A table of uses of Blogs in Education

It is at this link: http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/files/2003/10/matrix2.gif

10 great Technology training and tools for Teachers and Librarians

   Bibliography on Technology training and tools for Teachers and Librarians

TILT: Technology Integrated into Learning and Teachinghttp://www.4j.lane.edu/tilt

   Sponsored by the Eugene, Oregan School District.  This website has many resources for teachers to use or integrate technology into lessons.  This website has several Wikis that contain lessons in many subjects across grade levels.    They have Wikis on Smartboard usage  and technology tutorials/workshops, and ideas for Googleapps and many other 2.0 technologies and tools.

Teacher Training Videoshttp://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/

   This website is created by Russell Stannard who is a professor who specializes in Multimedia and ICT.  He has won several national awards for his innovations and website.  His website has training videos in Web 2.0 for English language and ESL teachers as well as all teachers.  His training videos range in topic from how to build a wiki to mindmaps to moodle to in-depth twitter, and many more.  He also offers a website or tool of the month and workshops.

Free Technology for Teachershttp://www.freetech4teachers.com/

    This blog is created and maintained by Richard Byrne who is a certified Google instructor and this site has received 3 Edublog awards in 2008-2009.  This blog site contains many blogs that have been archived into great subject headings such as: 15 of the most view blogs.  And in this blog you can find lists of great 2.0 resources for teachers and librarians such as: a list of 6 websites students can use to create videos and 12 websites students can use to create and post slideshows.

Commoncrafthttp://www.commoncraft.com/

       This website is owned by a small company created by a couple based in Seattle and since beginning to create videos in 2007 they have more than 30 videos produced which have been viewed by more than 20 million people worldwide.    Their company creates short, simple, and to-the-point tutorials, with a bit of humor mixed in on many topics especially technology, such as on: blogs, social media, podcasting, wikis, and much more.  This is a great resource to introduce those teachers who are reluctant to learn and utilize technology in the classroom.

Classroom 2.0 http://www.classroom20.com/

     This website is a social network for those interested in integrating 2.0 tools into the classroom.  The author of the website, Steve Hargadon, states that it is a great place for ‘beginners’ to be comfortable.   This website has received 3 Edublog awards for their social network and webinar series. This website is unique and useful in that they have a separate blog with ongoing conversations for each and every tool that you can imagine. They also have many videos on various uses of various 2.0 tools with case studies as well.

DiBlasihttp://www.drhowie.com/

               This website created by Dr. Howie DiBlasi has received the 2009-10 CILC award (Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration).   The website has various instructional pages for various tools and many pages/sites contain idea pages – ideas for teachers in using the tool or website -such as:  many Google tools; Glogster; etc.  He has a great resource under the topic ‘Creativity’ that contains many useful links to critical thinking websites with cool exercises.  Critical thinking is one skill students consistently score low on in standardized testing.

Bernie Poole’s Website for Teaching Technologyhttp://www.pitt.edu/~poole/

         Bernie Poole taught Computer Science at the University of Pittsburgh for 13 years and was awarded the Fullbright Scholarship to teach in India for 6 months.  He has online books he has written such as Education of the Information Age which in my humble opinion can be considered the bible on ‘technology and mindtools for teachers’.  He also has complete and simple to follow tutorials on how to use Microsoft Office software.  His tutorial on Office is for teachers and includes a tutorial on Office 2007 -drawing and diagramming tools- which are great mindtools - semantic and diagramming tools -for increasing the effectiveness of pedagogy.

The Blue Skunk Blog
http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/

          Doug Johnson is the Director for Media and Technology for Mankota (MN) public schools and he has written several books on the use of technology for student learning in schools.  He has a Blue Skunk blog, website and Facebook page.   The blog contains hundreds of archived posts on issues of technology and the advocacy of technology.  Even though the archives are organized by date he has a search engine in the archive.  In his blog he speaks on the philosophy of technology in eductation as well as introducing  new 2.0 and technology/hardware tools and he speaks on their usage and effectiveness.

100 Apps for Teachershttp://www.rasmussen.edu/student-life/blogs/main/100-apps-for-teacher

    This blog is sponsored by the Rasmussen College. This blog contains short summaries on each of the 50 tools and 50 smartphone applications listed and how they may of be of use for the teacher.  They also show a picture of the application with some of the listings. The applications are not only 2.0 apps but iPhone apps as well.  They list interesting tools such as Moodle, Mindmoto, ClassMarker –for creating online tests, and ‘Grammar up’ to stimulate students via interesting grammar quizzes, and many more tools as well.

