A 'Best of the Web' guide

Best of the Web Nov. 2012 from Richard Byrne

The above comes from Richard Byrne, the force behind Free Technology for Teachers.

Open Culture's educational resources

Open Culture's collection of K-12 resources is sure to continue to grow. The collection is arranged according to content area which should make it easy to find something that is new and applicable to your classroom. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

How to follow 'Free Technology for Teachers'

How to Subscribe to Free Technology for Teachers.
If you aren't subscribed you can join more than 51,000 others who do subscribe via these links.Subscribe via RSS. Subscribe via Email.Like Free Technology for Teachers on  Facebook.Find me on Twitter, on Google+, or on Pinterest.
.
If you want to learn how to follow all that's Free Technology for Teachers, click the above hyperlinked text.  (Do keep in mind that Free Technology for Teachers does include advertisements.)

A primer on copyright and Creative Commons

Copyright and Creative Commons Explained by Common Craft can be very useful in helping students understand why they cannot simply copy and paste whatever images they like that they find online. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

What can and cannot be used and how....Creative Commons licenses describe just how material an individual creates can be used by others. And there's some interesting and important information on this topic at Free Technology for Teachers.

Science searching

Symbolab is a new search engine designed for mathematicians and scientists. The search engine is a semantic search engine which means that rather than just searching the text of your query Symabolab attempts to interpret and search for the meaning of your query. What this means is that when you type in an equation you will get results as links and get results as graphs when appropriate. Think of it Symbolab as a cross between Google and Wolfram Alpha. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

Yes...from the old standby: Free Technology for Teachers

Earlier this week I recommended Pixlr to someone who needed a quick way to resize and change the colors of an image. Pixlr offers a large set of image creation and editing tools. One of the tools that can be quite handy is Pixlr Grabber. Pixlr Grabber is Pixlr's screen capture tool. Pixlr Grabber is available as an extension for Chrome or Firefox. Using Pixlr Grabber you can capture your screen, crop the screen image, and print what you like. You can also send the image to Pixlr Editor for further editing options. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

View the shoreline through the years

NOAA recently released a collection of more than 7,000 historical U.S. shoreline topographic images for viewing in Google Earth. The NOAA Historical Shoreline Survey Viewer has thousands of layers that you use to see what the U.S. shoreline looked like going back as far as 1841. The layers can be viewed alone or your can overlay them on top of current imagery. You can launch the KMZ file for this imagery by clicking here or you can read about how to navigate this imagery on the NOAA page. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Note: NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Like to debate?

Your Logical Fallacy Is provides short explanations and examples of twenty-four common logical fallacies. Visitors to the site can click through the gallery to read the examples. Your Logical Fallacy Is also provides free PDF poster files that you can download and print. I dropped one of these posters into Zoom.it for easy embedding into this blog post. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

National Geographic resource

The cover story on the May issue of National Geographic is about the sketches of artists during the US Civil War and how those sketches helped to tell the story of the war. You can view a gallery of sketches here. One of the online features supporting May's issue is a timeline spanning 1526 to today. The timeline is focused on the Civil War and the years following. Along the timeline there are images and short stories of significant moments in the history of civil rights in the United States. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

Questions to consider before' flipping' your classroom

It seems like you can't open an education periodical these days without finding an article espousing the wonders of flipping the classroom. Like most initiatives in schools, flipping the classroom does have merit in the right situation. But also like most initiatives it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. Here are three questions that I have to ask before flipping a classroom. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

History resource from Free Technology for Teachers

History Engine is an educational project developed by The University of Richmond for the purpose of giving students a place to explore stories of American life and publish their own stories based upon their research. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Pinball and mindmaps

Pinball is a suite of fun tools from the BBC for organizing ideas and generating new ideas. In Pinball you will find tools for creating mindmaps, outlines, and simple slideshows. Pinball also has tools to help you brainstorm and generate new ideas. Each one of the six Pinball tools provides options for including text and images in your mindmaps, outlines, and slideshows. If you're struggling to think of new ideas, each Pinball tool has a "lucky dip" button that will serve up a random image or bit of text to prompt you. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

Google opportunity

Titled Education on Air this live Google+ Hangout will happen on May 2nd. Education on Air is a day of hangouts hosted by teachers for teachers. Throughout the day there will be presentations centered around the following themes; Hot Topics in Educational Technology, Communication, Google Apps, Harnessing the Power of the Web, Instruction and Assessment, and Productivity. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

Teacher summer opportunity

C-SPAN is announcing the dates for its 2012 Summer Educators’ Conference.  Each summer we host a day and a half long conference at C-SPAN’s headquarters in the heart of Washington, DC. Airfare to and from Washington, two nights’ hotel stay, and meals during the conference are all provided by C-SPAN. If you are a C-SPAN Classroom member, and have not attended one of our previous conferences, we invite you to apply for this professional development experience. This year’s conference will be held on July 12 – July 13. (from C-SPAN's Teacher Opportunities Website)


The above information comes by way of Free Technology for Teachers.

Visualizing vocabulary

Graph Words is a neat little site that provides webs of related words. If you're like me and you tend to use the word "awesome" a lot and want to mix it up, type "awesome" into Graph Words to see a web of alternative word choices. Click on any word in the web to generate a new web of more related words. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

To learn more, click on the above hyperlinked text.

As usual, great resources

The Google Search Stories Video Creator allows you to create a short video about the searches that you perform on Google. To create your video you enter your search terms, select some background music, and let the creator render a video for you. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

Free Technology for Teachers is a terrific go-to blog that is always full of interesting suggestions and information. To check it out, click here.

Web tools for group work

Any teacher who has assigned group projects to students has at some point had to help those students organize and equitably distribute work.... Here are some tools that you can have students use to manage their responsibilities when working on group projects. (from Free Technology for Teachers)


Click the above text to learn specifics about these tools.

Online supplemental courses

Next month, March 5th to be exact, the first MITx course will begin. The online course, Circuits and Electronics, will be offered for free and give students the opportunity to earn a certificate of content mastery through an online assessment. MITx is a promising program for students interested in the courses offered. The content mastery certificate opportunity takes open learning to the next step beyond simply watching lectures and accessing course hand-outs. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

Amazing resource

Free Technology for Teachers is really the go-to place online for resources. In a recent post, Richard Byrne, the Free Technology for Teachers man himself, profiles Pearltrees.

Take a look:
A few months ago I wrote Playing With Pearltrees - A Great Way to Organize the Web. Last night I was exploring Pearltrees again when I came across a Pearltree titled Free Technology for Teachers. While the name is the same as my blog, I did not have anything to do with creating that particular Pearltree. That said, many of the resources cataloged in the Free Technology for Teachers
Your best bet is to click the above hyperlinked text and go from there.

Student essay contest

The Bill of Rights Institute is currently hosting an essay contest for high school students. The contest asks students to write an essay (1000 words max) about the following question, "how does the Constitution establish and maintain a culture of liberty?" Cash prizes of up to $1000 will be awarded in five U.S. regions...Entries are due by December 15. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

To learn about the contest rules, click here.