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!

Google Docs in the classroom

Google Docs works quite similarly to the Microsoft applications, without some of the glam. Can you do everything Word, Powerpoint, and Excel can? No. But if you're looking for an easy way to get collaboration into your classroom, Google Docs may be just what you're looking for.

Having worked with the collaborative features before, I can say you and your students will perhaps find it slightly frustrating the first go out, since even though the documents are meant to be collaborative, if more than one person is trying to edit at any given time, then it could kick someone else's edit off. However, this is true of most collaborative applications. In other words, if you chose to explore this, know ahead of time that students should give each other some lag time between posts. The more people who are editing any given document, the slower it will go, too.

If you're looking to add technological collaboration to your classroom, check out this Google presentation on interesting ways to use Google Docs in the classroom.

Fun Science link

Looking for a cool link for Science? Looks like this might be a site geared for younger kids, but I haven't totally explored it. It might be well used to teach some of the basics. The articles seem thorough and detailed, and the experiments are goofy but fun. Check it out!

General Resource Site

Having a little help making something simple (or better, something complex) is always a good thing in my book. I find little shame in using something that isn't an original. I say this because I know there are those of you out there who want to recreate the wheel every time. And, hey, that's fine with me. I just don't have the time, and I know I'm not alone in that boat. So anything that can cut my time is a good thing, indeed. And with everything else that is dumped on our teacher laps, I need all the handy, helpful shortcuts I can get to create a quality end. Quality is the key.

Having said that, here is a helpful resource aptly named Make It & Take It. It has everything from rubric & puzzle creators to interactive sites for all ages. Whether you have the time to spend or are in a pinch and need a quick fix, you should be able to find something here. And guess what? Learned about it from one of my Twitter connections!

Flip Videos Cameras

If you haven't gotten on the Flip bandwagon to get video into your classroom easily, then it's time to join the new wave of video. Check out the site, and see how sleek and simple it is.

If you're wondering why you might want to use the Flip in your classroom, check out this article from Escobedo MS Tech Talk. It will help you realize how this piece of technology can enhance your classroom.

Here is a Jing tutorial created by some of my students to show how easy it is to use the video camera.

Music anyone?

Noteflight came across Twitter this afternoon, and what you'll see is a Jing tutorial showing you how to use Noteflight. If you need students to create an original score for something, or if you teach music, this may be something you want to check out. Looks simple enough to use and share. Give it a look, and let me know what you think. Again, if you think there is no application to this in your classroom, I would encourage you to think outside your comfort zone and see how something like this might fit into your curriculum.

Building Your Own Website? Need CSS layout code?

This certainly isn't for all of you, but for those who are more technologically adept, and you're looking for some free ways to lay out your site, here is a place that has multiple CSS downloads for you to use to format your page(s). This seems like a great place, and the time saved... My question is, does this code work in a place like Weebly? Might be worth a look with your students.

Gaming in the Classroom?

Now, this is a hot topic in many circles - should gaming be allowed in schools, and is there educational value to it? I'll let you decide which side of the coin you sit on. There are also theories, for those who feel it does have value, about constructionism vs. instructionism (the idea you will learn more when creating a game vs. just playing a game). It's a deep argument on either side: value or not, and construct vs. instruct. As I always suggest, try thinking outside the box here.

Either way, this looks like a great resource with regards to the topic. Sylvia has put together a plethora of information for anyone who is willing to explore the topic. Thanks to her!

Is this quality content? I'm curious to know...

Below is some of my students' first try at podcasting. Now, mind you, we have had long conversations about quality content, but they begged me to allow them to post this podcast. We had the conversation that if you begin posting silly content, then people may not take you seriously and likely won't follow you. This conversation proceeded the talk about one of the main ideas of Web 2.0 is to share content. I think you get my gist - that I tried to work with the students to get them to understand the whole concept of quality content. I previewed, and rejected, several drafts of the lyrics before we settled on this version.

But, then, I'm amused at the end of the day about silly content on places like YouTube. So my question here is, does content matter when students post original work to the Web? Am I the one being too serious here? I'd love your feedback.

OmniDazzle

Yet another great great tip that came across Twitter. OmniDazzle... Looks like a way to spice up presentations, and now it's a free download. Reasons from the website for why to try OmniDazzle:
"1. You've got a presentation this week, and you want to hear both "oohs" AND "ahhs" from the audience.
2. Your documentation could use some really great screen shots.
3. You want to point out something on your screen, without actually pointing."
Looks like it's definitely worth exploring to add pizzaz to presentations.

Here is a student generated Jing exploring the use of Omnidazzle. Remember, this is from a student's perspective, and they couldn't understand the value of some of the features or just didn't like others, but I think you'll get the gist of how the program works based on their presentation of the tool:

Student Led Podcasting Integration Presentation

Our Student Council here at WHS took on the challenge of looking at the Student Handbook this semester, and one of the things they wanted to look at was the use of iPods/MP3 players in school. Understanding they wanted to get the access during the school day for their music, one of the students on the Council who is in my 21st Century Digital Communications Class came to me and asked what we could do as a class to help change this policy. Podcasting was my 1st thought, and so, as a class, we set forth creating the following wiki presentation about the concept of the use of iPods/MP3 players in schools both for personal and academic purposes. Check it out, and hopefully, the information is useful.