Part Two

Part Three

Named after its creator, Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha is not a search engine like Google that helps you locate information. It is a “computational knowledge engine” that “generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links.”

For more information on this amazing tool, read Joyce Valenza’s summary of Wolfram|Alpha’s features or watch Wolfram|Alpha’s creator do a demo.

Play around with Wolfram|Alpha. I think you will find a new tool to add to your information toolkit.

a research-oriented effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within higher education.

New this year is a Horizon Report, specifically geared to K-12 that follows the same format – a panel of experts from around the world identify and organize new technologies by their “adoption horizon” or how long they think it will take before those technologies are adopted in K-12 schools.

These are the technologies that are predicted to be seen in wide use within the year:

• collaborative environments – virtual workplaces where students and teachers can communicate, share information, and work together
• online communication tools – put students in touch with distant family members, practicing experts, and their peers, wherever they may be located

Within 2-3 years, we might expect to see:

• mobile devices – the new ability to run third-party applications represents a fundamental change in the way we regard mobiles and opens the door to myriad uses for education, entertainment, productivity, and social interaction.
• cloud computing – computing resources resulting from very large “data farms” — specialized data centers that host thousands of servers. Many of us use applications that run in the cloud daily without even being aware that they are cloud-based. Image editors, word processors, social networking tools, and others are examples of cloud-based applications.

In 4-5 years:

• smart objects – link the virtual world and the real: a smart object “knows” about itself and its environment, and can reveal what it is for, who owns it, where and how it was made, and what other objects in the world are like it. Libraries are an obvious place where smart objects come in handy, for purposes like collection tracking and checking materials in and out.
• personal web – a term coined to represent a collection of technologies that confer the ability to reorganize, configure and manage online content rather than just viewing it; but part of the personal web is the underlying idea that web content can be sorted, displayed, and even built upon according to an individual’s personal needs and interests.

The full report gives lots of examples of how these technologies could be used in K-12 and schools. Very interesting stuff and worth a look.

Word Mosaic

This generator from Image Chef allows you to write a comment or a poem in the shape of a heart or other symbols.

Thanks to Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts blog for the link.

Bookvideoning.com is a new portal where teachers, librarians and students can share media (in any digital format) to promote books, reading, and literacy K-12.

In my travels around the web, I have seen lots of great video book trailers, Voicethreads, Animotos, and other digital storytelling efforts. What a fabulous idea to have them all collected in one online space.

I encourage you to participate and upload your creations. Here is my contribution.

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According to the web site, Glogster is a way to “mix graphics, photos, videos, music and text” into a poster-style format called a “glog.” Glogs can include links to other web sites and be embedded into any site that allows users to paste in JavaScript code.

Now Glogster has introduced Glogster for Educators and I can see this tool being used for all kinds of student projects. Take a look at these examples of student-created glogs:

What a great web 2.0 way to re-invent the traditional poster project!

In the Ancient Rome 3D layer, you can:

• Fly into Rome as it looked in 320 A.D.
• Tour the interior of famous buildings.
• Visit the sites in 3D such as the Roman Forum, Colosseum and the Forum of Julius Caesar.
• Learn about how the Romans lived.

Here’s a demo: