Just read an article this morning that tomorrow Bill Gates is going to annouce that microsoft is going to make their development software free to college and university students! That is great!
“Covered software includes Visual Studio Professional Edition, XNA Game
Studio, Expression Studio, SQL Server and Windows Server.”
AcademHack has a great article on the use of twitter in schools… check it out! 
Ideas from the article:
Another thing which may be of interest… 7 Things you should know about Twitter from Educause.
GoogleTutor posted a nice reminder tutorial online today about the power of real-time collaboration with Google Docs and Spreadsheets. This past semester a class I was taking wrote a nice paper as a whole class and used Google Docs for gathering everything together between us all. Nice.
So there was been a lot of talk in the media lately about live blogging… CoverItLive seems to be a big player in this field.
What about the idea of LiveBlogging a class? Or perhaps having an assignment for students to liveblog something they are doing. It could be pretty sweet.
What do you think?
I am a foreign language guy by training, so anytime I see something about language training online I have to check it out. Well, yesterday I came across a new site called babbel.com. (via Lifehacker).
I set up my free account, and was practicing my German in about 30 seconds. It looks to teach you basic phrases that would be useful in a variety of different situations. I haven’t spent a lot of time on the site yet, but it does look promising.
Pro’s:
I did a section on going out at night and it taught me (or review) the words for flirting, getting a date, inviting someone out. Actual useful phrases. Con’s:
The educational applications are obvious. Great for classrooms. You can even become training partners with other people. Perhaps one day they will let you load your own training pictures/pronunciations up there. That would be good for any teacher.
Other thoughts?
Came across this nice how to translate text in microsoft word tutorial (via Lifehacker). Note: You do have to have the language pack installed for the language you are trying to translate into…
There are a lot of nice features in the new version of Office. I had a chance to try out the new reference tool as well. Although I still prefer Zotero, it is still pretty nice and many people will love it.
What about you? What do you like/dislike about Office 2007? Anyone had a chance to try out Mac’s Office 2008 yet?
I have obviously always been a fan of Google, but the work they are doing in the mobile device arena is just awesome, particularly with the iPhone. This morning they announced a new interface that includes interfaces for the calendar, gmail, reader, docs, photo’s, news, and notebook.
I also have all of these features on my blackberry and love them. Most of them are just links to online sources, but they are still awesome.
As this becomes more prevalent, students are going to be using these tools and maybe we can move beyond the simple text messaging population to a population that actually harnesses the power of the mobile web.
What do you think? Will this type of technology ever become part of education, if so, how long?
I came across a new service today called drop.io. It is an online storage type service, but they added a nice voice feature recently that allows people to call in a number and record an unlimited length voice message. It will then show up as a Mp3 online in a couple of minutes. Could be a nice easy way for students to create a podcast without dealing with all the recording software.
What else can you see using this service for?
I have been a fan of the gOs for a while, but the most recent announcement of this super small laptop for $399 is just awesome (coming January 20th in Walmart). I have always wanted a smaller Sony Vaio notebook, but the price tag (usually at lest $1500) was more than I could swallow. This looks very promising. I think it is time to rebuild my Linux test box and put gOS on it to see how I like it.
Check out these awesome specs for this little device:
I want, I want, I want…
With school starting back up again, and a new year, it is a great time to commit yourself to actually getting your schoolwork organized. Notely.net looks like a likely candidate! Here is a list of their features: