Monday, November 30, 2009

Edublog Awards

Edublog Awards celebrate the achievements of edubloggers, twitterers,podcasters, video makers, online communities, wiki hosts and other web based users of educational technology. In order to nominate blogs for the 2009 Edublog Awards you have to link to them first! Nominations close Tuesday 8 December, 2009. Voting ends Wednesday 16 December, 2009. More information and entry form available here.

We've nominated the following sites:
- Technology: An Educational Issue?, nominated for Best Resource Sharing Blog
- Year of Science 2009 Twitter, nominated for Best Individual Tweeter
- Extreme Biology (a teacher and her classroom blog), nominated for Best Class Blog

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Student Copyright Awareness


Intellectual Vengeance is a film about plagiarism included in Lesson 1 of Creative Thinking. This resource unfolds with a student who deliberately plagiarizes a paper for another student, thus tarnishing his reputation.

Northern Kentucky University (NKU) has developed lesson plans and videos that teachers can use to teach students about plagiarism, copyright, and fair use. Tied to national and state educational standards, Creative Thinking offers engaging content for teens and young adults in multiple disciplines. It could also be used for public library teen programs and community youth groups. The lesson content promotes research honesty and copyright consciousness for students. Both ethical and legal discussions are presented.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Copyright-Friendly Wiki


Copyright Friendly is a wiki with links to copyright friendly images and sounds. You may not need to ask permission to use them when publishing them on the Web for educational purposes, but it's a good idea to check and to cite or attribute these resources to their creators. If you see any copyright notices on the source pages, read them for further instructions. There are also links to resources where you can create avatars, concept maps, graphs, and other graphics useful to teaching. If you need help in using copyrighted materials, consult the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Free Educator Webpages

Here are 10 places where educators can build and host their website for free. Note that signing up for an account is always free for the links below, but some providers offer the option to upgrade for a small fee.

1. SchoolRack: create a classroom website or educational blog for students, parents, and colleagues to visit.
2. Yola: free website builder, no matter how much content you add.
3. Webs: offers a wide variety of templates and layouts, good for novices.
4. Hipero: is rich in features and easy to use.
5. Web Node: easy website builder, simple enough for students with little tech experience to use.
6. Weebly: indexes your pages for easy navigation of visitor navigation.
7. Microsoft Office Live: free but your own domain name comes for a small annual fee.
8. Google Sites: set up a free Google account and get a web site builder.
9. Sauropol: publish blogs, image galleries, bulletin boards, document folders too.
10. SnapPages: the free basic service has enough features for class websites.

Photo: Screenshot of TexasEmpowerment.org, created on SnapPages.