Omnivorous Surfer

Though it may sound like it, Teacher Challenge is NOT a competition or contest--please read on!

There is a wealth of free tools on the web for educational use. With all the time teaching takes, during the school day and on into the evenings, who can keep up with them, let alone learn to use them? Well, here comes Edublogs, known as a great site for hosting educational blogs, with a great idea.

The goal of Teacher Challenge is providing free professional development for educators. The current challenge presents structured tutorials for free online tools...21 of them at the moment. Each one gives directions to get you up and going with the tool along with tips and suggested ways to use it in the classroom. Take a look at #7--Kerpoof for an example.

Interested in blogging for yourself or your students but don't know quite where or how to start? Previous challenges were "Kick Start Your Blogging" and "Blogging with Students." Links to these are along the side of the Teacher Challenge page.

What about PLNs? The power and connectivity of the Internet makes it an amazing time for building PLNs. That's the topic of the next Teacher Challenge, so subscribe to their RSS feed or keep checking back to the site to see when it starts if you're interested.

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.

One of the stumbling blocks to having students blog is the necessity of using an individual's email address when accounts are set up. Another is the need to assure the student's safety while online, while a third is that many sites require users to be at least 13. Kidblog addresses all the concerns and, even better, it is FREE.

Kidblog was designed by teachers for teachers, primarily for elementary and middle school use. The teacher has administrative control over her/his class accounts, and students' blogs by default are private, viewable only by their teacher and classmates. If desired, a passworded guest account can be added so parents can view their student's blog posts and comments. Rare for free accounts, there is no advertising! If you're interested in learning more, see the About Kidblog page.

I recently read an excellent blog post, Middle School Blogging: Students Constructing Their Own Knowledge, which shares examples of students' blogs and the reactions of both students and parents to the experience.

New-year-resolution time is fast approaching, and while I do not really make resolutions...no sense in making resolutions you won't keep...I do try to make some improvements. I ran across this Zen Habits post somehow today, and though it doesn't deliver anything earth shattering or even new, it does present an interesting short list of 10 quick and easy changes to make along with suggested ways to accomplish them. Why read it? Well, I hope I'm not the only one who could do with a little simplification these days!

To give you an idea what's there so you can decide if you want to go read it (in case you already do all these things!), here are the 10 "things"...

1. Make a short list.
2. Drop 1 commitment.
3. Purge a drawer.
4. Set limits.
5. Simplify your to-do list.
6. Free up time.
7. Clear your desk.
8. Clear out your email inbox.
9. Move slower.
10. Single task.

I also enjoyed reading another post, Haiku Productivity: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential referenced in #4, which describes putting limits on everything. I like this one, as this is something that causes me difficulty. I like to do too many things and I'm not always good at prioritizing. Perhaps thinking about the content of this post might encourage me to make some moves in the right direction. But I'm NOT making any resolutions to do this!

I have always been on the lookout for places to find royalty-free, preferably Creative Commons licensed, video/audio/photo resources for my own and students' use, so I was excited to run across this sitepoint blog post with descriptions of and links to over 30 sites to explore. Some additional ones are mentioned in the comments, so you might want to check those out, too.

If I were still in the classroom, this one would get lots of use!

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.

If I weren't already so invested in Blogger, I would switch to Posterous. In fact, I might even think about doing that anyway. Blogging just doesn't get any easier, especially if you want the ability to use or embed almost any kind of media in your posts.

What makes it so easy? First, there's no registration, no login requried. Second there's no post creation interface: you simply send an email to Posterous. Third, there's no uploading: you simply attach any photos, videos, audio, etc. to the post email. Fourth, if you include a link to, say, a YouTube video, the video will automatically be embedded into the post. Begin to see what I mean?

If you want to get fancy, you can use Posterous to distribute audio podcasts via iTunes. If you want to autopost to Twitter or Facebook, or your photos to Flickr, you can set that up pretty easily, too.

Your site can be private if you wish; you can simply password-protect it and send the password to anyone you want to share it with. Or, if you want a group of people to be able to post (and posting is so easy anyone who can email can do it), you just add their addresses to your site; they don't have to register or do anything extra.

A quick read of the FAQs will give you a better overview of Posterous' features. If you're not already blogging, this would be such an easy way to start! What are you waiting for?

I find I'm featuring others' blog posts (mostly educational in nature) here more often than before. That's partly because I'm reading them more, and partly because I'm hoping that some non-blog-readers who find their way here will be encouraged to check them out and begin searching for ones that match their interests, oh, and maybe begin blogging themselves.

Today I enjoyed the "Technology-Transformed Learning Environments" post on David Warlick's blog. Having a long-standing interest in using technology in the classroom, I appreciated his description of what technology-infused learning looks like (definitely read the blog for the details):

• learning fueled by questions
• students engaged in a way that provokes conversation
• learning situations responsive to the learner's actions
• learning experience compelling a personal investment by the learner and contributing to the learner's identity
• learning resulting from significant opportunities to safely make mistakes

If you're interested in and decide to read that post, be sure to also read a follow-up post, "Some Good Tech-Transformed SD Questions."

There's much to think about in these two posts. The level of benefit from the use of technology in education is obviously dependent on good teachers, those who know how to use it to its fullest potential for students. Teachers need to be constantly evaluating technologies and their teaching methods to see how they can more effectively engage learners and help them reach new levels of thinking, understanding, and knowledge.

I probably won't use this site right now, because Handy Shopper, which I have been using on my PDA for many years, meets my current needs. Should I not have that available in the future for some reason (or should I get an  iPhone), this site looks like it would be a likely candidate for a  replacement, at least for grocery shopping.

ZipList lets you create grocery lists which can be accessed and shared via Internet, text, email, or instant message. Item entry is as simple as entering "2 lg cans of peaches" or "butter;olive oil;bread" or, for a high priority item, "milk!" Your list will be organized by category, and you can add prices for individual stores and enter coupon information. The site appears to be incredibly easy to use.

Now, that's the straight shopping portion, but there's more. ZipList also features a Recipe Box for storing recipes clipped from the Internet (at the present time--see post date--there is no allowance for hand-entering recipes). An "Add to List" button on each recipe lets you click to indicate items you don't have on hand from the list of ingredients and then add all those to your shopping list at once.

I learned of this from a post on one of my new favorite blogs, Coupon Cravings. This is a great place to find out about all kinds of great deals--free offerings, discounts, and coupons for anything from retail items to restaurants and other retail establishments.

I think this is only the second time I've included another blog in a post; usually I just add them, over there on the right. The first post was about a fun one, and this time it's a practical one for teachers.

From it's title, Free Technology for Teachers, one would think it might be simply a resource for finding and obtaining free technology. Oh, no, not quite. The site's subtitle reveals there's more here than that: A review of free technology resources and how teachers can use them. Ideas for technology integration in education.


The typical structure of a post begins with highlights of some aspect of technology, sometimes with additional directions, followed by an Applications for Education discussion and closing with links to related items.

Free Technology for Teachers also has a Facebook presence, but I don't know yet if that will provide anything different from the blog.