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Final Iowa results show Santorum with 34-vote lead – CNN.com
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“The results from Iowa caucus night revealed a virtual tie,” Romney said. “I would like to thank the Iowa Republican Party for their careful attention to the caucus process, and we once again recognize Rick Santorum for his strong performance in the state.”
“The Iowa caucuses, with record turnout, were a great start to defeating President Obama in Iowa and elsewhere in the general election,” Romney added.
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The beating heart of SOPA is the ability of intellectual property owners (read: movie studios and record labels) to effectively pull the plug on foreign sites against whom they have a copyright claim. If Warner Bros., for example, says that a site in Italy is torrenting a copy of The Dark Knight, the studio could demand that Google remove that site from its search results, that PayPal no longer accept payments to or from that site, that ad services pull all ads and finances from it, and—most dangerously—that the site’s ISP prevent people from even going there.
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it let IP owners take these actions without a single court appearance or judicial sign-off
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.to the point of potentially creating an “Internet Blacklist”.
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Interactive Biology, By Leslie Samuel
That is what Interactive Biology is all about – Breaking down the concepts in biology so that if a Freshman in High School wants to understand Graduate-level Neurobiology, with enough discipline, she could do so.
In this world of global connectedness in which we now live, learning opportunities can come from anywhere.
This morning a teacher popped in to my office to ask if I would have any idea on how to get in touch with a woman whose experience as a child was made in to a Disney TV movie. She explained that this movie, The Color of Friendship, was being used as a tie in with a To Kill a Mockingbird lesson. I didn’t make any promises, but told her I would try. Within 5 minutes, thanks to Google, I found this person’s email address. I emailed her to let her know that a school in Florida was watching the movie but had a few questions about her experience. About four hours later (she is on the west coast) I received an enthusiastic reply offering her time to have a Q & A with our English class. Do you think the kids might learn something by talking to the person on whom the story is based? I think so…
The important thing here is…We asked. It’s tough sometimes to muster up the courage to ask somebody to help out, especially someone whom you’ve never met and, more than likely, will never meet. If we’re not actively seeking out these learning opportunities for our students, I think we’re doing them an injustice. Google makes it incredibly easy to “find” people.
Whether or not being able to find information so easily about people is a good thing is still up for debate but as educators, we owe it to our kids to create the most authentic learning experiences we can. We’re conducting the Q & A next week. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Remember…JUST ASK…nobody is gonna bite.
photo credit: RussellReno
Most of us have heard of DropBox, the great service that gives you 2 GB of free storage space in the “cloud.” If you do not already have a DropBox account, you can easily sign up for one HERE. Did you also know that DropBox can be a great way to collect students’ digital work? This post will focus on 3 great tools that will make collecting student work a breeze. All three of these services are free (as of this writing) and all are dead simple to use.
Ever wish you could easily receive big files from anyone? Now you can!
Together with Dropbox you can setup an unique upload address with password protection.
DROPitTOme is your one stop solution when an email is just not enough.
Features of Dropitto.me:
- Dead simple to use – create an account, give it permission to access your DropBox, you will then be provided with a custom URL.
- Ability to require an upload password, so only those students with the password can upload files.
- Allows uploads of 75 MBs in size, can be any format
Downsides of Dropitto.me:
- No way to specify an upload folder – all uploads go into a Dropitome folder inside your Dropbox folder
- No way to embed the upload form into class website, blog, or wiki
Create a free account at http://dropitto.me
Send a stork to request files from anyone, anywhere.
FileStork offers Dropbox users an easy andsecure way to request files from anyone.
Features of FileStork.net:
- Two methods of file delivery – One time request – allows you to ask for a file by sending an email request. Standalone request – would definitely be the most effective method for use with students. Standalone requests do not require students to have an email account
- Allows for a description of the type of file being requested. This could be very useful to give the students further instructions about their file upload
- Allows the teacher to specify a folder for the uploaded files
- Ability to set up multiple requests – a teacher could create a a separate upload request for each class they teach. This would certainly help with organizing the files.
- Ability to require an upload password, so only those students with the password can upload files.
- Does not appear to be any file size limitations on the uploads
Downsides of Filestork.net
- No way to embed the upload form into class website, blog, or wiki
- A bit more time consuming and difficult to set up than Dropitto.me
Create a free account at http://filestork.net
This free service is the most intriguing to me. JotForm is a WYSIWYG form editor in the browser. They have recognized a need for a way to easily upload to DropBox and have created a custom form and setup procedure for DropBox that is just flat out awesome.
Features of JotForm:
- Once connected to your DropBox account, the process is 100% automated – I can use the default form they create for me or I can COMPLETELY customize my form to make it suit my needs.
- Not only do you receive a custom URL for your form, but you receive an embed code as well. This is the only service I’ve seen that allows your students to upload files to your DropBox directly from your class web site, your class blog or your class wiki. That’s cool.
- Can require (on your custom form) student names for each of the uploads. When the student uploads a file, a separate PDF file is uploaded in the background with all of the pertinent information about the upload. This really helps with the organization of your uploaded files.
- Can add Captcha codes to your form to ensure no spammers are uploading junk to your DropBox folder
Downsides of JotForm:
- Customizing the form, although as simple as they can make, is still a bit tricky. It will take a little time to get used to the editor for custom forms.
- No way to specify an upload folder – all uploads go into a JotForm folder inside your Dropbox folder
Create a free DropBox form at http://www.jotform.com/dropbox/
Bottom Line:
All three services offer a fantastic way to allow your students to send their digital work directly to your Dropbox folder for collection.
If you’re looking for something incredibly quick and simple, DropItTo.me would be the way to go. If you’d like to specify the folder that your files are sent to, then FileStork.net would be your choice. If you would like an embeddable, completely customizable form for your students to upload their work, then JotForm is for you.
One of the best uses of Twitter in education has been the introduction of dozens and dozens of educational “Twitter chats.” Many of these chats are quite popular. #edchat, for example, can see anywhere from 1200 to 1800 tweets in a single hour. The information comes fast and furious and can be quite difficult to follow, so back in August 2009, I volunteered to archive each of these chats so they could be viewed in a more reasonable manner.
The Archivist Desktop
The Archivist Desktop application, which is only available for PCs, has turned out to be the easiest way for me to archive these twice weekly chats. The application can be downloaded here.
The program is dead simple to use. Simply enter the search query…
When you’ve captured your chat, “Export To Excel.” This initial export will be a .txt (it’s essentially a .csv file) file that I open in MS Excel and perform all of the formatting and sorting. Once I have my spreadsheet looking the way I want it to look, I save that file as an Excel Spreadsheet (either .xlsx or .xls.)
I then upload that Excel spreadsheet to Google Docs, share the document, then grab the embed code to embed into the EdChat PBWorks page.
The process is simple and it works.
To find a list of all of the educational chats that take place on Twitter each week, check out the list at Jerry Blumengarten’s (@cybraryman1) amazing website here.
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Twitter is like a waterfall. Hold your cup under t
Twitter is like a waterfall. Hold your cup under the water when you need a drink. Don’t worry about the rest. #edchat
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