This amazing website helps you find open source alternatives to just about any type of software.

Great place to go find free open source alternatives to software. As you cut your budget for next year look here to see what you should use instead!

igoogle gadget to help you find open source software

Those people who are open source junkies -- this is a great google gadget custom search engine to add to your igoogle or gadget. It will help you easily find open source software.

Linux app finder website.

For those using linux, this linux app finder helps you find what will replace other apps that you may be used to.

Adobe Air has new apps become available daily.

Adobe Air will let you store searches on craig's list and access them even when your computer is offline. Adobe Air has some cool things that are coming and this is just one of them. I wonder how it will affect download time?

I love this article which talks about the most common problems when people call customer service. I believe that as I teach my students I should help them become technically fluent to minimize these problems and maximize their potential in this increasingly technical world. The most common problems are: * Users don't know the terminology to describe the problem they have or to know what to look for. * Users haven't studied the problem long enough. * Users don't recognize details or signs which might aid in understanding the problem. * Users might not have easy access to the documentation, may not be qualified to understand it (because of language barriers or technical level), or they may simply not have the time or energy to use it. * Users might be unaware of the status of their computer/account/browser and/or they might be limited in their ability to obtain this information. * Users might have received incorrect or misleading information from someone else, or they might have made incorrect assumptions about the product. * Users may be familiar with one kind of product and lack the appropriate mental model for knowing how the product is supposed to work. * Users might have previous problems in the past and found it easier just to call technical support than to risk aggravating the problem when trying to fix it.

Information on how to help users become more proficient at being helped.

Current comparisons of computer science and introductory computer science courses from the Computer Science teachers Association. I find it interesting that only 33% of schools require such a course and that the #2 choice for professional development for Computer Science teachers is now online networking.

Interesting results comparing the last two years of computer science teachers association surveys.

Information about the tapped in festival.

Tapped in has been a mainstay in education and a non threatening method of using chat to link with people around the world. This longstanding contributor to education has its 2008 Tapped In Festival scheduled for July 23 and July 24th with some neat things planned. This website has more information for you and certificates of participation will be available for those who participates. Teachers should connect in which ever way they feel most comfortable and the power of embedded networks should never be ignored.

Cool (not free though) website with some really nifty gizmos.

I think we're going to see more companies that have valid, standards based games like this one for elementary science and math. This isn't free but you can have a free trial and try the games free for 5 minutes. I think that games are going to be part of what we do and smart textbook companies would behoove themselves to embed games as part of the curriculum for each chapter. I wish my school could do something like this, another thing to look at.

Cool website with home experiments.

Cool experiement site that I'll be using this summer with my children.

Diipty lets you build timelines of all kinds - so cool.

Cool - you can also make personal flip books with chronoligies of your own content production. This is fascinating on dippity.

The time tube I built for flat classroom -- this is cool.

This is very cool -- You can use timetube to build a video flipbook or map on a topic of interest - it is fascinating to see the time tube for flat classroom. This is cool.

A social network for elementary students.

A social network for first and second graders -- this is free. Cheryl says it is a little bit "clunky" -- access is not so fast, however, it is a growing free tool for very young children.

This is a cool grant requiring a 100 word essay about how technology benefits and helps education and is one I'll be doing in the fall -- it is only open to schools in the US but it is public and private -- check the website for rules and good luck. Info from their site: "Each year, Samsung's Hope for Education holds a contest where students from schools nationwide can write a 100-word essay about how technology benefits and helps education. In 2008, the top winner receives a grand prize of over $200,000 worth of Samsung technology, Microsoft software and cash grants from DIRECTV, as well as the SCHOOL CHOICE® educational television programming package. Entries are open now. Contest will run until August 31, 2008."

win a $200,000 grant by having your students write essays. This is exciting.

Exciting description of a wonderful individual research project at the elementary level with limited resources and a very hard working teacher.

I love the pictures on this blog showing the students using the computer, on the floor... everywhere, working on individual research projects. (Got to this blog to see the final products.) At first I said, "display boards?" but then I realized the amount of computer work required to create these display boards and I saw the age of the students and the number of computers in this classroom. This is a tremendous amount of work. Applause here from me to Kristi, another teacher blogger who I "met" from yesterday's post (hey go back to yesterdays and leave yours!)

Educator who is blogging and sharing some great information with teachers.

Kudos to Brooksie, a new blogger that I found when she left her link on my blog today. Such a great resource. She's doing a nice job!

Animoto gives free full length video capabilities to educators. So cool!

Brooksie over at CD Tech (http://gcedtech.blogspot.com/2008/04/animoto.html) showed me this. Brooksie left a message introducing me to her blog on yesterday's post and wow, I learned something new! Animoto will giv eyou a FREE code to make full length videos on animoto! This is a really cool free tool but we've been using the 30 second version! I didn't know we could use the full version for fREE! Wow! So cool

Great article about how to build good relationships with bloggers. I wish the countless people I've never heard of who e-mail me to write about their product would read this one. It is about building relationships!

How to build relationships with bloggers.

Cool firefox extension for capturing screen shots.

Cool cool cool firefox extension that creates and edits screenshots of web pages. Soo cool!

Cool World environment day activities. - June 5th.

World Environment Day - -share what you'redoing -- this is June 5th - it is for New Zealand but it is something I think that others may participate in.

Cool school project.

A cool project for middle school students - Living archives is fascinating.