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Cloud Computing, Web 2.0, Social Networking

Technology Tidbits: Blog Companion

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21st Century Technologies

- Culture Crossing …………………………………………………... - Digital Vaults ……………………………………………………...

- Diigo (social bookmarking, educational portal) …………………..

- Embedit.in …………………………………………………………

- Fliggo (educational portal, hosting video) …………………………

- Glogster (educational portal) ………………………………………

- Interactive Quiz (arcade style quizzes) …………………………….

- Mixbook (educational portal) ………………………………………

- My Story Maker (digital storytelling) ………………………………

- Myths & Legends (educational portal, digital storytelling) ………...

- Shape Collage ……………………………………………………….

- Shmoop ………………………………………………………………

- Strutta (educational portal, online contests) …………………………

- Time Rime (educational portal for time lines) ………………………

- Twine (web 3.0) ……………………………………………………..

- Vocab Grabber ………………………………………………………

- Voice Thread (educational portal, digital storytelling) ………………

- Widgenie (graphs) ……………………………………………………

- Wolfram Alpha (computational search engine) ……………………..

- Wordle ………………………………………………………………

- World Digital Library ……………………………………………….

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Culture Crossing

Summary: Culture Crossing takes a rather unique spin on your typical mapping site. It gives the user an abundance of information that is otherwise hard to get to. For example, if you want to find out what kind of clothes students wear in Japan, or what their school hours typically are, CC is where you would look. What makes this so great for students are the different facts they can gather by clicking on: Class Rules, Socializing, or Misc. Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/05/culture-crossing.html Site: http://www.culturecrossing.net/index.php

See Also: Shmoop, Digital Vaults, Europeana, World Digital Library Media Tags: Photos

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Digital Vaults

Summary: What Digital Vaults is, is a place where historical records, photos, and documents are kept. At this site a user can either create a Digital Poster, Movie (my favorite) or a Pathway Challenge. A Pathway Challenge is a great way to lean history and see how historical items are "linked" together. Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/03/digital-vaults.html Site: http://www.digitalvaults.org/

See Also: Shmoop, Culture Crossing, Europeana, World Digital Library Media Tags: Video, Interactive

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Diigo

Summary: Diigo is quite possibly the best social bookmarking site around. It has an educational portal that makes it ideal for staff/students and surpassed Delicious in that respect. It incorporates many features such as: personal research tool, collaborative research platform, knowledge sharing, and annotation. Blog Reference: none Site: http://www.diigo.com/education

See Also: Delicious, Pinboard

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Embedit.in

Summary: Embedit.in is ideal for students/teachers who want to display content "live" on their site which they normally would have to link to. Plus, it is very easy to use, just click on embed and select your file or URL. Once, your file has been embedded, the fun really begins where you have even more options such as: annotating, tracking, and privacy controls. Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/06/embeditin.html Site: http://embedit.in/ Media Tags: Photos, Interactive

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Fliggo

Summary: Fliggo is a place where people can create their own video-sharing site. What makes this so attractive for education is, is that you can create your own "YouTube-type" site and customize everything. Also, Fliggo is very user friendly. Think of a combination of Blogger and Wikipedia and you got an idea of what you're in store for. You can set your page to private so only people w/ a password/members can get in. You can turn on/off comments and set those to be approved, and you can even have a rating for each video. Nothing can be posted on your site w/out administrator approval. Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/03/fliggo.html Site: http://www.fliggo.com/ See Also: Remix America Media Tags: Photos

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Glogster

Summary: Glogster is a site where you can make online/interactive posters. To get started is simple, in fact you don't even need to register if you want to just create one from scratch. However, for education you can sign up for a free "teachers" account and then register up to 200 students. Glogster generates all usernames/passwords so no student email accounts is necessary. Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/04/glogster.html Site: http://www.glogster.com/edu

See Also: Voice Thread, Wikipedia Media Tags: Video, Photos, Interactive

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Interactive Quiz

Summary: Interactive Quiz is an interesting site for making fun arcade style games for learning. What makes IQ so appealing for education is the ability create your quiz and then embed it into your site/blog. Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/07/interactive-quiz.html Site: http://classtools.net/education-games-php/quiz/

Media Tags: Interactive

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Mixbook

Summary: Mixbook is an exciting/new site for creating: digital stories, online scrapbooks, and storyboards. After giving it a try I have to say it is one of the best resources out there for doing digital storytelling/storybooks. Another great feature to Mixbook are the educational features. In here you can create your own environment for others to view/edit your books. Think Google Doc's but instead of working w/ text you are working w/ photos, a really nice feature!!! Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/05/mixbook.html Site: http://www.mixbook.com/edu See Also: iPhoto Media Tags: Photos, Interactive

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My Story Maker

Summary: MSM, is a great site for young readers/storytellers. The user selects the characters, props, scenery, and supplies all the text. Also, you choose how the story goes w/ preset effects such as emotions and actions. Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-storymaker.html Site: http://www.carnegielibrary.org/kids/mystorymaker/

See Also, Voice Thread, Myths & Legends, Art of Storytelling Media Tags: Interactive, Video

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Myths & Legends

Summary: Myths & Legends or ML as I call them is such a great resource for teachers/students. It is ideal for English/history. Basically, ML is a place where students can create their own myth or Legend and then post it online. Creating the Myth is very easy and not only can you upload your own pictures (or choose from their stock footage), you can record your own voice to narrate your story. Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/03/myths-and-legends.html Site: http://myths.e2bn.org/teachers/

See Also: Voice Thread, My Story Maker, Art of Storytelling Media Tags: Video, Interactive

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Shape Collage

Summary: Shape Collage is a free application that you can download for creating amazing looking collages. Another great feature is that you can customize almost anything... draw your own shape, edit the background, save it as any kind of file, it's all here. Plus, it works on any platform!!! Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/06/shape-collage.html Site: http://www.shapecollage.com/ See Also: Photovisi, Fotonea Media Tags: Photos

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Shoomp

Summary: What Shmoop is, is a site compiled of study guides for Literature/History/Poems. Also, it is a great resource for teachers/students to find: study tips/questions/links, etc. What I love most about Shmoop is the very user friendly layout which is easy to follow and it boasts some nice graphic design as well. Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/03/shmoop.html Site: http://www.shmoop.com/

See Also: Europeana, Digital Vaults, Culture Crossing, World Digital Library Media Tags: Photos

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Strutta

Summary: Strutta is an excellent new site for creating online contests. What makes this so great: is the very sleek looking design, super-easy user interface, and ability to moderate all content before it gets posted online. This is ideal for a school setting when having to abide by CIPA/COPPA compliance. Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/07/strutta.html Site: http://www.strutta.com/

Media Tags: Photos

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Time Rime

Summary: TimeRime is a new (beta) site for making online/interactive time lines. What makes TR such a great resource is the ability to "house" it internally and manage all content so nothing inappropriate gets posted online. This is ideal when trying to abide by CIPA/COPPA compliance. Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/05/timerime.html Site: http://education.timerime.com/page/en/education.html See Also: Capzles Media Tags: Photos, Interactive

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Twine

Summary: Twine potentially has the ability to be one of the best search engines around. There is so much behind this technology that it's hard to describe. Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/05/twine.html Site: http://www.twine.com/technology

See Also: Europeana Media Tags: Photos

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Vocab Grabber

Summary: According to their press release VocabGrabber is a tool "that helps teachers and students target the key vocabulary from a text within seconds." Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/05/vocabgrabber.html Site: http://www.visualthesaurus.com/vocabgrabber/

See Also: Word Sift, Lexipedia Media Tags: Photos

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Voice Thread

Summary: VoiceThread is a powerful new way to talk about and share your images, documents, and videos. Site: http://voicethread.com/#home

See Also: Art of Storytelling, Remix America

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Widgenie

Summary: Widgenie is a great new (beta) site for creating graphs/charts. What makes Widgenie such an attractive option for education is the ability to upload any: Excel, csv, Google Spreadsheet, etc file. This pretty much covers the gambit for any spreadsheet. Also, once the file is uploaded you can edit it to get the exact look/feel you want. Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/06/widgenie.html Site: http://www.widgenie.com/

See Also: Rich Chart Live, Lovely Charts Media Tags: Interactive

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Wolfram Alpha

Summary: Wolfram Alpha is a search engine that "solves" problems by doing computations. For example, if you wanted to know the half life of an element type it in here. Or if you wanted to know the difference between home runs hit by your favorite baseball team, WA would be your place of choice. Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/05/wolfram-alpha.html Site: http://www.wolframalpha.com/ Media Tags: Photos

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Wordle

Summary: Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. Site: http://www.wordle.net/

See Also: Image Chef

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World Digital Library

Summary: The World Digital Library is one of the best online resources to find "digital" information on materials from countries/cultures around the world. Blog Reference: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/04/about-world-digital-library-via-kwout.html Site: http://www.wdl.org/en#

See Also: Culture Crossing, Shmoop, Europeana Media Tags: Photos