The Rearview Mirror 7/30/2011

For those of you who may have missed a Catch of the Day or who didn't have the opportunity to look at some of them during this past week, here's a second chance.

Monday

Sidaza enables free group text and photo messaging from any phone to small groups of people.

Tuesday

LessonCast is a place where teachers will be able to share and find exemplars of the "what, why, and how of effective teaching." In 2 ½ minutes or less, lessoncasts focus on a single lesson idea or management strategy.

Wednesday

The 21st Century Teacher is a new online community devoted exclusively to education in the 21st Century.

Thursday

B Line Test Prep offers students preparing to take the GMAT or SAT self-paced prep courses for free.

Friday

No Friday posts until September :-)

Restoring Safari 5.0 in Snow Leopard Made Easy

Safari has been my browser of choice for quite some time now. I recently upgraded to Safari 5.1 even though I'm still running OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) on both my MacBook and iMac, and expect to continue this way for a bit. I use the Glims plugin for Safari which adds a bunch of really useful features to Safari, my favorites being address bar searching with keywords and adding additional search engines in the search box.

Unfortunately, some of the Glims plugin features were broken by the upgrade. Furthermore, I was having issues with Safari 5.1 seemingly leaking memory and beach-balling quite a lot after extended browsing.

Today I found this really simple (so long as you're comfortable with using Terminal) method for restoring Safari back to version 5.0.5 at Mac OS X Hints. I tried it and it seems to have worked fine. All the Glims features appear to be back and functioning.

 

Catch of the Day - B Line Test Prep - 7/28/2011

B Line Test Prep offers students preparing to take the GMAT or SAT self-paced prep courses for free.

B Line Test Prep courses allow students to identify and focus on the questions and key concepts with which they are struggling. Students can also view animated solutions illustrating the steps needed to answer questions, explained in detail by experienced tutors.

Some features of B Line Test Prep:

• Eight full-length, timed practice tests
• Review sections
• More than 1200 vocabulary words
• Animated and narrated feedback
• Article library

The objective of B Line Test Prep is to make available to students "all of the necessary information, material, resources and services necessary to help them achieve their desired results." B Line Test Prep promises students the most up-to-date and reliable information possible, in an easy-to-use format.

B Line Test Prep is available 24 hours a day everyday.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Catch of the Day - 21st Century Teacher - 7/27/2011

The 21st Century Teacher is a new online community devoted exclusively to education in the 21st Century.

Members of the 21st Century Teacher community can create and join discussion groups, submit thoughts and ideas to the community blog, share online resources, and more.

21st Century TeacherDiscussion Groups can be created for anything you would like to talk about with your fellow educators. Groups can be designated as public or private. Personal thoughts and experiences can be shared with other members via the Community Blog section.

The Links section of the 21st Century Teacher site is a place to browse member submitted links with a description of the site. The links have been organized in several categories to make it easier for you to find what you are looking for.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Catch of the Day - LessonCast - 7/26/2011

LessonCast is a place where teachers will be able to share and find exemplars of the "what, why, and how of effective teaching." In 2 ½ minutes or less, lessoncasts focus on a single lesson idea or management strategy.

LessonCast content is created by teachers with ideas they want to share. Contributors can use built-in screen capture technology to record what is being displayed on their computer's screen (it can be a presentation, documents, images, web cam, etc) and publish their lessoncast. Contributors may also supplement and support their lessoncasts with downloadable resources.

Lessoncasts are not meant to be lesson plans. They should be short "how-to" pieces designed to support and inspire teachers.

Visitors to LessonCast may view the lessoncasts and download the related materials for free. The goal of LessonCast is to create a mentoring environment where experienced teachers share their knowledge and expertise with colleagues looking for new ideas or methods that are classroom-tested.

LessonCast membership is open only to educators who can then download materials and vote, tag, and share lessoncasts. The LessonCast community collectively determines which ideas are the most effective.

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Catch of the Day - Sidaza - 7/25/2011

Sidaza enables free group text and photo messaging from any phone to small groups of people.

Sidaza provides an easy way to automatically message everyone in a group using a free group phone number. When a recipient responds, that reply message goes out to everyone in the group.

You can also message all your group members' phones directly from your desktop or laptop computer. Responses from the people in your group will arrive on your computer in real-time.

Sidaza is a private social network, so your conversations with one group will stay separate from conversations with other groups.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Create Text-Specific Links

 

BookmarkQ and Citebite are two utilities that allow users to create a short URL to  selected, specific text on a web page rather than just linking to the entire page.

Both BookmarkQ and Citebite work with bookmarklets that you drag onto your browser's bookmarks toolbar. Highlight the text on the web page you want to link to, then click the bookmarklet button.

BookmarkQ generates a small pop-up box with a short URL that takes you directly to the selected text. The pop-up also has buttons to share the link directly via Facebook, Twitter, Gmail or other email.

Citebite opens a new window with a direct link URL with options to send the link directly to Delicious, Stumbleupon, or Digg.

In either case, when you click on the the generated link, you are taken to a version of the web page with the selected text highlighted and a header at the top indicating that this is an annotated page view.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

 

The Rearview Mirror 7/23/2011

For those of you who may have missed a Catch of the Day or who didn't have the opportunity to look at some of them during this past week, here's a second chance.

Monday

OneDrum provides free, easy, real-time collaboration for users of Microsoft Office for Windows .

Tuesday

The Teach Primary website is the online component of Teach Primary Magazine, a magazine for KS 1&2 teachers in the UK.

Wednesday

By blending creative writing and social media technology, Boomwriter provides a writing platform that is integrated into the national education curriculum and promotes competition while allowing every kid to shine.

Thursday

Educaplay is a platform to create and share your own interactive multimedia teaching and learning activities.

Friday

No Friday posts until September :-)

 

Catch of the Day - Educaplay - 7/21/2011

Educaplay is a platform to create and share your own interactive multimedia teaching and learning activities.

The following types of activities are available in Educaplay:

• Maps
• Riddles
• Crosswords and Word Search puzzles
• Jumbled words and sentences
• Matching and Fill-in-the-blank
• More

You can build your own customized activities or search the more than 13,000 activities shared by other users. Filter the available resources by kind, newest or most viewed, or any of seven languages. Educaplay currently has over 10,000 registered users.

No software needs to be downloaded and installed to use Educaplay. It is a browser-based web application (but does require a Flash plug-in).

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Catch of the Day - BoomWriter - 7/20/2011

By blending creative writing and social media technology, Boomwriter provides a writing platform that is integrated into the national education curriculum and promotes competition while allowing every kid to shine.

Boomwriter gives teachers a tool that helps their students aged 8-13 learn creative writing techniques while having fun. Kids can write their own chapters, vote on other writers' chapters, and get their work published.

Reading and writing skills supported by Boomwiter:

• Creative writing
• Reading comprehension
• Peer editing
• Genre studies

To begin, students read the start of a story which has been written by an accomplished author. They then create and write the next part of the story themselves. Students next read the work of their peers and vote on what they think is the best next part of the story. The selection chosen as best is added to the story, and students write from that point to create the next new part.

BoomWriter is completely free in schools. No names are used during the writing process. The student authors remain anonymous until the book is published.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Catch of the Day - Teach Primary - 7/19/2011

The Teach Primary website is the online component of Teach Primary Magazine, a magazine for KS 1&2 teachers in the UK.

The Resources section of the Teach Primary website points you to free resources for KS1 (ages 5-7) and KS2 (ages 7-11) primary learning, lesson plans, and continuing professional development content to help you with your teaching career. The resources can be filtered by category and author.

The Tried & Tested section  includes links to proven third-party products, searchable by keyword.

See an online sample copy of Teach Primary Magazine

A subscription to Teach Primary Magazine is £14(UK) for four issues (about $22(US)).

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Catch of the Day - OneDrum - 7/18/2011

OneDrum provides free, easy, real-time collaboration for users of Microsoft Office for Windows .

OneDrum let's you continue with the applications many of you probably already use, Microsoft Office, and the documents you already have on your computer. OneDrum manages the sharing and collaboration.

Using OneDrum, collaborators all work on the most recent version of a document at the same time and can work both on and offline. However, all users own their own documents and can assign tasks to other writers.

Collaborators can chat in real-time inside documents, thus providing immediate and relevant feedback. Users will know right away when changes are made to the document.

You receive alerts into your work stream when colleagues share or edit documents, a view of all your collaborations.

Watch a video intro to OneDrum

Currently OneDrum works with Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint. Support for Microsoft Word is planned for later in the year.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

The Rearview Mirror 7/16/2011

 

For those of you who may have missed a Catch of the Day or who didn't have the opportunity to look at some of them during this past week, here's a second chance.

Monday

Calgary-based Minigroup is a completely private blogging platform that lets you share "the right stuff with the right people." Members can share messages, links, images, audio, video, documents, and more.

Tuesday

openSIS is a commercial grade, secure, scalable, and intuitive open source student information system (SIS) used by 5000 schools worldwide.

Wednesday

At 19Pencils, teachers can discover, manage, and share learning content.

Thursday

Elevated Math for the iPad is a compilation of more than 170 instructional math lessons for various grade levels and college entrance exams.

Friday

No Friday posts until September :-)

 

Catch of the Day - Elevated Math - 7/14/2011

Elevated Math for the iPad is a compilation of more than 170 instructional math lessons for various grade levels and college entrance exams.

Between 13 and 45 minutes of animation are included in each Elevated Math lesson to help students understand math concepts and solve problems. The lessons are meant to teach higher order thinking skills and to reach all students by appealing to each student's own learning style. Lessons are enhanced with a whiteboard where students can show their work and over 14,000 interactions to give immediate feedback.

There are more than120 hours of instruction in the Elevated Math app with over 70 hours of quality animation. Students can learn at their own pace, reviewing content with which they are struggling and skipping material they have mastered.

The Elevated Math lessons are bundled in groupings based on the NCTM Content Standards and college entrance exam prep programs. Also included is a series of career-oriented short documentaries focusing on individuals who are using math in their jobs to help teachers answer the oft-asked question: “Why do we need to learn this stuff?”

You can download the Elevated Math app free from the iTunes Store with two complimentary lessons and one complimentary career video.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Catch of the Day - 19Pencils - 7/13/2011

At 19Pencils, teachers can discover, manage, and share learning content.

19Pencils was created by a team of Silicon Valley technology veterans with more than 15 years experience who want to provide tools for teachers.

What you can do at 19Pencils:

• Search millions of quizzes or create your own
• Discover and share safe, educational websites
• Save, reuse, and share your favorite content
• Create a unique website for your class

Watch the video "What is 19Pencils?"

If you sign up for 19Pencils, you will be asked for your location and school. If your school isn't listed, select "Other" to still have complete access to the features and content and the ability to align content with a specific grade level.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Catch of the Day - openSIS - 7/12/2011

openSIS is a commercial grade, secure, scalable, and intuitive open source student information system (SIS) used by 5000 schools worldwide.

The core features of openSIS:

• Tracking of numerous student demographics in a permanent record and across enrollments
• Easy addition of contact information for parents, relatives, and authorized individuals
• A scheduler that allows you to mass schedule students as well as input individual student requests
• The grade book allows teachers to enter homework assignments, tests, and any other activity using weighted scales if desired
• Numerous standard reports and the tools to design custom reports
• Create report cards and calculate GPA’s and class rankings, generate transcripts
• Track attendance and health records
• A parent portal that allows your parents to see their childrens' grades, attendance, discipline, and more
• The ability to control user security at the local level, customize the included roles and/or create your own

The School Edition of openSIS is suitable for small and medium-size schools seeking a student information system solution. Offered as a secure hosted solution in the “cloud”, it is a tested, commercial grade product with many extra features.

For larger schools and districts needing customization and integration with existing applications, there is the openSISDistrict Edition. This version is offered either as a hosted “cloud” solution or as an on-site school-server. This commercial grade edition includes state reporting.

No upfront license fees are charged to use openSIS. Low support and maintenance fees give you access to complete help desk support at lower rates  than most commercial offerings. However, no maintenance and support fees are required to use openSIS.

openSIS data migration packages provide a seamless way to transition to openSIS from your existing SIS.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Catch of the Day - Minigroup - 7/11/2011

Calgary-based Minigroup is a completely private blogging platform that lets you share "the right stuff with the right people." Members can share messages, links, images, audio, video, documents, and more.

Minigroup is not visible to search engines. And, since every group is hidden from people who aren’t members, there will be no intrusions from strangers, friends-of-friends, and so on.

Use multiple custom Minigroup identities to share appropriate personal information with various groups from a single account. Show different sides of yourself to different groups.

Take a video tour of Minigroup

Minigroup is currently in public beta. Consequently, there may be occasional bugs. The developers promise a long list of features to come.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0