Podcasts- Bring Technology Professional Development to You

Podcasts are so easy to listen to while you rush around during the semester break on your ipod or mp3 player or directly from your computer.

Odeo offers some great podcasts to subscribe to. It’s another way of bringing professional development right to you. Listen to CNETs Technology or the Internet podcasts right from Odeo or sign up to receive them by RSS Feed or Itunes. The podcasts provide information that will keep you current.

If you like to keep in the know of tech gadgets your students are talking about sign up for Crave, a blog from CNET about the latest geek gadgets, or subscribe to the Weekly Crave Vodcast.

Social Media Technology makes it easy to share information and keep informed.

Social Network Technology

Social Networking Sites are springing up all over to help others expand their social networks by providing the technology to connect with old friends and colleagues, business contacts, or make new contacts. Social networking lets you rub elbows with others in your field and learn from the company you keep. Seriously, it’s an innovative use of technology.

My favorite is LinkedIn, but also check out some new arrivals:
Jigsaw
Ryze
Spoke

Azureus- Zudeo & The BBC

The BBC has announced the move to a file-sharing site that will make hundreds of BBC programs legally available to users.

Users in the US will be able to download copies of BBC high definition (HD) video with Azureus’ Zudeo software. After viewing it, they can comment on it, rate it, and recommend it to friends.

What’s so different about this file-sharing site is that bloggers will be able to link to the video programs from their blogs and social networks sites, like MySpace and Second Life.

“File-sharing is often associated with illegal distribution of copyrighted content. But in recent months a number of networks have tried to shake off this old image.”

This will be a great resource for instructors to find video clips to add to lecture presentations or find a short video clip for conversation starters to use in class.

Scientific American Podcast

Subscribe to Scientific American Podcasts. Choose from the weekly podcast Science Talk with Steve Mirsky to explore the latest developments in science and technology or 60-Second Science for quick reports and commentaries about the world of science.

Whichever one you choose it will keep you updated with information to share with your students. Subscribe to Podcasts- it’s a great way to bring professional development to your office.

eLearning Awards 2006

Visit the eLearning Awards 2006. The eLearning Awards are sponsored by European Schoolnet, with the support of Young Digital Planet, Intel, Promethean, Oracle and Michael. Teachers and schools submitted their ICT projects for the eLearning Awards. The Awards show how ICT is being used effectively in schools throughout Europe.

The 1st Place eLearning award for best use in ICT went to a project called "Living in Europe: on highlands and lowlands" from Scuola Primaria "Ada Negri" in Lodi Vecchio, Italy. 2nd Place-Podcast de radios scolaires from Ecole élémentaire d'Hénouville, Henouville, France. 3rd Place- Patient, Doctor, Specialist - A fiction of health consulting in a future world from Begin High School, Rosh Ha'ain, Israel.

Browse the entire Project Gallery to view this year’s entries from all EU countries or visit the shortlist of the Top 100.

My favorites:
->Slovakia- Fit Kids -Healthy Diet- You Are What You Eat
->Finland - ENO Tree Planting Event- A Day for the Environment & Peace
->UK- Battle of the Poets -STARZ Library- eBooks
->Spain- New Technologies also Teach Fables- Aesops Fables & Christmas WebQuests
->Poland- Mathematics Without Borders- Mathematics in Different Areas of Our Lives

Vimeo- For Sharing Video

By now you’ve found out how Flickr is a great way to share photos and have students create photo albums for projects. Now try Vimeo for video.

Take video, upload,and share. A great new Web 2.0 tool.

Try Vimeo out over the holiday break while you’ve got some free time. By January you will have many ideas to use this new tool with your students. They will really love using Vimeo too, since it's so user-friendly. I can't wait to get the faculty excited to use it too.

Best of the Web 2006- Website Design

It's that time of year again. So who made it to the “best” for 2006?

For beginners find out who the Archives & Museum Informatics chose as “Best of the Web 2006” in website design.

“Recognizing achievement in heritage Web site design, a committee of museum professionals selects the Best of the Web each year”

Add the winners to your del.icio.us site as resources to use with your students in the upcoming year.

Blendededu.com will be adding more "best" of 2006 as we find ones to benefit teaching and learning.

ChaCha…a cool new search engine

It’s smart, it’s powered by human beings.

ChaCha wants to help you find exactly what you’re looking for, since there is so much information on the web to sift through today.

You can ChaCha alone or with a guide to help you find exactly what you are looking for without spending days searching and coming up with millions of irrelevant search returns.

...so go ChaCha

Scrapblog- A Multimedia Photo Album

Seriously love taking and sharing photos? Want to get your students excited about photography? Add a photo project to your curriculum. Here’s a new creative idea, Scrapblog.

Scrapblog is a Web2.0 tool to create photo albums. Not just ordinary photo albums, but multimedia photo albums by adding audio, video and other artistic embellishments.

Your students could create a Language, Social Studies, Current Events or Science multimedia photo album. Students use images, weblinks, and music, then present the finished multimedia photo album to the class for discussion.

It's FREE and web-based. Nothing to do, but drop and drag. Seriously Simple.

Veotag-Add Text to Your Video or Audio

“Veotag” is an exciting new service that lets you display text, called "veotags," within an audio or video file."

A cool tool to add to your web2.0 toolkit.

Create an audio or a video and add text. Your text appears right next to your audio or video for your audience to see.

Listen to the "Tale of Peter Rabbit" and read along with the text next to it. What a great tool for learning to read! The “tags” allow young learners to 'read along', while engaging the learners as active participants, not just passive listeners.

Tags or Notes could be added to a class video, for better understanding. Adding text or tags also allows your students to jump ahead while viewing or go back for a quick review.

Browse through the veotag library of tagged videos. If you're interested in learning what this generation thinks about computers, cell phones, IM and watching TV, view "Next Generation Insights" with Guy Kawasaki and a young adult panel. It will give you some clues!

Veotag is an innovative way to make audio or video a better learning tool. Your students will love learning through a medium of their generation.

Global Voices Online - A Social Network of Worldwide Bloggers

"The greatest end of life is not knowledge, but action". Thomas Huxley

Trying to get your students involved with global issues? Are they listening?

Have them subscribe to Global Voices Online, a non-profit media project that sheds light on what bloggers are saying worldwide.

Global Voices, a social networking tool, has built a global network of bloggers who blog about what’s going on in their area. Your students will learn so much more than just reading newspapers and published magazines or journals.

Click on a specific region or “tag” to see what’s been blogged, read the Daily World Blog Roundups that focuses on regions that aren’t represented in mainstream media, or use the World Blog Aggregator to find stories about a specific region.

Be sure to subscribe to Global Voices Podcasts to listen to interviews with bloggers. These podcasts would make great conversation starters for your Global Issues and Current Events classes.

Your students now have an opportunity to learn about world issues through bloggers’ eyes on one site. It’s a great resource for your students.

IBM ShortCuts – Listen While You Work

Since it’s so easy to listen to podcasts I have subscribed to many to listen to while I work. Lately I have been listening to ShortCuts, a weekly online show from IBM and I passed the RSS Feed to faculty for their own technology professional development.

ShortCuts' tips, presented in a weekly online format, provide information to keep you up-to-date with answers to questions about email, blogs, wikis and the new Web2.0 tools we are learning to use.

You can bookmark the site or subscribe through RSS Feed.

Using RSS Feeds and a News Aggregator brings news and podcasts to you so you can do more important tasks than spending so much time searching the web. RSS Feeds keep you current without you having to do so much work. It's a shortcut!

IBM ShortCuts Weekly Podcast is one of many tech feeds you can subscribe to.
Make sure you share this resource with your students!

-> Subscribe to ShortCuts

Mobile Devices Doubling as Projectors

Read "Technology Review -Pocket Projectors" and get some ideas of what possibilities lie ahead for m-learning.

It is already possibly for students to listen to audio podcasts of their lectures like UC Berkeley and Duke University are currently offering on their mobile devices. In the future students will be able to download their visual class presentations and view them right from their cell phones, not displayed on their tiny interfaces, but project them on to any large area for viewing.

Greater cell phone storage capacity will provide students the freedom to carry presentations right on their mobile devices, allowing them to learn while in-transit. I'm visualizing the trains in Japan or the train stations in Bangkok with students in-transit taking time to review classwork on their way to class or work. Learning on the go!

This technology will also change the look of future classrooms as Instructors will be able to beam presentations right from their cell phone, a separate projector will not be needed.

Wireless m-learning. Making learning possible truly whenever - wherever.

Zotero- The Next Generation Research Tool

Getting ready to finally write that research paper? Well it about time, with the semester coming to a rapid close.

Here is a new research tool that will definitely make your life easier. I wish I had this in grad school.

