Cool Tools on Institute Day

Driven by NETS-T, Digital Leaders and instructional tech folks have been busy collaborating to prepare sessions designed to help teachers leverage technology to meet district goals and initiatives. Cool Tools will be featured throughout the day. Stay tuned for our wiki, filled with session resources.

Location: Brooks Middle School

Time: 8:00-1:00, no lunch

• Session 1: Keynote, Burke Hatch
• Session 2: Breakout session, 80 minutes
• Session 3: Breakout session, 80 minutes

Online registration is scheduled to open on Tuesday, November 16th. 

Stay tuned to your email for more information.

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Cool Tools on Institute Day - Nov. 24, 2010

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Digital Leaders are building a wiki of resources for the sessions we will be offering on Institute Day. The sessions are designed to help teachers and administrators leverage technology to meet district goals and initiatives. Cool Tools will be featured throughout the day. Watch our wiki grow!

Registration opens Nov. 14th

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Wordle and Current Events

Wordle is a great tool for beginning a discussion about current events. Here is what happened when I wordled election results from the Chicago Tribune, The State Journal-Register, and The Associated Press this morning.

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Awesome Highlighter

The name says it all. This cool tool allows anyone to highlight text on any web page, add a sticky note, and share the link. It seems like a very useful and friendly tool for teachers and students.

A bookmarklet can easily be installed to your bookmarks bar as a Firefox add-on to allow for highlighting on the go. If you find something you like when browsing the web, highlight it and get the link with the click of a button.

Try it for yourself by selecting the highlighted text below.

Awesome Highlighter

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A Laptop for All Teachers

A laptop for all teachers is certainly a cool tool.

In our school district we have adopted a technology plan and declared our committment to 21st Century Learning. In order to provide every teacher with a cost-efficient laptop, we made the switch from Mac to PC.

Teachers attending Dell Training Sessions throughout the summer were asked What do you like about your new laptop? Here is the response, wordled.

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21st Century Learning and VoiceThread

Here is a video snippet of how John McCauley uses VoiceThread as a tool for 21st Century Learning.



More samples of VoiceThread projects in D97 are included in the tabs at the top of this blog.

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A Glimpse of 21st Century Learning

Here is a snippet of 21st Century Learning, featuring the work of Ashley Kannan, Digital Leader at Julian.

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Some interesting ideas

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BagTheWeb: Online Bookmarking Tool

BagTheWeb is one of many free online social bookmarking tools that allows users to easily create a collection of web links which are conveniently stored and shared online. This cool tool functions similarly to Delicious, utilizing  an optional bookmarklet to make collecting web links a breeze, but the organization of the links in an online bag is a unique feature that makes this tool quite appealing.

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CrocoDoc: Collaborative Documents

Crocodoc is a simple, online document sharing tool that provides users with the ability to edit and collaborate on documents without requiring an email address. Stickies and drawing tools are available and they can be applied to several types of files, including PDF files. The ability to password protect an online document is an added bonus that makes this tool potentially useful for teachers, students, and parents.

Upload a document for collaboration, then share the link via email. It's easy and works well when sharing with others outside of Gmail.

-Learn more on my website:

  Go to Web 2.0

-Try it: Edit CrocoDoc

  Sample Student Expository Writing

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Flat Stanley in the 21st Century

Flat Stanley has been embraced by teachers and students since 1964. Originally a character featured in a Jeff Brown's children's book, Stanley's most appealing trait is that he has the ability to visit his friends by being mailed in an envelope around the world.  

Kathy Rolfes and Veronica White have found a much more efficient way for Stanley to travel, using  VoiceThread, a Cool Tool often featured here. They have modified Flat Stanley and sent him into a 21st Century learning environment.

The 21st Century Flat Stanley will not get crinkled or lost in the mail, and he is ready and waiting for students across the globe to discuss, 24/7.

Please visit the Flat Stanley VoiceThread and then help him move across the globe by passing him along.

     Flat Stanley VoiceThread

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Screencasting Tools

ScreenToaster:
This is a free online screencasting tool with plenty of handy features. The site itself is a great source of already created tutorials and it's worth checking out. ScreenToaster was very easy to use, and publishing a short screencast was painless. This seems like a wonderful screencasting tool and I will use it again.
Go to ScreenToaster

Jing:

Jing is an old, familiar application that works well and has exciting potential, but it tends to take a long time to load and play. Jing is free, but there is a download required so this is a tool for home use. There is also a more streamlined paid version of JING that is worth checking out. 
Go to Jing

Screener:

At first glance, Screenr seemed like the perfect tool for recording simple video tutorials. Creating a Screener couldn't be easier, but publishing one was a different story. First, Screenr insisted on posting my screencast to Twitter, but then it couldn't quite make the connection. All of the Screenrs I created are somewhere lost in CyberSpace.
Go to Screener

ScreenJelly:
This is another screencasting tool that depends on Twitter for publishing, but it also has a nicely displayed collection of already created screencasts.
Go to ScreenJelly

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