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| Tech Links |
Last updated 9/11/07 |
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Some of the links on this page are to programs affiliated with NY's Virtual Learning System, and some are here just because they're dynamite sites!
Franklinville Tech Talk Blog Set up by Don Watkins, Tech coordinator @ Franklinville
Verizon Thinkfinity NY (thousands of lessons tied to NY standards)
NY Teacher Center Online Academy (description of program below)
Study Zone (includes Regents Prep)
WNED's ThinkBright (description below)
Open Office Information (Open Office is a totally free office suite)
Open Source Software Information
Teachers Discovering History As Historians (Teaching American History Grant program)
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NYS Teacher Centers On-Line Academy
| Would you like to take a quality course and have the fee paid for by us? Check out the NYS On-Line Academy, a service of the statewide TC program. |
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If you want to take a course, we can give you a mini-grant up to $85 (the cost for most of their non-credit courses. The deadline for summer courses is June 25th.
Dear Administrators: These are quality courses that have met strict standards. You can access the standards document from the web page.
Think about some professional development on-line. There is plenty of great stuff out there. We've given grants to help pay for these courses, and we plan to continue. Other sources include Texas Instruments and ASCD.
Click here for the On-Line Academy: http://eeznt3.nyiteez.org/olacatalog
Click here for a Word doc showing current offerings.
If you have any problems setting things up, let me know.
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A former student of mine, Aaron Hale, showed me Open Office software. If you are not familiar with it, I would recommend that you give it a try. It's absolutely free, and many schools are using it throughout their districts. Aaron wrote a little report about his experience with Open Office. He and some fellow students recommended the software to their administrators at the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport. The college has since started using it.
Here's a link to Aaron's report.
Here are some other links that have to do with Open Office and open document format:
Everybody's Guide To Open Document
Training information for Open Office
I recently received the following note from Don Watkins, the tech coordinator at Franklinville, concerning Open Office:
We are using Open Office in both the high school and the elementary school. We have one high school teacher in particular who is using OpenOffice as part of our Linux Terminal Server project who is so high on OpenOffice that he actually prefers working with it to Microsoft Office 2003 which is on his own desktop computer. He recently asked me to install Open Office on his notebook computer.
I've found from some pilot tests with teachers and students that Open Office is more compatible with the various versions of Microsoft Office than those versions are with each other. You can't beat the price either, Free vs. $50/each if you are a Microsoft Open License user. Add to that we can give our students OpenOffice to take home with them. It's a win-win for us.
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The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages. Gimp is the practical equivalent of Adobe Photoshop and it's free. Franklinville has added Gimp to their standard student desktop. It is available for Macintosh, Windows, Unix, Linux.
Nvu-a: Complete web authoring system for Windows, Mac and Linux,
K-12 Linux Terminal Server Project Franklinville currently has two Linux Terminal Server labs running using all "open source" software. They have 27 thin clients being served by one Linux Terminal Server.
Making Decisions about open source software A project of the Northwest Regional Education Labs. The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL) provides research and development assistance to education, government, community agencies, business, and labor.
K12 Educational Commons The brain child of Paul Nelson. Paul Nelson is the Technology Coordinator for Riverdale High School in Portland, Oregon. The mission of the K12EdCom.org is to promote and publish OpenCourse Ware for K12 Schools.
Wikipedia The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It is a great source of information and it is very current. While products like Encarta may have more bells and whistles, Wikipedia has more dynamic content and you or anyone can edit what is there. Try looking up Portville, NY or any community in our area. Lookup Patrick Fitzgerald the special prosecutor. You'll find information that you won't find elsewhere.
Wikstionary A free dictionary. It is all part of The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is the parent organization of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks (including Wikijunior and Wikiversity), Wikisource, In Memoriam 9/11, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, Wikinews. It is a non-profit corporation based in Saint Petersburg, Florida, USA, and organized under the laws of Florida. Its existence was officially announced by Wikia CEO and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on June 20, 2003
Open Source Software Project Learn all about open source from the Open Source Project, a clearing house of information about open source software.
SoftwareFor.org The Software for Starving Students CD enhances the Windows and Mac desktop computing experiences by providing an easy way to install free, high-quality software titles via a user-friendly interface.
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WNED information:
To subscribe to
WNED's ThinkBright monthly e-newsletter, fill out and submit
the form at
http://www.thinkbright.org/subscribe or send an e-mail message
to
thinkbright@wned.org
Course descriptions and syllabi are available online at:
www.thinkbright.org/teacherline