A couple of days ago I came across some information for USFirst.org and the Utah First Lego League. This is an amazing organization which promotes students using math, science, and engineering skills to design robots for a competition. The organization promotes teamwork, research, and problem solving. For high school groups the regional competition for the robots will be held on March. 19 -20 at the Huntsman Center on the University of Utah campus. Take a sneak peak at some of the action:
On Tuesday February 2nd, Frontline is exploring what life is like in the digital world. This should be a must watch as we look at the digital natives and what we can do to keep up. Take a sneak peak:
All the talk right now is about Apple’s big announcement for their new tablet computing device. If you haven’t heard much about this yet, it will basically look like an iPod Touch but quite a bit larger. It will have a wireless 3G connection, like an iPhone – giving the user constant Internet access. Just like the iPhone and iPod Touch you’ll have access to the App Store, providing students with a wide array of educational applications (as well as a bunch of fun games!). Here’s a demo of what a tablet would look like for a magazine – say Sports Illustrated.
Google Chrome isn’t new. It’s actually been out for a while. What is new is there’s now a Mac version of the browser. I’ve been playing with it for the past couple of days and really like the speed of downloading. Pages come up very quickly in this browser. Also, there are some cool security features, including incognito mode – where no private data is cached (like your passwords or account info).
Like everything Google, it has some great searching features. The primary address bar also serves as a Google search bar, simply type in the term and your Google search results show up.
Is Google Chrome going to become my primary browser? Not sure yet. But I can definitely say it worth a look…
Just when you thought you’d seen the last new version of Picasa for a while, out comes Version 3.5. Not a full blown overhaul, but some great new features I think you’ll enjoy. In this version of Picasa you have the ability to scan faces and tag images based upon who is in the picture. It takes a few minutes for Picasa to scan the photos, but it does a pretty good job once you tell it the names associated with the faces. Another cool feature is the ability to geotag images based upon location. You can sort your pictures based upon where they were taken. There are few other new features to test, but for a complete overview watch the video below.
If you’re looking for an easy and fun way for your students to create their own comic strips, you need to check out Pixton.com. The site does require that you get a free login and password, but once you’ve done that it’s easy to get started creating comics. You can choose from several templates (called Quickie Comics) that you can easily customize, or start completely from scratch. I’ve seen many comics sites in the past, but what makes this one stand out is all the customization it lets you do. You can customize every aspect of each character in your comic, resize and rotate them (even in the third dimension), change their facial expressions and their clothing, and much more. You can publish your finished comic, email it to people, embed it in a blog, remix other people comics, and even buy merchandise with your comic printed on it. Pixton is by far the best online comic creator I’ve used. Thanks to Mitchell for referring me to it. I will be adding Pixton to UEN’s Multimedia Projects course.
For the past year or so Google has been working on a new product called Google Voice. This is the update to a service called Grand Central that allowed you to have all your phones connected to ONE central phone number. That’s right, rather than having 3 phone numbers (home, work, and cell) all associated with you – you can have one number that connects to the phone you choose. So, I can have my wife’s call go to both my office and my cell and I can simply answer the phone I have access to at that time. Awesome. There are a bunch of other great features too, so be sure to check it out at http://google.com/voice.
I know what many of you out there are thinking – What?! YouTube, there’s no way to even access YouTube in my classroom. My district blocks YouTube. While that may be the case, here’s an interesting take on how and why to look at YouTube as a teaching tool. Take a look.
Digital images are great teaching tools. Many of our students are visual learners and we can demonstrate complex concepts using one or two images, rather than paragraphs of text.
Take the issue of climate change. Rather than go through tons of textual information, look at the images from Teachers’ Domain : Documenting climate change. In this lesson photos are used to compare 6 pairs of photos from different Alaskan glaciers. One photo was taken in 1908 and the other was taken in 2008. Look at the difference a century makes to these glaciers. What a great way to illustrate a concept!
Many of you are asking why we should think about Twitter when it comes to education. In a recent issue of Tech & Leaning came a possible response.
Nine Reasons to Twitter in Schools By Laura Walker
Why should educators get involved with Twitter? Here are nine reasons.
1. Together we’re better
Twitter can be like a virtual staffroom where teachers can access in seconds a stream of links, ideas, opinions, and resources from a hand-picked selection of global professionals.
2. Global or local: you choose
With Twitter, educators can actively compare what’s happening in their with others on different continents. GPS-enabled devices and advanced web search facility allow searches that tell you what people are tweeting within a certain distance of a location, so if the other side of the world isn’t your bag, you can stick with your own patch.
3. Self-awareness and reflective practice
Excellent teachers reflect on what they are doing in their schools and look at what is going well in order to maintain and develop it, and what needs improvement in order to make it better. Teachers on Twitter share these reflections and both support and challenge each other.
4. Ideas workshop and sounding board
Twitter is a great medium for sharing ideas and getting instant feedback. You can gather a range of opinions and constructive criticism within minutes, which can help enormously, whether you are planning a learning experience, writing a policy, or putting a job application together.
5. Newsroom and innovation showcase
Twitter helps you stay up-to-date on news and current affairs, as well as on the latest developments in areas of interest like school leadership and technology.
6. Professional development and critical friends
One of the best things about training days is the break-out time between sessions, when teachers can get together to talk about what they are working on or struggling with. Twitter enables users to have that kind of powerful networking capacity with them all the time. It’s just a matter of finding the right people to follow.
7. Quality-assured searching
Trust the people you follow. Hone and develop the list of people whose insights you value. Once your Twitter network grows past a critical mass, you can ask them detailed questions and get higher-quality information back than a Google search would generally provide.
8. Communicate, communicate, communicate
Expressing yourself in 140 characters is a great discipline. You can become better at saying what needs to be said in my professional communications with less waffle and padding (even without txtspk).
9. Getting with the times has never been so easy!
Twitter is anything but complicated! You simply visit Twitter.com and create your account. A little light searching using key words for your areas of interest will soon yield a list of interesting people to follow. There are plenty of Web sites offering advice on getting started and how to avoid a few common beginners’ faux-pas. Your biggest challenge is likely to be getting the twitter.com unblocked on your school network if your main usage will be at school.
February 8, 2010 
Posted in Gaming, Jared, Teaching tool 
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Many of you are asking why we should think about Twitter when it comes to education. In a recent issue of