Colette Cassinelli’s edtech VISION

Stop spending hours looking for information online – have the information come to you. How can make this happen?   By using Google Reader and RSS

What is RSS?  RSS (real simple syndication) is the ability to “subscribe” to changes made on a website or blog. (Click here to view a video: RSS in Plain English)

First, you need to access your Google Reader.  Go to http://www.google.com/reader and sign in with your Google Account. This is where all of your subscriptions will be stored.

If you are not aware of which websites have RSS feeds, you can search for them by clicking on Add Subscriptions” button and search for feeds.  The search results will list websites that have RSS feeds for your topic.  Choose the one that interests you by clicking on the “Subscribe” button to add this information to your reader.  Now whenever that website has an update, you will be notified in your reader.  Unread messages are saved in “bold” until you read them.

If the RSS feed in incorrect or no longer useful, you can unsubscribe and you will no longer receive updates in your Google Reader.

There is another way to add feeds to your Google Reader. When browsing on a website, look for the standard RSS icon for subscription options. Click on the standard RSS icon. Most blogs have feed autodiscovery enabled, meaning the site will automatically tell Reader where to find a blog’s feed. If this doesn’t work, you’ll have to add the URL of a site’s feed directly. Find the RSS logo on the site in question, click it, and copy and paste the link into the ‘add subscription’ box.

If you can’t find an RSS logo on the site, the site may not offer RSS feeds.

Once you get into the habit of subscribing for news or information, you will find that you search less.  Stay up to date with breaking news, School updates, latest blog posts or news from your favorite website with RSS and Google Reader.

Once you become familiar with Google Reader, make sure you check out these cool features:

• Organizing your RSS feeds with folders and tabs
• Sharing interesting items with Friends or by email
• Adding Notesto your articles
• Accessing your RSS feeds on your mobile phone

An archive of Tech Tip Tuesday is located at http://sites.google.com/site/techtipstuesday/

Following Google’s philosophy of making the information you want readily available to you, iGoogle offers many different gadgets and themes to customize your iGoogle home page. Here’s a look at what we’ve done with ours.

From Mary Fran:

I really like a quick snapshot of the time and weather. That’s why Date & Time and Weather are at the top of my page.

To keep organized I now have my Google calendar on my iGoogle page. My husband and I share calendars, so if he forgets to tell me about a meeting he has at night, I find out about it by checking the calendar. I also miss fewer birthdays and the ToDo list that is easier for me to keep track of now that it isn’t on a piece of paper that’s easy to lose.

Cooking is one of my favorite pastimes, but I rarely sit down and look at the magazines I get in the mail. To keep meals interesting at home, I have the Epicurious.com and 100 Cookbooks gadgets. There are often fast, easy, and yummy recipes to try. And if the recipes are really good, I just copy them to a folder to keep track of them.

I like knowing what’s going on in the world, and I like to get the news from different perspectives. That’s why I have the CNN, BBC, and NYTimes news gadgets on my iGoogle page. After reading the news, Inspirational Quotes and Pictures often gives me a quick pick-me-up, as does the Places to See gadget. They take me away from it all for a second. And, if I want to find out more about the place, there is a Google Search box on the Places to See gadget so I can find out more about the place and broaden my horizons.

On my class iGoogle page, I keep Phases of the Moon, the World Daylight Map, a timer, and a Dictionary Gadget. It makes it easy for me to pull them up in a second should the opportunity to use them arise.

From Colette:

On my main iGoogle page, I keep my critical Google gadgets:  Gmail, Docs, Calendar and Reader. This allows me to quickly scan which items need my attention, unread messages, and appointments.  Because I see my iGoogle page every time I open my browser, I can easily keep on track of all that’s going on in my life.

Like MaryFran, I also have several news feeds on my page plus the 4-day weather forecast.  I also like to occasionally try out new gadgets on my homepage.  If after a few weeks I find that I don’t use it – I switch it out for another.  Currently I am checking out:  How to of the Day, MyRecipes:  Dinner Tonight, and Free Coupons Finder 2.1.

Don’t want to spend a lot of time searching through all the gadgets?  You can add thematic tabs that are already populated with gadgets.  For example, if you add a new tab and name it “Just for Fun“, the following gadgets will appear on that tab for you (keep “I’m feeling lucky” checked):  Joke of the Day, Sudoku, Hangman, Quote of the Day and Horoscope.  Consider adding tabs named Finance, News or Sports and see which gadgets show up.

Another tip: Did you know you can share iGoogle tabs you create with your friends?  Click on the down arrow on the tab name and choose “share”.  You can also edit your tabs or restore your iGoogle page to a preview version.

Have fun with your customizing your iGoogle page and don’t forget to check out the Artistic themes and customizable themes for your iGoogle page.  The themes color your iGoogle page with holiday images, artwork and color schemes. Some even change throughout the day, depending on the time.

Tech Tip Tuesday is written and published weekly by MaryFran Lynch and Colette Cassinelli.  The archive of all tips are located at:  http://sites.google.com/site/techtipstuesday/

Google Presentation is not quite robust a presentation program as PowerPoint or Keynote but students can create their entire presentation online and work on it with group members or access it from home/school.  But I have found the REAL POWER of Google Presentations is when you use the online presentation format.

1. Go to http://docs.google.com
2. Upload you PowerPoint file to Google Presentations (up to 10MB from your computer)
3. Warning:  Not all formatting features from Design Templates will always be preserved and there is NO animation.
4. When you publish your presentation to the Internet anyone will be able to access and view it online. They will also be able to join the presentation online and chat with others also viewing the presentation. Your document will be assigned a unique address (URL) on google.com. To do this go to Share button (upper right of screen) and choose Publish.
5. Click on the published link and this will open up your PowerPoint online and a chat window will appear on the right side of the screen.
6. In order for audience members to discuss the presentation, they will need to log into their Google account so their name will appear in the chat window.
7. Google Presentations also provides you with the embed code if you want to place your Google presentation in a webpage, blog or wiki.
8. Click HERE to view a sample presentation and its chat window.

Tech Tip Tuesday is written and published weekly by MaryFran Lynch and Colette Cassinelli.  The archive of all tips are located at:  http://sites.google.com/site/techtipstuesday/.

Advanced Search – Part 4

Sometimes finding the information you need on the Internet is challenging.  You are not alone.  According to the World Internet stats, there are 1.4 billion Internet users and there are over 200,000 websites registered EACH day.  Heck -there are 14,672,685 individual pages on Wikipedia alone!It can overwhelming when you discover there are almost 60 million search results for “John McCain” and 82 million results for “Barack Obama”.  Most of us are confident when we search Google that the information we need will be located in the first ten results – but that is not always the case. This past month you have been shown different ways to search on Google – like choosing descriptive, specific words, or adding “quotes” around multiple terms, or many of the unique Google search terms such as:  weather, define or local search. If you haven’t used the Advanced Search page on Google – you should consider using it and teach your students to use it too.   You don’t need to remember to use “quote “ or + signs when using advanced search.  The key to effective searching on the Internet is to know which search terms to use to narrow or broaden the results you receive.  Just type in your search in the section for: all of the words the exact wording or phrase one or more of these words I especially like to choose to have more than 10 results displayed.  Want that to happen EVERY TIME you search?  You need to go into your Global Preferences (http://www.google.com/preferences) and change the number of search results you always want displayed. Don’ want to see results in other languages – you can change the language settings to English only. Searching by file types is really helpful if you are looking, for example, a PowerPoint presentation you saw at a conference.  I heard about a PowerPoint template to make Jeopardy games and easily found it by searching for “Jeopardy” and choosing the “PowerPoint” file type. Selecting a specific date will prevent you from receiving old and out-of-date information in your results Another must is to turn ON the SafeSearch filter. A few hints about using the Image Search in Google. When your students are searching for an image using Google image search, the image results come from ANY web page that has been indexed by Google.  Right below the image search bar is an option to choose image size.  This is very helpful to find large enough images so you don’t end up with a pixelated image by trying to enlarge a small photo. In the Advanced Image Search, you can customize your search by image file type, color, size and turn on the SafeSearch filter. Many images found in Google Image Search are copyright-protected images so please consider requiring your students to include citations for their images as well as content information.  Sample: http://temple3.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/barack-obama-official-small.jpg and do not accept “Google Image Search” as a citation. Some other sources to find copyright-free or creative commons licensing images are:   Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org  morgueFile – http://www.morguefile.com/  Pics 4 Learning – http://www.pics4learning.com/  Stock.XCHNG – http://www.sxc.hu/  Flickr/Creative Commons – http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ (NOTE:  Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license – but remember – these are personal photos that people have taken – search safely!) This comic explains Creative Commons licensing:  http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/comics/sharingcreativeworks/sharingcreativeworks.pdf

~ MaryFran and Colette

http://sites.google.com/site/techtipstuesday/search-tips/advanced-search—part-4

Specialized Search – Part 3

This next set of tips is great to integrate into social studies curriculum. It’ll help your students find primary sources when doing research, and have a better appreciation for just where the events took place. view:timeline When you use view:timeline, your results are broken down into chronologically listed dates. You can filter your search to narrow the time period from which you would like to view results. For example, here is the top of the results page for the query [view:timeline battle of the bulge]: Notice the filter on the right of the page. Narrowing the search to 1940-1944 will give you these results: view:map You can add maps to the search results. [view:map battle of the bulge] will give you a Google Map, with markers that refer to the places listed in the articles in the results. Switch between map, satellite, and hybrid view to give students a better appreciation of the terrain.

Good Luck!
~ MaryFran and Colette

http://sites.google.com/site/techtipstuesday/search-tips/specialized-search-pt3

Google Search Features – Part 2

Teaching Your Students About Search – Part 1

This school year, my fellow Google Certfied Teacher MaryFran Lynch and I began a weekly email newsletter to introduce our staff to all the great tools and features of the Wonderful World of Google.

September 2008:  Welcome back to school and to the inauguration of Tech Tip Tuesday. It is our hope that over the year we will be able to introduce you to some tools that will help you both in your classroom and in your personal life. Every Tuesday, we’ll be sending you an e-mail with a Tech Tip we hope you will try.

To take advantage of many of these tips, you will need to have a Google Account. No need to give up your current e-mail address, you can have a Google Account without having a g-mail address. But more about that later. Today, we’d like to tell you about a Google feature you can use on your phone to get information on businesses.

Our first tip:

411 Calls for FREE!!!  You know how expensive it can be to make a 411 call. But by calling 1-800-GOOG-411 from either your cell or home phone, you can get the same information for only the price of a phone call! Try it! Once you dial, a voice will prompt you to tell which city and state the business you are interested in is located. The voice will repeat what it believes you said. You have the chance to correct it if it gets it wrong. You can always say, “Go back” and try again. The voice will then ask the business name or category. Once the system has the name and location of the business you are interested in, it will automatically connect you!

Want more information? Click here to watch a short video

http://sites.google.com/site/techtipstuesday/