Free Educational Games for Pre - Early Elementary Kids

I was just introduced to Game Goo, which is a collection of educational practice games provided by Earobics.  The purpose of these games is to provide students with the opportunity to develop early reading and language skills. 

If you teach pre - early elementary education, this is a FREE site you should definitely check out.  http://www.earobics.com/gamegoo/gooey.html

Last Robot Diaries Screencast

I just finished the screencast for sensors.  I used Jing for the previous two screencasts, but I used Camtasia for this one.  I discovered the zoom feature and thought it would be useful for this demonstration.

Download now or watch on posterous

sensor_good_video.mp4 (3344 KB)

Robot Diaries http://robotdiaries.posterous.com

First Two Robot Diaries Screencasts

Here are the first two screencasts I created for the Robot Diaires project.  I did not realize that I had the mic muted, so it defaulted to the mic on the webcam, which was pointing at the floor.  I fixed the audio the best I could in Camtasia.  If enough people think I should re-record it, I will.

Download now or watch on posterous

Parts.mp4 (3251 KB)

Download now or watch on posterous

Programming.mp4 (2379 KB)

Robot Diaries http://robotdiaries.posterous.com

Stop Motion

Here are Rob Ruddle's sample stop motion videos.

Download now or watch on posterous

dude_final.avi (12856 KB)

Download now or watch on posterous

triangle.avi (22446 KB)

 

Robot Diaries http://robotdiaries.posterous.com

A.nnotate Documents and Images

A.nnotate is a site that allows you to upload documents or images and annotate them.  The free version allows you to share with peers but you will have to upgrade if you want to be able to collaboratively add notes to the same document.  

You can upload images, PDFs, or MS Office documents.  This is nice because you don't have to worry about someone having an older version of Word that won't open your document.  Everything, including fonts will remain intact.  All you have to do, is share the link.

Here is an image of my family with some Star Wars characters I used as an example.  http://a.nnotate.com/docs/2010-06-08/TdxcIKoq/index.html

Oil Spill Visualization in Education

Http://www.ifitwasmyhome.com/ is a site that uses real data from NOAA to create an image that will lay over a map to help people understand the true seriousness of the oil spill disaster.  You can select any location and the image will show you what the oil spill would look like if it happened there. According to the site, it is usually updated once a day. I selected my home town and here is the image I saw. 

Think of how you could use this site in education.  A social studies teacher could probably use this to talk about how society is being effected.  An English teacher could show a map of the local area and have students write about how their lives would change if this actually did happen to them.  If anything, it will help students empathize with the people being affected.

Windows 7 Tip - Dock it in the System Tray

For those of you that use apps like Skype and other chat clients, which used to dock in the system tray, you probably noticed that Windows 7 keeps them in the taskbar when they are open. This can be annoying especially if you are working on a bunch things at once and already have a lot of icons down there.

Here's the solution
If they app docked in the tray on Windows Vista or XP, you can set the app to run in compatibility mode. To do this, right-click on the shortcut for the program and choose "Properties". Then, you will see a "Compatibility" tab. Click that tab and choose the "Run this program in compatibility mode for:" option.  Then, select the version of Windows you want. I choose Vista and that works for me.