Tag My Doc: Sharing Documents with QR Codes

TagMyDoc allows you to add a tag to any document in order to share it with others.  The documents are all kept in the cloud.  This is a free site but requires you to sign up with a username and password so that documents are stored indefinitely.  If you only use the guest access, documents are kept for 14 days. The maximum upload size is 5 MB per file.  File types that can be used are Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, PDF, OpenDocument and images.  A QR Reader is required to scan the QR codes which are often free.  There will be a TagMyDoc app coming soon to the iTunes store.


With a free account you have secure storage of 100 documents.  The choice of applying the tag to any corner of your document.  You will also have unlimited storage time and distribution of your document.

Free File Converter

Free File Converter
A common problem facing staff and students is finding a free and easy way to convert files into other formats without dealing with the hassle of creating accounts, providing personal information, and receiving the converted file through email which is often blocked.

Free File Convert is a simplified online conversion service that allows you to convert your files to most common formats in three easy steps.

Download link of converted file

Conversion Process

Caution: As many of these free services rely on advertising most will offer sponsorship links to very questionable websites. This one is by far the cleanest we have come across that offers this ease of conversion. Please use caution in promoting this product with your students until you are comfortable with all the sponsorship links as they may change over time.

Walking Together - FNMI Perspectives through LearnAlberta

Walking Together is a professional development resource for educators designed to help teachers understand the holistic nature of FNMI ways of knowing and understanding. It also provides opportunities for FMNI Peoples to share their viewpoint and to demonstrate FNMI perspectives in teaching and learning experiences using a large bank of audio and video clips.

Please be aware of the disclaimer before being allowed access: "This is a Professional Development Resource For Educators. The content in this resource has not been reviewed for student use"

The home page is broken up into 12 main areas

1. Kinship
2. Aboriginal and Treaty Rights
3. Healing Historical Trauma
4. FNMI Worldviews
5. Oral Tradition
6. Elders
7. Symbolism and Traditions
8. Connection to Lands
9. Indigenous Pedagogy
10. Culture and Language
11. Well-Being
12. Traditional Environmental Knowledge

SHOW: A New Way to Look at the World

SHOW:  This is an amazing site that highlights global statistics using data and graphs.  It is very easy to use and the visual aspect of it is very powerful.


SHOW could really enhance your class material on history, and social issues such as the environment and health.


According to the website, "select a subject from the top menu and watch the countries on the map change their size.  Instead of land mass, the size of each country will represent the data for that subject - both its share of the total and absolute value."


There are 3 different sets of data, SHOW/World, SHOW/USA, and SHOW/Japan


Show/World Categories:

• People:  Demographics, Causes of Death, Education, Health, Religion

Demographics for example, is further sub-divided into Population, Children, Aging Population, Urban Population, and Rural Population.

• Planet:  Animal Resources, Crop Resources, Energy, Environment, Metals and Minerals, Natural Disasters
• Business:  Economy, Global Brands, Industry, Technology, Transport
• Politics:  Government, Law & Order, Migration, War & Conflict, Aid
• Living:  Food & Dining, Travel, Sports, Medicine

 There are options given to download/embed a direct link, embed the animation, download this map as an image or download the data as an excel file.
The web site also suggests relevant books that can be purchased through various companies such as Amazon.



This map of the world shows countries that are resized by the countries' population relative to the world population.  Countries are ranked on the right hand side.  Clicking on those countries will indicate the actual population.



Online mp3 Recorder

Record mp3 is an easy to use, online recorder.  You can save these files and embed them into your lessons in programs such as PowerPoint and SMART Notebook.  By the way, the newest version of SMART Notebook is due out this spring and does feature an mp3 recorder to put audio directly into your lessons.  Until then, this is an easy program to use.  If you want a more powerful audio editor, Audacity is currently on our school division image.  You will still need to convert those .wav files to mp3.  If you require this, please contact your tech coach because an encoder needs to be added to your computer.

Pics4Learning: Free Image Library

Pics4Learning

"Pics4Learning is a safe, free image library for education. Teachers and students can use the copyright-friendly photos and images for classrooms, multimedia projects, web sites, videos, portfolios, or any other project in an educational setting.

The thousands of photos in this collection are approved for use in the classroom and indexed and sorted in order to maximize their effective use by students in a 21st century classroom.

While the photographers retain the rights to these photos, they have graciously allowed their use through this collection."

The web site makes it easy to search by topic and sub-topic.

Gooru: Comprehensive Math and Science Searches

Gooru -search results are shown in thumbnails and grade levels are indicated.  
You can:

• Search for resources, collections or quizzes
• Study individual resources or entire collections
• Practice with an adaptive assessment system
• Interact with your peers and teachers
• Save -- and customize -- your favourite learning materials

"Gooru is a search engine for learning that allows you to explore and study over 2,600 standards-aligned and personalized study guides. Study guides cover 5th-12th grade math and science topics, and resources include digital textbooks, animations, instructor videos and more. All resources are vetted and organized by teachers or Gooru’s content experts, so you don’t have to sort through the mess of subpar educational resources available online yourself. 

Gooru also makes it easy for you to connect with your worldwide peers to make learning a social experience. Post questions to an active community of students, teachers and experts, or find friends and peers to study with. 

Best of all, Gooru adapts to you. Based on the topics you study and your performance on self-assessments, Gooru suggests resources and study guides that will help you master the concepts. You can track your study habits and monitor your performance on any of the topics you study."

This comprehensive search engine can only be used with Safari, Firefox, and Google Chrome.  Some of our schools have Firefox.  If not, you can use the portable version of Google Chrome on your computer.  Contact  your tech coach if you need help getting this.  Portable Chrome   You can install the program on your desktop or onto a USB drive of your school computer.  At home, install the program as you normally would.

Cool Text for your Presentations

Here are a number of websites that allow you to make animated gifs that can be used in SMART Notebook.

Wigflip.com/signbot 
Scrolling LED sign

Wigflip Signbot

Tiny Tags
wigflip.com/tinytags/

Tiny Tags

Super Stickies

Textanim.com

How to open a blocked shortened URL

UnTiny

Creating and sharing tinyURLs or shortened / snipped URLs are now quite commonly used in Twitter and other micro-blogging sites. Tiny URLs are easier to remember and manage. However, sometimes tinyURL or other URL snipping services are blocked. As a result you cannot know and visit original URL behind the tinyURL.  This quick service lets you convert a tiny URL into the orgininal URL so that you can visit that website. 

How to Shorten a URL

Bitly

bitly is a utility that allows users to shorten a long URL, share it, and then track the resulting usage.  A shortened website URL is useful in text messages or Twitter posts in order to save room/characters.


This is also a free app for iphone/ ipod touch etc.


Other URL shorteners:


tinyURL


shrinkURL is also another free app available on itunes.