Web standards checklist

A fairly extensive guide to standards in a question/checklist format.

"The term web standards can mean different things to different people. For some, it is 'table-free sites', for others it is 'using valid code'. However, web standards are much broader than that. A site built to web standards should adhere to standards (HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSLT, DOM, MathML, SVG etc) and pursue best practices (valid code, accessible code, semantically correct code, user-friendly URLs etc). In other words, a site built to web standards should ideally be lean, clean, CSS-based, accessible, usable and search engine friendly. This is not an uber-checklist. It is simply a guide that can be used..."

A Roadmap to Standards (for website design)

"This is a comprehensive, informal, and somewhat long-winded roadmap for anyone who has heard about web standards, thinks they might want web standards, but doesn’t know where to start."

Developing With Web Standards

"This document explains how and why using web standards will let you build websites in a way that saves time and money for the developer and provides a better experience for the visitor. Also discussed are other methods, guidelines and best practices that will help produce high-quality websites that are accessible to as many as possible."

5 ways to optimize your design

These are tips for website designers in general, but can also be helpful if you're designing course pages.

Women Edubloggers

Janet Clarey highlights Women Edubloggers. Her own blog is interesting and has many categories, many of which address topics in education. I like her friendly, chatty approach, while still getting her messages across. Check out her Best Practices category while you're at her blog site.

Random Walk in Learning: Boundary Characteristics of Game, Simulation, Drama & Role play Learning - Early draft

"Game as a structured or semi-structured activity is becoming more and more attractive to educators as a learning environment. ... Many teachers/facilitators have recognised the existence of an "environment" while using these techniques. Frequently, and correctly, teachers and facilitators put great emphasis on the rituals in entering and existing ... "game environment". ... This paper provides a theoretical analysis of the environment based on the anecdotal evidences gathered by the authors."

JobProfiles.org

Jobprofiles.org: "We have build a collection of profiles and job descriptions about various different types of careers so you will better understand your area of study before you enter the workplace." This is an EXCELLENT site because of the variety of its offerings. Beyond those Job Profiles, their site sections include:

• Job profiles (as the site's name indicates):


• Guidance for Choosing a Career: A list of some excellent career-specific articles


• Information for students: "Helpful and humorous guides for college students of all ages."


• How to write a killer resume - 50 resources: Just ONE of the great resources in their Library section


• Online Schools: with full descriptions of where they are located, what they offer, etc.


• Online Degrees: An extensive list of degrees with descriptions that tell you what you'd study and what the degree is useful for


• Online Programs: The same kind of information as above for Degrees, this section describes many Programs listed by topic/subject.

Instructional Design & how to create QUALITY courses

• The title above is a link to a discussion on this topic at the Ask Dr.C Forums (acknowledgement: some of the following links are from that discussion
  
• Document Preparation for Online Courses: (a little course -- free to use)
  
• Ten Advanced Instructional Design Tips
  
• Instructional Design Tips for online instruction
  
• Instructional Design Tips
  
• Instructional Design for Online Learning
  

ASL American Sign Language

A very full site that includes free lessons, mini-movies to illustrate the finger alphabet, and much more!

Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary

The words dance around graphically in grouped, dynamic, ever-changing visuals of connected words and ideas. I can't describe it well, so check it out.

"Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate. It's a dictionary! It's a thesaurus! Great for writers, journalists, students, teachers, and artists."

Hacking Knowledge

77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better: "77 tips related to knowledge and learning to help you on your quest. A few are specifically for students in traditional learning institutions; the rest for self-starters, or those learning on their own. Happy learning." I was going to say "for your students", but these tips are good for all of us involved in lifelong learning.

Bibliomania

Read, study, research, shop. Free online literature (fiction, drama, poetry, short stories) with more than 2000 classic texts. Study guides, literature book notes, reference books, book summaries, author biographies. Here are just a few of my favorite links from the site:

• Quotations: click for Grocott's Alpha list or Grocott's Thematic list.
• Roget's Thesaurus
• Soule's Synonyms
• Oscar Wilde biography/links
• Actually, their whole Reference section

Study Guides and Strategies

"The Study Guides and Strategies web site is authored, maintained and supported by Joe Landsberger as an independent educational public service. Collaborative projects are developed across institutional, cultural and national boundaries. I resist advertising, registration, and distracting graphics or features that may interfere with maximizing learner access."

