Quick Links – 8th Feb, 10

A new feature for 2010 is a regular posting of Quick Links for the readers. These links will highlight some great articles or activities for you to use in your classroom or professional development as an educator. I hope you find them useful. Also, I’m happy to take any suggestions from readers of others.

  1. 50 Best Blogs for Education Leaders
  2. Article – Blogging for Higher Order Thinking
  3. Top 10 Apple iPod Touch Apps for Language
  4. Some great educational used for Wordle
  5. Angle Sums – Great for the IWB

Popularity: 1% [?]

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School’s Around The World

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As educator’s we often get caught up in the very small world of our own classrooms, or that of a colleague across the hallway. Finding Education however is encouraging teachers to move outside of their own walls and consider what other educator’s are experiencing. The tag ’schools around the world’ on their site is one worth following and regularly checking. So far they have featured school’s from Iran, Haiti and Liberia.

Here’s the tag for you to follow and add to your bookmarks: http://blog.findingeducation.com/assignment/tag/schools-around-the-world/

Popularity: 1% [?]

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You Can’t Take it Back – Video of the Week

Popularity: 1% [?]

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14 iPad reviews

ipadapple415.jpgA few days back Steve Jobs announced Apple’s intention of releasing the iPad, a 9.7 inch touch-screen computer that looks a little like an oversized iPod touch or iPhone. Now that the dust has settled, here’s a roundup of reviews from across the globe.

Digits, the technology blog from the Wall Street Journal has a review by Marisa Taylor.

CNet Video reviews courtesy of the Artuji.com blog.

A nice article from I4U blog that does a good job of summarising the reviews.

Some YouTube vids of people’s thoughts. Link One, Link Two, Link Three

TechRader.com’s Susie Ochs has a hands-on review

First impressions from UberGizmo

Australian site Lasoo.com.au has a nice, easy to read summary

KnowYourMobile.com round up the major sites thoughts.

The Huffington Post reviews with photos the Nine Worst Things About the iPad

The Telegraph’s take on it

PC World’s ‘The Critics Weigh In’ article

Australian site news.com.au has a review too

Popularity: 5% [?]

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The One Where I’m On a Break

Just a quick note to my regular readers; Today marks the last day of work for me for 2009. The kids have all left and I am about to head off for some holidays. I don’t officially start back until late January, and as such my regular blogging of helping teachers use technology in their classrooms will also be taking a rest. I may get the urge and need to scratch the blogging itch during that time, but in case I don’t, thankyou for your support and I wish you all the best for the season, the New Year and I can’t wait to catch up again in 2010.

Popularity: 3% [?]

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Addict-O-Matic (Inhaling The Web)

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Application: Addict-O-Matic

I’ve seen this tool floating around the Twitterverse and Diigo lately and thought I’d have a quick look at what it does; and as a place where lots of information can be gathered, I’m impressed. Dave Pell writes

Addictomatic searches the best live sites on the web for the latest news, blog posts, videos and images. It’s the perfect tool to keep up with the hottest topics, perform ego searches and feed your addiction for what’s up, what’s now or what other people are feeding on.

From its homepage Addict-o-matic opens up with a simple search function, into which you put your search.

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My search for ‘Tiger Woods’ provided ample information for me to sift through. I like that I’m able to change my sources and customize the references I need. A dropdown box is available for this to happen.

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It’s nice to clearly see all forms of media readily visible. There was video and pictures from Youtube, Trueveo and Flickr, social updates from Twitter, Friendfeed, entries from Wordpress and news items from services such as Yahoo and Google. From my use, all the entries for each source were relevant and accurate.

As a place to see all forms of media in one place, there is ample here to satisfy the references you may need. Worth having a look and I can certainly see why it has been gaining attention through the cyberverse.

Popularity: 3% [?]

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Six New Apps from Google

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Google just launched six new utilities for users. I won’t go into big details here but will instead link to two articles at ReadWriteWeb.com  

The first article talks about five tools

1. Near Instant Voice Translation

2. Customized suggest based on Location

3. Google product search combined with Inventory Feeds from Local Retailers

4. Near Me Now

5. Google Goggles

The second article contains news, links and video about the Real Time Search.

Well worth your time to investigate what these new technologies could mean for you, your students and your classroom.

Popularity: 6% [?]

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Free Audio Books

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I like freebies. I like freebies that I can use in the classroom. I like freebies that I could use outside of the classroom. The site Open Culture lists an incredible array (mostly classic) literature that can be downloaded for free. A book’s listing tells you too whether it’s from iTunes, Audible or an external source. Very easy to navigate through, the books are listed in alphabetical author order and start with Aesop’s fables and the fiction section finishes with Johann David Wyss’ ‘Swiss Family Robinson’. Look through the list as its quite comprehensive; Fiction and Literature, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Audio Book Podcasting Sites. There are also further links that expand these categories. Great for any one who teaches literacy and is wanting to use tools such as iPods in the classroom.

Link: Open Culture

Popularity: 4% [?]

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Google Wave Cheat Sheet

I take no credit for this.  I came across these little ‘helps’ from ChurchTechMatters and thought it was too important for Wave users to not post.  So with all credit to their writers here’s a very comprehensive list of cheats for navigating Google Wave.

If you would like to download this as a friendly PDF file for handy-dandy reference, here’s the link. Google Wave Cheat Sheet -PDF

———–

Search Cheat Sheet

This is a quick guide to the operators and restricts supported by wave search.

