Also news about new IPod Touches with cameras?  I’m sure you should stop by Apple’s site if you are interested.  I’ve always been quite sad that my Touch doesn’t have a camera.  I’m not feeling like I’d buy a new one just for a camera, but maybe there will be a more compelling reason to upgrade my Touch.  We’ll see.

Free Moodle hosting for educators.  A good option if you can’t set up your own Moodle server or your district is a bureaucracy.  Not sure how much control you have, but a nice option for the less technical.   Link

A nice way to edit photos online without installing software. Great for students where installing software is an issue.  Link

Recently installed Windows 7 build 7100 on my laptop.  It’s a faster, cleaner Vista.  Very nice to use.  Less headache than Vista and finally something worth abandoning XP for.  You can install it for free until March.  Best to do a clean install.  Link

Best Underhyped features of Windows 7.  Link

8 Ways to Build Websites (Not Blogs) for Free.  Link

Who’s blogging in the world of education?  Here’s a list of educators worth following.  Good to follow a few every once in a while and see if they have something useful to say.  I like Free Technology for Teachers and Cool Cat Teacher.  Link

A simple way to build videos online with your pictures and audio.  I can’t help thinking it’s Movie Maker for the web.   Link

I have been using a Macbook recently.  Though I cannot be nearly as productive on a Mac than a PC, I often find myself limited by the simplest operations.  This list of keyboard shortcuts has come in handy (including how to Print the Screen and delete text to the right of the cursor).  Link

Solutions to Teacher Questions:

1. Used OCRTerminal to convert PDF to Word document.  Limited number of conversions from this free service, but very easy to use.

2. Save option in Microsoft Excel where it automatically backs up your files at a regular basis.  If you accidentally crash or close your document, there is a location where files are backed up.  A teacher closed her file without saving.  You can see the Path from Tools–>Options–>Save

3. Printing screen on the Mac: (Shift Command 3)

4. Creating avatars using Voki.  Voki.com.  Then cropping them and uploading to Moodle courses for students.  Something I plan to do with all my classes.

5. I don’t know what I’d do without Audacity.  I used it for the Chinese and Spanish AP test recordings as well as many other recording projects.

6. I always hit a wall in terms of using hard drive based cameras and importing into editing software.  Finally, I found a solution in Sony Vegas 7.0 which allows you to import from a Recorded DVD (.VOB files).  I wish I had hours of time to discover these solutions.

Prefer to use discretion when adding Firefox extension due to the loading time of Firefox.  Here’s a list of the top 10 extensions.  Can’t say these would be on my list.

Dictionary.com now defines and pronounces words on IPhone OS.  This is a nice feature.  There are words I still mispronounce like “queue” and “distribute.”  Link.

Also, I’m real excited about the possibilities of Read It Later adding content to the IPhone OS, allowing you to archive interesting articles and then sync them for reading offline.  Since I have a Touch, I sometimes want to read when I’m not near a wifi connection.  Great solution if it works.  I might also try out Evernote for this as well.  Link

Finding music for students to use in their videos is always a challenge with the strict licensing laws.  Our film teacher has the students write to the recording industry for permission to use popular songs in their movies, and they get rejected or receive no reply.  The new Free Music Archive might offer an alternative for finding music to use.

I’m also planning to try using annotated pages using Diigo.  Check out a sample page here annotated.  Annotated article about Ask the Dust, a great book.  Will also have to try out Glogster.

Two quick tips for the IPhone/IPod Touch I learned on accident: Hold down top button and click home button and it will take a snapshot of what’s on the screen and saves them into your Photo folder.  If you double click the home button, it pulls up the last played song, video or podcast.  Funny how I stumble upon these things (sure wasn’t in the instruction manual, or if it was, I didn’t read it.)

For Viewing:

Film School for Video Podcasters.  Link.

For Discussion:

Should colleges host email for their students?  Read

While Internet service providers are racing to fix the problem, which makes it possible for criminals to divert users to fake Web sites where personal and financial information can be stolen, Mr. Kaminsky worries that they have not moved quickly enough.

A new vulnerability on the web makes it possible for hackers to redirect you to a website of their choosing.  The issue attacks your ISP, so it is tricky to know if you are being misdirected.  If you intend to go to Google, you might very well be directed to another version of Google without your knowing.  I still think many people are cautious about their personal information on the web, and I’m hoping that we are checking our websites carefully before we input confidential information.  Yes, if in the rare case you are redirected, you might compromise your password, but how much information will they really be able to exploit if they get into your Google account or your email? They might get some addresses or phone numbers.  We all should be careful about where we are going and continue to be extra cautious when we are dealing with highly confidential information.  I think eventually we will see this vulnerability addressed before too much harm is done.  The websites I use for financial purposes have security questions and images unique to them, something no fake website could emulate.  The people who are most likely to be taken advantage of this scheme are the ones who probably don’t use the Internet for serious cloud computing.  I’ll be interested if this really leads to any significant issues.