Timetoast

I love this website! Timetoast is a tool to create timelines, which people have used to make and share timelines on all sorts of different topics. As you roll your mouse over, it automatically shows the relevant events - one event per black dot. The little "+" sign allows you to open the event to view more information including pictures and text. You can create a free account to make and share your own timelines.

I think this would be fantastic in the classroom. It would be a great visual representation of historical events (I don't know about you, but I always struggled with timelines at school because the page was too small). Since you can expand events, there's all sorts of applications like mini essays - why not collaborate and have each student work on a different event?

Students could document the important events in their lives, even adding photos. Obviously, as this is public domain, personal photos should not be used and care should be taken not to reveal identifying information.

One application I think would be really fun would be for the students to create future timelines for themselves. These could be real goals for older students, or fantasy futures for the littlies. Who wouldn't want to be an astronaut when they were 5?!

Links:
Timetoast

An excellent example for classroom risk-taking

Google today announced that they are discontinuing their social networking software, "Google Wave". This technology was soft-launched with much fanfare in the geek community, as you could only join in the beta testing if you knew someone and got an invitation. All over discussion boards worldwide, people begged and pleaded for access to something they couldn't have. When it did get released to the public it really wasn't a big deal, at least not in any of the places I was looking. To be honest I really wasn't sure whether it even had been released publicly, although I vaguely remember playing with it once. Perhaps it was a video.

Google Wave brainstorm feature

The functionality was brilliant and allowed a lot of collaboration, for example the 'brainstorming' tool (right). You could type, or draw, and you don't have to press enter every time - it just comes up automatically.

Unfortunately the take-up of this product was far from Google's expectations, and they have had the courage to do what many others won't - gracefully move on.

They have acknowledged that it didn't do what they expected. They have decided not to keep pouring money into something that isn't working and most importantly, they have recognised that much of the technology that went into creating the product has been and will be useful elsewhere. Therefore, they took a risk and it didn't work, but they learned and grew from the experience. I will definitely be holding this up in the classroom.

Links:
Google's announcement introducing Wave
Google's announcement to discontinue Wave

Crossover Mac

Further to the previous post about Pivot and Stykz, I found it annoying not to be able to load a background. After much searching I found a program called "Crossover Mac" by Codeweavers, which runs Windows programs in, well - a window. It supports a ton of different programs and Pivot is one of them. There's a 30-day trial available, which was easy to install and user-friendly for adding Pivot. I've only tried it once so far, but it worked reasonably well. It was a bit slow when I had 3 figures in there, so I'll have to play a bit more.

Crossover Mac costs $39.95 USD if you want to keep it, so worth checking out anyway.

Links:
Codeweavers' Crossover Mac 30-day trial download page