Friday, February 26, 2010

Free Tech Tools

A mad dash to the main theater after the poster session I wanted to see was a no-show, here to see a session on free technology tools led by Rushton Hurley “teacher, trainer, nonprofit guy” & Google Certified,-- and once again I'm in a packed PACKED room! Already the presenter is much more dynamic than the keynote, which is great- I need a wake-up! Ugh…network issues again…back to typing on word. Here are my notes on this presentation:

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·         The key to technology is “you gotta play with it.”

·         Five minutes into this session he already has us laughing and joking- awesome!

·         Words and finding them

o   Urbandictionary.com (I’ve used this before- OME, it’s crazy.)

o   Google page- advance search, click on different types of files- search for powerspoints, pdfs, etc.

o   Don’t have kids create powerpoints- have them find them, evaluate them and choose the best and what they would do to change it.- FREAKING AWESOME IDEA!

o   Google books- get free books, add your own library to keep track of your books, some kids will do better by reading them online!

o   Google scholar has cited by link, related articles.

o   Google Docs- things you can do with your excel, he showed a cool example of adding countries to the spreadsheet; with fruits it will pull up chocolate too because it thinks it’s flavor.

o   Always ask “Kids we just pulled this information off the internet, how will be evaluate it?”

o   He has choose their own homework assignment each week (have guidelines for the kids) add it to google forms.

o   Wikispaces.net very edu friendly- if you request to take the ads off they will for education.

o   Google sites- google’s version of a wiki- add free

o   Look up self-grading quizzes on youtube

o   Tag galaxy- search for flickr photos (don’t do photo searches in front of the kids)

o   Flickr- cooliris.com

o   Google maps- my maps, still excellent if you can’t use earth.

o   Jamendo- everything is creative commons licensed, music sharing sites.

o   Zamzar, use to convert files, show you ads, but it’s free! You can convert a url to a pdf, video download, etc.

o   Google sketch-up, 3-D modeling program, dot changes to blue to find the midpoint, showed an example of creating a house, add shadows, download sketch-ups that others have made.

o   Always ask- is it accurate and how do we know?

o   Freshbrain.org- showed example of student made video on scouting, awesome.

o   “THIS STUFF MATTERS.” Kids love to see each others’ projects.

o   Nextvista.org is his nonprofit website.

o   Check out the website- more tools available.

Posted via email from Teacher Tracks (The Posterous)

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