Screencasting

Like many educators and learners, I have fallen in love with Kahn academy and Salman Kahn's visually-aided approach to teaching. If you don't know what I'm talking about please go to khanacademy.org or even do some Google searches about the site. Khan has even spoken at a TEDx conference.

Salman uses a screencasting tool to animate his words to potential earners. This revolutionizes what we know as distance learning. Edudemic has a recent blog post about 10 screencasting apps that may be used in (and more importantly outside of) your classroom. Have you ever wanted to pause your teacher's lecture, and even rewind certain parts? The technology is out there, we just have to start using it. Many of these apps are free and will work on multiple OS platforms (iOS, android, windows...)

Put down that dusty chalk and start recording educational screencasts that last virtually forever, and are so shareable that you can instantly provide educational opportunities for people all over the world.

Online Security

When you set up an account online, whether it be for an email account or a social media site, you are often asked to answer some security questions. This procedure is incase you forget your password, or maybe you are logging into your MySpace account from a new computer. Who am I kidding nobody uses MySpace anymore... 

The Aside blog recently posted about Social Engineering, or how people attempt to get information and even more from you. Now I've always been careful about posting confidential information online, but this blog points out something many might not be aware of. Sometimes we answer security questions such as "What street did you grow up on?" or "What is the name of your favorite pet."  Anyone who knows me or is friends with me on Facebook will know I posted 20 pictures a day of my cat Buster. With a little common sense, my account may be compromised by answering such "security" questions.

Children are highly susceptible to these types of security issues, and it is important to keep students informed when working with internet-enabled technology.

The lesson of the post is: be careful what you post online. When I was a kid (okay, okay, I'm still a kid) we were taught to never put a phone number or address online. Not only do some people post such things, but contacts between programs and applications sync their info right onto my iPhone. With a few clicks (okay they're not clicks, more like finger pressing a touch screen... we need a name for that. Maybe Apple can patent another iPhrase...) I can call these people or get directions to their house, or their recently geotagged post. Just be careful how trusting you are.

Scale of the Solar System

Our planet is nestled in a solar system with great distances between planets. To illustrate this accurately in a textbook is, well... impossible. A teacher who authors the blog ScienceFix uses the sidewalk in front of his school to demonstrate the scale of our solar system. He uses objects to scale to accurately portray the sizes of the planets such as the head of a pin for Mercury, or a bean for Saturn. To get accurate placement of the planets, teachers may use Google Maps to find where to place each planet for the most accurately laid out learning activity for conceptualizing the scale of our solar system. This is a great example of using Web 2.0 tools to create better lesson plans.

This blog post is dedicated to our dear friend Pluto.

Online Learning

If you're like me, you love charts and infographics. They are quick and powerful learning tools for visual learners.  The blog Getting Smart posted an infographic recently about the growth from what was called distance learning to the term we use today, online learning. We begin in 1840 when course material was sent through the mail service and come to today, were 1 in 4 college students are enrolled in at least one online course. We have come a long way in terms of getting educational material out to students off-site of the school or campus. There are still barriers to overcome, as described in the final pros and cons section, but one this is for certain: we are improving how we exchange information every day.

First Post

I have discovered a few educational technology blogs that many teachers may find useful for creating and bringing forward engaging lessons to the classroom. The first is called The Aside Blog and boasts wonderful video presentations and infographics that make learning easy and accessible. Their latest entry includes a video entitled "The Syrian conflict, in 5 minutes" with charts and links to follow. It is an easy to understand animation outlining the conflicts that have developed in the country the past decade or so leading up to the current civil conflicts.
Another blog that I started following is Edudemic. Edudemic keeps their blogs simple enough to be useful for the everyday teacher looking to incorporate technology into their lesson plans. There one post showing all of the basic features using iOS7 on the iPad, from creating folders, tabbed browsing, and icloud. If you are keeping track, iOS7 hasn't even been released to the public yet, so teachers can be a few steps ahead of the game when preparing lessons.