How 2 create a natural soundscape

It's the start of the year and I'm struggling a bit with the annual power struggle over who makes the rules in the classroom. Of course it's me, but I've never been happy with the process of establishing that, with all of its top-down implications. I like the result, but the process is very stressful - what with all of the envelope-pushing and peeing on hydrants and such. I'm coming home exhausted, grinding my teeth at night and am frustrated that I'm not doing something that shows more wisdom.

Feeling very stressed out, I started searching for some soothing music to play while grading some online homework submissions, but everything was distracting and added to my stress rather than lessening it. Then I remembered a nature-sounds LP that I used to play while studying in college (yes, I'm old enough to have taken a record player to college), so I did a google search on "nature sounds".

And I found this little bit of loveliness:

This elegantly simple miracle is called a "Free Nature Sounds Mixer" and it can be found at http://naturesoundsfor.me/

Right now I just have it playing while I work in another tab, but if I wanted to I could download my soundscape as a 1-30 minute long file.

In the time it has taken me to open up this blog post, I am NOTICABLY less stressed - I just literally felt the tense muscles in my forehead relax.

Every single one of my class openings will include a 3-minute calm-down that features this mix tomorrow. I'll report back on the students' reactions.

How 2 Learn to Type

It seems to me that even though more people use keyboards more often, that fewer people actually know how to type. There's just no excuse for this, in my opinion - and no matter how "good" you are with your particular bootleg flavor of "hunt-and-peck"......you need to learn how to touch type properly. Here are some tools to help you along the way:

ARTYPIST - this is the first one I used with students, and I like the way it's laid out in that it focuses on one finger at a time, which can be helpful. It also evaluates which fingers are problematic for you and steers you towards more exercises to strengthen them. Since my first keyboarding/computer apps class included a lot of kids with various disabilities, this kind of almost physical-therapy approach was really great. However, the interface is really boring and ugly, and the kids were not fans.

TYPING WEB - this is my favorite, especially since it recently got a LOT more teacher-friendly. It includes an elaborate series of step-by-step instructions that guide the students through proper touch-typing technique and has an awesome teacher interface where you can keep track of students' progress. This site will generate certificates of achievement. It uses a more traditional technique to teach that is based on regions of the keyboard and also includes about a dozen "specialty" lessons like 10-key entry, medical terms, etc.

TYPERACER - this is just a game - doesn't teach you anything but offers a competitive environment to practice your skills. It also features an app that can be loaded to facebook, myspace, orkut or netlog so that you can compete with your friends instead of random people on the internet.

web2.0 for teachers slideshow

Totally recycled post - but I bet you can find something worth trying as we start the new year!
Easy Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers

View more presentations from pingable.

How 2 have a private teacher phone line

This wonderful, FREE, web-based service is intended to help people consolidate lots of phone numbers into one that always stays the same.

That is nice, but that is not what I think makes Google Voice an absolute must-have for a teacher.

I just signed up for my google voice phone number. With a little bit of trying, I managed to find a local-area code number available that spells out "mrs. w" after the prefix - SCORE!!!

Within a few minutes, I had:

1. added my school email to my google account as an alternate email
2. linked the google voice phone number to my school email
3. set the settings so that my mobile phone will NOT ring when incoming calls happen unless I click to activate the ring-through and so that any voice mails will be transcribed and sent to my school email.

I'm not at home now, but I'll add my home land-line number to the account when I am (also without ring-through).

WHAT THIS MEANS:

1. I have a phone number that I can freely give to students, parents, etc. I can even generate a clickable badge for my website that will allow someone to type me a text message if they do happen to be on a computer.
2. Parents who don't have a computer or easy access can still send me an email by calling and leaving a voice mail message that will be transcribed and sent to my school account.
3. I can choose to receive calls from school during hours I choose. For now, I'm going to decide as I go, but I can forsee establishing "office hours" at key times when I will be availble to answer calls (like the night before a big test or on prom night).
4. I can make a phone call to a parent without sending my personal phone number to anyone using caller ID. What I do instead is I sign in to my google voice account, type in the phone number and google calls me and then the number. The person I'm calling sees my google number on caller ID.
5. I will finally feel comfortable making as many phone calls as I know I should be making.

I haven't even started using this (other than a few test calls) and it is already one of my very favorite things for the new school year.

Go - right now - and sign up for GOOGLE VOICE

How 2 Convert any file online

I just read about this and it's my new favorite thing.........an online file converter that not only works like a dream, but will send you the results by email if you don't want to sit and wait.

Online-Convert

So far, I have only tried to use it to convert a youtube video to mp3 and it worked wonderfully :) - I'll try more things soon and will expand this post accordingly.

How 2 Avoid the latest Phishing Scam

Most of you know that "phishing" is the term for websites or emails that are designed to trick you into giving them passwords or other sensitive information.

Most of you know not to provide any passwords or account numbers to anyone who contacts you.

However, there is a new tactic going on where a seemingly normal website suddenly changes to look like an email log-in page or your bank or something else.

ALWAYS CHECK THE URL IN THE ADDRESS BAR BEFORE TYPING IN YOUR PASSWORD OR OTHER SENSITIVE INFORMATION

Here's an article about this: right-click on the link and open it in a new tab, then click back to the tab with this page. Wait 5 seconds and watch what happens to the tab that used to have the article in it.........
http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/a-new-type-of-phishing-attack/

this one is DEFINITELY worth the read.......it's a little spooky.

How 2 Make A Recording on the Web

This is Audio Pal, which is a clever little web-based audio recording service. You record or upload your content and they send you an email. The email takes you to another part of their site that gives you embed code for a fairly diverse range of sites (including Blogger).



You can make a recording several different ways - here's one I made over the phone:



You can also type up to 600 characters and use text-to-speech to create an audio file:


I tried making a recording using two different computer microphones - one that was USB and one that used the "normal" mic jack - but the site seemed to get stuck on "processing" and I didn't see any change in the site itself during the recording (the "time elapsed" indicator didn't indicate any time elapsed....). It might just be a glitch today, or possibly something goofy that happened because of the machine or network I'm on today.


Finally, you can upload an MP3 that you've created (maybe with Audacity??). I would recommend STRONGLY against uploading anything you didn't create (I don't have anything like that handy at the moment, but I'll come back and ammend this post later when I do).

All told - I'm impressed - especially by the phone feature.