82 EdTech Resources You May Have Missed–Treasure Chest November 27, 2011

by Jeffrey Thomas on November 25, 2011

Here is another weekly edition of Treasure Chest—82 EdTech Resources You May Have Missed this past week.

Since it was a holiday week I scaled back my edtech curating but still managed to come up with these resources you may have missed. You may have been extra busy too with family functions and didn’t get a chance to keep up like you normally do. Well, this is your chance to catch up a little! Enjoy!

Featured

100+ Winter Websites for Kids!–Everything For Christmas and more!
Mobile Motivation: Learning with Mobile Devices – LiveBinder–Mobile Learning apps, blogs, and webinar recordings
“Don’t Punish Everyone”–It is important that as we continue on this path, and we look at what we are doing with our students, we don’t create policies for the “minority”.
Fel 2.0: 100 Take-Aways From the Midwest Google Summit–When I compiled my notes form the Midwest Google Summit, I was more than a bit astounded to realize I had exactly 100 Take-Aways
How About Better Parents? – NYTimes.com–Let’s stop putting the burden of education improvements just on teachers. Parents play a huge role in classroom success.
The 10 Barriers to Technology Adoption | District Administration Magazine–Why have computing technologies failed to transform K12? Here are our 10 barriers to technology adoption.
Skype in Schools – LiveBinder–Resources for Using Skype in Schools
Twitter Hashtags In The Classroom–As the year progresses, we are seeing more educators in our division use this hashtag as a way to share their work while also using it as a “bat signal” to ask for help.
Stanford’s Online High School Raises the Bar – NYTimes.com–Stanford University’s nearly $15,000-a-year Education Program for Gifted Youth will now bear the institution’s name, a move seen as a watershed in a growing field that is drawing scrutiny.
Just Because You’re Active, Doesn’t Mean You’re Productive | Big Is The New Small–I worked with, alongside, for and supervised many people who confuse activity for productivity
7 Secrets Of Highly Effective Twitter Power Users – AllTwitter–7 Secrets Of Highly Effective Twitter Power Users
Watch the Mars Rover Launch Live–Today at 10:02 a.m. EST, NASA will send the biggest rover it’s ever built, Curiosity, to Mars. Watch the live video here.
Top 10 Signs That Your Teacher Is A Geek–To help you unearth the technology elite in your school, here are the top 10 signs that your teacher is a geek:
Kindergarteners use iPads, not chalkboards–Gone are the days of chalkboards and worksheets in the classroom. Instead iPads, laptop computers and smart boards are the primary resources aiding teaching in the classroom.
Why Educators Should Join Twitter – Finding Common Ground – Education Week–In late July I decided to join Twitter. To be perfectly honest with you I had no idea what I was supposed to do when I got on there but I heard so much about it I thought it would be a worthwhile experience
A plea for a better Google Docs — Tech News and Analysis–Most of us who work with Google Docs have or will at some point get frustrated with it. After a recent poll, it’s clear the product that we know and like could be so much better with more attention from its creator. Herewith is our manifesto.
Seth’s Blog: Pre digital–A brief visit to the emergency room last month reminded me of what an organization that’s pre-digital is like. Six people doing bureaucratic tasks and screening that are artifacts of a paper universe, all in the service of one doctor…
TeachPaperless: The Wikipedia Dilemma–In recent years, this seemingly straightforward premise has been complicated by the definition of what constitutes reliable sources.
Edublog Awards 2011… or not. « What Ed Said–Another year later, a self-confessed addict to both reading and writing blogs, I wouldn’t know which to choose if I had to nominate favourites. Instead, I have some thoughts to share…
QR codes may be great, but will a url do just as well? – Simply Zesty – Simply Zesty–While it may seem like an obvious question, should we be asking ourselves if, sometimes, a plain old printed url will do just as well as a QR code?
The U.S. is getting it wrong on school reform – Mind Dump–Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World’s Leading Systems by Marc S. Tucker and colleagues takes benchmarking one step further.
Professional Development with the Experts Through Twitter – Finding Common Ground – Education Week–Elementary school Principal Peter DeWitt writes about students’ social and emotional health, and how educators can help young people find common ground

