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Articles in the Productivity Category

Productivity, Resources, Tools »

[22 Jan 2008 | No Comment | ]

-Windows Only-
If you find yourself typing repitive text a lot while working through your emails or mountains of paperwork, maybe you should consider saving some time with the handy application Texter(FREE).

MS Office, Productivity, Tools »

[21 Jan 2008 | No Comment | ]

Generally, most teachers will have everything that comes via email go right into their inbox folder, which isn’t the best idea when it comes to organization. It would be like having a giant box and having all of your paperwork tossed into it without paperclips, folders, etc…  It doesn’t have to be this way with email.

Productivity, Resources, Tools »

[5 Jan 2008 | 2 Comments | ]

Managing a class of students in a computer lab or a classroom with multiple student computers can often be a hassle. Anytime students have the option of choosing between a computer screen and the teacher, they will often choose the computer. Needless to say, you will have a rogue student playing solitaire, visiting other websites,  or just basically goofing off. Enter iTALC.

MS Office, Productivity, Resources, Tools »

[30 Dec 2007 | No Comment | ]

Tests that are included with textbooks or other teacher resources can be hit or miss, and often, creating your own tests and quizzes is the best way to accurately assess your students knowledge on a subject. But, it can take a while to go about formatting a test from scratch using word processing applications. That’s where Easy Test Maker steps in.

Literature, Productivity, Resources, Student Tech, Tools, Web »

[19 Dec 2007 | No Comment | ]

We’ve covered several different ways to generate bibliographies, but Bill over at bloggingonthebay.org has pointed out a useful tool, The Citation Machine. The concept of this web resource is that it gives you the fields to fill in about your source and it generates a citation for you. Handy. Check out Bill’s article here.

Hardware, Presentations, Productivity, Resources, Tools »

[12 Dec 2007 | No Comment | ]

We’ve covered a few ideas for technology on the cheap before, but this one may take the cake. The article has been posted on a couple of other boards including the classroom 2.0 Ning.
Johnny Chung Lee of Carnegie Mellon University has designed a project for creating an interactive whiteboard out of a Nintendo Wii Remote, an IR LED light, and of course your projector. The price? $50(projector not included). The site has a video demonstration, details on how to make the pen, and includes the software for running it.
The concept …

Hardware, Productivity, Resources, Tools »

[7 Dec 2007 | 5 Comments | ]

It’s true that a computer can have a huge positive impact on the classroom, but sometimes these machines misbehave. One crashed computer can mean months(often years) of hard work are gone forever.
Scenario: You arrive at school ready to take on the day. You go to turn on the computer and get a strange error message or blank screen. Windows never boots, and the thought of all those important files being erased strikes a chill down your spine.
The good news is that in almost all cases those files are still savable. …

MS Office, Productivity, Resources, Student Tech, Tools »

[4 Dec 2007 | No Comment | ]

Ever had that student that constantly turns in their work done on a program that you don’t have(ahem, Word Perfect)? Or perhaps you needed to do some work for school but the schools computer uses a program that you don’t have at home? Usually, the solution for this involves finding a program to convert it to a format that plays nicely with your computer. Sometimes these programs are free, but often not. Zamzar.com not only does the conversion for free, it does it without ever having to download a thing. …

Productivity, Resources, Tools »

[27 Nov 2007 | No Comment | ]

Ever noticed how there is never a printer available when you need one. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to que a document from your home computer to print on your school printer when you arrive in the morning without having to worry about flash drives, disks, etc…? Or how about the student whose printer always seems to explode whenever they have something due the next morning? There might be a solution. PrintAnywhere.com offers a free service that lets you print to any printer(or share yours) without having to …

Productivity »

[26 Oct 2007 | 2 Comments | ]

We have already covered how you can replace your pricey install of MS Office with OpenOffice.org’s amazing office suite, but there is more than one player in this game. Imagine not only having a quality office suite for free, but having the versatility to use it just about anywhere without having to carry around your files on a flash drive or disk, and the handy ability to share and collaborate on multiple document types. Enter the online office apps. Google Docs and Zoho.