Teachnology+Tips+1

Mac OSX Hints
Loads of tricks and tips about the Mac. A new tip arrives via newsfeed every few days (in Safari only course!). Click "Refresh" to see the latest articles media type="custom" key="287991"

Atomic Learning
Thousands of short tutorial video clips, covering just about every program we use at SHC. The Mac i-Apps (iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, Mail, Garage Band, Keynote, Pages) are particularly well covered. You will need to login, because we pay for our subscription: Username: ausacredheart Password: newtown3220 http://www.atomiclearning.co.uk

Google Services
Use some of the special online Google tools to find more accurate or more relevant information. A few of these tools require a Google Account - this is free, and if you have a gmail address then you already have one!

GOOGLE DIRECTORY
Tunnel down through related categories to narrow down your search to find the most relevant info. http://www.google.com.au/dirhp?hl=en

GOOGLE ANSWERS
Over the last few years people actually paid to have other people track down answers online. Google Answers is no longer accepting new questions - mainly because they think that all of the interesting ones have already been asked! You can still search this amazing database of Q&A. http://answers.google.com/answers/

GOOGLE BOOKS
You might have heard about all the legal battles Google are waging to be allowed to expand this service. Google's aim is to put the full text of every book online! A big task - but they have made a good start. You can look at - and in some cases print - the cover, title page, contents and index of millions of books, and usually see a selection of pages. In many cases you can specify a page number and read that page. You can search for text within a book, find Libraries that currently have it in their collection, and when all this free stuff isn't enough, find links to where you can buy it at the cheapest price! http://www.google.com.au/intl/en/googlebooks/about.html GOOGLE SCHOLAR Just as the name implies, Google scholar searches journals, these, peer-reviewed papers, abstracts and other scholarly articles. It's a way of finding more valid or reliable information: http://scholar.google.com/ BLOG SEARCH Are there any MYP technology teachers with a blog? What about MYP teachers who have been rock stars or DJs? Yes! How do we know? We can find these and other blogs via Google's special blog search: http://www.google.com.au/blogsearch?hl=en GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH and VIDEO SEARCH Many people have used Google's image search, but did you know you can ask it to filter your search so that it only displays Black & White, or Colour, or Greyscale images? Or you can restrict your search to small or large file sizes. You can specify image types, such as JPG or GIF, and set your own level of "Safe" searching. Click "Advanced Image Search" during any normal image search, or go to: http://www.google.com.au/advanced_image_search?hl=en The video search is a useful way to find clips online, but be wary of large downloads and questionable content that may appear on the first search page - even with Safe Search on, Image and Video searches are not recommended for in-class demonstration. http://video.google.com.au/ GOOGLE NEWS Google has its own news "aggregator" which searches all the major online news sources every few minutes. Google News is possibly the quickest way to find out what is happening in current events. You can customise your news page to show local news and weather. http://news.google.com/ GOOGLE ALERTS As well as reading recent news stories, you can use Google Alerts to receive email updates of news events, sporting results, weather, or any other Google search where the information may change over time: http://www.google.com.au/alerts?hl=en GOOGLE NOTEBOOK Have you ever been away from your computer, on a borrowed computer, or away form home and wanted to save some information from the Web? Google Notebook is an online notebook where you can store text copied from Web pages, images, links and your own annotations. You can create multiple notebooks, divide them into sections, and drag-and-drop your notes to stay organised: http://www.google.com/notebook/ GOOGLE LANGUAGE TOOLS There are dozens of online translation sites. Google has joined the ranks and has probably the widest range of languages of them all. The language tools can translate a whole web page just by typing in its URL. http://www.google.com.au/language_tools?hl=en GOOGLE MAPS Not just maps - this is one of the most exciting things from Google. Sure, you can search for a street address for almost anywhere in Australia, North America an Europe, but you can also ask for directions and search for nearby businesses and services. Google Account holders can set their favourite map to display when they login. As well as seeing the normal "street directory" view, Google Maps teams with Google Earth to give you a satellite view or hybrid view - even if you don't have the Google Earth program installed. In the last few days, Google has announced My Maps, where you can create and share personalised maps of your world. You can mark favourite places, draw lines and shapes, add text, images and videos, share your map with friends, or even publish it to the world on Google Maps! It can be a public or private journal based on a map of a journey, a place, or an event. http://maps.google.com GOOGLE MAIL and GOOGLE ACCOUNTS A few of these tools require a Google Account - this is free, and if you have a gmail address then you already have one! Find out more at http://www.gmail.com GOOGLE PAPER Now you can get your email delivered to your doorstep as bundles of paper. But only on April 1st: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/index.html