97 EdTech Resources You May Have Missed–Treasure Chest March 18, 2012

by Jeffrey Thomas on March 18, 2012

Welcome to this week’s edition of Treasure Chest—97 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

Voting for the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2012 is now open | Workforce Collaboration–This is the 6th annual Top 100 Tools for Learning list I will be compiling based on the contributions of learning professionals worldwide. With nearly 100,000 page views …
Re-thinking the Middle School–We tend to do everything wrong for kids between 12 and 15.
When the Stakes Are High, Can We Rely on Value-Added?–The importance placed on identifying good teachers and bad teachers stands in stark contrast to the teacher evaluation system, which research suggests is a broken system.
Why Is the Secretary of Education Proposing Teachers Receive $150,000 Salaries? – Education – GOOD–If states can’t afford to keep teachers at the relatively low salaries they’re paid now, why are we even discussing the possibility of more money?
What Should You Do If Your Employer Asks For Your Facebook Password?–Why are some employers asking workers and would-be workers for their Facebook passwords?
15 Awesome Ways To Use Blogs in Your Classrooms – SimpleK12–Ever thought of using a blog to enhance your classroom?
Khan Academy: The future of education? – 60 Minutes – CBS News–60 Minutes on CBS News: Khan Academy: The future of education? – With the backing of Gates and Google, Khan Academy and its free online educational videos are moving into the classroom and across the world. Their goal: to revolutionize how we teach and learn. Sanjay Gupta reports.
Teachers: Do you want your kids watching Khan? Or watching YOU? | EdReach–The Khan Academy PR machine is getting to be in full swing after last night’s CBS 60 Minutes airing. I’ve always stated that I’d like to see teachers being their own Khans, being master publishers, and using their many years of teaching mastery to “teach the world.” Khan beat us to it, but it doesn’t mean we can’t do it better..

NASA | Evolution of the Moon

What works? The sage on the stage — Joanne Jacobs–Unless they’re experts, students learn more when teachers fully explain the material, write Richard E. Clark, Paul A. Kirschner and John Sweller in the new American Educator.
TED Launches its Education Platform: TED-Ed–TED launches its TED-Ed YouTube channel: Short, animated videos for teachers and students
BBC News – ‘Pupils should learn maths through using it’–Children struggle with school maths as teaching methods don’t focus enough on allowing children to use it, argues an expert.
The Innovative Educator: Why I Let My Kids Have an Internet Presence–Should we let kids be out there on the ‘net? Should we post their pictures? Won’t they be kidnapped??
Why Are Teachers So Upset? – Bridging Differences – Education Week–Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch have found themselves at odds on policy over the years, but they share a passion for improving schools. Bridging Differences will offer their insights on what matters most in education.
Why be an Administrative Tweeter? « Molehills out of Mountains–Now, several years (and thousands of tweets) later, my opinion has changed. Twitter has become a professional development staple – a source of ideas, conversation, challenge, and inspiration.
Why My Six-Year-Old Students Have Digital Portfolios | Getting Smart–From the first week of school, the six-year-olds in my classroom begin to create an online presence in the form of a blog and digital portfolio. We use a blogging platform to do this, and include artifacts that show their progress in writing, reading, math, social studies, and science.
You Just Attended an Awesome Conference. Now What? | Edutopia–How about those exciting ideas and strategies you just learned at that educators’ convention? Blogger Nick Provenzano suggests five ways to take them home and run with them.
What Schools are Really Blocking When They Block Social Media | Connected Learning Research Network–The debates about schools and social media are a subject of great public and policy interests. In reality, the debate has been shaped by one key fact: the almost universal decision by school administrators to block social media.
Free Technology for Teachers: All of My Blogging Advice in One Place–It’s hard to make all my advice fit into 140 characters so I compiled this list of blog posts about blogging that I’ve written in the past. Hence the title All of My Blogging Advice in One Place.
Want Students to Succeed? Let Them Fail – Education – GOOD–Sending students the message that struggling is a crucial part of learning helps them excel.
5 Things I Learned About the Future from Stephen Wolfram–Stephen Wolfram performed that role in his talk, “Computation and Its Impact on the Future.” In his view, we’re at the dawn of an age of computing that’s as important as the agricultural and industrial revolutions, if not more so. Here are five key takeaways.
“The Audrey Test”: Or, What Should Every Techie Know About Education?–I want us to set the bar really high when it comes to education technology — both in its development and its implementation

Tools

Audacity 2.0 Update Brings Lots Of Bug Fixes & New Features–Finding the right tool from so many audio editors in the market that exactly matches your needs is a difficult job.
4 Powerful Free Cloud Services for Teachers | Emerging Education Technology–These popular free Internet based tools provide excellent functionality that you can access from many devices. The buzz about the cloud just seems to keep …

101 Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers That You Should Know About

View more presentations from GoEdOnline

9 Great Photo Handling Tools For New And Occasional Photographers–If you are just starting out in the world of digital imagery and are a little short on cash, here are some free applications and storage options that will help you get started.
5 Innovative Mind-Mapping Tools For Education | Edudemic–What do you do when you have an elaborate project, assignment, or paper that needs to be quickly organized?
The 35 Best Mac Apps | PCMag.com–Whether you’re a Mac newcomer or seasoned veteran, these 35 apps will make your OS X experience more fun and productive
Tools to Share (+Listen) Music Online – Best of–Do you like to listen to music while you’re working on a blog post, doing some web development, or maybe even just browsing the Web? For many, music works as a …
Drag & Resize YouTube Video Player [Chrome]–YouTube offers users with three different video sizes, which are small, large and full-screen. While you can switch between these three different modes,
35 Apps That Can Make You More Productive | PCMag.com–Half the battle in being more efficient and boosting your productivity at work or at home is knowing what tools are available to help.
3 Extensions To Help You Speed Up Search & Find Everything Quickly [Chrome]–In this day and age, it’s all about search.
A Few Search Tools You Can Use To Pick Up Press Releases For Blogging Ideas–Even before the internet was an idea, press releases had been the tool for promotion and social communication. Even now in the crowd of social networking and instant news feeds, press releases hold their importance.
Do I just Google that? Tools for Teaching Search Skills in the Primary Classroom–Nowadays many pupils, when given a research task, immediately might think to themselves, “I’ll just Google that.”
Curate.me Mines The Web To Fill Your Inbox With Personalized News–Curate.me is making its public debut today after a 6-month invitation-only beta period which attracted some 20,000 users.
Unobtrusive Website Toolbars to Help Increase User Engagement–Pop-ups, pop-unders, splash pages, marquees and other “in your face” techniques to grab your visitors’ attention are so yesterday
7 Tools To Backup Twitter Profile Updates–You have a large number of tools that can archive your tweets and you also have the option to search for any specific tweet anytime in future. Following is a list of 7 tools that are best in the trade.
Browser Wars: Chrome vs. IE9 vs. Firefox | PCMag.com–Safari and Opera, too, should be among your considerations of which browser you should use, based on speed, safety, and features.
Free Technology for Teachers: Screen Leap – Instant and Easy Screen Sharing–To share your screen using Screen Leap just visit the site, click “share your screen,” enable the Java applet, and send the sharing code to the person you want to view your screen
Dragontape – Create Custom YouTube Mixes | Mark Brumley–You are getting ready to start an instructional unit and you want to build excitement
Try WeVideo’s Camera App for Collaborative Video Creation–WeVideo is a collaborative, online video creation and editing tool that I’ve been quite excited about since last fall. In January they left beta and opened to the whole world. Their latest update was the launch of a free Android app.

How-To

4 Creative Projects To Do On Your Mac [OSX]–With summer still way off and spring only just poking its head out, there’s still time to get some creative juices flowing while stuck in front of your computer. If you still haven’t done anything with last year’s video footage and photographs, here are 4 creative projects you can do on your Mac (or on the Internet), mostly for free.
How to create a Windows 7 system repair disc | News | TechRadar–How to create a Windows 7 system repair disc Don’t let Windows collapse on you without a suitable fallback.
Limit Dropbox Download/Upload Speed to Save on Bandwidth–Is Dropbox hogging your internet connection? If you sync a large amount of data to Dropbox, this can happen quite easily. This groovy quick-tip should put the program in check and get your internet connection back to a usable speed.
The Innovative Educator: Teachers, leaders, and learners can podcast right from their phones!–In the busy school day many teachers and leaders don’t feel their schedules allow for the complexities of the equipment and set up necessary for podcasting. But it needn’t be that way.
Google Tutorials – MentorMob–Here you will find links to help you get started with Google Docs in the classroom
Hello! Welcome to PHS Library 2.0 Tools2Create4school–This tutorial is designed so that you can learn how to use the tools of web 2.0 effectively and creatively.
ePortfolios with GoogleApps–A website to support the use of GoogleApps to construct ePortfolios in both K-12 schools and in higher education
Microsoft Mathematics Tutorial 1 – The User Interface–The graphical user interface of Microsoft Mathematics 4.0
10 Useful Tips To Master Facebook Timelines For Pages–The new Timeline layout allows you to market and advertise your brand better than original pages and adds an opportunity to boost engagement with your fans.
Open Word, Excel (.doc, .docx, xlsx) Files Without MS Office Installed–Find Out How to Open Word, Excel (.doc, .docx, xlsx etc) Files Without MS Office Installed.
Free Technology for Teachers: Create Study Materials from Evernote Notes–Recently, while exploring some the many features of Evernote, I discovered that you can create flashcards from the contents of an Evernote notebook.
How To Unlock Your Computer After Forgetting Your Windows Login–Most passwords aren’t that difficult to reset, particularly those online. There is one that can give you trouble, however – your Windows login password. If you forget this you will be locked out of your account and unable to access all of the files and software specifically tied to that account.
How to Find and Unfollow Inactive People on Twitter–If you are a regular Twitter user, it would be a wise idea to unfollow people who are no longer active on does not tweet much. However, it can be a time consuming task if you are following hundreds of people on Twitter. To help you find inactive users and unfollow them, give Untweeps a try.
The Best Articles for Backing Up and Syncing Your Data – How-To Geek–World Backup Day is March 31st and we decided to provide you with some useful information to make backing up your data easier. We’ve published articles about backing up various types of data and settings both offline and online.
Educational Technology Guy: Learning HTML Code – some resources to get started–I’ve been teaching myself HTML over the last few months to do more with my blog and class sites than the templates allow.

iOS

35 Excellent iPad Apps – A Complete Toolkit for Designers | Multy Shades–The iPad is one of the best innovations from the house of Apple. It is not just about playing media or browsing internet but it gives full control to the designers to be more efficient and more creative with their work by using its apps.
32 iPad Tips and Tricks | PCWorld–Master your new iPad with these quick tips and handy iOS shortcuts.
My Ten Most Used Apps to Become Fluent on the iPad | Langwitches Blog–It is no secret, that I enjoy my iPad tremendously. I even proclaimed, now and then, that I love it! From the beginning, I approached the iPad with one goal in mind: I wanted to become fluent in using it. There is a distinct difference, in my opinion, between being …
Everything Your New iPad Needs Right Now–FedEx came through, or you survived an ungodly Apple Store line, or you mugged someone who just did. However you got your hands on a new iPad, congrats! Here’s everything you need to get started off right.
Untethered Teachers: Using AppleTV in the Classroom | Wired Educator–Is it possible to be both a wired and unwired educator at the same time?
5 Reasons to Evaluate your School iPad Program + Sample Evaluation Form « Staffroom HQ–Evaluating the use of the iPad in the classroom is just as important. The significance of gathering data and information about iPad integration will allow for the following:
Sneak Peek: The New Khan Academy iPad App | Edudemic–If you’re a fan of technology, education, and learning… you know about Khan Academy.
The iPad’s most useful apps, updated for 2012 | TechRepublic–While the iPad has its limitations, it’s really good at a few basic functions. These 22 apps play to the iPad’s strengths.
Apps for Editing PDF Files on your iPhone and iPad–You can perform basic editing of your PDF files on an iPad or iPhone with these apps. Remove pages from a PDF document, merge multiple PDFs and more.
1.5 Million Lessons And Growing: ShowMe App Emerges as Leader in iPad Digital Education Revolution | Singularity Hub–In 2011, the poster child of digital education was the Khan Academy, Sal Khan’s brainchild of over 3,000 lessons, but a new star is emerging for 2012 that’s taking Khan’s approach to the crowd.
Microsoft Office Documents on iPad with CloudOn–We were excited about the launch of OnLive Desktop – which gives you Windows and Office Docs on your iPad. Now there’s another cool app for iPad that lets you manage your Office docs called CloudOn. It integrates with Dropbox so you can work on documents on your iPad and from other devices.
The new iPad is a beautiful reminder of how stupid data plans are | The Verge–Apple’s new iPad is magnificent. The screen is superb, the processor is fast, and despite its newfound LTE cellular connectivity, the battery life lasts. And yet, I&rsquo;d never, ever recommend you..

Android

Instagram Announces Android Version–Instagram, the popular photo-filtering and sharing app, is on its way to Google’s mobile operating system Android.
Secure Photos and Videos on Your Android Phone Against Theft or Phone Snoopers–Android’s default setup doesn’t include any type of photo security. Even when you’ve put a password on your screenlock, all it takes is access to your SD card to get to your photos and dump them on the Internet for all to see. Want to make them more secure?
8 Android Apps to Boost Tablet Productivity – android apps, android apps for tablets, android tablet apps, Productivity–Android Applications have revolutionized the way phones are used. Smartphones loaded with innumerable android applications have changed the lifestyles of millions of people across the globe
10 Must-Have Android Apps You Need Now–PC Magazine Top Ten!
Download / Install Android 4.0.3 ICS On Galaxy S II [Official ROM: How-To Tutorial] | Redmond Pie–There has been some good news for Samsung Galaxy S II owners today with the announcement that the Korean company will start to push out the Android 4.0.3 update to S II devices in Korea and some parts of Europe.
Educational Technology Guy: Splashtop Whiteboard for Android now available – control computer from tablet–Splashtop has just announced that Splashtop Whiteboard for Android tablets is now available in the Google Play app market.
Smart Tools for Your Android Device–Smart Tools for Your Android Device
AirDroid – Control Your Android Device from Your Computer–AirDroid – Control Your Android Device from Your Computer
How to Send Large Files From Your Android–Trying to send large files from your Android phone and found that you can’t do it? Here are some apps to help you out.
Watch, Download TED Videos On Your Android With The Official TED App–TED has just released its official Android app which is free and allows users to download TED videos on their Android phone or tablet. You can even stream an audio podcast of a TED video on slow internet connections.

Miscellaneous

25 Free Resources from Discovery Education – DEN Blog Network—Don’t miss these great resources!
The Best Sites For Learning About The Titanic | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…–Next month is the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.
Jing Pro Retiring–Don’t fret– the free version of Jing isn’t going anywhere. But in order to better meet the visual communication needs of our customers, we have decided to discontinue our Jing Pro yearly subscription option.
10 annoying habits your Outlook users need to break | TechRepublic–Outlook seems to lend itself to worst practices. Luckily, a little education can help prevent a lot of user-induced headaches.
Failing Student Wears Sign As Punishment | Video – ABC News–Florida dad makes teen son wear sign outdoors for failing three classes.
Top Tech Buzzwords You Use But Can’t Define–The Global Language Monitor has released a list of the most confusing tech buzzwords of the decade, so far.

Free Biography, Autobiography and Memoir Books Online–This is a listing of sites that legally offer free books on Biographies, Autobiographies & Memoirs, for reading and listening (audio).
Stephen Wolfram Thinks Instagram is “Completely Nuts” For Writing Its Own Photo Filters–The easy news at South by Southwest yesterday was that Instagram has reached 27 million users and has indeed built the expected Android version.
20 Ways Libraries Are Using Pinterest Right Now | Edudemic–Pinterest is taking the social media world by storm, and it isn’t just popular with individual users
What Is The Difference Between A Worm, A Trojan & A Virus? [MakeUseOf Explains]–Some people call any type of malicious software a computer virus, but that isn’t accurate
10 tips to ensure success in maths!–10 tips to ensure success in Maths!
18 Amazing Examples of G+ Hangouts in Education | Online Universities–Google+ Hangouts is making a splash in education, where teachers and others are transforming the learning experience.
Interactive Whiteboard Activities from Scholastic | The Whiteboard Blog–The Scholastic website contains, amongst other things, a section with interactive activities that you can use on your whiteboard.
Americans Don’t Have Time For Slow Websites [INFOGRAPHIC]–Got a minute? See how mere milliseconds of extra loading time can mean major lost revenue for websites and ecommerce companies
Educational Technology Guy: List of What Makes a Good Teacher – created by students–This “what makes a good teacher” created by a group of high school students.
iPhone or Android: Five questions to help you decide | TechRepublic–When people ask if they should buy an iPhone or an Android device, which do you recommend?
Blog Carnival for Math Teachers at Play Number 48 Is Here – With a Fun Twist! | MathFour–One of the hardest, most challenging and fun articles I’ve ever done. Full of links!