Just a post for my EdTech Portfolio.

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As many of our regular readers have already noticed, I am a huge proponent of the need for Lutheran educators to have well-developed personal learning networks (PLNs).  My PLN is the bread and butter of my professional development plan because it allows me to tap in to the knowledge and expertise of so many educators, administrators, and technologists around the world.  PLNs are also highly interactive, meaning that I can go to my PLN, ask a question, and have a reasonable expectation of receiving a response within a few hours or, usually, much less.

As the years have gone by, my PLN has been constantly evolving.  At first, it consisted mostly of a handful of blogs, but now, it includes blogs, podcasts, Facebook friends, and Twitter followers.  Keeping track of all of this can be something of a chore, which is why I rely on a (more…)

A friend of the Lutheran Educators’ Guild, Anthony Horvath, is hosting a new bi-weekly discussion series intended to engage individuals with a range of philosophical and theological backgrounds in open dialogue.  The first session in this “Knights of Contention” series is happening right now (9:30 pm CST, Oct. 12).  The next session is scheduled for 9:30 pm CST on October 26.

You can join the discussion by following this link (you’ll need Adobe’s Flash player).

First, I would like to apologize for not posting a Web 2.0 Weekly review last week.  Unfortunately, I’ve been experiencing severe difficulties with my Internet connection for most of this week.  Sadly, these problems are still not entirely resolved, but I will make every effort to get back on schedule with Web 2.0 reviews this week.

In a previous Web 2.0 Weekly, I wrote about one of the many overlays for Google Earth.  In particular, we looked at an overlay that provided Google Earth data for every geographical location mention in the Bible.  I spent a bit of that review talking about some aspects of Google Earth itself, but I recently realized I haven’t actually done a full review of Google Earth.  I feel a bit ashamed about that, because Google Earth is an incredibly powerful tool that can be used in just about any course, not just history or the social sciences.  Even better, Google Earth is free to download and use.

Google Earth can be downloaded for Windows 2000 and up, Mac OS X 10.4 and up (PowerPC G4/G5 or Intel), and Linux with kernel 2.4 or later (only Ubuntu and Red Hat are officially supported).  What all of this means is that most computers made in the last 10 years or so that you’re likely to encounter at home or school are capable or running Google Earth to some degree.  Google Earth also requires an active connection to the Internet and this is definitely a case where a faster connection is better.

Performance in Google Earth can vary based on the number of overlays, layers, and other features you have enabled.  It is also highly dependent on the speed of your Internet connection, because Google Earth downloads much of what it displays as it is needed.  This is especially noticeable when zooming in on an area especially if you have many layers or the 3D features enabled.

If you want to use Google Earth in your classroom, I highly recommend using a digital projector or another large display that can be seen by everyone in the room.  Google Earth (more…)

Studying the weather is always an exciting topic in school, because you just have to look out the nearest window to see it.  But what if you want to take a look at the weather 100 miles away?  Or in the next state?  How about the entire continental United States all at once?  A quick visit to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s weather.gov site will provide you with a vast array of weather information that are excellent additions to units on the weather and weather forecasting.

But, let’s say you want to really impress your students with a massive, detailed overview of the weather in the United States.  Take a look at the full-resolution version of the National Mosaic Enhanced Radar Image for the United States.  This is a 3400 x 1700 pixel, animated loop of the weather radars covering the entire country.  This image would look great on a SMARTBoard or other interactive whiteboard (note: it’s probably still too high a resolution to fit entirely on the board).  Another nice feature is that clicking on a portion of the image will take you to an image for just that region.

The bad news is that it’s somewhat difficult to capture any of these weather radar images for later display.  The easiest way is using a screen capture program, like Jing, OS X’s built-in Grab, or even the old Control+Print Screen to capture to the clipboard of a Windows PC.

All of this information is free to use with no registration.  You’ll just need a computer with a broadband internet connection and a modern web browser.

For the final projects in my two most recent graduate courses, I needed a way to record some demonstrations of using some online tools.  After some consideration, I decided to create screencasts of my demonstrations.  I did some searching for screencasting tools, but ultimately decided on Jing for a few reasons.  First, Jing is free (more on this later).  Second, it runs on Macs as well as PCs (important, because I was using a Mac for my demos).  Third, based on past experience with Jing, I knew that I could save the screencasts as video files on my local computer.

Using Jing can be a bit jolting at first if you’ve never seen it in operation before because it doesn’t follow traditional GUI conventions.  Jing “lives” in the upper corner of your (more…)

The first week of school is not even over with and I am dealing with the gum issue.  (more…)

The ease with which rich multimedia content can be created and shared online has been one of the most revolutionary developments in 21st century society.  There have been numerous examples of YouTube videos going “viral” and receiving millions of views in a short period of time.  We are now starting to see regular examples of episodic content being released first (or even, only) online.  Often, these programs are being produced on extremely small budgets, but still have high production values.

There are many sites that host rich multimedia content.  YouTube is probably the best known example, but there are many others.  Many of these services have content that you might want to use in your classroom, but they may also host content that would be completely inappropriate for your students.  This can also be a problem if you are asking your students to search for video content on their own.  There are some services, like SchoolTube, TeacherTube, and GodTube that seek to address the issue of inappropriate content through various forms of review and moderation.   This week’s Web 2.0 Weekly takes a look at another option in school-safe video hosting.

SchoolWAX TV is a free service offered by SchoolWAX, an online homework assistance site.  SchoolWAX TV is a little different in that 100% of (more…)

As a classroom teacher, I often encountered a seemingly simple task that was deceptively challenging, namely, sharing a collection of web pages with students.  In most cases, writing a URL on the board or a handout is completely ineffective, resulting in a good deal of lost instructional time while the teacher helps students fix typos and correct other issues.  URL shortening services, like bit.ly and TinyURL can help, but can also lead to problems of their own.  The solution I usually adopted was to post the links to any web pages I wanted students to use in class on the course web page.Because this was a site that students were familiar with, it was easy enough to ask students to use it as a sort of portal to pages I wanted them to look at in class.

What if, however, you want to present students with a list of web pages you want them to visit in a particular order?  Again, you create such a list on a course web page, but you won’t be certain that students visit the indicated pages in the specified order.  That’s where the tool reviewed in (more…)