I received a very informative e-mail from the people at Teacher Tube. It made me very happy.
I hope it makes you happy too! Happy teachers make for happy students!
Read on…
From the Teacher Tube E-mail Newsletter:
If you have not visited TeacherTube in the past two weeks, you need to check us out. We are extremely excited to share with all of our community members that TeacherTube is performing at our fastest speeds even though our visits have doubled in the past two months. Our tech team is constantly working to provide the most efficient software and hardware solutions to keep the site performing at a high level. Our community continues to grow by the hundreds everyday. We have over 900,000 visits per month, over 170,000 members and have over 35,000 public videos that you can use in your classroom with students or for professional development with staff. You have made TeacherTube one of the most sought after free resources for teachers all over the world. We at TeacherTube say thank you. You are making a difference in over 220 countries.
There have been discussions among educators for TeacherTube to expand our resources and allow teachers to upload more than just video. I am formally announcing TeacherTube is currently working on new features that will allow teachers to upload photos, audio, and docs. Docs will be documents such as PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, word documents, rich text files, etc. We have held off on offering more resources for two reasons. First, we needed to have our software function more efficiently so that you would have a better experience while using TeacherTube . We have resolved the vast majority of our software inefficiencies. Secondly, we needed to design and implement a database structure that could handle scalable growth. Our tech team has designed a solution and it is scheduled to be implemented before January 1, 2009.
It is an exciting time to be an educator!
Jason Smith
CEO / Co-founder
TeacherTube, LLC
Sorry for the short notice, but come explore and extend your New York DEN - PLN (Public Learning Network) online and off at a reception event with Steve Dembo in New Paltz on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008.
The event will be held at the Gilded Otter, right at the edge of town from 6-8 pm. Drinks and appetizers will be served.
Register today and select the October 15th event: https://den.dabbledb.com/page/newyorkoctoberdeneventsregistration/vCjhVoLp
Directions to the Gilded Otter:
View Larger Map
Our tri-state Day of Discovery with Power to Learn this past week was FABULOUS!
Here are some pictures from the day to prove it! I created this 15 second video using Animoto.
Don’t forget to visit the wiki presentation I shared with you on VoiceThread and Animoto. Have fun enjoying these two applications with your students.
For those of you who were able to attend our Day of Discovery, it was very nice meeting you.
For those of you who didn’t attend, perhaps we could meet at the Northeast Regional Conference in Troy, NY on September 27th and 28th.
Happy Teaching and Learning!
Beginning mid-August, PBwiki is hosting a Back to School Challenge. Teachers can earn a free gold wiki, plus great classroom resources like books, legos and more. You can participate in the challenge by signing up here.
This is the “Year of Collaboration,” so consider joining this challenge as one step toward creating a 21st Century classroom and perhaps you’ll even make some global connections. If you’d like to better understand what a wiki is, and how to use one with your students, check out this great resource from Teachers First called a Wiki Walk-Through.
Awesome news! Animoto now has a section just for educators! Visit Animoto for Education to check it out! When I visited the site, I discovered that our own Lance Rougeux, Director of the Discovery Educator Network endorses Animoto as a great web 2.0 tool beneficial to students and teachers alike. He is right! Be sure to visit the site and register for your own educator account.
Just in case you’re new to Animoto, it is a site that turns your uploaded pictures into a video with accompanying music. I included an example I made after I attended my first mono-ski clinic through the the Professional Ski Instructors of America. There are examples of more educationally appropriate Animotos on the front page of the Animoto for Educators site, but I was not able to access the embed codes.
Have you discovered wordle yet?
Visit the wordle site to generate beautiful word clouds from text, a blog link or a delicious username. Just like a regular tag cloud, the words that appear more frequently are given greater prominence in the wordle. I especially love how you can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.
I created this wordle using the link for NY DEN blog.
Can you tell how important Discovery Star Educators are to our blog?
If you’re not attending the DEN National Institute, you can always watch from home.
Video chat rooms at Ustream
Thanks to our Pennsylvania neighbors Jen Dorman and Bridget Belardi for Live Bloggins and UStreaming Steve Dembo’s Keynote at the DEN Leadership Council Institute.
Broadcast by Ustream.TV
Hello NY DEN Members!
A new web 2.0/social networking application has arrived and you need to head on over to Shelfari to check it out!
Shelfari is a social media site focused around books, and will continue to innovate as it brings together the world’s readers. There are many teachers who have migrated to the site. Feel free to network with the teachers who have similar interests as you in groups like Educational Technology or Great Books for Teachers. Or, if you please, you can start your own groups.
According to the website, Shelfari’s members:
- Build virtual bookshelves to express themselves to their friends and to the world
- Discover books that are popular in their trusted circles of friends
- Influence peers by rating and discussing books online
- Discover and learn from people with similar reading tastes
- Participate in online book groups to further explore literature and share ideas
- Interact with and learn from authors
This is my bookshelf:
What are you reading?
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