Top 10 Sites for File Conversion

by David Kapuler


While most new computers can convert some file types (especially on a Mac), there are still many that need help. This is especially the case when going cross platform from a Mac to PC.

Top 10 Sites for File Conversion
1.  Comet Docs  - Easily one of the best visual sites for converting files and very user-friendly.Has over 50 conversion options with the ability to do file analysis and comparison.
2.  Zamzar - One of the most popular and easy to use conversion sites around.
3.  DocsPal  - A nice site for converting tons of different files; results are downloaded via unique URL.
4.  Vixy  - A great way to convert and download videos onto a computer or mobile device.
5.  YouConvertIt  - Easy to use site for converting multiple files.
6.  Cellsea  - Converts video files of up to 25 MB.
7.  OCR Terminal  - Converts scanned images into usable data such as: TXT, RTF, or Doc.
8.  Carryout Text - A great way to convert text to speech, good for converting blogs, emails or documents.
9.  HTML to PDF - Fast and easy to use; convert any web page into a PDF.
10.  Text 2 Mindmap - Excellent site for converting text into a Mindmap/outline.
 David Kapuler was the media and technology specialist at Greendale (Wis.) School District. Read his blog at cyber-kap.blogspot.com.

Tagxedo

You might be familiar with the word cloud generator, Wordle, but there's another one Tagxedo turns your tags into a visually stunning images lick these: .

 

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy v3.0

Yoomoot

Commenting by asking the question, does this sound more interesting than the traditional blogging? Yoomoot believes that this could "make complex conversations more organized and focused."

Read more to see what you can get out of yoomoot here

semantic web

"...now we need label our labels..." do you feel overwhelmed whenever you go to online, for shopping, searching, or just surfing? What will be after Web 2.0? What is ontology? what is "semantic web"? It's fun to watch this 15 mins video to see the future we can't even imagine....

Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.

Why Students Cram for Exams

Today's faculty focus is discussing about why students cram for exams. According to the research, approximately 45 percent of student admitted to cramming. The resesarch pointed out that many currently used assessment strategies promote cramming. However, there is no proof of the certain testing format promoting cramming more than another, although researchers concerned that multiple-choice is the one. Indeed, any test methods that required strong memory would unconsciously encourage students cramming for tests. Project-based learning would be a better alternative, when the formmative assessment is strongly recommended.

Another factor, Powerpoint slide lecture does not engage student to convert the knowledge into their own learning, which leave the space for the cramming a tthe end of the term. Does this make sense?

Why Students Cram for Exams

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Evernote

It is called "Perfect Memory." Could it true?

Evernote is to give everyone the ability to easily capture any moment, idea, inspiration, or experience whenever they want using whichever device or platform they find most convenient, and then to make all of that information easy to find.

Toondoo

ToonDoo is a cool, comic-creating tool, a fun site for kids. The founder is devoted to creating a unique array of free and customizable online games of educational value for children of all abilities.

Creating your own cartoon is not a difficult thing anymore. Try this free tool, you will love it.

Gantt Charts

Along with a traditional calendar, a Gramtt Chart can create a graphically represent of the project start/stop dates and the project progression to help you see the total picture, which improve your time management skills.

To draw up a Gantt diagram (Gant diagram), follow these steps:

• Step 1. List all activities in the plan
• Step 2. Head up graph paper with the days or weeks through to task completion
• Step 3. Plot the tasks onto the graph paper
• Step 4. Presenting the analysis

Gantt charts are useful tools for planning and scheduling projects. They allow you to assess how long a project should take, determine the resources needed, and lay out the order in which tasks need to be carried out. They are useful in managing the dependencies between tasks.

When a project is under way, Gantt charts are useful for monitoring its progress. You can immediately see what should have been achieved at a point in time, and can therefore take remedial action to bring the project back on course. This can be essential for the successful and profitable implementation of the project.

See full article here

Related article: A Teacher's Paradox - Flexible Time Management

Four Myths about the Online Education Experience

http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/SW5zZS1QaWdnLUNvdXAtVGhpci1NYWduLVBpZ2ctWmVybw==
This article lists four myths about online learning on behalf of students' perspectives:

1. Myth 1: My online class will be easier than a face-to-face one.
2. Myth 2: I won’t be interacting much with the instructor and other students.
3. Myth 3: I’m not tech-savvy enough to enroll.
4. Myth 4: My degree won’t be respected by employers.

See full article here.

All these myths are common. With more and more students having the online education experience, they will know online learning requires more time and effort than face-to-face learing to devote to communications via media.

A certified online instructor has more sense of online teaching that requires more facilitation to build the learning community in the online enviornment that students can communicate with their instructor, their peer students and even the external content experts.

New technologies did scare away some of students, especially continuing students, but not the new generation. Indeed, a good tech support and a detailed online orientation should help students build confidence on the online learning environment.

Hopefully, with the continuing growth of online education, people will change their mind to give more chance to those who have successfully completed their online education. Meanwhile, a high-quality online education programe is the key for the door open.

fish vs fishing

I read a short ariticle in Tech&Learning online magazine this morning, titled as Students as Meaningful Contributors by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano. Here is one paragraph that I want to highlight for its truthness.

The "why do we have to learn this" comment has bothered me for years. Several
years ago I realized it is a very good question and if I can't answer it with a better response than "you may use this some day" then I better get out of the teaching business. It came to me that we really do NOT remember most of what we are taught. So what is the purpose. I had to change my philosophy. I realized my focus should not be the content, but instead training the brain to think in different ways using the content of my classes. I have come to find the recent brain research agrees with me in that the brain develops different ways of thinking when we encourage it to do so. We as teachers need to let go of the "content focus" and focus on training the brain to think differently. If we arm our students with a brain that can think many different ways we have done our jobs.

Can't agree more than that...

Google Docs updates

Google Docs mades some new changes in their products to enhance the collaboration. The big change is Google Docs will now allow you to see other Collaborators changes in real-time as they type. And here are a few more:

• Creating collaborative drawings from the Docs list rather than only from within a Google Doc
• A ruler within the document for help with adjusting margins
• Additional ease with moving images and formatting your documents

The last but not the least, increasing speed in Docs, so anyone should be able to edit with up to 50 simultaneous users (rather than the actual 10-12 synchronous users that most of us have experienced). Does this sound more useful for your online course?

See the video below for the detailed explanation:

Resources

Illinois Online Network

Quality Matters Rubric

Pedagogy of Online Teaching and Learning

Feebles

Here some free applications that you can download and they are quite user-friendly:

Graphic and Screen Capture Resources:

Gimp Image Editing App: The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

Jing: Jing allows you to snap a picture of your screen or record video. You can incorporate your snapshots and screencasts into your courses or share with friends. For the video recordings, you can use screencast.com to share the link of the flash created file. If you decide to upgrade to Jing Pro, you will have the ability to create MPEG files.

Screencast.com is a TechSmith solution for business and academic professionals looking to manage and share videos, images, documents, or anything else online. Screencast.com's high-quality content-hosting gives you complete control over how, when and to whom your content is distributed.

Screenr℠, a service provided by Articulate Global, Inc. ("Articulate"). You can create screencasts for your followers as easily as you tweet.

PDF Converters:

CutePDF: After installing CutePDF, you'll be able to convert your Microsoft Excel, Word or PowerPoint documents, emails or web sites to PDF files using the print command.

PrimoPDF: Make PDF documents for different uses, including online viewing, eBooks, office printing, and prepress (high-end printing). Combine PDF files after they are converted.

Time flies

It's been a long time not to touch this area, I meant writing in English. I want to give a try again and focus on what I'm doing right now. Things changed a lot in past several years... that long? oh yeah, it's been years... Time flies...

human masters...

Panda Demands Abortion

information technology

"The best information technology closely parallels the pedagogical goals of teh learning paradigm: 1) fostering active learning, 2) constructing knowledge and 3) assessment. (Buckley, 2002:30)

Technology can serve as a "lever" in the transformation of higher education as it responds to teh needs for active learning, cooperative learning, multiple intelligences, diverse learning sytels, interdisciplinary instruction, authentic learning and assessment, critical thinking and problem solving, brain-compatible elarning, and the multicultural society.

"The only value of technology of instruciton is if it enhances learning in ways that are not otherwise available (Gandolfo 1998:30)."

The impact of technology on higher educaiton could identified as "requiring greater flexibility, the integration of research, teaching, and service in determinging faculty advancement, and a focus on outcomes and productivity to define success (Olcott 2000: 264)."


What could IT help?

• individualized training at your desks on: exploring the library's research resources, Microsoft offices, mail and tele-conferencing, browsing WWW, Web-based searching, Macintosh and Windows environments, backing up and managing files, updating virus-potenction software
  
• Computing First Aid consultants for tutoring general computer literacy topics.
  
• Computeing questions conference and chat
• outside-of-the-lecture-time computer class for beginer
  
• One-on-one new employee orientation about campus resources
• Staff workshops

Buckley, Donald P. 2002. "States of Progress: Education Leaders Talk Technology." Converge 3, no 4 (April): 54-58.

Gandolfo, Anita. 1998. Brave New World? The Challenges of Technology to Time-honored Pedagogies and traditional Structures. In Impact of Technology on Faculty Development, Life and Work, edited by Kay Herr Gillespie. New Directions in Teaching and Learning, no. 76. San Francisco:Jossey-Bass.

Olcott, Donald and Kathy Schmidt. 2000. Redefining Faculty Policies and Practices for the Digital Age. In Higher Education in an Era of Digital Competition, edited by Donal E. Hanna. Madison, Wis.:Atwood Press.

after suffering comes happiness

Congratulation, Dr. Chen!

That's the best news in these days. I'm sooooooooooo happy for you. :)

Life is harsh, but we are living with it no matter what.

We learn the lesson, and head forward.

Best wishes!

Creativity

Creativity

Traditionally, creativity is more considered in the art design and music composition. Although it is not easy to find the research about creativity in the educational field, in fact, creativity is the one of main considerations in the multimedia project.

What is creativity? Sternberg and Lubert (1995) proposed that novelty must be coupled with appropriateness for something to be considered creative. Although creativity can be seen in the products, it can also be considered in terms of the process. Weisberg (1986) proposes that creativity can be defined by the novel use of tools to solve problems or novel problem solving. From this point of view, our multimedia project involved creativity not only during the design process and also the applications which were used to apply for the content.

The most famous creativity model is Graham Wallas’ model. Wallas (1926) proposed that creativity involves four consecutive stages: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification.
1. Preparation. The person expecting to gain new insights must know his field of study and be well prepared. This fits what we have experienced that people get ingenious ideas mainly in their own fields - poets in poetry; scientists, in science. In the preparation stage we define the problem, need, or desire, and gather any information the solution or response needs to account for, and set up criteria for verifying the solution's acceptability.

2. Incubation - Wallas noticed many great ideas came only a period of time spent away from the problem. Many ideas come to us when we are away from the problem, usually after actively engaging with the problem. This could be explained in Weisberg (1986) that the creativity was thought to stem from unconscious thought processes. In the incubation stage, we step back from the problem and let our minds contemplate and work it through. Like preparation, incubation can last minutes, weeks, even years.

3. Illumination. It's a mysterious phase. Resting the mind by doing other activities was the only suggestion Wallas could offer about how creative ideas form., like a “click” or “flash.” In the illumination stage, ideas arise from the mind to provide the basis of a creative response. These ideas can be pieces of the whole or the whole itself, i.e. seeing the entire concept or entity all at once. Unlike the other stages, illumination is often very brief, involving a tremendous rush of insights within a few minutes or hours.

4. Verification. In this final step, efforts are made to see if the "happy idea" actually solves the problem. Since "great" ideas don't always work out in actual situation, this final step is vitally important to the success of any project. In verification, the final stage, one carries out activities to demonstrate whether or not what emerged in illumination satisfies the need and the criteria defined in the preparation stage. From this point of view, Gabora (2002) pointed out that creativity transforms and evolves a collection of old ideas into new ones rather than just unconscious procedures, which might imply that the creativity could be trained.

Moreover, Poon Teng Fatt's (2000) emphasizes the gathering of ideas in groups and the fostering for the free flow of ideas. By encouraging group discussion, brainwave will be encouraged along with the sharing of ideas and experiences.

Our traditional creative thinking only focuses on the brainstorming stage, however, the creative process involves purposeful analysis, imaginative idea generation, and critical evaluation – the total creative process is a balance of imagination and analysis (Plsek, 1996).

In Appreciation of Professor multimedia project, the design group create a unique multimedia project by considering the culture, community and historical perspectives. The ability of the creativity could be analyzed from the content, the design procedures and the final product, which could be integrated into the other projects in the multimedia learning and teaching environment.


References
Gabora, L. (2002). Cognitive mechanisms underlying the creative process. In T. T. Hewett & T. Kavanagh (Eds.), Creativity & cognition: Proceedings of the Fourth Creativity & Cognition Conference (pp. 126-133). New York: ACM Press.

Plsek, Paul E. (1996). Working paper: models for the creative process. Retrieved from http://www.directedcreativity.com/pages/WPModels.html

Poon Teng Fatt, J. (2000). Fostering creativity in education. Education, 120, 744-757.

Sternberg, R. J. & Lubart, T. I. (1995). Defying the crowd: Cultivating creativity in a culture of conformity. New York: Free Press.

Wallas, G (1926) The Art of Thought. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Weisberg, R. W. (1986). Creativity: Genius and other myths. New York: Freeman.

farmer girl

One of my friends told me that her dutch colleague asked her if I am a dutch because "boer" stands for "farmer" in dutch, and lots of dutch ppl have last name as boer. Wow, I wish so. This reminds me of one famous poet and his poetry "采菊东篱下，悠然见南山." What a luxury dream!

It's been several months not to write anything serious here. Writing in English is still challenging for me although sometimes I had an urge to say. What a pity!