Study guides and strategies

Know any students?

Study Guides and Strategies is a website with dozens of articles and resources on learning, studying and writing. Topic headings include: Preparing for tests, Reading skills, Learning with others, Math tests, and more.

Author Joe Landesberger includes tips on how to motivate yourself, how to take notes, how to manage stress, how to learn with ADHD and dozens of others. There are also links to other websites on exploring your own learning style, study skills websites, web design bibliography, and thinking-type games.

What's more, the content of Study Guides and Strategies is available in several different languages. Click on a tab at the left side of the page to instantly translate from English.

The author generously gives permission to "copy, adapt, and distribute individual Study Guides in print format in non-commercial educational settings that benefit learners." So if you are an educator, or if you know one, pass along this resource.

Pauline
teachmeinternet.com

SpokenText: Convert text to mp3

Confession: I download a lot of documents and web pages, and even print some of them out - with the full intention of reading them. But to be honest, I end up reading only a fraction of what I save. There just doesn't seem to be enough time to read everything I want to .

If you also have trouble keeping up with reading electronic documents, a solution is now available. My web designer, Linda Chapman, alerted me to SpokenText, a web-based service that converts documents, emails and even web pages to speech, and produces audio files that you can download to your iPod or mp3 player.

Listen to the audios in the car, while walking the dog, doing household chores, exercising, etc. Since the speech is robot-generated, you probably won't want to use this service for entertainment-type reading. But for brief, informational pieces, it's ideal.

Pauline
teachmeinternet.com

Podcasts via phone

Podcasts are now available by phone at PhoneCasting.com

Why would you want to do this? Convenience, for one. No need to download anything to your computer or mp3 player. You're more likely to carry your cellphone than your music player. And phonecasting is perfect for short podcasts such as news headlines, sports reports or health messages.

PhoneCasting.com has a variety of channels. Select what you want to listen to, and enter its phone number into your speed dial. If you don't see your favorite podcast, you can add it.

That's what I did with Scientific American's "60-second Psych. I went to the sciam.com website, and found the page with the podcast. I right-clicked on the "RSS" logo (in which is embedded the podcast link) and selected "Copy link location."

Then I went back to the phonecasting.com website and pasted the link into the search box - and voila! Up popped the phone number. Here it is, in case you want to listen:
+1 (360) 526-6291

Not only can you receive podcasts by phone. You can upload your own podcasts to phonecasting.com. Now you can give your listeners a choice - to listen online, on music players, or on the phone.


Pauline
teachmeinternet.com

Panoramic views

Want to visit faraway places, but don't have the time or money? The next best thing is a "virtual" visit through the lenses of panoramic photography.

Here's a view of Puerto Cabello, Venezuala. Use your mouse to drag the image. You'll see it rotate 360 degrees - almost like being there!

More panoramic photos are at ViewAt.org, Panoshow, and Don Bain's Virtual Guidebooks

This technology is used in interiors as well as in scenery. Some realtors are using it to show houses. Many tourist attractions have added virtual tours to their websites.

Add the phrase "virtual tour" to any search, and see what you can come up with. For example, search for:"luxury homes" virtual tour" or graceland "virtual tour" or "carlsbad caverns" virtual tour.

Have fun - and remember, if you get dizzy, just close your eyes for a few seconds. ;-)

Pauline
teachmeinternet.com

Doing research? Start from an information gateway

When starting out on researching a topic, you'll probably want a broad overview. You won't get that from a Google search. Instead use an information gateway site.

An information gateway (sometimes called a hub) includes links to hundreds or thousands of websites grouped by subject area. These are ideal when you are in the early stages of a search, or when you want to see what's related to your topic.

Here are some examples:


One of the oldest general information hubs on the Web, About.com (now owned by New York Times) is maintained by live "Guides" who collect information from various sources and put it together in different subject areas. It's like an annotated bibliography.


Librarians Index to the Internet is a publicly funded service, run by a team of librarians - information specialists.


dmoz is the Open Directory Project. The "dmoz"moniker is from the original name, Directory Mozilla. It's a human-edited directory, using volunteer editors from around the world.


Intute is a UK-based gateway to four specific subject areas: Science and technology, Arts and humanites, Social sciences, and Health and life sciences.


Pauline
teachmeinternet.com