PDFs + Windows = Happy Teacher

As most people who know me already know, I am a Mac Girl.  To me, Macs make more sense, they work better and I think they are a better value for the money (we still have an iBook G4 at home that's working-although since it's PowerPC it doesn't get updates...point is, it still works). 

I have noticed that while most PCs hardware isn't great, their software (and especially their operating systems) are improving.  It seems that Windows has been inspired by much of Apple's OS functionality and is copying them-which is great (since I'm PC at work).

One such item is the abilty to make PDFs without downloading things.  Office 2007 finally worked this in and now it seems so has Adobe/Windows. 

Everyone that knows me knows that I also 'do' interactive notebook in my classes.  This year, I have started to post all work in the notebook by page on Blackboard, which has been fantastic for both me and my students. 

They are able to get (and stay) caught up in class and they don't have to ask me for everything anymore.  It's especially nice when my students miss class. 

One problem I had early on with posting everything on Blackboard  was that all of my kids didn't have Word 07 (some didn't have Word at all), but by posting all documents as PDFs, all students could open the files.  I now convert everything to a PDF or upload it to Googledocs. 


Recently, my Dell has made PDFing much easier:  just right-click the Word file, and without opening anything, convert documents to PDFs (the picture below will show you all the steps).  Love it.

And, you can also convert websites into PDFs, so if your students need to use an online resource to complete some work, you can easily make it a PDF for them.

Huckle*Buckle*Beanstalk

Inevitably when my sisters and I get together, we talk about this game called Hucklebucklebeanstalk.  I won't lie, most people think I'm crazy when I talk about Hucklebucklebeanstalk, but it was honestly one of my favorite games when I was young.  I remember one of the best hiding things was this strawberry eraser (yes, it smelled like strawberries).  It got me thinking today, it would be nice if I could send my kids off on a scavenger hunt of sorts at school. 

Geocaching would be a great thing to try around school.  Geocaching on its own is pretty neat.  Bascially you use a GPS device (a/k/a my iPhone) to find things...

It seems like doing this at a school would be great-except that my adminstrators would probably not like it so much. Have any of you tried Geocaching with your students?  How did you work it out?  How did you set it up?  I'm curious, because I think I would like to try it...maybe I will.

Facebook & Your Students (or you)

I've been on Facebook for awhile now (even though I was totally anti after college), and I always have my name/details hidden.  A couple of years ago, I shortened and mixed around my name a bit to make it difficult for my students to find me.  It seems that kids are now doing the same thing for similar reasons.  In this article in the NY Times from this weekend (Thank you, NYT iPhone app), it explains the prevalence of students 'hiding out' from their potential college/university until they get in. 

It makes perfect sense to me.  I mean, I don't post a whole lot of shady stuff on my Facebook (I'm not sure why anyone ever would), but I still don't like my students to have access to that type of personal information, so hiding myself makes sense.  If I'm thinking like a high school student for a minute, I'm probably posting some questionable things/being tagged in suspicious photos and I wouldn't want college admissions officers looking at it-so it makes pretty good sense to hide on FB.

Are your students worrying about this or doing it?  How are they dealing with the challenges of getting into college in a social media/connected world?  Maybe share this article with them-see what they think.

Smiles

This morning during my junior/senior elective course, we had a discussion about moral dilemmas, but after that, there was a bit of time left over.  I stumbled upon CertificateStreet.  I wanted to try it out, so I made a certificate for one of my seniors who said her skin was particularly clear this week.  I was very surprised at how many options there are, and how easy they are to use-especially for a free site!

Try it and brighten one of your students' day.

Deal$.

