58 EdTech Resources You May Have Missed–Treasure Chest April 10, 2011

Welcome to this week’s edition of Treasure Chest—58 EdTech Resources You May Have Missed.

It’s really difficult to keep up with all that happens in educational technology. This is my attempt to make it just a little easier. I post a Treasure Chest every Sunday!

I usually don’t get too excited over an edtech resource, but this interactive solar system site is “out of this world.”

Interactive 3D model of Solar System Planets and Night Sky

Featured

• What Do Kids Say Is The Biggest Obstacle To Technology At School?–iPads. Interactive Whiteboards. Netbooks. Video games. Although educational technologies are being implemented more and more in classrooms across the country, we don’t often stop and ask students – or their parents – what they think their technology needs are
• When Not to Google: Searches You’re Better Off Making Elsewhere–For the searching you do every day, go ahead and use the powerful, convenient, ever-improving Google. But for certain queries, other search engines are significantly better. Let’s dig into the searches you’re better off making at engines other than Google.
• Verbally Turns the iPad Into A Useful Speech Impediment Aid For The Disabled–The iPad has earned itself a new useful function with the launch of the free app, Verbally, an assisted speech solution that turns the iPad into a communication aid. Verbally is listed as a potential communication aid for people with apraxia, ALS, stroke, traumatic brain injury, Parkinson’s, cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy.
• Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy—Livebinder–Resources for understanding Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy & applications for classroom
• 5 Ways To Earn More Twitter Followers For Your School–After you start using Twitter for your school following these 5 ways will help you earn more Twitter followers.
• Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Music Player–Amazon Cloud Drive is a new consumer-focused cloud storage service that is particularly well-suited, for now, to storing digital music. And when combined with the associated Cloud Player, Amazon is providing a near-complete replacement for iTunes and Wind
• Internet Safety Resources – help students stay safe online–Our students use the internet at home, at school, and all around with their mobile devices. Simply blocking certain types of web sites is not the answer to protect them. We need to teach them how to use the internet responsibly and how to be safe on the internet.
• 6 Internet Safety Games To Help Kids Become Cyber Smart–Digital education is not only about learning how to program or use a software; it’s also a lot about knowing the who the villain among the bits and bytes could be. With the age of cyber savvy kids on the rise, internet safety is just as important a part of education.
• HOW TO: Get the Most From YouTube Editor [VIDEOS]–Mashable spoke to a YouTube software engineer about how to get the most from his free video editing software.
• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: Top 10 Sites for Note Taking–While using a paper and pencil is passe, technology and more specifically the internet has allowed educators and students to take note taking to the next level.
• Reconsidering Technology Integration | Technology Teacher–For years, educational technologists have been staunch supporters of technology in the classroom–WITH the stipulation that teacher training also be part of the process. In other words, HAVING the technology in the schools is great, but knowing how to INTEGRATE it is an essential and key component.
• Digital Story Resources—Livebinder–Resources for students to make, share and read stories.
• iPad + Projector + Computer + Doceri = $50 Interactive Whiteboard | iPad Academy–Doceri offers $50 interactive whiteboard app for iPad. iPad, computer & projector become an interactive whiteboard system for Windows or Mac. View, navigate and annotate applications running on the computer using the iPad.
• BibMe: Fast & Easy Bibliography Maker – MLA, APA, Chicago, Turabian – Free–Faster than EasyBib™! BibMe AutoFills citations for you. Download your MLA, APA, Chicago, or Turabian bibliography in RTF for free.
• Apple’s three biggest weaknesses – CNN.com–Apple and CEO Steve Jobs have celebrated a string of huge hits over the past several years, including the iPhone, the iPad and the MacBook Air.
• 10 tools that simplify collaboration | TechRepublic–The key to collaborating effectively is to find tools that make working with others easy and efficient.
• 7 Best Sources of Free Music for Video or Podcast [Podsafe Audio]–Royalty free music is a must-have for your podcast, or video. Here are 7 sources of good, free, podsafe music for your audio or visual presentation.
• Top 10 Micro-Apps for Windows and Mac OS X–Your Windows system tray and Mac OS X menubar have become prime real estate for highly functional micro-applications that provide easy access to information, settings, and tasks. Here are our top ten favorites for both Windows and Mac.

Tools

• Digital Tools–Building Digital Literacy presentation by Nik Peachey
• Teacher Tools – 100+ Free Internet Resources for Real Teachers in Real Classrooms–Free resources for every classroom.
• DropTunes Is a Web Jukebox for Your Dropbox Music Stash–You can play music tracks through Dropbox’s web interface, but only one at a time, in a very minimalist player. DropTunes provides a great web front-end for your Dropbox-synced tunes, offering Flash or HTML5-based streaming and continual playback. It’s pretty darned handy.
• Kids’ Vid: Video Production for Students–Kids’Vid is an instructional website to help teachers and students use video production in class to support project-based learning.
• Spelling & Vocabulary Website: SpellingCity–Teaching spelling is easy with SpellingCity.com. Input spelling lists for your students to use for free spelling help.
• 5 Free Sharing Extensions for Chrome | Free Software–Here are the 5 Free Share Extensions for Chrome. These extensions include addthis, addtoany, stumbleupon, google share, and facebook share.
• Free Online OCR: web app delivers editable text from scanned images or PDFs | freewaregenius.com–Do you have PDF documents or images (e.g. JPG, PNG, TIFF) that were created using a scanner, and that you wish you could convert to editable text? Free
• Five Ways To Benchmark Your Web Browser’s Performance–Web browsers have become arguably the most important application on a modern computer. Browser performance has a big impact on how you experience the web and modern media. A slow browser might skip or stutter while a fast one breezes through without batting an eye.
• Online Bookmarks and Favorites – StartAid–Save your bookmarks and favorites online. Social bookmark manager that allows you can use tags or categories. Never lose a bookmark or favorite again.
• Upload – Dropdo–Dropdo is a file uploading site that lets your files be viewed instead of just downloaded. Upload a file and send the link to anyone you want to see it, without making them click ‘download.’ Supports audio, video, images, programming source code files, documents, powerpoint, excel, photoshop files, and many more.
• 10 New Twitter Tools That Will Make Your Life Easier–This is a review of excellent new Twitter tools that will help you maximize your experience and productivity when using Twitter.
• 6 best photo editors and organisers for OS X | News | TechRadar UK–6 best photo editors and organisers for OS X Apps to help you take control of your photo collection : TechRadar UK
• Gladinet Cloud Desktop Adds Amazon Cloud Drive Integration–One of the latest addition to the list of support cloud based storage providers is Amazon Cloud Drive which was introduced by Amazon a few days ago. You can check out our initial coverage at Amazon Cloud Drive, Free Online Storage for an overview of the service.

How-To

• The Complete Educator’s Guide to Using Skype effectively in the classroom | The Edublogger–Increasingly, educators globally are transforming their classroom using Skype to create powerful, authentic, motivating learning experiences
• How to Get Rid of Black Bars in Windows Live Movie Maker Videos | Windows 7 Tutorials–Ever notice those annoying black bars on the sides or along the top and bottom of a video? Oftentimes, the culprit is an incorrectly set aspect ratio. In Windows Live Movie Maker 2011, it’s easy to mistakenly save a movie in the wrong aspect ratio, thus creating these black bars in your final product.
• 5 Ways To See Your Facebook Friends On A World Map–Facebook is now the world’s largest social network with more than 500 million users worldwide. Even if you have a fraction of that geographical spread in your friend list, it really helps to locate them visually on a map. It’s not just a fun visual fun tool but has some practical uses too.
• Snow Leopard guide for new users | News | TechRadar UK–Snow Leopard guide for new users Turn yourself from a Mac novice to a pro
• How To Diagnose Hardware Problems When Your Computer Won’t Turn On–Last week I showed you some of the simplest DIY repairs and upgrades that you can do yourself, but one reader asked how to diagnose which component was the problem. Today I’d like to walk you through the process of diagnosing a faulty PC that won’t turn on.
• Upload Files to Amazon Cloud Drive from within Windows Explorer–Easily map your Amazon Cloud Drive account as a local drive and upload files and folders to the online drive from within Windows Explorer itself.
• How to Use SkyDrive’s 25 GB as a Mapped Drive for Easy Access – How-To Geek–SkyDrive is an online storage system included in Windows Live, which gives you 25 GB of space that you can sync to your desktop. Here’s how to connect it to your Windows 7 computer as a mapped drive.
• 29 Interesting Ways to Use Moodle in the Classroom
• How to Hide Photos or Status Updates in Facebook From Certain People–Learn How to Hide Photos or Status Updates in Facebook From Certain People.

