The Wayback Machine

Take a trip Wayback and show your students what websites used to look like.

http://archive.org/index.php

Can you remember when YouTube looked like this?

Getting Started with ToonDoo

ToonDoo Getting Started Guide

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10 Tips for Being Safe Online.

The online world is a fantastic place full of information, entertainment, social networks and much much more. However, students should always try to be as safe as possible when interacting on the internet, here are 10 tips on how to be safe online:

1. A password is not a password if everyone knows it:

- Create a strong password that is not easy to guess.
- Don't provide your password to others, it is your privacy and security at stake so keep it secret even from your friends.
- Never click "remember this password" on computers you do not control or own.

2. Be cautious when opening emails or messages: 

- Do not click on links in emails from people you do not know.

- Don't provide personal information to people online, even if they offer you gifts or free samples.

3. Don't accept every friend request:

- If you don't know someone in "real life" then don't accept their friend requests on social networking sites. Once someone is your friend on these sites they can see all of your information.

4. Social networking sites are public spaces:

- Assume that everything you put on a site such as FaceBook is publicly viewable by anyone.

5. Assume that everything you put on a social networking site is permanent:

- Content posted on these sites becomes the property of the sites owners and are stored on their servers permanently.

- Even after your account is deleted, information (status updates, photos, videos) you posted are still stored on the servers of these sites. 

6. Be careful about installing extras on your site:

- Sometimes these "apps" can be used to "hack" your account and gain personal information about you.
- Always check that an "app" is legitimate and has positive feedback before installing it.

7. Do not allow social networking sites to scan your email address book:

- This can lead to your friend being spammed with unwanted emails or invitations.

8. Don't lie about your age:

- Sites such as FaceBook require you to be at least 13 years of age, if you are under this age wait until you turn 13 before you join up.

9. Keep records of everything:

- If you are being bullied online or someone is making unwanted advances to you firstly, tell your parents or an adult (teacher) about what is going on. Secondly, keep track of all of the conversations, this will make the job of the authorities much more easy.

10. Be aware of what you have posted and what others can find out about you:

- Know your own online reputation. Does what you have found represent what you want people to know/think about you?
- Be sure that you have not been posting personal information (home address, phone number) about yourself.

Resources:
Teach kids online security basics - http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/security/family-safety/childsafety-internet.aspx
Information for young people - http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/usingglowandict/internetsafety/youngpeople.asp
ThinkUKnow - http://www.thinkuknow.org.au/
11 tips for social networking safety - http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/social-networking.aspx

How to Improve your Social Media Safety- http://www.hercampus.com/school/jmu/how-improve-your-social-media-safety#.T51CXfrPWEw.twitter

Import your PowerPoint slides into a Prezi

Did you know that you can now import your PowerPoint slides into a Prezi presentation? Watch the video below to find out how.
 Haven't got a Prezi Education account yet, click here to Sign Up!

3 Simple Online Countdown Timers

1. Online Egg Timer (MAX 90min)

2. iPad Online Countdown Timer. (not just for iPads) (MAX 99hr)

 

3. Countdown Timer (MAX 60min)

Mirror iOS device with PC/MAC using AirServer

I have trialled out this software today and am pleasantly surprised with how it works. There is minimal lag, the quality of the image is far superior to what I thought would have been produced and most importantly it was very easy to get it up and running.

http://www.airserverapp.com/ 

How to extract pages from a .PDF

How to extract pages from a

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Tips and tricks - VoiceThread

VoiceThread is a pretty cool tool. It allows users to facilitate conversation similar to a blog or an Edmodo type social networking application, but with the restriction to a series of slides. Here are a couple of tips to get the most out of VT for your presentation:

Export PowerPoints to PDF for upload:

For some reason or another when uploading .ppt files the VT application has the tendency to jumble text and images around. Simply saving your .ppt presentation as a PDF will eliminate this issue.

The create PDF function can in the File tab under Save & Send in MS PowerPoint 2010.

Less is more:

If students are uploading PowerPoints to their VT put a limit on how much text can go on each slide itself. There is no point in a student just reading what they have on the slide in their VT comments. To take this to another level you could get the students to only upload .jpg (picture) files, this could save a small amount of time as students wouldn't have to muck around with PowerPoint.

Mix it up:

To avoid your VTs becoming a bit dry or boring mix up the type of  comments you put up. Make a rule with your students that they should use an equal mix of the comment features e.g. text, audio, webcam and drawing.

4 things that make "Glogster" better than "GlogsterEDU"

We have been using GlogsterEDU for about the past 12 months now, while the initial reaction was great and many of our classes started using it right away, the use of it has died off significantly. Many teachers said that they grew frustrated with it over time, while some of these issues no doubt were to do with our network stability, it was not until I compared the "Glogster" and "GlogsterEDU" that I wondered are we really getting the most for of our education subscription.
I noticed 4 pretty obvious features that are in the standard platform which I would highly recommend being integrated into the education platform:

Portrait & landscape templates VS one size fits all:

Left: standard platform w/ portrait & landscape templates. Right: EDU platform w/ no templates.

Glogster's catch-cry "poster yourself" says it all here. Why wouldn't you  give the education subscribers the ability to create landscape posters?

Sleek interface VS cluttered & kiddish interface: 

Left: standard platform w/ sleek interface. Right: EDU platform w/ kiddish elements.

OK, so I get the EDU platform is aimed at children, however I think the teddy bear and the loading "donut" give the application a fairly immature feel. It is also interesting to compare the differences in the "dashboards" in each of platforms, the EDU one is considerable more cluttered, however this could be because the platform offers more features such as projects and classes that need to go here. The standard platform is sleek and stylish, and because of this the interface is more simplistic to use.

"Private Print" button VS no obvious print button:

Left: standard platform w/ private print button. Right: edu platform w/o print button (users must right click their Glog and select "Print Glog")

Once again the users of this application are creating a poster, it would be great if you could easily print it. A user should not have to figure out that they need to right click the Glog to be able to get the print option.

Embed option VS one size fits all (or does it?):

Left: standard platform w/ three embed options. Right: EDU platform with no options.

Have you ever tried embedding a EDU Glog into your blog? It doesn't quite work as the sizing is a bit too big. Of course you can always fiddle around with the HTML code, but should you really expect students to know or have to do this? In the standard platform you get three options when embedding; Full size (960x1300), blog size (560x768), feed (sidebar) size (360x488).