Betty’s Bytes

The developers have renamed Project Hummingbird SugarSync; you can sync, edit and backup any of your files and media with all of your computers, your online files on the Web and your mobile phone. ReadWriteWeb is offering Exclusive Private Beta invitations to SugarSync — RWW has 1,500 beta invites to the SugarSync to give away to RWW readers. Click here to get to RWW page with link to SugarSync.

I may never email myself a file again. I have signed up, downloaded the manager and put non-sensitive files online. I am already impressed.  I promptly updated to the additional storage and began to store some of my photos and video files as well.

Free mobile phone applications – there is so much available that your cell phone companies never tell you about.  Check out http://www.last100.com/2008/01/17/10-mobile-apps-and-services-you-should-definitely-check-out/#more-1330 for ten of them. Two featured are Jangl and Pinger; Jangl allows you to send free voicemails to any mobile phone via email and provides a local number for the person to return your call without sharing your real phone number, while Pinger lets you send a free voice message to any mobile phone.

Here is an opportunity to increase your or your students’ vocabulary and help donate free rice to the impoverished around the world.  Check it out with Snopes.com; this is a legitimate offer.

Click here —->>  http://freerice.com/index.php

You are given a word and four choices of definition. For each correct answer 10 grains of rice are donated.  The rice is paid for by the advertisers on the site. The distribution is handled by the UN World Food Program.

Thanks to our school system, in the near future, teachers will have free Web pages on the Internet to use for their classes. Computer Resource Specialists throughout the city will be trained in February.  To read a little more from someone who worked with us at one time, click here.

Do you show videos in your classroom? Do you take your students on virtual field trips in the media lab? If you are just beginning to use technology with your students, it is just that – a beginning. According to Stephen Downes, “We should not be teaching our students using video, we should be teaching our students to use video, not so they can be better students, but so they can be better teachers.” Will you bring your students into the 21st century?  Will you learn to use and create video?  Will you then help your students learn to use video, create virtual field trips and create video?