68 EdTech Resources You May Have Missed–Treasure Chest May 22, 2011

by Jeffrey Thomas on May 22, 2011

Welcome to this week’s edition of Treasure Chest—68 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!

Featured

6 Reasons Why Tablets Are Ready for the Classroom–If tablets have penetrated mainstream consumer markets, what’s preventing them from widespread use in schools?
10 Ideas for Class Blog Posts | The Creative Education Blog–Class blogging is becoming ever more popular as a fantastic way of encouraging young people to write with a purpose, for a real audience and receive genuine …
Philly Teacher: Should We Still Be Teaching Keyboarding Skills?–So I’ve been talking with my former college professor about keyboarding skills, how kids learn them and whether we should still be teaching them.
Justin Tarte – Life of an Educator…: I am an Educational Blogger…–In an effort to share the power of blogging for Educators I asked members of my PLN and the Twitterverse to share what they think is their most influential and most important blog post. I would consider this list to be a “best of the best” kind of list, and I would encourage you to take some time to check out some of these awesome posts:
Want Better Grades? New Study Says Try Facebook – SocialTimes.com–Facebook does many things, but boost academic performance isn’t one of them, right? Wrong. A new study suggests that social networking sites may help college students both socially and academically.
Free Technology for Teachers: Snack Tools – Apps to Improve Your Website–Snack Tools offers six free applications that you can add to your website or blog. In addition to Flip Snack, Snack Tools offers Quiz Snack, Photo Snack, Tube Snack, Pod Snack, and Banner Snack.
Private Schools: The Truth About Teacher Salaries – Edudemic–This is a simple article with a simple purpose: to raise the level of discussion about the amount private / prep school teachers are paid for their service.
Seth’s Blog: The future of the library–What is a public library for? First, how we got here: Before Gutenberg, a book cost about as much as a small house. As a result, only kings and bishops could afford to own a book of their own.
Seth Godin Misses the Point on Libraries, Again. | Librarian by Day–I was curious to read what Godin had to say about libraries this time. Last time he wrote about them it was pretty clear he didn’t get it
Engaging Educators – Learn. Teach. Engage–Our mission is to help teachers, schools, and school districts engage students in meaningful learning activities. Activities that are student driven, project based, and enriched by the use of technology.
Apps for Elementary Teachers—Livebinder
List of History Teachers on Twitter–List of History Teachers on Twitter: History games, revision quizzes and worksheets for KS3, GCSE and A-Level school children!
Students Speak Up in Class, Silently, via Social Media – NYTimes.com–A small but growing cadre of educators is trying to exploit Twitter-like technology to enhance classroom discussion.
ISTE 2011 Goes Virtual – Classroom 2.0–It’s exciting to see the new virtual modules that ISTE is implementing this year. If you aren’t able to attend the conference in person, here are a few worksho…
6 Steps to Finding The Twitter Chat That’s Right For You | BlogHer–Not all chats are well moderated and not all chats will provide you value. Consider what you want to learn, what you can contribute and when you want to be locked down for an hour online.
Education Article :: 99 Reasons Teachers Rock–To celebrate all the teachers we know, here are 99 reasons teachers rock.
Facebook Security: You’re the Problem | News & Opinion | PCMag.com–What is it about Facebook that makes it such a magnet for attacks? I can list 500 million reasons.
Shanker Blog » What Do Teachers Really Think About Education Reform?–There’s been a lot of recent talk about whether or not teachers support the various education policy reforms spreading throughout the nation. The available data suggest that teachers’ opinions, like everyone’s, depend a great deal on the details.
7 Reasons for Teachers to Tweet – SimpleK12–We’re huge fans of Twitter for education, and here are 7 reasons why you should join Twitter today.
5 Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) for Educators | MindShift–Here is a short list of PLNs that already exist, followed by some resources to help teachers build their own
What A Great Way To Get Comments On Student Blogs! | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…–As most teachers who have students writing blogs know, kids get very excited when people leave comments on their posts.
Why Twitter Is a Teacher’s Best Tool – Education – GOOD–The social media platform makes it easy to get instant ideas, links, and resources from a global community of educators
A-Z Web tools: G | Ozge Karaoglu’s Blog–Here comes the next letter: G EduGlogster is a tool to create online visual posters that are called glogs. You can add text, images, music and video to your

Tools

Five Best Apps for Real-Time Video Chat – Lifehacker–Thanks to video chat, staying in touch with friends, loved ones, and colleagues anywhere in the world has never been easier.
dotEPUB — download any webpage as an e-book–Tool for automatic conversion to the EPUB format: bookmarklet, widget and API
6 Chrome Extensions For Catching The Latest News Headlines–Chrome extensions or search enablers that help to serve news in the browser have one important purpose. They are shortcuts and save you the bother of looking up the news websites individually or searching through it. As these Google Chrome extensions show, some of them are quite cool too.
Web Apps / Online Tools / Cloud Computing – Cloud Trip–Cloud Trip is a directory of web apps or online tools. When you find a new web application, feel free to add it to the site!
12 Features Of Picasa That You Probably Don’t Know About–We have noticed that due to recent colossal influx of cloud based apps in software arena, many image editors and viewers are either totally drifting away

