Monday, March 03, 2008

Postcrossing

Postcrossing - Postcards Traveling The World

Pretend you’re eight years old for a second. Now pretend you just got a photo in the mail from your new buddy in Finland.

Fantastic, right? Best mail ever!

Now here’s the secret: it’s still that much fun to get photos from around the world. And it’s super easy thanks to Postcrossing: send a postcard to somebody, and somebody sends you a postcard back. Collect photos from 175 countries without blowing all your airline miles! You can even request pictures of specific things.




Create Electronic Greeting Cards

"Create Electronic Greeting Cards from Flickr with Phreetings"

Saturday, February 09, 2008

The Greatest Things I've ever learned....

The Connected Classroom: The Greatest Things I've ever learned....

A One-Page Internet Textbook on Google Features for Busy Educators

buckleit - Google-lizing Your School: A One-Page Internet Textbook on Google Features for Busy Educators:

After the morning break, so a short lecture/demonstration on the story of Google, covering topics like search engine history, how Google makes money, and so on. Use the links below, and have each person follow along. You can set this up as a scavenger hunt if you like. "

Mac Tricks And Tips: Top 100 Essential Mac Applications

Mac Tricks And Tips
From Mac Tips and Tricks

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

File List 1.2

Macworld | Mac Gems | File List 1.2

Macworld has declared File List — a great way to batch rename your files — to be one of its gems. It has a slew of features and it’s easy to use, which shouldn’t be surprising since it comes from the developer of other amazing programs such as Butler, Witch and Service Scrubber

Monday, January 14, 2008

April 18 - WDUG Workshop

Keep April 18 marked on your calendar for a fantastic presentation from Apple and hosted by the MHRIC here in New Paltz at the Conference Center.

Apple Software Enginner Matt Rowe will present iLife '08 and iWork '08, 2 fabulous suites of programs from Apple.

Registration is a must as seating is limited. More information will follow. If your district participates in Office Automation or the Technology Support Service, you are eligible to attend. You can register through MicroNews, on our web site, or use My Learning Plan. Registration opens in mid-March.

If you have questions, please feel free to contact me!

Best Mac freeware and free Mac games

Best Mac freeware and free Mac games: The Top 10 coolest Mac freeware programs you've never heard of: thriftmac: "The thriftmac collection has grown fairly large over the past few months, despite our efforts to list only the very best. Can we help it if there’s so much truly good stuff freely available for Mac people?"

Thursday, January 03, 2008

VoiceThread

A VoiceThread is an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish.

A VoiceThread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world.

An Introduction to Second Life | The Story of My “Second Life”

An Introduction to Second Life | The Story of My “Second Life”

An introduction to Second Life on YouTube.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Feature: The 20 Best iPod Utilities

The 20 Best iPod Utilities

For Mac and Windows.

Transfer Songs from Your iPod to Any Mac with Senuti

Transfer Songs from Your iPod to Any Mac with Senuti

Copy songs from any iPod to your iTunes library. There are other iPod-to-computer tools available for Mac and Windows, like iPod -> Folder, but Senuti stands out for this list for its ability to tell you want music on an iPod is already in your library and which songs are not, making it easy to slurp new songs from a friend's iPod without introducing duplicates into your library.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Free Professional Development Videos

Teaching Hacks.com » Blog Archive » Professional Development VOD:
"Every member of Ontario Teachers Federation is invited to access in-depth professional development workshops from leading educational producers. There are hundreds of hours of Professional Development streaming video content available here. The programs will be available from early November 2007 to November 30th, 2008. There is no registration to access the materials at this time, although the registration process will be simple enough for any educator to access the content."

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

MacXeagle

MacXeagle
This site contains some interesting freeware for the Mac user!

Monday, December 03, 2007

Smart Notebook Hacks

Smart Notebook Hacks: "Turn Any Document into a PDF
Many district networks are locked down from installing free software or don’t include software that will generate a PDF for you. Sure you can use online PDF generators but when you install Smart Board software you have a PDF generator built in."

Friday, November 30, 2007

» 2007 The Edublog Awards

» 2007 The Edublog Awards:

Best of 2007 in different areas..

Increase in Teacher Resignations - New York Times

Increase in Teacher Resignations - New York Times

More teachers resigned during the last school year than at any time in recent history, according to figures released yesterday by the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s teachers union. According to the figures, 4,606 certified teachers resigned last year, not including teachers who retired or had problems with certification. The numbers have been steadily increasing since 2001, when 2,544 resigned; last year 4,273 teachers did so. Of the 7,069 teachers who were hired in 2006, nearly 14 percent resigned by the end of the year, the union said, up from about 11 percent the year before.

School officials unite in banning Wikipedia | Seattle Times Newspaper

School officials unite in banning Wikipedia :

"The Great Meadows (N.J.) Middle School librarian hasn't been a fan of the online encyclopedia for years. This fall, she decided it was time to make others at her school aware of the Web site's pitfalls."

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Randy Pausch on Oprah

Watch a video of Randy Pausch when he appeared on the Oprah Show in September 2007

Randy Pausch is a married father of three, a very popular professor at Carnegie Mellon University—and he is dying. He is suffering from pancreatic cancer, which he says has returned after surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. Doctors say he has only a few months to live.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Friday, October 26, 2007

Apple - Mac OS X Leopard

Apple - Features

300+ new features in Leopard!

Getting Ready for Leopard

TUAW Guide: Getting Ready for Leopard - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Upgrading your Mac to the new Leopard? Here are some tips to help make it a seamless install.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

The Last Lecture

This was passed on to me by a team member:
"Professor Randy Pausch from Carnegie-Mellon University, he's an amazing man who has been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. His "Last Lecture" which was given at CMU on September 18th has reportedly been downloaded by over one million people. He w

Friday, October 19, 2007

States Report Teacher Staph Infections

Web Watch: States Report Teacher Staph Infections

And a national report released this week indicates that staph infections killed more people in 2005 than HIV/AIDS, proving that it is more common than previously thought.

Kittens and Computers

Kittens and Computers: Emotions and the Tyranny of Learning Environments

An Apple computer is so simple, even a kitten can use it!

Monday, October 15, 2007

Blog Action Day

Blog Action Day

On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Blogger Play

Blogger Play - View the most recently uploaded photos to blogger.com as a slide show movie.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Sagan

Evolution from Past to Future at Bionic Teaching

View a clip of the late Carl Sagan narrating an animation of evolution. Pretty interesting stuff!

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Dressing Teachers

Dressing Teachers

Nashville’s 75,000 public school students must now adhere to a strict dress code. Collared shirts are mandatory; hoodies and jeans are no longer acceptable. But what about teachers? Nashville parent Rebecca Willocks thinks there’s a double standard. "I saw a teacher’s navel piercing last year and was surprised," she says. "Students can’t get away with that." Nashville’s school board doesn’t think teachers should either.

Tech Ed Left Behind

Tech Ed Left Behind

Vocation programs in New York public high schools have sharply decreased over the past decade due to a lack of funding and an NCLB-driven curriculum. In 1992, 41 percent of the state’s public high school students completed at least one vocational course, compared with 25 percent last year. “We started raising standards and adding more requirements, and something had to fall off the plate,” Buffalo Schools Superintendent James A. Williams told the Buffalo News.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Acer gobbles up Gateway | Crave : The gadget blog

Acer gobbles up Gateway

"...hinting at yesterday's announcement that Taiwanese computer maker Acer has agreed to acquire Gateway, currently the No. 4-ranked PC vendor in the world."

Sunday, August 12, 2007

ButtonBuilder - Web Button creation for Mac OS X

ButtonBuilder - Web Button creation for Mac OS X: " Button Builder It's free and easy. Enjoy. Come in, We're open!

This is a pretty cool application that allows you easily create attractive buttons for your website, has gone the way of open-source and is now free.

Sorry, PC folks!

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

40+ Free Blog Hosts

40+ Free Blog Hosts

Looking for a place for your blog? Here's a whole list

Monday, August 06, 2007

Photojojo » Upload your Photo and Try a New Hairstyle or Grow a Mustache, Virtually

Photojojo » Upload your Photo and Try a New Hairstyle or Grow a Mustache, Virtually: "makeover studioWhether you prefer the presidential $400 cut, the corner barber shop, or something in between, chances are you’ve spent too many braincycles on those tendrils of dead skin cells emerging from your body."

ViaTalk Free Connect

ViaTalk Free Connect: "Need to make a quick call? Try viatalkfree.com and don’t pay a penny. Enter your area code and phone number in addition to the digits you’d like to dial. Get talking and enjoy up to 10 minutes of talk time. It’s on us!"

I haven't tried it...yet. I assume it's only for US calls.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

A quest for good image sites

A quest for good image sites

Great blog article on finding free graphics and Creative Commons License information. Read the comments too as there is more information in that area.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Sunday, July 15, 2007

ViaTalk Free Connect

ViaTalk Free Connect

It says you can make phone calls up to 10 minutes for free. No registration required. I'll probably try it later today and see what happens. I am assuming it is for the US only.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Stickam

Stickam: Would You Let Your Children Use A Service Owned By Pornographers?

Just came across this article and then checked out the site. Most of the chatrooms there are open to all. Just another site you might want to be aware of...

Saturday, July 07, 2007

Save your blog

Save your blog with BlogBackupOnline
If you have a blog (or blogs), this site offers free daily backups. Great for restoring, just in case...

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Chalk The Movie

Chalk
Two former teachers from Austin, Texas, have taken the concept of a fictional documentary, recently used to depict the idiosyncrasies of white-collar work in “The Office,” and adapted it for the classroom. “Chalk,” a mockumentary about discouraged educators, follows new teachers as they deal with classroom etiquette, cultural issues, and stereotypes, and delves into the reason why 50 percent of new teachers reportedly quit within their first few years.

It has gotten a lot of mixed reviews from funny and empathetic to demeaning to teachers.

You decide.

VoiceThread

VoiceThread

Create narrations to go along with your photos.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Phoney

Marketcircle: iPhoney

See what your web site will look like on an iPhone. Free download.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

PassPack - Online Privacy Manager

PassPack - Online Privacy Manager

It's free and all recommendations I have read are positive.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Photoshop action

Photoshop action to create an outer space scene :
This is cool but is only for CS2.

Podcasts: Where's the Learning?

Podcasts: Where's the Learning?

"Students develop literacy skills as they create podcasts. They become more engaged with their learning, or at least with the uniqueness of the technology itself. David Warlick provides evidence of learning at his Education Podcast Network. You will find topics in 21st century teaching and learning and subject-specific podcasts ranging from computer and information skills to dance, music, and visual arts education to mathematics, science, and second languages. There are also student and class podcasts categorized for elementary, middle, and secondary school. "

"Jim Moulton (2007) reported in his blog that seventh graders are creating "Words of Wisdom" podcasts for their school's morning announcements. They are "spending significant amounts of time reading, understanding, rereading, reflecting on, and ultimately recording the words of Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt, and others, along with a pithy moral. They are thinking about how to modulate and pace their voices, how to read in tune with the words so as to make their recording engaging and meaningful, entertaining and instructive, popular and purposeful" (para. 5)."

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Screen Saver!

The Library Project: Screen Saver!

People of the Middle Kingdon
People of the Middle Kingdom is a screen saver made with Derrick Chang's beautiful, positive, and thought provoking photography shot in China.

The Library Project donates books and libraries to underprivileged schools and orphanages in the developing world. We believe education is the key motivator to breaking the cycle of poverty that exists in the developing world. As we see it education is change.

It is available for both PC and Mac. They do ask that you donate 10 books to their Project. Not a bad price to help children's literacy in the world.

Smart Room?

Another “It’s not the Technology, Stupid!”

Another interesting post by David Warlick.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

New Releases

iusethis mac software
Found this site while trying to search for some mac tips. I want to put a folder on my dock that contains aliases to certain programs. Cool site since it reviews the software, freeware, and 'boughten" types.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Friday, May 18, 2007

DV Info Net

DV Info Net -- The Digital Video Information Network:
78,000 Questions. 605,000 Answers; 25,000 Real People with Real Names

Monday, May 14, 2007

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Mistakes

10 mistakes managers make during job interviews

General enough to include any job interviewer.

Web Design Mistakes

43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid

Not sure if I agree with all his points but we all have different opinions and design strategies....thankfully!

Other Uses for Your iPod

10 Unexpected Uses of the iPod
Some great ideas here...

MacOSG

Mac Owners Support Group: This looks GREAT!






10 Golden Lessons

10 Golden Lessons From Steve Jobs at Ririan Project:
Take your time. Read, and then re-read.

Mac 101: DMG files

DMG files are Disk Images
Great explanation for thsoe new to Mac's..

Cyberbullying Law in Ontario

Monday April 16, 2007

Ontario introduced a new legislation Tuesday to add cyber-bullying to the list of offences for which a student can be suspended or expelled from school.

Premier Dalton McGuinty said "bullying is bullying..whether you do it online by way of the latest technology or you're doing it in person or over the old fashioned telephone, it still causes pain and suffering."

Do any US schools have this as a policy?

Information Age

Make It a Think-Pair-Share-Blog: "Think-Pair-Share-Write"

Denial of Degree

MySpace & a Drunken Pirate's Fate: A Cautionary Tale or Hint of Things to Come?

This should spark a lot of comments & conversation in all circles.

2 Cents Worth

Never Underestimate the Power of a Superintendent:
What happens with a 21st century learning environment in Greene County, NC, and a Superintendent with a vision pair up...

