Blogger Credibility
Series of posts from Darren Rowse on Problogger about blogger credibility and building trust through longevity, experience, expertise, generosity, transparency, and more.
Blog posts
Reflections on Fourth Grade Collaborations | always learning
Kim Cofino reflects on doing the 1001 Flat World Tales with 4th graders--what the students learned and what she learned about managing these types of projects.
Cool Cat Teacher Blog: 38 Birthday presents from CoolCatTeacher to you!
Vicki Davis shares 38 online tools that she uses
Free Scheduling Software | Integrate Outlook, Google Calendar & Exchange Availability - TimeBridge
Scheduling tool--have people indicate what times work for them and this automatically finds a match for everyone, notifies them, and updates your calendar
2008space -
Collected student work published in an online journal--poetry, stories, animation, photos, and more.
Techdirt: Txt Spk In Schools Not A Big Deal
Basically, the research shows that students do sometimes forget and let abbreviations from texting into other writing, but overall the technology use and writing students do improves their writing. Links to multiple studies done in the last several years.
In 2003, there was a study that showed that all this writing online was actually making kids <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030520/1943254_F.shtml">more comfortable</a> with writing in general. In 2004, a study showed (like this one) that with a little instruction kids easily <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20041223/1427218.shtml">understood the difference</a> between texting and writing. In 2005, a study actually found that kids were <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20051031/1836235.shtml">better writers</a> than in the past "using far more complex sentence structures, a wider vocabulary and a more accurate use of capital letters, punctuation and spelling" even if they sometimes let a txtism into their writing. And, in 2006, a study showed that students showed <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060731/1938242.shtml">no ill effects</a> from widespread text and IM messaging.
Just For Advertisers - Top eLearning Tools Reviewed, Top eLearning Organizaitons
Just keeping a cached copy
Within each TOP AWARD TOOLS and TOP AWARD RESOURCES category there is a directory associated with that product or resource category. You can pay a small annual listing fee to include your product or service in those directories.
MOO.com | We love to print
Upload your own pictures from Flickr or use the designer options provided to print mini-business cards, stickers, postcards, etc. I think this would be very cool to have some cards the next time I go to a conference.
Selected Internet Resources --Government Resources for Science Images
Online image databases for science topics. These are government sources and therefore mostly public domain.
US Federal Government Public Domain Images - Primarily Photos
Databases of images from the US government--most are public domain
Dave’s Whiteboard » Blog Archive » When you need incompetence fast
Summary of a model for creating incompetence--i.e., what NOT to do
<p><em><strong>Information</strong></em></p>
<ul>
<li>Don’t let people know how well they’re performing.</li>
<li>Give people misleading information about how well they’re performing.</li>
<li>Hide from people what’s expected of them.</li>
<li>Give people little or no guidance about how to perform well.</li></ul>
Declutter your office or you will get fat | Janet Clarey
Discussion of decluttering physical and virtual spaces to avoid feeling buried and lost and improve productivity. You need a vision of what you want, then you can get rid of the physical/virtual/mental clutter that doesn't help you reach that goal.
Top News - Tech encourages students' social skills
Using technology with kindergarteners and first graders to support social constructivist learning. Registration required to read the whole article.
Well-integrated technology opens social networks for students and allows children to develop key social skills, according to two recent studies conducted by researchers at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
SLEDevents
Calendar of events for educators in Second Life
Getting Results
Free online professional development course for community college instructors from WGBH & the League of Innovation. You can follow a linear path or skip around to the parts you want. Content includes diversity, active learning, technology, and assessment.
5min - Find the best how to, instructional and DIY videos – Life Videopedia
Video tutorials in 5 minutes or less on a variety of topics. Not a lot of formal education topics here--it's more DIY content.
Harold Jarche » Is Johnny Bunko Right?
Summary of the career advice in Daniel Pink's book "The Adventures of Johnny Bunko." Jarche would add to the list that many typical qualifications (like degrees and certificiates) don't really correlate with actual work.
The only job that a university degree directly qualifies you for is another university degree. Sitting in a classroom, writing essays and answering tests is not the workplace. Solving real problems, of importance to others, within existing constraints - is what most work is about.
Sakai's Current Accessibility - WG: Accessibility - Confluence
Documentation on Sakai's accessibility--it's mostly compliant, but there are still some issues.
Making the Case for Quality
Resources and tools supporting continuous improvement techniques in K-16 education. Case studies from several school districts provided.
Create Custom Characters for Your E-Learning Scenarios - The Rapid eLearning Blog
Tips on breaking apart and combining parts of clip art to create appropriate characters for e-learning, even if you aren't artistic enough to draw them yourself.
What You Really Need To Learn » SlideShare
Stephen Downes presentation on 10 things "you really need to learn."
"Learning how to learn is learning how to create patterns in our mind rather than merely acquiring them."
The Bamboo Project Blog: 21st Century Workplace Literacy: What Does that Mean and How Do We Engage More People in the Discussion?
Lots of educators talk about the 21st century literacy skills that students will need for the workplace, but how much input do they have from people outside of education? How do we get people to interact outside their usual circles?
Building a collaborative workplace
Collaboration in the workplace doesn't need to just be the formal, structured, team-based approach. This whitepaper also described "community collaboration," where people focus on learning rather than tasks and "network collaboration," such as the loose networks formed through social media. Includes a checklist for how collaborative an organizational culture is.
Middle School Science Mania
Activities and resources for middle school science
A List Apart: Articles: Accessible Data Visualization with Web Standards
Accessible, interactive charts with CSS. All data is in unordered lists; the CSS formatting makes it a chart.
CSS Vertical Bar Graphs
How to create a vertical bar graph in html with just CSS and a table. Very cool technique. It appears that the data would all be accessible to a screenreader because it's basically a table.
Lancaster University. Centre for e-Science. e-Collaboration tools. Blogger
Step-by-step directions for the blog tool in Sakai
WebAIM: WebAIM Section 508 Checklist
Checklist with guidelines for each requirement of Section 508 standards for HTML and scripts. For each guideline, "pass" and "fail" tests are provided.
Blind users still struggle with 'maddening' computing obstacles
Computerworld article on the minimal progress made in assistive technology and accessible design. Vista is substantially less accessible than Windows 3.1, for example; there are actions in Vista which cannot be done with a keyboard.
<p id="first_paragraph">
Put your graphical user interface to this test: Adjust the contrast on your display until the screen is completely black. </p>
<p>Now, perform basic e-mail, word processing and Web-browsing tasks.</p>
<p>What? Having a problem?</p>
<p>Welcome to the world of the 1.3 million Americans who are blind.</p>
WebAIM: Blog - UN Ratifies Disability Treaty
UN's Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) will go into effect 5/3/08 in the countries that have ratified it (the US isn't one).
The most prominent is <a href="http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=269">Article 9 - “Accessibility”</a>, which places accessibility of information, communication, and technologies (ICT) at the same level as Articles on “The right to life”, “Equal recognition before the law”, “Access to justice”, and “Freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. You can see that accessible ICT is being taken very seriously.