Ever want a place for all your “Tweets” that is in one place and sooooo easy to manage? Well TweetDeck is it! TweetDeck is your personal browser that shows you everything that’s happening now across Twitter and also Facebook. With TweetDeck you can easily stay in touch with friends, family, and those Tweeters you follow. Plus, you can share links, record video and much more. I didn’t think I had the time to try out any more new tech tools or even download another app but a friend (thanks Marlo!) encouraged me to try TweetDeck and within minutes I was hooked! What a great aggregator for tweets and just one more tool to help me work smarter and not harder. Try it and you’ll see for yourself how you just can’t twitter without it!
At the Microsoft DigiGirlz Day held March 25 at the MS Technology Center in Reston, Virginia, I took 3 of our high school girls to learn about MS, their new tech tools and careers. One tool all of us were enthralled with was Surface. MS Surface is a digital interactive touch technology tool. For right now, it is being targeted towards the retail market for usage in hotels and restaurants. However, who know if it will come to education in the future. Check out this video I took of myself using Surface. I want one! However, I do not want its price tag of $12K or more. I can wait…..
I had the pleasure to attend for the 2nd year the Microsoft’s DigiGirlz Day at the Microsoft Technology Center in Reston, Virginia. I took 3 high school girls this year and we had a blast! I want to share a couple of free downloads that Microsoft offers for robotics and programming that our girls actually particpated in hands-on sessions. The first one is MS’s Robotics Developer Studio 2008 Express Edition. This is a free download for those interested in creating robotics applications that is visual and offers a drag and drop of components with great tutorials. The second one is Microsoft’s Small Basic. This tech tool makes programming accessible and easy for beginners. It is very simple to use and great for elementary and middle school students. However, our high school girls loved it as well. It also has great quick-start guides to help you out. The girls who attended this day all used these programs very effectively and did not want to stop using them! Enjoy and please give me some feedback.
Wordle is a cool tool for generating “word clouds” from words that you provide. You can make some words that appear more often than others to stand out more. You can also use different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The end result is a page that is unique as you are. This cool tool allows you to express yourself with words. Check it out, creat one, print one, or even save it to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. This would be great to use with students for them to have a place to display key content words and then share it with the class. Enjoy!
Glogster is a cool way to create a poster-like page profile about yourself that allows you to express your mood, feelings, and all the things you haven’t been able to do with words. Just imagine – you can create a digital poster that reflects your ideas and your own special style. This would be an awesome way for students to do a page on “All About Me” at the beginning of the year. Then, at the end of the year have students update their glog and see what has changed. Great tech tool to use for reports such as one on Famous Americans. There are so many ways to use this cool tool. After you check it out, leave me a comment on how you think you can use it with yourself or your students.
Google Mashups combine content or data from different web sites into new applications. A mashup often involves a map, photo, video and/or news. Educators are using Mashups for so many things in the classroom such as displaying flickr photos on a spinning sphere to displaying the locations of the 30 most recent earthquakes in the world on a map. Using Popfly is the way to do mashups. However, you will need to install Microsoft’s Silverlight which is a plug-in that delivers interactive applications. This is a great tool to check out and experiment with. Send me a comment and let me know how you like this tool and how you are using it. Thanks!
Doodle is a free open source tech tool that makes it easy to create a quick poll, find a date and time for any group event, or just coordinate a meeting. You don’t have to register or install any software. It’s all FREE. Enjoy and doodle away!
BubbleShare is a place where you can upload your photos, remix them and add comments or your own voice to them. BubbleShare then gives you a private link for your friends and family to view and sends it with one click. You can even add your photo album to your blog. Check it out and see for yourself how easy it is to share all your photos with others at http://www.bubbleshare.com
I just realized with my last post that some of you may not know about the website TinyUrl.com which takes really long URLs and will make them tiny so you can fit them into emails, blogs, etc. I have really liked using this tool. I have found myself forwarding links to my teachers to only get an email back from them that the link did not work or they couldn’t get to the site from the link I sent them – hence, a broken link. By using TinyUrl.com I have not had any problems with any links! Try it for yourself and let me know what you think! http://tinyurl.com/