Tools

50 Free Apps We’re Most Thankful For–As we prepare to give thanks for our delicious Thanksgiving meals (and impending food comas), let’s not forget to pay our yearly tribute to the wonderful developers who bring us our favorite free apps.
Free Technology for Teachers: Ten Search Tools and Tactics Teachers and Students Need to Know–As a follow-up to that experience, I’ve crafted the following list of search tools and tactics that every teacher and student should know.
Nine Excellent Yet Free To Use Apps For Mac OSX | Free and Useful Online Resources for Designers and Developers–There are many Mac OSX apps out there for for mac users, but getting by free and good ones is not that easy
Best Free Audio-Video Format Conversion Program–Many commercial programs will do this conversion for you, but there are a few good ones that will do it for free.
Download Microsoft Office Starter 2010–Microsoft Office 2010 is available in different editions just like the Windows operating system. There is Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010 or Office
A Revolutionary Education App Worth Talking About | Edudemic–It’s a revolutionary app that can dramatically cut costs because it’s an app that could quickly take the place of very (very) expensive augmentative and alternative communication technology.
Compare & Find Best Free Solutions | CatchFree–CatchFree makes it easy to compare and find the best free online solution for your specific need.
Tweet On The Go Like A Pro With This Killer Combo Of Apps [Android]–Ah, that most addictive of Internet birds, Twitter. No doubt it’s fun to tweet, and even more fun to read what other people tweet about and check out all of the interesting links they post. It’s a great way to kill time while you’re on the go, and thanks to a kick-ass new Android application that was recently released to the Market, tweeting on the go just became much more powerful.
Free Technology for Teachers: 11 Free Online Drawing Tools–As long as there has been a mouse connected to a computer there have been tools for making drawings on a computer.
The 5 Best Music Apps For Your Android Device–Your Android device is a great mp3 player, and using some of the amazing apps out there, it can be much more than that. You can access Grooveshark, stream your own music collection from your computer anywhere over the Internet, tune into radio stations worldwide, identify and get lyrics to any song that is playing, and keep track of tour dates of your favorite bands.
5 Free Online IQ Test Websites || Free Software–Here are 5 free online IQ test websites for those who always like to challenge their smartness and intelligence. Test your IQ Level.
Monitor Website Performance With Pingdom Tools Web App–Pingdom Tools is a web app that helps you analyze the load speed and performance of your website, and offers tips to make it faster. It displays the load time,
40 Useful Photoshop Free Plugins And Filters | Free and Useful Online Resources for Designers and Developers–In this post of some free Photoshop plugins and filters, you will discover a handful plugins that are (more or less) as old as time itself but they will work flawlessly on all versions of Photoshop and the effect they create are just as valuable now as they were then…
Screencast-O-Matic: Record & Upload Screencasts To YouTube–Screencasts are digital recordings of your computer screen. You may think of them as video screenshots that record and show the changes happening on your…
Top 5 Lesser-Known Online Photo Enhancement Web Apps–Editing a photo can be done for many reasons. It can be for professional purposes, for sharing with family and showing off your creative skills, or even just
8 Great Apps to Make Your Christmas Wish List–I have a confession to make. I’m 26 years old and I still give my parents a Christmas list. I mean, don’t get me wrong; I don’t volunteer the information. They usually have to ask me several times for it over the course of a month before I give it up.
5 Free Online Alarm Clocks || Free Software–Here are 5 free online alarm clocks to wake you up in mornings, absolutely free which do not require any kind of registration or login.
9 Apps to Download on Your Kindle Fire–While you can always use the Kindle Fire just to play Angry Birds, we’ve rounded up 9 more great apps that you’re sure to enjoy.

