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We’ve already pointed to a number of Google developments and acquisitions including the recent assimilation of Writely which has great potential in any collaborative writing. Well here’s the perfect complement in terms of collaborative spreadsheet work. I know some of us have had “Numbler” accounts but the Google machine seems unstoppable and more importantly appears to be striving for coherent and comprehensive coverage with Google Spreadsheets as one of the latest additions from Google Labs. Why not take a sneak peek - Great potential for cross school data handling projects at any level - topically we could be collecting interesting weather data from every school!

Following my recent letter to schools please see this further update: new newsletter from Digitalbrain which opens with the paragraphs:
“These are exciting times at Digitalbrain and we thought a quarterly update in the form of a newsletter would help keep you in the picture.
In this issue you can find out about developments to Learning Manager, take a look at how a couple of schools are making very different use of Learning Manager and catch up with an overview of the recent Learning Platform events……..”

For a second day in a row I was on the road with my iBooks podcasting, blogging and flickring. Today I was at SJT, further details about the day can be found here.

My latest podcasting day was in Oldbury Wells, more details can be found here.

Google notebook is an extension for IE or Firefox web browsers.

Clip and collect information as you browse the web.

• Clip useful information.
  You can add clippings of text, images and links from web pages to your Google Notebook without ever leaving your browser window.
• Organize your notes.
  You can create multiple notebooks, divide them into sections, and drag-and-drop your notes to stay organized.
• Get access from anywhere.
  You can access your Google Notebooks from any computer by using your Google Accounts login.
• Publish your notebook.
  You can share your Google Notebook with the world by making it public.

Further details can be found on the overview page. I see this as an effective tool for students carrying out research on the internet.  All notes have the url they were taken from recorded underneath the note, you can edit the notes and even type in your own notes which will be related to the page you are viewing.  Here is an example of a public notebook that I made searching for information about Whitchurch, Shropshire.

Personal homepages seem to be a common theme on the web atm, I have had a play with pageflakes, My Yahoo! and more recently Google. So why would I want a personal homepage, these are the reasons on the Google website:

Your personalized homepage brings together Google functionality and content from across the web, on a single page:

• Preview latest Google Mail messages
• See headlines from Google News and other top news sources
• Get weather forecasts, stock quotes, and movie showtimes
• Select from a variety of popular feeds
• Drag and drop the sections to rearrange the page.

You can also add your favourite rss feeds from any website/blog. Are there any educational uses for this kind of application?

Get Safe Online, the UK’s first national Internet Security Awareness Campaign, is a joint initiative between the government, the National High-Tech Crime Unit and private sector sponsors including Dell, eBay, HSBC, LloydsTSB, MessageLabs, Microsoft, securetrading.com and Yell.com. The campaign website: www.getsafeonline.org provides clear, reliable and practical internet security advice, enabling even the most vulnerable users to protect themselves while online.

The website contains lesson plans for stand alone lessons in Years 7 - 9, the lessons have been written in the style of the KS3 STU’s and provide all the resources required to teach the internet security lessons. There are also quizzes and further support materials for teachers and parents/carers.

I would be interested to hear feedback from any teachers that have used these resources.

(From the Digital Signposts blog); it looks like Writely is open for registrations again, having been assimilated into the Google behemoth. For those who haven’t tried it yet, Writely is an online word processor similar to wiki technology in that a number of people can share and work on a single document, with the facility to rollback to an earlier version if necessary. There are a lot of ways to use Writely, and now that registrations are free it looks like the time is ripe for educators to start finding some ways of using this technology in guiding learning.

Let us know how you are using it by posting a comment - it will inspire others to greater things too!

Via a comment left here I visited the ‘Digital Signposts‘ blog and was pleasantly suprised to see a post about this blog:

We need more of this

I came across the Shropshire ICT blog early this morning and it kept me up far too late. It is informative, up to date and easy to read. Indeed it is very refreshing to see a Local Authority ICT service with such a positive presence, the schools and teachers in Shropshire are very lucky. I have added the link to my typelist.

Most people just type their search terms into Google and then trawl through its results, did you know that it is possible to set up a couple of preferences for your searching. To do so click on the ‘Preferences‘ link on the right hand side of the search box, the preferences are as follows:

Interface Language - allows you to change the language you want your tips and messages in.

Search Language - this is the language that pages you search for are written in, by default this is ‘any language’. If you are an English speaker you could change this to English, or if you were doing a French lesson you might choose French.

SafeSearch Filtering - this allows you to change the default amount of filtering that Google applies. Further details can be found on the SafeSearch page.

Number of Results - this is the number of results per page, by default this is 10 but you can increase it to 100. Bear in mind the more results per page the slower the page will be to load.

Results Window - you can either have your search results opening in your present browser window or in a new window.

You can find further details on these settings here.  All these preferences are stored in your cookies so will remain on the machine you are working until you remove your cookies.