Ideas to Inspire Tammy's Technology Tips for Teachers – Helping teachers make better classrooms, one mouse-click at a time. Digital History We are very sorry, but you have reached a page that has moved or no longer exists. Please visit our home page to experience our new look and updated navigation. On August 8, 2012, Digital History switched to a new interface. We have been restructuring the database and the organization of Digital History for the past three years, and we feel this makeover will significantly improve the usability of our materials. In our new interface, materials are organized by era, so users will easily be able to view many different types of resources for a particular era such as the textbook, images, primary sources, multimedia and teacher materials. Although the links to our textbook, primary sources, and other educational materials changed in the new interface, we believe the benefits significantly outweigh any inconvenience. Please email Sara McNeil at smcneil@uh.edu if you have any questions about Digital History.
Screencasting With all the screencasting going on in the blogosphere lately, what with tutorials running rampant across all different video sharing websites…I thought I’d share a few screencasting tools for those of you looking for a free alternative to some of those higher priced utilities. This review covers both PC and Mac utilities, and not wanting to leave anyone out…one for those running Java. AviScreen AviScreen captures screen activities and converts the output into an .avi file or alternatively into several images. It does include that very nifty feature often referred to as “follow the cursor” which means you can create a smaller dimension video and the software will automatically follow the curser to the location so that the user watching doesn’t miss anything. AviScreen is very easy to use and I really like its “follow the cursor” feature. The one thing I don’t like is that it does not support audio and the GUI seems clunky sometimes. OS: Windows only CamStudio Copernicus OS: Mac only Jing
PeerWise 20 Amazing iPad Apps for Educators When one looks at how technology has changed education over the past decade, one can’t help but be blown away by the sheer number of iPad apps for educators that have absolutely flooded the electronic marketplace. There are so many iPad apps for teachers released every month that even the most plugged-in educator would have a difficult time processing and utilizing them all. Luckily, when teachers are looking to learn how to use iPads in the classroom, they need to look no further than TeachHUB magazine and TeachHUB.com -- an educator’s primary go-to resource when researching iPad apps for teachers and iPads in the classroom. Read on to learn about TeachHUB magazine and TeachHUB.com’s updated list of the hottest iPad apps for teachers and iPad apps for education, destined to forever alter your curriculum landscape, organized here by subject. Scroll down for an index of many of TeachHUB's helpful iPads in the classroom app reviews and more of the best usage of iPads in the classroom. Trello
Nik's Learning Technology Blog: Why do so many Moodle courses suck? Moodle is a magnificent free product and has the potential to enable schools and teachers to build wonderfully unique interactive online learning courses in which learner interaction can be tracked, measured and responded to. Despite this the vast majority of Moodle courses I see are a long list of Word and PDF documents with at best a few forums that enable a minimum of human social interaction. Given the state of many of these courses, it’s no wonder that drop out rates for online learning are so high. And of course Moodle isn’t the only culprit. Many of the other commercially available LMS (learning management systems) and VLE (virtual learning environment) platforms aren’t doing any better. Moodle has been around now since 2002 and research carried out in 2013 showed that more than 7.3 million students had studied in more than 83 thousand registered sites. The problem surely isn’t Moodle, because the platform is capable of delivering all of the above. How about ready made courses? Best
St. Ambrose University