Woopidhttp://www.woopid.com/

    Thousands of tutorial videos for free on how to use applications and programs in Mac and PC.
    Also some tutorials for websites on the internet such as Google and Facebook.  You can also get basic assistance on various hardware such as: iPhone, Blackberry, Xbox 360, etc.  If you do not find the tutorial you need on their site you can request a custom tutorial.  However it is a dot com and they make money by offering space for advertisers.

What to do to help move your-self, community, nation, world, forward!! -from the Crunk Feminist Collective.

  -Considering Hip Hop culture has been the largest influence of American culture in the past several decades one should be aware and study this influence. For we are: language, music, art, food, and social animals via technology and other methods. Hip-hop and post hip hop culture will play a significant role in our lives and you as teacher/librarian/student can use your knowledge of this culture to meet our youth where they are and to engage them in learning via meeting them where they are.

Check out these commandments for they may be the basis for an informed and joyous life:

The following taken from: http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/ten-crunk-commandments-for-re-invigorating-hip-hop-feminist-studies/

Ten Crunk Commandments for Re-Invigorating Hip Hop Feminist Studies

9 Mar

1. Know your history. – If you are going to engage in scholarship on Hip Hop and/or Feminism, know and cite the authors who have helped to shape the field—Joan Morgan, Gwendolyn Pough, Mark Anthony Neal, Tricia Rose, and others are a few good folks to start with. In the rush to incorporate the sexy theorists of the moment, don’t throw away important theorists like bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Gloria Anzaldua, Chela Sandoval and others in projects on Black and Brown feminisms. See a non-exhaustive, beginning bibliography here.
2. Don’t Romanticize the Past. – There is no Hip Hop Eden. Resist the urge to act as though there has been a pure moment in Hip Hop where issues of misogyny, commercialism, opportunism have not been an issue.
3. Positions—Know Yours/Take One. – Make sure as you are doing this work that you position yourself in relationship to the community. Recognize the need to acknowledge your race, gender, generational, and political positionalities. Be willing to take intellectual and creative risks, to question accepted orthodoxy.
4. Contextualize and Situate. – Name the cultural, political, historical and scholarly contexts of your work and your arguments.  Make sure to articulate the key political and social issues that frame this moment. Other scholars pointed to the 70s and 80s as the era of deindustrialization, the defunding of arts programs in public schools, the war on drugs, etc. But this moment is very different. It is characterized by unparalleled conservative backlash, near total deregulation of media and corporations, outsourcing, the economic and political dominance of transnational corporations, battles over the meaning of American citizenship, the War on Terror,  the concretization of the prison industrial complex and massive economic downturn. These are the issues that have framed the creation of Hip Hop music and culture in the 21^st century, and new analyses must be attuned to these issues specifically.
5. Avoid the pitfalls of presentism.— You cannot have this moment for life. Do work that will last. Do not merely discuss those artists whose work is hot in the moment but will have no lasting value. Make sure that your line of inquiry ascertains the broader relevance of the subject matters you choose, so that the formulations you offer will remain relevant even if the example you choose does not.
6. Embrace ambivalence. – Reject false binaries. For instance, the line between mainstream Hip Hop and underground Hip Hop is at best blurry.  Also reject formulations like the Madonna/Whore split when evaluating the contributions of women in rap music.
7. Envision the possibilities. – Rather than merely deconstructing, Hip Hop scholars and feminists scholars alike, must ask “what kind of world are we creating or do we aim to create?” We must also ask new questions. Questions about misogyny in Hip Hop are fairly uncreative at this point. Projects should begin to address Hip Hop films, Hip Hop literature, Hip Hop fashion, Hip Hop and the arts, and Hip Hop’s epistemological relationships to other knowledge systems.
8. Wield Technology.—Technological literacy is critical for scholarship, creativity and social movements. Open yourself to this world, and begin to ask questions about how the technological universe affects Hip Hop culture and feminist studies.
9. Lived Realities Still Matter.—Scholarship must be accountable to the people. Hip Hop and Feminist scholarship must still be connected to movements for social change. Also, theory does not flow in one direction (i.e. from the top down.) In fact, scholarship needs to catch up to the culture, not the other way around.
10. Recognize the Power of the Collective.—Collective organizing draws on the best creative, political and          scholarly traditions of both Hip Hop and Feminism, and folks who actively move in these communities,       must both remember and recenter the power of the collective in doing scholarly, political, and creative work.

This Friday - Great language and mind aerobics under the stars!

