78 EdTech Resources You May Have Missed–Treasure Chest July 31, 2011

by Jeffrey Thomas on July 30, 2011

Welcome to this week’s edition of Treasure Chest—78 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!

REMINDER: The Reform Symposium concludes later today. If you haven’t yet had a chance to attend, there’s still time. For more information on the Reform Symposium you can go to their Reform Symposium e-Conference Headquarters!

Featured

Social media finds place in classroom – USATODAY.com–Growing number of educators feel it’s crucial for making kids digitally literate
Matt Damon’s clear-headed speech to teachers rally – The Answer Sheet – The Washington Post–Here is Matt Damon’s powerful speech to the Save Our Schools rally in Washington, D.C.
The GPlus Info: Why The Google Cloud Is Secure For Education–Google Plus looks like it already hit 20 million users in under a month and the chatter about it coming to Google Apps is loud.
21 Brilliant Productivity Tools Every College Student Must Use – HOME – Edgalaxy: Where Education and Technology Meet.–The following list mentions 21 such tools which could skyrocket the productivity of college students when it comes to doing research, communicating with fellow students and dealing with assignments.
10 ways to use Google+ in the classroom | The Theatre Professor–This is a preliminary list. I am hoping over the next month or so to find out other ways that I can make google+ work for me and my students.
Web restrictions draw ire of some educators – USATODAY.com–Connecticut librarian plans Banned Sites Day to draw attention to Internet restrictions in schools.
7 Ways Google+ Users Are Getting More Out of Their Circles–We’ve talked to users who have devised clever ways to use Google+ circles. Here they share their best practices so you can learn from their early mistakes and successes.
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org: The Role of Schools – Developing Student Social Skills–When we focus only on the non-virtual social culture of schools, are we abrogating our responsibility to help our children develop social skills they will need as adults?
Great Tech Expectations: What Should Elementary Students Be Able to Do and When? | Edutopia–Mary Beth Hertz shares a list of tech skills by grade level that she helps her students obtain. How do they compare to yours?
The Mother of All Google+ Resource Lists – TNW Apps–A comprehensive list of Google+ extensions, sites and resources
The Problem with Classroom Technology? Faculty Can’t Use It — Campus Technology–The top challenge to implementing classroom technology on campus is faculty’s inability to use it. That’s the consensus among faculty, students, and administrators on campus, according to a new report.
Twitter Chat Schedule
Twitter to Add Parental Controls to Tweet Links–Twitter has added a way to flag links within tweets as “possibly sensitive.”
10 Worst Practices in ICT for Education | ICTWorks–Here’s a list of some of what I consider to be the preeminent ‘worst practices’ related to the large scale use of ICTs in education in developing countries, based on first hand observation over the past dozen or so years.
Apple iPads or Android Tablets? See What More Than 1000 Educators Decided | edte.ch–Since March I have been running this little survey that is a limited comparison between the current preferences between Apple iPads in the classroom or Android
7 Questions on Bringing Your Own Device | Barbara Bray – Creative Learning Strategist–Barbara Bray shares questions for professional development for teachers on bringing your own device to schools with ideas for a professional development plan.
Great Collection of ICT Tips posters for your classroom – HOME – Edgalaxy: Where Education and Technology Meet.
Google Plus Search – Search Google Plus (Google+) public contents and profiles online–Google Plus Search: Search Google Plus (Google+) public contents and profiles online
Learn It In 5 – Are we confusing our students?–Learn how to use any web 2.0 technology in the classroom in 5 minutes or less.
Americans Have Near-Record Low Confidence In U.S. Public Schools–Americans are becoming increasingly skeptical of the U.S. public school system, revealing near-record low confidence in schools. According results released this week from a Gallup poll conducted last month, 34 percent of those surveyed said they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in public schools.

Tools

Useful Free Tools for Creating a Map Online | blueblots.com–If you are fond of traveling into different places around the world, the need to have a tool to guide you to a area you have never visited before is important.
slidestaxx – 10 Tools I Don’t Use Very Often But Love Them When I Do!

