Blackboard Educator Central

Created for Bb's K-12 Clients. "Made for districts wanting to manage and evaluate professional development activities, expand professional learning opportunities, and build powerful communities of practice."

Getting Results

A FREE Professional Development Course for Community College Educators. Their press releasesays: "WGBH-TV and the League for Innovation in the Community College are pleased to announce the launch of Getting Results multimedia professional development modules for training community college faculty. The modules focus on the teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics specifically in Advanced Technology Education classrooms. The modules include real teachers and students in real classroom settings across the country, representing a range of fields, institutions, programs, and subject areas. Suitable for self-study, face-to-face training, or other formats of online and on-site use... Extensive curriculum, including downloadable PDF versions of web-based text, is now available online at no charge."

3 ESL Resource Sites for learners and teachers

This group of authors have created three ESL sites.

"All of the content on our websites is 100% free and we update the sites with new exercises regularly."

Learn English Feel Good.com: ESL portal with free English grammar and vocabulary exercises, printable worksheets, video-based exercises, lists of American idioms and phrasal verbs, and much more. "Your one stop site for free ESL resources. Whether you're studying English, or looking to download free worksheets/handouts for class, this website will provide you with the resources that you need. ...Whether your level is Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced, you'll find what you need to help you speak and write better English. Don't miss our video-based exercises - a great way to practice listening comprehension."

ESL-PDF.com: "One-stop source for ESL grammar and vocabulary handouts and worksheets. Our content was created by people with many years of teaching experience - so you know that you'll get handouts that adhere to high-quality standards. ...All of the worksheets are in PDF format and are arranged by category (verb tenses, articles, prepositions, etc.)"

Business English: "One-stop source for Business English. Our content was created by people with many years of corporate experience - people who actually use Business English on an everyday basis, so you know that you'll get the best, most accurate business vocabulary, phrases, expressions, and jargon." Content is divided by topic, including accounting, sales and marketing, project management, interviews, information technology (IT), and more."

Suite101 Courses: FREE

"Suite101.com offers free, fun, and accessible online learning for a wide variety of general interest courses designed with you in mind. All you have to do is pick a course or a particular lesson and simply click and learn…it's that easy!"

Here are just 3 examples of the MANY they offer.

For teachers:
"Teacher's Net has you covered. Even if you currently have nothing but the knowledge of how to open programs and type a few sentences, you're going to end this course with the knowledge of how to create an entire technology base for your classroom, including integrated technology lesson plan creation, web quest creation, and even a classroom website. These are specific projects that you will have completed and entirely ready-to-use in your classroom - in one month's time." The course lessons are entitled Communications, Instructional Design, and The Virtual Classroom.

For students:
College Strategies: "The course is jam-packed with info that can save you time, money, and frustration. Many drop out of first year unnecessarily due to being unprepared. If you are already a freshman and feel you are overwhelmed, this course can help you too! ...There are no courses offered in college on “what to do once being accepted to college”, while it is such a big transition in life it should be mandatory. That is where this course comes in; after completion you will have more knowledge than most students in their senior years do and the ability to jumpstart your academic and social life so you get the most out of it. Right away!"

For writers:
Professional Writing: "By taking this two-week course, you will be. This course will provide you with enough resources and contacts to keep your career as a professional writer going long after you've stopped reading." The lessons: Basics of Writing Professionally; Hone Those Skills!; Market (and Market); Manage to Write!"

Webinar introduces Blackboard Release 8.0

RELEASE 8.0 for the Bb Academic Suite (for people currently using the Bb Learning System Basic or Enterprise systems). This link will directly open a video/audio introduction, originally presented in a webinar on 12/17/07. Bb Support says,

"This is a comprehensive webinar recording that goes over the new benefits for this release. The run time is only 30 minutes and we would highly recommend viewing this webinar prior to upgrading to Release 8.0."

Web 2.0 Applications (MyOffice 2.0 Setup)

Stephen Downes calls this page "a fantastic collection of web 2.0 applications that effectively replace the standard desktop." A great one-stop resource for applications, organized into sections according to what they're used for, and complete with links to see/get them. Even if you're just learning what a Web 2.0 application is and want to see common examples, you'll recognize a lot of them!

Quotation Sources & Resources

Check out this new page on my website, where I gathered these links for quotations research, rather than having them scattered throughout the various other pages.

100s of Podcasts That Will Make You Smarter: Our Recession Special

OpenCulture.com says, "Every now and then, we like to make new readers aware of our extensive Podcast Library that includes 100s of cultural and educational podcasts that will make you smarter. We guarantee that. And the best part is that they’re completely free — perfect for a recession."

Resources for creating accessible online courses

My resources site has 3 pages of links about accessibility:

Designing for Accessibility

Accessibility Articles, Issues, & Information

Adaptive Technologies

Here are a few recent additions to my pages:

Accessibility tutorial for course designers: Georgia Tech Research offers this FREE online tutorial, "...comprised of 10 modules that offer information, instructional techniques, and practice labs on how to make the most common needs in distance education accessible for individuals with disabilities, and enhance the usability of online materials for all students."

Accessibility in Distance Education ~ A Resource for Faculty in Online Teaching: "The Accessibility in Distance Education (ADE) Web site focuses on helping faculty develop accessible online learning materials for people with disabilities. It is divided into five major sections, targeting common accessibility questions."

DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology): "DO-IT serves to increase the participation of individuals with disabilities in challenging academic programs and careers. It promotes the use of computer and networking technologies to increase independence, productivity, and participation in education and employment."

List-serve: Designing accessible distance learning courses: Click the link for information about how to join this list-serve. "The purpose of this list is to discuss issues related to creating accessible distance learning courses. This list fosters ongoing discussion about accessible website design, policy, and practice. It is supported by DO-IT [see link above] at the University of Washington."

10 Quick Tips to Make Accessible Web Sites

From the W3C Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative, these "ten Quick Tips summarize key concepts of accessible Web design. These tips are not complete guidelines; they are only excerpts of concepts from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0)."

Encyclopedia of Life

"This is the very beginning of our exciting journey to document all species of life on Earth. Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about all life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world." Already over a million species pages available.

Web 3.0 has long since passed Web 2.0 in Education for 2020

A peek into the future (2020), written in present tense. Check out the diagrams; they're interesting studies / descriptions about what Web 3.0 is, what other web aspects and trends it encompasses.

Will Web 3.0 and 4.0 Change Education?

If you're just getting what Web 2.0 is all about, maybe these newer terms are a bit much. But check out this at EduTechie.com article anyway, just so you know what's being referred to.

Educator Resources from Linden Labs, the makers of Second Life

SLED Blog: "...dedicated to the ins and outs of K-20 education using the Second Life® world. This blog is written by educators and for educators, for those who are seasoned Second Life veterans and for those just starting out, for those who are die-hards and those who are skeptics."

Links to listserves (mailing lists) and more: "This list is for educators interested in or currently using Second Life, and we will be using it to send out information we feel is of interest to educators and academics. This list is also an opportunity for all of you to communicate with each other, to find new colleagues and to share your experiences using Second Life for education."

SLED Calendar: A calendar of events for Educators in SL. "The 'SLEDevents in SL' calendar anticipates events in Second Life of interest to educators. The time zone of the calendar is US Pacific/ Second Life time. Second Life events are shown in blue, and planned outages in red. Events in Real Life of interest to SL educators are shown in green in the column opposite. The calendar is kept by Bruce Sommerville for the SLED listserv community."

Facebook 2.0

The question isn't IF, but HOW Facebook is going to figure into the field of education via social networking. Our local paper yesterday published a comment along the lines of How dare professionals like teachers belong to such a thing as Facebook, putting themselves out there for students to read about. I was incensed at this attitude because I believe teachers (and the public) still have little idea of the power of reaching out to students where they 'live' as opposed to expecting students to come into our more formal education world to seek or expand upon their knowledge. We have so much to learn from our students, and Facebook is just one place we can begin our education. If you're not in Facebook, get there! Anyway, I digress. This link is to an article that discusses the future of Facebook and other social networking locations within education, the pros and cons, various factors and concerns that need to be addressed. How can we address them if we know little about the experience? Tracy Mitrano says,

"...learning more about those spaces—how they operate, who is on them, and most important, how to talk about their social dynamics—is recommended. Parents can do that effectively only if they educate themselves about both the technology and the sociology of the Internet. And demonizing the technology, as is suggested even by such august public organs as Frontline, with its feature “Growing Up Online,” helps no one—not the youth who will undoubtedly use the technology, not their parents who supervise them, and not their teachers who need to understand the role that this technology plays in their development."

See also Ms. Mitrano's article, Thoughts on Facebook, April 2006 -- which is a long time ago in social networking! In that article she discusses Five Things to Think About When Using Facebook.

Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education

Steve Hargadon's blog post is a good read for everyone, especially educators because he includes a very useful and interesting list of things educators can do if they agree with his premise (the title). Kind of like a 'Start Here' guide for educators who are Web 2 newbies. I like this from the list: "Digest This Thought: The Answer to Information Overload Is to Produce More Information." Steve says,

"I believe that the read/write Web, or what we are calling Web 2.0, will culturally, socially, intellectually, and politically have a greater impact than the advent of the printing press. I believe that we cannot even begin to imagine the changes that are going to take place as the two-way nature of the Internet begins to flower, and that even those of us who have spent time imagining this future will be astounded by what happens. I'm going to identify ten trends in this regard that I think have particular importance for education and learning, and then discuss seven steps I think educators can take to make a difference during this time."

Social Networking in Education: Another informative article from Steve. Steve includes a long link-list to social networks used in a wide variety of ways, all connected to the world of education.

And what's even more fun (for me anyway): Today, as I seem to be becoming a Steve Hargadon groupie, I noticed in his Social Networking article that Steve is the guy who started up Classroom 2. I mentioned Classroom 2 in a post 3 days ago and put a big graphic about it on my Web 2 resources page.... though I didn't notice his name at the time.

Way off topic (not about education)

I couldn't resist posting this. I call it Journey by Flamingo. The creator calls it "Passage to Zhong Fu".

Created by filmguy1105.

"Passage to Zhong Fu was originally made for the 48 Hour Film Project in Second Life but since I work for Millions of Us, one of the sponsors of the event, our team wasn't eligible to compete. That said, making this film, for me, was never about any kind of competition. Rather it was all about having a focused opportunity to create something with a set of artistic constraints not under your control. That's the competition - one against yourself - that I'm always interested in pursuing."

Verdi Millionsofus - Director, Producer & Editor
Poid Mahovlich - Actor, Landscaper, Set designer, props
duckyfresh Watanabe - Actor, Wardrobe, Props, Flamingo Trainer
Dizzy Banjo - Music

Damanios Thetan - Flamingo Animator
BETLOG Hax - Volcano Sculpts
Green Fate - Special Effects
Sebastian Saramago - Special Effects

A Monolith Production

FLASH media: How to embed flash and still get your page to validate

Becky, instructor at LVSonline.com says, "There are several approved methods for validating the insertion of Flash movies. The most well-known (and pretty much the basis for all the others) is the Satay Method. I wrote up a stripped down version of this. It also addresses some accessibility issues. You probably need to update the link for the Flash plugin -- though you could leave that alt text out, if so desired."

Designing Kick Butt Quality Online Courses

[you can log in to this FREE course, hosted inside Blackboard. Username bbworld07, password bbworld07]

"How do you create courses that capture students' attention and direct them through the learning process? How do you merge clean, accessible design with sound pedagogical principles? This workshop provides tools and resources you can use to up the quality of your online courses and improve the online experience for your learners."

The Worksheet Library

"Worksheet Library was developed and is maintained by veteran elementary teachers who have over 50 years of classroom experience. ...We develop each worksheet of our site with the goal of making it clear and simple. We want to help you reduce your planning time and spend more quality time with your students. ... our worksheets are preformatted and ready to use in your classroom. Once you find the exact worksheet you need, it is ready to print. We also provide a simple answer key for any worksheet that needs one."

Moodle Resources

I've just added this new page to my Resources site. I grabbed and collated all my Moodle entries from other pages so they're now in a single location. Several new resource links added today, too.

Wetpaint

"Wetpaint powers websites that tap the power of collaborative thinking. The heart of the Wetpaint advantage is its ability to allow anyone — especially those without technical skill — to create and contribute to websites written for and by those who share a passion or interest. To do this, Wetpaint combines the best aspects of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks so anyone can click and type on the web."

What Makes a Successful Online Student?

"The online students of today consist primarily of working people who are trying to better their opportunities. This however is changing, as more and more young and older people become aware of the online model. The traditional school will never go away, but the virtual classroom is a significant player in today’s educational community. Corporations are using the online model to train technical professionals while private and public universities redefine the world as their markets. The market for students is expanding rapidly. In general, the online student should possess the following qualities..."

Internet Acronym Server

I like their sub-title: Searching for the Meaning of L.I.F.E. since 1988. "We've been collecting acronyms from all over the Internet for the best part of two decades."

Planning a course ~ 3 step approach

from Cornell University. "A 2 page handout (pdf) that quickly addresses the 3 main steps in planning an online course using MOODLE. This is a very broad brush document that indicates an approach to planning."

Preparing Teachers to Teach Online

by Greg Kearsley & Robert Blomeyer. A version of this paper appeared in Educational Technology magazine, Jan/Feb 2004.

Educational Wikis (EduWikis)

"This site aims to answer one question: How can I use wikis in education?" Explore their "comprehensive list of existing educational wikis that we can learn from".

Classroom 2.0

"The social networking site for those interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education." Lots of great stuff here, including news, forums, resources, groups, and the Classroom 2.0 Wiki.

Web 2.0 in Education

Steve Hargadon's wikispace. "Web 2.0 Is Critical to the Future of Education." "The Internet-based software programs that are generally referred to as 'Web 2.0' may have been perceived, as recently as last Spring, as the latest pet technology of the educational uber-geek or the conference presenter. However, Web 2.0 programs are rapidly becoming tools of choice for a growing body of classroom educators, who are discovering that they provide compelling teaching and learning opportunities."

How I use wikis in the classroom

Cool Cat Teacher, Vicki A. Davis. "I have two primary uses: classroom organization and classroom content....The wiki is my hub. I guess you could say, I have a wiki-centric classroom." While you're there, check out the rest of her Cool Cat Teacher website. I enjoy her writing style. Lots of interesting sections, articles, etc.

Canadian Intellectual Property Office

A big section about copyright. Intellectual property links. Sections about patents, trade-marks, industrial design, service standards. Printable forms, publications, newsroom.

WhatIs.com

Technical / computer definitions, terms, glossaries, cheat sheets, product demos, white papers, blogs, and more. Definitions for thousands of the most current IT-related words. As well as a search box, "all of WhatIs.com's words have been grouped into a series of categories and subcategories for easier browsing. This aids in searching for words about a specific topic or area of interest."

Wiki Charters

"A WikiCharter is a set of guidelines to ensure productive interaction between members of your wiki community. Here are five guidelines from the Sony Ericsson Developer World wiki provided by wiki evangelist, Stewart Mader."

List of 20 Education Blogs

Greg Ritter's Blog Habit post in educate/innovate explains: "I've decided to share a list of some of the educational technology blogs that make up part of my daily fix. What follows, in no particular order, are twenty of the best education blogs as judged by . . . well, me. It's a totally subjective list and it's by no means exhaustive, but all of these authors post regularly and all of them have introduced me to great new ideas at one point or another. But if you should get hooked yourself, you can't say I didn't warn you. ;-)"

How to add YouTube videos to Blackboard course

Not just to your Blackboard course, but to any webpage.

YouTube - BlackboardTV Channel

"BlackboardTV (or 'BbTV') helps e-Learning innovators -- designers, instructors, students -- visualize online teaching and learning. The education and technology videos collected in the playlists on this channel enable users throughout the global Blackboard community to see, and learn from, e-Learning innovations in K-12 schools, higher education institutions and organizations."

See also YouTube BlackboardK12.

ImageChef

Just go here and have some fun. Create unique images or icons for your website or course.

Online games

Web games to learn with. K-12 geography, chemistry, vocabulary, animals, history, math, and some quiz games.

Dezignus.com

Icons and other Graphics for FREE: Beautiful vector graphics of all kinds. I jumped right to the royalty-free section, so that's the link I'm providing you. But just have a look at the other beautiful stuff they have to offer!

