VYEW: Free Collaboration and Live Web Conferencing

• Why Vyew?
  Instant use from any computer No installation
• 
  New and improved collaboration
• Together in real time or independently at any time

Free collaboration similar to Go To Meetings

Interaction with all forms of content: Office docs, .pdf, Flash, MP3, video, graphics, screen captures, etc.
Saving, tracking and logging all meeting activity

WiZiQ Virtual Classroom

http://www.wiziq.com/

Anyone can Teach & Learn Live, Online
WiZiQ Tour

Join Now for Free

WiZiQ is a place where you can teach and learn using an easy-to-use Virtual Classroom. You are welcome to give private and public live online sessions. As a learner you can attend public sessions on various topics from academics to anything under the sun.

SKRBL: Online Interactive Whiteboard

Here's a great Web 2.0 tool:

http://www.skrbl.com/


Simple and easy online multi user whiteboard, start skrbl, give out your URL & start working together. Sketch, text, share files, upload pictures all in one common shared space. There are no new tools to learn, nothing to download, nothing to install. Brainstorm on our simple whiteboard to start thinking together, everyone sees the same screen, everybody gets on the same page.

There's a widget for it in the right hand column so you can try it out.

New Hotlist: Computer Skills

http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/listadultedjs1.html

This is the newest Hotlist to help students learn Basic Computer Skills, Keyboarding, Mouse Use and Internet Skills.

U.S. Constitution Day: September 17

If you are looking for information about the U.S. Constitution in English or Spanish, lesson plans, games, puzzles and interactive information to help study the Constitution, go to: http://constitutionaelc.blogspot.com/ for a list of sites to view.

Commentary: Sotir: Where to Now?

Education has traditionally been an almost passive pursuit. The usually didactic instructional methodologies have most often been geared to an "I teach, you learn" philosophy. While technology in education can certainly support that direction, it is increasingly moving towards being more dynamic, interactive and more social. The change factor lies in the children who are driving the new direction.
My grandson is a newly-minted second grader, but his comfort level, and that of most of his peers, leans towards technology as a core component, not an enhancement. He enjoys a board game of Life or Scrabble, but is connected to electronics in a way we as adults can barely understand. I watched him as he played on my computer. Without a blink, he deftly searched for the subjects that interest him. For example, he has an interest in US presidents, fueled by the upcoming election. When he wanted to know more about a particular president, he instinctively knew which search words to use. When a search did not produce the information he wanted, he scanned the disappointing results and found new and more effective search words to try. I showed him some basic Boolean search tools, which he immediately incorporated. Later, when searching for a particular Pokemon character, I saw him apply those same tools as if he had always known them.
The power of the Internet propels children into a learning style that is unique and foreign to those of us who have been learners for much longer, but we need to develop that same core competency. Teens develop their social networks using tools such as MySpace or texting. Interactivity is a given, as is multi-tasking. We need to develop strategies that enhance the core components that the kids do instantly and without conscious thought or decision. Lifelong learning just got kicked up a notch.

ABE/GED: Workplace Math Skills

Workplace Math Skills: http://www.readiowa.org/workplacemath/contents.html
Marty Lundberg: North Iowa Area Community College

"The purpose of this project is to develop Adult Basic Education math materials for the workplace. The materials are intended to help identify training needs and document mastery of the minimum math skills needed for entry level workers seeking employment. The Iowa Business/Industry Leaders identified the project competencies as high or very high priority on the Iowa Business and Industry Survey (IABIS ). Local construction and manufacturing employers have identified the project competencies as essential workplace skills.

The materials are limited to the specific competencies identified by Area II employers. For example, local employers seek entry level workers able to add and subtract with shop fractions, so this project will focus on assessing and teaching addition and subtraction of shop fractions. It will not include multiplication or division of fractions or calculations with fractions other than shop fractions because local employers did not report a need for those skills."

While identifying specific needs for their locale, the materials are helpful for others seeking these specific skills. Well done.

ESL: Civics

http://www.elcivics.com/

"Learn EL Civics with great pictures and easy words. Just click on a picture to start a lesson or activity. The following EL Civics units are now available: Statue of Liberty, Washington, D.C., American Bald Eagle, and Gateway Arch. English Language Civics provides an easy way to learn about American history, geography, and culture. New lessons, worksheets, PowerPoint presentations, and videos are added to elcivics.com almost every week."

