February 7

February 7

"Wisdom starts with wonder." - Socrates

In the News
AAA Fuel Cost Calculator: http://www.fuelcostcalculator.com/TripGasPrice.aspx
This site will help estimate the cost of driving from one location to another with information tailored to your vehicle. Enter your location, destination and car model. You'll get an estimate of the trip's cost. Also, gas prices may be high in your area. But other parts of the country might be paying even more. So, there's a map that will show you how gas prices stack up.

Bloggers - A portrait of the internet’s new storytellers: http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP%20Bloggers%20Report%20July%2019%202006.pdf

Computer program picks up language rules, makes own sentences, researchers say:
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/050831_langfrm.htm
"Researchers say they have developed a system that lets a computer scan text in various languages, figure out the grammatical rules behind it, then spit out simple, but sensible sentences of its own making. The method also works for such data as sheet music or genetic code, the researchers said, and has implications for speech recognition and genomics."

How to be a better blogger -- and still keep your day job: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9000792&source=NLT_AM&nlid=1

Information and Cummunications Technology for Sustainable Development - Defining a Global Research Agenda: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rtongia/ict4sd_book.htm
The entire book is online and is free to access.

The Life Cycle of a Personal Computer: http://www.svtc.org/cleancc/cc_graphics/life_cycle.pdf
This is a free PDF version of Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition's 'poster on the environmental effects of each stage of the computer life cycle.

Virtual classes opening worlds: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/living/education/15455614.htm
36 percent of American public school districts report pupils enrolled in distance education courses.

Email
Electronic Mail: http://www.webteacher.org/windows.html
Find out what it is, how it works, how to use it by going to the communications section of this page.

E-Mail Communication and Relationships: http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/emailrel.html

Email for Kids: http://www.email-for-kids.com/

Email In the Classroom: http://www.hardin.k12.ky.us/res_techn/TEC/integrate/emailnclass.htm
Explore ideas for using email in the classroom.

Eudora Email Program: http://www.eudora.com/index.html

Gaggle.net: http://gaggle.net
Free email site for students

Groupboard Math Tutoring Whiteboard Example: http://www.groupboard.com/math.html
A chat room with math symbols available.

Internet Etiquette: ftp://ftp.temple.edu/pub/info/help-net/netiquette.infohn

The Tyranny of Email: http://www.w-uh.com/articles/030308-tyranny_of_email.html

Web logs/Blogs
Blogs are chronologically arranged online journals. They function primarily as a medium for personal publishing. Blogs commonly include personal commentaries and observations, enhanced by relevant links and the opportunity for asynchronous response. Blogs tend to communicate their writers' personalities and points of view.
Students write for an audience and receive authentic audience response when using blogs. Blogs facilitate an emerging freeform genre of public journaling. They work well as sustained conversations -- students write and reflect about a particular reading or topic or issue over time and that writing inspires response from an audience. This conversation might be interdisciplinary and it might incorporate the works of others. It might include breaking news in the form of newsfeeds and students might link to and respond to these external resources.
Blogs involve students with content, critical reading, and thoughtful and reflective writing. Blog writing might occasionally warrant a casual style. Traditional writing assignments are only read by the teacher. Students have to follow rules. Blogging is much more about communication. For some assignments, IM speak might be allowed, especially when the audience is other students. Other assignments would require students to use formal language.
Beyond students' own personal reflections and experiences, they might create a simulated blog for a historical figure or a fictional character. Students might engage in group discussions playing the roles of characters and assuming their opinions -- they might pose as philosophers engaged in great dialog, or the characters in Julius Caesar.
Blogging can be a classroom management tool. All assignments might be delivered through the blog. Peer review can be integrated and the teacher could manage it all through an RSS aggregator.
Teachers could use their own blogs to organize general class dialog or literature circle discussions.
Information can be transmitted to the school community.
Blogs can serve the interests of educational organizations by supplementing and complementing the organizations other publication venues, while also providing:
1) a quick and easy way to share current information with both members and non members about events and ideas in the world of education
2) an alternate avenue for promoting activities and concerns to all members of the education community
3) an option for threaded and open discussion of concerns
Using blogs as "adventure learning" technology: Blogging serves as a reflective activity for the group that is traveling. Locate a nearby Internet café, and build a stop-in into the daily routine. While students also are allowed to check personal email, they are required to do a little expository writing on some dimension of their experience while traveling.
The experience students are having while traveling is so foreign to many of their classmates back home, it was difficult for trekkers to come to any meaningful exchange of ideas with their classmates in the absence of some kind of structure back home. Try to find at least one teacher who will be willing to build the blog into their social studies, history, or related course.
The onus is on out of school instructor to make strong connections with classroom teachers and understand their lesson plans for the coming months. In general, teachers really want to find lesson content in the humanities that "resonates with relevance" to students, and something like their blog entries is really just a portal. There are numerous facets to the experiential learning that can be built upon.
Some other specific ideas--both technology dependent and independent--for using blogs in the classroom:
- Use blog entries to provide text for a photoessay
- Teachers select a blog entry to develop into an well-rounded essay
- Blog entries used as primary resource for a journalistic article about the forum, experiences, etc. -- identify angles for Internet research
- Use the blog as source material for skits around cross cultural communication and other kinds of situations
However, teachers need to use blogs thoughtfully or they will suffer the fate of other new technologies. Blogs pedagogical purpose should be clear. They should not be forced into being curricularly useful. What is about the format that makes it better than what is being done now? Insert the use of blogs where they make sense rather than just adopting them because they are new.

Tools for Creating Blogs
Blogger.com: http://www.blogger.com/home

BlogMeister: http://classblogmeister.com/index.php

Easy Journal: http://www.xanga.com/

Edublogs.org - free blogs for education professionals: http://edublogs.org/

LiveJournal: http://www.livejournal.com/

Moveable Type: http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/

Xanga: http://www.xanga.com/

Bloglines: http://www.bloglines.com/
This is an aggregator that is used to keep track of updates to websites and blogs.

Sample Blogs
American Studies: http://central.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/americanstudies/
Thomas McHale, an English teacher at Hunterdon Central Regional (NJ) High School, began ablog for his year-long interdisciplinary American studies class.

Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth: http://www.edwebproject.org/andy/blog/

The Blog and the Borg: a Collective Approach to E-Learning: http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/jd29/papers/dronelearn2003short.doc

Bee-blogging from the Tropics: http://blogs.ecml.at/blog.asp?id=104

Blog Glossary: http://www.samizdata.net/blog/glossary.html

Blog of Proximal Development: http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/

Blogging Across the Curriculum: http://mywebspace.quinnipiac.edu/PHastings/bac.html

Bloglines: http://bloglines.com/
Bloglines is one type of RSS reader. It checks and lets you know when something new has been posted to a site you are following.

Blogs in Educaiton: http://awd.cl.uh.edu/blog/

Brandon's Online Magazine - a collection of weblogs and podcasts written by middle school students in Virginia Beach, VA.: http://mrmayo.typepad.com/magazine/

D'Arcy Norman Dot Net: http://www.darcynorman.net/

David Warlick's 2 Cents: http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/index.php

Dekita.org: http://dekita.org/

Ed Tech Talk: http://www.edtechtalk.com/
" A webcast & site where we discuss, comment and generally mull-over all things related to educational technology."

Edublog Insights - Comments, Reflections and Occasional Brainstorms: http://anne.teachesme.com/

Educational Bloggers Network: http://www.ebn.weblogger.com/

edugadget - plain-talking technology reviews for teachers: http://www.edugadget.com/index.php

Egyptology Blog: http://www.egyptologyblog.co.uk/

Egyptology News: http://egyptology.blogspot.com/

elearning space blog: http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/

Gargoyles loose in the library: http://www.uni.uiuc.edu/library/blog/
This blog is an extension of the library-as-a-place. It shows a library that is staffed by real people who have opinions and who care about kids. It is used to make announcements but it is also a forum for expression. The tone of the blog reflects the personality of the school, University Laboratory High School, and places a high value on quirkiness and individuality.

How to Create Blogs: http://www.geocities.com/wentzao2004/writing/blogs/how_to/index.htm

Hunterdon Central Library: http://central.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/imc/
This library blog offers library news but also functins as the IMC's main site, with major links running down the left column.

Internet Time Blog: http://www.internettime.com/wordpress/

Journalism 1: http://central.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/mcjournalism/
Thomas McHale is an English teacher at Hunterdon Central Regional (NJ) High School. His journalism class is blog-based and entirely paperless. He links to his students' individual writing blogs as well as the blogs of several writers' groups.

Joyce Valenza's NeverEndign Search: http://joycevalenza.edublogs.org/

LISNews.com: http://www.lisnews.com/
"LISNews is a collaborative weblog [aka blog] devoted to current events and news in the world of Library and Information Science."

Meriwether Lewis Elementary School: http://lewiselementary.org/
This blog is used to transit information to the school community.

Neville's Bloggers: http://itc.blogs.com/neville/

NOBLE - North of Boston Library Exchange: http://www.noblenet.org/

The Open Classroom: Using technology, transparency, and discussion to transform education: http://tmchale.blogspot.com/
Thomas McHale, an English teacher at Hunterdon Central Regional (NJ) High School invites parents and fellow teachers to join a thoughtful conversation which revolves around "weblogs, interdisciplinary teaching, writing, journalism, high school newspapers, and the culture of high school."

Our Class 2006: http://ourclass2006.blogspot.com/

Peter Scott's Library Blog: http://xrefer.blogspot.com/

Polar Science: http://www.polarscience.ca/

Sydney's People Podcast: http://rosaspodcast.blogspot.com/

Waypath - Blog Discovery Engine: http://www.waypath.com
Blogs On News lets you follow discussion of the latest news, as it takes place in weblogs. Using semantic matching technology, they find relevant blog posts for news articles, even if those posts don't link back to the news. The technology doesn't rely on keyword matching. The first release of Blogs On News uses the latest news articles from Yahoo! News. You can track blog posts for a specific article, or use Blogs On News to follow an entire news category.

Weblog Ed - Using Weblogs in Education: http://www.weblogg-ed.com/

When Blogging Goes Bad: A Cautionary Tale About Blogs, Email Lists, Discussion, and Interaction: http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/9.1/binder.html?praxis/krause/index.html

Whippany Park Library News: http://whippanylibrarynews.blogspot.com/
This blog incorporates images and media.

WorldKit: http://www.brainoff.com/worldkit/
Basically, WorldKit generates a Macromedia Flash map of the world, and allows you to mark the map with text and images, plotted at a particular latitude and longitude. Each time you plot something on the map, you can hyperlink it to a web page as well. It's a fairly simple tool, though you need to be able to look up the latitude and longitude of places you want to plot on the map. But apart from that, it's just a matter of editing the XML code of an RSS feed, filling it in with descriptions of each place you want to plot on the map.

Wiki
Wiki is derived from the Hawaiian for "quick." Wikis are used as collaborative authoring tools through the Internet. Users focus on crating, adding to, and editing text content using web browsers. Because wikis are browser-based editing tools, they are easy for nearly everyone to use. They are a logical tool for group projects.
Wikis have advantages over traditional print notebooks in education because:
1) They prepare students to write collaboratively in networked environments.
2) No one can take the notebook/disc and not return it.
3) All students in a group can easily contribute and edit.
4) Teachers can easily comment and/or monitor progress and see the level of student contributions.
5) They need not be limited to the enrollment of a particular class. They can be built collaboratively by classes across the country or around the world. They can involve cross-age collaborations.
6) They can support professional development. Faculty study groups can share collected knowledge, Teachers and administrators might use them as planning tools for drafting new policies or planning upcoming meeting or inservices. Individual could comment on and contribute to agenda items prior to an even and offer feedback following an event.
Some examples of collaborative documents that wikis can be used to draft are:
1) classroom policies
2) simulated peace treaties or legislation
3) poetry anthologies
4) recipe collections
5) peer review projects
6) wikidictionaries - When students learn new words, they add those words in alphabetical order in a class wiki. Throughout the school year the students would involve themselves in building a truly relevant classroom resource.
7) study guides - Students load their notes and useful external content onto a wiki and continue to refine it through the course to create a real study tool. In the end, each student would have a personal wiki textbook, a digital library of what they learned.
Wikis have disadvantages in that:
1) they are vulnerable to hacking
2) they have the potential to inspire editing quarrels

About Wikis
Blogs, Wikis, & Podcasting: Students Journalists & Information MastersNew: http://davidwarlick.com/classpage.php?page_id=2747&status=last

Wiklossary: http://wiklossary.nearlythere.com/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi

Tools for Creating Wikis
Seed Wiki: http://www.seedwiki.com/
Try editing my wiki at: http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/study_plans/study_plans.cfm

RSS
Eluminate Live
Mary Harrsch's presentation: Can RSS Help Learners and Educators? is posted inside LearningTimes at: http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=681848
Those who have a LearningTimes username and password can just login and access the recording. Those who don't have a username, can register for free when you click the above link by clicking "Join".
Or, you can visit http://www.LearningTimes.org and click "Become a Member".
Once inside the community area, they can follow this link to access the recording: http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=681848

List Serv
Education Listservs: http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/taylor/suny/listservs.htm

JISCmail: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/
"JISCmail is a mailing list service sponsored by the JISC, for the UK Higher and Further Education communities, enabling members to stay in touch and share information by e-mail or via the web."

"What You Need to Know About..." (your favorite topics) sign up for free newsletters: http://talk.about.com

List servs I belong to:
Digital Divide Discussion List: http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org/content/sections/index.cfm

MarcoPolo: http://www.mped.org/teacher/mp_listserv.aspx

MIDDLE-L Discussion List: http://ecap.crc.uiuc.edu/listserv/middle-l.html
MIDDLE-L is a discussion list for anybody interested in middle school education.

t2t(teacher to teacher)SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE FORM online at: http://www.teachnet.com/t2t/

*The Dummies Guide to Listserv Netiquette*
Before you hit SEND, check these 10 golden rules:
(1) Read all unread messages in your inbox, to avoid sending superfluous messages.
(2) Think before you write. Is your message relevant and appropriate?
(3) Think after you write. Re-read your message. Is it clear, concise and (again) relevant? Off-topic comments (sometimes flagged OT in the subject line) may be acceptable in some online communities, but not in others.
(4) Write properly. Many people will not take you seriously if you write messages without capitalization or punctuation (i dont like that). Use abbreviations only if you are sure everyone will understand them ("BTW," for example).
(5) Break your writing into paragraphs: screenfulls of text are off-putting. "White space" separates your ideas, makes it easier to quote selectively (see #9 below) and encourages recipients to read your message in full.
(6) If you have nothing to say, say nothing. Unless your fellow users are very patient, emails that just say "me too," "me neither," "I agree," or (worse) "I don't know anything about this subject, but ..." are likely to irritate. Such messages might be better sent as a private email to the sender (do this by copying and pasting the private party's address into your mailer--most groups are set to reply to the whole list). But sometimes, people ask for agreement or disagreement. Use common sense!
(7) Give your message a clear subject title. If you read your messages as a daily digest, try to refer to the subject of the
thread to which you are replying, rather than Digest #4203.
(8) Do not quote lengthy messages or entire digests in your reply. (Use cut and paste.) It is more annoying than you probably realize for users who read their messages in a daily digest, and it increases the time and cost of downloads for others. Similarly, a two-line
"signature" should suffice--especially if you are frequent correspodent (we all know who you are!).
(9) Write for the lowest common denominator. Assume your reader is using telnet across a 12k dial-up modem on a slow 386 or an
Apple II. Don't use HTML, don't use fancy graphics and colours and don't assume that links are clickable. Remember that internet
access is expensive in some parts of the world, and many people pay per minute.
(10) Break one of these rules rather than go against your COMMON SENSE--the best guide to (n)etiquette ever discovered.
This guide was prepared by Nigel Caplan for EV Online 2003 (with a few edits and changes by Elizabeth Hanson-Smith), and
may be freely distributed, providing this acknowledgement is included.

A self-quiz about listservs is at: http://www.albion.com/netiquette/netiquiz.html
It opens in new window. You may also copy the address and paste it into a browser window.

Free Online Subscriptions
C-Span Alerts:http://www.c-span.org/watch/cspanalert.asp?code=Watch
There are many different subscriptions to choose from.

Distance-Educator.com: http://www.distance-educator.com/dnews/

Edlines: https://mail.altec.org/mailman/listinfo/edlines
"Edlines is a Web-based news service provided by the High Plains Regional Technology in Education Consortium, one of ten federally-funded organizations focused on improving student performance through the integration of advanced technologies into instructional activities. Edlines provides a convenient way to keep up with breaking news in education and technology."

EducationNews.org: http://www.EducationNews.org

Email Lists: http://www.classroom.com/community/email/index.jhtml
Choose from ten differnt lists

eSchool News Online: http://www.eschoolnews.com/
Technology ALERT and Tools for Schools

ExLibris and Neat New Stuff: subscribe to these two newsletters at: http://marylaine.com/exlibris/subscrib.html

Explorator: to subsribe send a blank email message to:
mailto: Explorator-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

The Journal: get your FREE subscription to the magazine at http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/subscription/default.cfm
"for the latest trends and applications in the educational technology market"

Lesson Plan Page: http://www.lessonplanspage.com/

Neuroscience for Kids: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/neurok.html

PBS Teacher Previews is the weekly online newsletter from PBS Online designed specifically for preK-12 educators. Subscribe at: http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/previews/previews.shtm

Prove Them Wrong Digest: type "subscribe" in the subject line of an e-mail message and send to
mailto:subscribe@provethemwrong.com

Forums and Discussion Boards
eSchool News Forums: http://www.eschoolnews.com/ubb/index.htm

Virtual Dr.: http://www.virtualdr.com/
"A community where computing problems get solved"

This site began in March 1998 and was created by Janet Luch. This page was last updated on January 19, 2007 .
Email to studyplans@yahoo.com.