What Kind of Smart RU?

Take a quick test to see the different intelligences you use and where your strengths lie. Which are the strongest, and which do you use less? Try it with your students and let them discover there's more than one way to learn.

No Future Left Behind

When kids at the Suffern Middle School Tech Club were asked to talk about education and their future, they gave Peggy Sheehy, the SMS media specialist, an earful. Other students heard about the project and joined in. They brainstormed the script and started filming. Listen and learn the bits of wisdom that can be gleaned from the students, if we only dare to ask them.

wiffiti - What if cell phones could write

If you text me - 25622 - and start the message @02420sue, it will post your message on my wiffiti screen which is viewable when I login and view my site. I could project the active site to a screen in a classroom and receive text ideas from students, teachers, etc. Messages are screened by the site. Wiffiti is a start up located in Somerville, MA. Real cool.

Today I noticed my Cluster Map from last year finally had a hit from Africa and South America. 454 hits total for last year. Nice feeling to be so connected, if only this little bit.

jing - a ling

I love jing! I first downloaded it and installed it on my iMac and my Dell laptop because I needed to make training videos for my staff. It was so easy... but I'm using it all the time now as a screen capture for images while using my Dell. Mac has always had an easy screen capture built in, but not so PC. Jing does it and even includes a marquee tool to get just the piece I'm looking for. jing - a ling! I also like how the jing sun is always up in the corner of my screen, too.

Your virtual SMARTBoard

Just heard about this tool on twitter. If have an overhead projector connected to your classroom computer, and a whiteboard as your "chalkboard" you'd be all set for active board activities.
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. More about skrbl here

Did You Know?

The latest version of Carl Fisch's video originally shown August 2006 to the teachers in his Colorado school.

Wordle - Images with Tags

Wordle will create a design using your del.icio.us tag cloud. It will also create a design with any collection of words. This is my cloud. I love how it really tells about the focus of my interests now. Do you see Tim's name in there, too? I'm working on a digital storytelling class now, and will start my VTClass in July and finished up the Virtual Projects class last March. Moodle should be bigger, but then again, I just use it, I don't read about it. All on Web2.0. Nihce.

23 Things - Web 2.0 at its best

The librarians of Macom County have created a fun list of activities that will instantly get educators involved with the best Web 2.0 tools and concepts. They have picked the best; flickr, rss, blogs and wikis. Along the way you record your experiences and challenges and if you complete the 23 tasks in a given amount of time, you get a prize! Yippee. And if you get stuck they suggest you consult the other staff members in your school for help. A wonderful concept. Planning to try it in my school next fall. I might even plan it out as an iGoogle adventure through their list of Web2.0 wonders.

Adobe PhotoShop Express

Adobe is now making it possible to do a quick fix to a photo and also save it online, right in the fix-it shop. Crop, adjust color and lighten images. Also apply simple effects and wipe out red eye. Nice gallery feature, too and direct access to other sharing sites. Wish you could get to flickr... but maybe in time.

PHUN - a new fisicks toi

Just heard about this new physics interactive free downloadable "toy" for experimenting . Picked it up from a twitter post on Saturday morning... Thanks Remote Access and glassbeed.

Finally tried VoiceThread - it's awesome!

I made a tiny voicethread about my favorite April vacation spot.

This is all free, and if a teacher wanted to use it for a project, they would be able to create different users and have their students comment along with the teacher in a class thread. I've made some alias's to show how this works.

bookr!

I just made this tiny book using bookr! It took less than 5 minutes. I accessed some photos from my flickr account using a link right from this site. Great flickr toy!
bookr!


Also view it like this:
walk with me by sue

And here's another one about Christo's Gates:
Christo's Gates by Su
And this one about Nantucket:
frame finding by Su
And this one about our swap to Paris
Paris Swap 7_07 by Su
Couldn't forget Wellfleet
wellfleet by su

Check out all the flickr toys @ http://www.pimpampum.net/toys/

A SMARTBoard in every room!?

I've just read Will's post about using a Wii remote with infrared pens to make any surface that has a projected image interactive the way a SMARTBoard or ActiveBoard is interactive. The video that describes it by Johnny Chung Lee, makes it look very simple. You don't even need the Wii system, just the remote and the infrared pens and the software from his website. I wonder how long it will take for someone to package the whole deal and make it possible for every classroom to get SMART?

This is how twitter works

It is extremely hard to describe twitter to anyone who has not actually tried it. I was reading over the tweets this evening and there was a shout out to Steve Sokoloski's post. He has written a beautiful description of his experience with twitter and lurking. It is very close to my experience, too. Thank you Steve for getting the words to come together.

Going from reading blogs to actively participating in Twitter is like going from the garden hose to the firehose. In reading blogs I could pick up an idea here, and idea there. With Twitter, it is a constant flow, in real time. Really smart people, talking in real time to other really smart people and posting links about what they are checking out. The pace of new ideas has grown exponentially.
Twitter has provided a view into other professional’s lives. They all do not do exactly the same job as me but as others have tweeted I have found that lots of other tech educators are like me. They have their computers on beyond work hours. They work hard at their jobs in the hours beyond work. They try to balance family and technology. I am not nuts to do what I do. There are people like me out there. Lots of folks are puzzled, confused and trying to make sense of all of this stuff, and working hard outside of school to try new things and work it all out. They are thoughtful, wise, kind, and funny.

Steve Sokoloski

Giant Global Graph

Tim's blog has a very lengthly, yet fascinating explanation of the Internet - the Web and his new term, the Graph of links. Tim has been promoting the Semantic Web and the ability the semantic web would provide to connect bits of data across the web, so that web pages are no long the important bookmark, data is. Using rdf tagging, and other software types, information may be linked and reused separate from the page on which it appears. It is very exciting, and something I've been following for the past several years, as Tim continues to explain it and promote it. Here's his description of the graph:
In the long term vision, thinking in terms of the graph rather than the web is critical to us making best use of the mobile web, the zoo of wildy differing devices which will give us access to the system. Then, when I book a flight it is the flight that interests me. Not the flight page on the travel site, or the flight page on the airline site, but the URI (issued by the airlines) of the flight itself. That’s what I will bookmark. And whichever device I use to look up the bookmark, phone or office wall, it will access a situation-appropriate view of an integration of everything I know about that flight from different sources. The task of booking and taking the flight will involve many interactions. And all throughout them, that task and the flight will be primary things in my awareness, the websites involved will be secondary things, and the network and the devices tertiary. tim berners-lee

There's a word for it

It's a multilingual dictionary that will translate any word from a website that you open from within it. It defines words and also will translate into several different languages. You may even keep a list of words for yourself.

I just found this site

I just found this

top 100 tools - for learning

Jane Hart, Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, has published a list of Web2.0 tools that enhance learning. It is available as a .pdf document and is sorted and annotated in several useful ways. Includes direct links to each of the tools. You may even request next year's update of the list. Good collection... mostly free tools. Did I see Google in there many, many times????

Screencast-O-Matic

Screencast-O-Matic is the free and easy way to create a video recording of your screen (aka screencast) and upload it for free hosting all from your browser with no install! You may export the video clip in QuickTime as a .mov file. It is also available as a URL that you may link to, and also send in an email.
Test your mic, pick a screen size and even leave notes if you pause the capture. You can back up and redo a capture that hasn't been encoded yet. Viewable in many browsers.