Omnivorous Surfer

Do you just not "get" Twitter? I didn't when I first signed up...didn't use it for months. Now I'm following several people and learning so much and finding so many resources and articles and websites. I've learned that people have found all kinds of uses for it in their classrooms and in their professional lives.

What is Twitter, anyway? How do you get started? What do you do? How do you find people to follow? Do you wonder about these things when you think of Twitter? Well, here's a place to start getting answers.

To get you going, why don't you check out Centre for Learning and Performance Technology's FREE How to Use Twitter for Social Learning? You'll get everything from how to get started to how to find people to follow to ways to use it productively. (While you're there, look around. This is a great site.)

If you want more ideas, check out 31 Interesting Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom (well, it's 31 today, but the count will be increasing!).

Speaking of "Interesting Ways," you might be interested in my earlier post on Tom Barrett's series.

Do you ever use web page screenshots, either via digital delivery or on paper, to assist in teaching or training? I know I do. I utilize both Windows 7 Snipping Tool and Jing, but I think this tool is going to be one I will use frequently because of its additional features and ease of use.

Awesome Screenshot is an extension currently available for Chrome and Safari, with a Firefox version to be released soon (according to the website).

First, Awesome Screenshot will let you capture the entire page (my other tools don't do that), the visible page, or any part of a page. Once captured, you can crop the image if you wish, More importantly, you can add a variety of markings, including text. This is so much easier than what I've been doing! The image below of part of the Awesome Screenshot webpage I created will give you an idea of what it will allow you to do; the red markings (you can change the color) were my additions.


When you have marked anything you want to mark, you can choose to save the image to your computer; instantly share it via Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail; or get a link to the image for sharing yourself.

Students could use this as well as they find things to share while doing research. Find a good diagram, capture it and annotate it or question it. Find an interesting comment, capture it and mark it up.

Thanks to Richard Byrne, Free Technology for Teachers, for his post sharing this. (Don't follow his blog? You should!).

If you don't use one of the supported browsers and you don't always have access to a Mac or a Windows 7 PC, you might like my post on ScreenRip32.

I've been playing with a web tool called embedit. It's only useful if you have a website, but if you do, I'm sure you can think of some practical uses.

Upload any file* or use a link to an existing website to embedit.in for free.You will get the code to embed the document on your blog or other website, as the Aesop's Fable document below. (Don't know what to do with the code? Many blog or wiki hosts give the option of viewing/editing the HTML of your page Do all your other editing, leave a blank line above and below where you want the document and put your cursor in that spot. Switch to the HTML page and paste the code from embedit.in.)



If you don't want to embed the document, you can get the code to create a link that opens as an overlay over the page:



. . . or a thumbnail that does the same:


You can give the viewer the right to print or download the document.

You have the option of using embedit.in's red pen tool to annotate any page.

This is easiest way I've seen to make worksheets or reading assignments available to students on your website. If I were grading it, I'd give this site an A+ for ease of use and functionality.

Another feature of the embedit.in is Sitewide, which will "automatically convert all links to document on your website to embeds."  I'll let you investigate that on your own if you're interested.

Dr. Jude Rathburn has a good post on embedit which includes some nice shots of the website and how to use it.

* I was unable to find a list of file formats that embedit.in accepts. The file I used was a Star Office document. I have seen an indication that it works with any file formats that Blackboard supports, including images, documents, and presentation slides.

I've posted about this directory before, but Jane Hart of the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies (C4LPT) has just updated it to reflect the many changes that have occurred since the creation of the original list.

The Directory of Learning Tools 2011 lists over 2000 tools for learning in education and the workplace.

If you're looking for a web-based tool, check it out!

Wrds is an online vocabulary testing program that lets you enter your own wordlists. It's more than simple flashcards. Wait till you see what you can do on this site.

If your wordlists are in English, Dutch, Spanish, German, or French (or any pair of these), you can hear the pronunciation of the words. Other languages may be used, but there will be no audio. An online guide is displayed when adding or editing a wordlist to aid in entering foreign symbols.

Create your wordlist and you're ready to test. There you have many options: spelling only (see word briefly, then type it in), multiple choice, reacting (press space when you see the correct answer), puzzle (letters scrambled), consonants only, first letter only, in your mind (look and click to indicate if you were right), test (type the right answer). You can choose to ask all the words only once or keep asking until all answers are correct. Good way to learn and then practice vocabulary.

Wrds keeps a record for each wordlist giving the date, type, percentage, and time of each test. A wordlist is available only to the user who created it or someone with that individual's user name (email address) and password).

CC Licensed photo by Franz Patzig

I've posted a few times about sites to help find Creative Commons licensed media, and I have learned that Google has made a Creative Commons image search available since at least July 2009. Knowing so many students already use Google's image search, I think this would be an easy way to introduce them to being responsible users of others' digital property.

Google Image Search Advanced Search

Voki is a cool site that will have your message spoken by a character you create. There are a variety of characters to choose from, and they can be customized. The message can be spoken from written text, as the example below, using your chosen voice, or you can use a phone or your computer's microphone to record the message. The site is FREE, and lesson plans are available as well. Students would love this!

Click the play button below to hear the message spoken from the text I entered.