Thursday, August 07, 2008

Teacher Tech Bites

I have to be crazy. I've started another new online presence for myself. Why do I keep adding new projects when I have a hard time keeping up with the ones I do already? Anyway, I've decided to try to create a video podcast that will be updated regularly (hopefully twice a week).

My focus is simple tools or tips related to technology. These can be for improving our craft as teachers or for making our lives easier or more enjoyable. The videos will be short. I'm trying to keep them under 5 minutes and focused to a single tool/topic. I'm also planning on doing them in one take with little to no post editing. This means they may end up being a little rough.

I have a dedicated blog for them at TeacherTechBites.com, but I'm planning on cross posting them here as well. You will find my first episode below.

In my first Teacher Tech Bite I'm sharing a cool tool that I've been looking for for a while. I use both Mac and Windows computers. I love presenting with my Mac because it has a great zoom function. I just place my cursor and then hit a quick key and everything near my cursor is magnified and totally readable by my audience. I get asked all the time if there's a way to do this on Windows. Until recently I always said no.

Enter ZoomIt. ZoomIt allows me to quickly zoom in on any spot on my computer. It is particularly useful for urls. In addition to the zoom function it also has a pen tool. So, I can mark up anything I'm looking at as well. It does all this as a svelt 145 kb application. This has become my new favorite must have windows application.


1 comment:

Frank said...

ooh handy, thanks