Ten From My Feedly

Been off of my computer for a while.  With two kids at home and it being summer, only time I have a chance to blog is when both of them are not at home.  Today is one of those days.  From my time away, here are some of the top posts from my Feed.ly recently.

1.) and 2.) From A Media Specialists Guide to the Internet comes two lists.  20 Places to Find of the Year Resources is a valuable list for units, activities, games and more.  21 Websites with Summer Reading Ideas for You and Your Students provides lists of books for various grade levels for students and for teachers.

3.) 10 Ideas to Move Innovation Forward comes from The Principal of Change Blog and provides teachers with ways to be more innovative in your classroom and schools.

4.) and 5.) 10 Excellent Digital Citizenship Tops for Students and Kids is an infographic with Do's and Don'ts for the Internet and comes for the Educational Technology and Mobile Learning Blog.  Also from this blog is 50 Google Docs Tips Every Teacher Should Know.  This is a list of archived blog posts related to Google Docs.

6.) From the Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero blog comes 40 Sites and Apps for Creating Presentations.  Some of these are new to me and they can be found in alphabetical order as well.

7.) From Edudemic comes 35 Useful Apps and Web Tools for Math Teachers.  This is a good list with short descriptions and the ability to up or down vote the resources.  They can be viewed alphabetically, by rank, newest, etc.

8.) 10 Ways to End the School Year on an Up Note when You're Exhausted is a great post from the Cool Cat Teacher Blog.  Most teachers slowly wear down as the year goes on and these tips can be helpful towards ending the year positively.  These can also be great reminders throughout the school year as well.

9.) Going Global - Tips ad Resources for Global Collaborations provides teachers with tips, information, and resources to globally connect with other educators and the benefits of doing so.  This comes from the Blogging About the Web 2.0 Connect Classroom.

10.) From the U.S. History Teachers Blog comes an interesting share from the Washington Post; 31 Charts That Will Destroy Your Faith in Humanity.  Several students learn visually and these charts could be helpful for economics, sociology, and geography teachers.  At the same time, in advanced classes the charts could provide some interesting writing prompts as well.  

Blekko - The Slashtag Search Engine

WAY back in November of 2010 I wrote about Blekko while it was still in beta and never really gave it much thought after that.  Recently Blekko has gone through some changes to make search results for user friendly and different from what we are used to on other search engines.  Results from searches are now automatically broken down into various categories of different content.  When you search for something you get both the top and latest results as well as specific searches related to your original search.  This new layout allows for more results on one page and the search will automatically adjust to your screen size for mobile devices.  Users can also search Blekko for images and videos as well.

If you have never seen Blekko and are unsure of what a slashtag is, basically it allows users to easily create a custom search and helps to narrow down a search.  The slashtags are a tool that is used to help filter search results while helping to eliminate spam and content farms.  For more information about slashtags, check out the tutorial.  

Money As You Grow - 20 Things Kids Need to Know to Live Financially Smart Lives

Money As You Grow is an initiative of the President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability and has been selected by the American Library Association as one of its Great Websites for Kids!  The site breaks down financial literacy activities into five different age ranges ( 3-5, 6-10, 11-13, 14-18, and 18+).  Activities are available to help students understand money, finance, spending, protection, online safety, savings, credit, investing, and more.  Each area has multiple activities to help students become better stewards of their money.  With Money As You Grow, Teachers can download a free poster as well that helps to share the steps related to money at each age range.  See a sample of the poster below.  The steps that you see are also the topics that have activities associated with them.

The Science of Baseball

As a native of Louisville where the Louisville Slugger bat is crafted, baseball has always been a part of my past time.  From watching the St. Louis Cardinals to trading baseball cards I have always been a fan of the game.  From Exploratorium comes The Science of Baseball which allows users to test their fastball reaction time (requires Flash) or see what makes a home run (requires Shockwave).  There are also articles and other activities of interest related to baseball and science.  For history teachers there is also information about women in the game and other historical aspects of baseball.  For math teachers they provide statistical information that can be used to understand mathematical concepts.  If looking to make a lesson more relevant during the spring time period or bring a baseball lesson into the classroom on Opening Day, check out The Science of Baseball.

Gmail Search Gets an Upgrade

The image above is the winning doodle in the Google 4 Doodle Contest and thought I would share it here while also sharing some search changes in Google Gmail.  Google announced today that users will be able to see relevant emails, calendar events, Google Drive files and more (in the future) as they type a search query in their Google Gmail account.  The search feature will only be rolled out to English users at first and will be happening during the coming week.  Some users have already been using the feature as they opted in to the opportunity and from those users the trial period appeared to be a success.

The search feature works by providing users a drop down from the search bar with icons and information of different results from the predictive text of the search query.  You can see in the image below what it looks like.  Over time unification across various Google products appears to be the long term goal.