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The Internet Classics Archive: 441 searchable works of classical literature
MIT Has 441 works of classical literature available online that allow you to create powerful text queries.Also included are "reader's choice" websites related to the texts.
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If you wanted to examine the dead sea scrolls in the past, it would have been a challenge. These scrolls are being shared online now and allow scholars around the world to have access only afforded to exclusive scholars on a limited basis in the past.
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A wonderful list of educational Twitter hashtags by Jerry Blumengarten (@cybraryman1) - such a helpful person!
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Google Advanced Scholar Search
Perhaps the most powerful page in Google Scholar, you can limit your searches to certain fields of study, certain courts of law, certain years. This is a very powerful tool.
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Google Scholar Citations Open To All - Google Scholar Blog
Researchers should use Google Scholar Citations. This is like Google Analytics for your paper or article. You can create links to your work, update your profile, add links to coauthors, and then track how often your article is cited. The modern researcher should definitely set this up.
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Google scholar lets you search articles, patents, legal opinions and journals. It is time to take students into this took, especially now that you can use google scholar citations.
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Twitter Template - Resources - TES
This is a twitter template. Another tool for offline use for those schools who don't get a lot of access but would like to bring some fun social media style activities into the classroom. You do need to join the free TES site to access these, but it is a great site and I'm finding lots of things to use.
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Facebook template page - Resources - TES
Some of use the fakebook tool at classtools.net but if you need to be offline, this is a template to make a Facebook page for a famous character. It is a .doc (Microsoft Word) file and you can download it and use it for your activity. These are great for looking at famous characters and students enjoy them.
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TES collection World War II - Resources - TES
This is an excellent set of world war 2 resources from the UK including videos and lesson plans. For elementary school.
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Shelfster - The Best Research Tool for Writers
Shelfster is in beta and is a tool for writers to collect resources. It is interesting because of how it moves between desktop, mobile, and web. Research is evolving and students should be empowered with social bookmarking and research aggregation tools like this one.
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College Prep: Famous Authors Take The SAT!
Two well known authors subject themselves to the SAT essay and are graded.This would be an interesting case study for students from many perspectives: 1) for understanding the assessment and 2) for keeping perspective. ;-)
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Best individual tweeter2011 | The Edublog Awards
I love how this year's nominations for best individual tweeter include follow buttons. How cool! Thank you for those who nominated me, I appreciate it!
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Best individual blog 2011 | The Edublog Awards
Thanks for the nominations. My blog made one of the very many on the list for the best individual blog of 2011. Of course, I hope you'll vote. I'll share the other ones as well. Lots of great people on these polls. Yes, if you like me, I'd love to have your vote. ;-)
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ipl2: Information You Can Trust
The Internet public library has a great index of resources to help you find information, particularly deep web resources to use in research. This is a place you should refer student researchers.
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Here is the page showing how steve works. I've been digging through their website trying to see how active steve really is and it look as if perhaps this research project is not as active as it once was. However, I do think that letting students tag books and other works could be a powerful way of seeing meaning emerge and to create networks of learning
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Steve.Museum | Steve: The Museum Social Tagging Project
"Steve is a collaboration of museum professionals and others who believe that social tagging may provide profound new ways to describe and access cultural heritage collections and encourage visitor engagement with collection objects. Our activities include researching social tagging and museum collections; developing open source software tools for tagging collections and managing tags; and engaging in discussion and outreach with members of the community who are interested in implementing social tagging for their own collections."
This fascinating website is museum professionals looking into how social tagging can help museum communities and professionals. It uses a suite of open source tagging tools that can be downloaded. -
Here's my diigo tag cloud of resources I've bookmarked on Diigo.
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Social Bookmarking | Common Craft
If you don't understand social bookmarking, here is a common craft video called "Social Bookmarking in Plain English." It explains how social bookmarking works.
Daily Education and Technology News for Schools 12/05/2011
African Collectors and the Canon of African Art
A culmination of three years of research and writing, the book investigates the curious fact that African art history largely disregards African art collections owned by Africans or held in Africa. The goal of the book is to review the reasons for this marginalization and use a notable African art collection, the Femi Akinsanya African Art Collection, based in Lagos, Nigeria to examine how such collections might be recovered for art history.
Daily Education and Technology News for Schools 11/16/2011
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Nominations Open – The 2011 Edublog Awards are on! | The Edublog Awards
2011 Edublog awards are open. Yes, I think these are important. It helped me a lot in knowing that what I said mattered when I've been nominated, been a finalist, and won as well. Join in the nominations.
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A sticky note account. I may use this for my pkflow method that uses stickys. This website lets you have a page with online stickys and notes. Cool tool that reminds me of corkulous on the ipad.
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Knol - a unit of knowledge: share what you know, publish your expertise.
A website where people share knowledge. This was listed as an important website for learning. I haven't explored it yet, but hope that some of you will share what you're doing in the comments.
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This open source mathematics software includes graphics, algebra, and spreadsheet capabilities and is increasing in use. This is one of those "must loads" on your school or university websites.
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Here is the list of Winners and losers from Jane Hart's list. Some new entries: Google+ (debuting the highest at 26), Ted Talks (at 30), and for math teachers - Geogebra.
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» 2011 Top 100 Tools List and Presentation finalised Learning in the Social Workplace
Jane Hart's list of Top 100 Tools for Learning in 2011. (Hat tip Stephen Downes) This is from a survey - not just one person's opinion. Topping the list (again): Twitter. I also LOVE how this list shows the previous rankings from the prior 4 years.
Youtube is #2 although still blocked in SOOOOO many places followed by Google Docs, Skype, Wordpress, Dropbox, Prezi (something I haven't gotten into yet), Moodle, Slideshare, and Glogster EDU. Take a look at the entire list on her blog post. -
50 Free Apps We're Most Thankful For
Great post from Lifehacker of their 50 apps they are most thankful for with the links to the posts they've written about them. This is my kind of very functional list. I love it!
One note. I totally agree about Dropbox, ccCleaner, Audacity, and Paint.net. My students LOVE paint.net. -
iTunes Match Review – Does iTunes Match Live up to the Hype? | PadGadget
iTunes match is an eagerly awaited cloud playing app touted to people who love music and don't have a lot of space for music. The price is around $2.00 a month and this is one of the first reviews I've read of the service.
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Amazon Kindle Fire could Burn Up iPad's Lead | ITProPortal.com
This survey shows that iPad with the $199 price tag is a 'serious" contender for the ipad. I had someone ask me about Kindle fire vs. iPad. Definitely people are comparing it.
One of the top complaints about Droids has been the somewhat loosely managed droid store but the Kindle fire will use Amazon's app store not droid.I also had some people on Google plus point out to me as we talked about this that the droid OS on tablet device has a much better response to touch than do the smaller devices. This is one of those wait and see type things, I think. -
Teaching All Students: Cheap, DIY options for iPad Stands #iPadEd #mlearning #edtech #assistivetech
Interesting blog post on DIY "cheap" ipad stands for students (with youtube videos.)
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5 Reasons Why i Want Ipad2 in My Classroom Ppt Presentation
This is a great presentation to view for two reasons:
1) This author shares why she wants ipad 2's in her classroom and the reasons are pretty unique.
2) She uses Author stream which boasts it can "do more with powerpoint" - is this an alternative to slideshare? Interesting tool. -
Professor tries improving lectures by removing them from class | Inside Higher Ed
This case study in Inside Higher Ed about Professor Mike Garver (Central Michigan University - Marketing) shows how this professor is giving lectures by no longer giving lectures. Interestingly, he talks about how Bloom's Taxonomy impacted his change in style. This article ALSO includes a video and I totally applaud the journal of higher ed for including a video. There are so many articles talking about a "great teacher" doing this or "great professor" doing that - SHOW ME. This article did just that. Applause to Inside higher ed and Steve Kolowich - give us more articles like this.
If you're in higher ed or a teacher in high school - this is a great read.
