RCPS Technology

Resources, Help, and Info from the RCPS Tech Staff

Skitch: Screenshots, Drawing & More

April 14th, 2009 by · No Comments · For Teachers, New Technologies, Time Savers, Tools, Uncategorized, Web Resources

I’ve been playing around with the free application Skitch. Developed by the same people that make the ever-popular Comic Life, plasq’s Skitch is a multi-use tool for capturing, drawing, and uploading images from your computer to the internet.

First off, Skitch will allow you to take screenshots of your desktop, either small parts or the entire spread. It will also let you use your iSight camera or webcam on your computer. Thirdly, it will let you drag and drop any image into it, as well as open your iPhoto library or Photobooth library on your Mac. And finally, you can upload images that you’ve taken and edited to Skitch.com for other people to see or to services like Flickr.

To be able to quickly access any image on your computer is a must for any teacher. Drag a picture off of a webpage to your desktop and then into Skitch and immediately start marking it up in class in seconds. Take a picture of a book graphic with your iSight camera or scan it to your computer, then Skitch will allow you to use it’s powerful drawing tools to edit the image to your whim.

I immediately saw a huge benefit for Smartboard users. Since Skitch is primarily a drawing tool, it lends itself more to a Smartboard than a mouse and keyboard.

Skitch is very versatile. You can draw on an image and then upload it to Skitch’s servers, keeping a copy for you online that anyone can access. Then wipe the image clean and get ready for your next class. Skitch allows you to keep a history online and on your computer of your images so that you can easily look at everything you’ve ever done and pull it up quickly.

For more information about Skitch, visit Skitch.com

Dell Mini 10: Budget/Travel Minded Laptop

February 26th, 2009 by · No Comments · For Students, For Teachers, Technology Tools, Tools

Netbooks are the new thing. They’re small, pack a moderate amount of RAM, harddrive space and have a built-in 1.3MP camera for pictures and video.

For teachers, they hook up to projectors (with an HDMI adapter for most projectors necessary), are easy to move around, and have a big enough screen (unlike the 8 and 9 inch netbooks) that you can do desk work just as easily.

The only caveat is that there is no cd-drive. These are strickly for internet use. How do you get around without a cd drive? There are lots of downloadable applications online from reputable sources that we’d all be happy to point you to, including ones we’ve posted about on this blog. Even software most software you can buy on a cd is available online to download and purchase electronically.

Want to play movies? Well, there are USB DVD drives for sale for under $100, then you would also get the ability to install software.

Here’s a link to buy the laptop.

Edit .PDF as Word Documents Online

October 22nd, 2008 by · No Comments · For Students, For Teachers, Tools, Web Resources

PDFundo.net is a free online PDF to Word converter. It’s real simple to use and doesn’t require your email address or registration. You just upload your PDF document and when the conversion is complete, download your Word document.

I tried it out and it worked flawlessly. I wouldn’t try to convert .pdf with personal information in it, although the website doesn’t state anything about keeping or sharing personal information contained in documents that you convert. But this is a really handy site for changing .pdf files that need changing year to year or making changes to someone else’s .pdf forms for your own use.

Google Maps for GPS Users

August 14th, 2008 by · No Comments · Uncategorized

I’ve heard of some teachers doing labs with GPS technology and found a great website for upload GPS data files and overlaying it onto a Google Map. It’s free and as easy as uploading your GPS data file with a couple of clicks.

You can also add data manually, change the plotting colors and even draw on plain old JPG files for easy download and printing.

GPS Visualizer

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Google Docs, Calendar now available!

August 13th, 2008 by · 1 Comment · Uncategorized

We’ve recently opened Google Docs and Google Calendar on the proxy servers at RCPS. I, personally, am very excited about having these two online apps available. I’ve written about Docs before here and here. It’s great mainly for two reasons: it uploads and saves Microsoft formats (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) and it’s available anywhere there is an internet connection. Obviously you can use FirstClass to move documents around, but now you don’t have to worry about needing a Mac or PC or if your home computer is more or less up-to-date than your work one.

Google Calendar is an excellent online calendar that you can access from any browser and virtually any phone. This means no keeping separate calendars at home and school, no having to sync a pda or cellphone, and you can even send emails and text messages to your calendars to add dates and events. You can share calendars with anyone that has an email address (to edit or just to view). It will also email you reminders (and text your phone) if you want as well. It’s a great online application and hands down the best online calendar program available.

(Teacher tip: share a calendar with student’s accounts called “Homework” and have each event email them the day before it’s due. Then have that homework be a Google Doc that you assign to them from your account. Then email it to their parents!)

Sign up for a Google account today and start enjoying having your digital life everywhere you go. And don’t worry, your students can use it, but they still won’t have access to Gmail or Talk instant messaging.

Here‘s what Google got from feedback about Google Docs. There’s lots of basics and how-tos here.

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Technology Staff Gets Dressed

June 2nd, 2008 by · No Comments · About RCPS

The tech staff is just finishing up meticulously choosing an official RCPS logo Technology Staff shirt. What’s the shirt for? We plan on wearing them whenever the technology staff is out in full force, say at a county-wide inservice day, so that we’re easy to identify in case of a technological disaster or if you can’t log into your email.

It took a couple of months and a few meetings, but we refined our search criteria to get the best shirt possible. We analyzed the RAM of the thread and the resolution of the fabric weave. We made sure that each button on the shirt passed every hardware test we could throw at them. And finally, we got the best manufacturer warranty that $30 could buy.

We recently got in some sample shirts to test out. I, personally, am very happy with this new soft-wear purchase.

Did You Know…PowerPoint?

May 29th, 2008 by · 1 Comment · Did You Know..., Microsoft

Did you know that you can send text from PowerPoint to Word so you can easily get the notes without all the graphics and animations? I just found this out today.

Open a PowerPoint presentation and under the File Menu, choose “Send To…” and highlight Microsoft Word. That will open a new Word Document with all the text from the presentation in just one mouse click.

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WebOn: Build Your Own Site

May 28th, 2008 by · No Comments · For Students, For Teachers, Technology Tools, Web Resources

There are site building websites. There are blogging websites. There are photo websites. Then there are sites like WebOn that have it all.

Setting up an account at www.WebOn.com is very simple, but just a little chaotic. Everywhere your mouse moves, something activates and if your not careful, you could activate a menu you didn’t want to or create pages that you didn’t want.

But WebOn has a slew of customized templates and just enough tools to make a very accessible and quickly manageable website for your classroom or for personal use. Right now they only have ten “modules” to work with, but there is plenty of room for them to give you much more (what more could you want?).

You can also set your own domain name, such as http://myclass.webon.com, which is really handy to give out to students or friends.

So try this lively website builder out, have fun with it’s tools, and show your class that you can blog and post photos online with the best of them.

Google Maps adds Wikipedia / Photos

May 13th, 2008 by · No Comments · Google, Web Resources

If you go onto Google Maps now, under the “More” button on the map you’ll be able to check the additional content for Wikipedia articles and photos that have been geo-tagged.

For more information on geo-tagging photos, visit Google’s geo-tagging photo website Panoramio, which is Google’s version of Flickr.

I’m not sure at the moment how Google adds content from Wikipedia.

And don’t forget, that your friendly RCPS Tech Staff have created a map of the RCPS schools on Google Maps.

Online Presentations – Thumbstacks.com

March 31st, 2008 by · No Comments · For Students, Web Resources

I’m a supporter of online, alternative versions of Microsoft Office. I use Google Docs often and I’m always looking for new tools. When a student asked me about another way to use PowerPoint at home since they didn’t own a copy, I did a search online for “online presentation” and came up with Thumbstacks.com, a stripped down, no frills online presentation tool.

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