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All About Creative Commons And Copyright - LiveBinder
Excellent livebinder on copyright for those working with global collaboration.
Elearning and global competency #flatclass #globaled 03/01/2012
Teach This! Teaching with lesson plans and ideas that rock #teaching 02/29/2012
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THe hungry caterpillar electronic book. - Resources - TES
The hungry caterpillar ebook (in a powerpoint) that uses sound effects and animations. You could use this on your board to retell the story.
tags: education lessonplans teaching elemchat literature reading literacy
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Drawing a Fairy Tale - Resources - TES
How to draw a fairy tale. This is an elementary level project that lets students draw the stories of the three little pigs and Cinderella. This is a downloadable worksheet.
tags: education elemchat lessonplan teaching
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What Is a Leap Year? - YouTube
A video explaining leap year if you want to share it with your students.
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The Wind Power Challenge - Resources - TES
A wind power challenge for students for upper elementary, middle, and high school.
tags: education science teaching lessonplans
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Electric circuit builder - Resources - TES
This electric circuit builder program is something that you can use with all ages. It is a great resource for teaching about electricity.
tags: education teaching lessonplans physics electricity science science_teacher
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NSEW collection - Resources - TES
Some great lessons to use for science and Engineering week (in the UK but why not bring it over the pond) March 9-18th. If you are promoting STEM here are some fun lessons including the squashed tomato challenge.
tags: education stem teaching lessonplans math science engineering bestpractices all_teachers
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A look at the tools used to draw sesame street characters | The Sesame Workshop Blog
This blog post is an excellent tutorial about how the digital pen works.
tags: education teaching art art_teacher
Learning about Learning: Research and Edreform News and Views 02/29/2012
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25 alleged Anonymous members arrested internationally; hacker group retaliates
Hackers have knocked down Interpol's site this week in retaliation. Cybersecurity is a huge issue.
"Tuesday afternoon, the international police organization Interpol announced the arrest of 25 alleged members of Anonymous by officials in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Spain. Shortly after the announcement, Interpol's website was hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack. At the time this story was posted, the website remained unavailable."
Interpol announced that the arrests were made as part of "Operation Unmask", an international effort launched in mid-February to grab the perpetrators of attacks on websites in Columbia and Chile, including the Colombian Defense Ministry and presidential websites, a Chilean electricity company, and Chile's national library. Officials also seized 250 pieces of equipment, including computers and mobile phones, during a search of 40 locations in 15 cities.tags: education learning hacking technology news
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Foldit, crowdsourcing, and labor. - Slate Magazine
I know that some are saying that we can't gamify education. But what happens when problems become a game and we compete to find answers? This article talks about foldit and how crowdsourcing has become a possibility for something that can work when it becomes a game. This is a great read for those exploring how we will use games in education. I would suggest that this is an approach that we could use.
". Foldit, a novel experiment created by a group of scientists and game designers at the University of Washington, had asked the gamers—some still in middle school and few boasting a background in the sciences, much less microbiology—to determine the how proteins would fold in the enzyme. Within hours, thousands of people were both competing against (and collaborating with) one another. After three weeks, they had succeeded where the microbiologists and the computers had failed. “This is the first example I know of game players solving a long-standing scientific problem,” David Baker, a Foldit co-creator, wrote at the time."tags: education gamification news foldit. game_based_lng gamebasedlearning
Re-Wine Classic : Modern and Green Wine Bottle Packaging
States looking to Medicaid Managed Care plans to control costs

California is just one of the states looking to Managed Care to better care for the high risk beneficiaries in their state. By partnering with a Managed Care plan instead of paying fee for service, they'll be able to better care for the at risk patients. The team taking over the care, Molina Healthcare of California, will work with the beneficiaries to provide better care from the beginning, and avoiding the high cost of emergency care that can be prevented. This arrangement also allows for education and recognition of which populations need education. According to Manged Care Mag, by providing the education to these individuals, they can also minimize high cost of future care that can be avoided.
