Featured 3-27-2014: AirPano

Created by a team of Russian photo enthusiasts, AirPano is a not-for-profit project focused on high-resolution spherical panoramas shot from a bird’s eye view.

 

AirPano claims to be the largest resource in the world (by geographical coverage, number of aerial photographs, and artistic and technical quality of the images) featuring high-resolution aerial 360° panoramic photographs.

 

During next two years, AirPano plans to create aerial photo panoramas and virtual tours of more of the most significant places in the world. They currently have nearly 2000 aerial panoramas showing over 200 famous locations, including the North Pole, Antarctica, the Mariana Trench, and even the view of the Earth from the stratosphere. New virtual tours are published every week.

 

 

A spherical panorama can give you and your students a sense of being on location, where you can turn completely around and have a closer look at every detail. This can be especially effective when viewed on a large screen such as an interactive whiteboard. You can zoom in closer and examine objects of interest, or "fly" to a new location by simply moving your hand.

 

AirPano offers most panoramas in several different resolutions to accommodate the viewer’s internet connection speed and computer hardware. There are even panoramas suitable for mobile devices.

 

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

Featured: 1/24/2013 NANOYOU [Science]

NANOYOU is a project funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Program that aims to increase young people’s basic understanding of nanotechnologies (NT) and to engage in the dialogue about its ethical, legal, and social aspects.



Nanotechnologies are the design, characterization, production, and application of structures, devices, and systems by controlling shape and size at the scale of individual molecules, nanometer scale.  

Through a variety of NANOYOU resources such as videos, presentations, posters, picture galleries, and art projects related to nanoscience and NT, you’ll be able to learn more about nanoscience and nanotechnologies. As well as being able to use the tools developed by NANOYOU, you will also find some nanotechnologies resources available from other websites.

From the web portal students can actively participate in virtual dialogues, experiments and games. In the virtual Nano Lab, users will be able to become a researcher and do experiments online as well as finding resources for hands-on activities. Games such as the nano-memory game and the jigsaw puzzle can enable students to see how solutions to human needs have changed over time, and which solutions NT offer us for the future.



NANOYOU plans to have a very strong school program on nanotechnologies which will be completely adapted to the educational needs of students aged 11-18. The NANOYOU school program focuses on information and communication technology, energy and environment, and medicine.

NANOYOU offers Teacher Training kits for different age groups, as well as for science centers. The modules are available to all teachers interested in organizing educational activities within their schools, and includes background materials, literature, and specific case studies.

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

Featured: 11/29/2012 Lincoln Archives Digital Project [History]

The Lincoln Archives Digital Project is providing access to the fragile historic paper records of the administration of President Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincoln Archives Digital Project is the first project to scan the entire contents of a president's administration. When complete, the approximately 14 million federal records housed within the National Archives, including all documents, maps, and photographs from the Civil War era, will be available online. The period of time covered by the project is March 4, 1861, through April 15, 1865.

The Lincoln Archives Digital Project is supplemented by related maps, photographs, newspaper articles, essays, and video podcasts to provide a broader picture of this period in American history.

The Lincoln Archives Digital Project  also includes several documents, signed by Abraham Lincoln, that have never before been cataloged.

The Lincoln Archives Digital Project is a private enterprise.  The project receives no federal funding and is supported by memberships.

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

COD - 8/2/2012 - Three Ring [iOS, Android]

Three Ring is a free tool for digitizing student work, allowing you to create a stream of student work that can be sorted, searched, and organized, enabling you to engage in authentic assessment.

Digital portfolios of student work can be quickly and easily created in Three Ring. Simply capture an image of the student's work with your smartphone, and the Three Ring app will sort the work by student, tag its content, and upload it to an online interface accessible to teachers, students, and parents.

Three Ring provides a good way to get parents and colleagues involved in the analysis of student progress by showing them specific evidence.

The free, simple, user-friendly Three Ring smartphone app works for any Android or iOS device. You can also upload student work directly from your computer to the Three Ring website.

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

Catch of The Day - Showbeyond - 10/4/2011

Showbeyond is a multimedia slidecast creator, online publishing platform, and story sharing community.

A slidecast is a multimedia format that can be used for online story telling and online presentations. A slidecast combines and synchronizes a slideshow with a podcast. Showbeyond lets you easily mix your images with sound and text to create multimedia stories, then share your stories with others or post them to blogs or social networking sites.

Showbeyond features include:

• Compile your stories in real time with simple, yet powerful tools.
• Upload images from your computer or on-line sources such as Flickr, Picasa, or any image URL.
• Automatically arranges your image to the proper position in a slide.
• Each slide can have a text description.
• Automatically sets up the interval between slides based on content.
• Public and private sharing.
• Community oriented, collect, discuss, and share.

The Showbeyond system allows one soundtrack for narration of each individual slide, and another for background sound. Showbeyond currently accepts only jpg and jpeg image formats with a maximum file size of 8MB. You can use up to 24 images.

View an example of a Showbeyond slidecast

Public content is accessible to anyone who visits Showbeyond. By default, private content can be viewed only by the owner. However, if you share the link to your private content, anyone who clicks on the link will be able to see that content.

Note: Showbeyond supports Internet Explorer 6.0+, Firefox 1.5+, Safari 3.03+ and Opera 9+, with cookies, JavaScript, Flash Player, and Java enabled.

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

Catch of the Day - Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History - 5/4/2011

The website of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is a portal to American history with numerous resources designed specifically for K-12 teachers and students.

Since1994, the nonprofit Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has supported the exploration and enjoyment of the history of America through a variety of programs and resources for students, teachers, and others.

Working closely with schools, the Gilder Lehrman Institute:

• organizes summer seminars and professional development programs for teachers
• produces both print and digital publications
• hosts lectures by eminent historians and traveling exhibitions
• administers a History Teacher of the Year Award in each state
• offers national book prizes and fellowships for scholars

The Gilder Lehrman Institute's Affiliate School Program provides access to resources and tools designed to enhance teaching and learning American history. These include an Affiliate School web portal with lesson plans, teachable documents, videos, podcasts, toolkits, and more. Free and discounted books, multimedia kits, and traveling exhibitions are offered as well.

Users can search a database of over 60,000 historic documents detailing the political and social history of the United States. The Collection includes manuscript letters, diaries, maps, photographs, and printed books and pamphlets from as far back as 1493.

Go to an earlier post about History Now, a quarterly journal for American history teachers published online by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

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

Catch of the Day - PlanetFOSS - 4/25/2011

 

The PlanetFOSS website gives students the opportunity to take and share science-themed photos and see the photos submitted by other kids.

Students identify examples of science concepts in their local environment and capture them in digital pictures. They then upload their images to the PlanetFOSS website for sharing. Students can view science pictures taken by other students anywhere.

Resources for teachers using PlanetFOSS:

• Tutorial video
• Student worksheets
• Quickstart guide
• Parent letter

Images uploaded to the PlanetFOSS website are reviewed by a FOSS specialist and are not be accepted if they contain any human face or personal information.

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

 

Catch of the Day - Speaking Image - 4/11/2011

Speaking Image is a web tool for creating interactive images and sharing them with others.

Speaking Image is a web application which allows users to upload high-resolution images, add information to specific areas of the images, and use standard social network tools to interact with other users.

You can also create groups, add wikis, and control and manage collaborative work.

Find a list of video tutorials showing the basics on the Speaking Image help page and also on their YouTube Channel.

Things you can do with Speaking Image:

• Insert markers
• Draw lines and polygons
• Create wiki articles
• Share and collaborate

You need a modern browser with JavaScript support to use Speaking Image.

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

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 - CriticalPast - 8/9/2010

At CriticalPast, you can freely view nearly 60,000 historic videos and 7 million photos in one of the Web's largest collections of royalty-free archival stock footage.

CriticalPast was created by a team of archival research, film, and Internet professionals, working together to build one of the largest privately held online sources of archival footage in the world.

The CriticalPast collection is compiled largely from US government sources. The media in the collection can be licensed without the clearance issues often experienced when using many stock footage sources.

Full-resolution video can be downloaded on demand in most formats in minutes. Still photos are available for download, or you may have prints delivered directly to you. The cost to download a JPEG still image is $2.97(US). Video clips in .m4v or .wmv formats can be downloaded for $3.97(US). Placing an order for videos or photos is simple and straight-forward.

You can browse the CriticalPast collection by decade and year, or it is easily searchable by keyword with advanced search features available.

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

Shmoop Now Has Photo Slideshows

 

Shmoop announced today that they now have Photo Slideshows in literature, US history, and civics.

To find these photo slideshows, look for the new “Photos” tab in US History, Civics, and in many of their Literature Learning Guides.

Further, you can grab a mini Slideshow and post it on your blog or website just as you might embed a YouTube video.

Read an earlier post about Shmoop.

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

 

Catch of the Day - Yodio - 22 Jan 10

Yodio, a rich-media tool, is today's tasty catch


Yodio is a place for anyone to create and share their own personal broadcast messages. Use Yodio to add narration to photos or presentations, then share these narrated photo stories with others.

Yodio Home Page

Upload photos to Yodio, call from your phone to record the narrative, then share via email, link, or embed your Yodio story in web sites, blogs, etc.

