Please visit my new website at http://kimcaise.com. It will be available and accessible in about 14 days.
Posted in blogging
Do you want to get into Making and Maker Ed? Don’t know where to start? Don’t have a makerspace? No problem! Here’s five ideas, classroom tested, which can be built using a minimum of tools for students in the K – 8 grade scale.
If you are wondering how to connect these projects back to standards, check out PBL Through a Maker’s Lens and a free webinar at www.woodshopcowboy.com.
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Posted in blogging
Awhile back I 
moved my professional blog, “Kim’s Technology Treasure Chest”, to my personal domain at http://kimcaise.com. I do hope you will make the switch to the newer blog if you haven’t already done so and follow my blog posts there. I am still receiving comments here so I wanted to reiterate the location of my blog’s new home. Hope to see you there soon!
I am only sharing this here as many people have not made the change to my new blog at http://kimcaise.com. Please change your RSS reader or bookmarks to reflect the new link instead of this link here for this blog.
Today, December 2nd, at midnight EST is the last day to nominate a blog/site for the Edublog Awards (#eddies11). Our webinar series, Classroom 2.0 LIVE, was nominated last year and we won first runner up and were greatly honored to be nominated and to have won among some stiff competitors. The Edublog Awards is a fun ‘competition’ and some take it to extremes and complain and favoritism but I enjoy finding out about new blogs.
This year my personal blog was nominated in the category of:
Best Ed Tech/Resource Sharing Blog – Kim’s Technology Treasure Chest by Heather Davis who is currently in Canada but was recently in Beijing, China working at an international school. You can read about her adventures on her blog here. I have always wished I was brave enough to live overseas to teach at an international school. My blogs has gone through change after change and evolved over the years and am so honored and thrilled beyond words that I was nominated so thank you Heather. So on, with my nominees.
Best librarian blog – The Daring Librarian
Best free web tool – LiveBinders
Most influential blog post – TJ on a Journey – The Greatest Gift
Best educational wiki – TL Virtual Cafe Wiki
Best webinar series – Future of Education
Best educational use of Social Network – Classroom 2.0
Best educational use of audio/video/podcast – K12 Online Conference
Best individual tweeter – Angela Maiers – @AngelaMaiers
Best school administrator blog – Around the Corner – Miguel Guhlin
Best group blog – Texas Discovery Education/Leadership Council Blog
Good luck to everyone nominated!
Posted in blogging
On this day of giving thanks, I was reminded of the many blessings I have in my life. I was also reminded that I had not completed the drawing for the Amazon gift card for new or subscribers moving from my old blog to this blog with me.
I truly appreciate everyone’s support throughout the past several years after being encouraged to start a blog by Miguel Guhlin of ‘Around the Corner‘. He had a difficult time convincing me that I had anything of value to say, although I still struggle with that
I want to thank all of you so much for making the switch to the new blog with me regardless of whether you subscribed or just follow and read my blog posts via Twitter/Plurk/Facebook. Thank you to the new subscribers that recently discovered this blog as well. With health and family issues, I haven’t blogged as much as I would have liked and I truly hope this lapse hasn’t disappointed anyone.
Anyway, I would like to announce the winner of the subscriber that will receive the $25 Amazon gift card and that is Angie Kelley! Angie left a comment on the original blog post or subscribed via email and her name was selected when I used the drawing randomizer. Congratulations Angie and I will be contacting you shortly for your contact detail! If you have never used the randomizer web 2.0 tool check it out next time you need an impartial, random way to conduct a
drawing.
So on this day of giving thanks, I want to extend a special thank you to Peggy, Lorna, Steve, Miguel, my sister, my nieces, and especially my hubby-Marty, for being such an integral, important and special part of my life online and offline.
Be sure to follow me over at the new blog at: http://kimcaise.com. This will be a final blog post here at this blog. Thank you for a wonderful learning experience.
Changing RSS feeds can be a real pain and inconvenience. To ease any inconvenience for changing RSS feeds to the new blog, I am going to offer all
subscribers to the new blog, “Kim’s Technology Treasure Chest”, at http://kimcaise.com an opportunity to win an Amazon gift card! No strings attached – just subscribe to the new blog and leave a message in the comment section below the linked post at new blog post so I will know you subscribed 0r re-subscribed. One random winner will be chosen on November 6, 2011 and notified via email so make sure you leave that information in your comment. Thanks for making this move with me and be sure to click on the pink RSS feed icon or subscribe via email from the new blog and good luck to you!
Posted in blogging
I received an email from Brainshark today announcing they have developed a new app that will display PowerPoint (PPT) presentations on the iPad. After you sign up for a free account, you upload the PPT file to the Slideshark website and it converts it into a file that is viewable on the iPad. Slideshark is an alternative to saving a PPT file as a PDF, converting it to a Keynote file, or saving the slides as images.
Below is a description from the app description in iTunes:
With SlideShark you can view and show PowerPoint presentations on your iPad – the way they were meant to be seen. It’s easy to use, powerful, professional, and – best of all – free! SlideShark is the one and only app you can use to accurately and professionally show PowerPoint presentations on an iPad.
Key Features:
• Play PowerPoint files properly on your iPad
• Preserves animations, fonts, graphics, and colors
• Simply tap or swipe to advance animations and slides
• Connect to a TV or VGA-projector to present to larger audiences (iPad 2 users)
You are limited to 25mb of storage space which is a very small amount in my opinion. You can purchase additional storage space if you need to keep presentations stored that exceed the 25mb of space. Slideshark indicates there are additional limitations when viewing PPT files using this app:
While the app is optimized for PowerPoint, there are a few features that are not currently supported. These include: hyperlinks on slides, embedded videos or animated gifs, slide transitions, triggers, and 3rd party components. There are also some advanced PowerPoint animations that may not be supported.
If you are looking for an alternative to Keynote to view PPT files on the iPad when speaking or presenting this may be just the thing you have been searching for. With the small amount of space available for uploaded presentations I am not sure how useful this app will be. The app is compatible with devices to project on a TV or screen and you do not need an internet connection to view the PPT file downloaded to the iPad. Feel free to leave a comment below with your opinion on this app once you have used the app.
Classroom 2.0 LIVE! will return this Saturday after a brief hiatus for October due to health reasons for each of the co-hosts. We are excited to return this Saturday at our regularly scheduled time of 12pm ET/11am CT/10am MT/9am PT. We appreciate all of the wonderful comments, emails and best wishes from our friends and colleagues while we were on hiatus.
Saturday, October 29th, will be another webinar in our ‘Featured Teacher’ 
series. Bryan Jackson will talk about web 2.0 mean to him and why he uses web 2.0 tools in his classroom. Bryan Jackson is a high school gifted-education and music teacher in Coquitlam, British Columbia. For five years, he has taught the T.A.L.O.N.S. program, a two-year, interdisciplinary program for identified ring
Posted in blogging, Classroom 2.0 LIVE!, webinar
Tagged #liveclass20, classroom 2.0 live!
Welcome to my new domain and blog! My new blog will focus on educational technology and hopefully be a treasure trove of resources, new tools and strategies for integrating technology into instruction. I tried a similar blogging venture last November but I don’t think I went about it correctly. This time I started a new blog on my own domain and believe this will be the best move for me personally and professionally. This is the last time I will ask my subscribers to move to a new blog that I started as I know it can be a hassle to change over RSS feeds to various RSS aggregators/ readers.
Since recuperating from back surgery, I will be online more and posting regularly to my blog about technology issues and tools, Classroom 2.0 LIVE, DEN or K12Online Conference events. Stay tuned for more details and I promise this change will be worth your while!
To ease any inconvenience for changing RSS feeds, I am going to offer all subscribers to the new blog an opportunity to win an Amazon gift card! No strings attached – just subscribe to the blog and leave a message in the comment section below this post. One random winner will be chosen on November 1, 2011 and notified via email so make sure you leave that information in your comment on the other blog. Thanks for making this move with me and be sure to click on the pink RSS feed icon or subscribe via email and good luck to you!
Posted in blogging
This coming Thursday, October 20, 2011 is National Day on Writing. The National Writing Project is encouraging everyone to participate in a variety of activities to support National Day on Writing.
The urge to write can be a mysterious calling. There are so many different ways to understand not only the why of writing, but what one gets out of it. To celebrate the National Day on Writing, the NWP has joined The New York Times Learning Network and Figment to collect the thoughts of people from all walks of life—scientists, reporters, poets, teachers, and students—to discover why they write.
The National Writing Project, along with the New York Times Learning Network
and Figment
Submit student essays to Figment.com: Figment will be accepting submissions from September 28 through October 29. Since “Why I Write” is a celebration of writing, there are no prizes, but a curated anthology of selected submissions will be available as an e-book later this winter. Submit to Figment.
New York Times Learning Network: The New York Times Learning Network will present a series of interviews with reporters who cover a range of beats and explore their writing process. These interviews will serve as the basis for lesson plans, prompts for students, discussions, and inspiration. More ›
Edutopia: Edutopia will be celebrating “Why I Write” with a series of blogs by NWP writers. Each blog will then invite readers to share why they write with others in the Edutopia community. These conversations will take place on the Edutopia.org website and within our communities on Twitter and Facebook. More ›
NWP Radio: On October 20 at 7 p.m. EST, the National Writing Project will air a live radio show to celebrate the National Day on Writing with interviews with New York Times education reporter Fernanda Santos, New York Times Learning Network editor Katherine Schulten, Figment founder and New Yorker staff writer Dana Goodyear, Figment teen writers, and NWP teacher and author Ashley Hope Perez, among others. More ›
Tweet #whyiwrite: Tweet why you write and include the hashtag #whyiwrite so that everyone can see the many reasons people write. More ›
Post on Facebook: We’d like everyone to post why they write on their Facebook pages on October 20 and encourage others to do so. Let’s create a national dialogue about writing! More ›
Kim’s Technology Treasure Chest
Kim's Ventures in Educational Technology 