Qwizdom Wireless Tablet

http://www.qwizdom.com/ Cool tool. I do a lot of presentations and hate having to turn my back on the audience to run the slide show. This tool will make that problem disappear, allowing teachers to draw, annotate, and control computer applications without being tethered to a computer. It's a great add-on to an LCD projector and puts the presentation in the hands of the instructor.
View presenter notes and presentation indicators privately on LCD screen. Control volume, window shade, and virtual laser pointer.
Move from slide to slide and launch new presentations using navigation keys or pen. Pose questions and interact with learning objects or games. It also has interactive whiteboard capabilities, which will let you wirelessly create, annotate, and interact with screen objects.

Run computer applications with programmable pen keys and hard keys.
Utilize pen on tablet interface which offers all mouse functions.
Aligns with other whiteboard devices (not required).

Current cost is under $500 per unit.

All of this in a handheld device. Oh I do indeed love the new technologies and what they can do!

ProProfs: Create a Quiz

http://www.proprofs.com/I found this site while browsing through my favorite blog sites...this came from the Random Thoughts blog (http://nmckeand.wordpress.com/). It's a perfect Web 2.0 app that allows you to post quizzes on your website/blog or share through email, print, links etc. View quiz results & discussions, reports & analysis. Scored Quizzes are knowledge based quizzes like tests, trivia & assessments. Each question has a right/wrong answer. Personality quiz reveals something about the quiz taker. Unlike a scored quiz, here there is no right/wrong answer to a question. You can also create your own online flashcards for free. Customize with name and text & colors of your choice. Post your flashcards at any webpage (eg. your blog or classroom page).

According to the website, it has:

flickr integration for images
Widgets (embed) to share your quiz
Security options like password protection
Styles and formatting options

Looks interesting and worth exploring further.

Commentary: Sotir: Change and Evolution

It's that time of the year again. Yes, although the calendar says its only August 14 and Labor Day is still a few weeks away, there is a distinct 'Back to School' atmosphere surrounding us. Perhaps it's the smell of pencil shavings as parents dutifully sharpen the requisite amount of No. 2's, or the amplified voices of children as they realize that all too soon they will need to spend much of their day quietly working at their desks. But mostly it's the sense of renewal, because 'Back to School' implies a fresh start and a new year. The sins and omissions of the previous year are forgiven as the new year starts with lofty promises and sincere resolutions.

But in the world known as Ed Tech, renewal is a constant. What was impossible to do yesterday is made possible today by simply downloading a new app. Difficult and complicated old apps become amazingly simple. Not long ago, adding photos to this blog required a series of steps. Now there is an icon at the top of the post box that makes it 1-2-3 easy. I remember my excitement at the mere idea of being able to vlog, or add video to a blog, and suddenly there's an icon for that too. Even software companies have evolved. I looked in my supply closet the other day and saw a brand new CD storage case. For years I needed more and more storage cases to house the growing inventory of academic CDs. Now, all I need is a list of the websites where the online apps are located. Change and evolution.

What I don't see is the move from labs to classrooms keeping pace. Although I run an academic computer lab, I have always believed that the real place for computers and accompanying technology is the classroom. There are issues, of course. Instructors need training on how to operate the equipment. IT needs to deploy staff differently to deal with everything from network issues to ahhhhh, the computer power supply plug IS out of the socket. Once those issues are addressed, lesson plans need to be re-vamped to make effective use of the technologies, and, more importantly, a definition of 'effective use of technology' needs to be developed and then refined.

In education, there is always going to be a society of 'haves' and 'have nots'. Yes, that covers the schools that have new equipment and those that don't, but it also applies to staff who 'have' the skills necessary to incorporate technology and those who don't, or even more alarming, won't. Technology is like an oyster creating a pearl. An irritant of something that you want to do but don't know how eventually becomes a pearl after layers and layers of developing skill sets. Knowing how to blog makes creating a wiki easier. Knowing how to blog and wiki makes creating a platform for hosting podcasts simple. Even being able to transform 'blog' and 'wiki' into verbs requires a change in thought process. I blog because I can, and I know that blogging has become simple and intuitive. If only I can irritate the teaching staff enough to make them want to develop a few pearls for their students. Change and evolution. Can you catch a whiff of it in the air?

Citizenship News

http://www.citizenshipnews.us/

"Welcome to Citizenship News, where citizenship education providers can find information, resources, and the latest news concerning citizenship education, the U.S. citizenship test, and the naturalization process."

This is an excellent site for information and resources on obtaining U.S. citizenship or naturalization.

Commentary: Sotir: Got Tech?

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" Arthur C Clark

Actually, most of the Web 2.0 apps DO feel like magic to me. I've been involved in technology since before the WWW existed, and started out creating BBS, a.k.a. the infamous Bulletin Board System, uploaded through FTP transfer and requiring all kinds of magic codes to operate. Knowing what it took to upload to the Internet in the early days makes the new systems even more impressive. I look at a lot of sites, but my new favorites (and some 'oldies' but goodies) include:
Blogs and Wikis: How could I ignore my absolute favorite tools? I've been blogging since 2003, and love the transformation in how much easier it is to upload everything from photos to widgets. I also like browsing through other Ed Tech Blogs to get a sense of what else is out there. There's a list of my favorite 'others' in the right column of this Blog.
Gabcasts and Podcasts: Still make me smile every time I think about creating an audio podcast with nothing more than a regular phone and some site-generated code. Podcasts are also quite easy to create now that webcams are more plentiful. And thank you, Apple, for making the process effortless and almost instantaneous.
TinyURL: I hate long and complicated URL addresses, mostly because I never type them in correctly the first time. This cuts them down to size.
Hotlists: Wonderful tool to compartmentalize the various Websites by skill or level. We have several on this site, and I'm sure we'll make more. Anything that works to narrow done the huge and daunting amount of sites is worthwhile to both instructors and students.
Microblog and social networking sites such as Jaiku and Twitter...just because I'm busy and it's an easy way to stay connected with friends and family.
Cool Web Sites: A lot of sites that can be adapted to educational settings. SnagFilms has free full-length documentaries, and Voice Thread lets you do classroom projects using photos and audio. Webquests can be used as online lessons, and TeacherTube has an abundance of good (and safe) videos that can be incorporated into lesson plans. Webware has wonderful 2.0 apps to view, and Widgetbox will supply an endless list of widgets to apply to your applications. Sometimes a tool like SlideShare comes along, and lets you share those longer PowerPoints that never quite fit in an email and put them directly in Blogs and Wikis. BabelFish allows you to translate your posts into another language. It isn't perfect, but it certainly helps.

I have URLs for all of the above listed sites in the right hand column. You could check the list and and click or just click on any of the underlined words in this post. Did I mention that I really like things that are easy to use?

Math Open Reference

http://www.mathopenref.com/index.html

Most of us know that math is better understood when it is visually assisted with manipulatives. Here is a site that explores high school geometry in a very visual format.

"Mission: A free interactive math textbook on the web. Initially covering high-school geometry. Over the past few years, enormous strides have been made in providing computers in educational settings to aid the learning process. This, combined with high speed access to the Internet have opened up many new opportunities in education. This open reference project has the goal of providing high-quality content for these computers free of charge to the end user, and provide numerous benefits over paper textbooks. Find out more.. Using interactive tools and compelling animations, it provides an engaging way to learn and explore the subject. Teachers will have new ways to teach, and the students a new way to learn that is fun and engaging. "

Commentary: Sotir: Technology Melting Pot

"The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet." WF Gibson

Nowhere is the above quote more true than in education. There really is no standard for how accepting educators are that technology is indeed a part of everyone's future, and how and when they access that technology. In every school there are the pioneers; those who have never met a new technology that they don't at least try, if not embrace. But educational technology is a pyramid, with a select few at the top and the majority filling out the rest.

I'm often surprised when I work with high school and college students by how little educational Websites are actually used. The main reason is that they don't really know that these sites exist. While some social networking sites such as My Space or Facebook might be ubiquitous, tools to make study easier or more effective, say StudyRails or StudyCurve, are not as well known. I'm also surprised by their inability to search with any engine other than Google (or even know that other search engines exist), and that they don't know even the most fundamental tips to make searching more effective.

With instructors, I find even less understanding and acceptance of technology. Educators from grade school to university level are overwhelmed with achievement gaps, standards-based educational reform and standardized tests. The mantra has been 'No Child Left Behind' but the reality is that we need a policy of 'No Teacher Left Behind'. If we want our children prepared for the future, we need to make sure that their instructors are sufficiently well-versed in tools that students will need to achieve success. In addition, administrators often disregard technology skill development training for classroom use. We need a top-down solution.

