Editing and Manipulating photos is becoming an essential part of the multimedia classroom. In considering which tools are best I looked at a few primary factors.  These include: Price, Capability, Ease of use, and educational value.

1. Pixelmator- $59 Pixelmator is a very powerful photo editing tool that gives you photoshop like capability  in a easy to use affordable package.  Piximator lets you preform all of the basics like crop, rotate, change color and exposure level, but goes beyond to allow advances editing with layers. If you need an affordable tool that can do just about everything pixelmator is your tool.
2. MacGimp- Free (Open Source) Gimp has been an open source alternative for editing photos for a long time.  As a result it has become a well developed open source application.  Although it is not as pretty and not as easy to use as Pixelmator, it is just as powerfull in regards to capability.  The price is somthing any teacher can afford, but there is a steep learning curve.
3. I-Photo’08- $71 (Part of the i-Life suite)  I-photo is tightly integrated into many of the Mac applications, and is extreemly easy to learn and use.  It is a key componant to managing your photos, and does a good job with basic editing tasks.  On the down side I-photo is very limited, and will nt do any advanced editing.  It is simply a good tool to manage and preform  very basic edits to your photos.  I personally feel that it is not worth the upgrade price if a previous version came with your Mac, unless you are also doing a significant ammount of video work with i-movie whitch is included with the i-Life update.
4. Photoshop Elements- 89.95 Photoshop is the industry standard for photo editing. The elements version takes out a few of the professional features, and makes the interface a little easier to use, but still contains a significant ammount of editing power.  It is an affordable alternative to its big brother.
5. Photoshop- 299.95 Photoshop does not top the list primarily because of price.  It is simply out of range for most teachers.  For those that can afford it they also face a steep learning curve.  With all of these drawbacks, why is it on the list?  Photoshop is an extremely powerful editing tool.  It has the backing of a huge user base, so it is easy to find resources to figure out what you want to do.  Of the five this software ranks the highest in educational value, simply because the skills learned will likely carry over to the professional market.

(All prices based on academic discounts if availible)

https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html

Adobe has just released a great tool for basic editing of photos.  The best part about it is that it is free and does not require installation.  Photoshop Express is a free online application that lets you do a variety of things to photos, including: Cropping, Rotating, adding effects, correcting blemishes and more.  This is not Photoshop CS3,  The advanced tools and layers functions are not available in this version, but in reality for teaching middle grade students and perhaps even primary grade students how to do basic photo editing it is very cool.  If you an advanced Photoshop user looking for a new version you will have to wait for Photoshop CS4.

http://simulator.investopedia.com/

In one of my high school business classes we did an activity where we got to buy and sell stocks on paper for a quarter, and it was a great expierence.  The down side to that expierence is that it was limited to the major stocks listed in the local paper, and we had to hand calculate all of the transactions.  Today with new technology this experience has been greatly enhanced. One of the best systems available is on investopedia.com.  The investopedia.com solution starts you with 100,000 in virtual cash and lets your students trade on there website in real time, so they can have a great virtual stock trading experience.  The down side is that each student must register for an account.

If you are ready to teach students about investing I would also recommend  The Motley Fool Investment Guide for Teens.

http://www.flashcardexchange.com

Using flash cards does not really seem like it belongs in a technology  blog, but I have found a site that makes great use of the internet community to take this old educational tool to a new level.  Flash cards are still around because they are very effective.  The challange is finding flash cards that match your content well.  FlashCardExchange.com is a web based community where thousands of flash card sets are shared.  Regardless of the subject you are bound to find a set of flash cards that will meet your needs.  If you happen to need a more specialized set it is easy to create and share your own set of flash cards.  It seems that most of the files availible are text based, but you do have the capability of uploading pictures.  The site is free for online use, and $19.95 for the ability to print, or download the cards sets.  The $19.95 provides you with a licence for life.

http://www.hunkinsexperiments.com

The science fair season is upon us, and we are always in need of fun and easy science projects.  This free site has a wide variety of science fair projects availible.  It is well organized and broken down into categories making it quick and easy to find just the right projeect for your students interests.

