Other Helpful Links

Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov/index.html

archive.org
http://www.archive.org/
A vast collection of royalty-free, public domain videos.
This is a good resource for finding old black and white
public service announcements and documentaries.

freeplaymusic.com
http://freeplaymusic.com/
A large collection of royalty free music sorted
by mood, style, and theme.

Annenberg Media
http://www.learner.org/
Teachers Resources and Workshops

http://www.fieldmuseum.org/

http://www.msichicago.org/

http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/

GOOGLE - More than just a search engine

Google has changed the way the internet is searched. Today, web
sites specifically design their content to maximize their satus in the google
hierarchy. As we speak, Google computers are scouring the vast expanses
of the internet, downloading every site it can find and storing it in rooms
of massive hard drives that no longer measure in the gigs, but in tera-bytes.

Google is on a mission to "organize the worlds data." In order to sift through
the mountains of data that google is compiling, innovative new techniques are
needed to navigate it.

The most popular google search trick is using quotations. If you go to Google and
search easy science experiments, Google will find any pages that contain these
three words anywhere on the page. However, if you search "easy science expiriments"
in quotes, it will only return pages that contain those three words in sequence.


http://www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html

http://www.googleguide.com/cheatsheet.html

Blogging Terms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_blogging_terms

LINKS

Links are one of the most basic parts of the Internet. Often seen as
blue text or an image, links are assigned a "target" or a URL that
indicates the desired action, such as sending you to a particular site
or launching iTunes. Most web-sites such as Yahoo-Groups or Blogger
makes creating links very easy and intuitive.

1) When editing text, highlight the text that you would like to make into
a link.

2) Click the link button.

3) Type or paste the URL you would like to send your reader on.

Thats it! You just created a link!

Here are some useful links for teachers and bloggers we've found on Google.

Free File Hosting
www.photobucket.com (images\hot-links)
http://www.filewind.com (all files\no hot-links)

Teacher Tools and Resources

http://freebies.about.com/od/teacherfreebies/Teacher_Freebies.htm
(free stuff!)

http://www.suelebeau.com/freetools.htm
http://www.techtrain.org/teacher_tools.htm
(free online tools)

http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech101.shtml
(free templates)

Viral Video

Video is probably the most compelling of all the medias. It

stimulates both sight and hearing, while still enabling the

viewer to learn. In the early days of computers video files

were massive and could not be easily transfer ed via consumer

end Internet connections. Today, however, Internet sites such

as YouTube and Google Video have capitalized on new

technologies that make video files extremely small and still retain

acceptable fidelity.


YouTube is the most notable of the viral video sites,

primarily because of the massive amount Google paid

to acquire it. YouTube has one of the largest collection

of videos on the net, and as a result, the most contributors.



Google video stands apart from YouTube only in that

it that it hosts the most amount of feature-length videos.

These are particularly helpful for frontloading.



Sample links

http://video.on.nytimes.com/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18467963/

Hosting Data

Most of the internets free services offer users many useful tools,
however, very few allow you to upload anything that is not an image.
These files include, but are not limited to:

• Documents
• Presentations
• Spreadsheets
• Archives
• MP3's
• Videos

There are a multitude of pay-sites that offer hosting for a small fee,
these sites offer what is called hot-linking. That means that you can upload
any file for free, and the server provides you with a link that DIRECTLY
connects the user to that file. Filewind does the next best thing. It allows
you to upload any file then provides you with a URL that links to a randomly
generated download page. This is a pretty good deal, considering that many sitescharge about $7 a month for the same service.

[SECTION1] Content Is King

The ideal blog is informative, useful, and visually stimulating. The Blogosphere is a vastly diverse community, and just about anyone can find a niche to fill. For the purposes of the Inquiry Institute, we will be focusing on creating a blog that is geared toward educating the reader and preparing him or her to research a particular subject.

As a teacher, you know the power that media has to incite students' enthusiasm for learning.

Largely due to the rise of the Internet, this generation of students is highly visual in the way that they learn.

Only a few years ago, exposing students to media meant rolling out the VCR stand or handing out a packet of photocopied articles, archaically copied, collated and stapled. Today, however, there are countless tools that allow educators to gather media and offer it to their students via the web. This methods are particularly useful for front loading, in that one can link their students virtually any video, image, or article.

In the following entries we will explore how to create a blog that simultaneously stimulates the young minds of students and offers them a great deal of knowledge.

Official Image Management Post

If there is anything that makes for a bland weblog, it is a lack of imagery. Outside of the classroom, today's students are most likely watching television or using their computers. Both of these mediums are highly visual, and have transformed the way we receive our information.

As educators you may come across many images on-line that would be helpful for use in your curriculum. If this is the case we recommend that you make a habit of saving these images any time you come across them.

There are dozens of ways to make an image viewable online, and there are just as many ways to acquire those images for your own curriculum. the easiest and most common way to save an image you find on-line is simply to right-click [alt-click] the image and select "save image as."

However, tech-savvy websites that want to protect their imagery can disable this feature of your browser when viewing their particular page. A reliable way to "capture" these images is to use the "Print Screen" button on your keyboard.

To use this method, you first have to position the image so that it is in the center of the page you are viewing.

1. Cature the Image

[find the "Print Screen" button on your keyboard and press it once.]
2. Open MSPaint

[click: start>all programs>accessories>Paint]
3. Paste the image

[click edit then select "paste"]

or

[press Ctrl+V]

4. Crop the Image

Use the Select tool to trace a rectangle around the desired picture. Then press [Ctrl+C] to copy the image, [Ctrl+N] to make a new file, and then [Ctrl+V] to paste the resized picture.

5. Save the Image

Now press [Ctrl+S] and name your file and save it to your pictures directory.

[The legality of using these images is a subject that is often debated but never settled. However, I find it safe to say that as along as you credit the author or owner of the image, and as long as you use the image only for educational purposes within your curriculum, you needn't worry about any copyright infringement lawsuits.]