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Maintain Your Mac

Mac Maintenance Quick Assist

I know Windows Maintenace but sure do need help with the Mac side. This site, from Apple, has some good quick tips.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Leopard Delayed (MAC OS)

iPhone before Leopard

I guess I have no choice but to wait now:

Apple today released the following statement: iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price—we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS(R) X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard’s features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure we’ve made the right ones. NOTE: Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh and iPhone are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Source: Apple Inc. Web site: http://www.apple.com/

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Blog Code of Conduct


BBC NEWS | Technology | Weblogs 'need content warnings': "The code begins: 'We celebrate the blogosphere because it embraces frank and open conversation.'"

I like the idea of logos purposing the openness of each blog. this code is not censoring blog writings, just channeling their purpose and civility, similar to the Motion Picture Guides we are used to in the US.

Death threats and abuse should not be allowed and, to me, is really stretching freedom of the press.

Something to keep in touch with.. Tim's blog is here

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Mac Backups

Complete, free Mac backup

Guess it's time for me to backup my new Macbook Pro so I found this article. Now to choose which program and method.

I have an external 250gb hard drive that I use to back up data and I had partitioned it. If anyone wants to know the results of which software I have selected, drop me a line...

Friday, March 30, 2007

BlogSafety Community

BlogSafety Community: Predators & cyberbullies:

Interesting article from The BlogSafety site. I have read a few articles about the tv show "The Predators" and mot say the show is not reality and goes overboard.

I think I would rather exaggerate on this topic if it gets kids and parents to wake up to this danger. Hopefully, through education, kids are smartening up to this danger.

Interesting idea...

Classroom Commercials

Interesting idea....

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Macs Only

Website Link Checker Robot
"Feed it your home page address (url) and Integrity will follow all of your internal links to find your pages, checking the server response code for all internal and external links found."

Yes, it's free!

Monday, March 26, 2007

SunriseBrowser for web designers

Mac Only!
The SunriseBrowser is an open-source browser for web developers. For instance, the window can be automatically resized to 640 x 480 , 800 x 600, or 1024 x 768 with one button click. There are many other convenient and useful features like zoom levels, PDF export of the entire web page, etc. Lots more features as well.
Found on http://www.macmerc.com

Friday, March 23, 2007

Find your lost child

Find your lost child with a USB drive
My daughter is 26 now. I probably would have done this though. That's just the way I am....

Saturday, March 17, 2007

CSS

(The Only) Ten Things To Know About CSS

Vista.. Cause Problems?? You're Kidding!

Vista causes an array of problems - USATODAY.com

Microsoft Suffers Latest Blow

InformationWeek: Microsoft Suffers Latest Blow As NIST Bans Windows Vista

U.S. Department of Transportation also banned Windows Vista within the agency.

IceClean

Keep your Mac running smoothly with this free software. Let me know how it works...

US university dumps Windows to go all Mac

US university dumps Windows to go all Mac
"Touted by Apple as one of the first colleges to mandate a campus-wide shift from Windows PCs to Macs, the school wasn't a bastion of all things Apple before the decision, said Scott Byers, vice president for finance and the head of campus IT. Macs, in fact, were a minority."

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

CSS Galleries

74 CSS Gallery Roundup

Want to learn CSS or find new ways of using it? Check out these galleries. One should suit your taste.

Switch To A Mac

Apple Mac OS Market Share at 6.22 Percent - up 48 Percent from Feb 2006

Friday, March 09, 2007

Get a Mac - More Fun with Photos

More Fun with Photos

Just another reason to have a Mac...It's included....everything is included...I love my Mac....

Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Web Albums
Picasa Web Albums has just added more features:

"First, the free version of Picasa Web gets 1 GB of storage (up from 250 MB), enough to host 4000 high-quality photos. It's interesting that Google says "1 GB (and counting)" so the storage could increase like it does in Gmail.

Like in Flickr, you can also search the public photos posted by other people. Until today, you could search only your photos and the public photos uploaded by your contacts. Google wanted to be polite and ask you before including your public photos in the community search, so you must go to settings and enable this."

I guess I had better try this one out! You may need a Google account first

African Sunsets

African Sunsets - a photoset on Flickr:
Just some beautiful peaceful photos for your perusal...

CSS Menus

8 web menus you just can't miss

Very very nice designs here....and downloadable for you to use.

The End of the jpg???

Microsoft move could be the end of the JPEG

Now this could be very interesting..a new format called HD Photo from Microsoft....Time will tell...

Web Site Footers

19 Gorgeous Website Footers

Just like a word document, a footer is at the bottom of each page. Footers usually give information such as a copyright and contact information.