Some Good Stuff Here for Teachers and Parents

In a previous thread about an editorial article by the Times' Lynne Varner, she gave me a link to some teachers' blogs. I've been making my way through a few of them and this one, by Montana gifted ed teacher, Tamara Fisher, had some great links from her trip to Edufest (a conference for gifted ed professionals). These are tips any parent/teacher could use. From the blog:

Here are a few highlights of what I learned the last three days of Edufest that might be of interest/use for any of you:

iTunes University - Did you know that universities are now recording professors' lectures and making them available for anyone to learn from? Want to learn about computer programming from an MIT professor? Want to listen in on a class at Oxford? You can do it via iTunes University!

Online Stopwatch - Want to give your students a visual reminder of how much time is left? Online Stopwatch counts up or down and the displayed numbers are large enough to be easily seen from a computer in the room (better yet, project it onto a big screen or wall if you are so equipped).

SchoolTube - Do your students want to post their video projects on YouTube but your district blocks the site or you're worried about the too-open-for-school-ness that is YouTube? Try SchoolTube, the school-friendly version of video posting.

Have a kid who wants to learn about programming and making/designing computer games? Scratch is a great place to get started. Created by the "Lifelong Kindergarten" group [isn't that a great name‽] at the MIT Media Lab, Scratch is a free download and once it's downloaded, the computer doesn't have to be online for the program to work.

Do your students email their homework to you? Inbox getting clogged up? Try Drop.io where you can create a free online drop box (up to 100MB) that your students can drop their digital homework into and you can retrieve it from. Keep even more organized by creating a separate box for each class period. (Also great for sharing large files with people other than your students, too, of course.)

Concerned that your students don't know the best ways to search on the internet? Google has little posters with search strategies that you can print out and hang in your classroom.

Looking for a pseudo-website to help teach your students that not everything on the web is valid and reliable? Show them this page about the (supposed) Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and see if they bite.

Want to learn about more items like these? Poke around at this website created by the presenter for the technology strand where I learned these ideas (the presenter was Brian Housand). At Brian's Edufest page, click on any Day or click on "60 in 60" for additional ideas.

"I learned about EtherPad!" (work together in real time on the same document)