Check Out Jennifer Angel’s Prezi: What Great Principals Do Differently

I love it when I see our teachers integrating technology. It’s just as exciting to see our district administrator’s putting new technology to work. I’ve posted about Prezi before, but I wanted to share a great example. Below is a Prezi created by one of our assistant principals, Jennifer Angel. The subject matter, Todd Whitaker’s What Great Principals Do Differently is very relevant and this showcases what Prezi can do.

So, are you interested in using Prezi? Educators can sign up for a free account with 500MB of storage and lots of extra features. Just visit Prezi’s Edu License page and sign up. Then you can create your own Prezi’s. Yes, these can be embedded into your teacher websites as well!

Goomoodleikiog? What? Harnessing the Collaborative Web for Instruction.

Want to transform classroom instruction with the free tools that are available online? You can. Enter Goomoodleikiog, a word created by Leigh Murray and Heidi Beezley to encompass many of the collaborative tools that teachers can use with students. Their website has their presentation and several examples.  And, they’ve created a great video, in the tradition of CommonCraft, that explains the idea:

So, are your students using Goomoodleikiog?

-Lucas

Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools for Young Learners

Came across this great article in THE Journal today.  It’s a great list of ten, very useful, web-based tools to use with students.  Take a look!

-Lucas

Grammar Ninja!

Here’s another great online game that I found from my network on Twitter.  It’s called Grammar Ninja and is a time-based game that helps you develop your skills identifying parts of speech.  It’s pretty fun… and educational!

Oh yeah, did I mention it was developed by a high school senior as part of an independent study?

-Lucas

Free Plagiarism Detection Online

Fresh from my professional learning network…

I’ve added a number of free online tools that can be used to determine if a work is plagiarized or if someone’s plagiarizing your work. I’ve compiled them in the writing section of my delicious.com bookmarks.

-Lucas

Want to Share Your PowerPoint Presentations Online? Try SlideShare!

How often have you had a student who’s missed your class and needs to catch up on course notes? Ever wish there was a simple way to share your presentations online without students having to download PowerPoint viewer? Now there’s a solution! SlideShare is a free service that allows you to upload your PowerPoint or OpenOffice presentations and share them online. You can either refer students to the address of the presentation on the SlideShare site, or you can embed the presentation in your own site. If you really want to get creative, you can record audio of yourself (discussing the slide in greater detail) and upload the .mp3 to go along with the presentation. Then, you can edit the presentation to make sure the slides transition in time with your lecture. Very cool! Imagine having all of your class presentations done? And, yes, you can make your presentations private (invite only). Below is an example of one of my old Biology presentations on cell parts so you can see how it works.

| View | Upload your own

-Lucas

The Asus EeePC – Out of the Box

Yesterday, I had the first opportunity to give the EeePC a test-drive.  If you are unfamiliar with the EeePC, it’s a very small laptop made by Asus that is about the size of a trade paperback.   Here are my initial impressions:

1.  The laptop is very portable.  The screen measures 7″ on the diagonal.  At first I thought the fonts would be difficult to read, but everything scales nicely, and there’s very little side-scrolling while browsing.

2.  The keyboard, though small, is much easier to use than I anticipated.  The only issues I’m having with it are the backspace key and the placement of the number 1 key.  (I’m used to a tilde key being on the far right).

3.  Wireless was very simple.  I turned it on, double clicked, “Wireless Networks,”  selected my wireless signal, put in the passcode and I was online.  It was also simple to connect at a coffee shop, home, and at the University.

4.  The Xandros Linux with IceWM is a very simplified interface.  It has easy access to the things I use a laptop for 95% of the time (Office Apps, Internet, Media Players).

5.  The laptop comes with a headphone/mic jack, 3 USB ports, an ethernet connector,  a VGA out (and it projects nicely), and an SD expansion slot for additional memory space.  I tested the battery life yesterday and  squeezed a solid  3 hours and 15 minutes out of it while at graduate school.  I hooked up an optical mouse and it was instantly functional.  The machine feels pretty solid (especially with its solid-state hard drive).

6.  There’s a growing and active support community out there with folks pushing these little things to their limits.  (http://www.eeeuser.com <http://www.eeeuser.com/> )

My first practical use of the EeePC was joining a Skype-based conference call with two other individuals while we simultaneously edited a document together in Google Documents.  It was very smooth.

I’m still looking for a Squeak image that was designed specifically for the EeePC.  If anyone finds one, let me know.

-Lucas Gillispie,  PCS Tech. Coordinator