A Cheat Sheet for Mac Keyboard Shortcuts

CheatSheet is a free Mac app that allows you to quickly find all of the keyboard shortcuts for the applications that you use on your Mac. I'm installing it for those times when I can't remember if the shortcut I want to use requires the command key, the control key, or both. Learn more and see CheatSheet in action in the Tekzilla video below.

Need a Creative Writing Prompt? Try This

The Imagination Prompt Generator randomly generates prompts for starting a fictional story. Imagination Prompt Generator is part of the Creativity Portal which offers ideas for free creative projects. Most of the project ideas in the kids section of the Creativity Portal are appropriate for elementary school and possibly middle school age students.

Applications for Education
The Imagination Prompt Generator and the Creativity Portal are good resources for teachers looking for fictional writing ideas or classroom projects. Sometimes the hardest part of teaching creative writing or starting a creative writing assignment, is generating a story idea. That is when resources like the Imagination Prompt Generator are good to have bookmarked.

A Free Speech to Text App for Chrome

I've covered speech to text and text to speech apps for Chrome before and today I want to share another one that I recently discovered. Online Dictation is a free site that will transcribe your speech for you. To use the site just visit it, click on the microphone icon, and start talking. If the transcription inserts the wrong word (for example it inserted "number" instead of "mumble" when I tried it) just click on that word to replace it. You can copy the transcript and paste it anywhere you like.

 
Applications for Education
This could be a good resource for students who, for a variety of reasons, might need assistance generating text documents on a computer.

H/T to Life Hacker. 

Share Bunches of Links With LinkBunch

LinkBunch is a free service that you can use to quickly send a group of links to your friends, colleagues, and students. To use the service just visit LinkBunch, enter the links that you want to share, and click "Bunch." When you click on "Bunch" you will be given a URL to share with anyone you want to see the links in your bunch. When someone clicks on the URL for your Bunch he or she will be able to open the links you bunched together.

Applications for Education
LinkBunch, like Bundle Nut and Bitly, could be a good way to share a group of important online resources with your students and or colleagues. The one potential drawback is that there was a pop-up add that obscured part of my Bunch when I tried it the first time.

H/T to Kyle Pace. 

CNN Student News is Back for 2012-2013

The new school year has started for some and will be starting again soon for everyone else. With the start of a new school comes a new season of CNN Student News. CNN Student News started back up again yesterday. The format is the same as it has been for years. The roughly ten minute episodes feature US stories, a world news stories,  "shout out" to a class, and a quick quiz. Transcripts for each show are available for download as are suggested viewing questions to cover with your students. Today's commercial-free episode is embedded below.