Printable Worksheets

Teachers will appreciate this huge list of items to explore -- it's worth a click to see what's there.

edu 2.0: welcome to the future of education

edu 2.0: welcome to the future of education: "...free, web-hosted learning management system." Also has "a library of educational resources contributed by our community" and a community network for educators/students.

Video Toolbox: 150+ Online Video Tools and Resources

Stephen Downes describes this site:

"This is a huge list of online video resources, including tools that support live video communications, online video how-tos, online video editors, video converters, video sharing sites, video hosting sites, video management, vidcat and vlogging tools, video mashup tools, mobile video, video search, video downloading services, and online television. Phew!"

Open Second Life

A project from a group of programmers not associated with Linden Labs. Hosted at OpenMetaverse.org, a site that hosts projects related to Open Source Metaverse development. About Open Second Life, John Goldsmith says, in a posting to BCEdOnline, they

"...are attempting to "reverse engineer" the Second Life server code, making it possible for anyone to set up and operate their own Second Life Virtual World. Open Second Life will use existing Second Life clients (which are a free download from the original Linden Labs/Second Life web site). While this project is still in the formative stages, it does provide hope to DE schools, teachers and others who want to utilize the educational research being generated by Post Secondary educators who use Second Life, to create more engaging learning experiences for their K-12 students but, in a more controlled setting."

Canada must “unlock potential” in adult learning

"'There are clear and well-substantiated links between lifelong learning, productivity and innovation. If Canada truly wants to unlock its potential, we must help workers engage in lifelong learning,' said Paul Cappon, the president and CEO of the Canadian Council of Learning."

Presentation: Digital Game-Based Learning

"In this podcast of the presentation "Generation G and the 21st Century," Richard Van Eck, associate professor of instructional design and technology at the University of North Dakota, discusses the theory behind the effectiveness of games in teaching and learning; what the past can teach us about if, how, and when to implement digital game-based learning; and what this will mean for colleges and universities."

The Ten Most Common Photographic Mistakes

From Andre Gunther Photography, "Here is a quick rundown of the most common mistakes people (like me) make that mess up a good photo or prevent us from taking a good photo...to kick off [the author's] series on photography techniques." These are good tips and I'll be keeping an eye out for the rest of the series.

Factors Motivating and Inhibiting Faculty in Offering Their Courses via

From the same journal/edition as I posted in the entry below, this paper reports on a study the purpose of which

"...was to discover what factors may motivate faculty members at small, private colleges to adopt distance education, as well as what factors may inhibit that adoption."

Visions Shaping the Future of Online Education:Understanding its Historical Evolution, Implications, and Assumptions

(Click the title to link to the paper.) The purpose of this paper from the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration is to

"...present a historical background of online education, review its current status, and provide visions shaping its future in an attempt to understand its potential and limitations that will lead to the advancement of the scholarship of teaching and learning. Online instructors must understand the way online education has evolved over the years from previous conceptions of education and the wide array of implications and assumptions involved in the delivery of online education. Recommendations for the advancement of online education, including future research, are given."

Freebies Round-Up: Icons, Buttons and Templates

Some VERY AWESOME items here! I'm amazed they're free, they're so good. Check it out.

UBC Style Guides

Getting Started with APA Style: A site from the library at UBC, Vancouver, BC, Canada. The opening page has a really useful chart of sample formats for Reference list (which seems for most people to be the most difficult aspect of following 'style' formatting.

Similar assistance for MLA can be found in their Getting Started with MLA Style page

Teaching Digital Photography?

Visit DP Rounds ~ Digital Photography In The School. First visit their site of free Instructions. Good information, tips, and tutorial-like pages can be found under the headings of Photo Techniques, Photo Editing, and Photo Equipment. If you're teaching digital photography, they have a teacher's site as well. They offer "e-Rounds": student-ready handouts, integrated with web resources such as "how to" step-by-step instructions, downloadable exercises, showcase of high quality photo examples as well as student "best examples". Teacher-ready resources include teacher's notes, PPT presentations, a student CD, and on-line quizzes. Note: The school packages have a price tag, but reasonable. They also have an annual-fee-based access to their resource sites.

WebAIM: Captioning for Windows Media - Getting Windows Media Captions on the Web

A very helpful page from WebAIM (Web Accessibility In Mind) provides several methods to include captioning, illustrated with code. Discusses how to include a SAMI file, whether to embed or not -- Win Media Player 9+ do not "support embedded captions when the browser uses the embed tag to display Window Media content"; includes ideas for how to get around this issue.

