EduBlog Awards 2009 - Nominations are open

The Edublog Awards 2009 are open for nominations.

This is your chance to nominate your favorite educational blogs for this great honor.

You can nominate in as many, or as few, categories as you want.

Categories include:

Best individual blog
Best individual tweeter
Best group blog
Best new blog
Best class blog
Best student blog
Best resource sharing blog
Most influential blog post
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion
Best teacher blog
Best librarian / library blog
Best educational tech support blog
Best elearning / corporate education blog
Best educational use of audio
Best educational use of video / visual
Best educational wiki
Best educational use of a social networking service
Best educational use of a virtual world
Lifetime achievement

Vote now!

Google Tools for Schools

Google Tools for Schools is a great web site created by Jennifer Dorman (using Google Sites) that has a tremendous amount of information, links, and resources for teachers who want to use Google's applications in their classroom.

There are tutorials, links to videos, downloadable information and more available for most of Google's applications that are useful in the classroom. I have added it as a resource to my professional development sessions on Google for Educators.

How technology can help improve education.

(picture from http://www.ipli.com/ini-edu.htm)

(cross posted at http://www.techlearning.com/blogs/25562)

Improving education is a huge issue (and always has been). Test scores, our perceived performance against other countries, and other factors have pushed education to the forefront of national politics, right behind healthcare reform. Technology can be used to improve teaching and learning and help our students be successful.

While smaller schools and class sizes are always desired, technology can not do that physically. However, technology can be a “force multiplier” for the teacher. Instead of the teacher being the only source of help in a classroom, students can access web sites, online tutorials, and more to assist them. Education doesn’t stop at the end of the school day because students have access to teachers, resources, and assignments via the web and access these resources at any time. Students can also get help and tutoring at any time, whether from the teacher via email or online collaboration, or from a help web site.

Parental involvement is another factor that can increase student achievement. Most parents these days have extremely busy schedules, work different hours, and can’t always help their child with homework or come to school for conferences. Technology can help. Parents can go to a class website and see what their child is working on, they can contact teachers via email and web sites, and they can even check their child’s attendance and grades through online systems. They can also talk to their children from work via email and instant messaging.

Inquiry based projects are another way to get students to think rather than memorize. These group projects also help students build important skills such as communications, team work, critical thinking and problem solving. Technology can help with these projects and skills. Students can create things such as web sites, blogs, and multimedia presentations as part of their project. They can use the web for research and as a resource. They can connect with students at other schools and do collaborative work with them. They also learn technology skills while doing these projects.

Money is always an issue in education and technology can help. Virtual field trips, electronic forms instead of paper, email instead of printed memo’s, virtual labs, electronic textbooks, and the thousands of free online resources can all save schools money and give students excellent educational experiences.

Teachers can use technology to find resources and attend virtual professional development seminars and conferences (most are free). They can also create personal learning networks (PLN) with Ning, Twitter, and other resources to find and share ideas and resources, and get support from their colleagues. Technology can give teachers and students great resources, new opportunities for learning, ways to collaborate and create, and save money.

Technology is a very powerful tool for education.

Some resources that can help:

http://www.google.com/options/

http://www.evernote.com/

http://www.zoho.com/

http://www.techlearning.com/

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/10/scribblar-online-whiteboard.html http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/10/calculus-lifesaver.html http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/08/resources-for-students.html http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/10/21st-century-skills-and-education.html

http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-get-started-with-project-based.html

Share your ideas on how technology can help improve teaching and learning.

Google Chrome OS

Google just announced Google Chrome OS (although most people knew it was coming).

Google Chrome OS is a new operating system that Google is creating based on it's Chrome Web Browser.

The operating system will not store anything on the computer you are using. Everything, including applications, will be hosted on Google's servers ("in the cloud"). The operating system boots up in less than 10 seconds (very impressive!) and within another 5-10 seconds you are online and working. The OS basically runs everything through the Chrome web browser.

Every time you boot up your computer, the OS connects with Google's system and does a self check. If it finds any problems or issues, it will fix it with a reload. That is part of the security of Chrome OS. The other part of the security is that if you loose your computer, or someone steals it, they can't access your data with out your account information and password. There is no data on the computer itself. (This part is very nice considering how many companies lose important data, including customer personal information, when employee laptops are lost or stolen.)

My first impressions from the video of the launch are impressive. I see Chrome OS as the perfect OS for netbooks - it doesn't need much for memory on the computer, boats at warp speed, and still allows you do to your work. I already use mostly cloud based apps (Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar, Evernote, Engrade) so having an operating system like this on a netbook is great. This is not for everyone though. If you need to do work on computer based files, this is not for you.

Below, you can see a screen shot of Chrome OS. Notice how it runs in Chrome Browser. In the upper right corner you can see the time and battery level indicator. All the applications are tabs in the browser. The Chrome OS notepad is also shown on the right side.

Below is a shot of some of the applications for Chrome OS. They are all web based applications. Some of the apps listed: Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Google Reader, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Pandera, Picasa Web, YouTube, Hulu, Contacts, ToDo list, Calculator, Facebook, Twitter, and a "get more" link.

