Tech Notes

Documents, photos and other files accumulate on your hard drive. It is a safe bet that if you lost those files, you would not be able to replicate them very easily, if at all. Free online storage is available for you to store those important documents. Some website companies offer you the opportunity to upload, access, and share your music, video, photos.
Access one of the following sites to find out how to safely save your documents online for free.

Media Fire
http://www.mediafire.com/

Notes from the website: “MediaFire is a free and unlimited file and image hosting web site with no strings attached. Our goal is to help make the Internet a more interesting and media rich place by provide the fastest and most simple to use tool for sharing all kinds of files in almost any way imaginable… You can create an unlimited number of folders and sub folders to store, organize and share your files and images.”

Box
http://box.net/

Notes from the website: “Box.net is an online storage and sharing service that gives you access to your files from anywhere. With Box, you can access important documents from your desktop computer, laptop, or even mobile phone. Once you’ve uploaded your files to your online storage on Box, you can also share them with anyone, anytime — Box makes online web file sharing simple.” Small 1 gb accounts are free.

4Shared
http://www.4shared.com/

Notes from the website: “Actually, it is a big online storage where Internet users store their text, audio, video, photo, and other files and share them, if they wish, with other people. It is easy, handy, and free!”

After you have selected one website to use, post a ‘Comment‘ to this BLOG and let us know which one you chose and why.

The Magnificent Seven

These are the 7 graduate students in Special Education soon after they defended their theses.

Masters candidates: The following graduate students in the University of Guam’s master of education program in special education defended their theses/special projects as their final program requirement on May 15 at the Hyatt Regency Guam. They graduated June 1, 2008. Front row, from left: Richard Fee, Associate Professor; Lollie Castro-Bakker; Judy Roberto; Nichol Tanaka Napoleon; Christine Rosario; Jonas Dorego; and Julie Fee, Assistant Professor. Back row, from left: Michelle Suzman; Lisa Paulino; and Jacqui Cyrus, Assistant Professor.

The culminating project for ED 451 in the School of Education is an electronic portfolio (ePortfolio) in which each student aligns one assignment (or artifact) to each one of the 6 NETS*T standards. In this way, the students were required to demonstrate their abilities as new technology-proficient professionals. They were encouraged to be creative.

Rita-Rose

View her introduction video clip and her Credits page that show her credits as a rolling movie credit.

http://rhualde671.googlepages.com/

John

With the video on John’s home page, you are introduced to his ePortfolio wherein lies 3 other video clips of his creation, including a video that explains the first NETS*T standard – Technology Operations and Concepts and serves as the artifact for this standard.
http://taitano86.googlepages.com/home

Margarita (Wait for the music to begin.)

Watch the 3-minute YouTube video clip of D-PAN (Deaf Performing Artists Network) on her Philosophy of Teaching page.
http://oiloftropatiragram.googlepages.com/home

Suemalee

View her welcome video clip on her home page, her video explanation of standard VI (Productivity and Professional Practice), and her slide show on her Conclusion page.
http://queensuemalee.googlepages.com/home

Patti

Several digital media tools were used to construct her ePortfolio.
http://erodriguez.doodlekit.com/home
With your upgraded browser, view Patti’s multimedia lesson plan.
http://africanslavetrade.googlepages.com/home

Sangi

You will need to scroll down on her ‘del.icio.us’ page to the YouTube video clip on ‘Sharks.’
http://sangimarie.googlepages.com/sangi’spage

Divina (Wait for the music to begin.)

She inserted a YouTube video clip on her Conclusion page about digital media in the lives of young people.
http://dwmegsher7.googlepages.com/home

Melissa

Access the video she and 2 of her classmates created for an assignment on Fair User Practices listed for standard VI (the strawberry). Scroll down to the ‘artifact’ link.
http://melissa.luzano.googlepages.com/eportfolio

Sonya

Be sure to access her page on CyberBullying, on which she inserted the slideshow presentation as the artifact to satisfy NETS*T standard VI.
http://sonyadahill.tripod.com/index.html

Our School of Education does several excellent things; one of them is to require students to make presentations. In any given semester, students enrolled in 4 courses will be required to make between 4 to 12 presentations. Whew! By the time they graduate from SoE, they will have become comfortable making statements, defining problems and solutions and creating demonstrations in front of peers and faculty. It is a nice bonus to add to their resume – a relaxed public speaking demeanor.

In the required course, ED 451 – Audio and Video Education – students are required to discuss their ePortfolios (or the making thereof) in a 5-minute, end-of-the-semester presentation. The objective is to allow students to demonstrate their prowess with technology by selecting specific assignments (artifacts) to showcase in a concise manner. The assignment requires that the students be selective about their choices. The ePortfolio is created online and submitted for grading; the physical presentation file, however, is not required for submission. One student decided to use her newly-created class BLOG in which to showcase her presentation.

Take a look at the final presentation for Patti Rodriguez. Not only is it creative, but she actually delivered this presentation in 5 minutes.

With your updated browser, access the BLOG for Ms. Rodriguez at the following link:

http://shepatte.blogspot.com/2008/05/when-technology-student-collide.html

I encourage you to give her feedback on her efforts to continually upgrade her technology skills. If you have a GMAIL account, please leave her a message by clicking on the “Post a comment” button. She deserves a pat on the back.

Browser Wars Again: Sarfari, Firefox, Flock, and Internet Explorer

“People in the industry foresee a time in which for many people, the only
thing they’ll need on a computer is a browser,” said Mitch Kapor, the
software pioneer who now sits on the board of the Mozilla Foundation
and has created a start-up, FoxMarks, that is developing a tool to
synchronize bookmarks between computers. “The browser is just
extraordinarily strategic.”

That notion has helped to rekindle the browser wars and has resulted in
the latest wave of innovation. Firefox 3.0, for example, runs more than
twice as fast as the previous version while using less memory, Mozilla says.

The browser is also smarter and maintains three months of a user’s
browsing history to try to predict what site he or she may want to visit.
Typing the word “football” into the browser, for example, quickly generates
a list of all the sites visited with “football” in the name or description.

Firefox has named this new tool the “awesome bar” and says it could
replace the need for people to maintain long and messy lists of bookmarks.
It will also personalize the browser an individual user.

Internet Explorer 8, from Microsoft, promises its own set of tricks. One new tool,
Web slices, allows a user to bookmark a dynamic piece of a Web site, like
an online auction or a sports score, and save it in the margin of the browser,
the user can watch as it changes.

Another new feature, called activities, allows users to highlight text on a page,
click on it, then instantly send it to another site, like a mapping, e-mail or
blogging service.

His group (Firefox) will have one other company besides Mozilla to keep its eye
on: Apple’s Safari Web browser has a little over 5 percent of the market, according
to Net Applications, and subsists mostly on the loyalty of devoted Mac and iPhone
owners.

Shawn Hardin, chief executive of Flock, which is developing a browser that helps
users share photos, videos and blog entries more easily, said consumers would
ultimately benefit from the new browser battle.

“We are seeing choice in the browser market really emerge as a significant force
for the first time in a while,” Mr. Hardin said.

Browsers Are a Battleground Once Again
By BRAD STONE
Published: May 26, 2008
New York Times

Is your browser getting old? Does it sometimes show web sites in peculiar ways? Do you receive warning messages that your type of browser is no longer supported? If so, it is probably time to upgrade your browser.

What Is Wrong With Old Browsers?
Technology has changed and improved greatly in the last three years. Older browsers do not understand the latest versions of HTML (a markup language that browser software can read) and do not have reliable implementations of stylesheets, a powerful feature used by most modern web designers. By working within the latest standards, web designers have more control of how a page displays, sites can be more accessible to wider range of devices (including cell phones and accessibility software).
Your students are creating projects with these powerful new tools in several of their classes that require up-to-date browsers for creating and viewing. If your browser is too old, you may not be able to access your students’ creations.

How can you upgrade your browser?

Downloading and installing a new browser is easy and free. Visit one of the following websites and select ‘Download.’ You will be able to follow simple directions after you download the browser software.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7

Firefox 2.0

Netscape Navigator 9.0 (End of support and development as of March 1, 2008) Retrieved from [http://blog.netscape.com/2007/12/28/end-of-support-for-netscape-web-browsers/].

Safari 3.0

Opera 9.6

Camino 1.5.2

You might consider upgrading to any of the browsers listed above. Doing so will improve your web experience, enabling you to use and view sites as their creators intended.

At home, however, you need to be an educated consumer in order to make the best choices that meet your needs. These days, fake emails are getting more sophisticated, so it can be tough to know whether an email is real or not. One of the simplest and most important things you can do to protect yourself is to upgrade your browser to one with anti-phishing features.

“Phishing is an attempt to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. eBay, PayPal and online banks are common targets” (Wikipedia, retrieved from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing].

Upgrade your browser as soon as possible. It’ll take just a few minutes and you’ll be protected with the most up-to-date security available.

Welcome to the brand new blog at Edublogs for educational technology information.

If you’ve got 4 minutes and 55 seconds, you can view a video introduction that you might give you some insight about how this BLOG works:

Thanks again and welcome to TechNotes for teachers!