Group items tagged

**FOR GEEKY WEBMASTERS ONLY*** For you webmasters out there, I've found a really cool tool to make killer drop down menus that is worth the cost. Also, this is the information on how to make menus or other items appear IN FRONT OF flash objects on a web page. (I've had trouble w/ this forever!) Follow these instructions from this site: "To allow the layering of Flash content with DHTML content you have to do the following with the Flash Object tag: * Add the following parameter to the tag: ; * Add the following parameter to the tag: wmode="transparent" "

Tool for making cool drop down menus on your website AND instructions for putting the menus in front of a flash object.

"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

New list of 100 edu twitterers

Lists do always get a lot of people riled up, but I did find some interesting tweeters on this list to follow. Some of them I wouldn't add, but some are cool. If you want to see some great twitterers -- my follow list is around 1600 and there are some amazing people that I'm following who just totally blow me away. (Add more daily.) Just go to http://www.twitter.com/coolcatteacher and click following to see them. Twitter is really a great tool for learning.

At its best, Twitter is a place to share a resource, a link to a new blog post, or an insight, and even a place to have a little fun. It's a place that could be about learning. At its very worst, Twitter is a self-indulgent exercise in self-promotion and pettiness.

I read Joel Comm's book Twitter Power and it has been one of my longtime favorites on the topic. Here he talks brutally about the negatives of social media. I admit the topic caught my attention. I"ve just found that if I'm brutal about who I follow and make sure they're real educators, I'm usually pretty happy with my stream. I unfollow junk as soon as it is evident it is junk. Ultimately we all must guard who we follow or we might just find ourselves following the garbage truck.

This company is suing @phonedog (name since changed) since he left the company and changed his userid keeping the twitter followers (some 17k he had accumulated.) Expect increasing scrutiny and debates on who owns the followers of people tweeting on behalf of companies.

The top 50 people to watch in education in Australia. I enjoy looking at these lists and also following those who are thought leaders / educators. (I don't really follow politicians in the movements.) We have a lot to learn from each other.

Twitter is going to "rate" your tweets in the hopes of giving you and developers better content. Again, those late to the game may have trouble being heard, but I'd like to think there is always a way to be valuable. Never assume that because everyone is following someone that they have something worth saying - decide who YOU want to follow and that is enough. Of course, when this happens, expect the usual uproar of those who are valued and not valued, as for me, I hope I can resist the urge to start comparing in sharing and just try to stay helpful. From Mashable..."The value judgements will be assigned to the public metadata of tweeters' posts, and used by Twitter's streaming API to help developers more selectively curate massive amounts of status updates. Designations of "none," "low" and "medium" will most likely debut on Feb. 20, according to a post by developer advocate Arne Roomann-Kurrik on the Twitter developers' blog. A "high" value option will be rolled out sometime after the initial batch."

Are you coping with your 'to do' list? How about following other people's lists? This site allows users to share and follow to do lists to better collaborate and organise together. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

OK, so if you're looking for an amazing resource on Pinterest, Megan is it. With over 2703 followers, she's got a lot of classroom ideas for almost everything. A definite go-to person. I'm following all of her boards. If you want to see a pinterest-expert in action, this is it.

TEacher Alfonso Gonzalez @educatoral is Using World of Warcraft in eight grade science. He's transparently sharing what they are doing and how they're doing it. I'm following what he's doing and many others are as well. I'm fascinated to see how he'll doing but if he's following Peggy Sheehy - she is the one who really knows how to use WOW with almost any subject.

Mia MacMeekin makes amazing infographics and so much more. She's worth following on Twitter and you definitely want to add her to your RSS Reader -- she's been making infographics for a while and some of her recent ones are awesome (and some older ones - admittedly, I need to go through all of them.) Thought you'd want to know about her to follow her - she's @MiaMacMeekin on Twitter.

Hashtag page for necc -- one of the tags that may be used.

For those of you who don't twitter but would like to follow what twitterers are saying about NECC -- this is one of the hashtags that may be used. To make this work for you, you must be following @hashtags and then use #necc in your title -- I like it sans date, but am finding some people using #necc08 and #necc2008. I'll probably use #necc to save tweetspace.

"50 Twitter Feeds to Follow Higher Education News"

The following is a transcript of a teaching experiment, using the Socratic method, with a regular third grade class in a suburban elementary school. I present my perspective and views on the session, and on the Socratic method as a teaching tool, following the transcript.

"what strategies and plans can senior staff follow to ensure that they are truly making a difference to the work-life balance of teaching colleagues? Following a recent #UKEdChat session (click here to view), our community came up with a collection of ideas which you can adapt yourself, or share with the senior leaders in your school to set into motion to help improve the work-life balance of all staff."

"History by Era" is the Institute's innovative new approach to our shared national history. At its core it is a collection of fifty individual introductions written by some of the most distinguished scholars of our day. It thus speaks to the reader not in one voice, but in fifty different, unique voices as each of these scholars interprets the developments, movements, events, and ideas of a particular era. Each Era follows the same template so that readers can move easily from one to another. An introduction to the time period is followed by essays by leading scholars; primary sources with images, transcripts, and a historical introduction; multimedia presentations by historians and master teachers; interactive presentations; and lesson plans and other classroom resources. Read an Introduction to History by Era from our senior editor, Carol Berkin, for more detailed information.

"Let me introduce you to Brian. Brian is a (fictional) primary school head teacher in England, UK. Well, maybe not fictional, as many working in schools will relate to the story created by Will Ryan in his 'Dare to be Different' book. Following the internal dialogues, reflections and incidents that Brian is faced with on a daily basis, the story unfolds telling how an individual can strive to take back ownership of what happens in the classroom and build vibrant curriculum with which to hook the imaginations of pupils. How? Will has cleverly inserted over 100 tips based on exciting primary practice, along with nearly fifty significant ideas to strengthen leadership, and accompanied a similar number of inspiring quotations throughout the story that encourages head-teachers to be brave and follow their own rules for what is best for that school community."