TODAY'S TOURBUS TOPIC: YAHOOLIGANS TOP 10 TOYS / X FOR TEACHERS

Howdy, y'all, and greetings once again from deep behind the orange curtain in beautiful Irvine, California, the treaty that ended the 30 years war.

TOURBUS is made possible by the kind support of our sponsors. Please take a moment to visit today's sponsors and thank them for keeping our little bus of Internet happiness on the road week after week. On with the show ...

Yahooligan's Top 10 Toys

If you've been on our little bus of Internet happiness for a while, you will remember Yahooligans [ http://www.yahooligans.com/], Yahoo's wonderful web guide for kids. Recognizing that the holiday season is just around the corner, our friends at Yahooligans recently conducted a not-so-scientific survey of the kiddies asking them what toys they'd like to receive for Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa ("Kwanzukkahmas?"). A list of the children's top 10 most wanted toys can be found at

http://yahooligans.com/promotions/toys2002/result.html

and you can see the complete list at

http://yahooligans.com/promotions/toys2002/votingresults.html .

Before you rush out and buy all of the toys you see on this list, please remember that Yahooligans' list doesn't actually list the *BEST* toys out there, only the most popular ones -- the ones the kids *THINK* they want.

By way of comparison, each year Family Fun magazine invades elementary schools and after school facilities in the US, drops off a truckload of new toys, lets the kids play with the toys for a couple weeks, and then asks the children to review each toy. Family Fun's list of the *BEST*, kid-tested toys of 2002 will be out in a week or two ... and I'll fire off a copy of the list to you just as soon as I get it.

X for Teachers

A bunch of our TOURBUS riders are educators, many of who "compute with fruit." Well, if you are a K-12 classroom teacher in the United States who uses a Mac, check out

http://www.apple.com/education/macosxforteachers/ .

And if you are a K-12 classroom teacher in that great, white, frozen moose preserve known as "Canada," check out

http://www.apple.com/ca/education/macosxforteachers/ .

[And, yes, I know that there is more to Canada than moose and snow. For example, Toronto also has mutant black squirrels the size of pumas!]

Between now and December 31, Apple wants to give every K-12 teacher in the United States and Canada a free copy of Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar." The Jaguar installation CD-ROM also includes a "Getting Started with Mac OS X" training CD filled with practice exercises, tips, and over 80 QuickTime movies. You also get 90 days of free telephone support
from Apple.

Just click on the grey "Order Now" button in the upper right corner of the X for Teachers page to order the free CD-ROM.

To qualify for the "X for Teachers" program you must be a K-12 teacher at a recognized school (Public, Private, Catholic, Bureau of Indian Affairs) and you must agree to have software delivered to your school address. This offer is limited to eligible K-12 teachers and is not available to resellers, institutions, home schools, non-teacher K-12 school employees, preservice/student teachers, or higher education faculty (including college of education faculty).

Free PowerPoint Presentations

Talking about education, If you haven't raided my cache of free PowerPoint presentations in a while, you might want to take another look at

http://netsquirrel.com/classroom/ .

My Classroom Resources page now has nine different PowerPoint presentations you are free to steal:

1. Active Learning with Instant Messaging -- Threat or Menace?
2. Blindly Stumbling towards Technology Nirvana
3. Computer Care 101 -- Keeping Your Computer Healthy
4. Computer Care 102 -- Top 10 Troubleshooting Tips & Tricks
5. Designing Online Communities ... on a Shoestring Budget
6. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly -- How Internet Filters Work,
How They Don't Work, and How Students Bypass Them 7. Stop Searching and Start FINDING -- Strategies for Effective
Web Research 8. Web Page Design, Part One: People Actually Get PAID to Do
This? 9. Web Page Design, Part Two: Internet Graphics for the
Artistically Challenged

All of these PowerPoint presentations have been "zipped" to make them easier for you to download. If you are unfamiliar with how to unzip a file, take a look at

http://www.netsquirrel.com/classroom/zip.html

Finally, all of my free PowerPoint presentations are, obviously, Microsoft PowerPoint files. To view them, you'll need either a copy of Microsoft PowerPoint (which is part of Microsoft Office) or a copy of Microsoft's free PowerPoint viewer for the PC. Microsoft's PowerPoint viewer is intended only for those of you who don't already have Microsoft Office. You can download the viewer at

http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/Ppview97.aspx .

Mr. Bill also offers a free Microsoft PowerPoint viewer for Mac users who don't already own Microsoft Office for the Mac. You can find it at

http://www.microsoft.com/MAC/download/OFFICE98/powerpoint98viewer.asp

Enjoy! That's it for today. Have a safe and happy weekend and we'll talk again soon! :)