Catch of the Day - NBC Learn - 9/30/2010

NBC Learn makes the global resources of NBC News and its historic film and video archive available to teachers, students, schools, and universities.

Original video content produced by NBC Learn is engaging, innovative, and helps make learning fun.

NBC News Archives on Demand (K-12) is a collection of NBC News videos, primary source documents, images, and resources specifically intended for use in the K-12 science, social studies, language arts, health, and business classrooms.

• Search and download thousands of resources
• Video content aligned to standards
• Regularly updated current events
• Personalized playlists for teachers and students
• Free interactive webinars

NBC News Archives on Demand (Higher Ed) is tailored to the needs of college students and instructors. The 26 collections include Biology, Psychology, Forensic Sciences, Environmental Sciences, U.S. History, Business, Economics, Urban Studies, Women's Studies, and many more.

What's Your iCue? is NBC Learn's competitive video trivia game that pairs challenging questions with NBC News video to create a fast-paced trivia game.

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Catch of the Day - vReveal - 9/29/2010

vReveal helps you fix your shaky videos and other common video problems with powerful technology, for free.

With vReveal software for Windows*, it's easy to quickly fix the videos from your cell phone, HD camcorder, digital camera, or other device. Stabilize, brighten, sharpen, add fun effects and more with just one click. It's completely free.

Free vReveal features ...

• Import and enhance HD video up to 1080p
• Export to HD video up to 480p
• Stabilize, Brighten, Sharpen, and more
• Special effects: Black & White, Vivid Colors, Glow, and more
• Manage and organize your videos in a gallery
• Built-in YouTube and Facebook uploader

Import numerous popular video formats such as MOV, MP4, AVI, MPG, MTS, WMV, 3GP, FLV, ASF, and more. Export to video formats including WMV, MJPEG AVI, Uncompressed AVI, and DivX.

vReveal Stabilization Example

Snowboarding from vReveal on Vimeo

Additional features in the vRevealPremium ($39 US) software: export to HD video up to 1080p; enhance video detail with Super-Resolution; no watermark, ads, or promotions.

Watch a video introduction to vReveal

*Note: Although there is no OS X version, vReveal reportedly performs well running in Bootcamp.

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Catch of the Day - Googlio - 9/28/2010

Googlio is a free portfolio webspace created by mashing up blog, wiki, social networking, and other Google web tools for students and teachers to collect, publish, reflect, and connect digitally.

Googlios brings together free Google tools and ePortfolios. It is meant to be a collection of resources for using ePortfolios in education.

Watch a video introduction to Googlio

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Are your ears burning?

Do you like to listen to podcasts on your iOS device in 2X speed? Do you wish you could do this when listening in iTunes on your computer?

Unfortunately, iTunes doesn't offer this option for listening to podcasts. A relatively easy work around to speed up podcast playback in OS X* uses the VLC media player.

In iTunes, right-click (Command-click) on the podcast title and select Show in Finder from the contextual menu.

Next, right-click (Command-click) on the file in Finder and choose Open With, then VLC.

Click Playback in the VLC menubar, then Faster (Shortcut: Cmd +)

See how to do this in a video

You can speed up playback to double-speed or even faster!

*Note: This should work similarly in iTunes for Windows.

Catch of the Day - Teachbook - 9/27/2010

Teachbook is a very new website about community, utility, and communication for teachers.

If you join Teachbook, you can ...

• Manage your profile and the information in your account
• Create and search lesson plans, videos, and other teaching resources
• Manage your communications with secure parent-teacher communication tools
• Communicate and connect with colleagues though discussion, chat, blogs, and more
• Gain new teaching knowledge and insights from like-minded professionals
• Create and manage online courses and instructional modules
• Manage your students' grades by recording, calculating, and sharing them in a secure online gradebook

The Teachbook Ambassador Program is an opportunity for members to participate in growing the Teachbook community. Teachbook Ambassadors will post lesson plans, instructional videos, and online courses, and encourage colleagues to do the same.

Teachbook also offers classroom management tools such as a gradebook, events calendar, classroom newsletter, and homework space.

Right now Teachbook is a bit light on content, but it provides an opportunity to be part of nurturing and growing an idea.

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Catch of the Day - The International Children's Digital Library - 9/24/2010

The International Children's Digital Library is a digital library of children's books from every part of the world.

The focus of The International Children's Digital Library is on offering content that will help children ages 3-13 understand their world and the greater global society in which they live.

All materials in the collection are presented in the languages in which they were originally published. They are chosen to reflect similarities and differences in cultures, societies, interests, and lifestyles of people around the world.

So that every child can know and appreciate the riches of children's literature from the entire world, The International Children's Digital Library hopes to have every culture and language represented.

The International Children's Digital Library is a research project funded primarily by the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and Microsoft Research. It is anticipated that the ICDL collection will eventually include approximately 10,000 items in at least 100 languages.

Go to The International Children's Digital LibraryFAQ page

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Catch of the Day - Fuel the Brain - 9/23/2010

 

Fuel the Brain strives to make things easier for busy teachers by providing a variety of resources organized in one place.

It is the goal of Fuel the Brain to continue to build their site until it is a comprehensive collection of teaching materials across several grade levels. Currently Fuel the Brain focuses on K-3 (ages 5-8) objectives.

The content at Fuel the Brain includes …

• Games
• Interactives
• Printables
• Teacher guides
• Seasonal resources
• and more

Fuel the Brain has started with mathematics but plans to continue to create content for more subject areas. The next focus will be science and social studies.

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Catch of the Day - PlanbookEdu - 9/22/2010

PlanbookEdu is a free, fully customizable, web-based planbook.

PlanbookEdu is hosted on safe and reliable web servers. With a Mac or PC, a web browser, and an internet connection you can access your planbook anytime, anywhere.

Share your plans with anyone, colleagues, administrators, or a substitute. You can determine what they can see and for how long.

The PlanbookEdu basic plan is free and includes one planbook, access to your planbook from any Internet connection, support for major browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome), word processor-style editing, and full customization.

Additional features available in the $20(US) annual Premium plan are …

• Attach files to your plans
• Integration with Common Core Standards
• Share planbook with others
• Print from your browser or export as MS Word or PDF
• Spell check
• Unlimited number of planbooks

Watch a video demo of PlanbookEdu

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Lessonopoly Update

 

I first posted about Lessonopoly, a website designed to facilitate the organization of activities, creation and sharing of lesson plans, and connecting to other teachers in online communities, in July.

Lessonopoly has teamed up with NBC Learn to bring the excitement of the NFL to your classrooms with high quality science and math lesson plans that you and your students will enjoy. These lesson plans help make sense of the science behind the sport.

The series covers concepts like nutrition, kinematics, projectile motion, Newton's laws of motion, torque & center of mass, and the Pythagorean Theorem. Lesson plans target 5th-9th grade.

Go to my earlier post on Lessonopoly

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Catch of the Day - Literacyworks - 9/21/2010

Literacyworks provides free, multimedia educational materials, adaptable for ethnically and culturally diverse learners and for multiple learning styles.

Literacyworks can help people secure better jobs, become better parents, and contribute more to their community.

Literacyworks was created to address the needs of underprivileged and underrepresented adults, families, and children by using educational technology to increase the quality, availability, and accessibility of literacy curriculum for people with low literacy skills.

Literacyworks delivers their materials to literacy and education organizations, including library, community-based, and public adult and family education and literacy programs, through the Internet and on CDs and videos.

Literacyworks also assists literacy education programs with technology support, educational material, assessment, securing funding (including resource and grant development), staff training, design and maintenance of learning laboratories, and distance-learning programs.

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Catch of the Day - Juxio - 9/20/2010

Juxio is a new way to communicate visually. Students and teachers can use Juxio to mash images, text, and other content into visual streams called Juxes.

All elements of a Jux are dropped into Streams. You can widen a Stream or add Streams to make room for more elements. When you drop an element between two other elements, the Stream automatically widens to make room for the new element.

You can upload any kind of image such as personal photos, stock photos, and illustrations. Add images directly from your Flickr account. Integration with Picasa and other photo services is planned to be added soon.

Juxes can be shared by email, Twitter, or Facebook or by purchasing a print. An 11" x 7" Jux would cost $6.96.

Juxio is available anywhere at any time. Juxes can be created either on the web using most common browsers or by using a free iOS app. In Juxio's future plans is support for additional mobile devices.

Watch a video intro to Juxio

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LiveBinder: Free School Clipart

This LiveBinder is a collection of sites where you can find high quality free clipart for students and teachers.

Free Clipart

LiveBinder: Free Stock Images

In this LiveBinder, I have collected several sources of totally free (no cost, royalty free) stock photos for use by students and teachers.

Free Stock Images

 

Catch of the Day - Smart-Kit - 9/17/2010

 

At the Smartkit Online Puzzle Playground, you’ll find many fun puzzles and games to entertain and stimulate your brain.

The Smartkit Online Puzzle Playground provides the chance to nourish and exercise many brain areas with a great collection of puzzles and brain teasers, brain games, trivia quizzes, and jigsaw puzzles.

Among the puzzle categories are …

• Jigsaw puzzles
• Spot the differnce
• Hidden objects
• Math and logic
• Word and picture puzzles
• Riddles
• and many more

All content on the Smartkit Online Puzzle Playground is kid-friendly.

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Catch of the Day - Interactive Whiteboard Activities - 9/16/2010

Find lots of free Interactive Whiteboard Activities to use with any kind of interactive whiteboard on this site from Scholastic.

Scholsatics's Interactive Whiteboard Activities provides rich interactive content in four areas: Language Arts, Social Studies, Science & Math, and Learning Games & Teaching Tools.

Click on Teaching With Interactive Whiteboards to get tips for using and ideas for teaching with interactive whiteboards. Each activity includes quick tips for using the activity and a complete Teacher's Guide, too.

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Catch of the Day - The Center on Congress - 9/15/2010

 

The Center on Congress at Indiana University explains the work and role of the US Congress in a variety of ways, including web articles, brochures, teaching materials, conferences, books, television spots, videos and interactive learning programs for students.

The goal of The Center on Congress is to "help improve the public's understanding of Congress and to improve civic engagement, especially among our young people, as a way to strengthen our basic institutions of government."

The interactive learning modules offered by The Center on Congress include …

• How a Member Decides to Vote
• The Role of Congress
• The Dynamic Legislative Process
• The Many Roles of a Member of Congress
• The Importance of Civic Participation

Featured projects of the The Center on Congress are Teaching with Primary Resources, Virtual Congress, Oceana: A Virtual Democracy, and a Kid's Website.

View the The Center on Congress brochure.

The Center on Congress at Indiana University was established in January 1999. It developed out of former US Congressman Lee Hamilton's belief in the need to improve broad public understanding of Congress.

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