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.
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