How-To

How to Master Your Presentations Using Presenter View in PowerPoint – How-To Geek–In PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 there is a little feature called Presenter View that could help you get rid of your printed notes and track better your time when presenting.
How to Make a Pie Chart in Microsoft Excel 2010 or 2007–It might seem difficult to get started with a pie chart, but Microsoft Excel is an excellent tool for producing them with just a few simple clicks. In this groovy tutorial we’ll show you the basics of creating and customizing a pie chart in Microsoft Office’s Excel.
How to View Excel 2010 Spreadsheets Side-by-Side for Comparison–For some reason, Excel spreadsheets all open in the same application window, which is totally contrary to the way Microsoft Office handles Word documents. Never fear—there’s a way to compare two Excel spreadsheets side-by-side without using two computers.
5 Ways To Share Music, Documents, Files & More On Twitter–While it couldn’t be easier to share images or links on Twitter, if you want to share actual files, music or documents, you have to make a little bit more of an effort to find services that make it easy to do so. Take a look at these free services which make it easy to share all kinds of files on Twitter.
How To Share Your Presentation Using PowerPoint 2010 Through the Web – How-To Geek–Did you know that PowerPoint 2010 has a feature called Broadcast Slide Show with which you can share your presentation through the web to another computer, smartphone or any other device with a browser? Here’s how to use it.
How to benchmark your PC | News | TechRadar UK–How to benchmark your PC Tests to see what difference an upgrade makes : TechRadar UK

iOS

iPads in Schools–Resources for using iPads in schools.
5 Free Instant Messenger Apps for iPad–Here are 5 Free Instant messenger apps for iPad that let you chat with your friends on iPad. All these iPad chat apps are completely free.
How to Create an Apple ID for iTunes without a Credit Card–Learn how to create an Apple ID with a US address but without a credit card. Also what should you do when the none payment option is missing?
Connect to the VPN at work from your iPad | Business Center | Working Mac | Macworld–It’s easy to protect your iPad and its data by using your office’s virtual private network, or VPN. Here’s how to get connected.
How to transfer files to and from an iPad | Tablets | Working Mac | Macworld–There are plenty of ways to move files back and forth between your iPad and your Mac. None of them are perfect. Lex Friedman compares the alternatives.
Make Professional Looking iPhone 4 & iPad 2 Videos Using Videolicious–One of the best features about the iPhone 4 is the nifty built-in video camera which you can launch, shoot, and edit on the go
Getting started with MindMapping and Concept Maps, Free on the iPad | iGo With My iPad–We have mentioned a few times how easy work flow mapping has become by doing them on the iPad
10 iPad Apps to Enhance Your Mac Workflow–Did you know there’s a long list of iPad apps designed to work hand in hand with your Mac? Here’s a look at 10 of them and how they could enhance your everyday Mac experience.
Top 10 iPad Books – Most Innovative Use of Interactivity | The Digital Media Diet–Interactivity in iPad books is a double-edged sword. When done well, it can enhance a picture book in magical ways. When done poorly, it can distract from the story or even become more like a video game played over ‘pages’ instead of ‘levels’. So what makes for great interactivity?
5 iPad Apps for Creating Charts, Diagrams and Visualizations–Continuing our look at business apps for the iPad, today we look at tools for visualizing data and information
Reading on the iPad – Easy with These Apps!–Kids can read with these iPad apps
Four iPad Screencasts for Beginners–I am trying to create a bank of video tutorials covering all the aspects of using the iPad that I take for granted.
4 Free iPad E-mail Apps | Free Software–Here are 4 free email client apps for iPad that let you check emails on iPad.
4 Free Project Management Apps for iPad | Free Software–Here are 4 free project management apps for iPad that let you manage various aspects of your project right from your iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. All these apps are completely free.
The Innovative Educator: Sites for Using iPads in Education–Following an iPad in Education workshop led by Meg Wilson (@iPodsibilities on Twitter) that was held at Apple last week, I asked an Apple employee to share with me useful materials for follow up.
5 Free Video Chat Apps for iPad | Free Software–Here are 5 Free Video Chat Apps for iPad that let you video chat on iPad with your friends on iPad. Most of these video chat apps also work on iPhone, and iPod Touch

Miscellaneous

Weekend Fun! – Angry Birds Flies to the Google Chrome App Store
Pros And Cons Of Using The New Firefox 4, Chrome 11, IE 9 And Opera 11–The recent browser wars between internet titans like Microsoft, Google and Mozilla has left users out in the cold
Chromebooks Are Doomed to Fail | PCWorld–Google wants Chromebooks to be a new era in mobile computing, but they’re really just netbooks with limited functionality.
9 Ways Twitter Can Change Your Life | Bit Rebels–Twitter has had a big influence on me. People who follow me on the site know that I tweet a lot, and that I enjoy meeting and tweeting with friends
A Case For Open Source Textbooks [INFOGRAPHIC]–As companies compete to digitize the textbook market, open source textbook proponents believe online educational tomes should be free.
All About Creative Commons And Copyright–Learning All About Creative Commons And Copyright For Educators
Best Video Search Engine For Free Online Video Watching–Video Search can always be tricky, you can be misguided easily. The only thing which can save your time is a fast Internet connection and some good resources
SMARTBoard Users – Mangahigh is now FREE – Teachers Love SMART Boards–Mangahigh creates exceptionally high-quality, game-based learning resources to help Primary and Secondary students reinforce their Mathematics skills in a way that is both fun and engaging
5 Free Online Video Editors | Free Software–Here are 5 free online video editing software that let edit videos online.
GOOGLE Livebinder–resources to help you use and teach with Google
20+ Awesome & Unique Uses Of Google Reader You Probably Didn’t Know About–We all know Google Reader as a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline, but it can also perform various other useful tasks.
Best video editing software under £100 | News | TechRadar UK–Best video editing software under £100 Affordable video editing for your Windows PC : TechRadar UK
Add Twitter and Facebook Sharing to your SlideShare Presentations–SlideShare is a perfect place for uploading your PowerPoint presentations. If you can add Twitter, Facebook and other social sharing options to the deck, it can help drive even more traffic to your presentations.