Entering Into Another Dimension

http://www.classtools.net/movietext/

Today's Tuesday tech tip is very simple. Sometimes simple is best. As you may have noticed by now, I'm a big fan of www.classtools.net. They have an ever-changing fun collection of tech tools that I find are easy for teachers to use in their classrooms. I've spent quite a few of my Tuesday Tech Tips sharing tools from www.classtools.net. Very recently, they added a new feature. It is a Star Wars-like text creation tool, similar to one of the credit templates that is found in iMovie. You can click on the "text box", add your own text, and it will scroll across the screen along with the Star Wars sound effects. What I like about it, is that it makes for a fun "hook" when introducing an assignment. You can also use it as a writing prompt, "In a galaxy far far away...". Even better, when you click on the link here, they provide their own fun ideas for how to use this in the classroom, all of which adds to the excitement in your classroom.

Discover Something New With Google EDU

Today's Tech Tip is unusual. You may or may not remember me sharing information about Symbaloo, which is a website that allows you to create a webmix consisting of icons that when clicked, take you to different websites, typically related to one topic. Well, today's tech tip is all about a Symbaloo that was created to showcase the many educational components associated with Google. It. Is. So. Neat. The webmix is called Google EDU Dashboard. When you click on one of the Google icons, it will take you some place interesting. For example, if I click on the icon with the blue heart, it takes me to a screen that says, "What do you love?". Naturally, I type in the word books and I get back a treasure trove of all things related to books. It's actually a dangerous discovery for me. Why am I sharing this resource with you? Many of these Google sites were created with 20% time. If you don't know, Google's 20% time was an initiative that allowed Google employees to spend 20% of their work time exploring projects of their own interest. From this, Gmail, Google Earth, and other well-known Google apps have been created. It is a great way to demonstrate to your students what the power of building in a little time for creative thinking can inspire. It is also a great center activity for students to uncover the power of collaboration. After all, none of these applications were created alone. If you would like to use it as a center, here is a Q&A form to encourage your students to dig deep.