katie.christo.blog

I’ve really been enjoying twitter so much more since I installed TweetDeck!  It makes it so much easier for me to follow and participate in conversations (I’m on twitter as @katiechristo).  I’ve also found the three links below very valuable for finding people to follow.

• International School Teachers Roundup – A great list of International Teachers and their twitter ids. http://mscofino.edublogs.org/2009/05/10/update-international-school-teachers-roundup/
• Twitter4Teachers - http://twitter4teachers.pbworks.com/ (scroll down on the page to search by your subject/area of interest)
• We Follow – Search by tag at the top. http://wefollow.com/

I am really enjoying reading on my iTouch and I have to say that I was a “paperdork”(Aaron’s fabulous term) before I downloaded Stanza on my iTouch.  Stanza is a free reader for your iTouch/iPhone.  I’ve tried out many different free apps on my iTouch but Stanza for me is the best.  The only thing I don’t love is that you can’t annotate text yet but I know many users have asked for that function.

I especially like that while in Stanza you can download ebooks right to your iTouch/iPhone with their Online Catalog.   The Online Catalog links to many different online sites but by far my favorite has been Feedbooks.

Feedbooks is a universal e-reading platform compatible with all mobile devices where you can download thousands of free e-books, publish and share your own content, and create customized newspapers from RSS feeds and widgets.

One of the other great things (thanks Kim) to do with Stanza is to use ePub2Go to convert your PDFs.  You simply go to the ePub2Go site and either upload or link to a PDF you want.  Once you have uploaded your PDF and it has been converted you will get an option: “I’d like an e-mail sent to my iPhone so that I can download the book to Stanza.” Then you just open your email, click on the link, and the PDF is downloaded into Stanza.

Also don’t forget to check out some free PDFs to add to your iTouch/iPhone using ePub2Go.  Check out The Manuals and ELI 7 Things You Should Know.

Links:
Stanza – http://www.lexcycle.com/
Feedbooks – http://www.feedbooks.com/
ePub2Go – http://www.epub2go.com/
The Manuals – http://the-manuals.com/
ELI 7 - http://www.educause.edu/Resources/Browse/ELI7ThingsYouShouldKnow/33438

I’ve been working on a page for my Middle School students to access for a little while now.  Through a lot of revisions and talking to kids I think I’m starting to get a page together.  The rough draft of it is on my wiki where I keep adding content: http://katiechristo.pbworks.com/Student-Page Currently I’ve got information on copyright, downloads, online identity and general FAQs. The site students are accessing now is here: http://bit.ly/TCv6m

What do y’all think?  Suggestions?  Things I’m missing?  Links to your own student sites?

If you haven’t seen Wolfram|Alpha yet it rocks!  Instead of trying to tell you every little thing about it go watch the video: http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html Even if you only watch the first 3 minutes you will get a great idea of it’s power!  I think this is going to be a fabulous tool for schools.

Here are my thoughts:

• One of my favorite parts of Wolfram|Alpha is the ability to save a PDF of any data you find.  (Look at the bottom right of the screen when you get your results.)
• Instead of having to search for an answer to a question you get all of your information on one screen.  Even more importantly your results are vetted and are by acknowledged experts (overcoming the hurdle of sites like wikipedia).
• The compare and contrast functions will be amazingly useful in all different subjects.
• You can type a word and get definitions, synonyms, and even a synonym network (much more than just the define: function of google).
• The math and science functions are (obviously) off the charts.

I truly think there is probably a way this could be used in almost every subject.  What do you think?  How do you see it being used?