Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

Proloquo2Go iPad Software Gives Voice to the Autistic - ABC News For those who work with those with autism, this is a report on how the iPad helps those with autism communicate. tags : education , autism , edu_trends , edu_news Portal de Actividades Educativas multimedia - Educaplay This is in Spanish but some of my friends out there may like this site. This is from one of the founders, Raul, who just sent me an email: "Greetings, First I would like to congratulate you for your blog, I have seen it recently and I have noticed that you deal with subjects related to educational teaching. Thus, I would like to tell you about a new project that we have developed in ADRformacion. We call it “educaplay”, and it is a platform, completely free, to create and use scorm compatible multimedia educational activities. In this platform you can make up crosswords activities, guessing riddles, dialogues, word grids, etc. In short, we are very excited about the project, we are still in the develop...

Admongo.gov Gaming website to help students be able to decode and understand advertising. This is from the Federal Trade Commission and is very cool looking. It is a game! There are a lot of resources for parents and teachers. tags : education , learning Attend College Video Contest Winner College Summit has announced the winners of its first annual peer-to-peer student video contest. The contest encouraged high school seniors across the country to produce videos that illustrate how peers can inspire and motivate others to attend college. tags : education , college , career Microsoft Security Brochures and Fact Sheets Lots of free downloadable brochures on Internet safety that you can share at your school. There are some educational highlights on three of our Digiteen teachers. (Julie Lindsay, Suzie Nestico, and Vicki Davis) - you click on "Education Highlights.) tags : education , learning , flatclassroom , digiteen , edu_trends , digitalcitizenship Posted from Diigo . The re...

I was on-line planning the Citizenship, Gridizenship: Online Community Building for Self-Sustaining Safety at ISTE this year (Monday morning at 8:30 am!) with some amazing co-presenters ( Anne Collier, Marianne Malmstrom and Bron Stuckey.) Marianne gave me the link to this presentation from Anne Collier and I've started watching and think this is something you should listen to in your on-line PD this week. Today I asked a person just finishing her masters the most important thing she learned from her program and she said, "I learned that I can learn everything I need to know on-line."  Quite sage advice. But you've got to commit the time and go out and get it.  You don't get smarter by rubbing Einstein's head and a computer doesn't make you smarter either.  It is what you and where you tune those antennae.  I first "met" Anne (author of Net Family News ) when I saw her on the PBS Growing Up On-line video series we use for Digiteen .  ...

SortFix - Improve your Search This very interesting search engine uses a neat keyword feature at the top that I really like. Unfortunately they have quite a few google ads, but still, if you're struggling, then it could be useful. tags : education , learning Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

MacICT Virtual Worlds Project (April 2010) Great presentation overview on slideshare of the MacICT virtual worlds project from Kate Lumkin. tags : education , opensim OpenSim Video Tutorials I just received these open Sim video tutorials from Kate Lumpkin to share with my students. These are very helpful. tags : education , opensim , technology Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

Hi everyone! It is that time again.  If you want to understand more about Flat Classroom projects and the video assessment portion, now is your time. In fact, many have volunteered their time as a judge and gone on to start their own projects.  So, we're issuing an open invitation to educators and those involved in the technology field to spend 1 - 2 hours judging the NetGenEd videos.  Each video is pre-screened by two people and sent up for 2nd level judging and then to our final meta judge to determine the best of the project! We've got some great videos planned and would love to see some new faces. Here is the note from my good friend, Julie Lindsay, who is the organizer for the judges for this project! Please join us! We have many classrooms around the world busily collaborating and creating their final multimedia piece to submit for judging.  The deadline for submission of multimedia for the internal judging processes as well as the global competition organi...

GEEK LEVEL: Medium I'm totally fascinated by the possibilities for Sikuli Script as programming gets easier. This lets you use the sikuli interface and instead of having to know the object names, you can take screenshots of the buttons you want the computer to click and it will use a "visual search engine" to find that on the screen and click it.  This is the next iteration of programming and just phenomenal. I can see all kinds of applications for those who have to automate tasks! This is what they say about it on their website : Sikuli is a visual technology to search and automate graphical user interfaces (GUI) using images (screenshots). The first release of Sikuli contains Sikuli Script, a visual scripting API for Jython, and Sikuli IDE, an integrated development environment for writing visual scripts with screenshots easily. Sikuli Script automates anything you see on t...

Project SIKULI I don't really understand all about this project out of MIT but want to learn more about it. After watching the demo, I can see HUGE applications for IT administrators and support staff who have certain people and machines that need the same repetitive things done that they just cannot remember. Look at this sikuli script feature - it is GREAT!) Thi s is what they say on their site: "ikuli is a visual technology to search and automate graphical user interfaces (GUI) using images (screenshots). The first release of Sikuli contains Sikuli Script, a visual scripting API for Jython, and Sikuli IDE, an integrated development environment for writing visual scripts with screenshots easily. Sikuli Script automates anything you see on the screen without internal API's support. You can programmatically control a web page, a desktop application running on Windows/Linux/Mac OS X, or even an iphone application running in an emulator. " tags : education , learning...

My official "birthday gift to you" post (last year was my most popular post of the year which still draws traffic and remains current 1 22 for you: Cool Cat Teacher's Favorite Apps and Sites ) will have to come a bit later in the week as we have progress reports going out tomorrow. Many thanks to everyone who has sent tweets, Facebook messages, and emails. You are all blessings. Meanwhile, I've found the coolest tool that I highly recommend called Dexpot which lets you have multiple screens - like virtual monitors to switch between.  So, you can literally have 4 screens configured differently for different tasks (I have 8) and then you can swap between them easily as needed. (Like one screen may be watching an ftp and another for checking email with your Toodledo list up on the other.) The two tips I have for you is that if you use it and need to install programs, turn it OFF or you may get a Windows blue screen of death (I got one while setting up my virtual encry...

Don't Break The Chain! This very simple device invented by Jerry Seinfeld (can you believe it?) is also similar to what Benjamin Franklin used to help him focus on virtues. Select something you feel you need to do every day and then use this tool as a widget on your igoogle page or in Chrome. I love mine! tags : education , learning Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

OK, so, I have an obsession with organizing books for about the last 10 years and have just finished my thirtieth book.  You can ask my college roommate (Dena - God bless her used to put all my clothes in my closet just so she could not be embarrassed - she just threw them in - WHAT A MESS!) or you could ask my Mom. I just finished Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better by Gina Trapani in one evening and learned so much. (Honestly, I'd read Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload by Mark Hurst FIRST and then you'll be ready for Gina's book of tips and tricks.) I had a lot to do today but have a list of the "hacks" in her book to start with.  I want you to meet what I'm lovingly calling "Tim."  OK, his real name is F. TIM (First Thing in the Morning) but this handy trick is a winner.  You see, Gina said that a study determined that there are these super-productive technology p...

TimeSheet Automatically Tracks Your Time Spent Working - Time management - Lifehacker This is a pretty cool feature if you work on specific websites for people. It tracks your time on each task. This would also be good to use with students for them to track and understand ACTUALLy how much time they are spending on task and how much off task! tags : education , productivity , business , professionaldevelopment Advice and First Steps for Educational Leaders to Lead by Example by dlourcey This is a wall for beginners created by @dlourcey on Twitter for educational leaders. Feel free to share your thoughts on this wall! tags : education , learning , inspiration , leadership Dual Screen Wallpapers For tthose of you who have two screens - DUAL SCREEN WALLpapers - this site also has triple screen and quad screen wallpapers as well. tags : education , learning , productivity , fun , lifehacker Top 20 Greasemonkey Scripts For Firefox | Apple Views These are some very cool greasemonkey scripts ...

Oh my goodness, I was up well past midnight this past Wednesday night.  Not because of my ears (thank goodness -- those of you who follow me on Twitter know that the last two weeks I've been fighting with a horrific double ear infection.)  Honestly, it was because I was so excited. I learned so much from Dr. David Rose in this webinar, I hardly felt like a participant. Dr. Rose is a leading researcher in education and has so many accolades but I think the thing I liked about him most is that I could actually understand everything he shared in the webinar! This session was choc full of research. But perhaps the thing I liked the best was when Wayne D'Orio made the point that both of us (Dr. Rose in his Harvard grad student classroom and I in my high school classroom in South Georgia) were echoing that the use of technology has caused us both to be renewed and excited about teaching again. We're both feeling like we connect better with our students! What a powerful st...

SEcond International Symposium on Peer Reviewing Just got this in my inbox. I think this may interest some of you out there. Bottom line is that research is evolving! " As you know, only 8% members of the Scientific Research Society agreed that 'peer review works well as it is.' (Chubin and Hackett, 1990; p.192) "A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision and an analysis of the peer review system substantiate complaints about this fundamental aspect of scientific research." (Horrobin, 2001) Horrobin concludes that peer review "is a non-validated charade whose processes generate results little better than does chance." (Horrobin, 2001) This has been statistically proven and reported by an increasing number of journal editors. But, "Peer Review is one of the sacred pillars of the scientific edifice" (Goodstein, 2000), it is a necessary condition in quality assurance for Scientific/Engineering publications, and "Peer Review is central to the organ...

FYI. For those of you who have been emailing me, I use the Logitech Quickcam Fusion as a great option for kids because of the privacy and avatar options. (They have the option of having a cartoon as their face which tracks with their speaking! Back in Early March while I was off at MACUL, I received an email on my school account from Cherrie MacInnes from Washington Street School in Brewer Maine.  This amazing woman E-mailed me on a Sunday morning with the following message: "Dear Administrators and Third Grade Teachers, The 3rd graders at Washington Street School in Brewer, Maine are on aquest to google chat with a third grade classroom from every state in ourcountry. Students from W.S.S. would share interesting facts about Maine and your students would reciprocate with some interesting facts about your state. The conference would be a one time lesson lasting between 20 - 30minutes. My class will record the date of our video conference facts on a large map of the U...

The Complete Guide To Fixing Google Contacts | Lifehacker Australia Great article on how to fix google contacts. I'm going through this myself. tags : education , learning , tools CAST: Learning Tools Incredible learning tools from CAST - book builder, curriculum self, check, UDL lesson builder and strategy tutor (helps students doing reading and research on the Internet.) tags : education , learning , udl The safe use of new technologies / Thematic reports / Documents by type / Browse all by / Publications and research / Ofsted home / Ofsted - Ofsted This is is a very important study from the U.K. and Office of Standards in Education in 2009 entitled "The Safe use of new technologies" showed that where provision for e-safety was outstanding all used ‘managed’ systems to help pupils to become safe and responsible users of new technologies." This is being cited EVERYWHERE. Take a look. tags : education , digitalcitizenship , safety , opencontent , opened do we have sa...

This is late notice, but I just realized that I didn't share with you all about the webinar happening in just moments with Dr. David Rose as part of Scholastic's #experttalks series.  I'll be there via Skype but really, I'm looking forward to what he has to say. You'll be able to ask questions if you join in or follow the twitterstream at #experttalks. Hope to see some of you there - http://teacher.scholastic.com/experttalks/webcast4.htm It will go from 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm EDT 4/21/2010

Digiteacher Workshop: Digital Citizenship within a Project-Based Learning Environment Here is the link to the Digiteacher Workshop that Julie Lindsay and I are planning to do at ISTE. The other sessions that we're doing are almost full and I wanted to share this link with those who are going to ISTE and would like to participate in this workshop on Monday. Description: "Understand the project-based method of teaching digital citizenship first hand in this workshop from Vicki �Cool Cat Teacher� Davis, co-founder of the Digiteen project." and Julie Lindsay tags : education , learning , workshop , iste , iste2010 Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

Impact EVERY Student: Simple Strategies That Provide... - Eventbrite From my email today: "Turning Technologies, a leader in the student response industry, is sponsoring a webinar, “Simple Strategies That Provide Big Improvement,” that will take place on 4/30 at 2pm ET. It is part of the eSchool News free webinar series. During this workshop, participants will learn how to promote team-based, short-term thought and action, effectively use data to progress monitor student gains, produce immediate and frequent wins, and tools that can help you increase student achievement." tags : education , learning , edu_news Cyberspace isn't a place - Irish Judge • The Register ARticle on copyright infringement lawas and how this is being interpreted in Ireland. tags : education , learning , digital_law , digital_communications , entertainment SEM Image Gallery by ASPEX – Send Us Your Sample! | Information on how to submit your sample is here. Most of the information you'l...

Bill MacKenty - Educational Technologist probably doesn't even know me but he has endeared himself to me for responding to my student, Trent, a student on the NetGenEducation project seeking answers. You can read Trent's question and Bill's answer over on Bill's blog , but I wanted to say thank you to Bill for responding and for taking the time to answer. He didn't know Trent was a student or that his teacher happened to blog - he just shows his all-around niceness and kindness by responding so professionally to Trent.  These are the kinds of people I like to work with - those who do what is good and right without anyone looking. I'd also like to make a point that many of us are contacted by people and we know not who they are, but we should do our best to respond as best we can just because it is in the ethic and responsibility of sharing. My Dad always said, "You can tell a lot about a man by how he treats children and animals - those he has no bene...

Vicarious Learning: Developing Cultural Literacy Through Global Collaboration | Radio TICAL Here is the podcast I recorded at TICAL in Arkansas with Rowland Baker about vicarious learning and global collaboration. We had a great conversation and I love the example he shares from "close encounters" that makes so much sense! tags : education , learning , flatclassroom , inthenews , edu_trends CANVAS in Scotland: Students Display Artwork in Open Sim | Rezzable More work in OpenSim - displaying virtual artwork in a museum. CANVAS (Children's Art at the National Virtual Arena of Scotland) is a place where this is happening now in OpenSim. tags : education , learning , opensim Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

Image via CrunchBase Lots of comments running through Twitter about Ning 's decision to take away free networks from education.  While it would have been nice for Ning to notify us in a more direct way, they didn't and here are some of my thoughts. 1 - Ning SHOULD Make Money First and foremost, Ning is a for-profit company and they have a right and an obligation to their investors to make a PROFIT. I appreciate that they understood the power of free networks where STUDENTS were involved as well as keeping politically favorable in treating those networks with kids under 18 with "kid gloves" so to speak as it relates to advertising. While I disagree with their decision and point out that wikispaces has built a seemingly profitable model off of add-free sites for educators - this is Ning's company and Ning's right to do as they wish! 2 - Ning SHOULD Be Ready to Step Up That being said, I think that Ning's lack of communication with educators who had...

Project-Based Learning | Edutopia Excellent information on project based learning with a lot of real world examples from edutopia. tags : education , learning , projectbasedlearning , pbl , edu_news , edu_trends Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

ActiveWords Activewords is one of my favorite new productivity tools allowing me to do my most common things with just one keystroke. Here are the add ons that are used - I'm using one for toodledo and for Google searches. tags : education , learning , productivity , techintegrator Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

While I"m fighting a nasty double ear infection, I've been confined to my bed in the evenings with my laptop confiscated by my dear husband - so am snagging 5 minutes before I get my hair cut to share with you the links to our really amazingly cool Flat Classroom ™ winning videos from our last project - as most of you know - we run this project now 3 times a year. (For more information - see our website http://www.flatclassroomproject.com - yes, I know it is a .com but no, we don't charge anything! Still as grassroots as ever.) Julie Lindsay just sent this out - and I hear that the top three videos are just amazing. Student and multimedia information 9.C.1 The Journey ,by Salvador A., WHS, USA Title of video: The Journey Find more videos like this on Flat Classroom Project Second Place Student and multimedia information: 10.D.2 Virtual Communication by Yaroslav Loginov , Sotogrande International School, Spain Title of video : Virtual Communication ...

While it is on my mind, I wanted to share some upcoming dates with you: June 8 - Opening Keynote TNT Conference Teaching and Technology Conference Bismarck, North Dakota USA http://www.bsc.nodak.edu/ceti/tnt/ ISTE 2010 Citizenship, Gridizenship: Online Community Building for Self-Sustaining Safety [Formal Session : Panel] (50012999) Scheduled: Monday, 6/28/2010,  8:30am–9:30am  MF343L Digiteacher Workshop: Digital Citizenship within a Project-Based Learning Environment [Workshop : Lab-Based] (50085973) Scheduled: Monday, 6/28/2010,  12:30pm–7:30pm  Seven Steps to Flatten Your Classroom [Formal Session: Lecture] Wednesday, 6/30/2010, 10:30am–11:30am  TF446B Flat Classroom Workshop: 7 Steps to Global Collaboration [Workshop: BYOL(w)] Tuesday, 6/29/2010, 12:30pm–7:30pm  BW301 Wonderful World of Wikis: Practical Classroom Wiki...