instructional technology network
tri-county educational service center

INFOhio recently announced the release of the new INFOsearch tool.

INFOsearch allows the user to search many of INFOhio’s resources simultaneously. This resource will make it quicker and easier to locate good content via INFOhio. Records can be targeted toward the usual K-5 /6-8 /9-12 groups and can be filtered by resource types.

Tip: This would be a good place to introduce students to search skills using multiple databases.

More information:

• Full Press release from Theresa Frederick, Executive Director of INFOhio
• INFOsearch Frequently Asked Questions

As programs go, PowerPoint is not terribly difficult to learn. New slide. Insert text. Save. Go. It is routinely used with students as young as the elementary grades and, in some cases, is the hallmark of technology implementation in the school.

When teaching PowerPoint to students, it’s not the program itself that is difficult to communicate, rather it’s the important idea that PowerPoint (as with its non-Microsoft cousins, Apple’s Keynote and OpenOffice’s Impress) is a single tool with the purpose of supporting the communication - presentation - of an idea. The PowerPoint slide deck is not intended to replace the presenter, nor to display every single word the presenter will say. The slides should do no harm - that is, the content of the slides should not take away from the presentation with distracting graphic, backgrounds, sound effects or transitions. Not to say these are all bad additions, but that they must be selected carefully with the audience and the message in mind.

The ability to deliver an effective oral presentation is a part of our state standards. Where an expectation to include presentation support tools exists, oral presentation skills instruction needs to include good use of presentation tools as a part of teaching the topic.

I want to point you toward two recent articles on the topic of slide design. Take a look at these ideas and think about how they can help polish your own presentation skills.

Garr Reynolds at PresentationZen : PowerPoint tips that Are clear and to the point

Stephen M. Kosslyn at Oxford University Press blog: PowerPoint for Martians?

Via Lifehacker.com :

Where the Web Archives Are

“Some of the most intriguing resources on the web are located in archives—compilations of data that in the past, could only be found by making appointments in dusty libraries. Today, I’m going to take you on a quick tour through some of the most fascinating archives on the web.”

Depending on your subject area focus, some of these resources can be an instructional gold mine. The categories discussed include the following: History, Multimedia, Print Media, Science, Web-Specific, and Government.

Remember, always exercise your good professional judgment and preview any resource before using it with or recommending it to your students.

I last referenced Google Earth in the spring to make mention of an exceptionally good visual presentation of the crisis situation in Darfur compiled by the United States National Holocaust Museum.

In its latest release, Google Earth has added Sky to the list of features available in this tool.

With about a hundred million stars and two hundred million galaxies, Sky in Google Earth lets you explore the heavens like never before.

This tool has great potential for astronomy explorations. Key items are clickable and provide a more detailed description. Downloadable or custom-created tours make this resource still more useful for guiding your students through your specific instructional topic.

Downloading of Google Earth software v. 4.2 or better is required and will most likely involve your district’s tech coordinator due to both permissions and filtering software issues. Though a couple of the above links are marked as “blocked “, once the application is downloaded and installed on a computer, it plays well with filter restrictions.

Target Grades: 3+ for demonstrative purposes, higher for independent use.

[via TechLearning.com]

Harry Grover Tuttle, writing for TechLearning, offers 14 tips for integrating technology to enhance reading instruction.

Some suggestions require more specific resources or are incompatible with our filtering, but several can be implemented in essentially any classroom setting with commonly available computing tools.

Target grades: Varied

Facebook best practice: Sophos recommended privacy settings for Facebook

This article contains some really practical tips on Facebook privacy settings. Though Facebook is most likely not part of your classroom practice, it never hurts to equip your students with good tips for their real-world use of online tools.

The article, written from the perspective of a company concerned about internet security, makes simple suggestions on tweaking individual user privacy settings in ways that shouldn’t interfere terribly with Facebook usage and are accompanied by the rationale for the recommendation.

I came across and briefly found myself addicted to this language arts resource this summer.

“Word Frog provides practice in matching antonyms, synonyms, and homonyms.

The target word appears on the frog, with the word category underneath, defining the relationship to be matched.”

