Monday 8th December
With Google processing 40,000 search queries a second – or 1.2 trillion a year – it’s a safe bet that many of those doing the Googling are kids.
Not surprisingly, Google plans to create specific versions of its most popular products for those 12 and younger. The most likely candidates are those that are already popular with a broad age group, such as search, YouTube and Chrome.
Friday 5th December 2014
Are you looking for replacement software for Smart Notebook, to use with your new LCD interactive touch screen?
Give the cloud-based Prowise a try with your interactive display.
Prowise imports PDF, MS Office and Smart Notebook files.
Wednesday 3rd December 2014
Flubaroo is a free tool that helps you quickly grade multiple-choice or fill-in-blank assignments created in Google Forms.
More than just a grading tool, Flubaroo also:
Tuesday 2nd December 2014
Web search can be a useful tool for students, and some in-depth discussion about how to search for academic sources will help your students become critical thinkers and independent learners.
Using the materials on this site, students can become skilled searchers – whether they’re just starting out with search, or ready for more advanced training.
Lesson plans and activities, power searching tips, Google-a-day challenges and training videos…
Monday 1st December 2014
Rubik’s cube is more than a puzzle – it’s a question waiting to be answered. And when the right person finds the right question, it can set them on a journey to change the world.
As Ernő Rubik notes in the video below, great educators are helping young minds find the questions that challenge, excite, and let them see the world in a new way.
A useful video for setting the scene in your school planning meetings….
Are you looking for a cloud replacement for Publisher?
Need a desktop publishing app for your Chromebook?
Wednesday 26th November 2014
How private is your data (and your students’ data) when it is stored with a commercial cloud provider?
Will you and your students be targeted with advertising, based on the content of their emails and documents stored in the cloud?
Who owns ‘your’ data, once it is stored on a remote server, possibly in another country? Can you retrieve your data when moving to another provider?
Friday 21st November 2014
The Five Islands e-Learning Summit is a full day event, providing primary and secondary teachers the opportunity to develop their skills and understanding of current technology and how it is best used to support learning.
The day will consist of three sessions, broken up by morning tea and lunch (both provided) allowing for practical hands-on activities and collegial learning opportunities. The two presenters, Ariane and Laurens, are both experienced DEC regional ICT consultants currently working with Dell and Intel to make these opportunities available to DEC staff.
Wednesday 19th November 2014
Registration is now open for the annual Illawarra Teachers Golf Day – the Chalk-n-Talk Cup.
The competition is played as a 4 person Ambrose, and is open to all NSW DEC employees, retired NSW DEC employees, and sponsors.
Tuesday 18th November 2014
The New York City Department of Education (DoE) announced Monday that it has approved Google’s Chromebooks for use in the city’s public classrooms – representing approximately 1 million students and 1,800 schools.
The DOE also authorised the use of Google Apps for Education (GAFE), and put together a guide to implementing Chromebooks and Google utilities into the classroom.
Monday 17th November 2014
As schools here in Australia begin their planning processes for the 2015 school year, now is a good time to consider how new technologies are being harnessed to support curriculum activities.
The broad adoption of mobile electronic devices in the wider community has changed the options for ICT in schools. Schools are moving from remote ‘labs’ to always available BYO models.
Technology in the curriculum is becoming ‘transparent’.
Friday 14th November 2014
Weebly goes from strength to strength – here is some thing to explore over the weekend….
Check out the new Weebly for iPad…
Friday 14th November 2014
Photos from last month’s ASTD event are now available online.
Thursday 13th November 2014
Senior Victorian education department officials bought shares in and took jobs with the company given a $60 million contract to deliver the failed Ultranet schools IT project.
The revelations will re-ignite questions over the former Labor government’s handling of the project – dumped last year by the Coalition after its cost blew out to $180 million – and come as Victoria’s anti-corruption agency continues its probe of the education department.
The shares scandal was uncovered by a secret 2010 internal education department inquiry which revealed its general manager, John Allman, had bought shares in CSG Limited before it was announced winner of the Ultranet contract in July 2009.
The internal inquiry also found two of the department’s then regional directors, Wayne Craig and Ron Lake, purchased 11,289 and 1112 CSG shares respectively after it was awarded the Ultranet contract.
Thursday 13th November 2014
K-6 Teacher Professional Learning Workshop
Think3 presents iPads in Action: Apps and Activities for Creative Classrooms – at Berry PS on Friday 21st November 2014.
With so many educational apps available, many primary teachers are asking for guidance about which Apps to purchase and how to best facilitate their use.
This workshop will showcase and review a selection of quality apps for learning across all KLAs and explore how best to use them in primary classrooms through a series of hands-on activities and discussions.
This workshop will also outline and demonstrate a wide range of activities that make clever use of the built-in apps that now come with every iPad, including iBooks, iMovie, GarageBand, Pages, Numbers and Keynote.