iOS

• 10 iPad Apps That Will Bring Your Office With You–iPad proves to be the best device for small business owners, professionals and freelancers. 10 iPad apps that will keep you connected when you’re on the move.
• Bing for iPad Makes Browsing Beautiful–Bing has launched an iPad app today, with a design for its search portal that it truly customized to the iPad experience.
• 4 Free iPad Web Browsers | Free Software–Here are 4 Free Browser apps for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. These include Opera for iPad, Lunascape for iPad, Terra for iPad, Atomic Web Browser for iPad.
• 5 Free Music Streaming Apps for iPad | Free Software–Here are 5 free music streaming apps for iPad that let you stream free internet radio on iPad. Download free music streaming apps for iPad.
• Zoho Docs Comes to the iPad–Zoho has brought its popular online productivity tools Zoho Docs to the iPad. The app is designed to give you mobile access to your Zoho documents
• 5 Free Paint Apps for iPad | Free Software–Here are 5 Free Paint apps for iPad, that let you do painting in iPad. Includes: Autodesk Sketchbook for iPad, myPaint for iPad, Drawing Box, Doodle Kids, Kids Paint.
• Top 8 Best Free Games Apps For Your Apple iPad 2–Bought a new Apple iPad 2 or planning to buy it soon? What about downloading some best free iPad 2 games for your latest shiny tablet.
• 5 Free Twitter Apps for iPad | Free Software–Here are 5 Free Twitter apps for iPad. These include Hootsuite, Twitter, Twitterrific, echofon, twitbird. Download free Twitter app for iPad.

Miscellaneous

• Computer Hardware Chart Poster: All Computer Parts In One Image–Here is a beautiful chart of computer hardware and parts. This poster lists all the major computer components at one place- ram,slots,sockets,cpu processors and more
• YouTube Expands Search Options With Filter & Explore–For example, when I search for “Bon Jovi,” now I can narrow that query by searching for movies uploaded this week, those that are most popular and those in HD.
• Free Technology for Teachers: 7 Good Sources of Mathematics Videos–Here are some good places that students can find mathematics tutorial videos on the web.
• 10 Jaw-Droppingly Awesome Infographics on Education | Socrato Learning Analytics Blog–Beautiful images all about education. Discover 10 amazing educational infographics that will make you see the world and information in a whole new way.
• Can Your System Handle Windows 7? – PCWorld–Here’s some advice on upgrading to Windows 7, defragmenting your hard drive, and handling Data Execution Protection warnings.
• Thousands of newspapers on the Net–World’s largest listing of newspapers on the web
• 5 Uncommon Problems With Home Networks–Problems with home networks are a common occurrence now days. Just think about it? Everyone is now on the internet and most houses have some type of network setup to enable more than one computer to use the internet connection. Unfortunately this means that there are more problems with home networks

Slideshow/Video

• “The Beauty Of Maps” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…–The Beauty of Maps is a pretty amazing twelve part BBC series that is now available on YouTube. Thanks to Flowing Data for the tip.

News Anchor’s April Fool’s Joke Sends Co-Host Walking Off Set

Tagged as: Edtech, Education, iTunes, Resources, Technology, Twitter, YouTube