Omnivorous Surfer

Google SketchUp is FREE downloadable 3D modeling software that is easy to learn and fun to use. Google information says it has been used by architectural and engineering professionals for years, which indicates that it is powerful enough for high school engineering classes working on a low budget. I can testify from personal experience that middle school students, working through the provided tutorial, can gain quite enough proficiency to create their own designs.

Its use is not limited to architectural design. English/language arts students can create drawings of structures or locales which are a part of books or stories they are studying. History students could sketch the layout of a town or portion of a town which is part of a critical event, or of historic structures like the Great Pyramids. Geometry students could create polygons or polyhedra.

If you want more (and better) ideas, 3DVinci has a free teachers guide with design projects organized by grade (1-5, 6-9, 10-12) and subject (art, gography, history, math, and science). 3DVinci also sells project books: ModelMetrics books teach 3D design  and modeling skills for grades 3-9, GeomeTricks books teach 2D and 3D math and geometry concepts for grades 6-12, and the Google SketchUp Student Workbook uses design projects to teach all of SketchUp's tools and features to students in grade 9 through higher education.

If you want to see some examples, including animations, check these:
Google SketchUp K-12 Gallery
Student 3D projects by 13-year-old Italian students
Troy War middle school project
Free kids activities from 3DVinci

Did you know that Google will let you build a custom search engine? Instead of searching the entire web, you can create a search engine that will search only the sites you want it to and exclude any sites you choose. How useful would THAT be in a classroom sometimes? For example, if you want students to access only primary resources, you could create a custom search engine that would limit their results to sites you have identified that have primary resources. You could create an engine that would search only credible science sites for your science class. There are lots of ideas for using this.

I quickly put together a custom engine to search for videos. I did not include youtube, since so many schools have it blocked, but you'll see from the number of results that there are still plenty of resources without it.

You can embed your custom engine on a webpage, as the one below, but it will also have its own URL; here's mine: Carolyn's Video Search Engine

To create your own custom search engine, begin by putting together your list of sites, and then go to http://www.google.com/cse/ to start. You can also use the more link at the top of the Google search page, choosing even more at the bottom of the drop-down list, to get to the page to create your custom engine.

If you want a good, thorough tutorial for using a web app, a good place to start is Russel Stannard's TeacherTrainingVideos.com. I have learned how to use so many sites from viewing his narrated screen videos. If you're a Twitter user, you'll want to follow him (russell1955) to be alerted to any new additions.

Above is still of one of his videos, the one for Voki. The list to the left of the screen image is of individual training topics included in the video, so you can skip right to the information you want.

Perhaps not many will need this web 2.0 app that that takes a screenshot of a web page which then can be embedded on a webpage, but there will be times when it will be useful for me. Additionally, the embedded image will be a hyperlink to the webpage itself; try clicking on the one above.

The site will also create formatted quotes, like the one below. The quote will include a link to the source as well.



I found this site on Larry Ferlazzo's post, The Best Web 2.0 Applications for Education--2010. He has some interesting apps listed there, along with links to his lists from previous years. Between yesterday's post and today's, I have a lot of work to do...and now another new blog to follow!

Just found this great directory of "Social Learning Tools for the Classroom (ages 5-18)" compiled by Jane Hart and published on her Centre for Learning Technologies website. Appropriate age groups are indicated for each tool. While I'm familiar with some that are listed, others are new, so I have some exploring to do!

Her blog, Jane's Pick of the Day, will also be a good resource.

iLearn Technology is my new blog to watch. Yesterday's timely post was Thanksgiving: Plimouth Plantation Virtual Field Trip, complete with suggestions for integrating the "field trip" into your curriculum. Unfortunately, the  "event" is today...wish I'd seen the post yesterday. The blogger does also include some of his favorite Thanksgiving sites.

You might check out Scholastic's The First Thanksgiving, where there are lots of additional Thanksgiving resources for the classroom.

iLearn Technology was one of Richard Byrne's nominations for an Edublog award. I should tell you that his blog, Free Technology for Teachers, is one of my favorites.

Mbedr is a cool online tool that lets you embed a flickr image on your website. The title and any annotations of the original will be included with the embeded image. See an example below



Remember when using others' photos from flickr (or any site) to choose those with a Creative Commons license. You can read a previous post on a utility for doing a Creative Commons search of flickr images here.

I learned about Mbedr and other cool sites that use or manipulate flickr images on Karen Montgomery's site, Think Photo Sharing with Flickr. There is lots of excellent information here for anyone wanting to use flickr in the classroom.

There are several reasons someone might wish to have a YouTube video on a hard drive rather than viewing it from the YouTube website. Perhaps YouTube is blocked, as it is in many schools, or perhaps the video needs to be shared where there will be no Internet access; maybe it would simply be better to have it stored locally for use in a PowerPoint or other presentation.

I shared in an earlier post a site that would let you download YouTube videos. This post from Free Technology for Teachers provides descriptions of and links to some additional sites, as well as a link to alternatives to YouTube. This will give you some other options.

Free Technology for Teachers is another of my favorite blogs to watch.

I had occasion to extract video clips from an unprotected, copyright-free DVD a couple of weeks ago, and I found a simple, FREE program which fit my needs. Knowing teachers in particular might find it useful sometimes to pull clips for classroom use, I thought I'd share it here.

I looked at several options, but the one I ended up using because of its simplicity was bitRipper. As you can see from the screen shot at left, it has a minimalist interface. Most of us would never need to make any changes to the settings, but I did expand the Settings window for the image; otherwise, you work only with the smaller window. Those of you who, unlike me, know what you're doing, or who like to experiment, have the option of making some more advanced options about your output. I used bitRipper without making any changes to the default settings and had excellent results.

You choose your video clip by chapter from a drop-down list. Without titles, that can be a little tricky; however, I could choose mine from this DVD by its length. The video is converted to an AVI format and saved to your hard drive...and it's ready to play on your Windows computer. It really couldn't be any simpler!

I also found WinX Free DVD Ripper, which has additional functions. I didn't need any of these at the time, but I will keep it in mind for use if and when I do. This one will rip and convert to not only AVI, but also MP4, H.264, FLV, WMV, MPEG, MOV, or other popular video formats. It also gives the option of separating the audio from the DVD video, saving it as an MP3 file. It also supports capturing pictures from the video through screenshots.

If you want to insert the video in a PowerPoint presentation, the 2007 version will accept the following formats: ASF, AVI, MGP, MPET, or WMV.

JayCut is an online video editor that is easy to use and fairly full-featured. The software allows you to remix and trim videos and images; add music, transitions, and effects; and add captions and subtitles.

With a FREE account, for non-commercial use only, you have 20 movie exports per month, 2 GB of storage, and 10 GB of streaming per month.  Your video can be viewed from the site, or you can export to YouTube and Facebook with a single click and can export videos for iPhone, Windows, and Mac.

If you want more help than is on the site, just Google "JayCut tutorial."

If you don't have access to Windows MovieMaker or Mac iMovie, Jaycut is a comparable editor. This would be an option for joint or individual student projects so the students could work from both home and school.

I almost never post application tips, but I was so happy to find this one and it's so easy I had to share. I felt kind of foolish that I hadn't already noticed it. I must admit that I had included a drop cap in a document recently by using a text box with a single enlarged capital letter; the result was less than satisfactory, but I used it anyway.

In Word 2003, simply type the letter, select it, and choose Drop Cap from the Format menu. In Word 2007, use the Insert ribbon and choose Drop Cap from the Text group. In either one, you select from Dropped (see the example above) or In Margin, which keeps the entire paragraph indented.

This was a tip in a blog post from TechRepublic.

Image created using Spell With Flickr

TenMarks' Teacher Zone makes available FREE math video lessons for grades 3-10 based on state standards. All you have to do is to register for a free account.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by qthomasbower

I've posted before about Creative Commons copyright. MakeUseOf had a great post this week about How to Search and Credit Properly-Licensed Photos on Flickr. A great source with lots of information about CC and Flickr, it includes something I haven't seen before, which is a Grease Monkey script that will give you the code to display the image along with the proper attribution; see the image at left for an example.

Grease Monkey is a Firefox add-on which will allow you to use small bits of JavaScript to customize how certain web pages are displayed. All you have to do is to add the Grease Monkey add-on if you do not already have it and then click the Install button on the script web page.

I normally use Google Chrome, but I'll be using Firefox now to get the code to add Flickr image to a web page. It makes the attribution so much easier!

DROPitTOme is a FREE site which coordinates with Drop Box to allow you to accept files from other people. If you want assignments turned in electronically (or need to receive files from others), but have no way to do that, here's your solution. All you have to do is give them the upload link and password. For more information, see the Free Technology for Teachers post where I found this. Mr. Byrne has included a good description and video tutorials.

The Free Technology for Teachers blog is one of my favorites, so even if you aren't interested in DROPitTOme, check it out!

used by permission

Thanks to a former colleague, I was reminded of the FREE online quiz software I used to use. On investigation, I found that it is still available and still FREE. Perhaps some who read this may find it useful.

QuizStar is one of several online tools made available at 4teachers.org. Students can take quizzes or tests you have created and then see their results and review their individual answers immediately. As the instructor, you will have a report that looks much like a gradebook for that assignment and can also view their individual test "papers" as though they had been printed and scored.

One of the things I especially appreciated was the listing at the bottom of the test report page showing the number of students answering each question correctly and incorrectly. This allowed me to quickly identify a "bad" question and/or a concept that needed to be retaught. I could usually address the latter as soon as everyone had completed the test.

To prepare the students to take a quiz using QuizStar, I would create a simple 3-question quiz and make sure that they would miss one question. Then they could look at their test and see how to read the markings for the ones they missed. I would always give students the option of taking a paper test using QuizStar's printout.

I won't go through all the features; you can read those on the QuizStar website if you are interested. I used this program for at least 10 years when I was teaching in a lab and found it to be beneficial for teaching and learning and quite a timesaver, too.

Horia Varlan, licensed under Creative Commons

I guess I'm on a copyright kick! I found a great post, Digital Storytelling and Copyright, for teachers and others. Among other things, the authors shares information about Creative Commons Copyright and how to do a Google search for copyright-friendly images, as well as giving some sources of royalty-free music.

I learned from this post how easy it is for copyright owners to track the use of their images! I had no idea; very interesting information.

While students have leeway under fair use, it is important for all of us, including students, to understand and abide by copyright laws.

Horia Varlan, licensed under Creative Commons

Teachers have a responsibility to acquaint students with copyright issues, stressing the importance of abiding by copyright restrictions and citing sources of all materials used that were created by others. This wiki initiated by a teacher to provide both information on copyright and sources of copyright-friendly (primarily Creative Commons licensed) resources is a great resource in and of itself for educators and others as well. I have it bookmarked and refer to it frequently.

Spell with Flickr is a very simple website that lets you enter a word or words and then spells out your entry using images from Flickr.

Taking advantage of the fact that today is election day, I created this image: