Teachers often find themselves showing a computer's screen to a group of students. Whether it's a webpage or software application, chances are that much of what appears on the screen is too small to see clearly (even when projecting the screen onto a large wall).

Windows and Macintosh users have ways of zooming into portions of the screen. Magnifying parts of the screen is helpful to highlight what students should focus on.

Words on screen can be practically unreadable from a distance.You can see from the screenshots below that it's much easier to show an audience a link to click when zoomed.

Continue reading "Zoom into a Computer's Screen"

Wikipedia is the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It can be a very valuable resource if you keep in mind that, no joke, anyone can edit it. Does this make it more or less accurate? Many educators agree that Wikipedia is a source to be consulted, but more reliable sources should be referenced. Educators should teach students to be careful readers when using Wikipedia.

I want to show you an often overlooked feature of each and every Wikipedia page. First, let's go to the Wikipedia page for Octopus. Continue reading "Wikipedia's Overlooked Feature"

There are lots of great videos on YouTube that you may want to share with students at school. Unfortunately, chances are YouTube is blocked in your building. That doesn't mean you can't use YouTube videos in your classroom. You can use a free web service to download videos from your home Internet connection and bring them back to school on your laptop, flash drive, iPod, or DVD. Continue reading "Download YouTube Videos and Use Them at School"

I'm pleased welcome you to the Arizona K-12 Center's blog! What exactly is a blog? It is short for weblog and here's a definition for you:

A blog is an easy-to-update website that is
organized in reverse chronological order.

As a reader, you don't really care that it's easy for us to update the site. But what easy posting means is that we get to focus on what we write for the blog, not the process of getting it online. As a reader you will like that the newer posts are listed first so you don't have to hunt for what's new.

Continue reading "What is a blog?"