Miha's utilities - Mihov Freeware

The site has a bunch of great utilities. Here are just two:

Image Resizer: A free utility that can batch resize your images in bmp, gif, and jpg picture formats. You can also convert from one format to another, rotate images, create thumbnails.

Link Checker: Nothing more frustrating than clicking a link that's no longer valid. Don't let your website or course pages get outdated. This free downloadable utility works great.

Free Online Video Editing Sites

ExtremeTech has posted a review of 5 websites that let you edit your videos online for free.

"Some people would be surprised that you can edit photos online without locally installed software, but surely video editing is too resource-intensive to be done over the web, right? Wrong! We review five online services that let you do things like scene transitions, cuts, splices, loops, audio overlays—and they're all free. We tested the following: Cuts, Eyespot, JumpCut, Motionbox, One True Media."

Splashup

Edit your images online for free.

"Splashup, formerly Fauxto, is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. With all the features professionals use and novices want, it's easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once. Splashup runs in all browsers, integrates seamlessly with top photosharing sites, and even has its own file format so you can save your work in progress."

Performance Learning Systems

(My link above is to the teacher resources section of the website, but please explore their many professional development courses too.)

"The mission of Performance Learning Systems, Inc. is to enhance education through the development of educational services. These services, designed to increase the effectiveness of educators and others who support excellence in education, include: seminars, Graduate courses, Consulting services, Quality instructional materials."

The Reluctant Online Professor

"...when I was asked to put my course online, I felt quite unprepared ... I started the experience with great reluctance and trepidation. Much to my surprise, I finished it jubilantly. It turned out to be one of the best classes I have ever taught."

Cynthia Corritore, Ph.D., describes the process in detail: creating her course (design, content, 9 main components of the course, web tools used, etc), the outcome, and lessons learned. A refreshing example to read, especially for others in a similar position, but also for experienced online instructors.

Wiktionary

A multilingual wiki-style dictionary. "...includes a thesaurus, a rhyme guide, phrase books, language statistics, extensive appendices. ...not only the definition of a word, but also enough information to really understand it. ...etymologies, pronunciations, quotations, synonyms, antonyms, translations..."

Free Online MIT Course Materials for High School

MIT OpenCourseWare ~ Highlights for High School: Free Online MIT Course Materials for High School. By now most educators know that MIT has opened its courses to public access. Now they've added content for high school teachers/students. Check out their resources for the maths/sciences (calculus, biology, physics), their hands-on learning labs (chemistry, physics). Explore their section on writing: essays, technical writing, rhetoric, short stories, web design.

Moodlerooms

Want to try out Moodle but you need a server/host location? Check out this company. They offer hosting for individuals as well as organizations. They also offer user training, moodle customizations, and more.

"Moodlerooms’ values are all about community, collaboration and communication in the interest of lifelong learning. We seek to build, facilitate and be part of a community of like-minded educators endeavoring to extend and enrich the learning experiences of their students. We also seek to foster a community of educators who understand that teaching is a collaborative thing. We believe teachers and students learn more when they share knowledge with each other, challenge each other, and inspire each other."

MS Office/Word tips and tricks

Here are a few sites. Please post any others you have found especially useful. Thanks!

Carol's Corner Office: Lots of tips and tricks for MS Office here. Check out her Free Word Bytes Newsletter, as well as her subscription premium newsletter and her books.

Word for PC, Tips, Tricks, Troubleshooting: Part of the MPV website.

Word Shortcuts: A page from the above MPV site.

Useful MS Word links on Microsoft's website: MPV has compiled a handy list of links.

Word Tips by Allan Wyatt: A weekly email newsletter full of tips. The writer has also published a book of tips.

Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C)

"The purpose of the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) is to help learning organizations continually improve quality, scale, and breadth of their online programs, according to their own distinctive missions, so that education will become a part of everyday life, accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a wide variety of disciplines. Sloan-C maintains a catalog of degree and certificate programs offered by a wide range of regionally accredited member institutions, consortia, and industry partners; provides speakers and consultants to help institutions learn about online methodologies; hosts conferences and workshops to help implement and improve online programs; publishes the Sloan-C View, the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN), and annual volumes of applied research studies; and conducts research, annual surveys on online learning and forums to inform academic, government and private sector audiences. Sloan-C also offers an awards program and an effective practices database and wiki for members to share the lessons they have learned."

Grammar and Writing

A few links to assist in the review of the basic conventions of standard English: grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and word usage.

University of Ottawa: HyperGrammar electronic grammar course: Brief reviews of the basics, from parts of speech through to building sentences and writing paragraphs.

The OWL (Online Writing Lab) at Perdue: "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!

University of Victoria English Language Centre Study Zone: Index To Grammar Materials: "It includes grammar presentations, interactive practice exercises, and help pages for basic writing skills."

University of Victoria: The UVic Writer’s Guide: The site includes the topics:
- Planning, Organizing, and Presenting Essays
- Developing and Ordering Paragraphs
- Writing Clear Sentences
- Choosing and Using Words
- Acknowledging Your Sources
- Literary and Rhetorical Terms (By Category)
- Preparing Summaries
- Presenting Arguments Logically
- Knowing The Basics of Grammar

University of Toronto: Advice on Academic Writing: Includes these topics:
- Planning & Organizing
- Reading & Researching
- Using Sources
- Specific Types of Writing
- Style and Editing
- Grammar and Punctuation
- Some Answers for Writers of English as a Second Language

University of Calgary: The Basic Elements of English: Four major sections: Parts of Speech, Sentence Elements, Punctuation and Word Use. Includes Interactive exercises to help you "test your grammar skills and get immediate feedback by trying the exercises at the end of the tutorials. "

K12 Hot Links

"The web's best educational tools - all in one place."

TeacherTube

Like YouTube, only it's all educational videos. Also includes Groups and TeacherTube Blogs, Lesson plan videos, student lesson videos, teacher-made videos.

Quotations Book: search engine + much more

Quotations Book.com: A specialized search engine for quotations on the Internet. Lost of "extras", including a Facebook app; quotes of the day by RSS or email, for mobiles, & as a Firefox extension; starter page code for iGoogle, Pageflakes, & Netvibes; a widget to put on your website or blog; widgets for Windows Vista & Macs; a daily podcast; and more.

Trailfire

A Firefox extension or add-on. Enables teachers to create a "trail" through several web sites for your students to follow. "Sticky notes" with the author's comments, notes, instructions, etc. are placed on any web page, along with your next and back button. This links the pages together, creating a sequential path for navigating the trail. Students need only click YOUR "next" button to proceed to the next site rather than returning to some sort of index. Visit Trailfire's homepage to sample some of the trails others have posted.

Umbraco - Course Management System

An open source CMS. Runs on Windows using Microsoft's "ASP.Net" and Internet Information Server. John Goldsmith (B.C. teacher) says:

"While installation and set-up is not exactly click & run, the program is easier to install than most other open source programs. The installation instructions are clear, concise and well illustrated so that anyone with reasonable Windows skills should be able to install and run the program. Umbraco has a nice, light "Web 2.0" feel about it and, the "icing on the cake" for many teachers is the ability to add and modify web content using MS Word. HTML skills are not needed."

Second Life Education Wiki

Contains many useful page such as Guidelines for Educators and Programs for Educators, which include Community Support, Campus:Second_Life, Educators working with Teens, and more.

Guide to Grammar and Writing

This Guides is sponsored by the Capital Community College Foundation, a nonprofit 501 c-3 organization that supports scholarships, faculty development, and curriculum innovation.

Top Ten Grammar Errors that Haunt Web Pages

Robin Nobles lists some common grammar errors we see ANYWHERE, not just on web pages.

Also, see her Resources for Writers site.

How to Add a Shortcut Icon to Your Web Page Bookmark

Here are a couple of how-to sites:

• From Microsoft
• From HTML Goodies
• Favicon.com has an image editor applet with which you can make your own icons.

E-Learning Today.com

For students: This site has several helpful sections and articles for those relatively new to eLearning. I'm linking you to the eLearning Basics page, but tour around while you're there. If you're an eLearning provider there are materials/articles for you too.

Web Developer Toolbar

This FREE browser plugin/toolbar/extension was recommended by a fellow online student. She said,

"It adds a toolbar to your browser that gives you all kinds of control of cookies, CSS, forms, images, page and code source, etc. You can have it outline areas of CSS, tables and such on your page to help figure out how it was constructed. It will display all sorts of info such as HTML items, JAVA, links, META data, etc. You can disable CSS on a page to see what it looks like without the styling. It has validators for CSS, HTML and links. You can view the CSS split screen with the actual page to see how things are defined (both linked and embedded css). There are three little icons on the right side of the toolbar that give you a quick visual on whether the page you're viewing is standards compliant, has CSS errors or JavaScript errors. The list goes on and on. Take a look... can't beat the price!"

CSS Resources

I'm taking a course online and have gathered a few CSS resources that were recommended by fellow students.

• First, here's a link to my own CSS resources page
  
• CSS Vault: A site of resource links to inspiring websites done entirely with CSS. The site also has a blog that covers CSS topics, tips, tricks, ideas, etc.
  
• CSS Beauty: "A project focused on providing its audience with a database of well designed CSS based websites from around the world. Its purpose is to showcase designers' work and to act as a small portal to the CSS design community."
  
• Position Is Everything: "We're Big John & Holly Bergebin, and together we built this site to explain some obtuse CSS bugs in modern browsers, provide demo examples of interesting CSS behaviors, and show how to 'make it work' without using tables for layout purposes."
  
• CSS Edge: "The goal here is to find ways to make CSS live up to its fullest potential with only minimal regard to browser limitations."
  
• CSS Quick Reference Guide: A list of properties all on one page includes "only the CSS features that work in most browsers.
  

Later: An addition to the list:

• W3Schools CSS "try it" examples page: Enter your text and try out CSS properties, see the results instantly on their page. My online instructor says, "I STRONGLY recommend spending some time playing with the "try it" here. You can see immediate results from the changes that you make in the css to really fine tune your learning experience."
  

Webpage designers - COLOR helpers

A few fun pages to help you pick your colors for your website... The following plus a few more can be found on my website's Color Resources page.

Website Color Picker: "...will help you evaluate color combinations quickly and easily. It works equally well on MacOS or Windows. ...You can experiment with different colors for BGCOLOR, TEXT color, LINK color and VLINK color. ...click a color swatch in the appropriate section of the left window and see the color applied immediately to the chosen attribute in the right window."

Color Blender: Another visual color-code-producing site. This one lets you select 2 colors from color swatches, then blend the two in however many steps you specify. It's a Creative Commons share site, so you can copy the source code to have the Color Blender page handy on your own hard drive.

Color Schemer / Design in Harmony: My recent LVSOnline teacher says, "This is one of my favorites. You can use it on the web for free and you download any of the hundreds of color schemes posted there. The software available for purchase is really nice in terms of flexibility and power. It has a 15 day free trial."

Instructional design resources

From U. of Texas, a page of commented links to resource sites.

Teaching With Technology Tutorials

Examining Technology from an Educator's Perspective: "Tips for making the most of technology in your classroom, school, and district. We show you constructive and practical applications of technology."

Integrating Technology | Scholastic.com

Sections on the site include integrating technology, best practices, and links to additional technology resources. Topics are for K-12 and include Arts, Early Learning, Foreign Language & ESL, Health & Safety, Math, Professional Development, Reading & Language Arts, Research Skills, Science, Social Studies.

CSS Type.com

Generate CSS code visually. Create a box of type using their online element selectors, including font, size, color, etc. See your selection results right on screen. Then click to generate the CSS code for it.

Respondus Test Bank Network

"If you use Respondus or StudyMate, and if you use a textbook from a leading publisher, you can get the official test bank for that textbook in Respondus format for free. From there it’s easy to create online tests, learning games and even iPod activities using the publisher content." My title link is to a page of information about the Test Bank Network. Or you can link directly to the Network here.

Moodle Test Question Importer by Respondus

Their "QTI Importer plug-in allows the importing of test questions that have been exported from Respondus 3.5 in an XML format known as the IMS QTI. Respondus Inc. recently updated this plug-in and will provide maintenance and support of this code in the future" The page I've linked to has FAQs that explain what the Respondus QTI Importer can do -- and what it can’t.

Create iPod Quiz files with StudyMate or Respondus

"The latest versions of StudyMate (Version 2.0.3) and Respondus (Version 3.5.4a) allow you to generate files in the iPod Quiz format." This page explains it all, and includes "a few authoring tips, caveats, and general advice" from the Respondus staff.

SpokenText - Free online text to speech converter

Spoken Text records from PDF, Word, plain text, PowerPoint files, RSS news feeds, emails and web pages, and convert them to speech automatically. The files are saved as MP3s so you can listen to them on your favorite audio device.

"Our goal is to make the conversion of text to speech as simple as possible and in so doing make it accessible to everyone. The vast majority of the technology we use in our daily lives are way too complicated and overwhelms us with unneeded options and features. To this end we focused on providing a quick and simple way to convert your text content into spoken audio, for listening to on an iPod or your computer."

EduGarage: for Blackboard Developers

Launched October 23/07, this new website by Blackboard "is the place developers can meet to collaborate, leverage expertise and find all the resources they need to build powerful, successful educational tools."

McCord Museum of Canadian History

"The McCord Museum conserves and presents over 1,375,000 objects, images and manuscripts, all irreplaceable reflections of the social history and material culture of Montreal, Quebec and Canada. These myriad items – glass negatives, hoop crinolines, pieces of fine china, hand-forged tools, beaded headdresses, historical letters and documents – represent the lives and dreams of the men, women and children that came before us. They are words and actions brought to life, witnesses of our collective memory."

Explore the museum using categories like Collections, Artists, Objects, Time Periods, Geocultural Areas, Geocultural Map, Thematic Tours, etc.

Free Math Help.com

"We have many math help resources available, including math lessons, math games, and a math help message board." Featured Tools: worksheet generator: "You can create addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, algebra, or even geometry worksheets online, and even generate PDF's to print!" And their Flash Equation Graphing Tool. "The program can graph more than one equation, print an image, and allows you to move around the graph easily".

Learning Objects - The World Has Become Our Repository

Darren Draper:

"Much like the "most famous scream in Hollywood", there exists a plethora of educational content (much already digitized) that is just as effective in its reuse as it was in its first use. Wherein many original issues surrounding the implementation of learning objects centered on the practicality of creating and maintaining a centralized repository, it appears that Google has provided our much needed, neatly indexed repository: the world wide web itself."

Educational Uses of Second Life

Stephen Downes comments: "This is a remarkable list of educational applications in Second Life - easily the most comprehensive I've seen anywhere - with descriptions, links and screen shots. You could easily spend the entire day with Second Life and this web page going from place to place (I've gone to a bunch of them)."

Why use technology in the English classroom?

This whole article is a gem. To entice you, here are a few snippets so you get the drift of Michael Umphrey's opinion and the article's direction.

"...using technology to teach English. Why would I do that? Well, why do cowboys sing?"

"For generations, educators have labored toward the goal of bringing young people to basic literacy, giving them the power to encode and decode written language. ...But today basic literacy isn’t enough."

"Lots of kids are already their own publishers, posting whatever they want on My Space."

"English teachers should be excited by the prospect of a culture of writing consisting of more than a few “stars” and the bestseller lists."

"Whenever possible, school work should be real work. ...Great writers have always known that everyday life is the source of powerful writing."

"This is a good time to recommit to being not primarily consumers of commercial culture but also producers of our own culture, our own literature about the places and lives that we know. And if we do it with our students, we’ll find all sorts of intractable problems won’t need to be solved. They’ll just dissolve. Besides, it’s a great adventure. It’s also a necessity."

"Technology has enormous potential to make missing class less disruptive both for students and for teachers. Actually, it’s not potential. Everything we need now exists. Learning how to use it and getting districts to spend the money is another thing."

Google Notebook Browser Extension

A little-known helper within Google notebooks -- easily create your URL for your website citation. This browser extension helps you take notes from websites by simply marking the text, then using a right click to get to a special “copy” command. The program automatically records the url for complete citations. Downloading this extension gives you access to this mini Google Notebook feature, which allows you to:
- Clip and collect information as you surf the web.
- Stay in your browser window.
- Organize your notes from the web page you're on.

