digitalgoonies.com

www.tripit.com

Although this tool probably doesn’t have a classroom use, it’s outstanding for helping to keep your life in order. TripIt allows you to organize all your travel information in one place. You can add flight information, hotel reservations, rental car, activities, meetings, notes, maps, and whatever else you have. You can type all this information in directly, or best of all- forward your confirmation emails from hotels, airlines, etc. and TripIt will fill in all the information. Continue reading

http://www.cue2010.org/

Susan and I had a great time at the California Computer-Using Educator’s conference for the past few days. This was our first time to attend/present at this conference- and our first time in Palm Springs ever! We were amazed at how beautiful everything was.

While we didn’t get a chance to get out and do much during our stay, we got to meet so many great educators with a love for technology and students! We did take a quick trip to the windmill farm pictured above. Ironically, this was the first Google Earth placemark we ever created for our Google Earth books- so it was great to see this in person.

For our new friends, we hope you find this blog useful and that you will check back often! Don’t forget, you can subscribe to our newsletter (using the Newsletter link above). You can also download the resources from our presentations (using the Presentations link above). As always, we value your feedback, so if you have any comments, feel free to leave them here!

Thanks again to our west coast friends for a great experience!

http://www.tcea.org

For those of you who joined us in Austin, TX for TCEA…

Thanks for a great conference! As featured presenters, Susan and I presented a total of nine combined sessions within two days. The Web 2.0, Google Earth, and Print, Cut, Fold sessions went very well. For those of you that attended, we thank you and hope that you left with some great ideas to start using in your own pursuits! Three things to remember:

1. If you missed our presentations or want to see our handouts, click on the Presentations link at the top of this page!

2. Please sign up for our e-mail newsletter by clicking the Newsletter link at the top of the page. We’ll keep you informed of the latest and greatest findings on the web.

3. Many TCEA participants asked us if we deliver staff development at other districts. Yes! Yes! And a thousand times Yes! We love doing this and wish we could do this more. We are, however, limited by our own personal schedules and full-time jobs in our own district. For more information email jim@digitalgoonies.com or susan@digitalgoonies.com.

Oh, I thought of one more thing- if you haven’t joined us on Plurk, check it out (see Jim’s Plurk page here)! If you aren’t aware, Plurk is a great way to build your own PLN (Personal Learning Network). We have come to rely on it for some great ideas and feedback!

This is my daughter (an older photo mind you) wishing you a great Christmas!

No, it’s not your imagination… we’ve been on a small hiatus (as you can tell from the date of the last posting). It’s not because of the holidays either! Actually, we’ve been putting the finishing touches on our most recent book, Web 2.0: Hot Apps & Cool Projects for Language Arts. And as of today, our manuscript is officially out of our hands and headed to the chopping block editor.

Anyway, we’ll be back in full swing right after Christmas. Thanks for making this a great year for us. We (Jim and Susan) wish you the best holidays (and yes, since the both of us are Christians we celebrate Christmas). We wish you a fantastic new year!

It was bound to happen- it’s just the nature of web applications.

We love Etherpad- remember the really cool, really real-time collaboration tool that we blogged about back on October 1st? Well, it will be going to the Web 2.0 graveyard soon!

Etherpad announced on December 4th that Google had acquired AppJet (the great company behind Etherpad) and plans to incorporate the same functionality into Google Wave. So for those of you that got excited about Etherpad and started using it and making great plans, time is ticking away. After an outcry from users, Etherpad revamped their transition plan to keep it breathing for us a while longer. And they’re going to open-source their code (which means maybe we can see it re-surface in other free web apps later)!

We feel your pain! Our next book (Web 2.0: Hot Apps & Cool Projects for Language Arts) was only weeks away from completion and being sent to the editor. Etherpad was one of the great apps we included (but have since removed).

We are excited about Google Wave and wish the Etherpad folks who are transitioning to their team the best. Google Wave (yes, it’s free) is still open by invitation only. It’s got some exciting real-time collaboration features that we as educators will love! We have about 20 Google Wave invites to give away- send me a message if you’d like one!

Let’s give it up for the Etherpad team! They made a great product and let us use it for FREE! We wish Aaron Iba (former CEO of AppJet) the best over there! We were privileged to have worked with him and his web application briefly on our last book! Thanks!

Susan and I just returned from Galveston, TX where we presented five (that’s right, five!) sessions for science teachers from across the state and also introduced our newest book!

We met some great teachers and got to share a little of what we know about technology integration in our five sessions. Some of you reading this attended CAST and we hope you had a great conference- and even more, we hope your hotel was better than ours!

Four things we want to remind you of: Continue reading

We had a great time in Washington D.C. and met many of you there. We have received some great feedback from our three sessions. Many people didn’t make it in to the two free sessions because they were so full- we appreciate those of you who did make it to one of our sessions. We hope that you left with some new ideas and inspiration to use with your own students and/or teachers.

We referenced many websites in these sessions- some are already listed here on the blog (use tha Categories menu on the right). But many many more are coming your way soon. You can go check out some of our other websites:

Curriculum Magic- here you’ll find links related to Google Earth and GPS.

Google Earth Lessons Wiki- come see what educators are doing with Google Earth. Join the wiki and add your own content if you wish. Here you can also download the Google Earth sample files we used in our sessions. This wiki is relatively young, so content is limited at the moment!

Print, Cut, & Fold- come take another look at the sample activity types we flew through- as well as links to free downloads. Here you will also find some great links to free image websites that are copyright friendly!

Creative Edge Resources- this is by far the most boring of the sites and is the business arm of what we do. If you are wanting to talk about staff development for your school or district (yes, we travel nationwide), look here!

Thanks again for joining us- we hope you’ll keep up with us by reading the blog. We have some great content coming your way! And if you made it this far in reading, check out this cool Animoto video I put together of the Korean War Memorial that I visited while in D.C.

I almost didn’t title this posting as I did. I can never remember how to make Jones plural without looking stupid. Thanks to a quick Google search, I think I have it right this time!

It seems that every blog posting I read these days uses some new term that sets me off on a rabbit chase through the world wide web- just because I can’t stand not knowing. To save you some time and keep you in the know, here are a few I ran across recently:

Cloud Computing- “the cloud” refers to this surreal, invisible entity of the internet where files can be stored, applications can reside, and no one really knows or cares where the files are physically. They are just stored in the cloud- and can be accessed from anywhere. There are huge advantages to cloud computing- and some not so great things about it! But that’s for a discussion in some future post! Google Docs is a perfect example of cloud computing!

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