Catch of the Day - Adobe® Digital Editions - Jul 30, 2010

 

Adobe® Digital Editions is free cross-platform reading software for eBooks in PDF and ePub formats.

Adobe® Digital Editions software enables users to view and manage eBooks and other digital publications. Purchase and download digital content to read both online and offline. Organize your eBooks into a personal library and annotate pages.

Adobe® Digital Editions implements a clean, well-organized interface, specially designed for reading digital publications. In Reading View, see bookmarks and a table of contents. PDF files can be displayed in a double-page, single page, fit-to-width, or your own custom view. You can change text size with ePub content.

Other features include …

• Content portability, manage digital publications across multiple computers and devices
• Add bookmarks to and search an eText in Reading View
• Support for PDF and ePub documents and embedded SWF files
• eBook borrowing  from many public libraries
• Add eBooks from your computer to your library

Adobe® Digital Editions is currently offered in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional versions and can display content in a wide variety of languages

Adobe® Digital Editions can be deployed, maintained, and supported across your school system.

Watch a video overview of Adobe® Digital Editions

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Catch of the Day - Smart.fm - Jul 29, 2010

Smart.fm permits people to learn faster, remember longer, and manage their knowledge.

Smart.fm automatically creates a learning schedule that adapts to an individual’s performance and needs by combining learning science wit- adaptive, semantic, and social Web technologies.

Smart.fm measures memory strength on an item-by-item basis using personalized learning algorithms based on research on optimum learning patterns in cognitive science and neuroscience. Using these algorithms, Smart.fm generates optimal learning schedules for chunks of specific content. This intelligent scheduling is achieved by gathering metadata on each individual user's performance and modeling memory decay patterns at the item level.

Watch a video introduction to Smart.fm

Watch a demo of a Smart.fm lesson

The free Smart.fm app lets you learn anywhere using your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.

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Catch of the Day - B&N NOOKstudy - Jul 28, 2010

NOOKstudy is free eTextbook reader software coming from Barnes & Noble in August.

NOOKstudy keeps your eTextbooks and other class materials such as handouts and notes, organized and accessible right on your computer.

Multiple eTextbooks can be open simultaneously. With NOOKStudy, you can zoom in on full-color diagrams and pictures. Return automatically to the last page you were reading when you re-open an eTextbook.

What you can do with NOOKstudy ...

• Organize your materials by course
• Take notes directly in eTextbooks
• Highlight, annotate, and tag content
• Search the entire text of a book or your own notes.
• Look up definitions or formulas using Google and Dictionary.com
• Access over half-a-million free eBooks

The B&N NOOKstudyis currently being used and tested at Penn State, University of Nevada, Queensborough Community College, and the Rochester Institute of Technology.

NOOKstudy runs on PCs and Macs. A B&N Nook eReader device is NOT needed.

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Google Reader in Internet Explorer

Learn how to use the Google Reader Subscribe... bookmarklet to add RSS feed subscriptions in Internet Explorer 7/8.
Google Reader Subscriptions in IE7/8

Catch of the Day - TypingWeb - Jul 27, 2010

TypingWeb is an online typing and keyoarding tutor for learners at all skill levels. TypingWeb gives learners the training they need free.

Multi-faceted lessons, each focusing on specific areas such as speed, accuracy, key-rows, and trouble-keys, adapt to each student's typing strengths and weaknesses. TypingWeb also offers officially sanctioned typing and 10 Key certification to verify typing skills.

The Teacher Portal is a free, web-based tool for monitoring and grading your students' progress on TypingWeb. You can create unlimited student accounts, or link to accounts created by students. View detailed student progress, track usage activity, and see exactly what your students will be typing.

Watch a video demo of TypingWeb

TypingWeb runs in your web browser, so you will always have the latest features accessible from wherever you have an Internet connection.

Take TypingWeb with you everywhere on your iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, and work on your texting skills with TypingWeb.

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Catch of the Day - ePUB2Go - Jul 26, 2010

ePUB2Go is a web site that allows you to convert a PDF to an ePub file that can be read using a variety of ebook readers.

Why would you want to convert a PDF formatted document into the ePub format? The primary advantage of the ePub format is that it creates reflowable text, which means the text display adjusts to a number of variables such as the size of the display, the font being used, the size of the font, and so on. Consequently, ePub formatted documents display better  on a wide variety of readers, including mobile devices.

ePUB2Go is very easy to use. There are only two buttons on the home page, The PDF is on my Computer and The PDF is on the Internet.

Click the appropriate button, tell ePUB2Go exactly where the PDF file is located, upload it, and in a short time you will be given the options of either viewing or saving the ePub file on your computer or having it emailed to your iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad where it can be downloaded directly into the Stanza ebook reader.

Other good ways to view ePub files on your iDevice include the DropBox and Box.net apps. However, you'll have to download the ePub file first to your computer and then move it to your DropBox folder or upload it to Box.net.

ePUB2Go is free to use and there is no software to install on your computer.

Notes:  The PDF must be no more than 30MB, only bitmap (non-vector) images are converted, and tables are not converted

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DoSomething101 School Supply Drive

Staples and DoSomething.org are hosting the third annual Do Something 101 School Supply Drive. You can help right now by holding school supply drives in your school and community.

Through September 18, you can drop off school supplies at Do Something 101 collection bins at any Staples store across the US. Each Staples store is teamed up with a local non-profit organization that will ensure your supplies will help students in your own community.

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Catch of the Day - WordSteps - Jul 23, 2010

 

WordSteps is a website where people can learn and maintain their vocabularies of foreign languages.

At WordSteps you can enrich your vocabulary, as well as track your learning progress and recall the the words you find more difficult.

WordSteps, as the name suggests, works in three steps …

1. Find or create dictionaries of interest to you
2. Use any of 10 different exercises to learn new words
3. Refresh the words you've learned previously

There are thousands of existing dictionaries each covering a specific topic of interest such as art and entertainment, business and politics, science and education, sport, culture and people, and many more.

WordSteps claims that by investing just 15 minutes, 3 times a week, you can learn at least 3000 words of a foreign language in a year's time. That would be about 85% of the vocabulary used in books written in that language.

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Catch of the Day - Test-2-U - Jul 22, 2010

Test-2-U is an easy-to-use, cross platform application for creating and administering tests and quizzes.

You can design tests including multiple choice, true-false, fill-in-the-blank, and short answer questions with Test-2-U. Then digitally administer these tests to your students.

Test-2-u will score the tests and email the results to you for easy grade recording and record keeping.

The Test-2-U beta software (both Teacher and Student versions) is available for download and use at no cost. Once Test-2-U has been officially released, TS Solutions will provide the software at reduced or no cost to verified public school teachers and administrators.

Test-2-U runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.

Watch a video demo of Test-2-U

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Catch of the Day - TES Connect - Jul 21, 2010

TES Connect is a social network where teachers are able to connect, share resources, and search for jobs.

Perhaps the world's largest social network dedicated to a single profession, TES Connect gives teachers tools that could potentially transform their lesson planning and the quality of their teaching.

TES Connect is organized into five sections ...

• Community - discuss a range of issues in the forums, and see what your colleagues have been making good use of
• Resources - a library of more than 45,000 teaching resources created and shared by teachers in the TES community
• Jobs - browse by position, subject, workplace, and location and build customized job alerts (UK only)
• The Paper - print articles from the Times Educational Supplement appear on the site the day they are published
• My TES - A personalized page where you can save the content that is relevant to you

You can search or browse the free teaching resources. Resources are grouped by Foundation Stage, Primary, Secondary, Whole School, and Special Needs. These groups are further categorized by subject area and other special topics.

With nearly a million educational professionals in the TES Connect Community there are unlimited opportunities for learning and sharing.

Watch video highlights from the 2010 TES Schools Awards

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Catch of the Day - RhinoSpike - Jul 20, 2010

RhinoSpike is an online tool that enables language learners around the world to exchange language audio files.

RhinoSpike is simple to use. Submit some foreign language text that you'd like to have read aloud by a native speaker. A native speaker of that language then records it for you and sends that audio file back to you. You can then use that audio file to help learn how to speak that language.

You can listen on your computer, download it to your iPod or mp3 player, even embed it into your digital flashcards.

Listen to a sample recording in Russian | French | Spanish

With RhinoSpike you can get audio recorded for you by native speakers for anything in the world, on demand, for free.

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Catch of the Day - Creaza - Jul 19, 2010

Creaza integrates professionally-created and user-generated content, creativity tools, and a social network in a new and innovative way.

Creaza offers web-based, integrated creative tools for K-12+. Included are tools for mindmapping, creating cartoons, editing movies, and audio editing. Use Creaza at school, at home, or anywhere with an Internet connection.

Use the Creaza quartet of tools along with various themed units. Examples of these units are Creative Storytelling, Urban Lifestyle, Manga, and Little Red Riding Hood.

Creaza users can share their work with other Internet users and can give each other feedback on the content they share.

Creaza is offered as a free version and also as an annually licensed paid version. The licensed version includes storage, support, and access to all themes within Creaza for all students and teachers at your school.

Compare the free and paid versions of Creaza

Creaza is available to PC, MAC, and Linux users. To use Creaza, all you need is Internet access, a web browser, and the Flash plug-in.

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What Career? What College?

These three websites are all designed to help high school students explore colleges and careers.

Majors Explored helps prospective college students learn more about a particular college major or industry from the universities that teach it and from the companies that use that discipline on a daily basis.

YOUniversityTV has over 2,000 exclusive college and career related videos to help your students find out what colleges and careers are really like.

theU.com has more than 127,800 videos and reviews to help find the best colleges or careers for your students.

Thanks to @Pags21 for posting links to these sites on Twitter

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Catch of the Day - CK12 FlexBooks - Jul 16, 2010

 

CK-12 is working to establish the development and distribution of quality educational content that can be a core text as well as to provide a flexible context for learning.

FlexBook is an open-content, web-based collaborative e-textbook model. FlexBooks download in the ePub e-book format. Currently there are free FlexBooks available in math, science, technology, and engineering. There are algebra, geometry, and calculus textbooks with teacher support materials. In science, you'll find e-textbooks for biology, chemistry, and physics.

I downloaded the geometry FlexBook. After a quick perusal, it appears to be an adequate base geometry textbook. The images below show how the geometry book renders in several e-book readers on different platforms.

B&N eReader on a MacBook (with highlighting, note, and bookmark)

B&N eReader on a Windows netbook

Adobe Digital Editions on a Windows netbook

Firefox EPUBReader on a Windows netbook

iBooks on iPhone 3GS

You can create and edit your own chapters or even entire FlexBooks.

Watch a CK-12 FlexBooksvideo demo

Register for an interactive webinar "Intro to FlexBooks!"

Friday, July 16th @ 12:00pm PST | Friday, July 23rd @ 10:00am PST

A non-profit organization, the CK-12 Foundation has an objective of reducing the cost of textbook materials for K-12 both in the US and worldwide.

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