Comic Poster- What Students Should Know about Creative Commons Licenses

July 2, 2014
Here is another excellent infographic on the different Creative Commons Licenses. As most of you know, Creative Commons (CC) is a licensing non-profit body that provides content originators with different kinds of licenses that they can grant to the general public to use their work. Instead of "all rights reserved rule" CC works as "some rights reserved rule". Using CC licenses, authors of original content can specify the conditions, freedoms and limitations for the re-distribution and re-sharing of their works.

Knowing the difference between each CC license will enable our students to make informed choices and better use of licensed content they come across on the net. To this end, the visual below created by CC Poland ( I discovered it through Digital Inspiration) outlines the 6 types of licenses that students should know about. These licenses are accompanied by short definitions and conditions for use for each one of them.

 Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest .

3 Great Collaborative Whiteboard Tools for Teachers

July 2, 2014
Below are some great whiteboard tools for teachers to use in class. These tools allow you to draw, sketch, and type on a web-based whiteboard. Some of them like PixiClip supports screen sharing. These tools can be used for a wide variety of purposes. They can be used for collaborative brainstorming, creating diagrams and illustrations, and designing step by step how-to guides.

1- PixiClip

PixiClip is a great web-based interactive whiteboard with huge potential for educational uses. PixiClip allows you to easily record your screen and share it with others.It provides an online canvas on which you can type, narrate, draw, sketch, and upload images to mark-up. You can record the whole process of your work on the canvas accompanied with your voice
2- Sketchlot

This is a web-based whiteboard tool that does not require any plugin or app installation. Sketchlot is compatible with different computers and tablets. The great thing about Sketchlot is that students do not need to sign up to use it. Teachers can add students to their account.As a teacher whatever drawing, sketch or illustration you create on Sketchlot can be easily shared with students either individually or with the whole group.

3- Realtime Board

This is another whiteboard tool for teachers. It allows you to host collaborative brainstorming sessions online. You can also use it to visually illustrate content using drawings, images, videos and texts. There is also the option to post and mark PDFs and add comments to documents using post-it stickers.

 Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest .

9 Great Google Alternatives for Academics and Student Researchers

June 2, 2014
While Google remains a robust search engine with great capabilities and potential for us in education and academia, sometimes it seems more plausible to use specific and topic-based search engines to look for better search results. In the world of academia where  journal articles and research papers are the mainstay of learning and academic production, it becomes even more pressing to have a handy list of specifically designed search engines to easily search for and access journal articles and academic periodicals and papers. In this regard, I compiled a list of some of the best academic search engines that you can use for this purpose.

1- Academia.edu

This is one of my favourite search engines for academic papers. Academia.edu  is a place to share and follow research. You can use it to search for papers submitted by other scholars or you can share your own papers. Academia.edu is also a community of academic researchers where you can create your profile and follow others who share similar research interests.

2- Google Scholar

Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.

 Related : 9 Tips Every Teacher Should Know about Google Scholar

3- JURN

JURN is another wonderful search engine to use to search for millions of free academic articles, chapters, and theses across multiple disciplines ( Arts, History, Humanities, Business, Economics, Ecology, Science and more). JURN is also a directory of over 3000 free arts and humanities journals that you can easily search from one single platform.

4- RefSeek

RefSeek is a web search engine for students and researchers that aims to make academic information easily accessible to everyone. RefSeek searches more than one billion documents, including web pages, books, encyclopedias, journals, and newspapers.

5- HighBeam

HighBeam Research is a premium information service built for students, instructors, researchers, professionals, and others looking to gain deep knowledge on subjects of interest. HighBeam provides access to thousands of credible, professional, published sources

6- Springer

Springer is a powerful academic platform that provides researchers with access to millions of scientific documents from a wide variety of journals, books, series, protocols and reference works.

7- BASE

BASE is a voluminous search engine especially for academic open access web resources. BASE is operated by Bielefeld University Library. As a search engine, BASE facilitates effective and targeted searches and retrieves high quality, academically relevant results.The sources which are included in BASE are intellectually selected and reviewed.

8- List of academic databases and search engines

This page contains a representative list of major databases and search engines useful in an academic setting for finding and accessing articles in academic journals, repositories, archives, or other collections of scientific and other articles.

9- ERIC

The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) is another great search engine that academics can use to search for scientific papers.You can use ERIC to search for peer reviewed papers or use its advanced search tips to refine your search and target specific journals and papers.

 Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest .

Useful iPad Apps and Activities to Teach Social Studies

July1, 2014
"Practical iPad Uses in The Classroom" is a series of posts I started a few weeks ago in which I share with teachers some practical examples of tasks and activities involving the use of iPad in class. If you have missed the previous posts then check them out here and here.

Today I am sharing with you a great presentation created by Karlaholt. In this slideshow, Karlaholt features  three example activities of how to use iPad apps to help you with teaching social studies .

Activity 1
Based on the communities students have studied ( Peru, Tunisia, Ukraine and india) students are asked to create a slideshow presentation using Haiku Deck app. In this presentations students are to highlight the impact of geography and culture on the quality of life within communities. Slide 3 in the slideshow below has a visual guide on how students can use Haiku Deck to create presentations.

For more apps to use on this activity check out this resource:

5 Good Presentation Apps for Students and Teachers

Activity 2
In this activity students are asked to create  an illustrative postcard of the community they want to visit. The poscard should include a short description and an explanation of traditions and cultural customs of that community.
The app suggested for this activity is  Photocard Lite. Directions on how to use this app are included in slide 4.

For more apps to use on this activity check out this resource:
5 Good iPad Apps for Creating Classroom Posters

Activity 3
In this activity, students are asked to created animated images to compare and contrast the contributing factors to quality of life between the communities mentioned in the previous tasks. The app suggested for this activity is Videolicious. Slide 7 includes visual directions on how students can use this app.

For more apps to use on this activity check out these resources:

• 3 Good Apps to Easily Create Animated Videos on iPad
• 8 iPad Apps for Creating Stop Motion Video

Grade 3 Social Studies: iPad Station Cards from karlaholt

Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest .

An Excellent New Feature for Google Docs

July 1, 2014
A few days ago Google released a few interesting updates to its Drive applications. One important update that I want to share with you today is called "Suggested Edits". This new feature is great for collaborative work on Google Docs. Before, when you share a Google document with your collaborators and grant them the editing rights they can edit anything in it. But with "Suggested Edits" you, as the owner of the document, can control this editing process by allowing collaborators to make only suggestions which you can either accept or reject. This new feature is not available on Google Docs for mobile.

Here is how you can enable "Suggested Edits" in your Google Docs :

1- Open the document.
2- In the top-right corner, make sure you are in Suggesting mode

3-To suggest an edit to existing text, highlight the text you want to change and type the suggested edit. To suggest adding new text, just type the new text. Your suggestions will appear in a new color and any text you suggest deleting or replacing will be crossed out.

Owners of the documents will receive an email with your suggestions and be able to accept or reject them.

Accept or reject suggested edit in your document

If someone has suggested an edit to a document you own, you can decide to accept or reject it.

1- Open the document.
2- Click the comment where the suggestion has been made.
3- Click Accept or Reject in the top-right of the comment:

• Accept the proposed change so that the suggested text is added directly to your document.
• Reject the proposed change so that the suggested text is deleted.

You can see all of the suggested edits that have been accepted or rejected in your document by clicking Comments in the top-right corner of the document.

Allow others to suggest edits in a document

When you share a document with someone, you can allow them to make comments and suggest edits without making direct changes to the document by giving them "Can comment" permissions.

1- Open the file you want to share.
2- Click Share in the top-right corner.
3- Add the email addresses for the people you want to share with in the text box.
4- Click the drop-down menu next to the text box and select "Can comment".
5- Click Done.

People who have permission to edit the document can also suggest edits by switching from Editing to Suggesting mode in the top-right corner of a document.

 Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest .

A Handy Chrome Search Tip for Teachers

July 1 , 2014
Here is a quick and handy search tip I learned today from Ana Hoffman's post on Google Plus. For those of you who are using Chrome browser this nifty tip will allow you to search for content on any website right from Chrome address bar. This means that you do not need to access the website to use its search engine to look for content hosted on it.

Here is an example of how this tip works. Imagine that you want to search for some screen sharing tools on this blog. Instead of going to www.educatorstechnology.com and then use the search engine on the left hand side, you can just type the address of this blog in your Chrome bar and once you see the  suggested URL of the website, press the tab button on your keyboard to activate the search.

The URL of the address bar will then be converted automatically to a search engine saying "search educators technology.com:".

 For this trick to work, you need to make sure that you tap the tab button on your keyboard only when you see the root URL (eg. site.com) on the address bar. Try out it now.

 Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest .

10 Good Ways to Integrate Mobile Phones in Class

July 1, 2014
When it comes to integrating mobile phones in learning , many teachers show a deep-seated concern over it. But let's face it students as early as primary grades have phones and have already developed key skills to use them. Phones and other digital media are part and parcel of their lives if not an important part of it. So instead of banning them from using the digital media they are already familiar with, it would be better to look into ways to embrace these media and leverage its power to enhance students learning. In this regard, the visual below outlines 10 useful examples of how you can integrate phones in classroom learning. Have a look and as always share with us what you think of it.

Source: Splash Math

Follow us on : Twitter, Facebook , Google plus, Pinterest .