Welcome!

Welcome to the William Annin Middle School Technology Tips Blog. I decided to set this up as a forum to share ideas related to technology, particularly as they pertain to the needs of the staff and students at William Annin Middle School. Posts will come from responses to inquiries around the building as well as ideas that I believe you can use to enhance your use of technology. Feel free to comment on any of the posts or email me with questions / suggestions. I hope you find my entries helpful.

Mr. Isaacs

Google Wave

Hi Everyone. I have been enjoying playing with Google Wave (http://wave.google.com). Right now, google wave is in a limited preview mode, but more and more invitations are being sent, meaning more and more participants are getting involved. I recently created a public wave that I am managing on the topic of Middle / High School Game Design and Development. My intent is to collaborate with other professionals regarding teaching game design and introductory computer programming concepts.

If you are interested in participating in the wave, please let me know and I will be happy to add you. If you already have a google wave account, please provide me with your google wave email address. If you do not have a wave account yet, I might be able to help you to get involved. I have a few invitations available and am especially interested in giving them to other educators (especially if you are interested in game design and development). If you would like an invite, please provide me with your email address.

Interested in finding out more about google wave?

ToonDoo

ToonDoo - The Cartoon Strip Creator!

Thanks to one of my new google wave contacts for pointing me to ToonDoo. ToonDoo is a very user friendly web based application that allows you to create cartoon strips and even cartoon books. The site is designed to encourage participants to create new strips, share their work, and discuss cartooning. What a great way to get students involved in the writing / digital story telling process. The Toon Creator is full of backgrounds, character, props, and other useful tools to aid in creating your masterpieces. I would say that the site is certainly appropriate and easy enough to use for elementary students but is entirely appropriate for older students as well. What a find :)

ToonDoo is free to use, but also offers a nice package for schools in order to create a ToonDoo Space exclusively for your school. Naturally, this helps in terms of creating a safe space for your students. Rates are reasonable. For example, to create a ToonDoo space for 12 months for 100 students would cost $206. Seems reasonable for a grade level project.

Web 2.0 Pick of the Day: 30 Boxes

Thanks, once again to the facilitators of the Web 2.0 course I am taking for today's Web 2.0 Pick of the Day. Today, I feature 30 boxes, an online interactive calendar that can be shared among a number of participants.

The 30 boxes online calendar tool is simple, yet has enough features to make it worthwhile. Participants can collaborate on adding to the events on the calendar. Events can even be generated automatically from RSS feeds. You can use the drag and drop functionality to move events around the calendar. I could see great value in this tool as a simple online family calendar, a teacher's calendar of due dates, or a calendar for after school groups. I know for our school musical, there are dates for different groups to rehearse, days for the crew to meet, and of course all of the full cast rehearsals and shows.

While playing around, I found at least two added features that I really liked. One is the built in task list. You never can have enough 'Things to do' lists floating around. And finally, and maybe the best feature...When you register, you enter your zipcode. 30Boxes automatically includes and updates the 5 day forecast.

I am not sure if it includes all of the functionality of something like the Google Calendar, which my family uses. We especially like the Google Calendar as it allows you to color code and superimpose a number of calendars on the master calendar. We can see our whole family's ridiculously busy schedule all in one place :)

Try them both out. I am interested in hearing your comments.

Web 2.0 pick of the day: Gliffy

Currently, I am taking a Web 2.0 Professional Development course through the Virtual High School Consortium (http://www.govhs.org/). The course has been great and over the next 20 days we will be introduced to 20 new web 2.0 applications. I figured I should pass them along to you so that you can enjoy playing with some of the MANY interactive and collaborative resources available online.

Above: Screenshot from Gliffy

The 'pick of the day' for today is Gliffy, a tool intended for creating diagrams online. There are a variety of types of diagrams that you can design using gliffy including:

• Floorplans


• Flow Charts


• User Interfaces

One of the best features of Gliffy is that it allows for collaboration among users. I can see great value in using this for teams planning for group projects or students for pre-writing, etc. Many possibilities!

Please visit http://www.gliffy.com/ now to try it out! I'd love to hear your comments.

Google Wave

WOW! I'd like to thank my wife for sharing this video with me earlier today. Check out the video demonstrating Google Wave. This may be the next HUGE step in online collaboration, email, and Social Networking. Did I say WOW?

21st Century Skills Webinar

21^st Century Skills:
What Do They Look Like?


Tech&Learning Webinar


Date: Thursday October 8th
Time: 10 a.m. West Coast/ 1 p.m. East Coast
Duration: 60 minutes
Sponsors: Atomic Learning

Wondering exactly what 21^st Century Skills are all about? Trying to determine what steps to take to begin bringing 21^st Century Skills into classroom projects? Join this presentation and discussion around 21^st Century Skills concepts, examples, and real world advice on how to bring them into the classroom.

Presenter:

Brad Flickinger, Education Futurist and Educator

Although being born and raised in Canada, Brad is proud of what he calls his "Perfect American Accent." After high school Brad studied journalism at the University of Western Australia, returned home to Canada, married his high school sweetheart and started his own weekly newspaper. At the age of 24 he won the Young Entrepreneur of Canada for the work he had done in getting newspapers into the digital age. A few years later he moved his young family to a beach town in Costa Rica for a few years to work as a schoolteacher at a private elementary school before returning to the United States. By this time, the Internet was booming and Brad spent the next few years managing a technology and design company near Seattle before returning to teaching for the past seven years. Recently Brad has combined is passions for teaching and technology by working a consultant and speaker on new and emerging educational technologies. Click here to register for this FREE webinar.