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.