Tech Tips for the Week of December 14 - Go Phish, bighugelabs.com, easybib.com

Unlike the narrower focus of the last two instalments of Tech Tips, this week's topics are, admittedly, somewhat random.  We'll begin with some advice on keeping your identity safe on the Internet, move on to show you how your students can create quite professional-looking publications in a matter of minutes, and end with a quick way to create bibliography entries.  But first ...

Tech Tips for the Week of December 7 - iearn.org

In last week's Tech Tip I promised that I would spend a week or two examining how technology can provide students and teachers a means of connecting with people from around the world.  This week's Tech Tip,  examines iearn.org (International Education and Resource Network), a not-for-profit organization with the express goal of "Connecting Youth - Making a Difference in the World."

Using Google Apps in the Classroom

Google has a listing of lesson plans for using Google Apps in K-12 education. If you're a Google App user, this resource may get you thinking of possible ways to support curriculum. Many of these have an American flavour, but I'm sure they can be adapted.

What's the difference between Classblogmeister and Blogger?

1. Blogger is prettier (just like me!).
2. Blogger is simpler (just like... nevermind).
3. Classblogmeister gives you much more control!
4. Classblogmeister organizes posts according to assignments, teachers, and classes.
5. Blogger's Terms of Service say that it can't be used by anyone younger than 13 years of age.
6. Blogger is in the Googleverse so it's very easy to interact with other Google products, such as Google Docs.

I'm sure there are others. Let me know by posting comments.

Registering Your School with Classblogmeister

If you need to register a school in Classblogmeister, go to the address below:

http://classblogmeister.com/?blog=rethink

Once your school has been registered, you can create a teacher account within your school.

Why Blog?

It seems a bit ironic to be blogging about blogging, but here goes...

We spent some time today presenting a workshop on blogging. One of the topics we discussed was "Why Blog?" Here are two articles that address this question:

• 20 Reasons for students to blog
• Why use blogs in education?

Another topic we explored was "How can I use blogs in education?" The following resources might be useful:

• Matrix of possible uses for blogs in education
• Examples of blogs in education

How popular are blogs? According to David Sifry and Technorati, in April 2007 there were over 70 million blogs and 120,000 blogs were being created every day. That's like 1.4 new blogs being made every second.

Tech Tips for the Week of November 30 - kiva.org

All too often when we think of integrating technology into the curriculum we fall into what I might call the Application Trap.  In other words, we discover some piece of software and ask ourselves how that might be applied within a particular subject and/or at a particular grade level.  The fault in this approach is that it tends to place the application first and the human/learning element second.
It also ignores one of the fundamental advantages of living in our current technological world - technology connects people and ideas.  Just think about the technologies that youth adopt most readily: instant messaging, cell phones, texting, ...  all of them are about making and maintaining connections.  It is this human element that we sometimes ignore when we explore how to use technology in the classroom.

Furthermore, in this season, sandwiched between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it seems fitting to look beyond our own abundance (generally speaking) to the world outside.

Therefore for the next few installments, Tech Tips is going to examine technologies that help students make connections with other people, both near and far.  This week's episode looks at kiva.org.

Tech Tips for the Week of November 23 - Free Graphing Software

This Week's Tips - Free Graphing Software

Having cast a few nuggets in the direction of the social studies and ELA teachers in the past couple of weeks, I thought it time to make some suggestions for Math and Science teachers.

There are a number of free applets which math and science teachers may find useful, particularly when it comes to teaching graphing.

Tech Tips for the weeks of November 9 & 16 - spellingcity.com and World Bank Data within Google

Last week, I attended a conference where I was able to gather a number of ideas for incorporating technology in the curriculum.  Unfortunately, the conference distracted me from my usual "routine," and I didn't manage to get out a Tech Tips email.  So this week, I'm combining two suggestions in one email rather than littering your mail box with two separate tips in one week.  The first suggestion is aimed more at elementary classroom, whereas the second will suit itself more to middle years and high school curricula.

Ontario vs Saskatchewan

It's day 1 of the ECOO conference, or maybe day -1, considering this is really the pre-conference. Today Cal and I spent the day working with VoiceThread, but before that, we shared a cab ride with Jeff Brown, a Technology and Learning Resources Consultant from the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board. It's truly amazing how different our worlds are. For Jeff, a small school is one with 500 students. I simply have a hard time wrapping my brain around that.

Tech Tips for the Week of November 2 - Creative Commons Images

This Week's Tech Tip - Using Creative Commons Images

Many teachers and students are already familiar with the ease of searching for images on Google Images and then copying and pasting those images in documents and presentations.  There's just one problem with doing so.  Very seldom do we check to see if, in fact, this is legal.  Many - if not most- of the images that one might find on Google Images are subject to copyright, so using them in our own publications, without first asking for permission from the content provider, is neither legal nor moral.


