59 EdTech Resources You May Have Missed–Treasure Chest August 14, 2011

by Jeffrey Thomas on August 14, 2011

Welcome to this week’s edition of Treasure Chest—59 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

Why Would a Teacher Want to “Friend” a Student on Facebook? | Hack Education–No doubt, “creepy” behavior — to put it mildly — is the rationale behind Missouri’s SB 54, ostensibly designed to protect students from sexual misconduct at school.
John Thompson: Why Test-Driven Accountability Is Grasping at Straws–Bill Gates says that his $5 billion experiment in education has not failed. Gates also claims that he trusts in science. That prompted me to reread the National Academy of Sciences' analysis of the failure of test-driven accountability.
Free Technology for Teachers: NPR’s Math Guy – 78 Archived Episodes–Keith Devlin is NPR’s Math Guy who appears on NPR’s Weekend Edition and Morning Edition programs.
Ten common myths about teaching | Superintendent’s Center | eSchoolNews.com–It seems everyone has an opinion about teachers and their profession these days … and most of them aren’t teachers.
10 Highly Used and Abused Twitter Trends that are Not Cool–The amount of Twitter abuse going around the Twitterverse is mind-boggling! Some offenses are worse than others. While we can ignore a few of them, there are some that we just can’t.
Education Needs a Digital-Age Upgrade – NYTimes.com–It’s time to stop preparing students for a world that no longer exists
Now You Can Invite People To Google Plus By Sharing A Link [News & 300 Invites]–One of the major problems with Google+ so far has been the process of inviting people. At first inviting people did not work at all. Then, the invite process started working, but you had to work with the cumbersome process of entering the email address of every person you wanted to invite. Enter the invite link.
Google for Educators: The Best Features for Busy Teachers | Edutopia–Whether you’re teaching Spanish or social studies, mathematics or music, there’s a free Google feature that will make your lessons more dynamic and your projects more organized.
Where’s Education 2.0? | Digitizd–We need to provide teaching and coaching on how to exist in this ever-more-discursive, crowdsourced, everything-and-everyone-within-reach world
100+ Google Tricks for Teachers | TeachHUB–From super-effective search tricks to Google tools specifically for education to tricks and tips for using Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar, these tricks will surely save you some precious time.
Move Over, Sal Khan: Sixth-Graders Create Their Own Math Videos! | MindShift–Marcos’ advice to other teachers? Don’t put technology behind glass. “Let them touch the computer,” he says. “That’s my one-liner. Let them touch the computer. That’s how the world changed for me, for all of us. If you give kids a little bit of trust and let them try out some stuff, they’re going to come up with fascinating things that will surprise you.”

Lead Teach Tweet by sham sensei on Prezi

Lead Teach Tweet on Prezi

How Students Use Technology [INFOGRAPHIC]–This infographic sums up the research thus far on how students are using technology.
Scratch: Teaching Kids to Create and Remix | MindShift–The introductory programming language Scratch is on the cusp of having its 2 millionth project uploaded to its website.
Is Education Reform Effective? Depends on the Definition – Education – GOOD–Too many education solutions fall apart when you step back and ask some tough questions.
30 Years of the PC: A Timeline | PCMag.com–The last three decades have seen incredible changes in the concept of the personal computer. We have the biggest events of the last 30 years.
TThe Innovative Educator: The 5 Cs to Developing Your Personal Learning Network–The five Cs will empower educators to discover how they and their students can begin building personal learning networks specific to the learner’s needs extending relevant learning connections to like-interested people around the globe.

Tools

The Top 5 Online Photo Editing Tools for Students – HOME – Edgalaxy: Where Education and Technology Meet.–education, technology, teachers, students, lessons, resources, free, tools, ICT, elearning, schools, curriculum, educational apps, youtube, google, apple, microsoft, ipad, iphone, apps
The Best Online Presentation Tools: Top picks for hosting a live tutorial or collaborative session–The following tools enable you to offer assistance in real-time on the Web. All are free or offer basic versions of the service at no cost.
Convert Audio, Video, Document, Archive and Image Files–Converting files from one type to another is necessary in a world where not all file types play nice with all software. Many online websites exist to convert specific file genres, such as image, video and document files—so many that we have an entire folder on our bookmarks bar for nothing but con…
Clay Yourself! | A Hotels.com Production–Clay Yourslef from Hotels.com® allows you to create realistic clay avatars of you and your friends. Choose from thousands of unique features, name your avatar and even test your acting chops with a custom script generator.
10 Google Chrome Apps for Increased Productivity–These ten new apps are sure to increase your web productivity while at work.
Organize Your Research With The New Standalone Zotero–One of Zotero’s biggest cons is that it works only within Firefox. This means you have to be running Firefox and use it to save the articles you find. As long as I was using Firefox, this was not a big issue, but when I switched to Chrome for a while, it became quite cumbersome. This is why I was delighted to find out that Zotero have come up with Standalone Zotero Alpha.
Free Virtual Online Alarm Clocks | blueblots.com–What if your phone is dead and you do not have an old-fashioned alarm clock to wake you up or to be reminded about something at a specified time? There’s nothing to worry anymore because a lot of web developers nowadays have created websites which function as an alarm clock
Education Technology – theory and practice: TweetDeck & 100s of Twitter tools for Teachers–This post shares some examples of other available Twitter tools which gives extra boost on your tweeting.

How-To

Guides for embedding audio and video in a WordPress web site | John Larkin–Two How To guides designed to show WordPress users, particularly students, how to embed audio and video in a WordPress web site.
How to Build a Computer from Scratch: The Complete Guide–Last week, we showed you how to build your own custom PC, from picking the parts, to putting it together and installing your OS. Here’s the complete guide, along with a printable PDF version that you can use as a reference.
Move Windows Around Quickly Using Your Keyboard in Windows 7–Windows 7: One of the best features of Windows 7 is its keyboard support for moving and arranging application windows. Press the Win key and an arrow key to easily dock windows side-by-side, maximize them, minimize them, and move them to another monitor.
How to Prevent Neighbors from Using your Wi-Fi Network–Are neighbors piggybacking on your Wi-Fi network? Learn about simple ways to prevent neighbors from using your wireless Internet without permission.
Created by Russell Stannard for Teacher Training videos.com–How to Use Camtasia
Don’t be a Weiner–Secure your Twitter Account!–Ok fine, #Weinergate was fiction and no one ever actually hacked the perv’s twitter account. That said, if you don’t want to look like a Weiner, simply follow the steps in this groovyPost to add a layer of security between your Twitter account and the bad guys.
How to Block Bad Websites–With the amount of malware currently prowling the internet it’s becoming increasingly important to protect your computer.
How To Create Facebook Friend Lists – Auto Sort Facebook Friends Into Groups–Learn how you can create Facebook friend lists and how to share posts and updates with specific group of friends on Facebook. Have a large number of friends on Facebook> Use this app to automatically group them into meaningful friend lists.
A Complete Guide To Laptop Motherboard Repair | The Windows Club–Motherboard repair guide: This guide tells you the cause of Mother Board Failure, Signs of Motherboard failure and hot to repair motherboards.
How to Create RSS Feeds for Google Searches–This tutorial describes two ways by which you can create RSS feeds for Google search results and subscribe to them in your favorite RSS News Reader.
How to maximise your PC processor’s efficiency | News | TechRadar UK–How to maximise your PC processor’s efficiency Make sure your CPU prioritises important processes : TechRadar UK

iOS

The 100 Best iPad Apps | PCMag.com–The iTunes App Store is packed to the brim with dozens upon dozens of quality apps. We’ll help you wade through the slush to find them.
Apple Offers a $999 iMac for Schools–Apple quietly introduced a new 21.5-inch iMac on Monday specifically for educational institutions.
10 top iPad Apps for Teaching and Learning–So… (because I’m also a fan of the iPad!), I decided to write this post to share the most popular iOS apps for education pointed out during the day in various sessions.
Boxee for iPad Streams Videos from Your Local Network and the Web–Boxee for iPad is another live-converting, video streaming app (like our favorites StreamToMe and Air Video), but it also lets you collect videos from the web that you want to watch and does all of this for free.
Official Facebook Messenger App For iPhone, iPad, iPod touch And Android Now Available For Download | Redmond Pie–If you use Facebook on your mobile device, you might be a frequent user of its messaging service. If so, you might become the newest fan of Facebook’s just-released standalone messaging app for both Android and iPhone.
10 tips to improve your iPhone experience | TechRepublic–A few simple tricks can make a big difference in how well your iPhone serves your needs.
5 Free iPhone Apps to Send a Photo Postcard–Don’t be forced to choose from cheesy printed postcards at your vacation destination — use your own iPhone photos with one of these fabulous, free apps that create electronic postcards you can email.

Miscellaneous

Are Google’s Best Days Behind It? | PCWorld–Analysis: Slowing product development, legal woes, and rising bureaucracy may signal trying times ahead for Silicon Valley’s favorite company
12 best Google Chrome extensions | News | TechRadar UK–12 best Google Chrome extensions Top Chrome extensions to supercharge your browser : TechRadar UK
The Rise of the Mobile Workforce [INFOGRAPHIC]–The era of the nine to five job is over. In its place is a mobile workforce that can work from anywhere. This infographic explains the trend
18 Female Founders In Tech To Watch–As part of our Women in Tech series, we’ve hand-picked 18 female tech founders to watch–women who are behind tech startups that are upending industries, changing the way we browse the web, revolutionizing medicine, and much, much more. From fashion to city government, these leaders have noticed opportunities in the market and created companies around them.
INFOGRAPHIC : Class Of 2011 : Social Media Yearbook–Yes it’s time for another infographic (this time, presented by Classfinders) and this one cleverly compares all the social networks out there with the kinds of schoolkids who would be most likely to be on them in 2011. No surprises as the new hot babe that everyone is going bananas for is none other than Google Plus.
Twitter Rolls Out Photo Sharing to All Users–Twitter’s photo-sharing and uploading service is now available to all users, Twitter has confirmed.
Definition of hashtags, the easy hashtag directory–Ever seen a hashtag on Twitter, and wondered what it is all about? Now you can look it up, and cast your vote on the definitions. And if you don’t like the definitions, or none exists, you can create your own in seconds.
Listen To ‘This American Life’ Complete Archives For FREE–Listen to any episode of This American Life, anytime, for free. That’s access to nearly 450 hour-long episodes, all fascinating. You may not realize it, but the popular radio show from Public Radio International offers a free stream for every episode the show has ever produced right on its website.
Social Media Toolbars For Websites – Best of–The addition of a social media toolbar to your website can provide a wonderful user experience and large marketing exposure
Official Facebook Messenger App For iPhone, iPad, iPod touch And Android Now Available For Download | Redmond Pie–If you use Facebook on your mobile device, you might be a frequent user of its messaging service. If so, you might become the newest fan of Facebook’s just-released standalone messaging app for both Android and iPhone.
3 Things You Should Know About Your Windows 7 Firewall–The Windows 7 Firewall is software that controls your network traffic. Its default behavior is to allow outbound traffic and deny inbound traffic. Most programs that require a change from the default settings however, can add custom rules to the Windows 7 Firewall, requiring only minimal user input. This makes the Windows 7 Firewall a very convenient tool.
70 Years of Supercomputers [Infographic]–The so-called supercomputer is now 70 years old, at least if you have a very expansive definition of supercomputer. The first supercomputer was used for government work during …
Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… – “Twtrland” Is A Neat Twitter App–twtrland is a social tool that builds profiles according to twitter timelines, helping twitter users connect and others understand its world
Twitter Adds an Activity Stream–Twitter is introducing two new activity-centric features Wednesday in a partial redesign of its web application.

Video/Slideshow

Wolfram|Alpha in a Nutshell‬‏ – YouTube–Wolfram|Alpha is the world’s first and only computational knowledge engine. Enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its computational powe..