Thứ Tư, 30 tháng 9, 2015

MathStudio App Is Now Free Grab It

October 1 , 2015
The popular graphing calculator MathStudio Express is free today and only for a limited period of time (its regular price is $4,99). This powerful calculator offers more than 200 functions from basic calculations to advanced calculus and is powered with a quick CAS (computer scientific calculator) that beautifully typesets your answers and helps you with solving limits, derivatives, integrals, differential equations and many more.


MathStudio accurately graphs 2D function, vector fields, fractals and images with a lightening speed. It can also graph 3D functions, parametric, spherical, cylindrical and vector fields. MathStudio is among the first apps to introduce time graphing allowing users to create animated plots that graph in space and time using the T variable.

Other interesting features provided by Math studio include: Plot lists of numerical data in scatter, histograms, box and probability plots; create scripts in our powerful programming language that supports variables, loops and even recursion. MathStudio even includes an advanced regression analysis package, choose from several regression functions or create your own!

Courtesy of Apps Gone Free

6 Good Apps to Easily Create Video Collages

September 30, 2015
Looking for some good web tools to use to create educational video collages? The collection below has you covered. It features a number of popular tools and mobile apps to utilize with students to create, edit and share video collages. The common thing among all of these video editors is that they are easy and simple to use with no advanced video editing knowledge required. Some of these tools work on Chromebooks as well.


YouTube Video Editor is definitely one of the best and easy tools you can use to edit and create new videos. It allows you to combine multiple videos and images you've uploaded to create a new video. Other features include trimming clips to custom lengths, select music to add to your videos from YouTube’s library, and customize your clips with special tools and effects. Video Editor also has an awesome interactivity feature that allows you to add interactive elements to your videos.These interactive features can be annotations, links to other videos or external resources on the web, call-for action buttons and many more.

2- WeVideo- Video Editor and Maker


WeVideo is another powerful Chrome app that you can use on Chromebook to easily edit your videos. It provides 3 editing modes: storyboard, timeline, and advanced mode. It is also integrated with popular websites such as Dropbox and Google Drive so you can easily work on photos, videos and graphic files uploaded there. Other major editing features provided by WeVideo include: add text, music , and transitions to your videos, record voice-overs, trim video clips , style your videos using different professional themes, and many more.

3- Magistro

‘Magisto Magical Video Editor & Maker is a fun and easy way to automatically edit videos and share them with your friends and family. Just select videos and photos, and Magisto will turn them into beautiful edited movies, complete with music and effects, in minutes.’
4- VideoCollage

‘With our Video Collage App you can easily create beautiful Photo and Video Collage in few minutes. All you need to do is, just choose the photo or video to create collage, add extra effects to your Photos/videos, add music of your own choice and Save that Video.’

5- ClipStitch


‘ClipStitch is the ultimate app for creating fun, beautiful, and creative video collages. Have fun making your own video, and share it to boost your popularity. Here is how it works:Choose what videos to include in your collage, place them in the frame exactly as you like, be creative with colors and background themes, share on Instagram, Facebook, save to your camera roll, and much more ’

6-Animoto Collage Maker


‘Animoto Collage Maker help you make a beautiful video collage or scrapbook by incorporating pictures, video, music and words. Animoto's online video collage maker is fast, free and shockingly easy.’

Two Great Chromebook Tools for Creating Animations for Your Class

September 30, 2015
Upon your request, here are the two tools we would highly recommend for teachers seeking to create animations and explainer videos on Chromebooks. Both of these tools are integrated with Google Drive allowing you to easily drag and drop photos, clips and other media files right from your Drive to your video editor.

1- WeVideo

WeVideo makes video editing easy for everyone and accessible from anywhere. It supports three editing modes: storyboard, timeline and advanced mode and allows you to trim videos to focus on key moments. You can also add text, effects, music and transitions and choose from over 100 royalty-free effects and audio clips to enhance your videos. Other interesting features provided by WeVideo include: record and add your voice-overs, choose from a wide variety of professional themes to use with your videos, invite others to collaborate with you on your videos using Google Drive, publish to YouTube or Drive and share your videos on Facebook and Twitter.

2- PowToon Presentation Edu 


Pontoon Edu allows you to animate difficult topics and engage your students using a wide variety of tools. You can easily drag and drop characters and props into your slides and assign it an animation, choose from different pre-designed templates and style libraries.Videos and animated presentations you create through PowToon Edu can be exported in various ways. You can share them on YouTube or Facebook, download them to your computer. You can also export them as MP4 file to embed in your classroom blog or website.

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Thứ Ba, 29 tháng 9, 2015

A Must Have Gmail Chrome App for Teachers

September 30, 2015
Send from Gmail is one of our favourite Chrome apps we have been using for some years now.  Send from Gmail provides you with a quick way to share web links and other online resources with a single click. For instance, if you are reading a blog post that you want to share with one of your colleagues, you simply click on ‘Send from Gmail’ button and a new compose window will automatically open with the page title as the subject and selected page text and link address as the message. All you have to do is to simply type in your addressee’s email and hit ‘send’.


Another way to use Send from Gmail is to send yourself emails with links of pages you want to read later. This is especially useful for those of you who are not big fans of social bookmarking websites such as Diigo or Delicious. To start using Send from Gmail, you need to install it on your browser. Once installed the popular Gmail envelop icon will show up at the top right of your browser. Whenever you are on a webpage you want to share with others, click on that icon and there you go.

Feedly Released A New Collaborative Feature to Use with Your Students

September , 2015
Feedly has recently released an excellent new feature called Shared Collections which allows users to curate and share what they read with others.This is similar to YouTube playlists where you get to aggregate your favourite videos to share with others. As a teacher, you can utilize Feedly’s Shared Collections to share with students online resources relevant to what they are learning. You can also curate a collection of must-follow educational blogs or EdTech websites to help students make the best of technology in their learning.


With Shared Collections, you make it super easy for your students to find and read educational content you have yourself curated. You can include things such as YouTube feeds, Google News alerts, blogs, publications and many more. You can also create a personalized URL for your Shared Collections for purposes of sending it to others. ‘Shared Collections is completely opt-in. All of your collections default to private, so you can make use of this feature only if you want to. When you are ready to share, turn on the collections you want public and keep your personal collections private.’

Shared Collections is a Pro feature. Watch the video below to see it in action


Google Expeditions is A Wonderful New Tool for Taking Students on Virtual Field Trips

September 29, 2015
Google Expeditions is a virtual reality tool from Google designed specifically to help teachers take students on virtual trips all around the world. Expeditions is built with Google Cardboard which is basically a virtual reality headset that works with your smartphone to enable you to experience an immersive virtual reality  experience. Google offers a wide variety of viewers with different shapes so you can choose the one that fits your smartphone.  Watch the video below to learn more about how Cardboard works.


‘With Expeditions app on their tablet, a teacher is able to send synchronized three-dimensional 360° panoramas to each student’s Cardboard viewer, pointing out areas of interest in real time and instantly pausing the trip when needed. Used in conjunction with existing lessons and curriculum, Expeditions immerses students in experiences that bring abstract concepts to life and provide a deeper understanding of the world beyond the classroom.’ Watch the video below to learn more about how Cardboard works.

Google announced today the launch of Expeditions Pioneer Program which will bring “kits” containing everything a teacher needs to run a virtual trip for their class: ASUS smartphones, a tablet for the teacher to direct the tour, a router that allows Expeditions to run without an Internet connection, and Google Cardboard viewers or Mattel View-Masters that turn phones into virtual reality headsets.’The program will first start in the following countries before it expands to cover the locations : Australia, Brazil, New Zealand,the U.K. and the U.S. Check out this page to learn more about this program.

Check out this video to learn more about how Expeditions works.



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Thứ Hai, 28 tháng 9, 2015

Some Very Good Teacher-tested Tools for Your Professional Development

September 28, 2015
Here are some tools that teachers have said are useful in their ongoing professional development. Some will help you personally and some will help you and your students together.



TeachBoost 
Manages evaluations and feedback between teachers and administrators.
Provides news articles and information to librarians online and in print.
Offers a large collection of accessible digital books for people with print disabilities.
 Includes interactives and quizzes for performing formative and summative assessments.

