April 4th, 2008 | Tech Talk |
April 2nd, 2008 | Tech Talk |
igoogle doesn’t just have to be a nicely organized homepage for your own personal information! Teachers are getting creative and using their igoogle page as a teaching tool. Choose gadgets that include information pertaining to one of the units you are exploring. For instance, Frith deKerillis, chose multiple artist gadgets and her students are able to view, all in one location, multiple paintings and artist info everyday. You can start a lesson by going to your igoogle page, updated daily with new info and images, and conversation begins immediately. There are gadgets for all subject areas. Want to add an additional page to your igoogle? At the top of the screen click on “Add a tab,” give it a name and add your gadgets.
Here are two examples of what a history or science page could look like!
March 28th, 2008 | Tech Talk |
There is no way you could have missed the glorious capabilities of google as a search engine. Heaven knows each of us use google as a common household word. Fortunately for us, the head honchos at google didn’t just stop once they reached the title of search engine master. They continued and are still continuing to find new ways to get information to you in all kinds of formats and venues. Click here to see all of the google products that are currently available.
Below are a list of my favorite aspects of google- or at least the ones I use the most frequently. You don’t want to miss out on what the rest of the world is experiencing, and that is a google-filled life :)
Things to do with Google:
o Create a gmail account
o Make an igoogle homepage
o Make a calendar and share with family
o You can even add a public calendar!
o Upload documents and share with others with Google Docs
o With Google Maps, check traffic and zoom in with satellite view
o Google Reader keeps all of your rss feeds in one location
o Google Books allows you to preview books page by page!
March 12th, 2008 | Tech Talk |
With the excitement of the chicks hatching from their eggs, I failed to go into detail about how the viewing of the hatching chickens was made possible! And the answer is ustream.tv. Initially, we wanted the eggs to be visible for the entire class to see, so we brought in elmo. Elmo was perfect to project the eggs that were inside the incubator for the class to see. “But what if they hatch over the weekend?” the students pleaded. So I thought ustream. Perfect.
From the ustream team themselves, ” Ustream.TV is the live interactive video broadcast platform that enables anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size. ”
We connected a webcam to a computer that could be designated just for the chicks, logged into ustream.tv with an account I had made, and set up a show. It was too easy. Five days later, we had 3,020 5,763 views, and at certain points in the day yesterday had 82 viewers watching at the same time. And those viewers weren’t just inside the district. The included students in districts throughout Pennsylvania, as well as people who stumbled upon the video all the way in California. This from CA: “thank you SO much for making this the happiest chick-watching for me and my co-worker. we were OBSESSED! and we’re still watching them!!”
Thanks to ustream we were able to expand the viewing of the miracle of life to so many more than those inside the classroom yesterday. Real life happening in real time, shared with so many.
March 7th, 2008 | Tech Talk |
We are currently streaming live video of Mrs. Lorenzini’s chicken eggs using ustream. Click here to view the eggs and keep track of their progress!
