Featured 6-18-2014: CollegeEd

 

CollegeEd is the free, standards-based* college planning and career exploration program for middle and high school students from the  College Board.

 

 

Drawing on more than a century of experience by the College Board in guiding students on the way to college, the CollegeEd program provides lessons and activities meant to help students evolve the skills needed to meet their goals. In collaboration with Roadtrip Nation, CollegeEd gives students the chance to "explore their aspirations and set long-term goals to get them on the path to higher education and a successful career."

 

Lessons written by experienced counselors and AP teachers are organized around three consistent themes: "Who Am I?", "Where Am I Going?" and "How Do I Get There?" 

 

 

CollegeEd offers flexible options for teaching, implementation, and family involvement. The program consists of three levels, each with its own student workbook and accompanying educator guide:

• Grades 7-8 gets students thinking about the path to college.
• Grades 9-10 has engaging activities to help students discover their interests and begin planning for college.
• Grades 11-12 guides students through the college search and application processes.

 

CollegeEd materials can be used online and are also provided as downloadable, printable PDFs. Materials are also available in Spanish.

 

* The CollegeEd program is based on standards developed by the College Board, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and ASCA.

 

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Featured: 2-17-2014 myHistro

Create stories that are displayed on maps and geo-located interactive timelines with myHistro.

 

You can watch and read thousands of user-created timelines at myHistro or create your own dynamic timeline mashup with text, video, and images.

 

 

Combine maps and timelines seamlessly into unique presentations, convert any public timeline into a pdf file, or export it into Google Earth format (kml) for offline storage. Completed timelines can be embedded into blogs and websites for sharing.   

 

Features of myHistro:

• Archive with several hundred historical timelines to choose from.
• Collaboration tools, ideal for class activities.
• Secure content management.

Three privacy levels to choose from let you decide what others will see. You can keep your timeline private, make it public, or keep it between you and those you choose.

 

  

 View a slide presentation: myHistro Basic Guidelines For Teachers

 

There is an official free myHistro application for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch with simplified functionality. In this version you can create new accounts, add new stories, add new events, and manage existing stories and events.

 

Currently myHistro supports YouTube videos and pictures in JPEG and PNG formats. It does not require Flash.

 

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Featured: 1-23-2014 News-O-Matic

News-O-Matic from Press4Kids* offers children aged 7 to 11 their first daily newspaper. News-O-Matic produces five news stories each day, covering world news, science, sports, and more.

 

News-O-Matic readers also have access to history timelines, news games, interactive maps, and many other features. Readers also have the opportunity to rate the articles, ask questions, and submit drawings that relate to the news.

 

Each News-O-Matic article is aligned to the 3rd- and 4th-grade levels of the CCSS for English Language Arts and Mathematics. The articles provide students with necessary and exciting nonfiction content. The free daily Teacher Guide will indicate the precise correlations. Recall, comprehension, and discussion questions included within the guide will provide further practice. 

 

 

For schools without tablet technology, News-O-Matic will be accessible via a free daily School Version emailed in PDF format.  

 

Watch a video about News-O-Matic

News-O-Matic helps develop a daily reading routine while encouraging readers to become knowledgeable, global citizens.

 

*Incorporated in 2012, Press4Kids is a publisher of daily news applications for young readers built by journalists, educators, and entrepreneurs. Their goal is to inform children about current news and world events as well as to encourage them to read on a daily basis. All Press4Kids publications are 100% ad-free. 

 

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Extra: 12-28-2013 Website to PDF

Use the Website to PDF online tool to save web pages as PDFs for storing, sharing, printing, and otherwise using web content. Just copy and paste the URL of the page you want to save and click the CONVERT button.

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Special: 12-7-2013 Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

The inspirational story of one of the great leaders of our time, Nelson Mandela, is told in the film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.

The film provides educators with an important opportunity to help their students understand the story of this influential man. The classroom lessons that accompany the film examine this period in South African history, as well as providing an opportunity to explore current issues for Africa, America, and much of the world.

Some of the key themes explored include:

• The influence of cultural heritage
• The impact of apartheid and its relationship to racial segregation in America
• The paradox of the “liberator” versus the “traitor”
• The difficulty associated with change and transition
• The role of international media coverage and sanctions in the fall of apartheid
• Leadership and the role of the individual to make change

The main lessons are designed to be conducted in one to three class periods. The lessons contain clips from the film, as well as other exclusive primary sources, such as original audio clips, photographs, and documents. In addition, the lesson package also contains several shorter lessons that reflect the themes of the main lessons. There is also a film viewer’s guide of discussion questions for groups only viewing the film.

 Watch the official trailer

All Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom lessons align to current standard assessment models, including those of the National Council for the Social Studies standards and incorporate many Common Core skill areas, such as reading informational text, writing with purpose, speaking and listening.

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Featured: 11-26-2013 ThinkWave Educator

ThinkWave Educator is a free online grade book with a flexible grading engine, powerful reporting, and easy access for students and parents.

 

Versatile grading options let teachers use an all-points grading system or a flexible grading system that can include points, letter grades, check, check plus, and more. You can also create your own assignment types and use weighting.

 

ThinkWave Educator generates reports as professionally-formatted, ready-to-print PDF documents. Reports can be designed with an image, header, and multiple other customization options. 

 

Students can upload their homework files with a simple upload function. Files are immediately available in the grade book, organized by assignment and date. 

 

An intutive, easy-to-use interface can be learned quickly. ThinkWave Educator allows you to keep multiple classes in a single grade book making it easy to access different classes.

 

 

ThinkWave Educator is completely web based, no software to install. Teachers can access data from anywhere with an Internet connection using any modern web browser.

 

 Watch a video overview of ThinkWave Educator

 

ThinkWave Educator is available in a free, ad-supported version, or as a premium version for $49.95 (USD) annually per teacher. 

 

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Featured: 8-6-2013 Breaking News English

Breaking News English provides free, ready-to-print ESL/EFL lesson plans for teaching current events.

Breaking News English presents simple news, in seven levels from elementary to advanced, that is easier for English learners to understand.

Breaking News English delivers a new lesson every two days. All lessons are based on stories currently in the news. Lessons have up to 26 pages of printable activities and handouts available as downloadable PDFs. There are 30 or more online quizzes for each lesson.

 

 See a Breaking News English video tutorial example from Shelly Terrell

Listening files in mp3 format in British and North American English can be downloaded or subscribed to via a podcast. Breaking News English includes graded listenings with each lesson.

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Featured: 7-24-2013 Paperkit

With Paperkit you can easily generate the exact type of graph/grid paper that you need, on the spot for free.

The Paperkit toolbar allows you to fully customize the settings for your specific needs. You have control over:

• Spacing between grid lines.
• Margin size.
• Stroke color and width.
• Paper size.

There are five paper formats available: letter, legal, tabloid, A4, and A3. You can choose either inches or millimeters. A live preview will help you visualize your design.

Once you have completed the design of your paper, the paper will open in a new browser window and you can print the graph paper immediately or save it as a PDF.

Paperkit has the tools to make custom grid paper, dotted paper, and lined paper that you can print and use right away or save for later.

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Featured: 5-29-2013 Mobile PDF Apps [Tools]

 

Investintech.com offers a number of tools for working with PDF documents including three free apps for iOS and Android mobile phones and tablets.

Able2Extract Mobile is a free, lightweight, easy-to-use app for creating and converting PDF documents. Users can create PDF documents from MS Office documents and convert PDFs to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more.

Able2Doc Mobile converts PDFs to Word documents. This uncomplicated app promises to deliver high quality conversions on the go from your smartphone or tablet.

Sonic PDF Creator Mobile easily converts MS Office documents attached to emails or stored on your device to PDFs, right on your Android or iOS device.

Investintech.com also offers a full range of desktop tools for managing PDF documents.

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Extra: Generated Paper Features Over 40 Specialty Paper Templates

Print over 40 types of specialty papers at Generated Paper. Find PDF templates for ruled paper, graph paper, business cards, music sheets, and more, all completely free.

 

All the templates at Generated Paper are high quality blackline PDFs designed to print with less ink. You can use them as is, modify them to suit your needs, and share them.

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Created with Blogsy

Featured: 4-15-2013 Presefy [Presenting]

Presefy is a just-out-of-beta web service which allows you to store and control your presentations anywhere you are. All your presentations are available and can be controlled via an Internet connection. 

You can broadcast and control your presentation using any web-capable mobile device. Presefy lets you use a smartphone or a tablet to stay in charge of the presentation, jump to any slide with ease, and more. Your audience can follow your presentation in their own browser, or a computer connected to a projector can serve to broadcast the presentation.

Store and share presentations securely in the Presefy cloud.  Presentations are ready to be presented anytime, anywhere. The basic plan limits you to having two presentations stored at any one time.

At the moment Presefy supports PPT, PPTx, and PDF. Presefy is designed with HTML5 so it is compatible with all platforms without any setup. There is nothing to download or install.

 Watch the video: Presefy - Go Mobile with your Presentations

The basic version of Presefy is free.  A Pro plan that will allow the storage of up to 20 presentations and other additional features is under development. 

Recently I posted here about a similar service, ElectricSlide, which is iOS app-based, whereas Presefy is browser-based and platform independent.

Note: I my trials of Presefy, I found that slides are presented in their entirety without support for builds and transitions. Also, there seemed to be an issue with images being cropped.

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Things I Like: Google Books Downloader

Earlier today, I discovered a handy little app, Google Book Downloader.

Google Books Downloader is a very barebones tool. Enter the URL or ID of a Google Book and it will create and download a PDF of that book, including books that have full or limited previews. Google Book Downloader can only download the portion you can read on Google Books.

Download a book to Dropbox, Skydrive, Google Drive, or another cloud storage service and your book will be available on any device capable of viewing a PDF.

You can download Google Books Downloaderfree from CNET's Download.com.

Note: Google Book Downloader is not connected in any way with with Google.

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Featured: 3/14/2013 March Madness Math [Topical]

The March Madness website provides classroom lessons, resources, and tools that have been developed around the NCAA men's basketball tournament.



The March Madness website offers many ways to use the NCAA basketball tournament to inspire learning in your classroom.

Some of the March Madness activities:

• In Figure the Winner students practice calculating percentage, average, mean, median, and mode.
• Exploring Binary uses the NCAA brackets to explore binary trees in sports and math.
• A March Madness webquest.
• Who’s Number 1? is an activity in which students investigate the mathematics of ranking.
• Check out the cities and schools that are part of the tournament using Google Earth.

March Madness Reading engages students in drawing conclusions from large amounts of information, using evidence to support opinions, and reading tables, graphs and charts.

The March Madness website also provides links to a number of related resources as well as several downloadable PDF files.

Note: As far as I can see, this site has no official connection with the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

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Extra: 2/2/2013 PDFconv [Tools]

PDFconv instantly converts text documents, presentations, spreadsheets and images to PDF for free. No need to install anything on your computer.

1. Upload your files.
2. Set parameters and start the conversion process.
3. Download the result.

Also, by providing the URL of a digital document, you can generate a PDF of that document. Batch conversion is supported and you can select a maximum of 5 files together that total up to a size less than 25 MB.

PDFconv Supports a huge number of file formats including MS Office formats, Open Document, rich text, HTML, XML, jpg, png, and txt.

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Featured: 1/17/2013 bContext/A.nnotate [Tools]

Today's post features two tools that can be used to annotate and share a variety of documents, one is an iPad app, the other is a web tool.



Use bContext to transform static files into engaging content that you can present on your iPad.

bContext users can add hand written notations and narrative to static documents, such as PDF, PPT, or images, without any costly software, equipment, or complex editing skills.



Use bContext to record iPad presentation sessions that express intricate ideas using interesting and attractive multimedia content.

The links to your bContext presentations can be shared for free on social networks. With a pro subscription, share them by email or with private groups. Anyone can view the recorded sessions using their browser, on any computer or mobile device.

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A.nnotate is a web tool that lets you attach private or shared notes to documents and images using a web browser.

There are many applications for A.nnotate, including reviewing draft documents, compiling corrections for future revisions, selecting passages for future reference, and general document management.

You can annotate documents, images, and snapshots of webpages. Documents can be uploaded or emailed as attachments. Accepted document types include PDF, Microsoft Office, and OpenOffice formats.



There are free accounts for individual users that let you upload about 30 new pages a month. You can buy additional pay-as-you-go A.nnotate credits at any time or sign up for a subscription starting at $5.95(USD) per user per month.

A.nnotate runs entirely within your browser so there is nothing to install. The current version supports Firefox, Internet Explorer 6+, Safari, or Chrome. It does not require any plugins such as Adobe Reader or Flash.

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