Wikis in Plain English

Thanks to Common Craft I can show you the video here. The title of this post links to Lee Lefever's site (the video creator) where he displays the video.

We made this video because wiki web sites are easy to use, but hard to describe. We hope to turn you on to a better way to plan a camping trip, or create the next Wikipedia

Tips On Developing A Wiki Community

(If your monitor isn't wide enough for this blog page it looks like there's nothing in the middle column. Scroll down; I found the article halfway down the page.) There's no "about" or "intro"; the author jumps right in with the first in his list of tips. Definitely worth reading even if you're not creating a wiki but just using one regularly. Several comments about one of the tips; apparently in the case of wikis size does count. :)

Society for Teaching & Learning in Higher Education

STLHE "...is a national association of academics interested in the improvement of teaching and learning in higher education. Its members comprise faculty and teaching and learning resource professionals from institutions of post-secondary educaiton across Canada and beyond."

Podcast directory for educators, schools and colleges

"...the first and best UK directory to locate quality podcasts from over 390 carefully selected podcast channels for educational use - ideal for teaching and learning activities with children, young people and educational professionals. In our podcast directory, you can access educational content from over 4000 podcasts from different podcast channels."

Making iPod content interactive for education

Mobile Musings, a blog at K12Handhelds.com: This post offers links to programs that offer "...various ways to incorporate more interactivity into iPod content."

Custom Curriculum - K12 Handhelds.com

K12 Handhelds.com's page of FREE materials that you can download. Check out their free poetry unit.

Carol's Corner Office - MS Office tips and tricks

Lots of tips and tricks for MS Office here. Also check out her Free Word Bytes Newsletter. I hear from very-inside sources that Carol is going to start offering Open Office information along with MS Office very soon.

Free Computer Utility Software

Dave, the site owner, writes, "All of the software listed is spyware and adware free at the time it is listed."

IconArt -- FREE utility for creating icons

"IconArt is a highly-compact cursor & icon creator. Icons are used to illustrate programs and files. One example are the shortcuts on your desktop. IconArt allows you to either draw the whole image from scratch using all common tools or to import an image to turn into a icon or cursor."

Dave's Computer Tips

"This site contains tips, tweaks, and general advice related to computer hardware, computer software, computer peripherals, and other technology devices." Dave also offers a free biweekly newsletter that:

"...contains important computer news, computer security tips, software reviews, computer hardware, and software tips articles, as well as discussion about programs I find useful. ...Whether you are a geek, a computer owner, a computer user, or someone who thinks Windows are only for looking out of you will find something useful in my newsletter!"

SLurl: Location-Based Linking in Second Life

What is SLurl?
SLurl provides direct teleport links to locations in Second Life. If you have Second Life installed, clicking on the map link will automatically teleport you to that location in-world.

Why use SLurl?
In addition to allowing customized control over mapping locations in Second Life, SLurl also provides a better experience for web users who don't have Second Life. Instead of getting an error when clicking on web links that begin with "secondlife://", visiting a SLurl link gives potential new users a chance to sign up.

Also, check out this SLurl Builder, a handy online tool to help you build your direct links to SL locations.

Reuters reports from Second Life

Reuters of London have assigned a bureau chief, Adam Pasick, to a full time job reporting from inside Second Life! (He says it's difficult to explain his full time job to his mother/grandmother :) This site, complete with RSS feed, is filled with news, blog, videos, audio & video interviews with a range of Second Life subjects, Second Life Business News and Economy reporting, including a dollar value & daily spending charts, a Dollar/Linden currency converter, and lots more, all directly from Second Life. Of course, there's also a Reuters office tower in Second Life.

See this video report from CBC [note: you may be asked to install DivX to view it, but that's all Good!]. Complete with action videos taken inside Second Life, it's an excellent overview of what Second Life is growing to mean and do in our world. As a non-Second Lifer (I bet they have a word for us 'outside world' people?), I thought this video was one of the most informative I've seen so far. I've been told it costs money to "film" scenes from inside Second Life, so I guess this video is like an exclusive treat, courtey of CBC News and Reuters.

Games & Learning

UK's FutureLab's handbook "reports on some of the latest developments in the design of bespoke educational games. Such games are designed to be as rich and dynamic as their mainstream 'cousins', but are intended for particular formal educational outcomes. It also asks whether and how schooling should be adapted to accommodate the use of games."

