Great Article “Student Guide to Ebooks and Online Book Buying” from PCMag

digitaltext — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:17:25 +0000

For students who do not depend upon text to speech software, I saw this great article and thought it would be helpful as a new semester is gearing up.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2391592,00.asp

Want to get your students excited about science? Free interactive access to a scanning electron microscope

digitaltext — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 16:19:42 +0000

Every day, I’m just so excited about what others are doing (and freely sharing the resources) to help our students learn in new ways; I’m hopeful that this cognitive overload will indeed change our education model. Today I came across Bugscope from the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and just can’t wait to share it with our natural science department.

What is Bugscope?

The Bugscope project provides free interactive access to a scanning electron microscope (SEM) so that students anywhere in the world can explore the microscopic world of insects. This educational outreach program from theBeckman Institute’s Imaging Technology Group at the University of Illinois supports K-16 classrooms worldwide.

Bugscope allows teachers everywhere to provide students with the opportunity to become microscopists themselves—the kids propose experiments, explore insect specimens at high-magnification, and discuss what they see with our scientists—all from a regular web browser over a standard broadband internet connection.

iEducation Apps Review – Mobile Apps for Education

digitaltext — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 18:29:03 +0000

Nominated Apps for 2010 – Nicely Organized by Tony Vincent

The educator and developer community at iear.org has taken nominations and votes for their 2010 Best App Awards. While nominations and voting is now closed, the list of dozens of nominees is a valuable resource. Nominations were made in early December by those who read I Educational Apps Review’s blog. There are nearly 20 categories and each category is divided into elementary and secondary.

You can view the 125 apps categorized in a spreadsheet or view their icons in a widget. Clicking an icon will take you to the app’s details page in the App Store. The widget was made using Appsfire’s Widget Maker.

( Document Creation with Dragon Dictation and Google Education Apps via iPod Touch | Main | Overview of the IEAR Community as of 12/21/2010 )

How cool is that?

Free Online Learning Teacher Resources from PBS

digitaltext — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 19:19:11 +0000

PBS LearningMedia

Browse their collection of 14,000+ resources by subject area.

This next-generation digital media service empowers PreK–16 educators to re-imagine classroom learning, transform teaching, and creatively engage students. It brings together the best of public media, produced specifically for educators, from PBS, WGBH, and 55+ public media partners. This flexible service includes high-quality content tied to Common Core and national curriculum standards. The service is freely available to educators as a basic service that can be enhanced with premium solutions for schools and districts-designed for seamless media integration and customization. The basic service offers:

Unique access to best-in-class resources from PBS producers and partners and technology resources tied to Common Core and national curriculum standards

A robust content library of thousands of digital core curriculum resources, designed with today’s student in mind

Carefully created, purpose-built media: videos, interactives, audios, lesson plans, multimedia, professional development, and more

Ability for educators to search, save, share, and review content

Cross-platform flexibility to display on classroom presentation tools to mobile devices

Learning in the Digital Age from Frontline Workshops for Parents and Teachers

digitaltext — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 17:08:24 +0000

PBS LearningMedia - Learning in the Digital Age.

More and more educators are tapping into the power of digital media and technology for teaching and learning. The variety of information resources available online is simply staggering. Watch How Google Saved a School from FRONTLINE’s Digital Nation and discuss the hype and the hopes for improving education through technology.

Daisy Book Reader iPad iPhones Apps Now Available From Bookshare

digitaltext — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:05:59 +0000

Great news from Bookshare.org. They have created an iPad, iPhone app Read2Go available for $19.99. Finally, an “ereader” that really is an eReader….. at least to the way I think.

Read2Go is the most accessible DAISY book ereader for iOS. From within the app, you can browse, search, download, and read books directly from Bookshare using your Bookshare membership, as well as read DAISY books from other sources. The app gives you full control over visual choices for font size and color, background and highlighting color, and text-to-speech preferences. Read2Go features word-by-word highlighting for multi-modal reading.

Dyslexia Project – Dyslexia Help – Dyslexia Font

digitaltext — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 17:45:22 +0000

A great site visually demonstrating some of the problems people with dyslexia see when they read text. (The link is from Google Translate because the original text is Dutch.)

The Dyslexia Project

Free Film and Video Editors

digitaltext — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:56:28 +0000

18 Best Video Editors from SaveDelete.com’s Blog
I have limited experience with using a video editor and : only MS Office’s Movie Maker, Camstasia, and Adobe’s Captivate and without using the tutorials from Lynda.com, I would have rather do anything else than try to sync the audio with the video in Camtasia Studio and was happy to see the end of the free trial version. Rather than create my own list where I would prefer to have a brief description of the tool meaning I would need to try out each of the film and video editors , I found this list of free video editor and film editors on from by Yogesh Mankani blog post:

18 Best Video Editing Software For Free Download (Windows)

Royalty Free Music and Sound Effects

digitaltext — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 19:55:53 +0000

55 Great Websites for Downloading Free Sound Effects

The BeatSuite

Royalty free and podsafe music.

CC Mixter

Features remixes licensed under the Creative Commons.
ccMixter is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons
where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want.

Creative Commons

There’s plenty of music on the Creative Commons, though maybe not so much in your favorite genre.

LoopSound

More royalty free music

Musicloops.com

High quality podcast safe music from some of the best composers on the internet

Partners in Rhyme

Thousands of free sound effects to download and use, organized into easy to search categories

PodSafe Audio
Musicians and music lovers share tunes-
With an account you get:

• FREE MP3 and Video downloads
• Image storage and embedding
• Blogs, Gallery, Forum, EPK
• Editors – Review Artists and Songs
• Plus eCommerce shopping cart

Royalty Free Classical Music

Offers a nice selection of classical music for podcasts.

Royalty Free Music Clips

A blog with lots of posts of free royalty free music clips available for use in any commercial project including podcasts.

Royalty Free Music Loops

Music Loops from Partners in Rhyme

Royalty Free Music

Podcasting Tools

digitaltext — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 18:40:35 +0000

Blogtalkradio

Free 30 trial – Monthly Price after 30 days: $39.00

Why Choose BlogTalkRadio?

Broadcast to millions of people
Easy as making a phone call
Share via iTunes,
Facebook and Twitter
Embed your show player
on any website
No software to download or
hardware to purchase

Libsyn.com

“Libsyn (Liberated Syndication) offers several levels of podcast syndication including storage space and an archive plan that promises to hold all your podcasts, unmetered bandwidth, and the ability to use your own domain, and more. Podcasting packages start at $5.00 per month
All podcasting packages include:

No contracts
Cost effective plans to meet your needs
Simple to change plans at any time
Generous file storage and transfer policies”

PodBean.com

Podbean.com is an easy and powerful way to start podcasting

Easy to publish your podcast in 3 steps. No tech to learn.
Powerful promoting tools, iTunes Preview, Statistics.
Wonderful income chances with ads, paid subscriptions.
Basic Account is Free
Advanced Account is $4.95 per month

PodBean.com offers an easy way to publish your own audio and video podcast in 3 steps. There is not technology curve. You can share your podcast in Facebook, Myspace, Blogger, and other online destinations.

PodOmatic

PodOmatic offers a basic free and pro option. Basic provides easy tools, 500MB of storage and 15GB of bandwidth per month. Pro has more features for about $10/month.

SoundCloud
Has a free version

mirPod

“mirPod is a Virtual Media Center online that gives you the oportunity to find rss, podcasts, radios, Tv, videos. You can enjoy the shows online or on a mobile phone. You can, of course, download contents for your favorite pod. We offer, free players and tools for podcasters and bloggers.”

“mirPod is a webpage which allows you to create code to embed a podcast on your own website. This is a point and click operation which requires no technical knowledge.”