Flash animations can be found all over the web, and several can be very useful in the classroom-especially with interactive white boards. But what would happen if the site that offers it were to go offline, get blocked, or delete the video?? For these moments, it would be great to have a copy of it saved locally on your own computer, and with a little elbow grease it can happen. Here’s how.

Learning to use a computer efficiently can be a tough task if you weren’t born with one already at your finger tips. Solutions to simple problems typically aren’t obvious, and unless you have spent a great deal of time with one you won’t inherently know whether something needs to be clicked, double clicked, downloaded, uploaded, or just plain opened. J. McNulty understands your frustration and has developed a solution to alleviate these struggles over at  his site, 180techtips.com.

We’ve talked before about the incredible movies that Brainpop has to offer for a very wide selection of topics and content areas. But we have failed to mention one feature that places Brainpop above being just a place for good educational movies. Other than providing quizzes and the soon-to-be-added lesson plans, the site offers a way to view a list of all of their movies aligned to the State Standards for all fifty states. This feature takes all of the guess work out of selecting when and what to …

The following post may be a little too cutting edge for some, and still old news for others, but it at the very least shows a potential resource that could be tapped to reduce the strain on low budget schools needing more computers with internet connection. Rules and guidelines will still need to be hashed out, and key figures will need to be made believers, but the possibility is out there. With that said… here is the post.
I had an interesting experience this week that challenged a lot of what …

If you happen to be one of those teachers that live their life from the screen of your Smartphone, then you probably already know that with a data plan and a few quick settings you can have your email sent directly to your phone. Not only can you check your mail, but you can reply and often use the exchange server’s address book.
You might also be using your phone to herd your office documents together if you are running WM 6, which allows you to view, edit, and create MS …

Call me crazy, but the times when I am able to take my work home is often some of the most productive time that I have. My focus is clearer, and I am able to settle in to a comfortable place and work where the distractions are fewer. I get a type of productivity going that I could only refer to as “the zone”, but I couldn’t be hardly as productive without a quality internet connection-something that doesn’t come cheap…or does it?
I take a lot of pride in my high-speed …

Today, I was firing off a couple of emails when I noticed that the message count in the top corner said, “483 Messages”! I decided enough was enough and began doing some more research into managing my inbox. I checked up on lifehacker.com, 43folders.com, and a few others to see what was going on. One of the best words of wisdom I found, however, rested in Scott Hanselman’s blog.
Remember that your inbox is not storage, it’s a list of what hasn’t been categorized yet.
This is exactly what my inbox had …

If you’re like me, you probably have an assortment of Education related blogs and sites loaded into your feed reader or bookmarks that you like to check on a frequent basis, but one way to add to your list of resources is to use the browser add-on, StumbleUpon.
If you are unfamiliar with StumbleUpon, it’s a free service that integrates into your browser that allows you to check out sites based on categories that others have found useful. Hitting the Stumble button in your browser takes you immediately to the next …

We’ve talked about BrainPop here before, and how they have some incredible content for K-12 through their animated lessons, but now they would like to extend an opportunity to the readers here at TTB. So, from now until the end of May if you sign up for their free trial to you can enter in the access code “TEACHERTECH” you will receive an all-access pass to explore all of their content for 30 days. Thanks BrainPop!

I came across this site today and was blown away by the model they are using. Though it doesn’t seem comprehensive as of now, and I am in the works of contacting the creator, it does seem to offer quite a bit or promise. The site offers interactive quizzes for keyboard, theory, and song analysis. Each test will reveal the correct answer, provide an explanation, and send results to the teacher’s email. Being a music teacher, I feel that this site has the right ingredients, and with further development, it …