Collateral Learning

Here are your top ten (in no particular order) links for the week:

Let’s start the Semester off right:

De-Stress the Holidays with Online Flash Games
A collection of goofy and somewhat addictive online games to help de-stress after the Winter Break.  My favorite: Penguin Rush.  (Some may be blocked from campus… but then again, why are you playing games at work?)

Vista Gadget of the Week:
Magic Folder
Keep things cleaned up on your Vista desktop with Magic Folder.  The Magic Folder is actually just a Windows Sidebar gadget that you can drag files to, and it can automatically sort them into the proper folders, based on rules which you can configure easily.  There are tons of great gadgets out there, this one actually serves a purpose.

Digital Ethics Links:  Using Images Without Violating Copyright!

Creative Commons
Creative Commons is an easy and free way to display the rights that you and others have over a piece of work.  For example, blogs are many times licensed under the “Share Alike” copyright which states that you may freely use the information from the blog as long as you give credit to the author as well as the work in which you are using the material is also Share Alike (meaning your work cannot be “all rights reserved”).  Teaching our students how Creative Commons works helps to teach them about plagiarism, rights, and ownership of work.

Flickr (Creative Commons Search)
Great for finding photographs taken by people who are willing to share their creativity, usually only asking in return that you give them credit for their work. When I find what I want, I save the attribution info in the title, so that if I ever want to use the file again, I will be sure to give the proper credit each time I use it.

Great Content Site of the Week: Politics

Capitol Words
See what words are used most frequently on Capital Hill and even see the favorite words of different lawmakers.  You can see who is the most vocal, who is the quietest and who says what the most.  Great for seeing if what Washington is talking about is actual what is important!

Great Web 2.0 Applications of the Week:

Glogster EDU
Glogster lets you create interactive posters.  The new education side is filtered and is a bit safer to use (the main Glogster site may contain inappropriate Glogs for younger audiences).  This would be a great way to make a Biography project or Book Report interactive and interesting.

Adam
Adam lets you take a static PDF or image and make it much more dynamic.  Take the image/pdf and add hotspots with pictures, video, text, and more to make your file dynamic and interactive.  For example, assign students to create travel maps of Spain and have them look online for pictures and videos of tourist sites and link them appropriately to the map.  This is also a great opportunity to teach copyright and proper use of digital media.  See this house floorplan as an example.

Zamzar
Zamzar lets you convert YouTube and other online videos into movie files that you can download to your computer.

Great Blog Posting for the Week:
How Educators Handle Difficult Parents

Environmental Link:
Ecofont
An interesting approach to conserving ink:  how much of a letter can be missing and it still be legible?  Like swiss cheese, there are small holes in the font that at smaller sizes are hardly noticeable.  Less ink used = less waste.  Conceptually it’s a neat idea, realistically I’m not sure how much it will be used.

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Technorati Tags: Creative Commons, digest, Flickr, games, Share Alike, Web 2.0, YouTube

Since I’ve been on the road for over a week, I haven’t had much of a chance to really take alook at my blog. Even now I’m posting using my Palm. While everyone is out making outlandish resolutions they’ll never be able to keep, I’ve decided to make my own. It won’t be easy, but I’ve decided on just one resolution that’ll impact me the most- I’ve decided that for 2009 I’ll be more positive. This won’t be easy since I am by nature a cynic, so being an optimist will take some effort. So here’s to 2009 and all the possibilities it has in store for us all.

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Warning:  Theology based rant!

I loved teaching the book of Genesis.  I enjoyed taking a text that so many of my students felt comfortable with and helping them develop a new perspective for evaluating the text.  I find Genesis to be the introduction to how to read the entire Bible- it establishes themes and motifs that are repeated throughout the text and once you can begin to understand how they were intended to be read in Genesis, you can then understand how later stories were to be read.   Genesis reads like a great novel- sex, war, betrayal, romance- it has it all, including environmental responsibility.  I’ve never been mistaken for a zealous, tree-hugging, hippy environmentalist, but my students may have questioned my tree-hugging status.  In Genesis, we are called to have “dominion” over all of creation (Genesis 1:28 NRSV), to rule over creation just as an effective king would rule over his people.  As we see with David and Saul (examples can be found throughout Judges, I and II Samuel, I and II Kings), an effective king is not one who rules with a selfish hunger for power (as we see leads to the fall of Saul) but one who rules with careful care over the people who are given into his care always mindful of the will of the creator who blessed him with that position.  The same goes with our call to the environment: we are to care for the environment and not abuse it selfishly.

After over a hundred years of fossil fuel consumption, we have a need to find alternative fuels and energy sources.  We drive vehicles that are not all that different than those first Model T’s to roll off Henry Ford’s assembly line.  Even hybrid and electric vehicles still drive on the same consumption and waste principles that have driven the auto industry into near financial ruin.  While we are working toward redesigning our entire infrastructure, we need to be doing our part to make changes where we have the power to make changes.  Look in our classrooms- are we recycling or are we printing out unnecessarily and then tossing those pages in the trash?  What lesson are we teaching to our students?  One of my biggest questions is “why do we take biodegradable trash and shove it into non-biodegradable trash bags?”  As I drive down the street, walls of 55-gallon trash bags crammed full of leaves create walls on either side of the road.  While at a park I watched as a young woman picked up her puppy’s “droppings” and placed them in a plastic bag and then tied it off before throwing it into another trash bag in a public trash can.  Why?  My kids have guilted me into recycling, but at the same time I still throw out at least five bags a week full of biodegradable trash.  It’s time we started taking a bigger stance so that our children learn from our example.  Is the solution biodegradable trash bags, less packaging on our products, less consumption, or maybe an all-out change of perspective?  Maybe we should rethink our infrastructure all together and become the leaders in transportation, technology, and growth once again.  We ought not look at becoming paperless and moving toward alternative fuels simply because it would save us money, rather we need to be evaluating whether or not these policies are a proper way of caring for our dominion.

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Technorati Tags: Bible, Energy, rant, Religion

Your “Holiday” Link:

Norad Tracks Santa
Countdown to Santa and then track the big guy on his travels.  Want to know where Santa is when you’re out and about?  Download Google Maps to your mobile device (PDA, iPhone/iPod Touch, etc), search for “norad santa” and get live tracking information!

Great links for the Week:

Spoken Text
Spoken text lets you create an account and upload documents and PDFs to be converted to audio files.  It will create a MP3s and other audio files that can be put onto an iPod or MP3 player to listen to later.  Great for uploading a paper so that the student can hear their work read to them for review.  One catch- you can only have five files at a time (but you can delete them) and they are only saved online for one day.  You have to download them if you want to save them.

Diigo
Diigo allows you to highlight and annotate any webpage and then send your annotations to anyone, even if they don’t have a Diigo account.  This would be a great way to help students to use and evaluate websites for research.  Have them highlight and comment on a page and send the link to you for you to review.  Here is an example of a posting on my blog as I highlighted and commented on it:
http://www.diigo.com/annotated/2dfa123ad7ccb9d1bd57252fa06c4098
A great way of using this site would be to find resources for your students, comment on them and then send them the Diigo links rather than just saying “Go to the internet and Google…”  This could be a great way to demonstrate to your students how to research on the internet.

Edublog of the Week:

A Geeky Momma’s Blog
Lee Kolbert of Boca Raton, Florida runs this blog with some great tech tips.  She can also be found on Twitter: http://twitter.com/teachakidd

Favorite Post of the Week:

“The Ultimate Disruption for Schools” by Will Richarson
Will’s interesting take on how technology can empower students to be the administrators of their own education.

Google Earth Links of the Week:

Google Earth Blog
A blog with news and information about Google Earth.

Google Earth Lessons
Lessons, turtorials, and more for Google Earth.

Lower School Link of the Week:

Storynory
Free audio stories and fairy tales for kids.

Great Application of the Week:

Skype
Skype is a great program that lets you talk to other Skype users over your computer- basically using your computer like a phone.  It also lets you do video calls, instant messaging, and for a small fee you can even call land line phones.  For a monthly fee you can replace your home phone with a Skype account and be able to use your phone whereever you have wireless access!  A good friend of mine uses it to keep in touch with her sister and brother-in-law who are missionaries in Africa- she can call, have video chats with her nephew, conference call with her sister in Miami, brother in San Antonio, mom in East TN, and sister in Africa all at the same time and all for free!

SkypeInSchools
Collection of educators Skype names.

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Technorati Tags: digest, google, Skype, Twitter

I realized that I was sending out way too many emails to my teachers so I’ve decided to sum it up in a “weekly digest” format.  Granted, many have appreciated the links I’ve sent, but many also ignore them.  By inundating them with fifteen or twenty emails a week, they begin to just ignore them.  Teachers are too overworked and as such may be forced to ignore great ideas simply because they don’t have time to implement them.  By sending out so many emails, I feel that I may have been adding to their burden.  Now I’m making it easier for them to just ignore one email a week instead of the multitude .  So here it is, my first installment:

Teachers’ Social Network:
Teachers Recess
Create a profile, chat, and network with other teachers is this free site.  There is a place to buy and sell supplies to/from other teachers, a live chat, personal blogs, a repository for you to upload files, and coming soon there will be an instant messaging feature.

EduBlog of the Week:
The Cool Cat teacher Blog
Great Educational Blog by Vicki Davis.  She is quite active on Twitter (see below) and has tons of great ideas and help.

Favorite Blog Posting of the Week:
No time to Pee: Making the case for teachers to empower their own profession

Want to make your own “YouTube” like page?
BoostCast
Free site with some great features, but as with all things free, the ads get a little annoying.

Want to poll your students using their computers and cell phones?
Poll Everywhere
Create a free account and take a poll of up to 30 users at a time.  They can text in an answer or use their computer.  You get live results that you can export into a PowerPoint and display to the class.

Keeping up with your colleagues in 140 characters or less… Twitter
Twitter

Similar to your status in Facebook, Twitter lets you connect to friends and colleagues and connect to them in short 140 character updates.  Great place to ask questions, look for resources, or just taunt your neighbor.

Looking for Twitter accounts for teachers?
Twitter4Teachers (PBWiki)

Have no clue what Twitter is?  Here is some helpful guides:
Sue Waters’ PLN Yourself Blog
Twitter for Dummies
10 Easy Steps for Twitter Beginners
How to: Build Your Community on Twitter
How to NOT: Build Your Community on Twitter
The Twitter Glossary

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Technorati Tags: digest, edtech, Twitter