Just received this email from Derek Baird from the Yahoo! Teachers team and I wanted to pass it along to my readers.
Hello Everyone!
We’ve been working hard integrating all your great “sugs” (and fixing bugs) from our summer workshops and getting Yahoo! For Teachers Beta ready to launch.
We are looking for more teachers to join our beta program. If you know an educator who is interested in joining us, have them shoot an email to: yteachersinvite@yahoo.com Feel free to share this information in a newsletter or in a blog post.
If you have any questions, or need help with Yahoo! For Teachers, please don’t hesitate to let us know!
Thanks!
Derek
If you have any questions about the program feel free to comment!
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…
It will be interesting to start seeing del.icio.us results along with Yahoo searches. It is an intriguing blend of search bot and human powered input!
Delicious Integrated Into Yahoo Search Results: “I just got word that Yahoo is testing the integration of Delicious user generated bookmarks into Yahoo search results pages (Yahoo acquired Delicious in late 2005). Some users will see the Delicious icon as part of their normal search results, which tells them how many people have bookmarked those pages, as well as the tags people have supplied for those pages.” (Via Techcrunch.)
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!)
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.
Early in July I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to New York City to take part in a Yahoo! for Teachers workshop where they introduced us to the soon to be released Yahoo! for Teachers website. Collected with me were educators from throughout the tri-state area looking to learn more about the new service Yahoo! is creating. I must say that I was extremely impressed with the Yahoo! teachers site. As mentioned, on the launch announcement website, this service is a “peer network designed by and for teachers.” The ability to develop lessons and units using their well thought out tools is simply fantastic. I look forward to sharing what I can with my fellow teachers this fall and hopefully with Yahoo’s permission incorporate them into the testing phase. I will add more insight later on about the tools (Project building, “Gobbler”, Peer-State/Grade Level sharing), and since everything is still in development and private testing I will leave you to be filled with suspense! Here is an informational video about Yahoo! for Teachers!
