Tools and Links

 

Tools and Links

Tech Tutorialscommon_craft.html
CRPUSD Homepagehttp://www.crpusd.org/
Sonoma Statehttp://sonoma.edu/
CA Dept of Educationhttp://www.cde.ca.gov/
The Tech High Start Page Use the Tech High Start Page as your RSS reader and your portal into Google Docs, G-Mail, Google Chat, Google Sites, and Google Video. If you still need an account, see Mr. Smith to get set up.http://partnerpage.google.com/techhightitans.orgshapeimage_8_link_0
Website & Blog Creation Edublogs - Best blogging site for students and teachers Blogger - Blogging site with full Google integration PB Wiki - Easy, clean, powerful, and free! Wet Paint - Another great wiki site Synthasite - Classy and easy website creator http://edublogs.org/https://www.blogger.com/starthttp://pbwiki.com/http://www.wetpaint.com/http://www.synthasite.com/shapeimage_9_link_0shapeimage_9_link_1shapeimage_9_link_2shapeimage_9_link_3shapeimage_9_link_4
RSS Readers Tech High Start Page - See Mr. Smith to get started here. Google - Use their iGoogle service. Yahoo - Use their My Yahoo service. http://partnerpage.google.com/techhightitans.orghttp://partnerpage.google.com/techhightitans.orghttp://www.yahoo.com/shapeimage_10_link_0shapeimage_10_link_1shapeimage_10_link_2
Social Bookmarking Delicious - They do it best. Digg - See the power of the people. StumbleUpon - A whole new way to discover ideashttp://delicious.com/http://digg.com/http://www.stumbleupon.com/shapeimage_11_link_0shapeimage_11_link_1shapeimage_11_link_2
A Few Other Essential Tech Tools Audacity - Make a cool student project spectacular by adding a little bit of sound. Audacity is a fully featured, open source audio editing program. Turn your students loose with this one and see what they come up with. GIMP & Seashore- Photoshop for free! GIMP is an open source image editing program. Seashore is a sweet editor for Macs. GoAnimate - So much fun - so much potential. Create your own cartoons in minutes, no tech training required. GoAnimate is a web-based application where you simply drag and drop figures onto custom backgrounds, then create truly amazing actions for your figure to carry out. This is a great tool for storytelling and for adding some extra touches to a presentation. Screencast-o-matic - Make a video, complete with voice over, of what is happening on your computer screen. This is a great way to make tutorials. Animoto - This is a fun little tool that does automatic photo mashups. Just upload your photos, set them to music, and then hit a render button. A cool video with your photos comes out the other end - and the photoshow is even paced to the beat of your music! Clips under 30 seconds are free and longer movies are pretty cheap. OpenOffice & NeoOffice - Say goodbye to Microsoft! OpenOffice replaces Microsoft Office and it doesn't cost a cent. It is open source, meaning it is free and legal. NeoOffice is a similar product for Macs. This is a great thing to recommend to students as well. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/http://www.gimp.org/http://seashore.sourceforge.net/http://goanimate.com/http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/create?step=setuphttp://animoto.com/#learn-morehttp://www.openoffice.org/http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.phpshapeimage_12_link_0shapeimage_12_link_1shapeimage_12_link_2shapeimage_12_link_3shapeimage_12_link_4shapeimage_12_link_5shapeimage_12_link_6shapeimage_12_link_7
Must Have Tech Skills 1. Using File Transfer Protocol (FTP) While this might have a scary name, it is really a simple procedure that moves your files up to the web. Here is the simple explanation of how the internet works... Files are created on a computer and then these files are generally moved to another computer called a server. These servers are connected to other servers - lots of other servers - and it is through this network of servers and their files that you surf when you surf the World Wide Web. So a key part in the process is moving the files up and into the system so that others can view them. Generally, you will upload HTML files, Hyper Text Mark Up files. (Go up to your Tool Bar and click "View" and "Page Source" to see the HTML of any web page that you are viewing.) The cool thing about this idea is that so many programs can now be saved as an HTML file, including Word documents and PowerPoint presentations. For the most part, if you are making it on a computer, you can easily post it on the web. There are many great FTP programs out there for free - FileZilla and CyberDuck are excellent and there is also a great add-on for FireFox call FireFTP. Download one of these and play around with it. Once you configure the settings to talk to your server, it is a simple as dragging files from one window to another. But of course you need some server space! Get some at Yahoo for only $9.00 a month. It is well worth this small amount. 2. Embedding YouTube or TeacherTube videos, Google forms, GoAnimate cartoons, RSS feeds from other sites, and million of other things can be embedded on your website, blog or wiki. Just look for the word "embed" somewhere on the screen and it will give a chunk of HTML code (you don't need to understand a bit of the code). You copy the code and place it into your site by looking for something that says "Insert HTML" or "Insert Web Widget" or something along those lines. This essentially inserts a window in your site that shows the content of your embedded media. http://filezilla-project.org/http://cyberduck.ch/http://fireftp.mozdev.org/http://fireftp.mozdev.org/shapeimage_13_link_0shapeimage_13_link_1shapeimage_13_link_2shapeimage_13_link_3

Master the tools that are reshaping the landscape of learning and you will become a powerful leader in the emerging world.  Here are a couple tools to get you started.


Make sure you take a look at the Common Craft Tutorial Page to learn about things like RSS readers, Google Docs, social bookmarking, and much more.


Also, don’t forget to post your own favorite tech tools at the bottom of the page!