There is a societal difference in learning now that didn't exist 30 or even 20 years ago. In the past, teachers could teach with texts and lectures, and that was sufficient for students to learn and succeed. But just as previous generations were taught the Dewey Decimal System and how to use a card catalog, todays' students need to learn the skills necessary for finding information effectively. The general principles of learning still apply, but the methodology has changed dramatically. There is a wealth of information at your fingertips, but if you have not learned how to access it, it is merely a lot of wasted code.

New Technology: Slide Share

"SlideShare ( http://slideshare.com/) is the world's largest community for sharing presentations.- Individuals & organizations upload presentations to share their ideas, connect with others, and generate leads for their businesses.- Anyone can find presentations on topics that interest them. They can tag, download, or embed presentations into their own blogs & websites.SlideShare is the best way to get your slides out there on the web, so your ideas can be found and shared by a wide audience. Do you want to get the word out about your product or service? Do you want your slides to reach people who could not make it to your talk? Are you a teacher looking to share your lesson plans? It only takes a moment - start uploading now, and let your slides do the talking!

Some of the things you can do on SlideShare- Embed slideshows into your own blog or website. - Share slideshows publicly or privately. There are several ways to share privately. - Synch audio to your slides. - Market your own event on slideshare. - Join groups to connect with SlideShare members who share your interests - Download the original PowerPoint / Pdf file"

New Technology: Voice Thread

Did you ever want to share a photo, and get comments back from viewers? Voice Thread (http://voicethread.com/) allows you to post a photo or a diagram and allow for responses from the viewers. There is an extensive series of demos and tutorials, so pop onto the site and check it out. It really is quite awesome.

"A VoiceThread is an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish. They can even be exported to an Archival Movie for offline use on a DVD or video-enabled MP3 player. A VoiceThread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world."

• By Voice (mic or phone), Text, Audio file, or Webcam. Simple voice recording within your web browser allows you to collect the voices of an entire group on a single page. All you need is a mic and Flash Player 7+. Capturing voices couldn't be easier.
• Video Doodling allows you to control the playback of a video as you comment using a mic or webcam, giving you the power to voice comment over specific segments of video. Move to a spot, doodle, then move to another, all while commenting.
• The Doodler is a new way of annotating. It captures your drawing as an animation synced to your voice or text commentary. Instead of seeing the final product of your thoughts, viewers can see the actual process. Doodling delivers a sense of live presence.
• Put your VoiceThread on any site you want, or better yet, put it on many. Embedding is easy and allows you to add group collaboration to any website. Whether it's feedback, critique, or group story-telling, collect it how and where you want.

Add Full Documentaries to Blogs and Wikis and...

http://snagfilms.com/ SnagFilms has complete documentaries that you can quickly and easily add to things like Blogs, or use for class lessons. And yes, I am an educator, so yes, they need to be free. OK, there are a few short (seconds) of commercials interspersed, but did I mention the docs are FREE?
I can see this working either in or out of the lab, with ESL students listening to the films and individually answering questions to aid in speaking and listening skills, or with an LCD projector, in a group.
It's very easy to use. As an educator, also good words to hear. Click on the doc you want to add (in this case I chose Morgan Spurlocks' "Supersize Me"), click on 'Snag', choose your platform from the list (in my case I picked the Blogger icon), put in your Blog ID and password, and then tell it where you wanted to add it (in this case, right below this post). To view, click on the doc and voila! The little doc widget magically appears as a post on your Blog. Doesn't get a lot easier than that. There are categories of films from history to sports to the environment, and surely it would be easy enough to find one and create a lesson plan.

Many thanks to Nancy McKeand and her Random Thoughts Blog post If you want to watch a good documentary…
( http://nmckeand.wordpress.com/) for pointing me in this direction, and good luck to Nancy on her move from LA.

Snag Film Example

Try this to check out the quality and note that the commercials really are unobtrusive and short.

Curriki

http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome
The Curriki homepage has a new design. Included are:

• 
  It’s now possible to create wiki resources using a very simple form. To see some examples of lessons created using this new template, click this link. Then start to contribute your own!
  http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_curriki/ModelLessonsfromCurrikisForm-BasedTemplate
• 
  FEATURED GROUP: WYOMING SHARES SPANISH CURRICULUM
  This group has developed a curriculum for middle-school students who began their study of Spanish in early elementary school. The group is sharing its Grade 6 curriculum as a service to the profession and as a method of gaining input into the continued evaluation and updating of its resources. Check back soon for Grades 7 and 8!
  http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Group_Wyoming6-8Spanish/
• 
  To browse through other groups which have formed on Curriki:
  http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Groups/Browse

It's a good site and worth a second look.