 Lately, I've gotten into fun deals.  Namely, ones that cam through switching my gender on Pandora.  I know it sounds silly, but I changed my gender from female to male in my Pandora settings.  Now, rather than getting birth control, cleaning and 'lady' stuff ads, I get advertisements for concerts, technology stuff and (one I really appreciated) Living Social.  The whole point of Living Social (and others like Groupon) is to make you aware of insane deals.  I'm talking crazytown deals here.  I've services that are discounted by 90%, which I don't typically see in my regular life.  It also sends you deals on things you wouldn't typically look into yourself, like this one:

I'm not going to lie, I definitely wanted to do this, but didn't end up buying it-I sort of regret it now.  But seriously, what a fun date for $25.  Sometimes they are less amazing (one was some sort of dental work, which isn't exactly my idea of fun).  But very frequently, they are deals on food, where you purchase a (sort of) gift card for $20 and it's actually worth $40-nice if you plan to go out anyway.

Groupon definitely has more cities.  I live outside DC and I have three specific areas I can choose.  Living Social does not, they have one for the DC area, with most of their deals focused on The District.  They are pretty friendly, they send you an email in the morning (a nice surprise in your inbox), and if you delete it, you don't hear about that deal again.  There are also iPhone apps for them, and Living Social will give you push notifications, which are handy when you are stopped at the stop light waiting to turn into school.

All in all, in this time of teacher layoffs, no COLA or steps, getting deals where you can get them is good.  These aren't deals at Wegman's for groceries, but who doesn't need a break from real life every once in awhile-even if you don't have a six-digit savings account to fund it.

Music

Music is huge.  I love to listen to music (I know most of my kids do, too).  I usually listen to Pandora during my planning periods, which is fab.  You can't download any of the music directly from Pandora, and I usually don't hear anything new.  My stations on Pandora (more about Pandora later) tend to play music I already own & like.  The kids often get their music from less than legal sites. 

Now that I'm (reasonably) grown up, all my music downloads come from iTunes/Apple.  When I was in school, I used Napster, Bearshare, etc-I won't lie, but there are still some places that (reasonably) responsible adults can download new music for free.  Gimmesound is one of those websites.  It has a pretty great player, so you can just listen to tunes, but you can also download them for free.  Don't expect to find too many groups that have 'made it'...you won't find Paramore or Metric on here (I checked), but it's a great way of finding new bands & music to like.  Enjoy!

Ask and you shall receive...

I stumbled on Wallwisher, and I've honestly already begun using it.  Wallwisher is essentially an online bulletin board.  Students (or anyone) can post 'notes' onto it.  I have one for my elective asking students what they want to learn this quarter and I have on for my World History II course asking students what they'd like to review for the SOL (our state test).  

Students can post anonymously and anyone can edit, move & delete the 'notes'.  They're a great way of gauging how things are going in your class, soliciting advice, mind webs, or anything else you can think up.  You can customize what your Wallwisher looks like and who can post, who can edit and if you want to moderate (or approve) all postings, that is possible too.

Write on my Wallwisher and let me know what you think, what you'd like to see... http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/techinteaching

How would you use Wallwisher?

My love affair with Snagit...

I've been in love for a bit over a year now...in love with Snagit.  Snagit is a screen capture program, but if you're thinking this is like the Prnt Scrn button on your keyboard, you're mistaken.  That would be like comparing gas station prepack cookies to macaroons from this place, like comparing McDoubles to Filet Minon (for you omnivores out there).  Snagit is like mixing screen capture with Photoshop, but just the quick & easy stuff.

What I really like about Snagit is:

1. That you can choose just a region and then set hot keys for it.  Mine is alt+T, which opens up Snagit region capture. 
2. That once you capture, it automatically opens Snagit's spiffy editor, that I like.
3. Snagit will also scroll down a website or a PDF and capture it the whole way down.  That's nice.
4. The editor is great-it makes it easy to customize images-and actually has a lot of fuctions.  Best though, is that it's easy to use, especially when you need to 'doctor up' photos of your colleagues to add to Friday PLC meeting agendas.  :)

What I'm excited about...

