Task2Gather.com

It's all about timing...right? That's what you tell your students, you remind them, you have 2 weeks left until your project is due, 1 week, 3 days, tomorrow! And you're guessing about 75% of your students wait until that last week or so to start. Well Task2Gather is a great way to keep kids on track! Task2Gather is a free service for online task and project management. Manage all your tasks and projects online with Task2Gather and invite your student's parents, teachers, students, and anybody else to participate in the project. So now Johnny's parents can't say, "We never knew about this project!" Hello McFly! It's been assigned for over 2 weeks! Once again this is all free, you just need a email address!

Randy Pausch

On July 25th, Randy Pausch passed away after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Dr. Pausch is famous for his last lecture on Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, and just a FYI, Pausch was a computer science teacher, but had a incredible outlook on life, family, and just about everything else in the world. Take time and watch this quick 4 minute video, and please, if you have a little over an hour, watch his full last lecture.

See more of his videos and information about Randy Pausch at his homepage.

Songza.com

Every want to start that Monday off in the right way with a little music? Your going through your collection and it hits you....you're too old and the music you like, the students hate! Don't worry, Songza is here to save you! Find that new smash hit with a quick search and then play it, or actually make a short play list to play for the first 10 minutes of class! Now, Songza says all songs found on the website are legal according to their FAQ page. Think of it as Rhapsody or iTunes without the signing up and it's completely free! Ahh...the great songs of AC/DC at 7:30 AM...school can't get better than that, can it? Enjoy!

Jing Project

Have you ever thought...wow I wish I could just record what I'm doing on my computer so I don't have to keep on showing the same thing over...and over...and over again? Well Here you go, the Jing Project has came to your rescue. Jing is a always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video by either download or using screencast.com all from your computer to anywhere. This software is so simple, just download, install and, wham-bam-thank you ma'am, it's ready to go! It even allows you to only capture specific areas of your screen as well as snap shots. So plug in your mic, opps I forgot, it has mic support so it even records what you're saying! And get this program running ASAP. So good bye to the headache of answering the same question over and over and over...just say check out the class Jing! Check out the examples below...

Blog Video Example

Top 20 Growing & Disappearing Jobs

They say that students today will have 12-15 jobs by the time they are 34, does that scare you? I know sometimes it makes me wonder what we need to do so they only have 2-3. Forbes.com wrote an article about the Top 20 Growing and Disappearing Jobs in 2008. The lists compiled by jobs that are from any education level, high school diploma to doctorates. Some of the top 20 Up and coming jobs are, by no surprise to me some of the top up and coming jobs work with operating oil drilling machines and repair. As well surgeons, nurses, fabricators, and here's a weird one, alarm installer

As for the top 20 disappearing jobs, this list comprised of engine and machine assemblers, milling and machinist, seamstress, forest conservationist, and sorry for all you actors and entertainers, your jobs are slowly going away too. So go help your students and show all of them where the jobs are at, but as we all know, in another 5 years this list can completely change!

Edutopia

We've all known George Lucas as the great maker of Star Wars movies, but did you know he's a HUGE advocate for education? Edutopia, Lucas' website and magazine has a goal of " Kids today" and they believe that "No previous generation has experienced anything like the current pace of transformational societal change. Yet, in light of extraordinary advancements in how we interact with each other and the world, our system of education has been frustratingly slow to adapt." The George Lucas Educational Foundation was created to address this issue. Our vision is of a new world of learning. A place where kids and parents, teachers and administrators, policymakers and the people they serve are empowered to change education for the better. A place where schools have access to the same invaluable technology as businesses and universities -- where innovation is the rule, not the exception. A place where children become lifelong learners and develop the technical, cultural, and interpersonal skills to succeed in the twenty-first century. A place of inspiration, aspiration, and an urgent belief that improving education improves the world we live in. They call this place Edutopia. And we provide not just the vision for this new world of learning but also the leading-edge interactive tools and resources to help make it a reality, so go ahead and sign up, be wild and spend that $35!

WiX.com Beta

I love the old saying, out with the old, in with the new! And the reason I love it is because of the things we can do now as teachers to get students to learn in a different way. Much of the student population have grown up on computers, using them for social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, as well as using them for important things such as writing reports and doing research. My point is, is that why don't we take the love of MySpace that students have (trust me they go around every filter possible to get on that site at school) and incorporate it into the classroom. I'm not talking about MySpace itself, but the opportunity to create layouts and template that they could use as a report, that is a functional website, created by them, and could then actually be imported into MySpace (if they wanted to...but probably not.) or put on the teachers website or blackboard postings.

WiX.com is free and completely lets you build your own web page. Now, if your not too good or have no idea of HTML or any other web design language, that's alright! They have template you can change, modify, edit, and all other great ways to help customize each site. So stop making your students create a lame poster board, and have them create their own website or MySpace layout (and no, it doesn't need to be on MySpace to view)...out with the old and in with the new!

CamStudio.org

I teach CAD/Drafting, and it's about 98% on the computer, I've done demonstrations to the entire class, instructing all 27 students at the same time, but what about for the couple knuckleheads that aren't paying attention, or the students that got lost after you said, click on the icon that says SolidWorks. Anyways, I thought how can I have these students catch up without me going to help them because they weren't paying attention. CamStudio has solved this problem, it's a free streaming video software able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs).

So take your lessons to the next level and make them into something to share with everyone, put it on the network for all teachers to use, heck, if you have a web page or have a blackboard account, make these available to directly stream so students can watch and work at the same time. They are the generation of multitasking right?

GanttProject

I'm always trying to find ways to find new ways to help students stay on task when they are working on a project, especially when they're 2-3 weeks long. GanttProject has came up with a great program that can help students stay on task, in a cool and FREE way! With GanttProject you can break down your project into a tree of tasks and assign human resources that have to work on each task. You can also establish dependencies between tasks, like "this task can't start until this one is finished". GanttProject renders your project using two charts: Gantt chart for tasks and resource load chart for resources. You may print your charts, generate PDF and HTML reports, exchange data with Microsoft(R) Project(TM) and spreadsheet applications.

Adobe Photoshop Express Beta

Photoshop...it's this generations Microsoft Paint, but on steroids. Now most students probably don't have a legit version of Photoshop on their home computer due to it's expensive price, but we can change that. Adobe has released Adobe Photoshop Express, a free lite version of your typical Photoshop. You can edit, tweak, manipulate, color, and pretty much anything else you want to do in this version, plus when you sign up, you get up to 2 gigs of free storage for your photos. This site can also hook right into your students Flickr, Facebook, or their own Adobe photo storage. If your school can't afford the software, well now you have a free version to use, and trust me, it's a whole lot better than MS Paint.

Timetoast.com

Ahh the beaty of the great Timline. We've all made one and have seen the standard poster board with printed and photocopied pictures sloppily glued on. From the bad handwriting, to the pictures falling off, and the occasional no name poster, we've all have had problems! Well of course, the web has came to our rescue again and a site called Timetoast Timlines has been created. You have to sign up, but it's free, and trust me it's worth it. Students are able to insert pictures, write information in short statements and then you can click the + symbol and the information can be expanded. Like always, this can be used in pretty much any subject you can think of, even Math ( you could give the timeline on how to do equations or something goofy like that to help students remember). This thing is pretty cool, one of my favorites actually...enjoy!

edu20.com

Are you looking into other ways to teach your every day regular class? Well instead of things being "new and improved" people think they're tech savvy by calling it "2.0" So today's teachers and students can take their education to the next level by edu 2.0. This site could be used as an assistant to the everyday class. You need to sign up, but of course, it's free. Edu 2.0 also has teacher resources, postings, and ways to connect your students to students around the country. It took a little time to get a hang of the set up and all, but once you start, this site could really help students use technology with any class!