A List of Possible Web Tools for You

Wesley Fryer from Moving at the Speed of Creativity’s blog shared 30 Tools for Tech-Savvy Teachers.  I love compiling lists of potential resources because when I have down time I am able to check them out and add them to my teaching.  After this Web 2.0 class I feel that I will have a lot of resources to give my colleagues if they are curious about one of these tools. 

This list is simple because it lists the tool and gives you a bullet list of characteristics about the site.  I was able to look at the characteristics that the creators, Mike Agostinelli and Jason Neiffer, and quickly determine if a tool was worth my time.  It is also available in a podcast.

Open Educational Resources or OER Commons is one that I haven’t heard of before.   You can look up resources by subject and grade level.  I was quickly browsing through and found a 100’s Day video geared toward first graders.  When I become a member of OER I am able to rate the material, save it to my folder, and evaluate it.  As a visitor I am able to see the “background essay” or why the skill is important, discussion questions, and which standards it is linked to.  In my five minutes of searching the site I found a useful Web 2.0 Ideas for Educators.

NeoK12 is the same kind of site as OER.  I searched in the Health and Nutrition section.  I found printables, quizzes, puzzles, videos, and pictures that could be used in class.  My favorite part is that it offers to help me create a presentation.  When I clicked on it the picture search was “nutrition” and it brought up available photos from Flickr under creative commons attribution license.  And I was impressed with the selection of pictures as well.  It then brings up a Wikipedia article.  Then I can edit the presentation, view, and save it.  I thought this was a neat resource because it could save time searching the entire Internet. 

Check out the 30 Tools for Tech-Savvy Teachers and see what other web tools you could be utilizing. I haven't even looked at all of the suggestions, so bookmark it and check it out in your free time.

A Suggested Website Under the Microscope.

When looking through my blog subscriptions I always see and end up endorsing a few links.  I always take a peek at the links to determine if they are worthy of my support J  The following will take you on a quick walk through a website that has been recommended by another blogger.  

I’m sure you are on the edge of your seat waiting to take this journey with me!

Introduction

Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne wrote an article about a free plagiarism tool online.  Plag Tracker  is a free site that is available to students to check their papers for plagiarism.  Byrne’s snippet of an review is also linked to several others ideas for checking your papers.  Plag Tracker doesn’t require you to download anything to your computer (good, I have enough already).  It appears to be easy to use and you can also pay for other services.  I'm curious to find out what other services he is talking about...?  When you copy and paste your work on the site you can take a poll suggested other services to be checked.  I don't know why I took the poll, this is the first time I've been on here so what do I know.  It was only the click of the button, I chose "proofreading/editing" just in case you were curious.  It claims that it can check my paper in “one minute or less”.  Or it is free?  Oh wait, it already is.  

My Plag Tracker Experiment

So here it goes I am going to submit a paper that I wrote last year I am starting at 9:25 pm.  I copied and pasted and it is telling me that it may take some time. 20 minutes?! Is my computer that slow?  There it goes, it completed the check by 9:27 pm. 

The results…

It only checked the first 5000 characters of my paper, but I can subscribe to get the whole thing checked at a faster rate.  So it isn't free, well unless I type less than 5000 characters.  It gives me the option to submit a new document to have checked, so I guess if I had the time I could find the next 5000 characters and do my check over and over until my whole paper is complete.  

In the first 5000 characters it tells me that I have “6% of non-unique content that appears in 10 sources”.  It conveniently highlights the words for me.  The two words “classroom instruction” put together must be common.  I feel relieved to know that the first 5000 characters of my paper were checked without any problems.  Yay!  I escaped the plagiarism police.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I think that I will continue looking for a site that can check all of my characters for free in a fast manner.  No gold medals here, I would rate it a 4.  Don't just suggest a website, people.  Look at it carefully  and test it out. 

I’ve Got American Fever!

Which is much better than Bieber fever…

I really enjoy watching the summer Olympics!  I still can’t believe how much money is put in to running it, but it is quite a spectacle.  Swimmers that are unbelievable tall are winning multiple races.  And don’t get me started on the women’s gymnastics team.  One word: awesome!  These athletes are an inspiration and bring a tear to my eye when they win.   Just look at Blade Runner.  They have sacrificed a regular life to have a grueling schedule of training. Gold medals for everyone!   I find that the Olympic theme is on repeat in my head on a daily basis this week.  USA! USA! USA!  Athletes are communicating using twitter and news outlets are spoiling the results for me, but it is still fun to watch.

Another thing that makes me proud to be an American is the upcoming elections.  My son who is about to turn 3 said “American flag is cool”.  Why, yes it is.  I always get excited for elections and preach to people to actually figure out more about the candidates rather than just going on tv ads or People magazine’s take.  It always cracks me up that people vote for their party, but can’t tell me why they support that person.  The good thing is that we have the right to vote. Yay! 

Voting may become a lot easier for people.  Alex Fitzpatrick’s article TurboVote Wants to Be the Netflix of Voter Registration on Mashable made a lot of sense.  TurboVote is trying to jump on the newer technology bandwagon by incorporating registration by means of the Internet and will send the information via the post office to fill out to become a registered voter.  TubroVote wants to send you the ballot along with email and text reminders to encourage voters to perform their civic duty.  What a clever idea, why didn’t I think of this?

Even First Graders Can Blog!

I was checking out Mrs. Patton’s blog when I saw an intriguing title, “Blogging with students? Yes Please! (Even the little ones!)”.  The part that got me interested was “even the little ones”.  

I could imagine that a high school students would be able to understand how to set up a blog (if they don’t have one already).  Now the little ones would find it to be more complicated.  On Mrs. Cassidy’s Classroom Blog she has her first graders blogging! Yes, first graders.  I can feel the first grade teachers fearing for the safety of their precious, naïve little ones.  This is proof that it can work and the big bad world of scary internet creeps might not care about a six year old’s blog.

There are two important rules to Mrs. Cassidy's class blogmeister blog. Parents and classmates are allowed to comment, which makes for great interaction.  Some people may not realize that putting a last name could cause the internet creeps to come out of the woodwork.  Rule #1 Mrs. Cassidy has students using first names only.  If there is a post or a comment using a last name it is simply deleted. Rules #2 the students’ faces are only pictured on the main blog page.  Not on the individual entries. 

Now to the good part – when you click on a student’s blog entry it is listed chronologically, which is probably helpful for Mrs. Cassidy.  I randomly chose Camryn.  Each entry has a relevant title and some are just two sentences another is an addition story using Storybird. I love that I saw writing, spelling, math, etc. as blog entries.  Camryn also has pictures that you can tell were created in Paint that have been added to his or her page.  Some students have video recordings of them talking about something in class. This is like an online open house of students’ writing. 

I think this is the greatest thing I’ve seen in a while! Yay technology!  

Kinect Used for Math

 “Kids like technology; kids like video games.”  Watch the video and see how one teacher had programmers develop a Math App in Johnny Kissiko's  Kinect in Math article on the K12 Mobile Learning blog. There is a video showing how math is being used by connecting movement and math.  You can see yourself on the video as you can see the graphing being created by using your body.  The others students that aren’t actively using the Kinect are able to give feedback to help the participant.  A teacher needs a computer and a Kinect.  

I will tell you right now…I would’ve loved math if I could get up and move around while learning.  I think this is a great idea!  It will take a long time for something like this to be put into every classroom, but it makes me excited about what changes are going to happen to education in the next few years. 

Add More to Your Delicious Links

Educators Technology has read my mind.  They have put together the Teachers Easy Guide to the Most Important Web Tools in Education which is awesome!  The easy to read list has categorized some important topics about the newest and best tools.  The list has 13 different links from editing tools to mind mapping tools.  This is a really great list and I advise you take a peek and bookmark it!

First, I would like to suggest you look at The 33 Digital Skills Every 21^st Century Teacher Should Have.  Since I am working on my Masters in Educational Technology, this list is important and it makes me feel like I am on the right path to becoming a 21^st century teacher.

 When I looked at The Best Digital Story Telling Tools for Teachers list I was glad to see a bullet list of the importance of digital storytelling.   I also saw two that I have visited before with my computer classes.  The Zimmer Twins was such a great activity for my students.  They had a blast showing me and classmates their stories.  I enjoyed that class so much because I just walked around laughing at the crazy and creative ideas they were able to put into their stories. 

I know how much I loved using the Zimmer Twins, but there are a lot of other great ideas here that I can’t wait to look at.

Enjoy!

Hiding Behind a Username

I find myself looking at comments on pages all the time and thinking “what a train wreck” because I can’t look away.  I continue to read and get so frustrated because people will put opinions and offensive comments that can be horrible to readers. (I know, I know, freedom of speech is a great thing)  They do this behind an ambiguous username.  Yes, some things can be construed the wrong way.  But, what about when I search YouTube and find many videos that have comments using vulgar words and are not even on topic.  When I look at my hometown newspaper, I see comments that are demeaning and practically challenge others to fights.  It is awful and I really think that it needs to stop.  Maybe, just maybe, if websites made people use their real name they could be less likely to leave rude comments. Perhaps, they would think before they type. 

On a side note…I am embarrassed to say that I look at them to try to figure out what is going on (I am always trying to analyze the actions of people when they come off as crazy).  I will read all of the posts to see where the fight began.  It is horrible and can be compared to high school gossip.  Maybe for lent next year I will give up looking at the comments section.  Samantha Murphy writes about something that, in my opinion, should be the norm. 

In her article YouTube Wants to Prevent Harmful Comments by Using Real Names on Mashable, Samantha Murphy writes about YouTube’s effort to curb bullying by having users use their real names.   She states that YouTube eventually wants users to leave their full name and a picture that is linked to their Google+ account.  Maybe this could help users think before they post something hateful.  It will be interesting to see how this pans out.