Want more? Check out these shelves of tools .

Tools Discovered during Professional Development 
This is curated by Title I elementary school teacher Michelle Zahn.
This one is curated by instructional coach and teacher trainer Don Doehla.


By: Mike Lee, Co-founder of edshelf
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Use Zeemaps with Your Students to Create Interactive Maps

September , 2015
Zeemaps is another good website to use with students to create, publish and share interactive maps. Zeemaps allows you to visualize geographic data and customize your maps the way you want. You can for instance create maps of places you plan to visit with students or share maps of specific locations you have visited. And although it displays Google Maps, Zeemaps is not affiliated with Google and has its own servers where all created maps are stored.


Zeemaps is a freemium service with a free basic version that offers some decent features. The pro version provides more advanced functionalities. Here is a round-up of some of the main things offered by this web tool:
  • You do not need to create an account to make maps
  • Add searchable custom fields for map entries
  • PDF or PNG map images for presentations or brochures
  • Add video, photo, or audio with your markers
  • Customize marker icons with your own images
  • Highlight countries, states, cities, zip codes, counties, or hand-draw region
  • Up to 31 marker groups and sub-groups with clickable map legend
  • Show clickable list of entries to the left or right of your map
  • Keep maps private for confidential data with HTTPS support
  • Search for entries matching field values, with distance
  • Manage your map entries with powerful editing grid
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8 Fabulous web Tools for Research Students

September 28, 2015
Being a scholar entails doing a lot of research, readings, and writing of papers. Thankfully, technology can be of tremendous help in the research process. There are a wide variety of web tools and mobile applications that facilitate researchers work and  help them communicate and collaborate with the research community and easily share and disseminate research findings. Besides the numerous resources we reviewed here over the last few years, today we are sharing with you this interesting collection of web tools that students researchers can use to manage their references, compile bibliographies, generate citations, access journal articles and many more.

1- CiteULike
‘CiteULike is a free service to help you to store, organise and share the scholarly papers you are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser so there's no need to install any software. Because your library is stored on the server, you can access it from any computer with an Internet connection.’

2- Zenodo

‘Zenodo builds and operates a simple and innovative service that enables researchers, scientists, EU projects and institutions to share, preserve and showcase multidisciplinary research results (data and publications) that are not part of the existing institutional or subject-based repositories of the research communities.’

3- EasyBib

‘EasyBib is an intuitive information literacy platform that provides citation, note taking, and research tools that are easy-to-use and educational. EasyBib is not only accurate, fast, and comprehensive, but helps educators teach and students learn how to become effective and organized researchers.’

4- RefMe

‘RefMe is a web tool and mobile app that you can use to automate citations, reference lists and bibliographies.  RefMe also offers a bunch of powerful features that will definitely help students in their research.’

5- Mendeley

‘Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network. Make your own fully-searchable library in seconds, cite as you write, and read and annotate your PDFs on any device.’

6- Zotero

‘Zotero is a powerful, easy-to-use research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze sources and then share the results of your research.’

7- Paperpile


‘Manage your research library right in your browser: Save time with a smart, intuitive interface, access your PDFs from anywhere, format citations within Google Docs… and much more!’

8-Citeligther

'Cite lighter is a very good web tool for student researchers, teachers and academics. It combines both the features of an academic search engine and an organizational framework for helping students with their research papers writing. Citeligther allows you to easily search for facts and information to back your arguments and it automatically cites your sources using different citation styles: MLA, APA, and Chicago)'

Chủ Nhật, 27 tháng 9, 2015

Some Very Good Tools and Apps to Create Educational Flashcards to Use in Class

September 28, 2015
Flashcards are an important component in the teaching toolkit of teachers and more specifically primary teachers. They are an amazingly practical resource for teaching numeracy, literacy, vocabulary and many more. For those of you interested in learning more about how to use flashcards in vocabulary teaching, check out this excellent video from Macmillan ELT.
Looking for some resources where you can access tons of already made flashcards to use in your class? The apps below have you covered. Some of these apps will also enable you to create your own flashcards. Check them out and share with us what you think of them. enjoy

1- Cram

‘Cram is your number one online educational resource. We have a wide selection of flashcards for you to study, memorize, test yourself on, and more. Learn a foreign language, practice your multiplication table or prepare for your MCAT by memorizing every bone in the body. Whatever it is you want to learn, Cram has you covered.’

2- Study Stack


‘Since 2002 millions of students have used StudyStack to memorize information. StudyStack's community of students and teachers have shared millions of flashcards. For each set of flashcards entered, the StudyStack website generates over a dozen ways for users to study the information they need to learn. The variety of study activities enables users to memorize data quickly without getting bored from using a single method of study. Studystack enables teacher to quickly enter data once and have a dozen different activities created for their students to memorize facts.’

3- Quizlet


‘Quizlet makes studying fun, easy, and effective. Create your own sets of study material or choose from millions created by other Quizlet users, then master your subject with powerful interactive learning tools:Make your own flashcards, put your memory to the test with Learn, race against the clock in a game of Match, share with classmates or your students, Listen to automatic pronunciations in 18 languages, enhance your studying with images and audio’

4- Evernote Flashcards


‘This is a revolutionary flashcard app fully synchronized with your Evernote database account enabling you to memorize important information (such as words, phases or figures). Note this app is basically free to use with one Evernote notebook with some ads. You will have an option to purchase an in-app add-on which eliminates ads and gives you an unlimited number of notebooks.’

5- Flashcards+ by Chegg


‘Memorize like a pro with Flashcards+ by Chegg, the fast, fun, free flashcard maker designed to help you learn things more quickly and ace your toughest classes. This is the ultimate online flashcard & notecard tool for high school and college students, and those studying hard for the SAT, ACT, GRE and other standardized tests. With Flashcards+ you can study anywhere, and any time.’

6- Studyblue


‘This app is made for serious studiers; flip online flashcards for fast feedback on what you know, then re-study concepts you’ve not yet mastered using Study Filters. Review class notes or make flashcards whenever you have a minute to spare. Study over breakfast or late at night – at the library or in a coffee shop. Do what works for you, whenever and wherever you are.’

7- Flashcards Deluxe


‘Flashcards Deluxe is an easy to use, yet powerful flashcard app which you can use to study just about anything you want. I use this app for my own Chinese studies, and am constantly improving it to make it better for myself and others.’

8- Flashcards [⁛]


‘Looking for a powerful and easy-to-use flashcards app to help you study? This app allows you to create rich text formatted flashcards with pictures and download millions of flashcards on hundreds of subjects created by both experts and novices.’

9- Flippity

Flippity is a very good tool that you can use on Google Spreadsheets to create flashcards and quizzes. The flashcards you create can be either printed or shared online through a generated link. The process to create a flashcard using Google Spreadsheet is pretty easy.

Instructables Offers Tons of Educational Do-it-yourself Projects to Use in Class with Students

September 27, 2015
Instructables is an educational website and mobile app where you can have access to a treasure trove of instructional videos and how-to guides covering a wide variety of topics from science experiments to amazing inventions. If you need some new ideas for your next classroom maker project, Instructables offers a library of over 100k of do-it-yourself projects created and shared by members of the community which amount to 2 million members.  Additionally, you and your students can create your own projects and upload them to the site and share your ideas with other teachers.


Instructables has a special section for teachers where you can browse for projects created by other teachers and which you can use with your students in class. ‘Instructables supports teachers by providing free pro memberships and awesome project ideas for your classroom. It provides plug and play hands-on projects to let you supplement your curriculum with the best projects that other teachers have to offer. You don't need to be a traditional classroom teacher to participate, either. If you are an after-school teacher, a scouting leader, a librarian who runs programs, or anyone whose job is explicitly educational, you are invited to participate.’

Instructables is also available for iPad, Windows and Android. Watch the video below to learn more about Instructables.