Top Ten Missing Features of Second Life as an Educational Simulation Platform

Clark Aldrich's says,

"Second Life truly is a phenomenon. It is exactly what the name and vision imply: an example of a parallel 'multiverse'. People will learn much in it, as they might alternatively learn via participating on a real-world sports team, running a real-world lemonade stand, or walking around a great real-world city....Perhaps most importantly, participants learn 'to be' through expressing themselves, including building elaborate sets, and exploring alternative groups with which to interact. Meanwhile, corporations will set up shop in Second Life, as in FaceBook and MySpace, to be where the kids are in an attempt to speak their language and get some eyeballs. But when people talk about it as a platform for Educational Simulations, I am less excited. In fact, here are my list of top ten missing features from Second Life..."

Macleans.ca - NEW Education Site

A CNW Group (Canadian Newswire) article calls this new section at Macleans.ca "Canada's most comprehensive online destination site for current and potential post-secondary students has finally arrived. Announcing the launch of macleans.ca/university, the first website in Canada to offer continuously updated higher education news... up-to-the-minute analysis, interactivity and points-of-view ... It's an essential resource for students and recent graduates looking to make educational decisions." Extensive education/university content, including a personalized version of the famous Maclean's University Ranking Tool: Use Maclean's data to create your own ranking of Canadian schools.

Free Language and Translation Tools

"Lingo24 seeks to be the leading language and translation site on the Internet. Below you can find our early offerings – please do bookmark this page and come back soon, as we have more irons in the fire!" I recommend you check out their "Parasaurus Englix – English language paraphrasing tool". It's kind of like having a thesaurus for full phrases rather than just words. I used it on a few English phrases and idioms and got some interesting results.

WebCT Tips by Dick Evans

"I have been using WebCT since the 1990's at Rhode Island College. We are currently on release 4.1, but are testing release 6. As questions arise and I find a solution, I write a White Paper for faculty reference. This blog describes some of those papers and links to them on my college Web site."

Scratch - FREE application / programming language

Developed at the MIT media lab,

"...a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web. Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design. Scratch is available free of charge from the Download page. To find more about the educational ideas underlying Scratch, visit our Educators page."

Free e-Learning Tools

from UBC Arts ISIT: "The e-learning tools listed here are publicly available for academic use, within and outside the University of British Columbia."

The tools include a WebCT Discussion Extractor, Timeline tool, Multimedia learning object authoring tool, Image annotation tool, and more.

PowerPoint to Flash Conversion Tools

Robin Good's "PPT2Flash Top20". Robin asks, "Why Would You Ever Want to Convert a Powerpoint Presentation into a Flash File?" and gives us a "detailed list of the key advantages for converting a PowerPoint presentation into a Flash file. No matter what your final goal is, a Flash-based presentation goes a long way in making your content easily accessible and distributable."

Computer Science Directory

"This directory is developed as a project to list computer science links and articles with high quality. Here you'll only find the best of the best.This directory is developed as a project to list computer science links and articles with high quality. Here you'll only find the best of the best."

Blog Law » 12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know

"...increasingly Internet activity, and particular blogging, is being shaped and governed by state and federal laws. For US bloggers in particular, blogging has become a veritable land mine of potential legal issues, and the situation isn’t helped by the fact that the law in this area is constantly in flux. In this article we highlight twelve of the most important US laws when it comes to blogging and provide some simple and straightforward tips for safely navigating them."

Moodle Buzz

A collection of links to "Moodle news and publications from around the world."

Zamzar - FREE FILE CONVERSION

Convert Document, Image, Music and Video Formats (even YouTube videos!). Exact conversion types listed here.

Blackboard Educate / Innovate

"Educate Innovate is the Blackboard blog about the convergence of education and technology. We aim to use this as a forum to generate discussion about the topics, news, and latest trends impacting e-Learning and campus service offerings; and hope to provide insight about how technology can enable educational innovations for both."

Check out Rob Shea's May 8/07 posting about Ask Dr. C.
[look for moi ;)]

Chemistry Resources

Doc Brown's online Chemistry Clinic

Just Free Stuff! Freebies For Teachers

Check out the extensive collection of free resources in their teacher section.

Wiki Pedagogy

"This article endeavours to denote and promote pedagogical experimentations concerning a Free/Open technology called a 'Wiki'."