I recently reloaded Snagit to my computer and it showed up with some new, sweet features.  The best of these is the video capture.  I was delighted and amazed when it showed up.  After trying it, I'm a fan.  Just like all of Snagit, it's pretty easy to use.  Just select the type of 'snag' from the menu, draw the region and begin.  One sort of confusing bit is to stop recording, you press the Prnt Scrn (Print Screen) button on your keyboard (often located next to the power button on laptops). 

Once you stop the recording, it will open in the editor-you can save it from there.

I will use this, but I hope that the Snagit powers that be will enable editing for the video (drawing, stamps, etc)-that would be nice.

Snagit does offer a free trial download.  The full version is $49.95 and definitely something your school could benefit from.  Is there any interest in covering more of the features of Snag it?

If you're Mac (I am at home), Snagit is finally starting Mac Support.  Download their Beta and try it.

For more info, check out Snagit's very own product tour.

Can I say Awesome???

I saw this article on Friday in a Tweet.  I would LOVE this car.  I mean, seriously.  It would be fabulous to have a self-driving car.  Controlling your car from an iPhone app and then letting it drive itself?  As one of my students described it, 'it's like super James Bond'.  Think about it, though.  You could program your car to drive to some far off destination and then sleep in the back (or grade papers at the end of the quarter like some people I know).  No more long trips driving, you could just travel overnight and sleep in the back.

I completely love this idea-nothing about it I dislike.  I think it will be hysterical the first time some elderly pair sees a self-driving car.  HA.

Happy Monday.

Fun!

I read a lot of tweets during the day (I'm a big fan of Twitter), and in a lot of the tweets, there are contests, quizzes and games to get people to click on links to go to fine blogs (like this one).  So, I was thinking, "Hey, I can do that with my kids!". Yesterday, I had my first Twitter quiz/contest.  I took a photo of Douglas MacArthur (we just finished WWII recently), and offered a prize to the first correct tweeted reply.  

I was actually surprised with how many responses I got (they were all correct), but it tells me that the kids are reading my Twitter feed, which I had wondered about.  I think this is a great way to keep kids thinking about your content.  It only takes them a second to reply, and if you don't use Twitter, you could even do this using Blackboard blogs, Blackboard announcements/kids reply with email or anything else you can think up.  I like keeping kids connected to learning and helping them become comfortable with new technologies is a great side effect.  

I think I'll do another one today!

Pack your bags, we're going to Italy!

Well, not really, but with the increasing use of virtual field trips, this is one I had to share.  The Vatican Museum has put a Sistine Chapel virtual tour on their website.  I was very impressed with how good the quality is.  It's funny, I could see a lot more using the virtual tour than I could when I visited the Sistine Chapel in real life.  You can get very close to the fresco, which is impossible as an actual visitor to the Vatican.  

This is a great tool for your classes.  I mean, you do miss walking through the WHOLE Vatican museum before ending with the Sistine Chapel, and there are no Suisse Guards there to yell at you for taking illegal photos,  which is certainly a memorable part of the experience.  But, you can see amazing detail (click the photos below to enlarge), and you can see it with uncovered shoulders (which is a major no no at the Vatican-just ask my mom).  

All in all, I love it.

The floors were actually my favorite part of the Vatican Museum (and Rome generally)!

John Hancock

I'm having my students do a project to review for state exams in May, but some kids can opt out, they just need to complete a form and send it to me.  A part of it requires that they read a statement and sign it.  Over the last few days, a large number of students have wanted to sign it without printing the document, so I directed them to MyLiveSignature.  I'm pretty fond of sites like this that enable you to make your digital signature and then save it.  The nice thing about MyLiveSignature is that you can use a touchpad (or mouse, which works better) to create your actual real signature or use their generator, customizing fonts, size, weight, etc if you can't get the hang of the mouse.

Using the mouse:

Using the generator:

Not only has it been helpful for my students, but I've used it in the past, as well.  It works well for things like child study narratives and correspondence, so rather than completing forms, printing, signing and scanning, I can just complete it and add my signature to the file.  I always save the final version as a PDF so I can be (reasonably) sure it won't be altered (at least easily).

Opera?

I tweeted about this before, but now I've had a bit more of a chance to play around with it. 

Good:

• I like the tabbed browsing.  It's more like browsers on laptops.
• I like how crazy fast it is.  It's a lot faster than Safari has been-the packaging of data definitely makes a difference.
• I like the settings options, there is a lot of room for customization of your browsing experience.
• I like that I can organize my bookmarks in folders.  
• I like the startpage (it has tiled images of my frequently visited sites)

Not so Good:

• I hate that I can't make it my default browser.  A lot of what I do on my iPhone (in terms of web browsing) is clicking through links, which seem to always default back to Safari so that's not great.  There doesn't seem to be an option to make it default browser, but I haven't tried to delete Safari off my phone quite yet.
• I'm not a fan of the zoom.  There are really only two levels of zoom-unreadably tiny and readable.  I don't like that I can't customize my zoom. 

Obviously, there are more positives and I think I could get over/used to the whole zoom thing.  The only thing that prevents total Opera use is the fact that I can't default it so far.  

Any ideas on default?

GoogleDocs

I've talked about GoogleDocs before, mostly in reference to other things (like Twitter), but with the update of Google Docs, it seems like it deserves its own posting.

I mostly started using GoogleDocs for two reasons:  #1, Twitter and #2, Blackboard.  I like being able to post documents to Twitter (which is impossible without something like GoogleDocs, since it doesn't let you upload files).  I've been using it a lot lately, it's especially useful for tweeting completed versions of papers from classes, reviews and other materials.  With many of my students having iTouches, they can access those files from anywhere (including school), which has been handy, because they can check their answers/complete things at school from their own device without me providing them with laptops.

Blackboad is another part of why I use Googledocs so much.  I always found it odd that you can't upload files to announcements on Blackboard.  It was frustrating to me for a long time, so I started using Googledocs as a workaround.  There are times when I need my students to just get to a file, without looking around for it-Blackboard didn't let me do it, but Googledocs does, which is great.

Googledocs just underwent an update, and it's lovely-it's starting to resemble MS Word Suite more than I ever thought it would.  There are a number of changes, but I think the best one so far is the drawing aspect.  It resembles the image creator/editor in MS Word.  But, since it's Googledocs, it's completely collaborative, so students could create mindmaps, webs and other organizers and share them amongst themselves.  Using with groupwork seems like a natural application or if you taught an online class.  The tools are easy to use (you'll completely recongize them from Word)- I created the one at the top of this post in about one minute.  

Here's a video that outlines the changes to Googledocs:

Reader Request: Word Cloud Duel

Did I ever think I'd write about a word cloud duel?  no.  Am I excited about it?  Admittedly, yes. (Click on the image to see it larger)

A reader requested that I look a Tagxedo in comparison to Tagul (which I reviewed last week).  I will say that when I first went to the Tagxedo site (and downloaded a Silverlight update), I was prepared to anoint it the champion.  On first glance, Tagxedo is lovely.  

Good Things about Tagxedo:

• The interface is fantastic-it's extremely easy to use.  
• Want custom?  Tagxedo is for you.  You can customize almost everything.  I especially like that your word cloud can be in a shape you upload.  My cloud (below) is in the shape of my avatar.  That's pretty awesome.
• I like that they have many preset themes to choose from-sometimes I just don't want to put my own color scheme together.
• Generally, Tagxedo is fantastic if you want to make a word cloud for you, or for your classroom wall-I could see it as a great option for a Word Wall.  I mean it clearly beats down Wordle.  

