It’s certainly been a busy week! The holidays are always a great time of year for me and my family. Although I achieved my goal of “disconnecting” yesterday for Christmas, I did find time during the week to find a lot of useful resources for EdTech! You’ll find many Delicious export resources and iPad information. And, as always, so much more in this week’s edition of Treasure Chest!
Featured
- A Letter From Santa… Ten Reasons Why Teachers Must Be Magic! | 21 st Century Educational Technology and Learning—A must read for all teachers!!!
- Why Every Teacher Should Have Two Websites | The Creative Education Blog–Every teacher should have at least two websites. One for the class, and one for the world.
- 50 Brain Facts Every Educator Should Know | Associate Degree – Facts and Information–If you work with children, here are some facts that you might find helpful, from how the brain affects learning to facts about memory to interesting facts about the brain that you can share with your students.
- 15 MORE Free Guides That Really Teach You USEFUL Stuff–During 2010, we’ve written a bunch of new PDF manuals for you, on all kinds of subjects, from Facebook privacy to Dropbox tips
- Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom: QR Huh? What The Heck Is A QR Code?–I was a little surprised when I saw them all over the Black Friday ads back in November. This is a QR or Quick Response Code. Simply, put it is a 3D barcode. It’s a much more sophisticated version of the barcode on your bag of Lays Potato Chips. QR Codes are popping up everywhere and are gaining in popularity in education. So, I have been taking some time and doing a little digging about QR codes and trying to find some resources so you can get started using them.
- Reflections on the Chris Lehmann Live Chat | Teacher Reboot Camp–This past Monday, December 20th, members of the EDU PLN Ning and participants of #Edchat joined Chris Lehmann, @ChrisLehmann, founding principal of the Science Leadership Academy, in a live conversation about education transformation.
- Aw Snap, Latest Outlook 2007 Update is Causing Issues- Mass Recall–If you’ve installed this update, their advice is to uninstall it immediately.
- The 101 Most Useful Websites on the Internet–Meet the 101 most useful websites on the Internet. The list primarily highlights all the lesser-known websites that are incredibly useful and worth bookmarking.
- 101 Most Useful Websites You Dont Know About | Curious? Read–The list primarily highlights the lesser-known or undiscovered websites and misses out all-time favorites like Google Docs, Wikipedia or IMDB that most of us are already aware of.
- Top Web Annotation and Markup Tools–Design weblog for designers, bloggers and tech users. Covering useful tools, tutorials, tips and inspirational photos
- What Math?–The majority of educated Americans do not think of Mathematics when they think of a liberal education. Mathematics as essential for science, yes, for business and accounting, sure, but for a liberal education?
- FREE! 300 Advanced PC Tips eBook | PC Plus—Download it now – 300 advanced PC tips for making your machine faster, better and more efficient.
- Free Technology for Teachers: Holiday Edition: 11 Techy Things for Teachers to Try This Year
How-To
- Most Popular Lifehacker How to Videos of 2010–We’ve worked hard this year to bring you lots of great original video content, covering a range of subjects from building a Hackintosh to slowing down Justin Bieber. Here are the most popular original videos from 2010.
- How Did You Get Your Kids to do That? | Connected Principals–Share How do we change student motivation? How do we make education more engaging? How do we get teachers to embrace a more collaborative approach with their students? I am thinking, as I browse through the trove of resources on Twitter this morning, that I have missed the point. I have spent too much time [...]
- Import Delicious Bookmarks into WordPress as Links or Posts–import all the delicious bookmarks intoWordPress as links or Posts for later use. Delicious XML Importer is a WordPress plugin which allows you to import your Delicious bookmarks to WordPress blog.
- Import Delicious Bookmarks Into Evernote, Tags and All–Delicious isn’t being shut down, but will likely be sold. If you’re still eager to back up your tagged and dated bookmarks, one XML-crafty blogger has a custom import tool that can transfer everything into Evernote, tags intact
- Learn It In 5 – Twitter advanced search–Learn how to use any web 2.0 technology in the classroom in 5 minutes or less.
- How to Share Links Between Any Browser and Any Smartphone – How-To Geek–It happens all the time, you find an article to read but then nature calls. Do you take your laptop with you? With site to phone you can share links between any browser and any smartphone with a single click.
- HOW TO: Get Started With Your New Roku Player–The Roku is easy to use and pretty self-explanatory in terms of features, but we’ve managed to track down some tips and tricks to make your streaming entertainment box as awesome as possible.
- My PLN Blueprint in 5 parts « My Island View–Everyone has one, and each is different and as unique as a fingerprint. Some employ technology, and others dwell in faculty rooms across the country and around the world.
- Help – Video Editing: A Guide to Output Tips, Solutions & How Tos | PCMag.com–Don’t settle for the default video settings that your editing software gives; find an application that lets you dig in and find the best balance of video quality and file size.
Tools
- 13 Awesome (and Free) Tools to Rip Audio From Video–Want to extract audio from a video? Check out this cool list of free tools that can help you do that
- The Ultimate Guide To Moving Your Delicious Bookmarks | Edudemic–Delicious may be ready to live another day… maybe even another week or two. But Yahoo has stated they’re planning on shopping the service around and hopefully unloading it. That doesn’t bode well for the social bookmarking service. As a popular way to share links and information, Delicious boasts a large amount of bookmarks just waiting to be moved to a more reliable service.
- 5 Free Annotation and Collaboration Tools for Web Projects–Here are five of the best free tools to annotate and collaborate on the web.
iPad, iPod, etc.
- Top iPad apps – Bing—Use Bing Visual to find the top iPad apps!
- International Society for Technology in Education – Blog > A Guide for New iPad Owners: Must-Have Apps for Education,–Here’s my list of apps that any new iPad owner should install to help get the most from their tablet:
- Three Great Study Aids for iPad Users You Probably Didn’t Know About–Do you find yourself using your iPad for school and job related tasks and projects? We know the device can be great for reading ebooks, PDFs, brainstorming
- 8 Musical iPad Apps for the Digital Maestro–Turns out, people love making stuff with their iPads. And not just the pros. The App Store is packed with ingenious tune-making tools that can turn iTunes lovers into active players.
- iPads in Schools–Resources for using iPads in schools.
- 12 Great iPad Apps for Elementary School Kids | Education.com–The iPad isn’t only the latest craze in technology, but it’s also a great teaching tool. Here are our top iPad app picks for Elementary school kids by grade.
- The right office apps for the iPad at work | Mobilize – InfoWorld–If you provide or allow employees an iPad, here are the productivity apps that you should install on them
- I Education Apps Review – I Education Apps Review – Do these Apps change your view of the iPad as Consumption Devices?–I Education Apps Review believes devices like ITouch / IPhone / IPod have a place in education.
- Set Up and Get to Know Your New iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch–You’ve just been given an iDevice: a magical entity that bestows the gift of more apps than you can fathom. We’ll help you make sense of it all with some great apps, tips, and tricks for your shiny new Apple toy
- Access Flickr On Your iPad With Flickpad For Free–With all of its potential to be used by photographers as a portfolio on the go, the iPad still doesn’t have an official Flickr app
8 Reasons the iPad will Change Education
Games
- 10 Websites With Fun Art Games For Kids–Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up
Miscellaneous
- In Defense of Commercial Software: Sometimes It’s Worth It to Pry Open Your Wallet–It know it’s ridiculous, but I have a very hard time paying for software. I love being thrifty, but the bias that I (and I suspect many of you) have against paying for apps could is rarely worth it. Here’s why.
- 10 Free Online Resources for Science Teachers–These free tools can help teachers demonstrate abstract scientific concepts in ways a text book never could.
- How Should We Use Technology in Schools? Ask Students | MindShift–Last summer, 15 students from Chicago’s public school system were charged with answering this question: “How can 21st century technology enhance rigor, relevance, and relationships in high school?”
- Most Popular Sound FX | SoundFXNow – Find, Play, and Download Sound Effects—Free Downloadable Sound Effects.
- “Internet Math” by Sarah Schneider on CollegeHumor—Math, Internet Style—Take a look for a good laugh!
- How Twitter can help teachers connect with students — and each other–Teachers everywhere are grappling with how to integrate social media into their lesson plans, and many seem skeptical of the appeal of Twitter, let alone how it could be used for educational purposes.
- Facebook vs. Twitter: An Infographic: Tech News «–A comparison of demographic data about Facebook’s users vs. Twitter’s users shows that there are a lot of similarities between the two platforms, but also some key differences in how people use the two networks — including how often they visit and update their status.
- Visit These 5 (Virtual) Museums Without Leaving Home–A field trip to a museum was one of the necessary educational activities while growing up. I think it still is. The only difference is that with the explosion
- 17 Reasons Facebook is Right for Education – SimpleK12–Social media stats are on the rise (yes, still), and if you haven’t gotten on board with Facebook yet, you may be at a disadvantage. Time for a pop quiz! Don’t worry, I’m not grading.
- Google Voice Blog: Free calling in Gmail extended through 2011
- 57 Interesting Ways* to Use Google Forms in the… – “Google Docs”
- Smories – new stories for children, read by children—Take a look at this review of Smories here!
Related articles
- Are QR Codes in marketing just a passing fad? [TNW Social Media] (thenextweb.com)
- Tech-Ed 2010 – Download the presentation videos free (downes.ca)
- Fascinating List of Blogs (dougpete.wordpress.com)
- HOT QR Codes in the Classroom & Library | The Daring Librarian (thedaringlibrarian.com)
- Top 10 Ed Tech predictions for 2011 (zdnet.com)
- Real-world example of why you need to test QR codes with multiple scanners (holtz.com)
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