Second Life Keyboard Shortcuts

I'm linking you to an EduForge blog post that links you to a file of shortcuts and also provides credit for the file.

Games-based Learning; a serious business application

"This white paper has been written to serve as an introduction to what is rapidly becoming a very hot topic in training and education: gamesbased learning (GBL), also known as ‘Serious Games’."

Check out the extensive resource lists within this paper/report.

Math Videos on YouTube

> Etraffic Solutions, Victoria, BC, Canada has developed some good animations for different math concepts and made them available via YouTube: Etraffic's 9 videos

> Etraffic's site for "Pilot Math"

> Several pages of other YouTube algebra videos (linking you to the search results -- try your own searches)

RSS in Plain English

RSS in Plain English: Thanks to Lee and Sachi Lefever, who shared the code to display the following video. "We made this video for our friends (and yours) that haven't yet felt the power of our friend the RSS reader. We want to convert people... if you know someone who would love RSS and hasn't yet tried it, point them here for 3.5 minutes of RSS in Plain English."

Click To Play

There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.

Powerpoint Learning Objects

World of Teaching: Free Powerpoint presentation Learning Objects in biology, chemistry, math, English, history, physics, geography, Spanish.

Learning Objects - a huge collection

Learning Objects from the WISCONLINE.ORG Consortium: My partner found this, calls it "the motherlode of L.O. sites". It's VERY full of a great variety of lesson snippets and learning activities. Note: "We encourage all faculty to visit and register at the Wisconsin Online Resource Center and comply with the full terms and conditions when using any of the resources provided by the Wisconsin Online Resource Center."

Serious Games - Resource Links

In conjunction with SCoPE's current seminar series, Serious Games & Virtual Worlds, members are developing this page of Resource Links. I assume the page will still be there after the seminars are over, so check it out. While you're at it (and if it's still there), here's their Mind Map on this topic. [Click the title of this post to go directly to the Resources page.]

Vedic Mathematics

What you find when you're browsing! I'm no math person, but I love the 'puzzle' nature of math -- when I can figure things out it's rewarding, and the actual figuring is puzzle-like. So This Vedic Math stuff is fascinating. Here's an example that drew me in -- the 11 times table:

11 X 17 (this will work for any two-digit numbers multiplied by 11)
Add the 1 and the 7 together, giving 8
Put this 8 in between the 1 and 7
Giving the answer to the sum 11 X 17 as 187!

11 X 253
Layout the sum like so:
2 / 2 + 5 / 5+ 3 / 3
2,7,8,3
Giving the answer 2783

My favorite online school, LVS Online, is teaching a class about this:
http://www.lvsassociates.com/register/product_info.php?products_id=195

Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines

"How do good game designers manage to get new players to learn long, complex, and difficult games? The answer, I believe, is this: the designers of many good games have hit on profoundly good methods of getting people to learn and to enjoy learning. They have had to, since games that were bad at get themselves learned didn’t get played and the companies that made them lost money. Furthermore, it turns out that these learning methods are similar in many respects to cutting-edge principles being discovered in research on human learning."

Student Self Directed Learning

A new blog from an Australian educator, Phil Brown, a teacher in a secondary college. There's always something good coming from Australian educators, seems to me. This blog is focused on the above topic, and Mr. Brown has begun by selecting some interesting articles already, such as: Exemplary Online Educators; What Makes A Good Learner? "This blog is about my developments in understanding student learning." What a great approach by an educator!

Technology in Schools: What Does The Research Say?

A new report from Cisco Systems and Metiri Group is intended to assist educators to make informed technology investments.

"Overall, across all uses in all content areas, technology does provide a small, but significant, increase in learning when implemented with fidelity. While this statistic is encouraging, the real value to research lies in the identification of those technology interventions that get sufficiently positive results to warrant the investment. Most educators are looking for the value proposition that will significantly advance learning, teaching, and school system efficiencies. Taking advantage of these leverage points requires serious review of specific research studies that specifically address the needs and challenges of specific schools and serious attention paid to leadership development, professional development for teachers, school culture, curricular redesign, and teacher preparation.

"The reader should be cautioned that, although single studies with positive results are encouraging, such results could not be generalizedbeyond specific student populations and contexts within the studies. Educators are encouraged to pilot such solutions and research the effect locally prior to full-scale implementation."