Curiosity Machine- A Great Website to Boost Students Creativity

September , 2015
Curiosity Machine is an interesting website that connects scientists and engineers with children inspiring them to be creative inventors. The site provides a wide variety of open-ended engineering design projects that are appropriate for K-12 learners. These challenges are hands-on projects inspired by the cutting-edge work of scientists and engineers. In each challenge, children are presented with a complex problem to solve, and they progress with support from a trained mentor who guides and encourages them to persist through failure and bring their ideas to reality.




Most design challenges will take about 90 minutes to plan, build, test, and submit to the site for mentor feedback. A mentor will respond within 3-5 days, and then you can start the redesign process! The redesign process can go on for as long as you can make improvements to the design--and the same mentor will be ready to offer feedback on every change you make.Mentors are professional scientists and engineers from all over the world who are dedicated to inspiring the next generation of inventors.

Anyone can create a Curiosity Machine account and access its videos and engineering design challenges for free. For schools and other groups interested in support and training, the site offers a paid membership. Watch the video below to learn more about Curiosity Machine

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Thứ Bảy, 26 tháng 9, 2015

4 Great Wikipedia Tools to Use with Your Students

September 26, 2015
The use of Wikipedia in education is a controversial topic with a polarizing effect in the education community. Without getting into the nuts and bolts of this heated discussion, we   do harbour a positive stance towards this collaborative platform and view it as an interesting starting place and a springboard for researching any given topic. More specifically, the reference section at the end of Wikipedia’s articles, besides being a gold mine of information in and by itself, can provide students with useful links to help them with furthering their research. That being said, we are introducing you today to some handy Chrome extensions to help you make the best of Wikipedia. Check them out and share with your students:

1- Wikipedia Quick Hints


‘With Wikipedia Quick Hints getting definitions of unknown terms has become as simple as just hovering the cursor over a respective link. The definition pops up automatically. Images zooming is another useful feature of the extension.’

2- Readable Wikipedia


‘Wikipedia Readability improves the readability of wikipedia by reducing the number of distractions on the page and improving the readability of the type. This extension attempts to keep the distinctive Wikipedia look while adding usability and readability improvements.’

3- Wikipedia Search


‘Wikipedia Search allows you to type the word 'wiki' into your browser's search bar, press the space key, and search for an article on Wikipedia. You can also select any word or phrase on the web, right-click, and search it in Wikipedia. If you have Awesome New Tab Page installed, there's even a widget for that built-in. Instant access to the millions of articles of articles on Wikipedia.’

4- Wikiwand: Wikipedia Modernized


‘Wikiwand is a new award-winning interface that optimizes Wikipedia's amazing content for a quicker and significantly improved reading experience!…Some of its features include:New clean layout for optimal readability, great modern typography, convenient fixed table-of-contents, quick preview when hovering over links, multi-language search with thumbnails, beautiful, immersive cover photos, larger photos and better media gallery, easy article narration and audio playback, color, font and layout personalization…’

Secure Your Chrome With This Powerful Extension

September 26, 2015
If you use Chrome to navigate the web  then you definitely need to give this extension a try. Shield for Chrome, as its name indicates, is an add-on that protects your Chrome from bugs , malware, spyware and malicious extensions.We have been using it for a week now and it proved very useful. As you know, several extensions in the Chrome Web Store come in with destructive malware which could not only slow down your browser but could also jeopardize your computer’s operating system. With an extension like this you have at least an added layer of security.


Some of the features provided by Shield for Chrome include: stops over 100 adware, spyware or malware extensions that are currently available in chrome web store, monitors extensions and websites behavior to detect malicious patterns, shield code is protected to avoid bypassing by malware creators, and many more.

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The Popular PDF Smart App Is Free Today Grab It

September 26, 2015
The popular PDF Smart Convert app is free today for a limited period of time (its regular price is $6,99). This iPad app allows you to convert any file format you view on your iPad into a high quality PDF format. You can also use PDF Smart Convert to create PDFs from over 200 file formats by a single click. Using iPad’s built-in camera, you can easily take photos of any document you want, apply the app’s editing and filtering features to customize your photos before turning them into PDFs.


Another great feature of PDF Smart Convert is that it allows you to save and convert any webpage into PDFs. You can even turn clipboard content into PDFs, anything you copy will automatically appear in PDF Smart Convert’s clipboard ready for PDF conversion. Sharing files via PDF Smart Convert is super easy. The app ‘can access files at different cloud storage sources including Box, Dropbox, email attachments, PC/MAC via USB connection or WiFi sharing and even from other apps. File sharing with PDF Smart Convert couldn’t be easier with so many available sharing options.’

Courtesy of Apps Gone Free

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Thứ Sáu, 25 tháng 9, 2015

Help Students Learn New Skills Using These Excellent Apps

September 25, 2015
Here is a collection of some useful iPad apps that provide access to a wealth of educational content. Students can use them to learn almost anything they want from photography to web-designing and quilt making. The content comes in the form of courses and video lessons covering a wide variety of topics  most of which are from leading universities. You can also use the in-app  search functionalities to search for specific content.

1- iTunes U


‘iTunes U provides everything an instructor needs to bring their classroom together on iPad — build lessons with apps and your own materials, collect and grade assignments from students, discuss one-to-one or in groups, and annotate PDF assignments. iTunes U is also still the place where anyone with an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch can learn from the world’s largest collection of free education content — including public courses and collections from leading schools, universities, museums and cultural institutions.’

2- Craftsy


‘Craftsy is the online creative community for learning, making and sharing. Craftsy is the best place to get better at what you love to do, with hundreds of online video classes in sewing, quilting, embroidery, knitting, crocheting, cake decorating, food and cooking, spinning, weaving, drawing, painting, photography, woodworking, gardening, jewelry making and paper crafts. Need supplies or a project kit to bring your creativity to life? You can find those on Craftsy, too!’

3- Coursera


‘Learn anything, anywhere with the Coursera App for iPhone and iPad. You’ll have access to courses on business, computer science, data science, the humanities, and more—all developed by top universities from around the world. Earn certificates for courses and projects created in collaboration with top employers, to teach the skills you need to succeed.’

4- Udemy Online Courses


‘Unleash your true potential with over 32,000 online courses, available at your fingertips. Choose from over 32,000 courses, on anything from programming and business, to yoga and photography.Udemy Students can enroll and take courses with a computer or mobile device. Each course is on-demand, includes lifetime access with no expirations, and can be downloaded for offline use.’

Google Keep Is Now Available on iPad

September 25, 2015
Google Keep is finally available in the App Store for iOS devices. It took almost two years for Google Keep to make the move to iPad for it was only available on the web and Android. Google Keep for iPad has pretty much the same features found on the web and Android including :organizing notes by colour and label,  adding notes, lists, photos, and audio to Keep, get reminded about a note at the right time or place, record a voice memo and have it automatically transcribed, grab the text from an image to help you quickly find that note again through search.


Here is a quick overview of some useful features of Google Keep:
  • Set both location-based and time-based reminders to make sure you never miss a thing
  • Easily share your notes with friends and colleagues
  • Quickly filter and search for notes by color and other attributes like lists with the label “To-dos”, audio notes with reminders or just see shared notes. Find what you're looking for even faster, and let Keep do the remembering for you.
  • Keep works on your phone, tablet and computer. Everything you add to Keep syncs across your devices so your important stuff is always with you.
Watch the video below to learn more about Google Keep:



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Thứ Năm, 24 tháng 9, 2015

An Easy to Use Tool to Create Interactive Videos for Your Class

September 25, 2015
Zaption is a web tool and mobile app that enables you to create interactive video lessons. You can use videos from YouTube or Vimeo  and add to them a wide variety of interactive features to bring life to them. Add text, images, quizzes, polls and create an ongoing discussion around video content. Similar to MoocNote and videonot.es, Zaption is also ideal for flipped classroom.


Some of the main features provided by Zaption  includes: A gallery of ready-to-use video lessons on almost any topic,; add images, text, and questions to any online video, creating interactive lessons that meet your learners’ needs; share video lessons with a simple link, or embed directly in your LMS, blog, or website; get actionable data on personal responses from learners with award-winning analytics; and instantly measure understanding and differentiate instruction.

The basic version of Zaption is free but comes with a very limited set of features, the premium version provides more advanced features. Watch the video below to learn more about Zaption.



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