Internet Tools - Google and More

Collaborate on a Wiki

Google Research

Let Google Be Your Clipping Service

Something Extra: Teachnology.com

Research Beyond Google
 

Educational Media
This three-times a year newsletter is published by the Renton Technical College Library.  If you have any suggestions for topics, please call the library at     (425) 235-2331, or  email  Laura Staley at    lstaley@rtc.ctc.edu

The library has over 1300 videos and DVDs covering the RTC curriculum. Want to know if we have anything for your RTC program? Call us at (425) 235-2331.

The library is located at: 3000 NE Fourth St, Renton, WA 98056

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, which is a long name for a time-saving idea. 

Do you have several websites that you visit on a regular basis, checking for news?  If these sites have RSS feeds, this tool allows you to go to one place to find out what’s new. 

You will need a RSS reader.  (RSS readers are programs that go out to each website you’ve listed, and collect files with updated information.) You can download one or use a free web-based version. I strongly recommend the web products. I use Rocketinfo.com (http://reader.rocketinfo.com/desktop/), but Yahoo and other sites offer them as well.

Simply sign up for an account, put in your RSS feeds URL—most sites that offer feeds advertise them on the home page of the site—or select from the ones the RSS site already offers.  Then visit your RSS reader page as often as you choose!

There are RSS feeds on most subjects. If you are interested in cars, take a look at the Auto channel’s RSS feeds at http://www.theautochannel.com/rss/

For nursing research, look at the feeds listed at http://wjn.sagepub.com/rss/

For accounting, try http://www.inboxrobot.com/rss_services/news/big-four-accounting

What’s the easiest way to find interesting new feeds?  Just go to Google and type in your subject and “RSS”.

Google for Educators (http://www.google.com/educators/index.html) focuses on how teachers have used a wide variety of free Google tools—Blogger, Google Earth, free Google web pages and Google Docs file sharing—to enhance the learning experience for their students. For most tools there is a tip sheet with concise  instructions.

Google Earth. Geography and biology teachers use Google Earth – which offers satellite- height coverage of large portions of the earth –  to study  everything from animal migration to volcanoes.  A writing teacher used Google Earth as well, to have his  students trace the landscape described a text. For other ideas see                    http://www.google.com/educators/p_earth.html

Google Calendar allows the posting of a class schedule, including subjects, registration, test and paper due dates, competition dates, and other class related information. http://www.google.com/educators/p_calendar.html

Google Docs & Spreadsheets.  This tool could be very useful for group projects.  Share documents and spreadsheets online, accessing and editing them anywhere there is an internet connection.  The system accepts many of the most common file formats.  The account holder can grant permission for other users to edit them. You will  need a free Google account to use this feature. For more information, see http://www.google.com/google-d-s/tour1.html

 Two Google tools we will only mention (because they require downloading programs onto your hard drive, and therefore may not be suitable for work use) are Picasa, an image editing and sharing suite (http://picasa.google.com/), and SketchUp, which allows sophisticated 3-D modeling (http://sketchup.google.com/)

    Editing Pictures Online

Don’t have an image editing program on your computer and you want to modify a photograph?  Try Snipshot at http://snipshot.com/ .  This is an entirely web-based photo and clip-art editor.  You can crop a picture, rotate it, resize it, and change its brightness, contrast, saturation and hue.

You can choose the file format you want to use to save your altered picture. The options are .jpg, .gif, .pdf, .tif, .psd, and .png.

There are  other free photo editing sites on the web. Pixenate http://pixenate.com/  and Pixer http://pixer.us/ also don’t require registration.