How 2 Memorize Things

HeadMagnet

I just came across this site. Haven't played with it much, but it has way better features than any other computer-based flashcard game I've ever seen.

• lots of customization possibilities
• uses pictures and words
• saves lists for later
• ANALYZES YOUR PERFORMANCE (wow)
• keeps track of things you miss and makes you practice them more often (wow)
  
• share lists with others (wow)
• free (always good)
  

Clearly there are a lot of opportunities for teachers. Personally, I think I'll make use of the names-and-faces template the next time I start a new activity....maybe I will finally rid myself of the embarrasing hole in my head where names fall out!

How 2 Share Presentations or Documents on the Web

Powerpoint has pretty much replaced posterboard for research projects that are either supposed to be "more fun" than traditional research papers, or that really do need more visuals than straight text.

However - there are a great many possible formats to these, and the introduction of Microsoft Office 2007, with its members-only format, has made transferring these projects from student computer to teacher computer extra-difficult.

Plus - there's always the problem of "I saved the wrong version" or "my email won't let me send a file that big".

Try www.slideshare.net



Slideshare will handle up to 100MB files in the following formats:
Presentations: pdf, ppt, pps, pptx, ppsx, pot, potx (Powerpoint); odp (OpenOffice); key, zip (Apple Keynote).
Documents: pdf, doc, docx, rtf, xls (MSOffice); odt, ods(OpenOffice); Apple iWork Pages.

You can choose for your document to be viewable by the whole world, just you, or somewhere in between. You can make your file downloadable or not.

This is a free site but it requires a log-in. There is also a short wait time while your file is processed before you can access it. For this blog post, I created a 3-slide powerpoint file and it took just a few seconds to upload, and it was availble for viewing in about 3 minutes.

Not only can your presentation now be viewed (small or full-screen) from any internet-connected computer, but you can generate embed code to post anywhere AND you can email a link to anyone. If you like, slideshare will import your address book from most of the popular webmail services.

Others (from the world, or from the list of people you invited) can leave comments.

There are tools on the site to add in an audio file to create what they call a "slidecast" - this is not to upload music - it's intended for a recording of a speaker who might be using the presentation. [note: make this recording with audacity] If you click on the link for that option, there are several help files available that will guide you through the process of synchronizing the audio file and the visual of your slides.


You can even post a transcript of the audio portion of your presentation.

Most of the presenters at an educational technology convention I recently attended used this site to post the presentation materials they used. A few talked about how they taught their students to use it for projects.

Here's the presentation I created to test this out:

Sample Presentation

View more presentations from awaldfogle.

How 2 Create a trip itinerary

Most of the services where you buy airline tickets, car rentals, hotel reservations will send you email confirmations. Some will give you a url for the portion of your itinerary that you arranged through them.

www.tripit.com will put all of these in one handy location for you - you can then access it whenever you like, and you can send links to your friends, family or co-workers.

TripIt will send your itinerary to a smartphone, iPhone or any text-capable phone as well as alerts to keep you on schedule!



The website is free but does require registration.

how 2 make a bibliography

www.bibme.com

SO many hours of my life lost to bibliography creation and searching for sources!!!!

This website is free, but you do need to register for an account if you want to save work and come back to it later. If you have all of your information at one time, you do not even need to log in.

BibMe will create a bibliography from very little information about your sources - it uses amazon.com and other resources to pull all of the pertinent information about publishers, copyright date, multiple authors etc. You just supply a title, partial title or even just keywords and choose your resource from a list.

(this means that you can use BibMe to locate sources that will be useful to your research as well - pretty cool, huh?)



As you see from this screenshot, BibMe can handle a variety of types of resources. Once everything is entered, you can print directly in a number of formats (APA, MLA, etc.) or your can copy and paste the resulting page into your final document.

How 2 create a Digital File Cabinet You Can Bring With You Anywhere

My personal favorite cloud storage site is Dropbox. You can use it with or without the installed app and if you CONTACT ME for a recommendation, we'll both get extra storage space (so drop me a line!). One thing I especially like about this site is the "Public" folder - you can store things here and for each one you can generate a link that can be posted elsewhere. I used this for files I post on my not-so-friendly class page at a previous school. It was a royal pain to upload documents, but it was easy to post links. I discovered another advantage in that I could easily revise already-posted documents and as long as the name was the same, the link still worked.


Here's a review of Evernote (which looks really cool even though I never quite got the hang of it) Digital File Cabinet You Can Bring With You Anywhere

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