Teacher Discounts

Would you like to receive a discount for being an educator???? I think I would! There are many discounts out there for us that we probably don't even know about.

A great compilation of educator discounts can be found at bradsdeals. This site lists 82 stores that are currently giving discounts to educators. The stores include bookstores, school supply stores and even clothing stores.

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Delicious to Continue Service

I mentioned in a previous post that it had been rumored that the Delicious bookmarking site was going to close within a few months. It appears that this is not the case. Delicious has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen and will continue to be available.

To continue using Delicious, you must agree to let Yahoo transfer your bookmarks to AVOS, urley and Chen's new Internet company. For the link to do so and more information go to http://ebm.cheetahmail.com/c/tag/hBNuMN2BPQv4VB8Z-BvNtHkBvB2/doc.html?t_params=

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Google Tools

Google has become a dominant force in education, and with so many available tools and apps, you may be a bit overwhelmed.

Where do I begin? Which tools will benefit my students? If I take the time to integrate this tool into my class, will my students really use it? We ask these questions but sometimes we don't have the time to conduct the necessary research, so we never find the answers.

One site that may answer these questions is Bloomin' Google by Kathy Schrock. Kathy has divided the different Google tools and apps according to how they support Bloom's Revised Taxonomy. All you have to do is locate the cognitive area you need to address, and then click on the preferred tool link.

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Have you ever wanted to create your own short movie for your class? One of the available services for this is Xtranormal.com, which is where I found the program to create this brief movie about how to NOT interview for a job.

You can download the basic version of Xtranormal for free, and you are given 300 free points to purchase settings and characters for your movie. I used my full 300 points purchasing the office setting and my two characters. Xtranormal is very easy to use and it is fun to add in gestures, movements, and facial expressions.

Also, to make the movie ADA compliant and more UDL friendly, I added captioning through YouTube, which is available on all new videos. You just have to type your script in Notepad, upload it with your video to YouTube, and YouTube will sync the text with the audio.

So, I made this movie for free, it is ADA compliant, AND I can use it again and again in my classes!

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Science Podcast

Browsing through the BEN (bioscednet.org) site and found this general interest science podcast on physiology. Perhaps many would find it too specialized to be general interest, but I thought it would be worth a look for the social sciences, health and environmental sciences as well as the obvious biology areas.

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Color Blind?

Color blindness is a form of vision impairment and is covered by ADA. According to the EEOC, "...approximately 10 million people in the United States are blind or visually impaired."

How does this affect us in online education? Obviously at some point we will have a color blind student, and it is our responsibility to make sure the colors and graphics in our classes can easily be read by them. This is where Vischeck can be helpful. This free service allows you to upload a file and see what that files looks like to a color blind person.

The original image shows you a PDF file that I use in my class for evaluation, but the Deuteranope Simulation shows you what my file looks like to a person with red-green color blindness, or Deuteranope. Taking into consideration color blindness when preparing files is also a great way to practice UDL (Universal Design for Learning) principles.

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CuePrompter

When recording a video with your webcam, don't you find it difficult to look directly at the camera? You want to use your script, but at the same time you want your delivery to have a conversational tone.

So, how can we work on this. In the past you may have typed your script in Word and left it up on your computer screen while talking. Word doesn't scroll down on its own though. CuePrompter is a great alternative to this. CuePrompter takes your text and puts it on a teleprompter, which automatically scrolls down as you are talking. You get to choose the speed, font size and screen size for the teleprompter.

It may take a bit of practice to effectively use CuePrompter, but the results will be worth it!

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