Rally for Education at State Captiol- TX -March, 14, 2011

Less money= smaller class sizes= less attention & time= lack of education=increase failures & dropout rates= Can our ranking get any lower?!=major social problems and $ for Texas in the future!

  I was at the rally and AFT were strong in numbers.  We spoke to one representative who stated that the entire reason for forming  State gov. was for education.  If this is true then Gov. Perry has alot of re-thinking to do. When is the right time to use the Rainy Day fund?! - because our children and our future in Texas are drowning over here.

Two separate educations : Video: Income inequality in America: An illustrated interview | Need to Know

Where have we been and where is America heading?Video: Income inequality in America: An illustrated interview | Need to Know

Teens wanted!

  By an artist in the org. -Graffiti Foundation: http://www.graffitifound.com/

Check out their artists page and see some great work!

From their website:
Mission: Our mission is to help local artists find an outlet for their creativity, energy and voice as well as teach them how to create a future from their passion

Vision: Create a self sustaining Social Enterprise that brings a new social awareness to the local community to help reduce the amount of unwanted graffiti in the city. By working with both the artist and the community, it is our vision to help create a solid platform of art over vandalism. It is also our goal to use funds that were once allocated towards cleaning graffiti and have it redirected it to help improve the lives of individuals by giving them the financial resources and the opportunity for a formal, art/academic-based education

Their blog for upcoming events: http://www.graffitifound.blogspot.com/

Where Spirituality and Technology meet!

  Just strolling through the Josephine Street theater area - Tobin Hill Art Alliance.
   Goes on every 2nd Saturday of the Month.
Creations by Richard Slocum at: rslocum@satx.rr.com
            Facebook: richard slocum




































His art makes me wonder about the connection between spirituality and technology.  Technology is perhaps the greatest gift/tool in human history for discovery, learning, sharing, communicating, advocating, community building, the democratization of ideas and of voice.  Yet over 60% of all internet activity is for porn?!  We need a revolution or evolution in the use of technology and the internet.  Create and share the positive and amazing in life. "More! More! More! "

Great blog on book reviews.

http://professornana.livejournal.com/

Advocate

Advocate

Advocate for libraries today. Instant connection via email to Senators.

Great read and inspiring story!

His blog and book review is at: http://williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/

  This is great autobiography of a young 13 year old boy from Malawi, Africa who sought out books and reading and used his new knowledge to basically save the lives of his family.  He was ridiculed by almost everyone for going to the scrap yards to rummage for everything he needed.  A great read.

Black and Brown Feminisms in Hip Hop Media Symposium at UTSA!

Many and various sessions took place during the day.  In the evening many participants of the symposium as well as fellow San Antonions participated in the roundtable discussion.  I was present for this and I have to say it was eye-opening to hear the in-depth and intense knowledge the speakers have of hip-hop culture and American culture, politics, race-relations, education, technology and youth actions.  All four professors: Brittney Cooper, Aisha Durham, Susana Morris and Rachel Raimist worked in a concerted effort to offer one of the best and most relevant roundtable discussions this blogger has ever attended! Do yourself a favor and go to thier blog to read their top ten list of life lessons/manifesto at: http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/

Update Google doc and share instantly from Microsoft Office

Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office available to all

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Labels: Cloud Connect

Many of you already use Google Docs for editing your documents, but there are still many people that are tied to desktop applications and haven’t experienced the numerous benefits cloud applications to bring. To help bring more people to the cloud and take advantage of features that result, we’re happy to announce that Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is now available to everyone. Google Cloud Connect is a free plugin that improves Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 on Windows PCs. It adds simultaneous collaboration, revision history, cloud sync, unique URLs and simple sharing to the Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint applications:



Take it for a spin on your Windows PC by downloading the plugin.

To learn more about how Google Cloud Connect can help businesses, check out the more detailed post on the Google Enterprise Blog.

Posted by: Shan Sinha, Google Apps Product Manager

Update: Many of you have also asked about availability for Macs. Unfortunately due to the lack of support for open APIs on Microsoft Office for Mac, we are unable to make Google Cloud Connect available on Macs at this time. We look forward to when that time comes so we can provide this feature to our Mac customers as well.

Great website for new 2.0 tools for teachers - eduTecher.net

It even has a free app for the phone.
eduTecher.net

What to do about the Digital Divide?

Do you keep new tech. from students to keep them from feeling bad? 
According to this manifesto you should introduce the technology as long as it fits the needs of your students.

Common Sense Librarianship: An Ordered List Manifesto