The iPod has already had an impact on the education community, but the advent of the iPod Touch  shows particular promise as a tool that could significantly improve the classroom.  iPods are a great way to deliver media contents to students to give extra review and practice to the students that need it.  The iPod touch takes it beyond the basic viewing and listening of media to add applications.  From using Internet resources, to communication applications it puts a vast amount of resources in the hands of teachers and students. 
In June Apple will release another update for the iPod Touch that will allow you to add a wide variety of applications to your ipod touch.  Although I can only speculate I would expect to see grade management, student management, and educational programs very soon after that.  This new expansion makes the iPod Touch a viable and valuable classroom tool.

The wiki for educators has been recently updated to better meet the needs of educators.  A few of the new features are:

• NEW CURRIKI “GROUPS” TOOL MAKES SOCIAL NETWORKING AND COLLABORATION EASY
  Whether you’d like to form a community of interest or a community of practice, you can now join a group or use Curriki tools to create one of your own!
• CURRIKI REVIEW SYSTEM Subject-area experts have begun to review and make constructive comments on Curriki lessons, units, and courses. Nominate resources to be reviewed by the Curriki Review Team, or add your own comments using the “comments tab.”

If you don’t know what Curriki see our article at: Ed Tech Review Curikki

http://10-fast-fingers.com/

10 Fast Fingers is a free online typing tutor that is simple yet effective in teaching the basics of keyboarding.  It is based on touch typing principals meaning that we know where the keys are based on muscle memory rather than sight.  I enjoyed using the lessons, and will continue to use it until I break my poor keyboarding habits.

Is this the end of cursive ? (Christian Science Monitor)

Because of the rise of the information age, keyboarding ha been gaining ground in it’s amount of time dedicated to it’s instruction.   There assumption indicates that this time is replacing cursive instruction.  Although this may be the case it does not need to be.  I do question how much time should be spent specifically on any handwriting instruction beyond second grade, but I don’t think cursive will disappear any time soon.  I don’t believe it is the place of technology to replace other subjects, rather it’s purpose is to enhance and improve instruction.  The biggest challenge we would face in replacing handwriting skills is practicality.  Although computers are taking over handwriting tasks, we still teach in classrooms where a majority of work still takes place using a pencil.  until every child has a computer and it’s socially acceptable to use a computer in all types of places, the mostt efficient for of writing, Cursive, will still have its place.

In fourth Grade my elementary school got it’s first computers.  They were the state of the art amazing Apple II Computers.  These amazing machines allowed you to type and correct mistakes, without starting all over, and create cool looking banners with Print Shop.  It seemed that Mac had a strong hold on the education market early on, especially in the elementary sector.  This trend continued through my high school years, where I spent my time programming in basic and pascal on our Apple IIe’s.  There was a crack in the dam, when our school purchased a PC lab for the CAD program my senior year.  Soon high schools colleges, and businesses were dominated by the PC.  But Apple despite inferior technology at the time held strong in the Elementary School market.  Apple was nearly dead with a fledgling user base of dedicated fanatics that still swear up and down that pre-OSX operating systems were better than Windows XP.  Based on the frequent crashes an multiple systems  with my Macs I would respectfully disagree with these fanatics.  Finally the Elementary Schools got some sense and realized that they were wasting money on Macs, and started making the shift to PC’s  But Apple still had some fight left in them.  The iPod was introduced and widely accepted as the music player of choice, and with this significant influx of cash they transformed the there sub par Hardware and Software into the Modern powerhouse of computing.  Consumers are flocking to Mac in record numbers, and businesses are beginning to shift.  But what about the strong base of Elementary schools,  Well Mac labs continue to be replaced by PC’s.  Finally Mac has the best product out there, and it the schools are dropping it like flies.  In reality, I understand why.  Schools have begun to realize that Apple does not have a competitive price. I can put together a computer that is component for component identical or superior to Mac technology for about half of what Apple charges.  Software is much more available for PC than Mac, especially in regards to open source tools.  It is easier and more affordable to find PC techs.  You can save a lot of money going the PC route.  But it does seem a little ironic that schools stuck with Apple until they produced a good product and then jumped ship.