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Zamzar is an awesome tool for educators who are going the extra mile trying to use technology in the classroom. Too many times educators receive files from other schools or colleagues that just don't work on their computer because of different operating systems and software platforms. With Zamzar you can take files of many different file types and have them be converted to another file type. There isn't any software that needs to be downloaded; just internet access.

Takes some of the math out of Physical Science that can be a barrier for some students.

This article, written by EDUDEMIC author, Jeff Dunn, offers 5 distinct reasons why schools need to move toward Digital Textbooks/ebooks as opposed to traditional paper books/texts. He begins by adding support to his stance by citing Ed Secretary, Arne Duncan's call to make "textbooks obsolete". Among Dunn's reasons and pertinent to our Media/Inform Literacy discussion are these ideas: Using digital texbooks or ebooks on line, allows for students to interact with the book. Some books have videos, highlighting/notetaking features, moveable models and interactive diagrams. In addition, such technological books are more immediate-they are simply accessed by the press of a button. Arne Duncan also remarked that the US is lagging behind other countries in converting to these computerized books. With states desiring a lead position in education in the US, and Obama's push (Connect Ed) campaign to have all schools connected (internet/computer/tech), this transition to Digital Text/ebooks seems a likely probability-and exciting one too. Though sitting back, especially in a beach chair, with a paper book still holds an appeal for me.

There are some amazing tools listed on these sites, including a Mind42 map of Web 2.0 Tools. I can see that my map is quite lacking compared to these. But, now I have an idea as to what to aim for. It would be great to set my students loose of some of these tools. "If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow." (John Dewey). This has been one of my favourite quotes along with "We need to prepare our students/children for jobs that have not been created yet" (Unknown). For me, they sum up what we as teachers need to strive for and that we need to keep on trying to stretch ourselves and our students...after all, we are 13% of the way through the 21st Century. It's exciting.