Nassau BOCESDepartment of Curriculum, Instruction and Technology

The Open Innovation Portal is a collaborative community designed to identify, improve, and implement innovative solutions to educational challenges.

The Portal is a Web 2.0 application that combines elements familiar to most Internet users.

- Rate solutions and fellow members.
- Connect with other members.
- Post classifieds to seek or offer services.
- Earn points for participating.

The Portal works by having members post their ideas to a variety of different innovation challenges. Other members in the community ask questions, contribute helpful comments, and rate the ideas. The best ideas float to the top, where they attract the attention of other innovators, potential funders, or contributors of in-kind resources. The feedback also helps innovators improve the quality of their ideas, for submission to other Portal challenges or external grant programs.

Visit the site here: https://innovation.ed.gov/

A big Thank You to Paula Pisano for sharing this amazing resource!

Every morning, more than 800 newspapers from around the world submit their front pages to the Newseum via the Internet to be part of Today’s Front Pages.

The Today’s Front Pages gallery gives visitors an up-close look at the day’s news on up to 80 newspaper front pages from every state, the District of Columbia and countries around the world.

This is a great way to engage students with news and events from around the world and explore different perspectives.

You can find it here: http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/default.asp?p_size=669

Futurelab is an independent not-for-profit organization in the UK that is dedicated to transforming teaching and learning, making it more relevant and engaging to 21st century learners through the use of innovative practice and technology.

As a part of the very many project and resources that they are involved in and provide are a series of handbooks that cover everything from curriculum innovation, learning spaces, technology integration strategies and connections to education.

You can find them all here: http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/publications-reports-articles/handbooks/

Google Fast Flip is an online news aggregator from Google Inc. that mimics the experience of flicking through a newspaper or magazine, allowing visual search of stories in manner similar to microfiche.

The site presents images of stories from Google’s news partners, which can be clicked on to navigate to the story on the news provider’s own website.

From Google: Google Fast Flip is a web application that lets users discover and share news articles. It combines qualities of print and the Web, with the ability to “flip” through pages online as quickly as flipping through a magazine. It also enables users to follow friends and topics, discover new content and create their own custom magazines around searches.

Check it out here:  http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/

See a list of sources here: http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/sources

If you have a Google domain, make sure to check out the new Google Apps Marketplace.

The Google Apps Marketplace offers products and services designed for Google users, including installable apps that integrate directly with Google Apps. Installable apps are easy to use because they include single sign-on, Google’s universal navigation, and some even include features that integrate with your domain’s data.

Among others, the first two I installed on my domain were Aviary Design Studio and Offisync.  These two apps certainly add value to the Education/Google proposition and some nice “integrated” functionality.

Check out the Marketplace here: http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/home

Weblist is a new way to gather and organize content on the web. Create your list of URLs centered on a specific theme and they will be combined into one easy to navigate URL.  Once you have created your list you can save it as a smart bookmark or as a customizable home page.

Weblist is a free service and registration is optional. If you choose to register as a user your entire list will be saved under your account and you will be able to edit, delete and add to your lists.

Although the service is still in alpha, it is a great site to start taking advantage of and there are certainly many uses for both teachers and students in the classroom.

You can find it here: http://weblist.me/

Windows MultiPoint Server 2010 is a new Windows product that allows multiple users to simultaneously share one computer.  Those of you familiar with NComputing will understand this concept right away.

From Microsoft:

Student success is your top priority, so you need to make learning more motivating, relevant, collaborative, and engaging for today’s students and their varied learning styles. Windows MultiPoint Server 2010 is a cost-effective solution that was designed to help you accomplish your goal.

More information on MS Multipoint Server here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/multipoint/learn-more.aspx

Mouse Mischief is a tool that Microsoft makes available free of charge, and that allows teachers to work with Microsoft Office PowerPoint to make interactive presentations. With Mouse Mischief, teachers can add multiple choice questions to their presentations, and large groups of students can answer the questions using mice connected to the teachers PC.

Learn more here: http://www.microsoft.com/multipoint/mouse-mischief/default.aspx

THE Journal article here as well.

SAS Curriculum Pathways is an online resource for students and teachers that adds new tools and interactive content to the classroom.  Available at no cost and used by thousands of educators in all 50 states, SAS Curriculum Pathways provides standards-based content in the core academic disciplines of English, mathematics, social studies, science and Spanish for grades 8-12.

Though SAS offers SAS Curriculum Pathways at no cost, the company’s investment in innovation continues. For example, new social studies materials include an interactive atlas. In math, a new interactive tool helps students develop basic algebra skills. Enhancements to the award-winning Writing Reviser in the English module help students master sentence fundamentals. SAS Curriculum Pathways earned a Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) CODiE Award this year for Best Reading/English Instructional Solution. New Spanish materials help students develop reading and listening skills in real-world situations.

This great resource can be found here: http://www.sascurriculumpathways.com/

The Professor Garfield Foundation learning portal is a fun interactive online environment where children can safely explore, learn and creatively express themselves.

PGF offers fun, engaging and transforming educational content for school children between kindergarten and 8th grade. The educational content is upgraded continuously and presented in a popular culture entertainment format. All of the content has been reviewed by educational experts and tested in classroom settings.

You can find the Professor Garfield Foundation learning portal here: http://www.professorgarfield.org/pgf_home.html

Thanks to Trish Iannacone for sharing this great resource.

College InSight, an initiative of the Institute for College Access & Success, makes data on college affordability, diversity, and student success easy to find, compare, and analyze. College InSight provides data for almost 5,000 U.S. colleges and universities. In addition to college-level data, it features totals and averages for states, sectors, and other groupings of colleges.

Enjoy this resource here: http://college-insight.org/#

The Living Stories project is an experiment in presenting news, one designed specifically for the online environment. The project was developed by Google in collaboration with two of the country’s leading newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Complete coverage of an on-going story is gathered together and prioritized on one URL. You can now quickly navigate between news articles, opinion pieces and features without long waits for pages to load.

Visit the Stories here: http://livingstories.googlelabs.com/

The University of Utah provides two tremendous resources free of charge to educators for use in the classroom.  (1) Learn.Genetics delivers educational materials on genetics, bioscience and health topics.  (2) Teach.Genetics provides resources for K-12 teachers.  These include PDF based documents, activities, interactive materials (great for use on an Interactive Whiteboard), unit plans and other supporting resources.   Both sites can be found below:

Learn.Genetics

Teach.Genetics