Yad Vashem Auschwitz Album

Once upon a time, I taught English, and I spent an entire semester teaching the Holocaust through literature and research to my students. The project began as a simple reading of text, and over nine years developed into a semester long project that encompassed everything from books to art. It became a powerful way for me to connect current events with the history of the past. I learned so much from becoming a Fellow of both the Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies at Kenne State College and the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. I am beyond grateful for the opportunities to have extensively studied the events of the Holocaust through these two incredible organizations, and I would highly recommend studying with the Cohen Center , (if you are local to Northern New England) or a reputable local organization if you are invested in teaching the Holocaust. Becoming an Alfred Lerner Fellow to the JFR is an honor that is given after attending and being recommended by a connected Holocaust learning center.

Thank you to Tom White, Coordinator of Educational Outreach for the Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies at Kenne State College in Keene, NH for this link to the Yad Vashem's Auschwitz Album, which is a powerful photo documentary of sorts that takes witness to the atrocities to the events leading up to extermination at Auschwitz. It is simple, yet quite powerful with the combination of photos and narrative.

Worth using in the classroom, and completely appropriate to use with all ages.

Why am I limited to 160 characters?!

As an avid texter, I have always wondered why on Earth I was limited to only 160 characters before I had to hit send. I can be a rambler when I want to be. I want to say what I need to say, and I don't want to be limited by some random number. Well, this article explains that indeed the number 160 is not random. Well, if you count sitting at a typewriter and pounding out random sentences "not random." 

It's an interesting article if ever you are curious; otherwise, don't bother. Just accept the fact that the number came about based on the number of characters that exist within a typed line or two. And when the number was created, no one anticipated how the phenomenon of texting would explode, especially amongst teens. Truly, I fall into the category of someone who would rather text than talk, but then, I also have massive conversations texting. It's a warped irony, I know, but I honestly think my conversations are more succinct because I am limited by that character number. Now, as educators? If we could transfer the succinct conversations that happen in texting to the papers our students write....

Holy Twitter App, Batman!

If you're a Twitter junkie and have time on your hands for this, get ready, because there are a load of apps you can download from this wiki! I'm not sure what some of them even mean, do, or should do, but I'm just impressed with the sheer volume of different apps available for Twitter.

I fall into the category of "Like what I have, can't take on more". Perhaps some of these apps are worth downloading, and I'd love for someone to tell me what I should be using other than my Tweetdeck. So go ahead... try them, use them, love them, and I'll trust your word and try myself. But, in the meantime, I'm good. Safe. Just my Tweetdeck and me.

Online Resources

This whole blog focuses on the concept of giving teachers resources to use to help integrate technology into their classrooms. This is an interesting article with some tips about how to search sources and which ones are the best to use. It's worth the read.

Here are a few tips from Ed Week & their article Hunting the Internet for Quality Content:

"Tips
1. Find social networks that allow you to consult with colleagues in your district, state, and across the country.
2. Search portals specifically geared to teachers that include links to curriculum materials and downloadable lessons, worksheets, and multimedia resources."

To read more, go to the article.

5 Best Mind Mapping Tools

It's a proven fact that mind mapping tools and graphic organizers help students work through processing skills better. They help organize, are visual, and in a computer setting, they can become interactive, to help the learner grow further skills. However, there are so many from which to choose. I am a fan of Inspiration, which my district graciously supplies to the teachers. However, if you are in position to look for other tools, some of which are free online tools and others that are fee based, check out this article from lifehacker titled Hive Five: Five Best Mind Mapping Applications. The online ones look quite useful, and when you put them up against programs that cost several hundred dollars per license, it seems likely you will be able to operate around whatever you're missing with the fee based license. Check them out, and see which works best for your needs.

Easy Photo Editing

Let's face it, Photoshop is a high end tool, no matter how you look at it. Not a Photoshop expert, but need to edit some photos? Here are a few online photo editing tools that might help you. Picnik is one of the easier tools I've seen online. It's fast, easy, and for something basic, it will do the job you need. Fotoflexer seems to work in a very similar fashion.

If you want something slightly more advanced, then I might recommend phixr or splashup. I have not used phixr, but I have used splashup, and there are some glitches, like my students and I were unable to save an image to our desktop. We were only able to do a screen capture to have the image for ourselves. It looks like it saves to a URL or you can immediately post to certain sites, but this wasn't our goal.

I found this article titled 20 Great Online Image Editors on Mashable, which is an interesting place to get tips and learn more about social media.

Check out the online photo editing tools and see which one works best for you.

Looking for that font?

Sometimes, we need to create that document or file that has to have that certain type of font because the suggested/given fonts just don't work for the context of the document. You've seen the font in use and can't find it. Enter WhatTheFont! You can insert the picture, or you can give the URL and WhatTheFont! will tell you what the font is. You can also search fonts to find that specific font. Have fun - it's one of those sites where you could get lost playing!

Second Life in the Classroom?

I'm always open to new ideas. I have to be in my line of work. But I have to admit here, this wanders in to territory that even I need to continually rethink. I'd like to try it, but am still, admittedly, pretty unsure. What am I talking about? Second Life.

Second Life is an online community where you can create your own avatar and live a literal second life online. Some people have abused this idea, and this is where online communities get their unfortunate bad name, but I'm hopeful when I read articles like this one, which talk about universities/colleges like Elon in NC who are now using Second Life as a regular and required part of their curriculum. When I read the article, I was beyond impressed with what the students could do, and it is candid about what the downsides are to using an application like Second Life (giving up a week of class time to allow students to learn the application). However, when you see the final products, you perhaps can see that these couldn't have been created in a real life environment, which is the ultimate online capability, giving students the chance to create something that couldn't otherwise be created in real life. This is where I need to think outside the box, and challenge myself to rethink my curriculum and allow my classes to explore a genuinely life-like virtual world.

Research tools

All of us have questions about how to when it comes to online research and the presentation of the materials. The folks at St. Andrews Episcopal School in Austin, TX have made the task of online research a little easier with their Upper School Research Tools link. There are some solid tips on everything from Research Assistance to Copyright Guidelines. It looks like and invaluable tool to help your students get their next research project up and going, and making sure they produce the best quality work possible. Give a good look! And thanks to the folks at St. Andrews for their work on this! It will be a great tool to have in your toolbox!

Public Domain e-Books

Budget issues have forced many of us to explore how to use online features and open source materials to help reduce costs. This link came across Twitter a few days ago about Public Domain e-Books. Normally, some of these are hard to come by as free e-Books, but if you're in the market for online books, check out this source to see if you can find what you need!