Group items tagged

Plagiarism Tool for Teachers.  Able to search urls, upload a variety of file formats, or copy and past chunks of text

"August 1, 2011, 5:51 pm By Rachel Wiseman College students with very poor vision have had to struggle to see a blackboard and take notes-basic tasks that can hold some back. Now a team of four students from Arizona State University has designed a system, called Note-Taker, that couples a tablet PC and a video camera, and could be a major advance over the small eyeglass-mounted telescopes that many students have had to rely on. It recently won second place in Microsoft's Imagine Cup technology competition. (...) The result was Note-Taker, which connects a tablet PC (a laptop with a screen you can write on) to a high-resolution video camera. Screen commands get the camera to pan and zoom. The video footage, along with audio, can be played in real time on the tablet and are also saved for later reference. Alongside the video is a space for typed or handwritten notes, which students can jot down using a stylus. That should be helpful in math and science courses, says Mr. Hayden, where students need to copy down graphs, charts, and symbols not readily available on a keyboard. (...) But no tool can replace institutional support, says Chris S. Danielsen, director of public relations for the [NFB]. "The university is always going to have to make sure that whatever technology it uses is accessible to blind and low-vision students," he says. (Arizona State U. has gotten in hot water in the past in just this area.) (...) This entry was posted in Gadgets."

Joy Resmovits Aug. 5, 2011 ""We have become increasingly concerned with the proposed contract," Michael Mulgrew and Richard Iannuzzi, who respectively head New York City's and the state's teachers' unions, wrote in the note. The letter is addressed to New York State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, state Commissioner of Education John King, Jr., and copied to State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli. "It is especially troubling that Wireless Generation will be tasked with creating a centralized student database for personal information even as its parent company, News Corporation, stands accused of engaging in illegal news gathering tactics, including the hacking of private voicemail accounts," the letter reads. Murdoch acquired 90 percent of Wireless Generation for about $360 million last November. At the time of the acquisition, Murdoch said he saw K-12 education as a "$500 billion sector." Murdoch's first general move in the education sector had come just a few weeks earlier, when he tapped Joel Klein, then the chancellor of New York City's schools, to lead his education ventures. The Wireless Generation contracts were approved while Klein still ran the district, leading to speculation about the chancellor's intentions."

The updated 2006 copy of the National Reading Panel teacher's guide to give a framework for using the findings of the 200 national Reading Panel in the classroom. This is another guidebook for teachers and curriculum directors.

At first, it may look like they're taking part in a graduation ceremony, but the students who march across the stage at Maine's Falmouth Audubon Society to shake hands with their principal and teachers aren't walking away with diplomas. They're walking away with tangible results of their learning. In this particular case, the eighty-five seventh graders from King Middle School in Portland each received a copy of "Fading Footprints," a CD-ROM they produced about Maine's endangered species. During the ceremony, which included thank-yous to teachers and experts who had helped on the project, some students explained the process. "I made sure all the links worked." Others talked a little about what they learned. "You can ask me anything about the harlequin duck." Then they all repaired to a courtyard for cake and punch.

Public domain image resources is a copy of the master wikipedia page at Meta, which lists a number of sources of public domain images on the Web. The presence of a resource on this list does not guarantee that all or any of the images in it are in the public domain. You are still responsible for checking the copyright status of images before you submit them to Wikipedia.

Although the First Amendment may appear unconditional on its face, the right to speak and write freely has never been absolute. Intellectual property rights often prevail over an author's "creative license." The main benefit of copyright, for example, is the right to exclude others from making copies of a work (or any part of it) without permission. By protecting an author's expression, copyright guarantees that authors and other creators, derive financial benefits from their work. If you intend to use someone's copyrighted work, unless the use is considered a "fair use" (which is technically a defense to copyright infringement), you must obtain that person's written permission. Under federal law, only the copyright owner or someone acting with the owner's authority, such as a publisher, can grant that permission. Without written permission, you expose yourself to legal risks. While not every unauthorized use of a copyrighted work is an infringement, whenever you include another person's words, illustrations, photographs, charts or graphs in a work you publish, you must be sensitive to the risk of infringing someone's copyright. What follows are some common copyright permission myths.

Creates super easy html & text attribution that can be copied & pasted directly from a flickr page. Pretty dern sweet.

Awesome tutorial for administrators of the free SMF software. Do not copy and paste on this page, the server will ban you by IP address. Use the print links on the right hand side of the page in different parts of the site to print the pages correctly. Check out the second page also. This is most awesome and user friendly tutorial for installing and administration of the SMF software.

VocabGrabber analyzes any text you're interested in, generating lists of the most useful vocabulary words and showing you how those words are used in context. Just copy text from a document and paste it into the box, and then click on the "Grab Vocabulary!" button. VocabGrabber will automatically create a list of vocabulary from your text, which you can then sort, filter, and save.

Download a free copy of Media Meltdown, media literacy graphic novel for 8-14 year olds. Teacher resources, media lit games and more at site.

"This pdf includes 18 lessons organized in two ways: by comprehension strategy - defining, summarizing and comparing and by target reader - non-reader, word caller and turned-off reader. "

Free comic book about copyright that teaches you everything you need to know. You can even remix it. There are multiple translations as well (and you can buy a hard copy.) Awesome tool to use.

Great article outlining copyright, fair use and explaning the 5 principles of fair use in education.

Web tool for selecting things. Enter up to 100 choices and spin on the site, embed on your own site or share the link. You can enter choices by copying and pasting choices into a single textbox, making it simple to draft on an offline document.

"A very simple noughts and crosses template slide for PowerPoint. Just add questions or pictures and copy into a presentation."

"Building a rich vocabulary, across the curriculum, is one of the main aims for most teachers. Not only does a rich vocabulary help to create strong writing skills, but also can help with improving access to all areas of the curriculum. In his book, Andrew Jennings explains why vocabulary should be a focus in your classroom, providing resources and inspiration to help optimise vocabulary learning. Resources include a focus on SPaG facts, key vocab words that support various popular primary topics, an etymology section to inspire pupils, and looking at various grammatical features that can help build a repertoire of rich vocabulary. Throughout, the book provides other resources that can be copied for classroom use, or be used to take home to help build vocabulary skills away from the school setting."

Microsoft has announced an initiative as part of the ConnectED movement in the US. Here are the details: "Windows 8.1 Pro Operating System: One of the most powerful and flexible operating systems for education, it provides the ability for students and teachers to use education apps and Microsoft Office, search for information across their device and the web, and is optimized for touch, education apps, research, productivity and digital inking, critical keys to better learning outcomes. Office 365 Education Communication and Collaboration Tool: Email, sites, online and offline document editing and storage, IM, and web conferencing capabilities for all you students for free. Plus 5 copies of Office for free for more than 12 million students at qualified institutions. Partners in Learning Network Teacher Training and Resources: Partners in Learning provides educators with a network of nearly 1 million educators from 136 countries. It offers them a forum where they can share ideas, find free lesson plans to inspire classroom learning and develop professionally. Bing for Schools Ad-free search: An ad-free digital literacy platform aimed at helping students learn important digital skills based on access to a connected computing device, daily common-core aligned lesson plans, and a safe, private environment where search history will not be mined for data. Student training and resources: Microsoft IT Academy: For roughly 2,000 high-needs schools, Microsoft is providing academic institutions and their educators, students, and staff with digital curriculum and certification for fundamental technology skills. Affordable Broadband from EveryoneOn: A critical component to connected learning, Microsoft's non-profit partner EveryoneOn is offering home Internet service for as low $10 to the 36 million Americans living in low-income communities."

This is how you link to a specific starting point in a YouTube video. Basically, just add #t=XmYs to the end of the video URL.  X is the number of minutes and Y is the seconds you want skipped when the video is viewed.

Right after posting this, I realized there is now a Share option on the YouTube site that you can use to make this even easier. While viewing the YouTube video: 1) pause the video at the point where you want others to start watching, 2) click the Share button, 3) click options (directly under the link), 4) put a check in the Start at box, and finally 5) copy the link provided by YouTube. Note that you can also type in the start at time as minutes:seconds. The #t part of the link that makes the video start at the spot you specified is included in the link.