@justinreeve made an interesting tweet today about a service called Pixton, and said that he could see students using it to demonstrate knowledge. After checking it out, I totally agree. Pixton is another comic book creator type website, similar to others around. But, I like this one a lot better. It seems as if everything is a lot more customizable and simple. Clicking on parts of the body brings up tools that will help you move and animate them, while clicking on objects gives you different sets of tools. Just …

As schools open their doors in the fall, there’s no doubt that some will be starting with a slightly tighter wallet than in years past. Some schools will handle the tough economy by cutting programs, others will be cutting jobs, and most will be finding it tougher to get their hands on those high price tag items for their classrooms. With this in mind, here is a roundup of the five free resources that could make things a little easier in the classroom.

Often, when working on presentations, lessons etc.. I need an image from a movie clip, website, or still frame from the screen of my computer. This is something easily done within windows with the Printscreen button. Next time you have something on your screen hit the printscreen button while holding down CTRL and ALT. This will save a picture of everything currently on your screen and store it in your clipboard. You can now paste(Right Click>Paste or Edit>Paste) the picture wherever you need it. If you are just wanting a certain part …

If your email is getting a bit out of hands these days and our previous tips haven’t helped, maybe it’s time to check into some software solutions. Xobni, a free Outlook Plugin, has done wonders for my personal email productivity. Let’s take a look at some of it’s features.

Google has had an option now in Google Earth that allows for exploration of the night sky through Google Sky, but Microsoft’s new Worldwide Telescope may be a stronger player in the game.
Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope offers students, teachers and astronomy buffs a chance to seemelessly explore the night sky through a virtual telescope. It allows you to choose from several options including views from the Hubble, Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, Spitzer Space Telescope or others. But one of the greatest features that I have seen are it’s tours. The application …

As attendees of one of BrainPop’s presentations were discussing some of the cool ways that they were using BP in their classrooms, I had a chance to pick up an awesome tip. Monica Nahas, an Instructional Technology Specialist, mentioned that Readwritethink.org has a tool for creating your own comics, and it could be used to create your own BrainPop styled comics.
Taking this tip, I decided to check it out. The tool is simple, and probably best for younger students, but I could imagine that even …

I realized after posting the poll about Twitter that it may be unknown to some exactly what Twitter is. Describing Twitter isn’t so much hard, as it is difficult to explain without leaving people wondering why anyone would want to use it… which is a question most people ask, and only try out of curiosity. The fact is, there isn’t one way to use twitter.
Let me give you a brief walk through.
I signed up for twitter, and now I have an empty page with a little box at the top …

A couple of weeks ago I received an email telling me about a site that offered up video content from the likes of the University of California that combined trusted video content with a sort of social media twist. And to be honest it has taken me quite some time to really dig into their site to really see what they had to offer. I liked it!
The videos that Veezyon offers are indeed trustworthy as they come straight from content partners that are notorious for being solid research institutions, which …

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.