How to get the French accents on your Chromebook

It is quite easy to type the French diacritical signs (aka: those pesky accents)  with your chromebook. Let’s take the mystery out of them:

• First you need to set up your keyboard input one time:

1. Click on user icon -> Settings -> scroll down, Show Advanced -> Languages -> Customize languages and input...
2. Under "Input method" check the "US International Keyboard" checkbox (Leave "US Keyboard" checked as well)
3. Click the "Add" button
4. Select "French"
5. Also check the “US Extended Keyboard”

When you’re done, your languages screens should look like these:

• Exit the settings page.  There will now be a little "US" next to the clock and the wifi indicator in the lower right corner.
• Go to the page/Doc where you want to do international input.
• Use control-shift-space; the "US" in the corner will change to "INTL" or “EXTD” or “FR” -- pick “INTL”

• Now, the letters:

• à, è, ù: Left alt-grave accent and letter.
• é: Right alt-e  or leftalt-apostrophe ( right of keyboard) and e.
• â û ô ê : shift -6 and then the letter: a, u, o or e.
• ç:   right alt-comma.
• ü : rightalt-y or shift -"- u
• ë : shift -"- e
• ï : shift-"- i
• œ: rightalt-k
• æ: rightalt-z
• ¨ ' ¨: rightalt - )

• To enable Caps Lock: Left alt-search (magnifying glass key). Use left alt-search again to turn off caps locks.

• When you are done, control-shift-space will set back your keyboard to "US" (and right alt will just be alt again)

Four very rich websites

Four web sites chock full of the newest ideas in education and other fields which are coming in video and mp3 formats. Remember that curiosity about ideas and creations in unfamiliar fields is one of the proven keys to success in one own's field:

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

Try this video of Richard Pyle about finding new species on the coral reef.

PopTech is a network of remarkable people, extraordinary conferences, powerful ideas, and innovative projects that are changing the world. Pop!Tech’s community is eclectic – intellectually, creatively, politically and culturally. But its folks share some common values. The folks who both produce and participate in Pop!Tech passionately believe:
That individuals and small groups have the power to shape the future
That all of us together are smarter than any of us alone
That good ideas should trump ideologies – whether on the Left or Right
That robust debate is the sign of a community’s health
That tomorrow will be more surprising than today
That progress is possible.

Try this video of Thomas Friedman about going green and the energy crisis


Entitled Opinions is like NPR on steroids. Produced by Stanford University, it features downloadable weekly interviews of artists, thinkers, advocates of worthy causes, scholars, writers, scientists, and other people of Nobel caliber. The interviewer, Robert Harrison, makes smart connections from one weekly topic to the other ones, never dumbs down an issue while asking the right questions allowing a general public to follow the interviewee, and makes you feel part of this community of world-class creative people.

Try the interview of Vinton Cerf, co-founder of Google (look it up under Nov 11, 2008).

Edutopia is the magazine, Web site, and video documentaries published by The George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF). Founded in 1991 by filmmaker George Lucas, the Foundation documents and disseminates information about exemplary programs in K-12 schools to help spread these practices nationwide.

See Ben Johnson’s blog on Differenciated Instruction and student success

Jude

Teachers love Twitter

From the NHOET Blog- While some educators are just getting familiar with the term Web 2.0 and all the various tools that can be classified as “web 2.0 tools,” other educators are already immersed in using them. Of course everyone has their favorites. My current favorite is GoogleDocs, but that’s a topic for another post. Today I thought I should share a few interesting articles about how Twitter (one of those Web 2.0 tools) can be used for language arts, community building, and many other things.
Search Engine Watch has an article by Ron Jones about Twitter
David Parry has a blog called academHack with a lengthy interesting post about how he uses Twitter in his university classroom at U Texas in Dallas.
EdWeek’s Digital Directions June 2008 issue includes an article about Twitter. One of my favorites was how this teacher used it:
created a Twitter account called Many Voices and invited his students, and students around the world, to add a sentence or two to the ongoing story through tweets. Within six weeks, the rolling story, written 140 characters at a time, was finished—with the help of more than 100 students in six different countries.
Have you used Twitter? Cathy Higgins

New website for online learning resources for everyone

From the NHOET blog-This morning, Governor Lynch was joined by state education officials in unveiling a new Web site that will serve as a one-stop, online learning resource for students, parents, teachers and school administrators. The new Web site provides information about online learning course work available — at schools in NH and beyond — which can be counted toward high school graduation credit. The comprehensive site also presents information and studies regarding the benefits of online learning. More…

Green curriculum

GreenHearted.org is a primer on transformative education for sustainability ...what you'll need in order to green your classroom, your curriculum, your students' learning, your school community, and your life's work as a teacher. Definitely inspiring. Jude

PBS online courses -PSU graduate credits

PBS TeacherLine offers more than 130 top-quality, graduate-level online courses for educators and has offerings that span the curriculum.
PBS TeacherLine's online courses were developed to align with national standards developed by leading professional organizations such as NCTM, ISTE, and NCTE.
Graduate credit is available from Plymouth State University. Fall courses start October 22, 2008. Check out the website. Jude

Quality Online Professional Development w/graduate credits

Lots of New Hampshire educators have participated in courses offered by the New Hampshire e-Learning for Educators program (otherwise known as OPEN NH). And they usually say, “this is the best deal in town!” because the courses cost only $100 with an option for graduate credits through Plymouth State. In seven weeks you can earn 3 graduate credits and network with other educators all across the state on topics that interest you.
You can still register for courses beginning October 7 and ending November 25. Fall 2008 courses include:
BP-01 Creating and Using Meaningful Rubrics that Assess Student Work
BP-06 School Policies for 21st Century Learning
CE-05 Developing Competencies for High School Courses
LA-03 Differentiating Instruction to Accommodate Learning Styles in Language Arts
LT-03 Supporting Literacy Development in Upper Elementary Classrooms
LT-04 Helping Struggling Readers Improve Comprehension
LT-05 Accommodating ESOL/ESL Students in the Classroom
MA-04 Using Real Data in the Math Classroom
SC-01 Inquiry in the Science Classroom Using Internet Based Data Sources
SC-05 Matter and Energy: Understanding Some Basic Principles of Science Literacy
SC-10 Understanding Force and Motion
SS-04 Differentiating Instruction to Accommodate Learning Styles in Social Studies
(From the NH OET Blog)

Grant Opportunities

One of the functions of this blog is to help teachers becoming aware of grant opportunities. the K. Schrock and the Big Deal grants pages have good collections of grant opportunities. Jude

21st century media centers

This article was found on the Alan November website. About the leadership role of media centers in the integration of technology at school as well as home. Definitely stimulating: Designing Libraries, Learning for a Lifetime
Jude

posting Office Documents

It looks like all blogging sites offer the option to post Office documents, but it's not a simple drag-and-drop process. Docs need to be embedded, and it looks like this takes several steps. If you've done this before, let me know, by adding a comment to this post. Jude

first post

This is my first post. At this point, my question is, is Blogspot a good plaform for our Action Team? It's simple and clean, while providing a certain versatility which might be all we need. The only thing I wonder is, how to organise posts, in case we would have hundreds of them. The simplest way to go is to decide on labels: Technology, Library Media, and Cross-disciplinary. As it is too long to type, we could shorten to Tech, Lib, CD. Let me know what you think.
Jude