Karen’s Mashups - K12 podcast compilation

This podcast features mashups (compilations) of short excerpts from podcasts and other digital content of potential interest to the educational community. It is intended to give you a taste of a various podcasts that you might want to explore further. Most shows will have a theme, such as math, science, student productions, professional development, museum productions, or technology news. Some shows will be focused on podcasts for administrators and teachers, while other shows will highlight podcasts for students or parents. The show is produced and hosted by Karen Fasimpaur of K12 Handhelds. On this web site, we will include links to the web sites for each of the shows included in the episode, along with brief notes on the nature of the content included.

Windows Vista - what works and what doesn't

Keep a watch on this page. Ohio University maintains this page about issues resulting from using MS Vista. They're testing all applications used on campus to determine compatibility. The page links to Microsoft's list of applications that have earned the "Certified for Windows Vista" logo or the "Works with Windows Vista" logo. Ohio U. also lists a compatibility list for software. One surprise to me is that iTunes doesn't yet work well with Vista, another that Acrobat Reader 8, PhotoShop 8, and a few others only work "with modifications". Good page to bookmark if you don't have time to keep up your own research about whether or not to move to MS Vista. 04/03/07

History Education - Trends and Issues 2007

If you teach history, this page from wwwTools For Education will no doubt be a useful source of resources. Click the heading of this post to go directly to the history resource page.

FlashMeeting - Webconferencing Software

"FlashMeeting is an application based on the Adobe Flash 'plug in' and Flash Media Server. Running in a standard web browser window, it allows a dispersed group of people to meet from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. ...During the meeting one person speaks (i.e. broadcasts) at a time. Other people can simultaneously contribute using text chat, the whiteboard, or emoticons etc. while waiting for their turn to speak. ...A replay of the meeting is instantly available, to those with the 'unique' replay url."

Read this review by somebody who's used FlashMeeting for a year now.

Creating ePortfolios with Web 2.0 Tools

Creating ePortfolios with Web 2.0 Tools: More excellent help from Helen Barrett. This page links to Tools, Sample Portfolios, and Help/Instructions. Excellent!

Visual Calculator™

"A Simple, Clean Calculator for Homework & Everyday Math. It features an interactive calculation history which may be used to build large expressions in small chunks." Even though it looks extremely simplistic when you first arrive, if you take a quick look at the Help screen you'll see how the calculator allows advanced users to type in their expressions. It is able to do exponents, square roots, trig functions, etc.

Second Life VOICE to launch by June

"Linden Lab said on Tuesday it will launch integrated voice capabilities within the next several months, including effects to prevent a cacophony of overlapping voices. ...Introducing voice could expose the broadening language gap in Second Life, where more than half of users now speak a first language other than English. Also, some in Second Life have argued that integrating voice could break the “magic circle” that makes the world so convincing, by pairing real voices with virtual avatars."

Also check out Second Talk, which is in beta right now.... something to use in the meantime until the above completely integrated voice talk is ready to use in June. Second Talk is a "free, easy-to-use voice chat to Second Life." Kind of funny -- your avatar goes to a kiosk and gets a headset to wear.

101 Fun and Relevant Ways to Use Spreadsheets in K - 12 Classrooms

Dr. Alice Christie's Using Spreadsheets in the Classroom Page. All fun activities to get students involved in using the spreadsheet tools.

The Phrase Finder

The meanings of idioms phrases, sayings. As well as an alphabetized index (on a second level page) and a search engine, they're categorized under headings like Shakespeare's sayings, biblical, nautical, proverbs, euphemisms, the body, nonsense/fallacies, etc. There's also a discussion forum, a Phrases Thesaurus (kewl idea!), phrase quizzes, most-popular phrase links, 'a phrase a week'. If you're into words and phrases, this is a fun site!

Alcwin.org - resource site

"Whether it is chemistry, geology, mathematics or a whole range of topics, our resources offer practical advice and information for every day life. Build your own volcano; learn about earthquake or source a new Recipe's in our extensive library. Find out about OWW (World Occupational Wages) or visit our American aircraft section (United states / U.S.). Wherever your thirst for knowledge takes you today - find the answer at Alcwin.org."

How to Write Articles and Essays Quickly and Expertly

From Stephen Downes. A link for your students?

How do I embed sound and music in a page?

Headings include: File format choices; Linking directly to audio files; Embedding audio files to play in the background; Embedding music with Flash and XSPF Music Player; Fine tuning: repeat play, autoplay, shuffle play, images, and autoresume; Alternate methods. Each section gives specific instructions and code!

