SmartBoard Blog

I would like to recommend a blog that I have been following. It gives excellent ideas for interactive activities using a whiteboard.


http://annemarie80.edublogs.org/

Plurk

Plurk is a microblogging site that I heard about at MACE. I have discovered some valuable resourses and have received some great advice from members on Plurk. Check it out!

http://www.plurk.com/

Mrs. Thorpe's Class Video

Mrs. Thorpe's class has been writing letters to penpals in Germany! They have been learning about similarities and differences between the cultures. As a culminating activity Mrs. Thorpe's class produced a video to share additional information about their school and where they live. Mrs. