Archive for category google
Google Opens Up Its EPUB Archive
Google Applications and Google Sketchup
Tonight is my last night of class for a ten session graduate class at SUNY New Paltz which is part of the Classroom Technology Institute (CTI) summer classes. The title of the course is Google Applications for Teachers. I had a lot of fun taking this course! Here is a list of some of the different Google tools that we have explored.
and iGoogle
Quite a bit of these web-based applications I am familiar with and use. Regardless of what I use I find there is always new things to learn about these types of tools. It is interesting hearing from other teachers how they look to use these tools in their classrooms.
One tool I had a lot of fun playing and working with was Google SketchUp. This application brings me back to my technical drawing classes back in high school!
Here is a quick snapshot I took from the project I worked on for the course. I decided to try my best at drafting up a model of the school I teach in.
On the left monitor is an aerial view of my school via Google Earth. On the right screen I tried my best to draw the different portions. It is amazing how powerful a free application such as this is. Kevin Jarrett informed me via Twitter that Google SketchUp Pro is free for educators. I look forward to going through the process of obtaining one of these free teacher licenses in order to see the type of features that are present in the Pro version.
Enough about me…
My question for teachers out there is…what Google tool do you use the most personally? Also, which is your favorite to use with your students?
I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer!
Microsoft and Yahoo? An Educator’s Perspective.
Creative Commons Photo Courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/niallkennedy/43468891/
I must say that I was quite surprised this morning to read the news regarding Microsoft’s announcement of their 44 Billion dollar bid for Yahoo!. In today’s search engine race it is obvious that Google is continuing to climb in the market and clearly is the dominant player. It seems reasonable for Microsoft, who has the cash on hand, to put forth an effort to salvage their own live.com.
In many ways the easiest and most habitual action is to reach out to Google for the tools and services that they provide. Google Earth, Google Docs, and GMail are all extremely popular services utilized by educators around the country and the world. I use all of these tools but there are some aspects of live.com, specifically maps.live.com that I really like. The bird’s eye view is by far my favorite.
I have utilized the bird’s eye view in my classroom during lessons involving locations around our community. Something about the aerial view/hybrid view just does not cut it. In my opinion seeing a side angle of a building or a local landmark is preferable to pixelated views of roofs and tree tops. That opinion can certainly be debated, but based on the response of my third graders they tend to recognize the location much more once I switch over to maps.live.com.
I believe this news is a good thing for both Yahoo! and Microsoft as they seek to hold ground, and users, in the web search industry. If anything, I believe that it will create more competition (I hope) which in the end leads to better products for the end users (you and I). Better applications, that are intuitive and stable, can lead to more confidence for the reluctant teacher. Variety can be healthy. Even if in 3-5 years it is Google vs. Microsoft Yahoo! Ask Search.
Now I wonder, if this all goes through…will Yahoo! become Yahoo! Live?
Will Yahoo! drop the “!”?
Simply puzzling…
Google Earth Flight Simulator
A pretty cool feature has been found in the new version of Google Earth. With the recent announcement of the addition of Google Sky, a new flight simulator has been discovered when you press Ctrl+Alt+ A. I had the older version of Google Earth, minus Google Sky, and all I needed to do was download the updated Google Sky version from the Google Earth website.
I am glad that I did not become a pilot because I certainly can not control the simulator. I do however enjoy the ability to fly over local terrain as well as choosing which runway to start off at.
Here is a link for the controls needed to fly.
http://earth.google.com/intl/en/userguide/v4/flightsim/index.html
As far as the implementation, exploration, and integration of Google Earth as a curricular resource and learning tool, Dean Shareski has created a wonderful collection of links and resources over at his wiki. He also presents a session called “Exploring Google Earth…moving beyond the Wow Factor.” Bob Sprankle, with permission from Dean, recorded this presentation at the Building Learning Communities conference and in late July released the session via his Bit by Bit podcast. Here is the link to the MP3 file…
http://www.bobsprankle.com/bitbybit/podcast/bitbybit072907.mp3
Thank you to Dean for compiling the Google Earth resources, and thank you to Bob for your podcast!
iScrybe, Google/Yahoo Tools, and Web Filters
A few days back I received an email invite to join the beta testing for the website iScrybe. I signed up late this spring for the announcement of release. Since I had not heard back from them I moved on and started playing with Google Calendar and Yahoo Calendar. A great feature for any of the new web calendars is the ability to export the calendar file, which I quickly imported to Scrybe. The Scrybe interface is slick, the thoughtpad is a neat feature that reminds me a lot of clipmarks/del.icio.us/yahoo gobbler, and the ability to work offline is much easier, and faster, than using Google Gears.
Here is the promo video from Oct. 2006
I really enjoy viewing, editing, and scrolling through the calendar in flash. I had it running on my laptop, offline, as I was adding events for the first week back. When I got home I logged in via wireless and it automatically sync’d all my work from the day. Simply awesome! I look forward to when we start seeing this functionality in more web services.
Note of frustration. Today I went to download my “beginning of the year” files from Google Docs and the web blocker popped up. I knew I had the files backed up at Yahoo Briefcase, only to find that blocked as well. Last but not least, I found my thumb drive with my last back up. In between the decorating, labeling, and crayon sorting, I was hoping to use Google Docs to put together a collection of creative commons flickr images that I plan on using for a bulletin board near my classroom library. Luckily Zoho Writer worked for creating a web based document containing the photos. Flickr Storm + Zoho Writer + Color Printer = Success. Now I have some nice scenic, global pictures to hang on my connections board!
Related links…(I think I will keep doing this related link sharing!)
Creative Commons Video- Wanna Work Together
Creative Commons Comic Book- Check out the Flash Animation Version!
Yahoo Creative Commons Search
Flickr Postcard Viewer
Zoho
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- Question for everyone–pass the word, please comment!
Does anyone know of a place where I can host SWF files? I have a screencast I made, using Jing Project, for the Yahoo Gobbler. I have it hosted at Screencast.com on one of their free accounts, which has limited bandwidth. I am afraid that once 20 people watch it I will no longer have access to it for the month. I have already used up a quarter of the bandwidth showing it to my colleagues.
Thank you!
Bloglines Beta vs. Google Reader
I feel like such a hypocrite.
Why…because this summer I sang the praises of Bloglines to many of my fellow teachers during one of the professional development courses that I attended. With a little pressure I even helped them set up an account (This I was hesitant about because learning about RSS and Feeds could be a whole day workshop, as compare to a 20 minute set-up). The difficult thing with RSS, Bloglines, or any news aggregator, is that many people have never heard of the nouns contained within this sentence. This is perfectly fine, I too was in their shoes, and now I seek daily to find resources to educate myself on these “web tools” as well as seek ways to better utilize them for gaining knowledge and sharing information.
Back to the hypocrite portion. The day after I shared with everyone how much I loved Bloglines for organizing and collecting incoming blog and news posts, I jumped ship to experiment with Google Reader. I fell in love with Google Reader. What I liked was having the ability to “tag” posts, “share” posts, and “star” posts. When I say posts, I mean new blog and news entries. Overtime I have developed a pretty expansive list of feeds that I follow. Some have posts that I star, in order to find later, some I share (via a neat Google Reader page, and even on the side of this blog) or some I just skim right over. Needless to say, Google Reader became my feed reader of choice.
(Bloglines Mobile dominates Google Reader’s Mobile version however. This I shared with Derek Baird at the Yahoo Teachers Workshop, and with John Pederson on his blog.)
A new component to my RSS adventure has arisen. News broke a few days ago spreading the message about Bloglines Beta.
Photo from ReadWrite Web
Then I read this…
There are more features to come, as Beta Bloglines has iterated on – including new options for saving, sending and sharing posts, as well as building link blogs, managing blog rolls, etc. Also coming soon is upgraded developer APIs. One of the more exciting future features from my point of view will be Personalization Preferences, allowing users to edit a feed or settings.
So it seems as if Bloglines is innovating in order to catch up to the competition. Will it gain back my favor? Read/Write Web provides a nice piece on the history of Bloglines…
Then Bloglines got acquired by Ask.com in February 2005 and the innovation ground to a halt. Bloglines did add some search elements in March 2005 and the service showed no signs of slowing its user growth – in May 2005 Bloglines dominated the RSS Reader market. But despite that, the rot had begun to set in. In October 2005 I lamented that Bloglines was no longer innovating. Fletcher left Ask.com in June 2006 and for many more months Bloglines languished, with seemingly little interest within Ask.com to improve the service – despite the regular protests by loyal users such as myself. So many of its early adopter users moved onto something else – in my case Google Reader, which was innovating in a big way during 2006.
My experimentations are fresh since Bloglines Beta has just come out. My opinion so far is…”WOW”. Pretty lame description, for which I apologize. Only a few of the features promised are built into the current release. This comes from the Beta information page.
“Bloglines Beta is opening now with basic functionality and we will add features regularly over time until it reaches full functionality. Upcoming releases will be grouped along the following key activities.
- Mobile – Bloglines on the cell phone.
- Actions and activities involving a post – Save, Send, Share.
- Personalization Preferences – Edit a Feed or Settings.
- Creation of Disposable Email Addresses.
- Upgraded Developer APIs.
- Creation of a Link-Blog.”
Once these are integrated I should be able to provide a better review. So far I love how it pulls in a lot of the AJAX (the super cool ability to drag and drop content around a webpage) functionality that I like about Netvibes, Pageflakes, Protopage, and the Yahoo Gobbler. With news of Bloglines releasing a new Beta service, and Yahoo Mail dropping its Beta label, I have had a super tech week.
Here are some links which help describe some of the tech. things mentioned in this blog entry.
Google Reader Introduction Screencast
100 Web 2.0 Ideas for Educators
RSS in Plain English
Bloglines Beta Video
How to get started with Google Reader
Using RSS Feeds Video from Teachertube
New Tools or the 21st Century from Jakesonline.org
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