However,  the winner of this match goes to Tagul.  I like Tagxedo's interface better and I also like that you don't have to log in.  But, Tagxedo is in Beta testing (which I don't mind), but certain features are being spirited to a "Pro Account" in the future, which stinks. Also, there isn't an option to copy the HTML code to embed it into fine websites like this blog.  But more importantly, I especially like Tagul because the words in the cloud are links.  It's interactive, it can take your students somewhere.  I think that is the really innovative part of Tagul.  Not only is it interesting/pretty/exciting to look at, but if I have laissez-faire as a word on my review cloud and some of my students haven't a clue about what it is, they can click it and find out.  It's pretty learning, which I'm all for.

So, thanks for inspiring this post, Anonymous 4.11.2010, 2.03 PM-I hope this review helps you.

iTether? iWish!

So, my inner geek is on high alert today.  Apple is releasing the iPhone 4.0 software today and I'm all sorts of excited.  From different apple rumor sites, it seems like multitasking is going to be included in this one.  I'm glad to have multitasking, especially at night.  I fall asleep to one of my favorite apps, Koi Pond, but if it's running and I want to send a text, I have to reset Koi Pond (the timer, etc) when I finish with the text.  It doesn't seem like a huge thing, but it is unnecessarily klunky.  Why Apple didn't have that in the first place, I don't know.  

But, that isn't what I'm most looking forward to.  I really (REALLY!) hope they finally enable tethering.  Tethering would allow me to use my phone as a modem and connect it to a computer, thus letting me use the AT&T network in the car, for instance.  I would be so happy if that were part of it.  Among my other iPhone geek pals, there is a great deal of skepticism, so I wouldn't bet on its arrival today, but I can hope.  

Don't let me down, Apple.  I'll be awaiting news from Cupertino all morning!

Tunes

In my school division, copyright is a huge issue.  Central office seems to be very concerned (and rightly so, I suppose) about being sued for copyright violations committed by content groups as well as individual teachers.  Clearly some teachers are more concerned about being in compliance with copyright laws.  Most teachers I know have copied things illegally, and I understand why they do it.  Happily, more and more copyright free (or at least material that is usable for educational purposes) have popped up online.  I'll be trying to include as many of these as I can.

I found Royalty Free Music, which is handy, because not only does it have music that you are free to use, but it has music all in one place.  One of the major limitations I've experienced (as a History teacher) is that it can be time consuming and difficult to find usable music online without downloading potentially malicious software (like Limewire).  I've found that if YouTube doesn't have it, it's usually impossible to find.  Royalty Free Music does have limitations-there aren't that many files on it currently.  Hopefully, as more people use it, it will stay free and they will add more music to their catalog.  Try it out!  Some of their offerings are in the image below.  

What copyright-free sites do you use?

A Walk in the Clouds

I've been using word cloud-generators for a bit, like Wordle.  To make a word cloud, you copy and paste your text into a generator and it makes a shape (specific or free form) out of your words.  The more times the word appears, the larger it is.  So in that last sentence, the word the would be the largest because it appears the most (you can usually exclude words like the). 

I've recently come across a sweet new generator called Tagul.  It's pretty sweet because with Tagul, your clouds are clickable.  So, if you click on the words below, they take you to google searches (Click on the green techinteaching-on the upper right & it will take you to the google results for this site and the Twitter feed!).  But, you can change it so that it will take you somewhere else-just add the web address.  The style is totally customizable (shapes, fonts, colors, backgrounds, mouseovers, etc), and you can make your cloud from copy/pasted text as well as from a website.  I can see a lot of use in this.  Using it as a review would be great.  I plan to create one from all of the vocabulary words my students have learned this year and then post it to Blackboard.  If they don't know the words, they can click them for a definition.

Networked Copier Scanning

This post is a request from a colleague.  We have Ricoh copiers in our building (toner is included in the contract), which is actually pretty great.  I love having our copiers on our network.  Not only does it let you copy things old school style (which I rarely do), but you can print from your classroom as well as scan and retrieve the scanned document from your laptop.  These are the steps to scanning using the Ricoh: