Make Students Info Literate

Excellent article by Judy Salpeter from Technology & Learning

There remains a larger challenge for schools: how to develop a new generation of knowledgeable digital citizens who can operate in the unregulated online world.

Read the article...
Techlearning >> Make Students Info Literate > May 22, 2008

Intro to EasiTeach Drawing Tools

A short tutorial to introduce the drawing tools in EasiTeach.

Using the PowerPoint Drawing Tools

This short video tutorial provides an introduction to PowerPoint's drawing tools.

Note: This tutorial was made using MS Office 2003.

ChitChat Educational Network

ChitChat Educational Network offers a free, easy-to-use Educational Network, allowing teachers to easily create rich multimedia course content, share it with other teachers, and post it on interactive class websites.

• Make class pages
• Build interactive assignments
• Share with other teachers

The ChitChat Educational Network is built around the fundamental model of education: teachers assign, students respond, and teachers provide feedback. The product has unique tools that show teachers a simple list of all student responses to each assignment, allow them to write comments directly into the text of students’ work just like they would with a red pen, and automatically send feedback to students.

Get Better with the Box

If you feel you're not quite as computer literate as you should be and you'd like to enhance your skills, here ia a sampling of twenty free online courses from about.com and hp.com you might like to investigate.

About University (about.com)

• Build Your Own Desktop PC
• Computer Security 101
• WiFi Security 101
• Computer Viruses 101
• Web Search 101 Course
• Beyond Basic PowerPoint
• XML 101
• JavaScript Course
• Beginning Web Design
• Adobe Photoshop Basics

There are more than 50 free computer technology courses offered through About University. Courses are delivered daily or weekly to your email address of choice and last anywhere from one day to 12 weeks. Most courses are text based, but some include images, videos and links to additional resources. There is also a guide that you can email and a discussion forum if you come across something you don't understand.

HP Learning Center (hp.com)

• Computer Security (Quick Lesson)
• Protecting Personal Business Data
• Firewall Basics
• Printer Management 101
• Laptop PCs: Troubleshooting and Repair (Quick Lesson)
• Linux 101
• Adobe Photoshop CS2 (Advanced)
• Microsoft Excel Basics (Video Course)
• Microsoft Word (Introduction)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (Advanced)

There are dozens of free computer technology courses available through the HP Learning Center. Courses are instructor-led and available 24/7. Most of the courses are text based, but there are quite a few video courses to choose from as well.

Streaming Videos for the Classroom

From Julia VanderMolen, Techlearning...

With new technologies comes new ways of developing and delivering educational resources. The Internet has opened up an exciting new realm of useful content. However, with such a vast repository of information there comes the problem of deciphering what is quality and relevant content.

Streaming Video can provide a very powerful tool that can enhance the learning environment both in and out of the classroom. It allows you as the teacher to enhance the classroom experience by playing media in the classroom with a simple click on a web link. Students can access the videos to study for exams, review information that they may have not clearly understood, or watch the video to build on what was presented in class.

Where to Get Streaming Videos for the Classroom...
Educational video-on-demand or video-streaming programs offer a unique opportunity to allow students and teachers access to a wide variety of quality programming without limited access to popular video programs, lost videos, or the need for multiple formats for different users within the school.

Here are a few resources to explore. The first three streaming video or video-on-demand resources are proprietary and the last two are the free streaming video sites for the classroom.

CCC! VIDEO ON DEMAND
UNITEDSTREAMING
SAFARI MONTAGE
TEACHERS NETWORK
TEACHERS DOMAIN