Yodio Editor

Yodio has created a new form of rich media where you can synchronize voice commentaries with digital photos to create easily shared, voice-narrated, photo presentations. Yodio combines sight and sound into a unique form of broadcasting.

Sample Yodio I Made


Using Yodio, you can call on a phone to record or upload an existing recording. Upload one or more photos to your Yodio account. In your account you can create your own rich-media broadcast by simply dragging-and-dropping the audio tracks and the photos. Then publish it with helpful information and tags, and share it via e-mail, links, embedded player, etc.

Yodio Sharing

Yodio offers an integrated, one-stop digital publishing service where anyone can go to record, produce, and share audio recordings and personal broadcasts.

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

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Catch of the Day - Eyewitness to History - 9 Sep 09

Today's savory catch is Eyewitness to History

Eyewitness to History's tagline is "History through the eyes of those who lived it." The site offers a very large collection of eyewitness accounts of a comprehensive collection of historical events spanning ancient times to the present.

Excerpt from an 1861 account by Pony Express rider Buffalo Bill Cody

As I was leaving Horse Creek one day, a party of fifteen Indians 'jumped me' in a sand ravine about a mile west of the station. They fired at me repeatedly, but missed their mark. I was mounted on a roan California horse - the fleetest steed I had. Putting spurs and whip to him, and lying flat on his back, I kept straight on for Sweetwater Bridge - eleven miles distant - instead of trying to turn back to Horse Creek. The Indians came on in hot pursuit, but my horse soon got away from them, and ran into the station two miles ahead of them. The stock-tender had been killed there that morning, and all the stock had been driven off by the Indians, and as I was therefore unable to change horses, I continued on to Ploutz's Station - twelve miles further - thus making twenty-four miles straight run with one horse. I told the people at Ploutz's what had happened at Sweetwater Bridge, and with a fresh horse went on and finished the trip without any further adventure.

In addition to textual content, Eyewitness to History includes photographic, audio, and video content as well. For example, there is audio of a live 1945 radio broadcast describing the American assault on the beaches of Iwo Jima. Students can watch a video showing the ravages of the Dust Bowl in 1936.

Eyewitness to History home page features include:

• It Happened This Month
• Spotlight On:
• Photo of the Week
• Voices of the 20th Century
• History in Motion
• Notable Quote

A short video tour of Eyewitness to History.

Eyewitness to History is your ringside seat to history - from the Ancient World to the present. History through the eyes of those who lived it, presented by Ibis Communications, Inc. a digital publisher of educational programming.

EDge21 Freeware Festival - GIMP

Today's highlighted freeware is GIMP, a totally free alternative to Adobe Photoshop®


GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for tasks such as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring.

Windows Screenshot

GIMP has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, a high quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, and more.

Mac OS X Screenshot

GIMP is extensible. It is designed to be supplemented with plug-ins and extensions to do almost anything. The scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

Linux Screenshot

GIMP Features:

• Full suite of painting tools including Brush, Pencil, Airbrush, Clone, etc.
• powerful gradient editor and blend tool
• Virtually unlimited number of images open at one time
• Editable text layers
• Layers and channels
• Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip
• Selection tools including rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy
• Foreground extraction tool
• Advanced path tool doing bezier and polygonal selections
• Transformable paths, transformable selections
• Quickmask to paint a selection
• Load and save animations in a convenient frame-as-layer format
• Support for numerous file formats: bmp, gif, jpeg, mng, pcx, pdf, png, ps, psd, svg, tiff, tga, xpm, and many others
• Highly customizable interface
  

GIMP: Free Alternative to Photoshop, a video from Pollyticks.com



GIMP Frequently Asked Questions

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Catch of the Day - Stock.XCHNG - 30 Jul 09

Free stock photo site Stock.XCHNG is the fresh catch of the day.

Stock.XCHNG bills itself as the leading FREE stock photo site on the Internet. SXC was launched in February 2001 as an alternative to expensive stock photography. The objective was to develop a site where people could exchange their photos. Since then, the site has evolved into the massive community you see today with over 2 1/2 million registered users and about 400,000 photos online by more than 30.000 photographers.

Yesterday, it was announced that Stock.XCHNG has been incorporated into the Getty Images group of companies. This is not expected to change the day-to-day SXC user experience, but there will be more access to iStockphoto, another Getty Images company and one of the world's leading royalty-free stock multimedia destinations.


If you use Firefox as your browser, here's a handy little SXC search plugin you can add to it.

SXC is also a friendly community of photographers who offer their works to those who need them free of charge. If you have some nice photos that you'd like to share with others, you can do it by joining Stock.XCHNG.

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