California DEN

I’m sure the folks at Microsoft read one of my previous postings about how I prefer Firefox and it inspired them. The newest version of Internet Explorer is out and has some pretty groovy new features. Check out IE 8 Beta 2 and read the review by EWeek here. I have to say that one of the most useful features of Firefox in education is still the integrated spell check. Does IE have this and I’m just missing it?

~Dave Kootman

Just in! We have a limited number of seats available for Discovery Education and the DEN at a special screening of Discovery en Espanol’s My Hispanic World and Mysteries of the Yucatan.

When: September 17, 2008

Where: Museum of Latin American Art, 628 Alamitos Ave., Long Beach, CA 90802

Time: VIP Reception 6:00pm, Screening at 7:45pm

RSVP: tahia_harley-cw@discovery.com or 240-662-2815 (Let her know you are part of the DEN).

Click here for the invite.

I like to multitask. At any given time I usually have about 6 different application windows up and running on my laptop (not to mention all the items running in the background). So, it would follow that I similarly have a ton of tabs open in Firefox. Here are two tips for those wanting to get the most out of their browser.

First, when you set your homepage, why not set several tabs as your homepage instead of the usual one? I use email, Google Docs and my Netvibes reader. To do this just open up the tabs you want to use (no more, no less) and then click Tools and see the image to the right here for more info.  Notice the word “pages” is plural! Click and there you go.  The next time you open your browser you’ll have all your goodies open!

Second tip, If you have a bunch of tabs open about the same topic you can bookmark them all at once.  Just click Bookmarks and then  Bookmark all tabs. I usually choose to create a folder when I bookmark several at once.   Now they are all organized for me and I didn’t have to click for each one.  In addition, you can delete them easily because it just takes one click to delete the entire folder. Ever actually go through all of your old bookmarks?  That’s a task I dread.

Now the cool part.  Let’s say you are teaching a lesson on the solar system and you have several online resources (including Discovery Streaming of course), ahead of time you bookmark a bunch of appropriate pages and keep them in a folder. Then when its time for the lesson you navigate to that folder in your bookmarks and click  Open All in Tabs. Viola! I’m going to be presenting to an administrator shortly and I have my resources in a single folder which I will just open at once, no wasted time clicking on all of them individually.

Now I can’t tell you if this will work in Internet Explorer or Safari because… well I just don’t use them because I consider them inferior (just my take).

~Dave Kootman

As the California budget dwindles, schools and teachers are relying more and more on additional methods of funding. Everywhere you look, there seem to be grant opportunities and contests.Have you taken advantage of these lately? You have to have the attitude that you can get it. Oregon DEN member, Amy Lundstrom, won $100,000 from Best Buy! Below is a link to a contest that California DEN member, Suzanne Wesp is aiming to win.  What can you do with a little effort and creativity?

Two of our Star Discovery Educators here in California need our help! Julie Mildrew and Suzanne Wesp entered a contest at NECC and would love some help from the DEN to win! They need votes, lots of votes to win sets of Turning Point Response Systems for their school. You can vote once a day, per computer until October 15, 2008. So let’s go DEN and show them how the west can win again! Click here to watch their video and vote.  (Give the video a minute to load….)

posted by Kim Randall and Dave Kootman

These come via Twitter courtesy of DEN member Fred Delventhal.  If I had to follow one ed tech leader on Twitter I think Fred would be the one. Check out his blog here. Some of the latest:

Google Apps Tips

10 Obscure Google Search Tricks

Ways to Exhibit Student Art on the Internet