Mike DeFoe's "Tech Talk" blog

I am highlighting a site/program/application that begins with a certain letter. This is to keep the staff of DLPS technologically “nourished”!

“U” is for “United Streaming” (now part of the Discovery Education Network).

“V” is for “Viewpoint“, our data warehouse.

“W” is for “Wordle“, http://www.wordle.net/.  Wordle is a tool for generating “word clouds” from any text that you provide. Great for analyzing and improving writing.

“X” is for “Xtranormal“. If you can type, you can make movies!

“Y” is for “Yacapaca“: Create quizzes and surveys; discover, modify, and share assessments; set work for the whole class with a few mouse clicks; mark automatically; and analyze with tools that improve your teaching.

“Z” is for “MarZano” . Check out this Livebinder full of Dr. Robert Marzano resources for research-based instructional strategies.

I will be highlighting a site/program/application that begins with a certain letter. This is to keep the staff of DLPS technologically “nourished”!

“P” is for Portfolios, http://t.co/98WoEFNL, an e-portfolio is a learner-driven collection of digital objects demonstrating experiences, achievements and evidence of learning.

“Q” is for Quiz, http://quizlet.com/, Quizlet is the largest flash cards and study games website with over 9 million free sets of flashcards covering every possible subject.

“R” is for RUP. The DLPS Responsible Use Policy.

“S” is for SMART Board, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWLSQuXa2W0&sns=em, “Getting to know your SMART Board”.

“T” is for Thinkfinity, http://thinkfinity.org/, a wealth of information!

I will be highlighting a site/program/application that begins with a certain letter. This is to keep the staff of DLPS technologically “nourished”!

“K” is for KidPix, a delightful, versatile, multimedia application.

“L” is for Livebinders, your three-ring binder for the web.

“M” is for MAP Testing, Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) system.

“N” is for Noun Project, “sharing, celebrating, and enhancing the world’s visual language”.

“O” is for Online Learning via EduTech:  Providing professional development opportunities to North Dakota educators on a variety of topics.

Every week I will be highlighting a site/program/application that begins with a certain letter. This is to keep the staff of DLPS technologically “nourished”!

“F” is for Firefox, District browser of choice.

“G” is for Google Apps for Education, our new district wide suite of applications.

“H” is for How Stuff Works, “Learn how every thing works!”

“I” is for Instant Alert, our District notification system.

“J” is for Just in Time Training, utilizing our Curriculum Tech Coach, Nancy Conkins.

The “Tech Vitamins” is a new feature of the DLPS Tech Talk. Every week I will be highlighting a site/program/application that begins with a certain letter. This is to keep the staff of DLPS technologically “nourished”!

This weeks letters are:

“A” for Atomic Learning

“B” for BrainPop

“C” for Clip Art

“D” for Discovery Learning

“E” for Evernote

This summer is not as busy as 2010, i.e. Sweetwater addition but there are definitely projects to do!

My iPad was delivered a little before 10 am on Saturday, April 3rd – as promised! This was a surprise sine it was in Kentucky Friday night. I had already run-off the signature page, signed it, and was ready to post it on the door when we left on Sunday. No need for that! I synced it to my computer, loaded some songs (Diana Krall), some podcasts, books, videos, and apps. It also synced my Mail account, my contacts, and my Safari bookmarks. Set-up was very similar to the iPod touch.

The iTouch apps worked ok with a few of them “pixellating” when I went 2x. I also loaded some free iPad specific apps. Some, like Dragon Dictation, are universal apps so with one download you get the iTouch version and the iPad version. Some, like Netflix, are only iPad. For the apps, the iPad is basically a big iTouch – the “Readers Digest Big Print” edition.for those of us AARP members 😉

The one big difference is the Safari based browser. You get full screen web pages in a resolution very close to an iBook 1024 x 768, cool! Another nice feature is the keyboard. Nice in the way it responds not nice because you can not “touch” type.

The other negative right now is the inability to edit Google Docs. I am confident that this is a temporary set back, time will tell.

I really like the size for reading and responding to my “teeets”‘ checking email, and browsing.

Great new product!

Welcome to Blogs@EduTech. This is my first post to start blogging using the EduTech blogs!

This looks like a very full featured blog since it is based on WordPress – one of the biggest, most used, blog engines.

Bye for now.