How-To

How To Store Your Files in The Cloud – And Why You’d Want To–So far in our series exploring cloud computing for consumers, we’ve looked at calendars and music. In the multi-device world we now live in, files from your computer are also increasingly being stored in the cloud.
Copyright Fair Use and How it Works for Online Images | Social Media Examiner–Copyright of images: What you need to know about publishing photos, images and videos online to make good decisions on fair use and avoid legal actions.
32 bit and 64 bit explained–If you’ve asked these questions then this tutorial should help you to understand the concepts of 32-bit and 64-bit computing.
Windows Live Mesh – How to Sync Folders with Other People | 7 Tutorials–One less known feature of Microsoft’s SkyDrive and Windows Live Mesh, is that they allow you to share and synchronize folders with other people using the same platform. This tutorial will share how this works, the limitations of this feature and…
How To Get The New YouTube Homepage Right Now–If you are following the chatter on social networking sites such as Google+, Facebook or Twitter, you may have noticed that YouTube is currently testing a new…
Create and Use Basic Formulas in MS Excel 2010–Oftentimes people avoid using certain programs because they figure the learning curve might be too long or the amount of time invested won’t be worth the eventual payoff. Nowhere is this more apparent than Microsoft Excel, the spreadsheet program that comes with the Office suite of applications.
7 Computer Tips You Won’t Learn From Your Mom | Computer Tips–7 Computer Tips You Won’t Learn From Your Mom. When I was a kid, I learned a bunch of computer tips from other kids which I used to hide things from my parents. Although this article talks about ways to avoid parental surveillance, it’s really written for parents. We want you to know how your kids might use the computer in ways you don’t approve of.
How to Tweak the Advanced Settings of a Power Plan in Windows 7 | 7 Tutorials–Windows 7 offers a lot of advanced configuration options, which can help get the best balance between performance and power saving. This article will cover all the important configuration items and help you customize power plans in detail.
How to Set Up a Digital Photo Editing Environment in Windows | 7 Tutorials–Editing photos have become a much larger part of what a photographer does and, as a result, the pros have developed some best practices when it comes to setting up an environment that allows them to do their work easily, efficiently, and well.
How to Record Audio or Sounds with Free Sound Recorder for Windows–Free Sound Recorder for Windows is Probably the Best and the Simplest Tool to Record Audio, System Sounds, Streaming Audio and Much More on Windows Computers.

iOS

iLearn: 100+ iPad Apps Perfect For High School–The Palm Beach School System has an incredible wiki where members of the community share their favorite apps for specific disciplines. Below I’ve embedded their list for the top high school apps but they also have a curated list of apps for middle school and elementary school. I wanted to give a mention to the people behind the project. Be sure to reach out to them if you have any questions or just want to let them know that you are benefiting from their hard work:
Over 125 iOS Apps And Games On Sale For Black Friday – AppAdvice–Forget standing in long lines today and instead do your holiday shopping from the comfort of your own home by taking advantage of the great Black Friday deals occurring
Top 10 iPad Apps for Teachers | Mr. Gonzalez’s Classroom–Guest Post: This article was submitted by Lori Hutchison. She owns the site Masters in History and is an Art History Professor. As the use of iPads becomes
Turning Students Into Teachers – iPads in Education–The best way to learn anything is to teach it to someone else . Isn’t that what you’ve always been told? It’s true … and also a great philosophy to apply in…
Moving at the Speed of Creativity – Lessons Learned using VoiceThread for iPad–The free VoiceThread for iPad app has been available for awhile, but this afternoon was the first opportunity I’ve had to play with it at length.
5 Free Google Docs Apps for iPad || Free Software–Here are 5 free Google Docs apps which can fetch documents on iPad from Google Docs account. Install any of these Google Docs apps Free.
Google Launches Search App for iPad — With a Siri-Like Feature–Google has unveiled the latest version of its Google Search app for the iPad, making searching on the tablet faster and more intuitive.
Top 10+ Free & Cheap Math Learning Apps | Getting Smart–Lately, we’ve taken an interest in math games or simulations for increased math learning. Students and parents today can download countless smartphone and…
Apps in Education: 4 Way Video Calls on iPad–Last month Fring released an iPad optimized version of their app that can do 4-way video calling. Now you can talk to 4 people at once and because the screen is cut in 4 you can see everyone.
Electronic Arts Drops Prices on iOS and Android Games–Game developer Electronic Arts today dropped the prices of some popular iPad, iPhone and Android game titles by as much as 80%.
Apple IPad 2 Buying Guide | PCWorld–Maybe last year, the iPad seemed too new and exotic to be on your holiday wish list. If this year is different, here’s some buying advice.
Watch Steve Jobs Brainstorming With His Team At NeXT In This Never-Before-Seen Video | Redmond Pie–If you’re even slightly interested in the life of Steven P. Jobs then the chances are you’re also at least mildly intrigued by the second company he founded, NeXT.
Moving at the Speed of Creativity – Embedding Flash Audio on WordPress.com with an iPad–In this post I’ll describe how I used this technique to include flash-based embed code from the audio podcasting site Cinch today, using the free WordPress for iPad app to post it.
10 cool iMovie effects to make your videos sparkle | News | TechRadar–10 cool iMovie effects to make your videos sparkle Dolly zoom and steadycam effects, cutting to music and more : TechRadar
Top Must-Have Widgets For iOS 5 Notification Center | Redmond Pie–Before the belated introduction of Siri, Notification Center was the main talking point of Apple’s much improved operating system for mobile devices – iOS 5. Although the voice-recognition software is marvelous and all, the improved notification infrastructure has to go down as the prized feature of what is (besides the battery issues) a very well put together update.
Using FTP on Your iPad–There aren’t many free and good FTP apps for iPad. One of the best that I found is iFTP which really works well.
Hotspot Shield VPN App Enables Secure Browsing on iPhones, iPads on Public Wi-Fi–Hotspot Shield for iOS lets you set up a VPN on iPhone to keep your browsing session secure on public Wi-Fi.