Overall, I would say that Google Chrome OS, which should be available next year, will be a great OS for people using netbooks and who work with web-based applications.

Discovery News

Discovery Networks has a great news site, Discovery News. The site has news articles and resources on Earth, Space, Science, Tech, Animals, and much more.

Like most Discovery products, it is well done and easy to find things. There is all kinds of breaking news, new discoveries, social issues, videos, discussions, and more.

This a great site to use with science students as a resource, or as a way to get discussions on different topics started.

Copyright Advisory Network

The Copyright Advisory Network is a great resource when you need help with copyright issues.

The site has articles, copyright tools, advice, and more to help you deal with copyright issues and sort through how to deal with different items in a scholarly setting.

Copyright issues and Fair use are often misunderstood by teachers and students and this site can help explain things in an easy to understand way.

For more copyright resources:

http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/05/copyright-for-educators.html

http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/10/copyright-friendly-resource.html

http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/06/copyright-issues.html

http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/05/public-domain-images.html

Egiate - College search and info

Egiate is a site that takes college search a little further. Instead of just having some basic info on a college and a link to the school's web site, Egiate takes things further. It has those basic things, but then adds in better search options, maps, satellite photos of the campus, 3D buildings (if available) and much more.

They are still building the site and working with schools to incorporate more information. Searching can be done by location, major, size, and more and there is information on admissions, majors, students, athletics, and more on each school.

WatchKnow - educational video search

WatchKnow is a new site set up by the creator of Wikipedia. The site collects all the best free educational videos for students and indexes them for easy searching and you can watch them on the site.

The videos are links and are actually hosted on their home sites, so some of the videos will be blocked by internet blocking software.

The best part about WatchKnow is that it has done the work of sorting through the millions of videos on the web to find the ones that are good for education. Do a search and see how easy it is to use and find great videos for your classroom.

Google Image Swirl

Google Image Swirl (Google Labs) is a new way of searching for images on Google.

Being part of Google Labs means it is still in the development stage, but works.

Image swirl is a visual way to search for images and it shows their relationships to other images in groups.

Enter your search term and click enter and you get a screen like the one below (I searched "Physics").

As you can see, each image has a stack behind it. Click on an image and it brings up a circle of images. Click on another image in there, and it brings up another circle with that image and more that are related.

I like it because it is more visual than the basic image search and you can find related images much easier. It is great for helping students find images that are connected and exploring those connections.

Interactive Periodic Table of Elements

I just learned about a great interactive Periodic Table of the Elements from my PLN (personal learning network) on Twitter.

This interactive Periodic Table of the Elements is great and loaded with features. As you move your cursor over an element, the information for that element is shown larger above the table. If you click on an element, a pop-up window launches with more detailed information about the element (courtesy of Wikipedia). When you move your cursor over a category of elements (halogens, alkali metals, etc.), those elements highlight, and the rest fade to grey.

It will also show the properties, electron orbitals, and isotopes for each element. And, you can adjust a temperature slider and it will color code the elements based on their phase at that temperature (solid, liquid, gas, or unknown).

This is a really useful, informative, and fun periodic table to use with your classes.

Science Fair Resources

Science fair season is upon us as students start to work on their projects. Here are some resources for teachers and students:

Discovery Education Science Fair Central - helps with ideas, organizing a project, finding resources, and presenting your project.

Our Science Fair - a free science fair website service designed to increase student participation and make the entire process simpler and greener. Science fair coordinators can set up custom web sites for their science fairs.

Science Bob - science resource site with science fair tips and ideas.

PreK-12 Engineering

PreK-12 Engineering is a site with free resources for educators to integrate engineering concepts and activities into preK through 12th grade classrooms. The activities are linked to the Massachusetts Science and Technology/Engineering Curriculum Framework.

The activities are really well thought out and developed and I have used many of them.

Things are sorted by grade level for easy searching.

For more resources on engineering: http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/10/engineering-resources.html

Learn to Type

Instructify, a great blog, has an article with resources about learning how to type. The introduction of more computers and computer based learning has made typing a necessary skill for anyone these days. Check out the resources in the article.

Edheads - online projects

Edheads is a great web site that has online projects for students to do. These projects help students explore and learn about a variety of topics.

Some of the projects include - design a cell phone, virtual knee surgery, simple machines, and more.

I found it fun also! Try it out yourself and you will find that it is a nice resource to use in your classroom. The crash scene project was fun and is great for a physics class.

The Differentiator

Byrdseed, a site I just learned about today, contains ideas to use in gifted classrooms. I've already found some great ideas to use with any class.

On the site is something called the Differentiator. The differentiator makes it easy to come up with lesson objectives following Bloom's taxonomy and other guidelines.

You pick a thinking skill, such as explain, describe, or criticize, then pick the content it is about, the resources students will use, and the product that they will create and the site creates a one sentence objective. It is very easy to use and will help you plan out lessons and make sure you are doing different things in your lessons for different types of learners and different levels of understanding. An example of one I did is below.