Control Your PC From Your iPad With Remote Desktop Apps | PCWorld Business Center–Want to drive your computer from your Apple tablet? We tested four of the top iPad remote-control apps to see which one dominates desktops best.
2 Free Online Tools to Encrypt Your Emails & Securely Send Confidential Emails–Check out these 2 Free Online Tools to Encrypt Your Emails and Securely Send Confidential Emails.
Eight free downloads that are still excellent years later | Applications – InfoWorld–These freeware programs, such as OpenOffice.org and RoboForm, just keep getting better with age
DiskMark Is a Free and Easy Hard Drive Benchmark Tool–Windows: Hard drive benchmarks are important to ensure not only that your new drive is performing as well as it should, but also to make sure that disk fragmentation is not impacting your performance
Twitter Symbols Lets You Add Special Characters & Symbols To Tweets–Every character counts on Twitter because you only get to type 140 of them. There are services that let you enter longer tweets but what they essentially do is…
Put Web Apps and More in Your Windows 7 Taskbar With Pokki–A lot of computer users spend much of their computing time on the web. Maybe you use Gmail, Facebook or Twitter. Maybe you read many different websites. Some of us are weather watchers, while others like to shop online.
Gmail with Google Voice is like a cheaper Skype with multiple calls | TechRepublic–Kevin Purdy shows you how you can make and receive multiple calls using Google Voice features in your Gmail account.
The Best Online Teleprompters | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…–When you, or your students, are making a videocast, having a script or notes appear on your screen could come in handy.
Capture Screenshot and Tweet it in 3 Steps using DesktopTweet–DesktopTweet allows you to take a screenshot of your screen and tweet it to your account after uploading it to twitter picture service such as TwitPic or yfrog..
15 Outstanding Tools to Collect, Organize and Share Your Web Experience–In this article I’ve collected 15 of the very best tools on the web to collect, capture, organize and brainstorm your bookmarks, images, notes and thoughts.

How-To

How to move from Blogger Blogspot to WordPress – Step-By-Step Guide–Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, has said that 1,000+ bloggers migrate each day from Google’s Blogger Blogspot to WordPress
How to Search Using Filters in Windows 7 Explorer–Learn How to Search Quickly Using Filters in Windows 7 Explorer.
How to Customize Google+ | PCMag.com–These 16 Greasemonkey scripts, Chrome Extensions, Firefox Add-ons, and other browser plug-ins can alter your Google social networking experience.
How To Customize Toolbars and Buttons in Firefox–This article from Mozilla covers just about everything you want to know about buttons and toolbars, with images and step-by-step directions.
6 Windows Taskbar Useful Tips–Six ways to power up the Windows Taskbar for extra productivity
How to Create Nested Labels in Gmail For Better Email Organization–Learn How to Create Nested Labels in Gmail For Better Email Organization.
How To Create A Twitter Background In Photoshop–Maybe you’ve already tried out Twitbacks, or perhaps you just don’t like limiting yourself to an app such as PrettyTweet. You’re ready for the big dogs, and you want to design your own Twitter background in Photoshop. This how-to goes into the details of creating your very own Twitter background with the help of Photoshop
Free Technology for Teachers: Show Me What’s Wrong – Help Your Friends With Their Computer Problems–The service is designed to help you help others with their computer problems.
Troubleshoot Internet Connection Problems over a Wireless Network | Windows 7 Tutorials–Have you ever connected to a wireless network at a friends’ house and could not access the Internet, even though you were connected? Did Windows 7 tell you that there is no Internet access?

5 Google Plus Tips

Be A Comment Snob & Filter Out Undesirable YouTube & Web Comments–Sharp-tongues and foul-mouths are the staple of comment boxes. This is one of those little tips that can make the online world a much civil, if not a better place.
Use Old Firefox Extensions with Compatibility Reporter–Every time a new major version of Firefox is released, one of the unfortunate aspects is that suddenly, a few of your favorite extensions won’t work. In some cases, this is because things have changed enough with Firefox itself that the extension truly is “broken,” but in other cases, the extensio…
Create Sticky Notes and Speech Bubbles with Text using Google Charts–Learn how to create yellow sticky notes, speech bubbles, taped notes, callouts and more using the popular Google Image Charts tool.
Creating an ePub Book Using Pages – How to Make the eBook Cover Look Good | iPad Academy–A cover page with a white background using the handy ePub template Apple offers is easy.Generating a full-color cover page is more challenging
Firewall, What Firewall? The Top Four Tech Hacks For Teachers – Education – GOOD–Districts block plenty of sites that are handy in the classroom. Here’s how to get around those restrictions.
10 things you should still do to every Windows PC | TechRepublic–There are at least 10 things you should take a few minutes to do to every new Windows PC to get it ready for daily use
How to Achieve Faster File and Folder Copying in Windows With TeraCopy Guiding Tech–Learn How to Achieve Faster File and Folder Copying in Windows With TeraCopy.
10 things you still should do to a new PC before you login to Facebook | TechRepublic–When you get a new PC, one of the first things you want to do is connect it to the Internet. But that is a very bad idea

iOS

How to Use the Sleep and Home Buttons on an iPad or iPhone–Your iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch has two buttons – the home button at the front and the sleep / wake button near the top right-hand corner. How do you use these buttons and when?
Improve Your Kids’ Basic Math Skills With The Help Of MathBoard [iPad]–If I had to choose which subjects I learned at elementary and middle school which proved to be really useful in later life, mathematics would definitely be one of them. We use basic math so naturally all the time – from counting how many days left to the weekend, to calculating how much money we have left until the end of the month
NASA Creates Awesome iPad App for Science Education – Education – GOOD–The new “Visualization Explorer” app takes NASA’s trove of satellite data and brings it to life in a free app.
Ustream Launches iPad App | iPad Feed–If you have never heard of the video service known as Ustream, you should really check it out. The service is quite a bit like YouTube, except that instead of…
How to Set Up a New iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad–So you’ve finally splurged on a new iOS device for yourself, or gotten it as a gift from the Apple lovers in your life. Sadly, you can’t just open the box and start using it—it requires a bit of set up. Here’s what you need to do.
PicPlz: The Ultimate Photo Sharing Website for Computer and Smartphone Users–PicPlz is the ultimate photo sharing website. In addition to letting you upload as many photographs as you want, the site lets you apply numerous image filters to your images
Can’t Wait For Facebook’s iPad App? Here Are 3 Free Facebook Apps For The iPad–How come Facebook doesn’t have an official iPad app? Rumor has it they will launch one soon, but if you’re tired of using the iPhone version of the Facebook app, or if you’re just tired of Facebook’s new chat interface, check out these 3 free Facebook apps that provide the Facebook experience in an interface that is native for the iPad.
How to Create Khan Academy Style Video Lessons?–The Khan Academy of Salman Khan is helping students understand concepts better. You can also create Khan Academy style video tutorials using free software.
30 best iPad games | iPad Atlas – CNET Reviews–Trying to figure out which iPad games to buy with your hard-earned dough? Here’s a look at our current top-30 favorites. Read this blog post by Scott Stein on iPad Atlas.

Miscellaneous

Handy Microsoft Word shortcuts to save you time and effort | News | TechRadar UK–Handy Microsoft Word shortcuts to save you time and effort Get faster at using Word
10 Blogs For Stunning Infographic Collections–Infographics could be a cool solution for information overload. What makes them cooler and eye-catching are of course, the nicely done visuals
15 Google+ Sites & Services for Power Users–From directories where you can find new Plussers, to sites that will show you the hottest posts and even resources that will help you get more out of the service, we’ve rounded up 15 fab online destinations for Google+ users.
Free Technology for Teachers: JayCut Bought Out by RIM (Blackberry)–On Friday JayCut announced that they have been bought by RIM (Blackberry) and as of now they are not accepting new registrations.
Music Streaming Spotify: What You Get For Free–The long awaited streaming music service, Spotify landed in the U.S. last week. Unlike other streaming services, however, Spotify offers an ad-supported free option, which makes millions of albums and songs available to you through the Spotify desktop client. Let’s explore what else you get for free and what you don’t.
Technology Is The New Smoking | Digitizd–Alexia Tsotsis hits a little too close to home: We’ve all been there; You’re at an outing or a dinner table with friends but itching to check your email or Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Google+ or Yammer or what ever digital hit of serotonin you prefer
Decoding Intel’s Laptop Processor List [Technology Explained]–The modern computer processor has always been a complex piece of technology, and that shows no signs of changing. Such complexity brings a challenge to companies such as Intel. Making great products is one thing, making them easy to understand is another but Intel certainly has made an effort.
Free Training Manuals for MS Office–Mouse Training is a UK-based company that offers training courses to companies whose staff use Microsoft Office. Following the release of Office 2010, the company has made available all of its training manuals for previous versions, totally free of charge.
5 Uses For The Evernote Desktop Clients [Windows & Mac]–A couple of years ago, we had a post on the myriad uses for Evernote, which could well be an all-in-one second brain. With the advent of improvements on the desktop clients, there have been inevitably many more uses today. Thus, here are a few more tips on using the desktop clients for Evernote.
Why unfollowing is a good thing and why you should make lists on Twitter – Twitter–It’s called following for a reason. You can always stop and follow someone else. It’s Twitter. It’s not the end of the world.
15 Useful Google Chrome Extensions To Get The Best Out Of Google+–While many people still have not gotten their invites, there are already 10 million users on the platform and a billion items shared per day. If you find yourself terribly addicted to Google+, Here are 15 Google Chrome extensions that make using Google+ a better experience.
Google Music Allows Current Users to Invite Their Friends–Today, Google Music has opened up invites so current users can invite their friends. Currently you get two invites and they’ll appear in an orange bar (see above) when you log into your account. Clicking on the bar will bring up a panel that’ll let you enter the email address of the person you’d like to invite. Just click “Send invite” and your friends can join in.
Google Plus Hangouts Adding YouTube Live Video Viewing–The Hangouts group video chat platform on Google+ now lets video-chatting groups watch live streaming videos together on YouTube.
Google+ Update Makes Managing Circles Easier–Too many Google+ Circles to keep straight? Now, you can reorder them in any way you’d like.