BY BILL FERRIS
Google, apparently fed-up with the stereotype of programmers being a bunch of pasty white dudes, is trying to open up the computer science field to women, minorities, and special-needs students with a series of scholarships. These $10,000 scholarships will go to qualifying students who intend to pursue computer science in college.
BY BILL FERRIS
Just because Google and Microsoft hate each other doesn’t mean their software can’t work together in harmony. OffiSync lets you create, access, edit and save Google Docs from Microsoft Office.
One of my fondest memories growing up was this time when my friends and I found an old treasure map. We eventually ran afoul of a family of gangsters, but my one heavyset buddy was able to befriend the deformed son of the head gangster, Mama Fratelli. Just as the gangsters caught up with us, Chunk and his new friend, Sloth, were able to swoop in and save the day. We were, truly, a bunch of Goonies. No, wait—there I go again, confusing myself with Corey Feldman.
That image you get in your mind when you imagine treasure maps isn’t just fascinating because of the promise of riches. That classic example of some old, yellow, frayed-at-the-edges map also maybe has some crazy artwork of an agitated seabeast where there be dragons or something. You can just feel the wonder of exploration resonating from old-world cartography.
The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection has been busy scanning these old maps and making them available free-of-charge in digital high-resolution images. (more…)
According to the plot summary for Teen Wolf on Wikipedia, “High school student Scott Howard is seventeen years old, sick of being average and wishing he were special… Scott keeps undergoing changes and eventually undergoes a complete change and becomes a wolf… During the final basketball game, Scott refuses to “wolf out” and insists on winning the game on his own.”
Isn’t that heart-warming? The message is just be yourself!
So, what does Teen Wolf have to do with anything here? (more…)
BY BILL FERRIS
Google announced yesterday their plans to roll out a new operating system, Chrome OS. They’re designing it to run on netbooks initially, desktops eventually, beginning in the latter half of 2010.
According to the Official Google Blog, “Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds.” The code will be open-source, to boot.
The question: what possibilities does this operating system hold for educators? As more and more computing happens online, does this development set the stage for schools to shrink their technology budgets by buying Chrome-packed netbooks instead of laptops or desktops? And if so, how will this run up against filters, firewalls and internet censorship that’s so common in many schools. It’s all fair game here. Let’s hear your opinion in the comments!
Introducing the Google Chrome OS
Computer science and programming language can both be pretty intimidating. In fact, they can be a little forbidding if you try to jump in feet first. The thing about computers, though, is that they aren’t going anywhere, and they’re just going to keep talking their crazy language. That’s why it’s great to have a little help to chip away at that mystique.
Google Code University is a great resource that computer science students and educators can use to stay current with tools and computing technology. Everything is Creative Commons, too, so it should be easy to work it into your classroom.
BY BILL FERRIS
It’s hard to believe that Google figured out how to search for my house from space before getting around to searching for photos licensed under Creative Commons1. According to the Google Operating System blog (not affiliated with Google), Google Image Search now lets you narrow your results to pics that carry the Creative Commons license. Hey, better late than never.
BY BILL FERRIS
Google is renowned as one of the most remarkable companies in the world. Their search engine, maps, docs, the Android phone platform, are revolutionizing the way information is found, communicated and used. As such, when Google wants to bring in a speaker to rally the troops, they can get top-notch presenters like Steve Wozniak, Tom Brokaw, Neil Gaiman, David Allen, John Battelle, Merlin Mann, and Ken Jennings. Seeing as how they’ve bought up the whole internet including YouTube, they’ve archived videos of these presentations and made them available to the public at Videos from the Googleplex.
U-2 Spy Plane in Google Earth
Nothing says Cold War quite like the U-2 spy plane incident. Free Technology for Teachers provides a link to a Google Earth file in which your students can find out fascinating facts about this seminal event in American history.
How To Learn Photoshop In 24 Hrs
As long as you’ve ponied up a few hundred bucks for Photoshop, you may as well learn how to use it. DesignReviver has a series of tutorials on how to use this venerable graphics program.
18 Most Scenic Places For Teaching English Overseas
Who among us hasn’t pondered teaching English abroad? See exotic places, learn a new language, and see how people live in another part of the world. MatadorAbroad sweetens the deal by listing 18 of the most beautiful places you could go for your overseas teaching experience. Locales like Rio, Prague and Zanzibar look awfully tempting, especially when winter rolls around again.
Nine Reasons to Twitter in Schools
Get the most out of 140 characters. Tech & Learning has 9 reasons Twitter is a powerful educational tool. FYI, this entry: 138 characters. -BILL FERRIS
Photo credit: (nz)dave on Flickr.
Google does it again. This time it’s a new layer for Google Earth that uses NASA-funded maps to show carbon dioxide emissions from various sources. Of course, you can download Google Earth 5 and get the information so you can make your own maps, but you can view an example here.
In a classroom, maps like this can have many applications. The most obvious would be in a science class if you were studying climate change. You could compare and contrast the emissions from electricity production and the industrial sector. Additionally, you could use the map to study your own area’s carbon footprint and compare it with other areas. Students could use the data within Google Earth to create a “tour” showing how various sectors and/or geographical areas contribute to carbon dioxide emissions.
I’m sure that once you play around with the maps and look at the data on your own, you’ll find many ways to integrate it into your own classroom. -REBECCAH HAINES
USA CO2 Emissions from fossil fuels 2002
Enter a new world with lesson plans for Google Earth
Google Earth 5 adds more educational features
Instructifeature: It’s getting hot in here! Teaching about climate change
Welcome to May’s random roundup. This month’s theme: Little Johnny, one-man stand-in for school-aged children the world over. After a year-and-a-half of hard work, we figured this overused cliche deserved a post of his own before he gets back to studying.
Time-savers for teachers
For other notes and resources the students need, consider giving this stuff to them as a whole, at the beginning of a session or semester. That way you only have to keep a master copy for Little Johnny who struggles to keep himself organized.
Learning exercise: Promote healthy living this school year
If you’re concerned about your students’ health, you can do something about it by extolling the virtues of healthy exercise. Ask Little Johnny how his little league team did over the summer. Do you have any joggers or climbers in your midst? Take an interest, and maybe they’ll get more active.
Search Visually, Safely with RedZee
RedZee filters out porn and other inappropriate content, so you don’t need to worry that Little Johnny will “accidentally” stumble across something he shouldn’t be looking at on a school computer.
Swap your Stuff at Zwaggle
But Zwaggle might be a good resource to pass along to parents. If you can make their lives easier by showing them where to find Christmas presents on the cheap, they might make your lives easier by encouraging Little Johnny to buckle down and try a little harder for his nice teacher.
Keep Your Grade Book Online with Engrade
If students (and their parents) can track their grades at any time, it may motivate them to stay on task throughout the class. Come parent-teacher conference time, you won’t have to deal with parents who are angry about Little Johnny’s surprise “D.”
Instructifeature: How to Stimulate Class Discussion Using Discussion Forums
In the classroom, you’re limited by clock. There’s only so much time you can devote to class discussion. Students feel the time crunch even more keenly—they’ve got to compose a thoughtful response in mere seconds. And while thinking on one’s feet is a valuable skill, how much better would Little Johnny’s answer be if he had more time to compose his ideas? Using discussion boards, students have the time they need to think of the best answer they can.
Photo credit: khalid almasoud on Flickr.
We here at Instructify love to hear from you. Would you like to leave some feedback on this posting or just send me a message? Simple: just go up on your roof and paint your remarks in big, block letters. If you’re in a rural area, you might arrange some rocks in a field. Then in the comments section under each posting simply send us the coordinates.
Yeah, I suppose maybe you could leave the actual comments in the comments section, Captain Buzzkill. I’m just trying to get you motivated about different ways that you might possibly use Google Earth.
Maybe you might be interested in using Google Earth to explore the Civil War, look at the global diamond trade, or engage students in math and geometry by looking at different mountains’ ski slopes. Take a look at these lesson plans for Google Earth, for example. You’ll find lessons spread out across five content areas: social studies, math, science, language arts, and cross curricular. The lessons start at basic how-tos for users (which aren’t just for stinking newbies — experienced users might even find new features to investigate), then branch out into both student-controlled and teacher-controlled lessons.
The best part is that these lesson plans are already prepared for you. The file formats will vary, but now you don’t have to stay up until 1 a.m. doing prep work and planning. Who knows? This new abundance of time might afford you the chance to start a new hobby…like arranging cryptic messages for satellites to read. I’m just saying. -NICK YINGLING
Google Earth 5 adds more educational features
Rembrandt. Velasquez. Jerry’s girlfriend Nina. You and your art history students can now see the works of two of these great masters by visiting Spain’s Prado Museum in Google Earth. In addition to building a fancy 3D rendering of the museum itself, the real draw is the paintings themselves. According to Google, “The images of these works are about 14,000 million pixels, 1,400 times more detailed than the image a 10 megapixel digital camera would take.” These ultra-ultra-ULTRA high-res photos let you see every brush stroke and crack in the centuries-old paint. When you see these great works in such fine detail, you’ll see why they’re in the museum in the first place. -BILL FERRIS
Don’t have Google Earth? You can still view these masterpieces in good old Google Maps. It won’t give you driving directions, however.
Too many students approach a research paper by using a database or searching aimlessly on Google. Instead of teaching students to find information, teach them how to get the information to come to them.
With Google Reader students can create a constantly updating library of information that requires little work on their part beyond reading. Google Reader was created to keep up with RSS feeds from various websites. If you don’t know what an RSS feed is, don’t feel alone. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication — if that doesn’t mean much to you, that’s okay. Just know that it enables every new edit or post on a webpage to feed directly into your reader. You can subscribe to a website’s RSS feed through your Google Reader account. This allows teachers and students to find up-to-date information from a variety of sources all in one place.
There are other RSS readers out there, but I have found that Google Reader has some cool features for students and teachers. First, you can search by key topic, or receive recommendations based on your current subscriptions. A subscription to Instructify, for example, will lead you to other technology or educational blogs and websites.
Once students have created a list of subscriptions they will get an update whenever there is a new post, comment, or edit on the page. They will get all their current events and blog posts on one page. If students are working on a collaborative wiki they will see each edit seconds after it happens without having to visit the site to see what has changed.
When the feeds start coming in, Google Reader keeps up with your students’ reading habits, producing a report of when, what, and how much they are reading each day. The Reader also allows students to share their favorite entries with friends. They can write comments or notes on all their favorite posts and share these with friends and teachers. “Starring” a post also helps students find the text later when it comes to writing a report or posting their findings online.
Google Reader is an easy way to help students find current information about different topics, get up-to-date information, keep track of their classmates’ work with the same materials, and keep notes on their favorite readings without having to spend half their computer time visiting random websites. Try setting your students up with a Google Reader account and start collecting information on a topic important to their education and interest. -MEGAN CURLEY
The Official Google Reader Blog
As a graduate student and educator I found it more and more difficult to balance my day-to-day without some organizational assistance. I was constantly checking my calendars, and putting bookmarks on every website I found so I could read it later. I then discovered iGoogle.
iGoogle is a web page designed by Google to allow users to create their own personalized home page. Users can choose to put their calendars, e-mail inbox, bookmark list, RSS readers, and other neat gadgets right in one place. Google supplies thousands of these free gadgets designed to help reduce your need to visit a dozen different pages in one day. Not only does this give your mouse a rest, but it keeps all your important web sites up front and current all the time.
Once I started using this tool on a daily (okay, hourly) basis I realized how useful this could be for all educators, or what’s more, for their students. As many schools are making formidable budget cuts, teachers are finding ways to reduce their paper and copier use by turning to digital software to store and share assignments. Now we have classrooms of students that are using the internet on a daily basis for research and homework assignment. And just like they would need that old pile of paper, students need a virtual locker to store all this virtual information. This is where iGoogle comes to the rescue.
I have slowly been weaning some of my more tech-savvy students onto iGoogle. I find that they are just as excited about it as they are for their social networking web sites. They can personalize their pages with the gadgets and tools that they need to be successful in school, AND they can make it look pretty too. I have shared my Google assignments calendar with them so they can see what is due every day. They get updates each time a teacher updates his or her web page or blog. Students can check on the status of their virtual online projects and find current events all on one web page.
For more suggestion on ways to use iGoogle in your classroom you can visit iGoogle for educators. -MEGAN CURLEY
NCTIES update — Thursday morning
Instructifeature: Create teaching portfolios easily with Google Sites
moxie design studios
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