Just saw a post about ThingLink on twitter and have to play! @AuntyTech has a whole bunch of ideas about using ThingLink in education.
Ok, I’ll be back in a minute or two after I play with it a bit.
And I’m back. Wow, that is so much fun! It reminds me a bit of doing a clickable imagemap in my early html days. But this is so much easier.
Here’s how it works:
Don’t miss this opportunity!Google’s Global Online Science Fair is open to students aged 13-18 and is accepting submissions from Jan 11 to April 4.
Of coures, the project encourages the use of many different free Google tools : Google docs to create surveys, gather data and create presentations; YouTube to present a video of the project; Google Scholar and other search tools for research, and so on.
Google and partners (CERN, National Geographic, Lego, Scientific American) are offering some pretty great prizes like a trip to the Galapagos Islands, scholarships and more.
And students will need a Google account to submit their project via the template available in Google Sites. (Sample submission)
Want to know more? Check out the Resources for Teachers page.
Say what I might about Google owning our lives (and I do!), this looks like a fabulous opportunity for your students. And a great chance for you to explore some tools that you may not have tried yet. I know what great things educators are doing with these tools from all the interesting ideas I’ve heard in the Google Tools workshops I’ve been teaching. Of course, there are are many other tools that students can use in their research projects as well. That’s the basis of another workshop I’ve been offering called Research 2.0 Hope to see some of you at the next session later this month in Saratoga.
Just a quick post with some odds and ends of great resource sites & blog posts that I’ve run across in the past few weeks. I came across most of these via my friends on Twitter. Some pretty amazing school folks on Twitter, and oh so willing to share their ideas, tips and resources.
If you haven’t considered using Netvibes as a tool to help student’s organize their research resources, take a look at these examples created by 10th grade students working on Veterans’ issues research projects. Alex’s page & Jovi’s page are both terrific examples of how Netvibes can help students bring together a wealth of research materials, help keep them on track during the project and allow them to share their progress with others. It’s equally an organizational tool and a presentation tool.
These students are part of the semester long Media 21 project designed and taught by Buffy Hamilton and her colleague, Ms. Lester at Creekview High School in Canton, Georgia.
And be sure to read Buffy’s most recent post to hear more about this impressive project and hear Alex & Jovi explain how they put together their Netvibes pages.
From findingEducation
New York State Educators:
If you are teacher, librarian or school administrator at a New York public, private or independent school, WE WANT YOU! We are conducting a survey of middle school and high school students’ online research habits, and we’d love for you to participate.The online surveys are short, painless (we don’t ask sensitive questions), easy to understand and anonymous. They should take about 10 minutes to complete.
Please note: Students will not be asked to provide their names, e-mail addresses or any other identifying information.
I’m having a great time playing with my new Verizon Droid phone and learning how to interact with a phone that is way smarter than me. My old phone was 6 years old, hip for it’s day, but that day is long gone!
My favorite app so far is Google Sky Map. My local astronomer immediately took it outside to test it against the real sky and gave it two thumbs up. The sky moves with you and zooms in to give you more detail of any section of the sky.
There are options to turn stars, constellations, grids and other sky features on and off. Type a planet or star into the search box and it helpfully suggests objects so you don’t have to type the whole name. Select an object to get a big circle and arrows that point you to that object. Look, I found Mars! I wonder if it will show the location of meteor showers?
My astronomer is now fearing redundancy. I promise that will never happen! Really.
p.s. There’s a web based version of Google Sky and a Sky feature in Google Earth too.
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