Photovisi

Photovisi is a site that allows you to upload several photos to create a collage of photos.  The site is fairly simple to use.  Select a template, upload your photos, then download the collage in jpeg format.  There are several different templates to choose from as well, and if you create an account you get access to all the templates.  Each template can be edited to organize the pictures in a way that best suits your needs.  You can change the background color or even put an image in the background of the template.  You can also crop the photos once you upload them.  The upload features was also rather fast.  I was surprised.  Photos can be re-sized, turned, and warped as well.

You could use Photovisi as a way to organize many photos for a presentation, or even take pictures of your students and then have that as the background on your computer (if you edit the photo, you can put their name on the picture as well.).  Would be a great tool for yearbook or journalism teachers as well for organizing photos of several students at one event.  Great for adding photos to a classroom or school web page as well.

Drag on Tape

Dragontape is an online video mixing tool that allows you to take videos from a site like YouTube and merge them together to create one large video.  Dragontape would be a great way to merge together several clips to show your students without having to go back and forth and save to a playlist.

Dragontape uses a simple drag and drop feature and you can search for YouTube videos from within the website or you can copy and paste the URL.  Organizing and watching the videos is very simplistic as well.  You can register for an account, but it is not necessary to use the software.  Registering does allow you to save your video mix tapes that you create.

You can give your "tape" a title and determine whether you want it to be private or public.  Go here to get started creating your own video collage.

7 Technology Alternatives to Standard Homework Assignments

Standard Homework Assignment: Create a poster board over a book/person/event.
Technology Alternative: Create a Glog using Glogster for Education

Standard Homework Assignment: Find an article about a certain topic (Current Event maybe) and bring into class with a write up discussing the content
Technology Alternative: Have students find that article online and post a link to it on a blog or wallwisher wall discussing the content.  Share the blog/wall in class the following day.

Standard Homework Assignment: Complete the questions from a certain section or chapter review in your textbook.
Technology Alternative: Create a Back Channel Chat using a site like TitanPad and discuss the questions from the book at a certain time that night. 

Standard Homework Assignment (Math): Do a certain number of problems from your book and bring them in to check for correctness
Technology Alternative: Use a site like Twiddla and provide a whiteboard area for students to collaboratively work together on the problems.

Standard Homework Assignment: Complete a worksheet and turn in to the teacher the following day
Technology Alternative: Create the worksheet and make it available to students online (Use a Word to PDF converter).  Have students search the Internet for the answers and provide a link to the source for where they found the answer.

Standard Homework Assignment: Read a poem/story/section of a book and be prepared to discuss in class the next day
Technology Alternative: Read a poem/story/section of a book and create a blog or Twitter account for students to discuss the night they read it.  Then share the comments on the blog with students to facilitate the discussion in class the next day.  It also provides a way to grade them for participating in the reading.  If they do a blog response, they get a grade, if not, they don't.

Standard Homework Assignment: Write a Poem.
Technology Alternative: Use a site like PicLits and write the poem using an image as inspiration.  Email the completed poem to the teacher.  Share in class.

What Technology Alternatives do you have for the Standard Homework Assignment?  Feel free to comment!

Top 10 Things I Learned Going From Teaching Students to "Teaching" Technology Integration - My 200th Post

I do want to point out before getting into the list that these are in no particular order and one of them is not more important than the other. Some of these are personal opinion, while some of these are from personal experience.  However, all ten are very true to the successful integration of technology in the classroom.

1.) So much of the technology integration that I am sharing was available while I was teaching, I just did not have anyone to show it to me.

2.) With what I know now, I am intrigued with the idea of going back to the classroom to use the technology to improve my lessons and activities and engage my students more in class.

3.) It is still, and will truly never be about the technology; it is about the teacher who uses the technology and how they use the technology.

4.) Possibilities for integrating technology across the curriculum are endless for those teachers that are willing to learn.  Technology is the one true resource that is not biased to a certain subject matter.

5.) Twitter is a great method of Professional Development for educators and should be encouraged by teacher education programs and school administrators.  We expect students to be lifelong learners, but then don't expect it of ourselves.

6.) It is good practice to use the tools that you are sharing with the staff during meetings and professional development so that they can see the tool and resource in action.  It is also good for them to see it not always go right when you are using it and how you adapt to a "problem."

7.) You don't have to be a technology integration specialist or a technology resource teacher to share technology with your staff.  You just have to be a teacher who is willing to share personal experiences with integrating technology in the classroom.

8.) Blogging (both writing and reading) provides a way to share, discuss, and reflect on experiences as a teacher.  It has been a great experience in my position, especially receiving feedback and learning the powerful uses of RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

9.) Ups and downs that come with technology integration are no different than any other ups and downs that one might experience while teaching and working in education.  The Internet will always be down at some point....but so might the copier that you need for those copies.

10.) Technology integration offers more opportunities and possibilities for communicating with students and parents....especially outside the classroom.

So what is keeping you from having the same eye opening experience I have had in the past year? 

DOC Cop

DOC Cop is a Plagiarism detection website.  It can check PDF files as well as any version of Microsoft Word.  DOC Cop is completely free to use and for the first time that I have seen of any of these sites, it does not keep the submissions.  It deletes the document once it completes the submission.  No submission is copied, retained, or passed on to be sold. 

The idea behind DOC COP is really to compare papers over the same topic, not necessarily papers to other books, magazines, or websites.  It is good if you have the resources in PDF form to check against, otherwise you are only able to check a students paper against another paper.

All the files must contain at least 20 words and no more than 100,000.  All checks on web based submissions have a limit of 550 words.  If you want to check a web submission you can do so, and it is powered by a Google Search.  This would be good to check web pages that students created to see if they copied any material.

Sign up is as simple as providing an email and waiting for a Guest ID to be emailed to you.  In the time it took to write this post I had not received a Guest ID though.