter, richer, deeper and more impactful. Please enjoy."

Been toying with the idea of using Augmented Reality in your classroom or library? Here's your chance to use the latest in AR to excite your students and get them looking at environmental issues through a new lens, then lens of their smart phone, iPad or tablet. If you are looking for a super #edtech way to engage your students, I have just the thing for you this World Environment Day - June 5. How about  a 700 x 1156 pixel poster which when scanned with the Augmented Reality (AR) app Layar will display rich  media elements.