RegEx for Math

You may be one of the many people who use RegEx as a way to create the variations for answers in math questions in their online courses. I've heard it's simple to learn and use, but I don't do math so I don't use RegEx. However, my Resources website does have a page of reference and resource sites on the topic.

Here's one of them: RegEx Side. Says the site's author: "Regular Expressions are a necessary evil. So necessary they are, that they could be considered good." See his recent posting, Regex Cheat Sheet.

YouTube For Educators

Says Dean Shareski in his blog, Ideas & Thoughts From an EdTech, "I’ve started a group called K12 in Youtube. I wondered if those posting videos might want to add them to this category. I know many students and teachers are creating good stuff but it’s hard to find it. sPerhaps this will help. Spread the word around so we begin to collect a repository of educational content."

WAVE Accessibility Validator

Test your website for accessibility issues. You can enter any URL, and WAVE will give you feedback to help with accessibility. The tool is not perfect but a great starting point and guide.

How to search Google Educational Videos

"...an amazing trick for finding educational videos on google Video."

Infinite Thinking Machine

"...a Google sponsored blog designed to help teachers and students thrive in the 21st century. Through an active blog, an Internet TV show, and other media resources, the ITM shares a "bazillion practical ideas" for turning the infinite universe of information into knowledge."

Setting up a vodpod - for video

A blog posting at EduBlog provides a simple tutorial. "Vodpod is a great way to show videos directly in your blog. No downloading needed for the viewer."

Edublogs tutorials

"This blog is designed to get you started in blogging with simple tips and hints on how to improve what you are doing."

Learning in Immersive Worlds: a review of game based learning

I like Stephen Downes' comment in his review of this report: "Rather than using games in learning, I still think educators should be looking at how to use learning in games."

"[The report], authored by Sara de Freitas, scopes out the current use of games for learning in UK HE and post-16 education and has been produced to inform practitioners who are considering using games and simulations in their practice.
The report includes:
. a review of the literature
. a series of case studies from practice to illustrate the range of uses of games
. synthesises the key issues and themes arising from learning in immersive worlds."

Scholar - academic social bookmarking

"Blackboard Scholar® is a social bookmarking service customized for education. It provides an exciting new way for students and instructors to find educationally valuable resources on the Web. Using the knowledge and power of our network of educational users, Scholar makes it easier for instructors and students to find relevant resources on the Internet for courses and research. Furthermore, by storing and sharing associated information with each resource such as tags, disciplines, other users who have tagged and more, Scholar allows users to evaluate the resources and find the most relevant and reliable. And it is directly integrated within the Blackboard Learning System(TM) - Enterprise, Vista, and CE Licenses, providing easy access right within the course environment."

OER Commons - Open Educational Resources

Welcome to a worldwide learning network — OER Commons: "Resources, or OER, offer new ways to engage with free-to-use learning content." "...open network of shared resources and practices, from K through college, from algebra to zoology -- it's all free to use."

Peterson's - a very helpful website for students

Search "Online Learning Programs" by filters of Course of Study and Level. "Even if you don't have a clue where you want to go, there's no reason to worry. We'll guide you through every step of the college-planning process, from discovering the right school to finding scholarships."

Many other tools available on the site -- search for colleges by discipline; get advice about choosing a college or about campus life; lots of help for new college students; help with preparing for tests --filtered by specific existing test types; excellent last minute study tips for various types of tests; and MUCH MORE!

Distance Learning Moves Into 'Second Life' Virtual Classroom

Another higher education institution has moved into Second Life -- University of Florida in Gainesville.

"Paul Fishwick, a computer science and engineering professor, is teaching one of at least two classes offered at UF this semester largely in cyberspace — specifically, the trendy three-dimensional online world called Second Life. There, Fishwick’s 'avatar', the character that represents each player in Second Life, leads discussions among some 30 other avatars controlled by upper-level UF undergraduate and graduate students in CAP 4403/CAP 6402, Aesthetic Computing.

With distance learning decades old, classes on computer are nothing new. But Second Life, which has more than 2 million users worldwide, opens a wealth of fresh possibilities, one educators nationwide are increasingly experimenting with."

Curriki ~ Global Education & Learning Community

Curriki stands for (I'm guessing) curriculum wiki. They're new, so resources are limited right now, but please join and contribute!

