46 EdTech Resources You May Have Missed–Treasure Chest Jan. 9, 2011

by Jeffrey Thomas on January 9, 2011

Here is this week’s edition of Treasure Chest–46 EdTech Resources You May Have Missed for this past week.

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Before getting started, I found an interesting tool to discover the most popular links on a page.

For instance, I could put the URL of last week’s Treasure Chest into this tool and it would return a color-coded version of the page. I’m not sure how useful it is yet, but for now I like using it!

Visually Discover the Most Popular Links on a Page–Learn how you can visually discover the most popular links on any web page – like this page for example

Featured

DOs and DON’Ts of Blogging With Students | Burcu Akyol’s Blog–I thought it would be a good idea to publish some DOs and DON’Ts. These guidelines are specific to our school but some of the suggestions might be valid for the other blogging teachers too.
Web-based Digital Storytelling Tools and Online Interactive Resources–There are many great websites that provide opportunities for students to develop language skills, tell stories, and share back their knowledge in fun, creative, and meaningful ways each using a computer. There are also terrific websites and portals which have links to excellent online interactives which can be used in the classroom with an interactive whiteboard.
Solar System Exploration: Home Page–The Solar System Exploration website is a one-stop shop for planetary information published by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

What Great Principals Do Differently!

What Great Principals Do Differently on Prezi

Learn It In 5 – What Teachers’ New Year’s Resolution Should Be–A conversation with a young, first-year teacher on Christmas day had me contemplating the problems in education and how we should solve them.
Why Teachers Should Blog: A Helpful Flowchart–Not sure why you should blog if you’re a teacher?
Lisa Nielsen: When Passion Drives Instruction, No Child is Left Behind–When instruction is driven not just by data but by the passions of the students, there is no child left behind scratching their head wondering what they're going to do with their lives.
If I only knew then… | ZDNet–It’s a new year and, although that doesn’t actually mean a lot in education, where the year is only halfway over, it always makes me a bit reflective. Add to that an email I received over the holidays asking for advice for a young tech director and you get a list of the 10 most important principles, precepts, bits of knowledge, and pieces of advice that I think are worth sharing with fellow Ed Techies.
The Answer Sheet – How technology will and won’t change schools by 2020–Will ever newer technological devices really lead to an educational revolution and make schools unrecognizable by 2020?
What’s Our Stake in High Stakes Testing? « My Island View–I recently received a comment from an educator that stated he always found the topic choices (for #EdChat) very interesting, but eventually we would need to discuss Standardized Testing or High Stakes Testing as a topic.
Cool Sites for Kids | Ozge Karaoglu’s Blog–There are zillions of websites and everyday new sites are launching. It maybe difficult to choose the right sites for the kids.
100+ Online Resources That Are Transforming Education–Most education innovation is centered around a short list of fundamental ideas. In this post we walk through nine clusters of education tech companies.
11 Free Resources About Creativity–Want some ideas about creativity? I found some files and ebooks that might be of value to you. Note: these are all PDF files.
32 Interesting Ways to use Google Docs in the Classroom—Presentation
Angry Birds Now Available for Windows XP & 7–Wildly popular smartphone game Angry Birds is now available in Intel’s AppUp netbook app store for Windows 7 and Windows XP platforms.

Tools

30+ Free Online Multimedia (Photo, Audio, Video) Editors–Here’s a list of free web services that allows you to edit multimedia files (photo, audio and video) online.
10 Websites to Make and Print Word Search Puzzles–Add word search puzzles to the list of games you can play with mere words and using nothing but a pen and paper. Oh, I forgot, you can play all sorts of puzzles
Popplet Looks Like A Winner — It’s Wallwisher On Steroids | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…—Popplet is a new web app that is like Wallwisher on steroids. You can make an online bulletin-board with virtual post-its (called popplets
OurStory.com – Capture your stories, save them permanently.–OurStory goes beyond blogging to permanently capture life’s stories in words and photos. Publish or share the stories privately with family and friends.
MIT’s Scratch Part 4: Twenty Webs Sites To Support Scratch And The Itch For Transforming Education–This time I have struck the mother lode with twenty sites that are bound to bring relief to those itching to learn Scratch.

How-To

Resolved: How to Keep Your Computer Safe, Clean, and Backed Up in 2011–Those important computer tasks–like securing, cleaning, and backing up–are like any other resolution: we all say we’re going to do them but rarely keep up with them all year. Here’s our simple guide to staying on track in 2011
Gmail Advanced Search – Ultimate Guide–Design weblog for designers, bloggers and tech users. Covering useful tools, tutorials, tips and inspirational photos.
Easy Lifecaching: How To Back Up Your Online Life–Did you lose a little faith in the cloud when you heard about Delicious shutting down (even though they say it will be sold now)? Setting up your life cache will involve the use of a few different online services, which can be chosen by you.
Send Files to Dropbox with a Right Click–Learn how you can easily copy or move files to the main Dropbox folder with a simple right-click.
How to get a Google Voice Phone Number Outside U.S.–This tutorial describes how you may get your Google Voice phone number activated from outside the U.S. for free.
Import Photos and Videos into Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 | Windows 7 Tutorials–Creating movies from pictures and videos is a breeze with Windows Live Movie Maker 2011. Once you have your pictures and video clips imported into Windows Move Live Movie Maker 2011, you can get right down to applying AutoMovie Themes, creating title clips and credits, setting your project to music and adding animations and transitions.

iPad, iPod, etc.

The App List: What’s Going on my iPad–I have been asked time and time again by students, teachers and technology specialists just what I am installing on my class set of iPads. Well, here’s the post you’ve all been waiting for.
7 Reasons You Need an iPad in Your Classroom and 10 Ways to Use Them | Technology Teacher–This blog post will explore reasons why the iPad might be the perfect technology tool in our schools today, providing teachers with 10 concrete ideas for using them in the classroom RIGHT NOW.
5 Free Twitter Clients For The iPad–From the official Twitter app to the broader social networking client apps, if you’re an avid Twitter and iPad user, you will no doubt want to download more than one Twitter client for iPad, because each of the ones reviewed below offer something a little unique that you may find useful to how you interact with Twitter.
More Schools Embrace the iPad as a Learning Tool – NYTimes.com–Spending money on tablet computers may seem an extravagance, but some educators say they are more than just a cool toy.
10 Great Free Games for Your iPad–Who got an iPad for Christmas? I did, and I’ve been glued to it ever since. I’m going to start with the iPad games section because, let’s face it — what’s an iPad really good for, if not fun?
The iPad Kids–The iPad Kids is all about the iPad from a kid’s point of view. Reviews of apps, iPad cases and stands, YouTube cool videos, our own The iPad Kids Podcasts, social networking, educational tools, how to start a blog like The iPad Kids, social media, Twitter, Facebook and stuff.
Fun Educational Apps for your ipad–Did you know you could turn your iPad into a Fun Educational Learning Center with some great educational apps?

Miscellaneous

NewsShare – The Educator’s PLN–The Educator’s PLN page for sharing popular links for educators!
Pupils think they know more than ICT teachers – News – TES Connect–Six out of 10 pupils say they learn more about technology outside the classroom
100 Extensive University Libraries from Around the World that Anyone Can Access–From digital archives, to religious studies, to national libraries, these university libraries from around the world have plenty of information for you.
Life of an Educator–7 videos that WILL ignite a discussion…–Here are 7 videos I have selected to use in an upcoming professional development day.
Understanding the Differences between MP3 and MP4 Files–MP3 files are well known to users of Windows 7 and devices such as iPods, smart phones, and other digital music players. The most popular digital audio file, MP3s offer excellent quality in a small package. However, the MP4 format will likely replace MP3s as the most popular digital file format.
Free Technology for Teachers: 11 Mathematics Resources to Try in 2011–To start off the new year, each day this week I’ll be posting a list of eleven resources to try in a particular content area. Today’s list is for mathematics teachers.
Google gives schools, organizations “walled garden” approach to email | ZDNet–Google announced that it has provided Google Apps administrators with the ability to limit groups of users to internal contact only via email.
Teachers “Doing The Flip” To Help Students Become Learners – THE DAILY RIFF – Be Smarter. About Education.–It’s called “flip teaching” and “reverse teaching” or a “backwards classroom” (who knew?), and “reverse instruction.” Here’s how it’s happening, for real:
A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods