It's September. Not the first of the month but pretty much half way through the month. I have been trying so hard to be a good blogger. A friend of mine told me that I needed to keep plugging away even if I only make one post a month. My goal was once a week and we can see that didn't happen. So at the very least I am going for once a month. Have to think positive though that I will make more posts. I'm trying. Okay enough whining....
Two interesting tools today. I was looking at a really wonderful wikispace called
Cool Tools for Schools. Very nice collection of web 2.0 tools to use. Among the larger list of links I tried one called
Quikmaps. I really liked it. Whenever I talk about musicians or composers in my music class I always like to show where they lived and traveled. It's hard to talk about Germany if the students have no clue where it is in relationship to where they live. Besides the fact that I just love maps! Right now we are listening to college fight songs in my music classes and I created a map showing where our school is and where the two colleges we have listened to are located. This link will take you to
the map I created. You can add markers, text and save the map. You can use a variety of maps such as Yahoo, Google or Bing. I chose a Google Map. Very user friendly. You need an account but you do not need an email to get a free account. It is in beta but definitely worth a look.
You have seen this (to your left) before probably. I know I have. In fact I think I remember seeing them before I ever saw the gaining popularity QR code (on your right). This is a
Microsoft Tag. You will need a Windows Live ID to create a free account but they are as simple to create as QR Codes. I don't know which will be most popular. You can get QR code readers and Tag readers for your smart phones. It seems I've seen more QR that Tags. But Microsoft has a pretty large footprint so who knows. So scan this with your Tag Reader app and it will take you to my school music wikispace. Download a QR reader app and try this QR code. One the quickest sites to create a QR code is
Kaywa. Either way using these in the classroom would be a new way to engage your students.
