Drop.io

Steve Dembo recently blogged about his top 10 free favorite Web 2.0 tools at the NECC Conference. One that I find that would be particularly useful for group projects at New Trier is Drop.io. Its online collaboration and file sharing service that would provide our students with a simple, real time and private way to chat and share images, video, audio, documents and other digital content through sharing points called 'drops.'

Each 'drop' is non-searchable, non-networked, does not require any type of account registration and can be password-protected and set to expire after a period of time after the project is completed.

Love Looking at Visual Tools

Check out Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary which looks up words and clarifies definitions.

This free resource allows uses Princeton University’s WordNet, an opensource database built by University students and language researchers. Useful for writers,journalists, students and teachers.

Local presentation on The Global Achievement Gap

From the New Trier Parents' Association News Update: Thursday, August 20, The Global Achievement Gap, 7:00 PM, Glenbrook North High School, 2300 Shermer Rd., Northbrook, 60062.

Tony Wagner, Ph.D., has served as Co-Director of the Change Leadership Group (CLG) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education since its inception in 2000. An initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CLG is an "R & D" center that helps teams to be effective change leaders in schools and districts. Dr. Wagner will discuss his new book, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need--And What We Can Do About It. The book outlines a bold new plan to teach and test the competencies that matter most for the 21st Century and to motivate the Net Generation to excellence.

This book and related titles such as Disrupting Class (Christensen), A Whole New Mind (Pink), Outliers (Gladwell), and The Six Secrets of Change (Fullan) are available this Fall through New Trier's Library -- check out the new look for our catalog here.

When YouTube is blocked ( 14 ways around it!)

Back in December, 2008, librarian Joyce Valenza wrote in School Library Journal's Never Ending Search blog about 8 ways to bypass the commonplace YouTube blocking at schools. This post has been the most frequently commented upon of all her blog posts and now she has added 6 more tools to accomplish the bypass.

I think that speaks to value of allowing students access to YouTube at school. At New Trier, the good news is that teachers are not blocked but the bad news is that students are still prohibited from searching YouTube. This is basically nonsensical since our students have found work arounds not only to access YouTube blocking but also to get to social networking sites such as Facebook. Is anyone paying attention?
Educators need to learn about and spend time teaching students appropriate use of social networking tools. Let's not waste time blocking access. No one can keep up with all the wonderful tools available. Not even me:) Not even during summer vacation!

Flickriver: A New Way to View Flickr Images

Flickriver is a new web-based image viewer which supplies the viewer with images from Flickr as a new way to explore photographs which are displayed as one continuous stream without requiring the viewer to click 'next'. This "infinite scroll" shows today's most interesting photos. It is searchable by tag and allows shortcut keyboard navigation to the original flickr page by hitting the V key.

Creative Commons image from EssjayNZ's photostream

Flickriver follows the Flickr guidelines because the photo must link back to its original Flickr page so that the user knows the image origin, author or copyright. Your own Flickr photos and profile can be hidden from Flickriver if you use settings to opt out of third party sites.

I love the black background which makes for a better viewing experience. There are cool tool options for embedding photos to your website or blog; the site also allows you to create a dynamic Flickriver badge to post on your profile, group, blog or website.

Another Flickr API in beta is using the black background as well. See the blog post about Flickroom.

Online Tools for Launching Surveys and Polls

The tools just keep getting better. Here is an amazing array of tools to survey or poll your audience. It's worth looking at 30 Sites to Build and Launch a Survey. Many free widgets to set up, customize and use! I'm liking OpenJason, Open Source Specialist almost as much as Mashable.

What if kids could learn the way they want to learn?

I learned about this video from a Twitter group I recently joined: "WeAreTeachers". Watch Vision for Technology in K-12 Education