A great reminder that what is obvious to you is mostly likely eye-opening to everyone else.

Obvious to you. Amazing to others. – by Derek Sivers

Ever play a YouTube video and which you could hide all the distractions? SafeShare.TV is a simple tool to make YouTube safer in your classes. Simply paste the url to your youtube video and you’ll be given a new url that hides all the distracting “related” videos and comments.

Compare this:

To this:

 http://SafeShare.tv

A Google A Day is a fantastic way to test your (and your students) search engine skills. Each day, a challenge is presented where finding the answer will take a little more searching skill then your everyday search. The site uses a ingenious system that searches the web as it was the day before the A Google A Day challenge was given, ensuring that you don’t stumble across spoilers.

Many students think they are good “Googlers”, but often they are just scratching the surface of what search engines can offer. This short activity can be used as a great transition activity, discussion starter, or even class competition to compare times. You can even embed the challenge as I have below to highlight the day’s challenge on your class website.

A Google A Day

Technology: Exciting, Disruptive but No Longer Overwhelming! – goo.gl/UVLdB

• A Day in the Internet – http://www.onlineeducation.net/internet
• The Top Ten Disruptive Technologies – http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=681107
• Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy – http://www.tubechop.com/watch/170739
• The Cost of Technology – http://www.intac.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/cost-of-technology.jpg

Polleverywhere.com – goo.gl/RLB7I

• Polleverywhere.com – http://www.polleverywhere.com
• Classroom Example -http://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/NDI4MDE2MTQz
• An affordable CRS accessible to all educators – http://www.polleverywhere.com/sms-classroom-response-system
• Real Time Assessment – http://novemberlearning.com/resources/handouts/real-time-assessment-with-poll-everywhere/
• Using Poll Everywhere in the Classroom – http://digitalteach.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/using-poll-everywhere-in-the-classroom/

Presented at Technology Boot Camp @ CEDFA Summit 2011

The Technology Toolbox – http://goo.gl/JQSD0

• Skype – http://www.skype.com
• Skype Projects in the Classroom – http://education.skype.com/projects/
• Call Recorder for Skype – http://ecamm.com/mac/callrecorder/
• Skype Explained Visually – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1mflr-kQlk
• Find Other Schools and Students on Skype – http://www.epals.com
• Find Authors Willing to Skype – http://skypeanauthor.wetpaint.com/
• Tips from a Teacher Using Skype – http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2006/10/using-skype-in-classroom-or-just.html
• Teachers’ Experiences with Skype – http://www.robcoschools.org/cpes/teachers_and_skype
• Class Skypes with Ill Classmate – http://learningismessy.com/blog/?p=196
• Skyping with an Illustrator – http://langwitches.org/blog/2009/02/12/skyping-in-mike-artell-illustrator-author/
• Production Staff of Movie Skypes with Class – http://clc.yale.edu/2009/02/18/videoconferencing-in-the-classroom-with-skype/
• Dropbox – http://dropbox.com
• Teacher Shows How He Uses Dropbox – http://www.thenerdyteacher.com/2010/03/dropbox-must-for-all-teachers.html
• The Magic Pocket – A Dropbox Manual – http://manuals.makeuseof.com.s3.amazonaws.com/MakeUseOf.com-Dropbox.pdf
• Have Students Upload Documents into your Dropbox – http://dropitto.me/
• Prezi – http://www.prezi.com
• Prezi Quickstart Guide – http://www.activehistory.co.uk/Miscellaneous/free_stuff/worksheets/Prezi.pdf
• Free Prezi License for Educators – http://blog.prezi.com/2010/01/24/new-release-features-educational-license-reuse-learn-center/
• Evernote – http://www.evernote.com
• Posterous – http://www.posterous.com
• Instapaper- http://www.instapaper.com
• QR Codes – all QR codes in this presentation made with goo.gl

If you’re like many schools, your email system is being strained by constant use. Email has become an essential tool in our lives, and education is no exception. Google apps offers a lot of benefits to school, with only a few drawbacks to consider. Let’s examine Google Apps and how it might fit into your organization.

What is Google Apps?

Google apps is a suite of online applications. It’s a way for you to have gmail, google calendar, contacts, docs and more under your domain name. You keep the same email addresses, and get the familiar gmail interface you’re used to.

The benefits

You’ll have all of the features of google’s top-notch applications under your domain name, totally free. You can stop subscribing to a spam filtering service, maintaining a email server (or paying someone else to), and possibly support many more users and offer many features you simply couldn’t afford before.

The drawbacks

Everything has to have a downside, right? The two biggest downsides are giving Google access to your email and a slight lack of control.

Privacy

There are serious concerns with giving Google total access to your organization’s email. And while Google’s moto is to “do no evil” and they have been fairly successful at living up to that moto. But legal issues exist whenever you outsource email. Personally, we’d rather have one of the biggest companies in the world handling our email than a mom and pop shop down the street. Which is more likely to be secure and protect our data?

Lack of control

The other issue most heard is that you’re now under Google’s control. While this is true whenever you outsource something, people get very worked up when email goes down when its out of your control. Google has had a few notable outages lately, but it’s hard to find another email provider that has a better record of uptime than gmail.

Google Apps is a great solution for most schools. Look for posts coming soon on the successfully migrating to Google Apps!

Some interesting links I’ve found useful lately:

• The teaching blog of a technology teacher at an international school
• TheThinkingStick – The Blog of EdTech presenter Jeff Utecht, plenty of great information that might help you focus on giving your students the technology skills they need.
• A Digital Citizenship curriculum for PK-12 students and teachers at International School Bangkok
• Wakeland Highschool Library’s guide for website evaluation.
• Really Bad Powerpoint – what not to do.
• Teacher training videos
• including teacher training on twitter -
• 100+ Google Tricks for Teachers
• Free Lesson Plans and Educational Resources from the Verizon Foundation

Rasmussen College has a great article on 100 applications useful for educators. Maybe you’ll find your next indispensable app on their list?

100 Apps for Tech–Savvy Teachers

Presented 1/20&21 at the Ohio Free-Tech Conference in Cincinnati

Presentation:

Handout:

http://tech.savvyteachers.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Moodle_Outline.pdf

Resources

Moodle Benefits

http://www.smartschools.ph/SmartSchools/SmartTools/BenefitsMoodle.htm

About Moodle

http://docs.moodle.org/en/About_Moodle

Moodle Philosophy

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Moodle/Philosophy

Review of HS use of Moodle

http://aiken.moodlerooms.com/wb/pages/academics/moodle/moodle-at-aiken-high-school–introduction/moodle-at-aiken-high-school–images.php

Getting Started

http://docs.moodle.org/en/Getting_started_for_teachers

Blackboard vs. Moodle

http://www.humboldt.edu/~jdv1/moodle/all.htm

Hot potatoes – Create Interactive Activities

http://hotpot.uvic.ca/

Wikipedia’s Moodle Article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle

Demo Course – Features

http://demo.moodle.net/course/view.php?id=5

2 Minute Moodles – Videos

http://tomazlasic.net/moodle/moodle-tutorials-2-minute-moodles/

Moodle Documentation

http://treadwell.cce.cornell.edu/moodle_doc/