The Week In Review - Lots of Wires

Good evening from the Free Technology for Teachers World Headquarters in Woodstock, Maine. This week I wrapped-up a Practical Ed Tech webinar series on Monday and started thinking about the summer workshops. On Friday I visited the offices of CDW in Chicago where I learned quite about new servers (disclosure: CDW paid for the trip). They even left me somewhat unattended to look around. Though the little kid in me wanted to pull a few wires to see what would happen, I just settled for taking some pictures like the one to the left.

Here are this week's most popular posts:
1. Read & Write - A Great Chrome App That is Now Free for Teachers
2. Twelve Good Tools for Building End-of-year Review Activities
3. Four Ways for Students to Create Multimedia Magazines
4. Use Your Voice to Give Students Feedback on Google Drive - Cool Kaizena Updates
5. Quill - Writing Worksheets Made Interactive
6. Learning About and From Obsolete Objects
7. Spell Up - A Fun Way to Learn to Spell in Chrome

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Please visit the official advertisers that help keep this blog going.
Practical Ed Tech is the brand through which I offer PD webinars.
IXL offers a huge assortment of mathematics lesson activities.
Class Charts provides a great way to record and analyze student behavior information.
Typing Club offers free typing lessons for students.
Discovery Education & Wilkes University offer online courses for earning Master's degrees in Instructional Media.
MasteryConnect provides a network for teachers to share and discover Common Core assessments.
ABCya.com is a provider of free educational games for K-5.
The University of Maryland Baltimore County offers graduate programs for teachers.
Boise State University offers a 100% online program in educational technology.
EdTechTeacher is offers professional development workshops in Boston and Chicago.
StoryBoard That is a great tool for creating comics and more.

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GeoCommons - Browse Mapped Data and Create Data Maps

Maps can be a great tool for visualizing sets of data. GeoCommons offers a couple of good tools for finding mapped data sets and creating maps from data sets. GeoCommons Finder is a great place to find publicly shared data sets for use in maps. GeoCommons Maker. GeoCommons Maker provides users a quick and easy way to take the datasets found in GeoCommons Finder and display those datasets on a map. Users can create multi-layered maps and customize the way those layers are displayed. Click here to see a two layer map displaying demographic data regarding single parent households in theUnited States.

Maps created through GeoCommons can be saved as KML files, saved as images, or embedded into a website.

Applications for EducationGeoCommons Maker is as easy, if not easier, to use as Google Maps. The benefit of using GeoCommons Maker is that students can find datasets without having to search the Internet for them. This should save time when you're trying to complete a lesson plan in one sitting. GeoCommons has datasets that are relevant for use in Social Studies, Math, and Science.