Thursday 13th November 2014
The Rosetta spacecraft’s lander module, Philae, has touched down on the 67P C/G comet, and is now sending photos and data back to earth via Rosetta – from 510 million Kms away!
Wednesday 12th November 2014
Launched in 2004, the Rosetta spacecraft has travelled over 500 million Kms, and tonight at 8:00 pm (AEDST), a landing module will separate and descend to the surface of Comet 67P.
If successful, the landing will be complete by 3:02 am Thursday (AEDST).
Monday 10th November 2014
Microsoft has succumbed to pressure from rivals – it has updated Office apps for iOS and Android – now you can edit Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files, for free.
Previously you could view documents with the MS Office apps, but required an Office 365 subscription to edit documents.
Microsoft has also integrated the new apps with Dropbox, and now provides unlimited online storage capacity for paid Office 365 subscriptions.
How quickly things are changing as Microsoft battles to maintain relevance in the mobile environment.
Friday 7th November 2014
When schools move down the BYOT path – leveraging students’ own technologies to support the curriculum – much planning time is often focussed on which device (or devices) will be acceptable, how these devices will connect to the school network, how apps will be controlled, and other ‘technical’ hardware and software support issues.
While all of this discussion and planning is relevant, it is not the most important ingredient in a successful BYOT model.
Monday 3rd November 2014
Imagine if you were setting up a new school today – planning and installing the school’s new technology infrastructure from scratch.
How will it look, when the school opens in 2015?
Wednesday 29th October 2014
While there are currently a number of workflow solutions and Learning Management Systems that work well with iPads, Google Classroom will likely become popular in iPad classrooms because of the integration with both the Google Drive and Google Doc’s iPad apps as well as any number of iPad creativity apps.
Although there is not a dedicated app for Google Classroom, the web interface works seamlessly and allows students to submit any assignment or file that is in their Google Drive account.
Monday 27th October 2014
eCarnival is an iPad app, developed by a local Illawarra teacher, for recording results at school sports carnivals.
And it is now available for schools for free!
Use eCarnival to record your sports carnival results, and the app will generate sports house points automatically.
With eCarnival you can:
– Record results for Athletics, Swimming, Cross Country or any other type of carnival;
– Create a list of carnival events;
– Record results for each event and the app will sort placings automatically;
– Keep a live tally of house points, no need to add up later and you determine the amount of points each place wins;
– Share results in a colour PDF document to print, email or add to a website.
Friday 24th October 2014
Here is a new (and possibly more realistic) animated model of how our Solar System moves in relation to the Sun.
A helical model, rather than a flat elliptical model – though this animation has caused much debate in astronomical circles. (See also: Is the Solar System really a Vortex?)
Might be an interesting discussion starter for curious students…
Wednesday 22nd October 2014
With Classroom released just last month, Google has already responded to the many feature requests. (I have no doubts that this will be an ongoing process).
The first improvements include…
Tuesday 21st October 2014
Word clouds, also known as text clouds or tag clouds, are a popular tools for visually analysing text – making it easy to spot word frequencies. The more frequently the word is used, the larger and bolder it is displayed in the image.
Many teachers use word clouds as part of their learning activities, or to support their own professional writing – the process often involves copying and pasting text into an online form or other software.
Monday 20th October, 2014
Are your students are creating research papers in Google Docs? If so, there is a great (free) add-on they can use to build a list of their references.
Using the EasyBib Add-on for Google Docs, students can easily create a bibliography and add it directly to their research paper, as shown in the video below….
Thursday 16th October 2014
For one day only (US time) the new Comic Life for iOS app is available for the special ‘launch price’ of $3.79 in the Australian app store, or $2.99 in the US App store.
Tuesday 14th October 2014
As this year’s HSC examinations get underway, a plethora of teenagers, who have spent their entire lives surrounded by digital information, will wonder why they are still required to handwrite their HSC responses.
Why do a generation of young adults who have never had to write a letter, unless it was to Santa in the North Pole many years ago, still have to handwrite the exams which may shape their future?
Social media has a place and a purpose, but too many parents are creating unnecessary stress by trying to be in two places at once, while modelling to their children that online relationships take precedence over real ones.
In an era of constant distraction, we must decide what’s more important: heeding the constant ping of our devices, or telling our children, in word and deed, “I am listening. I am here. And there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
Wednesday 8th October 2014
Here is another one of those great natural science discussion-starters for students of all ages …..
A blood red moon will emblazon Australian skies on Wednesday night, during a rare total lunar eclipse.
A blood moon occurs in the event of a total lunar eclipse, when the Sun, Moon and Earth form a line and the Earth blocks all sunlight to the Moon.
The Moon turns a deep red as some light from the sun is bent around Earth’s atmosphere and reflected onto the Moon.