Of course, as educators, we have an obligation to direct students to responsible, moral behaviour wherever possible.  So what's the solution?  The answer lies in using pictures which have been distributed with a Creative Commons license and finding a means to search for pictures which fall under that license.

Tech Tips for the Week of October 26th - Photostory

This Week's Tip:  Photostory 3

An old adage cautions that "There's no such thing as a free lunch."  Like all truisms and generalizations, this one is only partially true.  Certainly, in the realm of computer software, there are many quality products available for free.  Last week's Tech Tips focused on free software to protect your computer from viruses.  This week's free software recommendation takes us in a completely different direction - creating a photo slideshow.

Tech Tips for the Week of October 19th - Free Anti-virus

Expanded Distribution

This week I've expanded the list of folks who receive this email to include the ELT group, as I received some requests from this group to be included in this mail-out. As well, I have had some requests to include some EA's in my mailing list, so I have added them as individuals. If you have folks within your schools or offices who are interested in receiving these weekly emails, please let me know, and I will add them to my list.

Tech Tips for the Week of October 13th - Password Security, Chinoowiki

Tip 1: Password Security: October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month, and, as if to punctuate that declaration, some recent events have brought into stark relief the importance of keeping our private information private. While Internet transactions are, as a rule, quite secure, their safety and security can easily be compromised by poor decisions on our part, in particular, insecure password choices. In my days as a Tech Coordinator, I sometimes found myself needing to log on to a staff member's network account to perform some troubleshooting. All too often, I didn't have to ask the staff member to log on for me, because I was able, after two or three attempts, to guess his/her password. This Gmail Blog post covers a number of strategies for keeping your passwords - and you personal information - secure.

Tech Tips for the week of October 5 - Google Calendar

Teachers are a busy lot, who often find themselves trying to keep track of the many commitments they have in their professional, extra-curricular, and personal lives. This week's tech tip highlights a tool to help teachers, or anyone else, manage their complex schedules, Google Calendar.

Tech Tips for the Week of September 28 - CIA World Factbook, Estat, Excel

First as a follow-up to last week's Tech Tip, my colleague Rob Geiger pointed out that my video on using the Format Painter had neglected to draw attention to the benefits of double-clicking on the Format Painter button. Double-clicking essentially "locks" the Format Painter in an "on" state so that you can swipe the Format Painter cursor across multiple selections, copying the format of your original cursor position. When you are done applying formatting in this way, clicking on the Format Painter button again turns it "off." Thanks, Rob.

In this week's Tech Tip, I would like to draw your attention to two great information resources for Social Studies teachers and a powerful tool for managing and understanding the information gleaned from those resources.

Tech Tips for the Week of September 21 - MS Word

In conversations I've had within the last week, I'm reminded that sometimes folks may be unfamiliar with some of the more fundamental abilities of Microsoft Word, features which can simplify common, everyday tasks in education. To address this gap, I've put together three video tutorials to introduce (or reinforce) people's knowledge of some of MS Word's underutilized features:

• Using the Format Painter and Autostyles to Simplify Repeated Formatting
• Placing and Handling Graphics in MS Word
  
• Using Automatic Numbering and Bulleting in Word 2003

Tech Tips for the week of September 14 - Email Filters, Gmail

True to last week's promise, this week's tech tips will show you how to create email filters within the Chinook email system; however I have a few other items first.

1. Inspiration follow-up: Further to last week's Inspiration tech tip, in a conversation with one of our division Project CRISS leaders, I was asked if Inspiration could handle/generate outlines in "Power Outline" form, one of the concepts of organization central to the CRISS methodology. As a matter of fact, Inspiration can generate power outlines, although it does not do so by default. This makes Inspiration an even more valuable tool to support one of our literacy initiatives. To switch to power outlining in Inspiration:
1. Switch to outline mode by clicking on outline on the toolbar.
2. From the menu, select outline
3. Then prefix labels
4. And finally, power outlining
   Your outline will now be in Power Outline format.
   
   
2. A note to Moodle users: For those of you who use Moodle with your face-to-face students, we would like to pass on a reminder to un-enrol students from previous years' courses. This will prevent students from having to wade through a long list of "dead" courses in their Moodle home page.
   

Tech Tips for the Week of September 9 - Inspiration

First, let me introduce myself to those of you who may not know me. My name is Cal Deobald, an Elearning Catalyst teacher with Chinook School Division. My primary assignment is working with the schools in the southwest area of the division, but this year I have also assumed duties for leading and organizing professional development provided by the Elearning team.

In this second capacity, I have committed to providing tech tips via regular emails to all teachers in the division. My goal is to accomplish this weekly. We'll see how that goes. ;-)

The goal of my first tech tip is to ensure that all teachers in the division are aware of Inspiration and its possibilities within the classroom.