ZOTERO (in beta) will organize your research, collect your links, manage and cite right from your Firefox web browser. Unfortunately, you still have to write the paper yourself.
After download, Zotero runs as an extension in your Firefox 2.0 Browser. (*another reason to use Firefox as your default browser)

My favorite feature is the way it stores your references for your bibliography. No more looking back through all your sites to find that information. Zotero does it for you. Just click “create bibliography,” then choose APA, or MLA and then Zortero will save the file in a format you choose!

Oh, and Zotero has this terrific note taking feature you'll love.

This is definitely a tool you need to share with your instructor!

Building a 21st Century Workforce

Last week during Saipan’s first “Workforce Development Summit” we had the opportunity to present a guest speaker, Rosemary Cowan from the Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration via Elluminate Live from San Francisco, CA.

Cowan gave her presentation from her office in San Francisco about "Building a 21st Century Workforce" and stressed the Power of E3- Employment, Economic Development, and Education, the need to create strategic partnerships, effectively leverage resources, and a definite need to be innovative and creative in finding solutions.

It was quite apparent from her presentation that without education you will not have economic development or employment. All 3 factors are twined together like a tightly twined rope.

Innovation applies to education as well as economic development. In education that means innovation in curriculum development using new methods and tools to teach old concepts.

The term “Think Outside the Box” has changed to “Think Upside Down.” Forward thinking -not backwards, think how things can be done through new methods. Just as we brought the presenter through a new method instead of her being physically present, turn your thoughts upside down. Use new social networking tools to build community, use new communication & media tools to meet and collaborate, and use new web 2.0 technologies to complete your work.

Have your students check out, Career Voyages and the DOL/ ETA site to help steer their career path.

This summit brought together the Saipan Public School System, the Northern Marianas College and island business owners to share ideas, to have conversations, and hopefully build partnerships to improve education, the economy and employment conditions.

The task is to ‘think upside down’, its not an easy task, but necessary to prepare for a 21st Century workforce with skills for their future.

Technology in Education- TIES Conference

TIES Conference 2006- December 2-5 -Preparing Students for a Global future.

"At TIES 2006, experts will share their ideas on the flattening of the world and how this will affect education."

So if you' re in the Minneapolis area this week, this looks like a good event.

US Federal Courts

Since semester finals are around the corner here's a great resource for Criminal Justice Students and other Social Studies' class students.

Understanding the Federal Courts answers questions about the US Federal Court system.

Loaded with answers to questions about the court system structure, the jurisdiction of the courts, the judicial process, federal judge’s roles and how they are chosen, and many other areas pertaining to the US Court System. The site also includes a 'common legal terms' glossary.

All the information can be downloaded as a PDF file for students to print if they wish.

This site is part of the much larger site, US Courts.gov that holds a wealth of information. So encourage your students to bookmark this site, or even better, have them add this site to their del.icio.us site as a class resource.

This site is designed for anyone who wants to learn and understand more about the US Federal Judiciary System.

December 1st: World AIDS Day

UBC- Merging Social Networking Tools

From: Tag This! How UBC Researchers are Merging Blogs, Bookmarking, and More for Learning and Community Building

The power of building community is one benefit of social networking that is very important for educators to understand. Why do you think Second Life, MySpace and flickr are popular sites among youth today? Socializing and youth go hand-in-hand. Educators should capitalize on the power of social networking to build community. By sharing knowledge and expertise students greatly expand their capacity to learn.

David Vogt and Lee Iverson of UBC are looking at ways to combine new methods of knowledge sharing through merging blogs and social networking tools to engage students in their learning, so learning occurs naturally through student engagement.

Vogt and Iverson have designed a software application GUSSE- the Global Urban Sustainability Solutions Exchange, that allows the sharing of information to problem solve real-life issues such as global sustainability. Through this project they hope to realize a pool of collective knowledge contributed through student engagement. GUSSE "is built on social software practices that integrate a range of tools, such as searching, tagging, bookmarking, blogs, chat and content repositories.”

Vogt and Iverson are hoping this idea of merging social networking tools will turn course content upside down. . Usually in higher education the instructor develops curriculum content, but GUSSE is engineered and driven by student input instead. To me, its sort of a ‘create your own adventure type novel’ where students input information, ideas, and share knowledge and the ending- the learning- is created by their input. A ‘novel’ idea to curriculum design.

Student engagement is key to student learning. New social networking tools provide the opportunity for students to draw upon their need to be social, engaged in their learning naturally.