3 education tools you don’t want to miss

wowHere are three tools that work-around problems you have every week–maybe every day–in your classes. Sit down with a cuppa and be prepared to be wowed.

  • Google Voice
  • Email aliases
  • Get Psyched music

Google Voice

Price: Free
Rating: 5/5

Overview

Google Voice is a web-based phone service that works through your current phone or your computer. It’s free, and available through a Google account (if you have Gmail, you’re eligible). Incoming calls can be forwarded to your cell or landline (or both) or ring through your computer-based Google Voice account. Voicemails and text messages are transcribed and sent to your Gmail address. Outgoing calls can be made through the website or by calling your handset (smartphone or landline) first, then it calls the number you entered. Here’s what the dashboard looks like (intentionally blurred in spots):

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Need a Halloween Costume? I have that

Every year, I struggle with a Halloween costume. The teams of grade-level teachers always have themed looks—the Three Bears or Eeenie Meenie Minie and Moe–but I don’t have a team. I also don’t have kids at home to inspire me into painting my hair pink or my nails black.

A few years ago, I found the solution, and now–no worries. Even if it slips by my consciousness until I arrive at school on our Halloween Parade Day to the sight of goblins, Dr Who’s and other fantasies, I’m ready. Here’s my costume:

halloween

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word cloud

How to Create a Tagxedo

Tagxedos are an excitingly versatile tool that turn words into pictures. They’re word clouds–like Wordle, but more powerful. You can use them to share ideas, collect descriptive words and phrases about events, or evaluate the import of a website. Click here for a review of the webtool and over fifteen uses in your classroom.

We used Tagxedos this summer in Summer PD and I created this how-to video for students. Watch it–if you haven’t used Tagxedos before, you will fall in love with them.

Here are Sara’s thoughts over at Teachers and Technology, and Hardy Leung shares 101 ways to use it.

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A Day in the Life of a Tech Teacher

teacher-359311_640I love summer. I sit at home, reading, researching, chatting with friends. I make my own schedule, own my own time, start and finish a project without interruptions.

That is a massive high to me.

Why? I’m a tech teacher. That is like a geek+. I teach–yes–but I’m also the first line of defense (sometimes offense) for colleagues as they struggle to use the digital devices populating their classrooms. From the moment I step foot on campus, life spins out of my control. Here’s a typical day–does it sound familiar:

6:45    arrive at school

6:47    a student enters to use lab

6:48   I greet student with a friendly hi and begin work on a lesson plan

6:49    Student asks for help

7:00   Student finishes and leaves; I return to my lesson plan

7:02   Frantic teacher calls–her computer won’t boot up. She came in early to work and now what’s she supposed to do can I come right away?

7:03   I arrive in teacher classroom to help

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Columbus Day

columbus dayColumbus Day, which is annually on the second Monday of October (this year, October 13th), remembers Christopher Columbus’ arrival to the Americas on October 12, 1492.


Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

vocabulary

5 Field Trips Free to Students

Kids love field trips. They’re out of the classroom, get to travel by bus with lots of kids and not enough adults. What’s not to like?

A few items come to mind: Cost, staffing, potential for disaster. And that’s just off the top of my head. There’s a way to provide the field trip experience with few of the risks, no cost, and a fraction of the time away from what is likely an overstuffed education day:

Virtual Field Trips, via the internet.

There are so many options  for real-time webcams, conversations with experts (via Skype and Google Hangout), and the opportunity to visit locations that are otherwise inaccessible that classes have embraced this new approach to seeing the world. This enthusiasm has encouraged a cottage industry that often is far from the exciting, realistic experience teachers want for their students. When I search the internet, it seems any site with a camcorder and multimedia resources calls itself a ‘virtual field trip’. Truthfully, many of them are a waste of time. Sure, I like the pictures and the movies, but I don’t feel like I’m there, immersed in history or geography, with a life-changing experience that will live in my memory for decades to come.

Intellectually, I know there are good ones out there. Finally, after wearing through my favorite virtual shoes, I have a list to recommend. These next nine virtual field trips cover topics from geology to history to the human experience. See what you think:

360 Cities

What’s not to love about a website that starts:

Welcome to Earth! It’s a planet having an iron core, with two-thirds of its surface covered by water. Earth orbits a local star called the Sun, the light of which generates the food supply for all the millions of species of life on earth. The dominant species on Earth is the human being, and you’re one of the six billion of them! Humans have iron in their blood, and their bodies are composed of two-thirds water, just like the planet they live on.

Enjoy your stay, and try to stay calm.

360 Cities contains the Internet’s largest collection of uploaded panoramic images. Let’s pause here for a moment. Panos–those wide pictures that cover up to 180 degrees left and right. Right?

360 Cities does panos differently. Let me show you. Here’s one from my iPad:

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