“It’s a good way to, in his words, ‘Put a movie in your mind,’ -
Social Games: 5 Growing Threats to Watch - IndustryGamers
Interesting analysis on why some social games (Zynga in this case study) are having problems online. I think the "friend spam" approach is something for many of us to learn as we join spaces. This is an interesting article for FlatClassroom students to read as they analyze game based activities.
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Secondary Maths resources collections - Resources - TES
A monstrous list of math links including some cool math bingo and other math collections. This UK collection has a ton of resources for those who are always looking for math things.
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Year Long Technology Project (US Grade 9) - Resources - TES
I uploaded my "Freshman Project" to the @Tesconnect website. This is a very large network of teachers that I'm using now as it links with English speaking classrooms outside the US. This is the assignment that begins the year long project in my class as students design their own project. This is based upon the senior project I first saw this summer in Evansville, Indiana. Yes, you need to join TES to download the resource. I am promoting this site as part of some work I'm doing for them (as I disclosed two weeks a go) but it is a great site and I like the work they are doing very much! So join in, share, and download.
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Kodu and English - Resources - TES
Some guides for using Kodu game lab in the classroom. I've used this in my classroom. Kodu is a free game creation software from Microsoft. Cool tool.
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Fifth Graders Go Global with Holiday Card Exchange | Edutopia
Donna Roman is such a great teacher. Here in her Edutopia article she shares how her classroom is going global. Just a great example for elementary teachers to follow.
The New Authentic Research Frontier: Google Books nGram Viewer
Google's nGram viewer lets you search over 5 million books for the instances of words. Imagine it as a search engine into the uses of words since 1800.
To better understand it, view the Tedx Boston talk "A Picture is Worth 500 Billion Words" by Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel.
It is quite interesting and still a big imperfect as the uses of words change so dramatically. You can see that in this search (shown in the chart below) I did for the words school, teacher, and principal. Do we now call principals administrators instead? If we do, then administrator is used in many professions and the results won't just show schools.
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| Comparing Teacher, Principal, and School and the use of these words in books. |
I also find it fascinating in the chart belowwhere I searched for educational technology, project based learning, differentiated instruction, classroom management, class size.
Here we can see that as we talked about class size in the 1930's we talked about classroom management. In the 1970's and 80's educational technology and class size were common discussions and now we are beginning to talk more about classroom management than educational technology as we talk about class size.
Differentiated instruction and project based learning are barely a blip. We just aren't talking about this. (Sad.)
Finally, I've been curious about the use of the terms PLN, PLE, PLC - note this is only going through books through the year. When you look at the chart, you think that PLC has been winning out until you look at the types of mentions more closely.
The fact is that PLC are programmable logic controllers and their use has blossomed. Be very careful and look to drill down and understand the meaning of terms.
If you take that chart at face value you will make a WRONG analysis. Instead you have to type the terms themselves. Note that we can only search through 2008 or this number may be different. However, if we look at this, we see that personal learning environment is used more widely with personal learning community and personal learning network not even making a blip.
So, you can't take a search at face value.
We are only at the beginning of our analysis. I would like to know, for example, why William Shakespeare was so incredibly popular between 1940 and 1950.
This is a new albeit imperfect literacy but a powerful tool that is now an infant born before your eyes. All types of questions will emerge such as:
- Can we include all ebooks?
- Can we opt in new books so they are automatically included in the results?
- Can you aggregate and compare blogs, news media, and books?
- Can we drill down and include only one genre?
- Could we just use this for research in a certain field, for example?
- Could we aggregate collections?
Researchers, students, teachers, and anyone curious can find all sorts of uses for this incredible new tool. It may challenge your thinking but we are just seeing the beginning of digitization. What happens when paintings are digitized and we can examine trends in the use of color or trends in the use of certain types of materials in art? Topics or themes across art?
The thoughts are limitless but this is a tool I've introduced to my students today. They started by looking up their names and various spellings of their names.
Khan Academy
Since I'm an elementary + secondary English person, I focus a lot on tools that can be used in reading and writing. Science-y tech tools are pretty easy to find, but I've found that, in general, I have a lot harder of a time finding technological math tools. One of my good friends teaches Algebra, and she is working hard this year to incorporate more technology into her classroom. When I stumbled onto Khan Academy, it immediately made me think of her because of the math possibilities on this website. But if you teach science, history, or any type of financial or economics course, Khan Academy would be good for you, too.
Khan Academy offers FREE videos to the public over the subjects mentioned above. There are over 2,000 videos available for viewing, and they seem to be adding more!
A really cool math feature: math exercises are offered, one-by-one, at whatever level of difficulty you need. Users work the problem out step-by-step before being taken to another equation generated by Khan Academy. The website can remember progress students have made while doing equations, and can e-mail the teacher statistics of each student's work.
While Khan Academy doesn't follow any state's specific standards, it does hit concepts commonly referenced on ACT, SAT, AP exams, and other standardized tests. I assume it would be easy to find a video to fit a particular objective since the videos are clearly labeled.
You can watch the videos for free and without doing anything to register, but if you want Khan Academy to remember any progress, produce any charts, etc. you must sign up for a free account. If you want your students to use this and be tracked individually, each student must have his/her own free account. I know it sounds like a hassle, but the rewards are steep! On the plus side, anyone can use their Google or Facebook account to sign in quickly and easily to Khan Academy, and almost everyone has registered for at least one of those websites!
If you only look at the subject list, it may appear as though Khan Academy doesn't offer much. But that's an illusion. They focus mainly on math and science, but their collections of videos in those two subjects are quite extensive. For instance, in the math section, there are the following categories: arethmetic, developmental math 1, developmental math 2, core pre-algebra, worked examples 1, brain teasers, worked examples 2, worked examples 3, worked examples 4, core geometry, trig, probability, statistics, pre-calc, calc, differential equations, and linear algebra. And then each of those categories hosts a plethora of video options. For instance, in the "core algebra" category, there appear to be about 100 videos!
The videos appear as YouTube videos, but since they're shown through the Khan Academy website, you shouldn't have any problems with filters, even if YouTube is blocked at your school.
Here's an example of a video. This one is titled "Algebra: Slope."
Although I believe that teachers should do the teaching in their classrooms, I do understand that sometimes videos are necessary. Videos taught by a person other than the teacher can give students a look at someone else's teaching method, which may increase understanding. Videos can also provide supplemental information (particularly at home) or can be something to show in a pinch when you need emergency lesson plans in preparation for a substitute.
Whatever your intention, maybe Khan Academy will help your students grasp a better understanding of its featured subjects.
I Got Two Dogs: (Book and CD)
Fanny and Blue may not be the smartest dogs, and they may not be the best-behaved dogs, but they are definitely the most-loved dogs.
John Lithgow's bouncy song - in the book and on the accompanying CD - is based on his own family's two dogs. And Robert Neubecker's eye-popping illustrations capture the joy of all things dog.
Product Details
Reading level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover: 32 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing; Rei/Com edition (October 21, 2008)
Language: English
From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 1—This musical ode to two prized pooches packs a crowd-pleasing wallop of theatricality: "I got two dogs, Fanny and Blue./Bet you kind of wish you had two dogs too.... They're not too smart, but they're loyal and true-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo/Oh there's nothing I'd trade for my Fanny and Blue." Lithgow performs his catchy melody on the accompanying CD, complete with a back-up chorus, trilling flutes, and trumpets. The lyrics are translated clearly onto the book's pages and will send listeners into fits of giggles at each houndlike repetition of the "ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo" refrain. Neubecker's large, vibrant paintings perfectly capture the frenetic world of dog ownership, cheekily depicting a broader appreciation for each creature's personality than the verses alone provide. For example, "I got two dogs, Fanny and Blue./Always go together like a sock and shoe" is paired with a picture that reveals the two mutts using a sock and a shoe as chew toys. The illustration for "I walk 'em in the evening and the morning dew" shows the pups bounding after a very displeased cat with their leashes trailing behind. Sure to entice youngsters, this book will find a welcome home in storytime and circulating collections.—Jayne Damron, Farmington Community Library, MI
Daily Education & Technology News for Schools 06/03/2011
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a bunch of kings and queens: spoken word for the last day of grade 9 english @teach-em-good
From Teach -em Good on the last day of class. I enjoyed reading this.
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A blog written about ipad apps for education.
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The oldest word wide web catalog. Includes many deep web resources.
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Welcome to INFOMINE: Scholarly Internet Resource Collections
An index of deep web resources. Did you know that some estimate the deep web has 50 times the data than is available on the surface web? Educators should model getting past popular public search engines into these dynamic academically curated sources of information.
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You can save your favorite Tweets to Diigo. This is going to be SO useful!
I'm going to be sort of hacking in in that I'm saving those tweets to my education tag which will then send the tweets to my blog in the morning. We'll see if I like it and how it goes.
Daily Education & Technology News for Schools 04/02/2011
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Generations and Gadgets - Pew Research Center
Important study for those who want to know what people own. Cell phone tops this list! 95% of people aged 18-34 have a cell phone with 85% of people 18+ owning one.
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Add-ons for Google Products :: Collections :: Add-ons for Firefox
Google Add ons for Firefox - some other excellent add ons if you use the google suite of products.
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ID's collection : expert web browsing made simple :: Collections :: Add-ons for Firefox
An amazing list of firefox add ons for firefox 4. For those who want turbo-charged web browsing.
eBook Revolution (btw Tons of Free Educational Books in Kindle Store Today)
Behind the scenes, ebooks are gaining steam. I gave the assigned book for my marketing class and had a student ask me if she "is allowed to get it on her kindle." We have at least 10 students with them and many more who want them.
The literature teacher today told me that she was concerned about students keeping up but that one student used it for the Great Gatsby today with no problem keeping up and she was pleased. She's thinking about using Kindle on her ipad and marking her highlights and then using the Kindle on her PC to show on the board her notes and highlights instead of having to read them out.
Another reason: Free "stuff"
Over 130 free books from Kaplan for a limited time! Perusing my favorite "kindle freebie" blog, Kindle Nation Daily, I found tons of free educational books out today from classroom management to grammar to some killer Kaplan study guides for about every test and subject. There is also one for kids looking at going to college. Most of these are free for a limited time, so you've gotta act now.
To me, it is worth the 99 cents a month I pay for Kindle nation daily as I've gotten some great books that shortly go up to $17 or more and I would have wanted to buy them anyway. I keep them in collections but they are also incredibly searchable for when I'm researching a topic.
So, you don't have a kindle - well, download it onto your computer (ipad, or cell phone or whatever) - you can still get these books. If Kindle's aren't standard, the apps should certainly be standard on your teacher computers!
Besides this free stuff today, the ebook revolution is here - the teachers here are ready, the students are ready - and usually when it hits here it is a sign of what the masses want to do. So, publishers - beware - ebook or die. And the rest of us - let's figure this out and understand the easiest ways to do this.
A free Freebies of note:
Aluka
"...Aluka seeks to attract high-quality scholarly content about Africa from institutions and individuals across the globe. By contributing their collections to the Aluka platform, content owners will have a means of offering access to their collections to an international audience—without having to develop and support their own technology platforms. Aluka’s web-based platform provides powerful tools for research, teaching, collaboration, and knowledge exchange..."
JSTOR: Open Africa Program
JSTOR the scholarly journal archive, has launched the Open Africa Initiative:
As part of JSTOR's mission to create an archive of scholarly literature and extend access to the archive as broadly as possible, we are proud to announce that JSTOR has adopted a plan to waive participation fees for any academic or not-for-profit institution on the continent of Africa. This plan affects new participants, as well as institutions that currently participate in JSTOR.
Program highlights include that:
- Access will be for the entire JSTOR archive, including all content added to the archive during the period of participation. Information about each collection may be found at Currently Available Collections and Journals.
- Access to JSTOR is provided via the Internet, using IP addresses that are authorized at the institution to have that access. An institution must have stable IP addresses in order to participate in this program. JSTOR will not be offering password-based access to Open Africa participants.