Miscellaneous

36 Top Tweeters for Science Teachers | The Creative Education Blog–It’s been a while since we did any posts on top tweeters to follow, so i thought I’d take up the gauntlet and we’ve put together a list for Science teachers.
EdTechSandyK: 2011 Edublog Award Nominations–After watching the Edublog Awards process for a few years, and even voting in the final round before, I’ve decided it’s time for me to get involved at the grass-roots level by making some of my own nominations in 2011!
10 Amazing Free Online Computer Science Classes from Stanford University–10 Amazing Free Online Computer Science Classes from Stanford University
10 Beneficial Facebook Pages For Educators To Check Out | Emerging Education Technology–A selection of Facebook Pages providing resources and dialogue focused on education and instructional technologies
STEM Education: Does America Have the Right Stuff? [INFOGRAPHIC] #edtech–A stronger focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education is the key to our country’s future. Find out why from this infographic!
The Best Kindle Fire Apps: A Starter Kit – IMO Instant Messenger – Slideshow from PCMag.com
Apple May Have Won The PC War… By Losing The Windows Battle | TechCrunch–Because they didn’t have the baggage that other PC makers had, they were free to re-invent the wheel — the personal computer — with their iOS devices. Because Apple lost the PC battle to Windows in the 1990s, they may end up winning the personal computing war.
The 10 most important things to teach your Excel users | TechRepublic–You can help new Excel users become more productive and self-reliant if you explain these core concepts, efficiency tricks, and essential features.
BBC Nature Video Collections | The Whiteboard Blog–The BBC Nature Video Collection is a large library of video clips from the excellent BBC Natural History archive, many narrated by the legend that is…
Top 10 Wireless Routers for home use–A Router pronounced commonly as Row-ter (Row pronounced as cow), is a device that forwards data between computer networks
15 Reasons Why GeoGebra is Successful Mathematics and Multimedia–Michael Borcherds, lead developer of GeoGebra, asked why GeoGebra is successful in the GeoGebra Forum; I summarized the responses and came up with 15 reasons. Here are the reasons why GeoGebra has been so successful all these years.
Why Do Schools Still Teach an Oversimplified Thanksgiving Story? – News – GOOD–A growing number of teachers are making an effort to teach “a more accurate history” about Thanksgiving.
CALCULUS.ORG
Google+ Was Never a Facebook Competitor–The social web is a well reported topic within the media today, and for good reason. We are in a transitional change with how we communicate with each other online, how brands reach consumers and how organisations market to their audience
12 Awesome Christmas Themes for Windows 7–Download Free Christmas themes for Windows 7. Best Christmas themes for free download. Windows 7 Christmas themes download.