Google New

I have long been a fan of Google’s releases for both personal and professional productivity.  The company is constantly adding new features and tools at a staggering pace.  Keeping up with all of the latest developments is a real challenge.

To keep track of all of the changes, Google has launched a blog named Google New that makes keeping current simple and painless.  Check it out at: http://www.google.com/newproducts/.

Transforming Your Classroom Blog into a Published Book

Many teachers across the district have successfully integrated the district’s WordPress blog platform to create a safe, digital space for students to engage in educational conversations with one another and the greater global community.  We find that students have become accustomed to interacting with an audience beyond their peer group outside of school with tools like social networking sites and gaming communities through consoles from Sony and Microsoft.  Blogging has become a natural activity for citizens of the “digital nation” (see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/).

One of the advantages of a blog is that it can act as a digital portfolio for a classroom or individual students.  Sites like www.blurb.com, www.mypublisher.com, and www.lulu.com take online publishing a step further by turning a blog into a print book (http://www.blurb.com/create/book/blogbook).  For example, one school turned a school mural project into a picture book using blurb.com (see http://www.blurb.com/books/1030436).  Books from blurb.com range in size from 7″x7″ to 13″x11″ and lengths from 20 to 440 pages.  Prices start at $12.95 for a single copy.

A book based on a classroom blog could easily turn in to a class or school fund raiser while giving students a meaningful purpose for writing.

Teach for Greenville County Schools and don’t have a blog?  Setting one up is easy by following the print or video tutorials at http://www.greenville.k12.sc.us/gcsd/depts/ets/its/blogs.asp.  Blogging ideas and research is located at http://timcushman.com/presentations.html.  Be sure to carefully follow the steps for configuring the “moderation” settings when creating your blog.  This is a critical step in exercising control over the content that appears on your blog.

Google Earth Professional Free For Educators

Google Earth is often pigeon-holed as niche software for those teaching geography or for the hobbyist with a keen interest in GIS applications. Google Earth has much more to offer the classroom teacher than the obvious geography connections. I will not attempt to enumerate all of the uses in this post. I did find the following links to be very helpful for incorporating Google Earth: http://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/GeogP/gearthplan/, http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php/Cat/0, http://googlelittrips.com/, and http://www.google.com/educators/p_earth.html.

According to Google, Google Earth Professional offers “high-quality printing, image export, movie maker, data importer, premium support, and measurement tools.” (http://earth.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=21407) The real advantage of Google Earth is the resources you can incorporate into the software. Look for “Google Earth Pro plug-ins” with your favorite web browser if you would like specific functionality from the software. You can start with perusing http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-plugins-and-resources-to-make-google-earth-more-fun/ and http://www.gearthhacks.com/downloads/. All of this comes at a price though – $400 a year to be exact. However, Google is offering the professional version of their software absolutely free to educators.

Be sure to check out the Google Earth “how to” from Hall Davidson at http://www.halldavidson.net/GoogleEarthHD.pdf.

Steps For Applying For a Free Educator Account:

1. Download the Google Earth Professional trial version at https://registration.keyhole.com/choice_kh_initial.html. Make note of your Google Earth trial account user name and license key.
2. Send an email to GEEC@google.com from your school email account expressing your interest.
3. Wait for the reply from Google. They will send a short application for you to complete in email format.

Digital Resources for the Classroom

by Tim Cushman

We live at a time where all of the world’s knowledge is accessible through a singular and ubiquitous platform.  This is the unimaginable reality of the day in which we live thanks to the evolution of the Internet.  One would think that educators would be on the cusp of the knowledge revolution.  The fact is, many classroom teachers do not leverage the potential of the Internet.

A major barrier for the busy teacher is finding appropriate resources in a timely manner.  It is easy to spend several hours at several different websites looking for resources for a single lesson.  The incessant “needle in the haystack” searching for meaningful content gets old quickly and is abandoned in due course.  There is hope for bringing the best of the Internet into your classroom thanks to some great collections of digital resources.

I will not attempt to enumerate the “Top 10″ most useful teacher websites.  I would, however,  like to share a handful of sites for finding some really great resources.

1. Thinkfinity (free) – a very well organized, easy to use portal for instructional resources
2. Discovery Education Network (free) – register yourself and start collaborating with 25,000 other educators; browse by category
3. Nettrekker (by subscription) – available for all GCSD teachers; a search engine customized for schools that returns educationally relevant results to keyword searches; well worth the money

What other repositories of good educational resources have you found?

Professional Development in a Flash

by Tim Cushman

The primary challenge in the successful implementation of technology in the classroom is the buy-in from the individual teacher.  Many districts elect to channel all of their technology funds into the purchase of hardware and software at the expense of end-user training.  This short-sighted approach leaves many teachers floundering to learn the new technology on their own time, often with limited access to self-study materials.  This frustration is enough of a roadblock for many teachers to ignore technology tools all together or to use them only at a very basic level.

I do have to wonder, at one point do we as professional educators include the pursuit of learning technology under the umbrella of personal growth?  I am not referring to simply staying current with a variety of new products in order to continually “wow” a group of students as a means of crowd control (listen to Wesley Fryer’s “Strive to Engage, Not Enthrall”).

Image details: Single Image Set by picapp.com

Technology is a tool that serves as a powerful conduit to learning in the hands of the master teacher.  A colleague of mine, Tim Van Heule, often quips that, “the effective use of technology makes a good teacher better, but the misuse of technology makes a good teacher poor.”  Like a master craftsman building a house, it is about using the right tool in the right way.

I recommend the following method for staying current: read blogs, listen to podcasts, watch video tutorials.

Start Here
David Jakes provides an excellent resource on his wiki for teachers interesting in deepening their understanding of an array of technologies.  The tasks are straightforward and can easily be completed in fifteen minutes.  David’s site is full of great resources and is worth a thorough examination.  Do this if nothing else.

Blogs
Click here for a clear explanation of blogs and here to learn how to get blogs automatically delivered to your computer.

A few of my favorite blogs are dy/dan, edu.blogs, Ian Jukes, Steve Hargadon, The Strength of Weak Ties, and 2 Cents.

Podcasts
Click here for a clear explanation of podcasts.  iTunes is a great way to manage your podcasts.  Click here for a video tutorial on how to subscribe to podcasts through iTunes.

Video Tutorials
More video tutorials on the use of hardware and software packages are being posted online thanks in large part to the YouTube revolution.  Atomic Learning is well worth the money if you can afford it because of the volume of tutorials and the speed at which they load.  You can find some decent user content on sites like YouTube or TeacherTube if you don’t mind putting in extra time searching.

Super Stories: Comics and Digital Storytelling

by Tim Cushman

Comics and education?  Can their be a more juxtaposed pairing?  The idea of using comics to teach is inconceivable for many like me who spent tedious hours in the elementary classroom listening to a lecture on this historical character or that scientific principle while nervously eying my best friend the next row over as he drew the story playing out  in his head.  Inevitably, he would be caught and would face the full ire of a peeved teacher.  The fact is, telling a good story is a very difficult thing to do.  I don’t mean telling a story that simply entertains (although there is a place for that).  Rather, using storytelling, and in this case comics, as a means to communicate a powerful idea in a concise way.

The standard needs to be set high.  I like to make the comparison to Hollywood films.  A good movie that tells a powerful story in a powerful way wins an Oscar.  Movies that may enjoy a certain amount of the mainstream spotlight and are in some way sensational may generate revenue but do not necessarily reflect good storytelling.  We need to get our students to produce ”Oscar-worthy” digital stories.  This is very difficult and requires a great deal of thought and creativity.  The challenge to be creative and innovative is what our students need.  Jobs requiring knowledge are outsourced.  Jobs requiring innovation and cooperation within a diverse community never will be.  This is the future we are preparing them for.  Enough pontificating from my soap box…

Comeeko.com offers a new take on digital storytelling by turning your digital photos into a comic-style format.  The effect is appealing.  All you need is a digital camera for taking pictures of the “characters” in the comic.  Comeeko will add the unique comic-styling.  What could you do with Comeeko?

Don’t Just Say It, Screencast It

Supporting student learning has gotten easier with modern tools like TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio 5 ($179, educational price) and Matchware’s ScreenCorder 5 ($189, educational price). Camtasia allows you to record your on-screen actions, add narration, pop-up speech bubbles, and illustrations to a video in a variety of shareable formats. Both Camtasia and Screencorder are very good if you are looking to purchase desktop recording software. You can download the Camtasia or ScreenCorder 5 trial to find the solution that work best for you.

Creating screencasts can be a great way for teachers to maximize instructional time by making technical explanations and classroom lessons available for students to review outside of class.

Screencasting would also be a an effectual means of individualizing instruction for struggling students. How much more productive could the middle school math teacher be if a series of step-by-step instructional videos were created on solving equations or working with integers? Students can also create videos to either demonstrate knowledge of a process or as part of a classroom project.

Camtasia and SreenCorder are good, but money for software may not be in the budget. There are two free alternatives for you to consider – uTipu and CamStudio. Both programs are completely free and easy to use. I prefer uTipu, but both will do the job. Be sure to check your district’s policy regarding the installation of software.

Screencasting does require a time commitment. Consider using students to create and produce the videos. The result is mutually beneficial.

Musopen! Copyright Free Music

MusOpen! (www.musopen.com) is a growing collection of online music, completely free of all copyright restrictions. MusOpen! is maintained by a non-profit organization with the express goal of “setting music free” by making recordings of sheet music in the public domain. In short, MusOpen! works with artists that are interested in making copyright-free music available to everyone. You can read more on the legal stuff here if you are the curious type.

The quality of the songs is surprisingly good (320kbps bit rate) and is available for streaming or download. Sheet music is also available for download and may be of interest to music teachers and students alike.

MusOpen! is “setting music free” as claimed, but it is hardly a large scale jailbreak. The collection is currently limited to roughly one hundred, classical performances. The sparse library is a bit disappointing, but the idea is innovative and has potential.

I am pleased to see sites like MusOpen popping up on the Internet. It is difficult to find no-cost, legal audio sources to direct students to as they create technology-based projects. You can read more about sources for multimedia in the classroom in a previous posting.

You may also have occasion to use a copyrighted work for instruction or in some way to promote your school. Copyright law still applies, regardless of your intentions. There are several good sources on the web for educating yourself on your legal limits of fair use. I found one good site here.

Google Scholar: Researching Faster, Not Harder

http://scholar.google.com/

The best part of my library experience during grad school was the fact that I never had to actually go to the library to get the journal articles I needed for research. The digitized collection, readily available online with student login, was a tremendous time saver and an efficient means of staying current on educational research.

Upon the completion of my degree, I had to resign myself to the lack of accessibility to the wealth of digital journals I had enjoyed during my studies.   My spirits were lifted when I recently stumbled across Google Scholar (It was launched in 2004.  I am just slow).  Google Scholar is a solid research tool for students and teacher-leaders alike.  It is not a rival to what most universities are able to offer, but good nonetheless.

The keyword search mechanism is intuitive since it is, after all, Google’s familiar platform.  One key distinction of Scholar searching is the citation ranking.  This ranking system helps steer you to the articles you need instead of spending hours “Google wandering.”

Google Scholar is different from a general Google search because Scholar searches several “invisible” academic indexes.  I also like the fact that Google Scholar includes a feature that allows users to view what other publications cited the article in their research.

Google Scholar does have its limitations.  Any seasoned search-engine user knows that Google’s strength is breadth over depth when it comes to website indexing.  The same is true of Google Scholar.  Any commercial research database will always be more effective then Google Scholar in returning the most appropriate results.

Users should be aware that Google Scholar returns both free and for-purchase articles.  Despite the limitations, Google Scholar is a serviceable tool for starting the research process.

What other free research tools have you found?

Read the Words

by Tim Cushman

Read the Words is a fabulous, FREE web service for converting text into speech. Instantly, many teachers will think of using this site for their special education and non-English speaking students. I would argue that the applications for this web tool is far wider.

Think about the flow of the normal school day. Hectic? How about making more of your teacher notes or other handouts available as an audio recording instead of paper handouts (be mindful of copyright)? Creating a digital reading and distributing the file to your class takes less time then running photocopies and saves precious school resources.

Read the Words has potential for some unique student projects. For example, you might want to translate student writing pieces to an “audiobook” that could be posted on your classroom web site with different voices for each character. The audio file could add some extra flair to traditional projects like Interactive PowerPoint to relay information or give directions.

Read the Words is a singularly-purposed app that does its job well. You can copy and paste text to the site or upload a PDF, Word doc, HTML file, RSS feed, or website address. Read the Words will convert the text into an MP3 file that can be loaded on your iPod or MP3 player as well as giving you a URL for embedding the audio file into a website. Don’t worry about losing your recordings. All conversions will be saved for your exclusive use on the Read the Words website under the “My Recordings” tab.

It only gets better. Read the Words will read in English, Spanish, and French in fifteen different voice and at a user-controlled speed. Worried about conversion speed? Read the Words will convert an hour’s worth of audio in literally 60 seconds. Trouble with mispronounced text in your recording? Type the problem words phonetically.

Text to speech technology has a mixed history – mostly disappointing. I admit that the voice quality from Read the Words aspires to be at the level of KITT from the old Knight Rider series, but that is not exactly an equitable comparison since KITT had an actor doing voice-over AND David Hasselhoff riding in the driver’s seat. Try it out for yourself. I used Read the Words to convert this post to speech.  However, I could not get the code to work properly within WordPress (and yes, I did follow the directions).  Read the Words was very fast in converting this post to MP3, with a processing time of exactly four seconds.

What are your ideas and experiences with Read the Words?