Lots to Browse, Lots to Learn

OpenCourseWare Consortium is a comprehensive database of free online courses from colleges like Yale, Stanford, and MIT. You can take courses on just about any topic from literature to music to kitchen science. There are hundreds of courses to explore. Great resource for supplemental materials or to challenge students to see what college courses are like.

World Series

Social media offers a variety of ways to keep up with the World Series. You can follow on Twitter, Facebook, on your iPhone... Cnet News offers a round-up of tools here.

Spanish-Language Browser

This might be worth a look for some students. Flock has introduced a Spanish-language browser in partnership with Univision Interactive Media, the largest Spanish-language media company in the US. You can read ReadWriteWeb's take on it here.

Cell Phones: "Remote Control for Life"

There is a discussion in the Ning about cell phones and other disruptive technology in schools. This study adds some interesting statistics on how ubiquitous and invaluable cell phones have become for many people. Global market research firm Synovate surveyed more than 8,000 cell phone owners across 11 markets to learn more about how people are using these devices. Among the findings:

• Three quarters of respondents never leave home without their phones, and 36 percent of people across the world go as far as to say they ‘cannot live without’ their cell phone.
• 23 percent of respondents own more than two mobile phones. Americans are among the most likely to own at least two at 33 percent, along with the French (34 percent). Brits and Americans were the most likely to own a smartphone at 21 and 20 percent, respectively.
• 17 percent of respondents use e-mail on their mobile on a regular basis, led by 26 percent in the U.S. and 25 percent in the U.K.
• Similarly, 17 percent use Internet browsing, topped by the U.K. at 31 percent and the U.S. at 26 percent.
• 11 percent say they social network regularly via mobile, again led by the U.K. (17 percent) and the U.S. (15 percent).
• 62 percent use the camera regularly, led by 76 percent in the U.K., 71 percent in France and 68 percent in the U.S
• Text messaging has changed the way people manage their relationships. The survey showed that 31 percent of people have lied about their whereabouts via text, one in five has set up a first date and 12 percent have broken up with someone.

View news release ››

YouTube Tools

These two tools let you show just the "good parts" of YouTube videos:

• TubeChop
• Splicd

Word Games

I love word games. My favorite is Babble, a Boggle-like challenge. Here are a few others:

• MustPopWords
• DeepLeep
• WordTwist

I haven't tried any of these, but Dictionary.com just announced the five winners of their Word Play contest.

Know any others I can add to my collection?

Who Are Those People?!

Flickr now allows you to identify the people in your photos, add names to others' photos and more. According to the Flickr Blog:

People in Photos lets you add a member to a photo, find photos of people you know, and manage which photos you’re in.....

You can set your preferences for who can add you to photos and who can add people to photos you’ve shared. You can even determine on a photo-by-photo basis if you’d like to be featured — after all, everyone has a bad hair day now and then. If you do remove yourself from a photo, only you will be able to add yourself back in. If you decide that People in Photos isn’t your thing, you can remove yourself entirely.

History Resources

History Day is coming soon! Here is a list of 100YouTube Channels for History Buffs. I found this on Online College Blog. It often has great lists of useful sites. Worth adding to your RSS reader.

Something Else

I found this on Free Technology for Teachers.

"The Community College System of Colorado has a faculty wiki on which there is a page about Bloom's Taxonomy. The Bloom's Taxonomy page contains two flash tutorials designed to help teachers to plan lessons and create assignments using Bloom's Taxonomy. The first tutorial is a general overview of Bloom's Taxonomy. The second tutorial applies the concepts of Bloom's Taxonomy to current Internet resources like blogs, wikis, and multimedia mash-up tools."

Nice.

Things I Found Today

...via Twitter and reading my Bloglines feeds.

The first one is this short slide presentation :

A Teacher's Guide To Web 2.0 at School

View more documents from Sacha Chua.

I added the author's blog (http://sachachua.com/wp/) to my reader after browsing her posts.

Another discovery is this series of short films from Project Information Literacy, a research project of the iSchool at the University of Washington. There are five in the series and all are worth watching, but I especially liked these:

PIL InfoLitDialog, No. 3: Frustrations


PIL InfoLitDialog, No. 1: Wikipedia


Project Information Literacy is a national study about early adults (college students) and their information-seeking behaviors, competencies, and the challenges they face when conducting research in the digital age. What PIL learns will apply to how K-12 teaches research, too.

History Resources

The Gilderman Lehrman Institute of American History promotes the study and love of American History. The Institute maintains a website as a portal for American history on the Web; to offer high-quality educational material for teachers, students, historians, and the public; and to provide up-to-date information about the Institute's programs and activities. There is a lot to explore here, including online exhibitions such as Battle Lines: Letters from America's Wars, Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, and The Manhattan Project.

Libraries Change Lives

William Kamkwamba built a windmill in his Malawi village from a picture he found in a library book. (The library was funded by the US Government.) He was interviewed recently by John Stewart on The Daily Show.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
William Kamkwamba
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

William was invited to give a TED talk that you can watch here. His book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind has been published recently.

YouTube Channel

LeAnn mentioned subscribing to YouTube channels as part of your online personal learning network. SMART Technologies, producers of SMART Boards, has started a channel that highlights ways to use the boards in classrooms, offers tips & tricks, and more all in thei YouTube channel. A good resource if you have a SMART Board. Subscribe here http://www.youtube.com/user/SMARTClassrooms#p/a

National Information Literacy Awareness Month

Official notice of the importance of information literacy! President Obama has declared October National Information Literacy Awareness Month. From the press release,

Rather than merely possessing data, we must also learn the skills necessary to acquire, collate, and evaluate information for any situation. This new type of literacy also requires competency with communicationtechnologies, including computers and mobile devices that can help in our day-to-day decisionmaking....Though we may know how to find the information we need, we must also know how to evaluate it.

You can read the entire press release here.

Reliable Web Reference Sites

The American Library Association MARS (Machine-Assisted Reference Section*) has just published the 11th Annual list of best free reference sites. The list recognizes outstanding reference sites on the World Wide Web. You can find the list here.

* I have always thought the MARS acronym particularly appropriate--sort of a space agey name--Machine-Assisted Reference.