The producers of this resource, Arcademic, have other word and math games available, but I haven’t taken the opportunity to preview those to see if they are of similar quality. These are primarily geared toward an elementary audience.

Earlier this month, the National School Boards Association published a document called Creating & connecting: Research and guidelines on online social - and educational - networking. What makes this document notable is that is published by a mainstream education organization (as opposed to 3rd-party groups such as the Gates Foundation or the George Lucas Foundation who already typically favor such policy changes) and is generally pro-social networking in its conclusions.

If you’re not up to speed on social networking tools as the article defines them, you can get a flavoring for the issue as it ties into education if the words blog, podcast, file sharing, MySpace, and Facebook are added to the mix and blended with a helping of media hype. So, for the NSBA to come out in support of the educational value of tools that are almost completely blocked in schools is an interesting step.

I highlight this report not to make any sort of general statement about the overall safety of social network tools or what kind of oversight and education are required, but merely to say that there’s good discussion to be had on this topic.

For more insight from EduBloggers around the country, see these articles:

David Warlick at 2¢ Worth: “‘Reexamine Social Network Policies,’ says the NSBA”

Will Richard at Weblogg-ed: “Social Networking in School Gets a Boost from NSBA”

Andy Carvin at PBS Teachers’ learning.now: “New NSBA Report on Social Networking”

Steve Dembo at Teach42: “Social Networking: The Good, the Bad, and the NSBA“

The registration deadline for the Fall session of eTech Ohio’s online Professional Development courses is tomorrow, Tuesday, August 21. Courses start September 23.

A broad range of tech and non-tech courses are available with a cost of around $50. Graduate credit is available through several state universities for an additional fee.

For full details, see the eLearning - Online Professional Development page at eTech’s website.

Not ready this session? Registration for the Winter session will begin in mid-Fall.

About this resource

Intended first and foremost for educators in the Tri-County ESC Service Area, the Instructional Technology Network blog is a resource for information, news, events, highlighted articles and emerging practices in instructional technology delivered to you in a tech-friendly, teach-friendly format.

About the author

Chad Lemon is an Instructional Technology Consultant with Tri-County Educational Service Center in Wooster, Ohio.

Keeping up to date

There are at least three easy ways to keep up to date with articles added here.

• Option 1: Stop by often.
• Option 2: Subscribe via RSS feed. Pageflakes, Google Reader, and Bloglines are just a few ways to do this.
• Option 3: Subscribe via email. Look for the “Subscribe by email” option to get updates in your Inbox. We use a service called Feedburner to do this.

How often will updates arrive?

The goal is to add useful content as often as possible. Some weeks, this may mean an update as often as once a day, while on slow news weeks or busy ESC weeks, it could mean as few as once every week or two. Hopefully it will never be so much as to overwhelm and never so little as to make you wonder if we’ve forgotten you.

Is this useful stuff?

Hopefully, yes! Keep in mind though that the usefulness of the content will depend on your area of teaching responsibility, general interest, and skill level. We’ll try to make sure you don’t have to guess what makes a particular item useful through clear descriptions and categorizations.

Your Two Cents

We’d love to hear from you. Comments are open, although moderated to screen for spam and other objectionable content. If you have something more substantial that should be broadcast to the community in its own article, send me an email at the ESC and we’ll see what we can arrange.

Where’d the Instructional Technology Network Discussion Forum go?

Well, after a good pilot run, it seemed that a format that came directly to your doorstep would be a better fit for your busy schedules. Blog comments still allow folks the opportunity to participate in dialogue, while getting the word out a little easier.

Content Disclaimer

Use your head. A lot of resources will be referenced here over time. Some will be carefully reviewed, while others will be simple references to something that seemed like a good idea. Always, always, always preview any resources before using them with or recommending it to students. If something that seemed like a good idea turns out to be objectionable in hindsight, please, by all means, bring it to my attention so any necessary changes or deletions can be made.

Help! Please?

Instructional technology consultation is a service of Tri-County Educational Service Center. You are invited to contact the ESC for technology integration support. In most cases, this is available to teachers in Tri-County’s local and exempted village districts at no extra cost. ESC services are also available outside our home districts through special arrangement.