BPS TILT Blog Goes Social

VISIT THE BPS TILT SNS FOR ALL TILT BLOG POSTS
Get all of your news, reviews, ideas and encouragement...at one place - the BPS TILT Social Network Site (SNS). Because we are all members of the SNS now, I will start to transition all of our many avenues of communication into this one site. I will start with the blog...if you come to this site in the future, you will see a link to the SNS, so that you can visit the latest posts, photos, videos, and forums.















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Having trouble remembering to go to the SNS? Then bookmark it to your delicious account, bookmark it in Safari, bookmark it in Firefox, bookmark it in Internet Explorer, bookmark it in Flock...bookmark it. Then, visit it!

Better yet, there is an RSS feed available - add it to your iGoogle Home Page!





I created a tab (page) just for my RSS feeds. It really makes keeping up with the TILTers much easier!







I am using this SNS for documentation for the grant. I would appreciate you using the forum to update me about the technology you are exploring (personally & professionally) and learning. You can post a discussion to the forum under "Share & Share Alike" or "Classroom Ideas"... or create your own discussion category.

Remember TILT is about sharing your knowledge, ideas, questions, and frustrations. The SNS is only as good as you are willing to make it through your participation.

New Photoshop.com

This is a slideshow created by the new Photoshop.com

Pandora radio

Well, if you are a music junky like me then you will love this site, Pandora Radio. All you have to do is type in what you want to listen to and boom... you got it. Try it out!

Edutopia Highlights High Tech High

To see a collection of videos from High Tech High, Click here!

Newseum for current events

This is kind of a neat site – and a fun way to do a little comparison of “current events” from around the state, nation, and world.

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/

Just put your mouse on a city and the newspaper headlines pop up... Double click and the page gets larger....

Also, if you look at the European papers, the far left side of Germany will pop up as The Stars & Stripes (European edition, of course). AND, this site changes everyday with the publication of new editions of the paper. Hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

Google Has Gone Under! (water that is)...

Google 5.0 now lets us oggle over the 70% of the earth we cannot see from land or plane. That’s right; you can now fly your Google navigator under the sea! The 5th version of Google Earth adds the ability to explore the Oceans and Mars, as well as a Historical Imagery feature that lets you view satellite imagery from the past, going as far back at the 1950's in some places. They have made making tours easier and allows users to create a narrated tour in Google Earth and share it with the world. The ocean layer is not on by default, so click it on before you 'crash' into the ocean to explore. Check out this article that highlights the new features in Google Earth 5.0. http://earth.google.com/tour.html

Do you use Google Earth Plus? Well, that is no longer available as the new 5.0 has also included the most popular feature of GPS connectivity into its new version.

Verizon Unlocks GPS Capability

For those of us Crackberry users, it seems that Verizon gave us all a Christmas gift when it unlocked the internal GPS functions for both the Curve and Pearl in its new OS upgrade (4.5.0.77). Until now, you had to subscribe to Verizon's VZ Navigator service that was running you $2.99 per day or $9.99 per month.
Using Blackberry Maps 4.5.0, you can now locate places, mark locations and track your driving/walking route in real-time much like you can with a Garmin handheld GPS. The only data available on the dashboard is # of satellites and speed. You can switch between pan mode and zoom mode with a click of the trackball. Another shortcut to zoom is using the I and O buttons (for in and out). Yes, you can still use Google Maps, although your location will be more like within 1700m.

Converting the New Office Files

WHAT'S UP WITH THAT??



Microsoft, in an effort to make it's file structure more universal, has gone to an .xml based file format in the release of Office 2007 for Windows and Office 2008 for Mac. Some of you have noticed files with an x at the end of the extension...and many of you, I am sure, are not able to open these files. There are several ways to open files that have been created in the newest version of Office (for this post I will focus on Word, but the steps are the same).

Option One - Ask the person with the newer version to be kind
If you have a newer version of Office, you can save your file to previous versions through the Save Dialog Box:












Note: You can even set your preferences so that your file always saves in a .doc format.



Option Two - Online Conversion using zamzar:

• Visit Zamzar
• Browse to your .docx file
• Choose the file format you want (probably .doc)
• Type your email address
• Wait for the email from zamzar with a link to your converted document.

Option Three: Use Microsoft's conversion tool
If you are on a Mac, you can use Open XML Converter. If you are using Windows, you can use the Microsoft Compatibility Pack. These are programs you install onto your computer. They are very straight-forward...you open the program, open the file you want to convert and click convert. It saves a copy of the file in a readable format in the same place as your original document, then opens it for you.

One of my favorite sayings is, "There are always at least three ways to do one step with technology." Here is the perfect example.

High Tech High student project

Student projects cover almost every inch of the school. Here, a project to highlight the evolution of technology is hanging in the middle of the student commons.
Desiree Caskey
Technology Integration Specialist