“ScreenChomp is a free app for creating and sharing short tutorials or lessons on your iPad. ScreenChomp provides a whiteboard on which you can demonstrate things by drawing and talking people through your instructions. ScreenChomp records your voice as you go. When you finish your recording share it to ScreenChomp.comwhere a shortened URL will be provided for you to share with anyone you like. From ScreenChomp.com you have the option to download recordings as MPEG-4 files.

Applications for Education
If your school has purchased iPads for your classroom, ScreenChomp could be a good app to have to students use to create and share short demonstrations of their understanding of a particular topic or concept. ScreenChomp reminds me quite a bit of Show Me so you might want to do a comparison and decide which one works best for you and your students.

H/T to Silvia Tolisano at Langwitches.”

(via Free Technology for Teachers)

“Behold is a search engine that is designed to help you find the best Creative Commons licensed images for your blog, slideshow, or video project. Behold searches the catalog of more than one million Creative Commons licensed images on Flickr. What makes Behold different from just searching by using the license filter on Flickr itself is that Behold searches not just by image tag but also by the quality of the content of the images. When it works correctly if you used Behold to search for images of “buildings in New York City” you would not only be searching the tags people assigned to their images, but you would also be searching the actual content of the images.

Applications for Education
When students create multimedia projects in my classroom, I require them to use either Creative Commons or Public Domain images if they don’t create their own images. I do this to teach and reinforce the point that they cannot just grab and re-use images without regard for Copyright. Behold could help my students find quality images that meet my Creative Commons requirement.”

(via. FreeTech4Teachers)

Keeping Score – Study the Symphony:

“The San Francisco Symphony’s website Keeping Score is up for a Webby Award this year. Keeping Score is a comprehensive website full of educational materials about composers, scores, musical techniques, and symphonies.

There are two elements of Keeping Score that should be of particular interest to educators. The most immediately accessible section of Keeping Score is the interactive education elements that contain videos, images, and texts that tell the stories of composers. The interactive section also features explanations of musical techniques, the history of notable events and themes in the symphonic world, and analysis of various scores.

The second section of Keeping Score that teachers will be drawn to is the lesson plan library. In the lesson plan library teachers will find lesson plans developed to incorporate elements of the Keeping Score website. There are lesson plans appropriate for every grade level.

Applications for Education

What I like about Keeping Score is that while the materials are obviously appropriate for music classes, there are also materials that could be used in a social studies classroom. The stories of composers and the history section provide teachers with opportunities to talk about what was going on in the world when the composers were creating their scores and how that may have affected what the composers created.”

(Via FreeTech4Teachers.com.)

5 Resources for Learning About Volcanoes:

“The eruption of the volcano in Iceland may present teachers with an opportunity to combine lessons in science and current events. The list below contains five resources for learning about volcanoes in general. If you’re looking for links specifically about the volcano in Iceland, Larry Ferlazzo has a good list going.

Volcano Above the Clouds is a NOVA program that chronicles an ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro by a group of climbers and scientists. In addition to the video, Volcano Above the Clouds offers a large collection of materials and teaching guides for learning about volcanoes, glaciers, and climate change with Mount Kilimanjaro at the center of each lesson. As Mount Kilimanjaro is one of the Seven Summits of the world, NOVA provides a slideshow of the Seven Summits which puts Kilimanjaro into perspective relative to those other summits.

Forces of Nature is a feature of National Geographic’s website. There are four sections to the Forces of Nature. The sections focus on tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes, and earthquakes. There are six parts to each section. In the last part of each section students can create their own natural disaster using the knowledge they’ve gained from the previous five parts about how a natural disaster is formed. The Forces of Nature also offers photo galleries and interactive maps about tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes, and earthquakes.

The BBC has a series of interactive guides that explain how natural disasters are caused. Included in this series is a twelve part animated explanation of volcanic eruptions. The series also includes explanations of hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis.

National Geographic’s film Volcano: Nature’s Inferno follows scientists as they explain what causes volcanoes to erupt and as the scientists try to predict when volcanoes will erupt. Watch the film for free on Snag Films.

The PBS Series Savage Earth offers animations how volcanic eruptions happen. The series also contains animations that explain earthquakes and tsunamis.
”

(Via FreeTech4Teachers.com.)

I’m proud to announce that all regularly scheduled Board of Education meetings, beginning with yesterday’s special meeting, will now be available on iTunes for listening to on your computer, or iPod. Meetings will be posted by the end of the business day following the meeting.

To subscribe in iTunes click the following link:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ccsd181-board-education-podcasts/id363744270

To subscribe in a podcatcher other than iTunes use the this link:

http://livestream.d181.org/D181_Events/Podcast/rss.xml

District Technology is pleased to announce that Aviary is now available as part of Google Apps. Aviary is a web based design suite with drawing, image markup and even audio editing capabilities (though I’d stick with GarageBand for audio editing). Documents that you create are stored in your Google Docs so you can access them from anywhere, and since aviary works in a web browser you can edit them from anywhere too. Unfortunately, aviary is currently only available to staff but we are investigating student access. Note: Aviary requires flash and will not work on an iPod, iPhone or iPad

To access Aviary:

1. login to your Google account at http://webmail.d181.org/

2. Click on the more link in your top Google Apps navigation menu

3. Select Aviary from the drop down menu (It takes a minute for aviary to load after clicking the link)

4. Select the Aviary application you would like to use and start creating

NY Times – Inside the Olympic Action:

“The New York Times has good collection of videos and audio slideshows designed to take you ‘inside the action‘ of Winter Olympic events. The videos will take you down a luge run at 90mph, through a snowboard half pipe, and down the men’s downhill ski course. Along the way athletes and coaches explain intricacies of each event and how the athletes maneuver through their events.

Applications for Education

Inside the Action could be a good resource for learning about Olympic events from an ‘insider’s perspective.’ You might want to use these videos in conjunction with a Google Maps Street View tour of the Winter Olympics.”

(Via FreeTech4Teachers.com.)

NASA Lunar Simulator on iPhone and iPod Touch:

I don’t often write posts about iPhone apps or iPod Touch apps, but today I learned about one that I had to pass along. NASA recently released an iPhone app that they’re calling the Lunar Electric Rover Simulator. As I don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch myself, I haven’t been able to try it yet, but the Lunar Electric Rover Simulator looks like it could be a fun learning experience for students that have iPhones or iPod Touches. The app is free and can be found in the app store where you can see more screen shots of the app in action.

Mashable, which is where I learned about the app, has some more information that you may be interested in reading.”

(Via FreeTech4Teachers.com.)

“Yesterday, while exploring Time’s website I came across this timeline featuring the key decisions made by President Roosevelt during World War II. The World at War is an interactive timeline in which you can click on any of the key decisions listed to learn more about those decisions. The decisions interspersed amongst other key events of WWII. None of the events are terribly detailed, but the timeline does provide a nice general overview.

Applications for Education

The World at War could be a good introductory resource or review resource for US History teachers and their students. Teachers could have each student in a class select an item from the timeline to research and teach to their classmates. ”

(Via FreeTech4Teachers.)

TIME Magazine Interactive World at War Timeline