Article: "Five tools for the world's best teacher"

Summary: Nowadays, there are a variety of online tools to teachers. Many online tools for teachers provide the option to both crate and keep a grade book. Teachers are able to communicate with students such as upload assignments, keep track of their attendance or grade. Some tools are let teachers share grades with parents. Moreover, since the syllabus and assignments are online, students’ will have access to the class resources no matter where they are. The article provides top 5 teaching tools, Blackboard, Classroom2.0, Engrade, MyGradeBook and TeacherTube.
Blackboad can upload grades, monitor student performance, and administer tests.
Classroom 2.0is a social network for teachers. Educators can chat, send messages, and exchange ideas o how to best educate students.
Engrade provides students with a place to monitor grades and see how they've performed on quizzes.
MyGradeBook is an impressive utility. Once the teacher buys a license (prices range from $30.95 to $39.95 per license per year) he or she will find one of the most powerful teaching utilities on the Web.
TeacherTubeis a video site for educators. Teachers can upload instruction videos, which can be viewed by anyone anywhere in the world.

Some of sites are great tools for teachers and students. It provides more chance to communicate between them even though they are not in class together. However, I get scared.... Some of sites let parents easily to access and see how their children is doing at class which means children are no more allowed any excuses to their parents!!

Definition #11
from "Five tools for the world's best teacher"

1.Internet Explore
(formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer; abbreviated to MSIE or, more commonly, IE), is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995. It has been the most widely used web browser since 1999, attaining a peak of about 95% usage share during 2002 and 2003 with IE5 and IE6.

2.Google Toolbar
is an Internet browser toolbar available for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox which records the surfing behavior of the user.

3.Global Positioning System (GPS)
is a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) developed by the United States Department of Defense and managed by the United States Air Force 50th Space Wing. It is the only fully functional GNSS in the world, can be used freely, and is often used by civilians for navigation purposes. It uses a constellation of between 24 and 32 medium Earth orbit satellites that transmit precise radiowave signals, which allow GPS receivers to determine their current location, the time, and their velocity.

4.RoboForm
is a proprietary software password management program developed by Siber Systems, Inc. It is available for many web browsers, but mainly supports Internet Explorer (and other browsers based on it), Mozilla Firefox, and Netscape, as well as support for Palm, PocketPC and Symbian.

5. Toolbar
In a graphical user interface on a computer monitor a toolbar is a panel on which onscreen buttons, icons, menus or other input or output elements are placed.

Definition#8
from "Wales giving up on Wikia Search"

1.Wikia
(formerly Wikicities) is a free web hosting service for wikis (or wiki farms) operated by Wikia, Inc., a for-profit Delaware company founded in late 2004.[3]
Wikia was founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley, respectively the Chairman Emeritus and Advisory Board chair of the Wikimedia Foundation

2.Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based. It operates several online collaborative wiki projects including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks (including Wikijunior), Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikimedia Incubator and Meta-Wiki. Its flagship project, the English-language Wikipedia, ranks among the top ten most-visited websites worldwide.

3.Wikia Search
was an open source project run by Wikia to create an editable, transparent, and free search engine. It closed down in April 2009.

4. Wikianswers
Wikianswers is a site where you can ask questions and give answers. We're aiming to create the best answer to any question.

5. Google SearchWiki
SearchWiki is a Google search feature which allows logged-in users to annotate and re-order search results. The annotations and modified order only apply to the user's searches, but it is possible to view other users' annotations for a given search query.

Article: "Wales giving up on Wikia Search"

Summary: Wikia announced Wikia Search product was closing. The service was aiming to users could influence the rankings of result for all other users. However, it wasn’t on the right trajectory. On the other hand, Wikia’s other projects, Wikia Answers, are growing very quickly. Jimmay Wales, founder of Wikia said that he would return to Wikia search product again when the economy was good.
In November, Google launched Search Wiki, a feature that lets users prioritize, erase, supplement, and annotate search results. Google remembers the changes a user has made to search results via SearchWiki, so results for repeat searches will reveal the same customizations and notes.
While Wikia is exiting the search business to focus on reference works, Microsoft is leaving the reference business, which is Encarta. They announced the site will discontinued on October 31, 2009.

When Google search engine is quite comfortable to find out answer though other website,
Wikia search isn’t useful.
I also don’t think Encarta isn’t necessary or useful…