Copyright

A few sites about copyright:

"Fair Dealing" (Commonwealth copyright info): This wikipedia entry is a starting point if you're at all confused about copyright guidelines. "Fair dealing is an enumerated set of possible defenses against an action for infringement of an exclusive right of copyright."

"Fair Use" (like the above, unique to the U.S.A.): (wikipedia entry) "A doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as use for scholarship or review. It provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test."

The Copyright Website: "Welcome to the Internet's first and premiere Copyright Registration and Information Resource. The Copyright Website strives to lubricate the machinations of information delivery by providing transparency to a particularly opaque and obtuse area of intellectual property. Whether you want to protect your own work, or check out the legal hijinks of the movie, recording and software industries, you've come to the right place!"

Canadian Copyright Act: The full text of it.

Access Copyright (formerly CanCopy): Canadian "innovative copyright licensing solutions". "In schools across Canada, from elementary to post secondary, the comprehensive photocopy licence from Access Copyright is at work every day, making sure Canadian educators and students have access to a global repertoire of content to meet their learning needs. The licence gives educators and students advance permission to copy from millions of copyright protected newspapers, magazines, journals and books from around the world, complementing what is allowed under fair dealing, educational exceptions under the Copyright Act, and through the public domain." Access Copyright also provides for advance clearance and pay-per-use licenses "for copying beyond the limits of the comprehensive licence. Pay-per-use licences can cover needs such as digital uses (posting content online or scanning it, for example)."

The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy: Confused about copyright for education purposes? Check out this article/report.

If you need more, please visit my resource site's page of links about copyright.

Dapper

"Dapper is a free, web-based service that enables users to easily create an interactive feed from any website for consumption on any platform: RSS reader, iGoogle, enterprise mashup, mobile phone, etc. Users can make a dynamic feed (API) that changes based on user input for any website. With Dapper, anyone can create RSS feeds, universally embeddable widgets, and XML (among other formats) for any website." [from Answers.com]

See this short demo video that illustrates how easy it is to make a "Dapp".

Dapper Facebook AppMaker:

"Turn any website into a Facebook application -- no programming required!" "Use your own header, footer, background styling — really make it yours — and with absolutely no programming. If you can make a Dapp, you can make a Facebook app."

150 Resources to Help You Write Better, Faster, and More Persuasively

A categorized and alphabetized list of links that

"...focus on places where you can conduct research, software that is free and easy to use, and services that will remove that "extra work" monkey from your back....This list focuses solely on those tools that can make your writing life easier."

Their categories are: Almanacs; Business and Legal Matters; Citation Styles; Dictionaries; English Language Skills; Genres; News Digests; New Media Resources; Organization; Professional Organizations; Rhetoric; Toolboxes; Writing Services; Writing Skills; Writing Software.

Netiquette

I referenced this website back in 2000. Thought I'd mention it again; it's still probably the best netiquette information site on the web.

"'Netiquette' is network etiquette, the do's and don'ts of online communication. Netiquette covers both common courtesy online and the informal 'rules of the road' of cyberspace. This page provides links to both summary and detail information about Netiquette for your browsing pleasure."

bFree Blackboard Course Content Extractor

From the University of N.Carolina:

"With bFree you can Open a Blackboard™ archive to browse and preview the course materials; Search for words in titles, descriptions, wikis, forums, and file names; Preview content items automatically; Extract selected materials as an independent web site that mimics the original course; Extract selected materials as plain files and folders. The extracted web site can be put on a web server or even loaded into another online learning system."

LMS Satisfaction Features & Barriers

Tony Karrer's summary post about a survey that measured, among other details, user satisfaction with a number of Learning Management Systems. He links us to the eLearningGuild's Learning Management System research report, and includes some of the charts that illustrate various satisfaction categories...answers to questions such as satisfaction level, satisfaction with particular features, are you planning to replace, primary barriers, importance of features, etc.

CBC Archives

"On this Website you'll find a selection of radio and television clips from the Archives of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Some of these files have rested quietly at the bottom of our vaults for more than 60 years and are, for the first time, now accessible to the general public."

A section for Teachers, with grade level lesson plans to complement topics on the website. Podcasts. Archives timeline. Index of topics, index of clips, index of interviews. Topic-based sections of the site (e.g. people; war; arts & entertainment; politics & economy; etc.).

"All educational materials are free to use within the framework of educational, non-commercial use. Copyright restrictions dictate that clips cannot be downloaded."

Educational Uses for Google Earth

Quoting directly from my Google Earth email newsletter. NOTE: THE FIRST 2 LINKS BELOW WILL OPEN YOUR GOOGLE EARTH; they're not weblinks!

"Teachers and students should be aware that Google Earth is a great tool for education. And, it's not just about geography. Google Earth has been used by educators in many subjects including: science, literature, history, cartography, GIS, and more. Check out some examples like: Places quoted by Shakespeare or the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

For Google-created resources, teachers should visit our Google Earth for Educators site, or check out some Sky lesson ideas. For some ideas from our users, see the JuicyGeography blog by Noel Jenkins in the UK, or a summary by Frank Taylor at the Google Earth Blog."

Jottit

Kathy Schrock introduces "Jottit": "Neat wiki! This allows teachers to have a classroom wiki that is only accessible to students who have the password and students do not need an email address to sign-up." I'm linking to her post, which includes a link to the wiki site.

Webinar: Podcasting Xtreme

Led by Jane Himmel and Julie Navar:

"When we talk about "extreme" podcasting, we're not just talking about cutting-edge tools. Rather, we're trying to help people take their podcasting to the next level by delving more deeply into the design process of producing an effective, educational podcast. How? Primarily by taking an instructional design approach, and analyzing information needs and audiences to determine if podcasting is the right match with your instructional needs. During our Webinar we also discussed current trends; how to incorporate music and other elements of commercial podcasts; hardware and software needs; and ideas about distribution - all with the goal of helping you create a more creative and engaging final podcast."

[They provide the link to the the archived recording of the Webinar; click this post's title.]

Text to Speech Software

TextAloud: In 2004 I posted an entry about this application. "TextAloud MP3 is Text To Speech software that uses voice synthesis to create spoken audio from text. You can listen on your PC or save text to MP3 or wave files for listening later."

Just as an update, this week's WinXP News says: "TextAloud is the world's leading text-to-speech program, available now with optional AT&T Natural Voices for the best in computer speech. TextAloud uses voice synthesis to convert text into spoken audio. Listen to text from email, web pages and documents on your PC or create MP3 or WMA files for use on portable devices like iPods, PocketPCs, and CD players. Imagine being free to relax, get up and stretch, or work on other things while the information you need is read to you in a pleasant, natural sounding human voice. Better still, leave your computer behind. TextAloud can save your daily reading to audio files for your portable player."

NextUp.com, makers of the above software, offers several other tools for text-to-speech.

Moodle Playpen

"This site demonstrates the use of Moodle when augmented by community code." Helen Kershaw of Knowplace says, "The best Moodle theme expert in the world. We're not kidding -- this fellow is just the best! On his site you can take a look at the leading, bleeding edge of the latest Moodle versions and manipulate things too!"

Online Education Glossary sites

Glossary of Online Education Terms from Digital Bridges

eLearning Glossary from WorldWide Learn

ELearning Glossaries from EdTechPost

eLearning Glossary from eLearning Guru

Some readings about Online Learning

Annotated Bibliography for Online Teaching: Categories of articles include Overview of Online Teaching; Theory of Online Course Writing; Practice of Online Course Writing; Web Design for Online Course Writing.

Theories of and for Online Learning: "We see changes in teaching and learning emerging from the nexus of a changing landscape of information and communication technologies... We see the need for, and the emergence of, new theories and models of and for the online learning environment, addressing learning in its ICT context, considering both formal and informal learning, individual and community learning, and new practices arising from technology use in the service of learning. This paper presents six theoretical perspectives on learning in ICT contexts, and is an invitation to others to bring theoretical models to the fore to enhance our understanding of new learning contexts."

File Extensions

File extensions and file types resource. Find file extension details here including easy-to-understand descriptions and associated applications. Search by extension, view common and most visited extensions, and click to extension categories including audio and music files, game files, system files and text files.

Firefox Extension for Ask Dr. C Search Engine

In her blog, Laura Gekeler says: "The WebCT 'Ask Dr. C' forum/knowledgebase is still alive and well. And I still use it frequently before responding to questions I'm asked. Nowadays my preferred browser is Firefox (especially for administrative tasks in Blackboard Vista because of the 'stop script' feature). So I installed Henk Schotel's Firefox extension (last updated 11/2006) which searches Ask Dr. C for me, much as a Google toolbar would perform a websearch. To get it, use Firefox to navigate here and click on the Ask Dr C link to install it. It works great!"

SchoolTube

"A network of students, educators, and professionals working together to foster video production and internet publishing in a safe online learning environment. SchoolTube gives you the ability to safely upload your video onto the internet to share with other educators or students. All SchoolTube videos have been moderated or teacher approved for viewing. Our high standards are based on the STN Code of Ethics."

Theories and models of and for online learning

"For many years, discussion of online learning...has been pre-occupied with the practice of teaching online and the debate about whether being online is ‘as good as’ being offline. ...We see the need for, and the emergence of, new theories and models of and for the online learning environment, addressing learning in its ICT context, considering both formal and informal learning, individual and community learning, and new practices arising from technology use in the service of learning. This paper presents six theoretical perspectives on learning in ICT contexts."

Pedagogical Templates for E-Learning

A report that "...describes a series of pedagogic templates for the integration of technology into teaching and learning... The main objective of this report is to provide an overview for IoE academics who are interested in integrating e-learning into their courses. This report has been designed to guide practitioners on how e-learning can be used in the context of a course, and the description of each template focuses on the pedagogical aspects of using e-learning."

eXe : eLearning XHTML editor

[eXe = eLearning XHTML editor]

"The eXe project is developing a freely available Open Source authoring application to assist teachers and academics in the publishing of web content without the need to become proficient in HTML or XML markup. eXe can export content as self-contained web pages or as SCORM 1.2 or IMS Content Packages."

Watch the video intro on YouTube.

Grammar Grater: PODCASTS

"...a weekly podcast about English words, grammar and usage for the Information Age. Because we live in a time of e-mail, blogs, instant messaging, even online product reviews—everybody's a writer. And with the global nature of communication, there's not a single style guide everyone uses. To help sort through some of the confusion, host Luke Taylor and the Grammatis Personae Players (Cory Busse and Amy Ault) take linguistic bugbears and put 'em through the Grammar Grater."

Grammar Girl: PODCASTS

I've seen this referred to as "one of the most downloaded educational podcasts on iTunes" [reference]. A "real-life science writer", Mignon Fogarty, has built up a great resource site of "Quick and Dirty Tips: Clean Up Your Writing". My title link is to this week's tip; scroll down to see others (they're all on one page). The left panel has links to titles and a search box. I like the fact that the podcast also appears in text form.