With Medicaid accounting for anywhere from 1/4th to 1/3rd if annual budgets are spent on Medicaid. By shifting to the manged care model, states can also care for more people. Many are looking to expand to new populations, new geographies and new services, provided by a pre-arranged network arranged by the Manged Care program.
Johnny Loco Cargo Cruisers are Stylish and Light Weight
MBP (Multi Purpose bike)
This super light Multi-Purpose-Bike is made of alloy and is standard equipped with a Nexus-7 internal speed hub by Shimano, a steering damper, a canvas seat and Shimano roller brakes. The performances are outstanding, even in the city. This Cargo Cruiser easily cruises along with a full load over bridges, through parks, and past the cars on the street.The rear-end of the frame tilts as you turn.
The Dutch Delight is completely graphite black with brown grips and saddle which gives the bike a classic look. This model will remain in our collection every year as it is a favourite world wide.
Dakota also belongs to MBP and The Dakota gets its name from the light grey paint combined with neon orange saddle and grips, the colours that some DC-3 aircraft (the Dakotas) wore while serving in WW2. An extra set of dark brown grips and saddle is standard included so that the neon touch may be replaced if so desired. And then it is a beautiful retro edition too.
The standard version is equipped with hand brakes (Shimano roller brakes), a steering damper, 3-speed internal hub (Shimano Nexus-3) and a canvas bench with two three-point seat belts.
Simple Pinterest for Beginners
I'd like to help you get started just like I did with QR Codes, Web 2.0, wikis, etc.
1 - Get an invitation.
Anyone can view Pinterest boards, but if you want to start pinning, you'll need to get an invitation.
Option A (Stealth method for getting an invitation)
If you're on Facebook, this is simple. Just go to the Pinterest app on Facebook and look on the right (as shown in the graphic below) to see if you have any friends on Pinterest. If they've taken the time to like the Pinterest page, it is likely that they not only use it but like it. Message a friend or two and ask for an invitation if you don't like to be open about it.
| Go to https://www.facebook.com/pinterest?sk=wall and see which friends you know that "like" Pinterest. Ask them for an invitation. |
Option B (Open Method)
You can do like I did and ask on Twitter. I had at least 10 people who messaged me and said they'd give me an invitation. Don't be embarrassed, I've just been using pinterest for a week. Tons of people aren't there... yet.
2 - Create some boards
You'll want to have a few boards to start adding to before browsing and before connecting with friends. Usually pinterest suggests some for you.
Examples
You can see my boards at my profile http://pinterest.com/coolcatteacher/ and in the graphic below along with some typical descriptions
Note: What is particularly fascinating about Pinterest is that when you follow someone, you can follow either just the person or one or more of their boards. I usually follow the person and then can unfollow specific boards on topics that don't interest me (like Tattoos or wines), I can also just follow a random person's board about iPad apps and nothing else. It lets you get very granular with your time. Think of it as if you could segment a person's Tweets and follow just their technology tweets and leave off the junk about their dog.
Here are my boards and how many are following each board (after a week):
- Happy Thoughts - 209 followers - "These are the thoughts of things that make me happy when I look at them. It is my personal mood booster."
- Things that make me laugh 221 followers - This is my board of funny things so I can always find them again. Like Mary Poppins' uncle, I love to laugh!
- Teaching ideas and apps 243 followers - Great ideas for teaching and helping students be more.
- Inspiration - 219 followers - I love to look at things that inspire me to be more. This is a personal boost for those days I need to climb mountains.
- Productivity 223 followers - I am a productivity fanatic. Here is where I'll post ideas about how to improve my life and get more out of it. With 3 kids, global collaborative projects where thousands of kids work together, books, a busy blog, and lots of social media to attend to, time is valuable. We all have the same 24 hours in a day but differ in how we use those hours. Let's use them well.
- Collaborative Writing 232 followers - My second book with @eyeoneducation is about collaborative writing. I co-manage wikis where over 1,000 kids collaborate AT ONCE. Google docs, and cloud tools are just some of the cloud tools I use to teach and encourage writing. I'll pin examples, ideas, and tools here to help with collaborative writing.
- Being a Social media Maven - 217 followers - I love social media and want to understand and use it well. Here is my collection of tools, ideas, and methods that help me in this area.
- iPad and iPhone apps for Teachers - 230 followers
- Global Collaboration in Education (a board I'm inviting some friends to help me moderate) 222 followers - Excellence in global collaboration in education by people who are flattening classrooms.
- Beautiful Workspaces - 188 followers - You spend a lot of time at your desk and I do too. I want it to be beautiful and inspiring. Here's my collection of beautiful work spaces when I'm looking for how to improve where I work.
- Little BIG things to improve education - 194 followers - My collection of the little things that can improve education in big ways.
- Online and F2F Presentations 204 followers - A collection of my online and face to face presentations by Vicki Davis, full time teacher, @coolcatteacher, co founder of @flatclassroom.
- Board Name I recommend around 28 characters. Any more and it will run off the board and a person glancing at your profile might not be able to see what you are talking about. (Note: It might take 29 characters, I was afraid to mess up my board names and that is the most I've been able to get on there without running off. Nudge me in the comments and I'll update this number.)
- Board Description Tell people why you're making the board and what they can expect on the board.
- Who can pin? You can invite others but they must be on pinterest. I'm inviting our Flat Classroom teachers to our Global collaboration board to collect best practices, and it is taking a bit of time to get them invited, set up and then add as collaborators.
- Category. They have preset categories. This is important because a person can go to the homepage of Pinterest and browse by category. This category determines whether your pins might show up on the main pinterest feed or not. All of your boards should have a category. I'm so excited that Pinterest started off with an education category! That has helped teachers find each other.
I'm having you WAIT on this, because when you go and add all your friends from Facebook, you get one chance for them to decide you're interesting and that they want to follow you. I've found that when I go on a new site that if I find and follow 300 good sources of information in my field that I will begin to get meaning out of the content. Sometimes I have to go unfollow content. For example, there was a great pinner I found who also had a real tattoo fetish that filled up my whole screen. I unfollowed just that board and it cleaned up my stream right away.
I did this on Twitter and every other site. After I follow 300, I start engaging, sharing and being as helpful as I can. If you're sharing in social media because you want to be the hot chic on the block, think again. People will see through your diva charade in a moment. Be real and be really helpful. If you are helpful, kind, and useful, people will follow you. If not, you'll still learn a lot.
Have fun on Pinterest and be sure to share your tips below.
Daily Education and Technology News for Schools 02/29/2012
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What Is a Leap Year? - YouTube
A video explaining leap year if you want to share it with your students.
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Recess - Read, submit, vote and comment on education articles.
A friend of mine, AJ Juliani, will be launching academic recess soon where you can read, submit, vote, and comment on education articles. He's very sharp so I expect great things out of him. For now, you can put in your email to be notified about the service.
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Featured Wiki: Expedition Earth and Beyond
This wiki has NASA scientists and students sharing on a wiki. This wiki is where the student teams that participate in EEAB collaborate and share.
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How to remove your viewing and search history. It is time to do this now.
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BBC News - Twitter partners with Datasift to unlock tweet archive
We need to be backing up our own tweets, I guess. Tweets are going to be sold to companies now.
"Firms can search tweets back to January 2010 in order to plan marketing campaigns, target influential users or even try to predict certain events.
Until today, only the previous 30 days of tweets were available for companies to search. Regular users can access posts from the past seven days -
Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Clear your Google web history NOW! Why and how educators should do this.
Wednesday, February 29 is a leap day in many ways as you'll get just one more day to clear your web history before Google puts in place new policies on March 1st. Here's how.
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California expected to reap Facebook windfall - Feb. 28, 2012
If government could understand that business is good for the state. California is set to "balance the budget" perhaps literally from the Facebook IPO. I wish they'd invest in education more as they've been struggling there for some time.
