Our friends Melinda Kolk and David Wagner from Tech4Learning have a great resource on their web site providing images for educators.

This site at htp://www.pics4learning.com allows users to search from a collection of thousands of images by key word, location, caption, or photographer. Users can also Browse by topic or look at the 100 Most Popular Images.

At the bottom of each image are instructions for downloading it and well as the citation that the user can copy and insert in their document with the picture.

And, if you have images you’d like to share, there are directions on the site to help you upload your images for others to use.

Instead of creating a traditional “book report”, encourage students to create a “book trailer” using the free Photo Story application. Photo Story 3 is a free download from Microsoft that (1) enables you to create short ‘movies’  (animation added to photographs), and (2) add .mp3 files or use a built-in music generator to add music in the background. This article, “Making Book Trailers” with Photo Story 3” written by Mark Geary provides an overview and step-by-step instructions on how to create the book trailer. While the article focuses on students creating the final product, you can also use it to create a short introductions to new units of study.  

If you follow several blogs, it makes sense to use a blog aggregator such as Bloglines or Google Reader. However, if you have just one or two blogs that are of particular interest to you, consider using RSS FWD for automated notice of updated content.

You will have a difficult time finding something online that is as easy as this setup. First, enter the URL (address) of the site you want to subscribe to. Second, enter your email address. Third, choose how you want information sent to you. You have three primary choices – normal (each new message comes as a separate email), clustered (individual emails sent in one daily thread), or digest (single email message with all content sent either in the morning, afternoon, evening or night). Finally, click the Subscribe icon.

The other day, I briefly mentioned the social networking site called Classroom 2.0. There are several resources on the front page alone to keep yourself informed, but in particular, I found the Resources Wiki link to be the highlight of the site.

Because it is a social networking site that depends on input from people all over the world, there are sections that are not yet completed. However, there is still plenty of information to get started and the categories are relevant to classroom situations. Note on the left column that there are 32 categories, including links for blogging, collaborative resources (documents, idea maps, spreadsheets), Google Earth, photo sharing and social resources such as bookmarking, networking and note-taking. Each category includes information to the same basic questions:

• Uses For (category) In Education
• What (category) Does For Students
• Lesson Plans and Ideas
• Active Discussion Page
• Specific Program Links (found some new web sites here)
• (Category) Resources
• Wiki Resources (related to category)
• Podcast Resources (related to category)
• Other Website Links
• Article Links
• Books
• Videos, and
• Additional Resources

While reviewing these resources, I was introduced to the concept of Collaborative Web Trails. There may be a lot of potential with this idea in the classroom. 

Among the numerous online tools for sharing documents is mynoteIT. There are some similarities to Google Documents, but some unique characteristics that make this tool something worth considering. On the front page of the web site, several benefits are listed, including:

• ability to keep track of upcoming assignments (and for teachers, perhaps keep track of what needs to be done in preparation for a class project),

• create classes to keep notes separated,

• create “groups” in which peers can be invited for sharing the notes, and

• upload Word and OpenOffice documents, images and audio notes.

On my personal time, I’m developing a wiki that focuses on the role of technology with the strategies discussed in Robert Marzano’s book, Classroom Instruction That Works. In the process of doing some research, I found this fairly simple “technology integration teaching module” produced by Edutopia (George Lucas Education Foundation). For many who read this post, an introduction to technology integration may seem ‘elementary’, but you may know of someone who is wrestling with the value of technology integration and how to tackle the challenge of learning the skills needed to effectively integrate. The ‘module’ includes four major sections: (1) Why is technology integration important? (2) What is tech integration? (3) How to integrate technology, and (4) Tech Integration Resources. There is also a self-assessment survey to evaluate areas for growth. While not the primary focus of the teaching module, several comments (pro and con) have been posted about the importance of teaching keyboarding skills.