Keywords

about:[keyword] — finds waves which have [keyword] occurring anywhere. Same as [keyword].
title:[keyword] — finds waves which have [keyword] in the title.
caption:[keyword] — finds waves which have an attachment where [keyword] occurs in the caption.
————————————————

Status

is:read — finds all read waves.
is:unread — finds all unread waves.
Note: you cannot currently do a search like “-is:read” by itself and get reliable results due to an outstanding restriction on megastore queries

is:mute — finds all muted waves.
is:unmute — finds all waves not muted
is:active — currently the same as is:unread.
is:note — finds all waves which have you as the only participant and contributor
————————————————

Participants

from:[address] — finds waves from the participant identified by the address. Special case of from:me identifying waves from yourself.
by:[address] — same as from:[address].
to:[address] — find waves which are a dialogue between you and the participant identified by the address.
with:[address] — find waves that have the participant identified by the given address explicitly listed.
owner:[address] — find waves by person, that they created.
only:[address] — finds waves to which only the participant specified by the given address contributed.
————————————————

Date Search

Currently, there are a few restricts:

past:[date term] — finds all waves in the last period.
previous:[date term] — finds all waves in the period before the last period.
before:[date term] — finds all waves before a certain period.
after:[date term] — finds all waves after a certain period.
which can be combined with date terms:

day
week
month
year
So you can have past:week, past:year. There is also support for

past:N[date term] where N > 0. So you can have past:3days (today, yesterday, the day before yesterday).
Also you can have

past:Ndays
past:Nweeks
past:Nmonths
past:Nyears
Finally, you can abbreviate days, weeks, months and years to a single letter (d, w, m, y). Thus you can write

past:3d
past:2w
————————————————

Folders

in:[folder name] — find waves in the folder with the given name. For example, in:inbox.
in:[search name] — find waves in the saved search with the given name.
is:unfiled — find waves which have not been moved to a user folder.
is:filed — find waves which belong to some user folder.
————————————————

Attachments

has:attachment — finds waves with an attachment. This changed from “is:image”.
has:document — finds waves with an attachment which is a document. (coming soon)
has:image — finds waves with an attachments which is an image. (coming soon)
caption:[keyword] — finds waves with an attachment with caption containing [keyword].
filename:[keyword] — finds waves with an attachment with filename containing [keyword]. (coming soon)
mimetype:[keyword] — finds waves with an attachment with mimetype containing [keyword]. (coming soon)
————————————————

Tags

tag:[tag name] — finds waves with the tag [tag name].
————————————————

Gadgets

has:gadget — finds waves which contain a gadget.
gadget:[keyword] — finds waves which contain a gadget with name containing keywords. e.g. chess, fridge, map, risk, sokoban.
gadgeturl:[keyword] — finds waves which contain a gadget with urls containing keyword.
gadgettitle:[keyword] — finds waves which contain a gadget with a title containing keywords.
————————————————

Expressions

foo & bar — match waves with foo and bar.
You can use AND, or skip the operator altogether, as the logical and is the default.
foo | bar — match waves with foo or bar (or both).
foo OR bar — match waves with foo or bar (or both).
-foo — match waves that do not contain foo. (There is an outstanding bug that causes searches with only negative terms to fail. To get around it, use to:me -foo)
“foo … bar” — matches waves that contain the exact phrase “foo … bar” (There is an outstanding bug for live search not working with phrases)
foo & (bar | -baz) — matches waves that contain foo and either bar or do not contain baz.
————————————————

Phrases

“[multiple terms]” — match waves with one or more terms in sequence:
“hot dog” catches waves with the terms hot and dog in sequence. This is also required for other operators such as in:”new inbox” where say “new inbox” is a saved search.
————————————————

XML Search

tags:subtag — find all waves which have this combination.
tag:[tag] — find all waves which have this .
attribute:[value keyword] — finds all waves which have < …. attribute=value …> where keyword is a token in value.
————————————————

Wave ID

id:”” — find a wave with a specific wave id.
————————————————

Zero Inbox

If you want to zero inbox, you can hack this temporarily by saving a search “my inbox” with the query:

in:inbox is:unread this:week. You can then use the menu option “Mark as read” in the wave panel.
Alternative zero inbox: in:inbox is:unread past:7days -is:mail
————————————————

Saved Searches

A search can be saved using one of two methods:

Create a search in the search box and then press the Save search button at the bottom of the Digest panel.
Add a search using the searches Add button on the Navigation panel. Then add the search query and name of the search in the Saved Search popup panel.
Saved searches can be edited and managed using the pop-up menu which shows when hovering over the saved search in the searches section of the Navigation panel.
————————————————

Filters

Filters are saved searches which also have an action to apply to all waves which match the saved search. The actions supported are

skip inbox – removes the wave from inbox. Whilst this wave continues to match the search, it will continue to stay out of the inbox. Skip inbox will shortly be renamed archive.
mark as read – Whilst the wave continues to match the search, it will be marked as read.
————————————————

Folders

You can add a folder by using the Add button on the folders section of the Navigation panel. A folder is added by typing the folder name in the text box given and hitting enter.

Folders can be managed using the pop-up menu that shows when hovering over the folder on the Navigation panel.

Add folder – A subfolder can be added under the current folder.
Rename – rename the current folder.
Delete – delete the current folder.

Popularity: 100% [?]

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Gerry Dee on Teaching

A bit of a different flavour here for the Video of the Week – after all, it is Friday!

Popularity: 3% [?]

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