#educhat

What the heck is #Educhat?

Basically this is a way for Twitter users to get together and discuss topics based on predetermine themes in real time. One of the major advantages Twitter has is the ability for a quick exchange of information. By adding a code or "#" hash tag such as #educhat to your tweets they can be cataloged in one place which is easy for viewing. This would be similar to one really large CHAT session using Twitter. Rodd Lucier founded the #educhat stream.

"Educhat is one example of the potential of twitter-based synchronous events. Modeled after #journchat discussions, which are ongoing conversations among journalists, the educhat format/context has the potential to create a specific framework within twitter for having education-related discussions and tracking those discussions using the hashtag #educhat."

As Stated on the Twitter for Teachers WIKI

Users can access the TWEETS or comments related to #educhat by using their browsers to visit a site such as Twitter Search. This site will list all of the TWEETS or comments made by the participants. Just search #educhat.

The pace is very very fast but you will get used to it. The key is to have some topics you would like to discuss ready so you can through it out there and see what comes back.

Why would I do this?

This is a great question! I believe you can:

1. reach may different educators from all over the world and get their input in a relatively short period of time.
2. make contacts from all over the world
3. make you voice known on issue concerning others
4. Get involved with web 2.0 technology! Your students live here...
   
5. free, self directed PD!
   

I grabbed all the tweets and filtered all the extra stuff out of there to create this Wordle Word Cloud to show some of the themes of the 1st #educhat

Click the Wordle for a bigger view.

How do I get Involved?

In order to get involved you need to understand what twitter is. This is an online service that allows you let people know what you are doing in 140 characters or less. Essentially it is a micro blog. "Why would anyone care what I have to say?" is a question new twitter users may be asking. The best way to use twitter is to find other users who have the same interests as you. Once you find someone on twitter with the same interests you can "follow" them. There "tweets" or 140 character comments will then show up on your twitter page for you to view. Eventually people will find you and follow your updates.

Twitter allows you to form a Personal Learning Network. You can ask questions, answer questions or look for feedback. If you are interested there are links below to help you get started.

STEP ONE:

Get a TWITTER ACCOUNT!

Click the links below to create your own twitter account and then find out when the next #educhat is going to occur. Go ahead get your feet wet!

This is all well and good but what is Twitter? Click Here.

If you are interested in participating in the #educhat synchronous discussions, please click on this link "The Launch of Educhat".

Virus Protection Software for ONTARIO Teachers

For those educators in Ontario here is a great deal on virus protection for you!

Eset's Nod32 Provides Effective protection against :

Virus Worms
Trojan Phising
Adwares Spywares

NOD32 Antivirus System is a single, highly optimized engine that works as a unified Anti-Threat system to protect against a broad spectrum of malware. Viruses, worms, spyware, and other malicious attacks, which are constantly evolving. Eset NOD32 Antivirus system utilizes patent-pending ThreatSense Technology to detect tomorrow's threats in real-time, by analyzing code execution for malicious intent - keeping you ahead of the malware-writers. There are hundreds of malicious software objects released into the 'wild' every day! Are you protected?

Eset NOD 32 Antivirus system is a Proactive Real-Time Detection

The best security is proactive. Malware protection must be real-time at the point of impact. Every minute one waits for a virus signature update creates a window of vulnerability that could have devastating consequences. Eset NOD32's Technology closes the window of vulnerability left open by other reactive, signature-based antivirus vendors.

Additional Information on NOD32 antivirus system

Anti-Virus Reviews

Information on all OSAPAC (Ministry Software) can be found HERE!

Teacher Home Purchase of NOD 32 Details

From SHI Canada:

For the price of $19.99 Canadian we will send a copy of NOD32 via email to the any teacher or staff within the Ministry of Ontario's jurisdiction (as per the contract). If the employee sends a request to the following email address with the information below we will process their order within 5 business days and send them a link to download the software as well as a license number to their e-mail address. Attached is information with respect to NOD32 teacher purchase.

The $19.99 includes one year of support for the product.

The email address to send orders to is going to be:

Patsy Swanson
Account Executive
Phone: 877-858-2008
Email: Patsy_Swanson@shi.com

What SHI Canada needs to process your order is:

Name:
Address:
City :
Postal code:
Phone number:
What school district you belong to:
What School:
Your role at the organization:
Credit card number (if you do not want to give your CC number, they can call you back to get this information)
Exp date:
Credit Card ID number (on the back of credit card 3 digits long)
E-mail address:

http://www.canada.shi.com/

Always Check Your Children's Homework...

I did some checking on this and as far as I can tell the story originated in November 2008. I can 't verify if it actually occured but there is a lesson here and the story is amusing.

The following picture was submitted to a teacher that drew some attention!


The picture was subject to interpretation and the teacher contacted the parent to be aware of what their child submitted.




The Parent Response.....




Dear Mrs. Jones,

I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer.
I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit. I told her we sold out every single shovel we had, and then I found one more in the back room, and that several people were fighting over who would get it. Her picture doesn't show me dancing around a pole. It's supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot.

From now on I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Smith


A crazy story and I can't verify for sure the source but the message is still valuable...

• Not everything is as it appears

• Don't jump to conclusions

• and may God help us when our children talk about their parents at school!
  

The Wonderful Word of Wordle!

What the heck is a Wordle? Well, I took the explanation from the Wordle website and put it into Wordle and this is what I got!From the look of things above it is about clouds, text and the frequency a word appears.

Wordle in the words of Wordle:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

How will this apply to Educators?

The possibilities are limitless.

Here is how it works.

I asked myself the question: What do you think of when I say "Christmas"?

I went to Wordle and typed in my answer:

Click on "Go" and this appeared:

This is a neat little Word Cloud that can be customized by the user. Click on the RANDOMIZE button and you get something completely different:
I asked a colleague to take a look at the wordle above and tell me what the question it answed. She answered "What Christmas means to me?".

If I typed the word Christmas 5 times and the other words just once I produced the Wordle below:

Obviously Christmas is the dominant word. Try it out yourself at Wordle.

This is what our new Secondary Assessment and Evaluation Document produced:


I made my Wordle so now what?

The word clouds you create are yours. Feel free to save them and use them later. Use SCREENHUNTER to capture your new Wordle and save it as a graphic.

Education Applications:

• Wordle is about the love of words. You can give a wordle to your class and ask students to write about what it means to them. Pefect for a thought starter, unit intro, or ice breaker.

• Include a number of words that are motivational to you and create your own motivational poster.
  

• Encourage student's to copy and paste an essay previously completed into Wordle. The main idea should be prevalent in the word cloud created. If it isn't maybe the writer can explain why? Maybe the word cloud should have been obvious or not but either way a discussion will ensue!

• Students can experiment and learn on their own how Wordle works. The greater the frequency a word appears in a document the more prominence the word is given in the cloud. This could be a fantastic literacy/numeracy experiment that could be very enjoyable.

• Insert a poem or story to get a visual representation.

• An Advanced Wordle site exists where you can build more robust Wordles at Wordle Advanced.

• Check out the Wordle Blog for more ideas.

If you did find this Blog useful or you came up with some better uses of Wordle please use the COMMENT feature on the Blog and post your thoughts! We can all benefit.

Google, Not Just A Search Engine!

The New York Times reported Google's release of a new website designed to detect regional outbreaks of the flu a week to 10 days before they are reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The website is called Google Flu Trends. The site uses aggregate Google search data to estimate flu activity in each state. They believe they can estimate flu activity up to two weeks faster than goverment flu survellance systems. This is not available for Canada as of yet.

The graph below has shows past flu outbreaks from last year. Flu Trends:
"Each week, millions of users around the world search for online health information. As you might expect, there are more flu-related searches during flu season, more allergy-related searches during allergy season, and more sunburn-related searches during the summer. You can explore all of these phenomena using Google Trends. But can search query trends provide an accurate, reliable model of real-world phenomena?"

I am sure this will open up a whole new science where Google uses user searches as suggested above but to what end and what accuracy?

This site can be used in a number of grade levels in a numeracy or literacy exercise to analyze trends and data. If you can come up with some specific practical uses please share with others and comment here! Don't forget to do your own trend searches at Google Trends!

Stay Current with Newseum!

Today I will be talking about a neat resource for a World Issues topic, literacy exercise, or even just a current events discussion.

The big news last night was the Election of a new U.S. president Barack Obama. A neat way to look at the effect of this event or any other current event for that matter is a site called Newseum. Newseum displays daily newspaper front pages from around the world in their original, unedited form. The papers can be sorted according to region, country and more. Take a look at todays Newseum .

There is an archive of front pages from past events but the events are major American and world issues. For example I could not locate the Canadian Election on October 12th, 2008.

The front pages are not edited or altered so consider your audience when sharing this site.
Each front page will give you a link to the source paper. You can usually find additional information on a topic without logging in.

Don't forget the WINDSOR STAR resource located in the board's student portal. Students and teachers have access to 10 Canadian Regional papers. Click Here to visit the student portal.


Thanks:

This site came to my attention from Rodd Lucier (E-Learning RELC) who picked it up from Will Richardson.

Do NOT Call Part 2

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Registry swamped
BY SARAH SCHMIDT CANWEST NEWS SERVICE OTTAWA
The Windsor Star
01 Oct 2008

Consumers eager to add their phone numbers to the newly launched national Do Not Call list to block telemarketers ran into trouble on Tuesday when the website crashed on its first day and the telephone sign-up number was not accessible. The online...read more...

The website crashed multiple times Tuesday and only allowed for 157,000 people to register. The phone line allowed for 74,445 to register. Don't give up just keep trying.

Remember you can add any number to the list and Telemarketers get 31 days to take you off their lists!



To Register:

Website: https://www.lnnte-dncl.gc.ca/

Phone: 1-866-580-3625

Registrant rush takes down do-not-call site

Tech Tags: The Windsor Star newspaper Canada