Omnivorous Surfer

I am ashamed to say I had never check out YouTube for useful information. For fun stuff, absolutely, but never for anything that could remotely be considered helpful. Wow! What have I been missing?? I'm always on the lookout for resources that might become part of a workshop, either for preparation or sharing. I just did searches for "classroom skype," "windows file management," "microsoft office," and found that there are lots of tutorials as well as videos of people sharing what they are doing in the classroom. I can't even begin to imagine what else I might find as I explore more.

SlapStick dry-erase replacement boards are installed on top of existing chalk boards or even on walls. This would be much cheaper than buying dry-erase boards. The company also has SlapTape, a double-sided tape for hanging posters which, they say, should not remove paint on most walls. The website has a link to a YouTube video which demonstrates the ease of installation (video recorded using a Flip video camera, but that's another story).

I think the tape could be useful in the home, but the replacement boards and tape would definitely be useful in the classroom at any level.

If you ever order a decorated cake, be sure to pick it up in time to have it redone if necessary. Don't understand why? Check out the Cake Wrecks blog. Amazing what can happen to a cake. Prepare yourself for lots of laughs on this one!

Animoto lets you create professional-quality videos that can be downloaded or shared using your own photos/video. There's a good description at Mashable, but basically you upload photos and videos, add music and optional narration, and voila, a video appears. Prices are reasonable (30-second videos are free, full-length ones cost about $3, and an annual subscription is $30), but teachers can apply for a FREE all-access pass to use in the classroom to produce full-length videos from photos. Pretty awesome.

I have a new Flip Mino HD video camera and lots of photos...I'm going to have to try this one out fo myself!

Oh, my goodness! Can I ever use this site! I used to be so organized that I would have all my cards for the month in my bottom desk drawer, addressed and stamped, in date order with the date to be mailed on the back flap. Now I’m lucky if I get cards in time, let alone mail them in time. Jack Cards is a site designed to help people like me, and I’m sure I’m not alone on this one!

After you have registered (for free) on the site, import or add your contacts along with with addresses and birthdates and/or anniversaries (or you can have the site ask your contacts to enter that information for you). Then select cards from the wide selection available ($3.95-$4.96 or so) and you will receive each card, ready for you to personalize and mail, in time to send it out. You can also make a special event list (such as Christmas), add contacts to that and have those cards taken care of. I don’t know that I would use that feature, but it’s available.

Why do I keep buying cookbooks when I can find recipes for almost anything on the Internet? I have a Make-a-Mix cookbook which I love. Making my own mixes saves money (and time), so I use it quite a bit. Now I’ve found a few websites that have mix recipes. More fun!

Budget101.com has coupons, freebies, and lots more, but the mixes are what I’m interested in.

And what doesn’t about.com have? The mixes are in the “Busy Cooks” section.

As a Hoosier, I can’t leave out a Purdue 4-H site. There are only 5 recipes on the Make-Your-Own Mix Recipes page (shake & bake, corn bread, taco seasoning, poultry seasoning, and onion soup) , but I plan to use them!

While looking for good sites with free audio downloads, I found Open Culture, “the best free cultural & educational media on the web.” I’ll use the audiobook page, which lists titles available from a variety of sources, but I found more than I bargained for with this site.

Open  Culture provides access to educational resources for almost every discipline and includes, in addition to audio and podcasts, video (YouTube has content for education?), 250 free courses, eBooks, and culture.

A friend brought pictures of some ice formations someone he knew had found in his yard. In doing some research, he found them to be called ice ribbons, frost flowers, or ice flowers. They can take on different forms, and they're fascinating! The photo here, which I believe not to be copyrighted, comes from City-Data.com.  Dr. James R. Carter of Illinois State University, Normal, IL, has links to lots of pictures (his and others') and information available.

In short, it appears that when certain conditions exist, water drawn up through the roots into the stem of the plan and, freezes it and as it expands is "extruded" through breaks it creates in the wall of the stem.

I now want to get some seeds to plant Verbesina virginica (also known as White Crownbeard or Frostweed), one of the plants that seem to support the growth of ice flowers. Apparently there are others, including yellow ironweed, salvia, and vinca. I've planted both in the past; I will do so again and will leave them in the ground over winter to see what might happen.

QDrive.net provides 1G of space for free. Files can be securely transferred. You can Tweet a file by simply clicking "Tweet File to send a download link straight to Twitter. Files will be completely compatible across all operating systems, according to the site. The site has a more complete description of features, which vary by type of account.

NYI PhotoWorld, a photo ezine produced by the New York Institute of Photography, has "Photo Tips, 'How-to' Articles, and Opinion from the Pros." I came across it while looking for help on taking photos of Christmas lights, which I had been experimenting with. This particular article has suggestions for digital as well as film cameras, suggestions for using editing software, and a variety of ideas for different photo moods. If this is any indication of the content, I think this will be a valuable site which I will have to peruse when I have more time! Actually, their classes look pretty interesting, too...

If you want to check the speed at which your computer uploads/downloads data, speakeasy does a free speed test, no registration required.

This tip, "Use Word to type on a printed form without a typewriter," from Tech Republic offers a much better solution than the one I have used in the past. It does require a scanner.

When sharing files over the Internet there are at least two reasons why you might wish to make them available as PDFs rather than as document (.doc, .xls, etc.) files. First, the recipient might be unable to open the file if (s)he doesn't have the same software and version used to create the document. Secondly, sometimes you don't want others to make changes to the file.

Windows, at least through the XP release, doesn't  provide for creating PDFs of documents. I have been using PrimoPDF for several years. Once you have downloaded and installed the free software, you will see PrimoPDF as one of your printers. Simply print your document, choose the PrimoPDF printer, name and choose a location to save the file, and your PDF version will be displayed in Adobe Reader. It's then ready to email or upload to your website. Too simple!

I use PrimoPDF to "print" (read "save") copies of purchase confirmations or web pages rather than printing a hardcopy. Save paper, and I know right where they are!

Some schools provide amazingly rich collections of links to websites for teachers. I just found one such listing from Dillon District 2 from South Carolina. If there's a category that isn't included here, I don't know what it could be! There are links for lesson plans, templates, fonts, and so much more.

Teachers--well, and others, too--would sometimes like additional fonts. Several sites (all of the ones below) have FREE ones available for download. The fonts available will include alphabets and dingbats (typographical ornaments or symbols).

Fonts4Free has some really cool holiday fonts among its collections.

Fontstock.net has literally hundreds to choose from (use the alphabetic selector on the left side; the search box is for another site).

If I didn't have an alarm gadget on my desktop, I'd use Kuku Klok (why do tech people keep missspelling words on purpose??) to help me limit my time on the Internet! All you have to do is set the time. Clean interface. "Swiss made"!

What a great resource! HP Learning Center provides FREE online classes on a wide range of topics of business and home interest from beginner to advanced level. These include such things as technology in the classroom, Office products and other software packages, digital photography, PC troubleshooting preparing effective PowerPoint presentations, Windows basics, and WiFi.

Some lessons are “quick lessons,” which have one session. Others may have 4-6 lessons, with 2 presented each week. Each lesson consists of 4 parts: a lesson (reading), an assignment, a short (10-question) quiz, and the message board. The message board allows for communication with the instructor and other participants, providing a way to have questions answered and extend learning.

I have learned to print my lessons to PDF so that I can go back over them later. Keeping a chart (table in Word) of new learning provides me with a quick way to find things I know I learned but haven’t used for awhile.

If you’re at all like me…is anyone??…you encounter acronyms that you can’t decipher, especially in new environments like Twitter or unfamiliar settings like kids’ (or savvy adults’) text messages. No more googling them for me. My new one-stop-searching place for them is allacronyms.com.  It advertises its content as “Acronyms, Initialisms, Alphebetisms and other Abbreviations,” and it covers a wide variety of categories.

It is often useful to keep a list of links to websites for the classroom to make available for student use. Keeping such a list online is much more efficient that trying to keep Favorites/Bookmarks updated on a number of classroom machines. My first criteria in choosing such a manager is keeping students safe from inappropriate collections; the first one I tried did not.

Then I found iKeepBookmarks.com, which I used in the classroom for years. Problem? It loads far too slowly for whole-classroom use. I recently tried sitejot.com, but had the same problem with it.
I believe I have found an acceptable site in BookKit. It has a clean appearance, and loads very quickly. This will be my manager of preference, despite the fact that it is missing two features of my previous one which I used extensively: the ability to have a combination of public (student) and private (teacher) links, and a tool to add a bookmark for a site while on that site without copying and pasting the URL onto the manager site.

As much as I like this site, it seems to be good for personal use, but I haven't been able to access it without logging in, so it is not public. I have contacgted the BookKit people and am waiting for a response, but for now it appears this will not do what I originally thought it would do. I may have to keep looking.

EduHound is the technology resource site provided by THE Journal.  It provides links to Site Sets (collectioins of topic-based online education resources) on everything from Aaron Burr to Zoos. It includes an exhaustive list of categories including Grants & Funding, Lesson Plans, Museums, Reference, Social Studies, Software, Substitute Teaching, WebQuests, Worksheets, and many more. Links are also included to additional EduHound Websites; examples are Awesome Clipart for Educators (it has fonts, too!), and Educator Templates. This is a top-notch resource!

ShootSmarter.com has lots of photography tips (taking and editing), though some refer to higher-end hardware and software than I use. Very interesting, though, and many tips are useful...even to me, the definite amateur!

SCREENRIP 32 IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE. (3/20/2011)

ScreenRip32 (http://www.progency.com/other.html#screenrip32) is a freeware portable screen capture utility that will save me so-o-o-o-o much time when creating training documents! This is the best thing I've seen in a long time!! Thank you, Brent, for sharing!