Enter D'Apps I'm using this site to gain competence with technologies that I intend to utilize in the classroom. My college is doing a pretty good job teaching traditional methods, however, I only have one instructional media class and I believe that 21st century students should learn with 21st century technology. When I begin my teaching career, I want to integrate technology starting on the first day, and the only way I'll be able to do that is to start practicing now. I'll use blogs in the classroom for communicating with parents and daily roving reporting by students. Students will also have the option to write on their own blog. Over the next couple of years I'll model how I'll use use blogging in the classroom on this site. Please check out my other sites concerning Handhelds and Podcasting.


Sunday, April 29, 2007

 

Disposable E-mail

Disposable e-mail helps you eliminate spam by giving sites that require registration a pseudo-fake email address.

There are a couple of basic different strategies for disposable e-mail,

1. the disposable e-mail account lasts for specific amount of time and you can use to complete a registration process or correspond with the site.
2. the disposable e-mail accounts forwards correspondence to your real email, and if spam starts getting forwarded you delete the disposable one (and you know who sells to spammers).

Many of them allow you to pick the address you provide, so you can do something like dalePalmGearRegistration@"Whatever the disposable email site uses"
Here is a pretty good list of sites that provide disposable e-mail accounts

Information like this will certainly be part of any Internet-safety unit I teach to students.

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Monday, April 23, 2007

 

Pivot and Linerider

I've been really enjoying these two fun, free animation programs

Similar to the freeware PalmOS application Boneman, Pivot is a downloaded program that allows the user to manipulate the bend points of a human stick figure. From what I've seen, you can also import background images.

Linerider is a web-based application. In Linerider the user creates a course that a character on a sled follows. You can make extremely dynamic course where the character does all sorts of flips and loops.

I really see all sorts of potential using these tools throughout a curriculum in the form of animated chains (food and life cycle), time-lines and sequences. Perhaps animate a Haiku or take a ride through some math facts.......

Here is a Pivot sample from a group of 3rd graders



and here is a very involved Linerider clip entitled "Jagged Peak Adventure"



There are quite a few tutorials on YouTube for creating really involved courses on YouTube. Just do a search for Linerider.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

 

my favorite free, easy-to-use web2.0 tools

There are some truely amazing, free web2.0 tools out there that I can use as soon as I start teaching (even if I'm subbing). All I'll need is an internet connection......

In addition to PBwiki and Google Docs and Spreadsheets (I know other w2 office tools are better but everyone's familiar with google) I really like:

bubbl.us which is an excellent mindmapping tool

and

myPodcast which offers space for your audio file and a blogger style webpage template in a couple of clicks of the mouse (Sweet for on the fly).

Here's an example of a mindmap I did with bubbl.us


Sunday, April 15, 2007

 

The Official Palm Blog

I've just added The Official Palm Blog to my RSS feeds. Paul Loeffler from Palm says the new blog will have a couple of posts every week, and it accepts comments. The first two posts combined have 120 comments and many are of the "very-grumpy-but-polite-customer" variety.

Monday, April 09, 2007

 

New Application

An application I created over the weekend called SRC (Strategies for Reading Comprehension) can be downloaded from my download page. An instructional video has been created and is posted to TeacherTube, so I'll have that up and running shortly.

This application creates Templates for the KWL, KWL Plus, SQ3R, and 5W's on Palm OS-5 applications for students.

If anybody has any additional strategies they would like to see included, let me know in the comments section.

Friday, April 06, 2007

 

all web2.0 sites are cool

I just found these.

MindMeister is a collaborative online mind mapping tool that allows simultaneous and collaborative editing.

tteach School 2.0.

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