"The Curriki Community is comprised of thousands of people like you who want to create and use high-quality educational resources. ...Our mission is to improve education around the world by empowering teachers, students and parents with user-created, open source curricula, and it's all free!"

Embedded Media HTML Generator

"The Embedded Media HTML Generator has been developed to ease the burden of inserting video and animations into web pages." The page will generate code for embedding Flash, Quicktime, RealMedia, Windows Media.

Accessibility Information & Resources

Accessibility Information & Resources: from Saskatoon Catholic Cyberschool, a commented list of resource sites.

Instructional Scenarios Wiki for WebCT Vista

Topics included are Content, Communication, Course Management, Evaluation. Lots of good tips 'n' tricks here!

"This site is designed and maintained by the Teaching Technology Services group of Instructional Multimedia Services of McGill University. This wiki describes how to use WebCT Vista to do complex instructional tasks using multiple tools. We (the Teaching Technology Services staff) built this wiki to explore the potential of the technology and to experiment with collaborative group work. These instructional scenarios are meant as a complement to the WebCT Vista manuals and do not duplicate any information from them. "

Video Blogging Resources

Video blogging made easy: From Telus, a step-by-step how-to for those who are new to videoblogging. The article includes links to other help/tutorial sites, so I'll include those here too:

• The Video Blog Handbook - a community project for documenting tips and tricks


• Node 101 - an educational resource aimed at teaching people how to video blog


• Freevlog - a multi-lingual how-to on video blogging


• How to video blog with Blogger - A tutorial on video blogging with Blogger and QuickTime

DropShots: A Free sonline video host -- "family friendly photo & video sharing service". s"We support MPG, AVI, MOV, WMV, and 3GP from all major digital cameras. You just drag and drop the video to our application and we resize, transcode, upload, and host your video. We use the Flash plug-in to stream the video, which is already installed in over 98% of browsers and has a 1-click install process. This makes video easy to post and easy to view."

Zippy Videos: "Your media sharing community." Free host for an unlimited number of videos up to 100mb each. You can create your own URL on the site for sharing videos.

Think.com - An Online Community for Learning

A password-protected learning community, Think.com "turns students into multimedia authors for a global community and allows peers to think and learn together. ...Experience a new level of collaboration with Think.com Projects. Identify a topic of interest, assign your students, and allow others locally or across the globe to join. ...Free service without any advertising for accredited primary and secondary schools. Think.com provides interactive learning tools to thousands of schools around the world in 8 languages."

EduNation - Second Life in Education

"...the first private island simulator in Second Life dedicated to online training seminars and conferences, and the use of Second Life in Education. EduNation is a 65,000m2 island in the Second Life virtual world with seminar, powerpoint, audio and videocast facilities. Use of the seminar facilities is free. It also features small land and accommodation rentals for other educators to rent and use on a weekly basis."

My Second Life - An Educator's comments

Educause Connect: a post by Jeff VanDrimmelen, which Stephen Downes describes as a "description of a teacher's experimental forays into Second Life." A short but interesting read if you're an educator who is either new to Second Life or haven't yet experienced it.

Distance Learning Programs

A free guide for researching, evaluating and applying for online college degrees and online university programs from online universities worldwide. Undergraduate and Master’s programs plus trades. Thousands of distance learning options.

With so many online universities to choose from and so many online college degree programs, we felt there needed to be a top-notch, easy to use free online resource to help people learn about these distance learning programs and to get more information from the ones that they are interested in.

The OWL at Purdue

A fantastic resource site: "Free writing help and teaching resources, open 24/7" Here are some of their categories:

The Writing Process; Professional, Technical, and Scientific Writing; Job Search Writing; General Academic Writing; Research & Citation; ESL; Literary Analysis & Criticism; Writing in the Social Sciences; Writing in Engineering; Creative Writing; Teaching Writing.

-- and each one has many sub-menu items. I can't describe it; you'll just have to check it out for yourself!

Learning with Handheld Technologies

"This handbook on learning with handheld technologies arises from a two year study by the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol... . This study comprised observations and interviews with some of the leading practitioners of handheld learning in the UK, and desk-based research to identify other developing projects in this area. In the course of the project, a number of key recommendations and observations emerged which have been distilled by the researchers on the project in this publication." The handbook includes recommendations on:

• planning and implementation
• outreach
• professional development
• technology provision and support
• teaching & learning