California DEN

If you use Tiny URL or Twitter…

See for yourself:

http://tinypaste.com/10dea

Techcrunch review

Check out the Firefox extension too

Could this be used for annotations and citations? What if you/student used a photo in a project and simply used a TinyPaste link to credit the author or photographer? Would that be a legal way to cite things?

When the web first came out, it seemed one of the most important features was instaneity of the news. Journalists were able to publish stories moments after they happened and readers were able to get them before the evening news. The world’s information was getting faster. Now, it’s getting more creative.

With RSS feeds, our ability to manipulate the way we view information has increased and this seems to have shaped our way of viewing the world. I no longer read the news as just a citizen, but as a teacher, a technologist, an athlete, etc.. As I customize my news, I seem to more deeply entrench myself into fewer niches. RSS technology is now creating more ways to absorb the world.

Daily Universe takes an interesting astronomy-inspired approach to this world view by creating constellations out of news stories. The concept is inspired by the idea that “our constellations were actually created by a small handful of astronomers, who, over the years, decided to project their own particular worldviews into the night sky” (from the Statement which also explains several ways to look at Daily Universe). Instead of linear headlines, stories are plotted as stars and connections are made. It’s certainly worth a look

Another interesting RSS feeder that came out a few years ago is 10 X 10, a sort-of photographic mosaic of the most recent news stories. 10 X 10 was created by Jonathan Harris and works by scouring RSS feeds from top news agencies around the world and then looking for keywords (like tags) and associated images to create a visual-learner’s information paradise. What’s really cool though is the History button (below the images), which lets you look at any hour, day, month, or year in images.

As a classroom application, I challenged my students, a few who have taken it up, to join me in creating their own personal 10 X 10 by listing on their blogs (or in paper journals) the 10 words that best describe their day. The students say that’s hard, because they have to analyze and summarize information in a concise way. But doing it with personal information is also more meaningful. “It’s almost like poetry” said one student. I’m hoping such skills can be transferred to more subject-based material, such as selecting 10 words to summarize a science unit or a character from an assigned novel.

My next step will be to have them create a photojournal for each day in a month and post it to a photo-sharing site such as Flickr or Picasa to create their own mosaic. As a learning tool, dividing the students into groups and have each group take one photo that represents a concept their currently learning in each subject (math, language arts, science, etc.) and creating a 10 X 10 could really help them conceptualize standardized information. They could even create this digitally using a tool like Mosaickr.

While these tools are great, please, please, check with your district’s/school’s teacher acceptable use policy before using them. Many districts block certain sites for many reasons. We don’t want any teachers “in trouble” for going around the system….

~DEN Management

I’ve had a lot of success using the online file conversion tool, Zamzar. I’ve used it to change sound file types, compress files, create pdfs and, most frequently, rip Flash videos from YouTube.

I hope many other DEN members had found this tools useful as well. One thing that never occurred to me though was how I could get videos from YouTube while at school (aside from simply converting them at home) . In the past, I had always converted them at home (being that YouTube is blocked at my school and most others).

It completely skipped my mind that I could actually do a Google search (or Google Videos) for a YouTube video and then copy and paste the URL from the results page into Zamzar! Now you can have your banned YouTube videos at school! I love finding ways around “the man.” Just make sure that Zamzar’s emails are not blocked by your system. Needless to say Discovery’s videos should always remain top priority

I teach elementary school (there, I said it. Please don’t judge me ) In my classroom, I like to use quiet music in the background when students are working. I know a lot of teachers find the value in a peaceful work environment and students working quietly to the sound of Enya (or something else we would never listen to while driving in our car or sitting in our own living room). The “Old School” way to play your music would be to put on a CD and go.

The new school way is to rip all your CD’s on to your hard drive and play the music from your computer. On a Mac, iTunes will do this for you, on a PC, Windows Media Player will do this for you (both free). Once your music is on your computer you can just load up several albums/artists at a time.

The part that makes you really feel like a tech superstar is creating playlists and then making shortcuts to those playlists. I created a playlist for my classroom music (use the “help” button on the player if you don’t know how). Usually I add some albums more than once because I want the music to play for longer than my school day. Then I right click on the file for my playlist and create a custom shortcut for that playlist (on a PC this can be done by clicking on “Properties”). So, now when I want to start my classroom music I can just hold down CTRL+Alt+m (I chose “m” for music) and my music will play all day long!

I keep the music running in the background all day and just have my students turn up or down the volume depending on whether I am teaching or they are working.

Baroque music works great, as does simple piano music, rainforest music, Native American chants, Enya or anything thematic. Things with words can be distracting though.  I also make playlists that are more “pop” feeling for when we are doing art projects or other more active classroom projects.

If your students say they are distracted anyway, you likely have the volume up too loud. Happy listening!

Dave Kootman

We all have our favorite websites for learning.  I’m talking about sites that provide useful tools, frequently Web 2.0 style.  These are mostly things that we couldn’t even have imagined in a desktop environment a few years ago, let alone on the web.  With thousands of great sites out there, and more coming every day,  it’s tough to narrow down what works for you.

Larry Ferlazzo (not a DEN member :(  but an Edublog award winner nonetheless) has done his version of list creation that seems to have gained some attention.  Here is a link to his :

The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2007

Check out some of the other links on the bottom of his page for other great ideas too.

Cell phones seem to work just about everywhere these days.  Internet
access also seems to be just about everywhere these days as well.  Last
week, I found myself in a situation where I had internet access, but no
telephone service whatsoever.  I was at the Discovery National
Institute in the Carribbean and there were many things I needed to
communicate to the outside world. Email was just too slow.  What to do?

I
used a service called Teleflip to send text messages to my friends cell
phones…from my email.  The basic part of this service is free.  You
enter your friend’s telephone number followed by @teleflip.com
(7605551212@teleflip.com).  Your email goes right to their phone!  I
usually take off any signature I may have to avoid using the character
limit.  When I get a text back, it goes to my email account.  I can
then see the actual email address that Teleflip sent the text to, such
as 7605551212@messaging.sprint.com.  I generally put that in my contact
book to have for future reference. 

I find this service very useful for sending out texts to larger numbers of people too.  There are few other services that do similar things, but I find this one to be simple and effective.  If you search the web, you can even find widgets to embed in a webpage that will allow people to text you directly from your website or aggregator .
Teleflp also has a free service that will allow you to forward your
email to your cell phone (without additional data plans.  Happy texting!

In many school subjects, we use timelines to account events
throughout history. We not only
consolidate data and make our own timelines, but we view timelines to help us
visual the context in which these events occurred. Google now offers the ability to have your
search results displayed in timeline format! What a neat feature! Check out
this example of a Thomas
Jefferson search result in Google Timeline format.

I have a confession to make. Until last year, I never wrote down any dates or appointments. I usually remembered to attend them, but only
because I had them all stuffed in small crevices in the corner of my
brain. Of course, that usually lead to a
feeling of being overwhelmed and unorganized.  Maybe that’s why I could never sleep soundly-
always wondering what I had to do the next day…

 I remember trying to
use a day planner, but if I needed it at school, it was in my car or if I
needed it at home, it was at school. You
see the pattern there. So it never got
used. Early last year, I began to use an
online calendar and it has changed my life.

The online calendar/organizer I use allows me to enter
events in any month or year and set reminders to be emailed IM’ed or text
messaged to my cell. The best part is
that I can add or view events from any place with an internet connection
(services will soon be available that will allow this to be done offline as
well). So now I don’t have to keep track
of where my planner is!

For items that recur weekly or monthly, I can set the event
just once and then tell the program to repeat until a certain date. 

There are many free web applications that will do all of
these tasks, including the ones below. The one I am most anticipating is Scrybe
(still in beta-check out the video). You
can enter your data in one calendar and save it in iCal format. You can then import the data into another
online calendar if you want. 

So check out some of these free sites and post some comments
letting us know what you think. Are
there some cool features that you use that we should be aware of?

Hipcal, Kikocal, Google Calendar…