Issues and Trends

Awesome website that provides students interactive information surrounding the human body and health.

Providing medically accurate information surrounding comprehensive sexuality health education.

Great website to provide scientifically accurate information regarding drug education to teens.

Picasa is a great application by Google, it allows you to upload and edit photos. A great web 2.0 tool that could be implemented into an activity. I love using Picasa, since photography is one of my many hobbies!

I love using Picasa! Every since I learned about it I use it for personal editing and professional editing! It's so easy to manipulate and very fun! I think that both students would love using this as an interactive tool in a class! I also think that it's fun and great for teachers to use as well!

I've used Picasa before and it seemed simple enough to use. I think the upper elementary grades would definitely be capable of using this but I would maybe wonder if something like iPhoto would be a little easier for them to use? I've had a little better experience with that. If you were trying to get teachers to use the software I also think iPhoto might make them a little nervous about using photo editing programs. People tend to have good thoughts more often than not when they think of Apple.

This is an education web resource about tropical storms. It tells you how a tropical storm forms and also tells the scale of a tropical storm. This is how they tell how bad a storm is going to be.

Paige - This site comes in handy as we are getting ready to start studying tropical storms next week. This is a site I would you to help illustrate information regarding tropical storms or let students research information.

This is a a very cool and can be used for sharing information for projects and collaborative working among students. This can also be used between instructors as well for collaboration among projects, curriculum, and anything else that need be. 

Blog to share ideas and resources with teachers, parents, and young people.

Blog to share ideas and resources with teachers, parents, and young people.

Megan, I love reading and checking out blogs. Especially when they relate to education! Lisa Nielsen's blog seems to be a great resource for not only teachers, but parents and students too. I think that it can help impact and benefit aspiring teachers because it has so many resources and ideas related to education!

Check out this blog by the "Educational Technology Guy". It provides lots of posts about educational resources!

Check out this wiki created by CMS itWeekly. This wiki provides weekly podcasts relating to questions regarding education and technologies!

Check out the blog of UNI's very own, Dr. Leigh Zeitz, better known at Dr. Z! His blog talks about the perks of educational technology.

This shows the different steps and trimesters of the babies growth. This could be used in a health class or sex ed. class.  

A wiki about dolphins, describing what they are and giving information on dolphins background.

A wiki about dolphins, describing what they are and giving information on dolphins background.

This educational resource describes the different breeds of cats from Maine Coons to Pixiebob and many more. By clicking on one of your favorite or preferred breed information on that breed will pop up.

This educational resource describes the different breeds of cats from Maine Coons to Pixiebob and many more. By clicking on one of your favorite or preferred breed information on that breed will pop up.

This is Dr. Jeff Masters blog on hurricanes in Hong Kong. I would use this blog to teach kids about how dangerous a hurricane can be.

This is Dr. Jeff Masters blog on hurricanes in Hong Kong. I would use this blog to teach kids about how dangerous a hurricane can be.

An online guide for Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in classrooms grades kindergarten to 12th grade.

An online guide for Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in classrooms grades kindergarten to 12th grade.

There are a lot of resources here for all classrooms, teachers, and students. It is divided up into 14 different categories and everything that I've looked at is free to your classroom. I've been searching for a few resources, such as a good audio-to-speech converter and some better graphics organizer sites. I typically have students create a end of the semester portfolio that documents all of their learning and their final products in various categories and I can see how sites like Cacoo, Organizely, and Popplet could really help me out.

A webpage that allows teachers to interact with students online. It reminds me of eLearning.

A webpage that allows teachers to interact with students online. It reminds me of eLearning.

I used Edmodo for about four years and I loved just about every minute of it. For a long time, I swore by Edmodo, as it had the most capabilities and services, and tried to convert most teachers to at least trying it out with one class. The site has definitely changed over the last few years, adding new features and even an App Store, however there are so many new LMS resources out there now, that I kinda felt like Edmodo has started to lag behind and is often playing catch-up. I also started to get kids in class complaining that it was just too much like Facebook and that it was really difficult to find assignments and resources easily. I've since switched to Schoology (https://www.schoology.com/home.php) and it has fixed nearly every complaint and problem I had with Edmodo. It gives the teacher more customization options and it is really easy to grade assignments and quizzes. Students have also told me that it's way easier to know where assignments are and what they are supposed to do and how to turn it in. Don't get me wrong, Edmodo is still very awesome and it will help you become a better at your management of assignments, just know that there is a lot of competition and innovation happening from other sources. Great post!

I have to do a lot of file conversion as apart of my subject area, especially Drafting and Design. I also have students who have projects that require file conversion as well. This resource has proven to be invaluable as it has nearly every file format you can possibly think of and it does all the conversion in the cloud. Therefore, it is not slowing down your computer and it will email you when it is finished.

A major push in my district and in the State of Iowa, is to get students reading more technical documents. Like you, I only have so much time to try and go out to find articles that will be interesting and relevant to students, so I use Scoop.it to do the hard work for me. I have it setup to email me once a day with stories and articles that are based around my subject area. You can absolutely do the same for your subject area!

If you teach in any of the STEM subject areas, you need to check out this blog. I regularly check back for different resources in my area of Technology Education, however there are great resources for everyone as well. There are also some ideas for lessons that you can implement into your classes using the tools that he talks about.

This is a free site where users can submit designs that they have created for 3D Printers. Most prints are guaranteed to work with Makerbot 3D Printers, but most prints are designed to be universal.