"California could reap as much as $2.45 billion in additional revenues over the next five years from Facebook's initial public offering, according to a new report issued by the state Legislative Analyst's Office." -
Foldit, crowdsourcing, and labor. - Slate Magazine
I know that some are saying that we can't gamify education. But what happens when problems become a game and we compete to find answers? This article talks about foldit and how crowdsourcing has become a possibility for something that can work when it becomes a game. This is a great read for those exploring how we will use games in education. I would suggest that this is an approach that we could use.
". Foldit, a novel experiment created by a group of scientists and game designers at the University of Washington, had asked the gamers—some still in middle school and few boasting a background in the sciences, much less microbiology—to determine the how proteins would fold in the enzyme. Within hours, thousands of people were both competing against (and collaborating with) one another. After three weeks, they had succeeded where the microbiologists and the computers had failed. “This is the first example I know of game players solving a long-standing scientific problem,” David Baker, a Foldit co-creator, wrote at the time."tags: education gamification news foldit. game_based_lng gamebasedlearning
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Have you accepted online technology as your organizational savior? - Small Act
If you work in social media, this article talks about the balance between immediately distrusting new technology and "shiny object syndrome." There is a balance and this article does a great job of helping you see both sides.
tags: education nonprofit news technology
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France Says Google Privacy Plan Likely Violates European Law - NYTimes.com
The French data protection authority said Tuesday that Google’s new privacy policy appeared to violate European Union law, raising the stakes in a showdown with the company only days before it planned to put the new system into effect.
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Women in Haiti | United States Institute of Peace
If you work with empowering the victims of crimes, I think the Women in Haiti case study shared on this website is an important one to help you understand how to empower people who are or could become victims. This program by digital democracy, uses technology, trains volunteers, and collects data so that an understanding of what is happening can help drive solutions. This is something we should look at doing in many other areas. If you work as an advocate with victims of any kind, take a read.
This, my friends, is a great use of technology. I want to be part of helping such things spread. Will you?
"Recommendations
Technology is not a panacea. In any successful project, it is only one piece of the puzzle. However, technological tools provide an opportunity to amplify peacebuilding efforts. Some key recommendations from Digital Democracy’s recent experience working with women’s groups in Haiti include:
Survivors of sexual violence are not passive victims. They are often strong, vocal advocates for change.
A shared blog can provide a powerful platform. In the aftermath of the earthquake, the blog Fanm Pale offered an opportunity for women to share their stories with the outside world.
Data matters. Accurate data can help target preventative and relief efforts. With technical skill-building, women can collect this data themselves.
Engaging male allies is crucial. Gender parity and respect for both sexes can only be achieved through engaging men and women alike to work for peace in their communities.tags: education news haiti technology nonprofit
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Cybersecurity's new reality: The attackers are winning - Feb. 28, 2012
Cybersecurity is a growing problem. Schools shouldn't think we're immune. Be smart about what you do to protect your school's system and remember that one of the biggest problems is people who keep their passwords under their keyboard.
This from a cyber security conference...
"Never have the attacks been as targeted, with the aim of breaching one organization as a stepping stone to breaching others," he said.
Coviello dealt quickly with the elephant in the room, acknowledging RSA's black eye over the breach -- one of the largest in terms of the number of clients put at risk through a vendor's vulnerability.
"My colleagues and I feel this as personally as everyone in this room," he told the crowd of thousands. "Since the breach, we've been dedicated to regaining and maintaining your confidence in us. We have a sense of urgency as never before."tags: education news cybersafety hacking
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iPads for Orangutans: Program would let apes Skype other zoos
I think that giving apes iPads to let them skype other monkeys is over the top. Why not connect retirement homes with their families like my students are doing with their Skype project? This is a bit over the top.
tags: education news skype bizarre technology
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BBC News - Apple iPad 3 expected on 7 March following press event
We'll see on March 7 if the world has been fooled. Is it an iPad 3? Is it an iTable? What is it? The journalists are banking on the Ipad 3 but who knows. Here is what the BBC is reporting on February 28.
"Invitations sent to journalists read: "We have something you really have to see. And touch."
While not officially confirming the product's launch, the message was accompanied by an image showing what looked to be an iPad touchscreen.
Clear your Google web history NOW! Why and how educators should do this.
IMPORTANT NOTE: IF you have multiple Google accounts ( a personal gmail and a school account through Google apps for domains, for example) you'll need to do this for both. I'm going to have my students do this tomorrow.
Why would you want to clear your history if you're a good person?
Your gmail, youtube, and web search accounts are going to be combined for Google to use somehow as they share with advertisers or whoever. I don't know and Google may not either.
I have nothing to be ashamed of, but I do have some things I need to keep private including the IP addresses of every machine and smart device I log into here on campus. I also found a few things like my children searching for no-so-nice lyrics of some songs they may like (that Momma doesn't know about.) You're not the only one using your web browser, you know.
Additionally, you'll find if you look deeply, the topics I'm researching. Most of them are just fine but what about the links and information I'm putting in my next book? I've worked hard for what is in my head, do I want you to be able to see everything there before it is published in my next book? Would it put me in breach of my publishing contract? I'm not totally sure (but then again, I'm not totally unsure either it is enough of a question to bother me, however.)
I also vet the people I work with. If someone calls me from out of the blue and wants me to do work for or with them, I check them out. I do due diligence. So I may combine someone's name with various search terms to see if something comes out. (If you saw I had the name of a reputable person combined with odd search terms would you think I knew something bad?)
Even more important, could I possible disclose something covered by an NDA? I'm under lots of NDA's that let me see advanced products and websites. If I was searching for things related to work with them or consulting work I do for people who want to be bleeding edge in technology, then I could be in breach of those NDA's, I would think, depending upon who saw it.
After I cleared my web history, it let me pause the collection, which is probably where I"ll leave it for now until I understand what this means and how it impacts the legal requirements.
I think the big question in the minds of many is something that happened like with Google Buzz privacy fiasco where everyone's emails were shared that you had in your contact list and people started asking why people were emailing each other.
Big companies rarely test such things completely and often just asking forgiveness is the course.
I work with children and have a responsibility to protect them and the teachers as well. I will always err on the cautious side of the fence with such precious ones in my care. It is the right thing to do.
Some scenarios.
- What if you're looking for a job and no one knows it. How is this going to be used?
- What if you had a parent situation and you were looking up information on the parent?
- What if a student typed something bad on Facebook and you had to type in what they said to find it?
I don't know where this information will go but sometimes I find myself typing things I"d rather not have to type. I recall having to look up a word not too long a go that was scratched on something and it was a very embarrassing definition.
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| I paused my web history search. |
Then. Clear your Youtube History
Clear your youtube search history by going to www.youtube.com and sign in. Click on your name and click on "Video manager" and then click "Search History." You can clear your search history and then, click "Pause Search History" which is what I did.
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| YouTube after I cleared and paused search history. |
and go through all the steps outlined by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They did a great job of explaining it.
Now that you've protected yourself, it is time to educate others. I think this is very important for teachers and principals as we are under policies that require us to keep things private. Until we know and understand what they are doing, we should be safe.
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Bow Berlin: Tyre inspired Jewelry & Leather Fashion Showroom
A full four tons of tires were cut, wired, screwed and nailed to fit them with LED-lighting and back-lit white glass tops to create shelves, display tables and even chandeliers. Yes, we particularly love those chandeliers.
All in all, Berlin West is turning into a cool and chic destination and not just because it is close to the known fashion addresses of Kurfürstendamm or the transportation hub of Bahnhof Zoo. New life is being breathed to the area constantly with such projects as Bikini Berlin and with Europe’s first new-build Waldorf Astoria, scheduled to open in early 2012. - Tuija Seipell [Source]















































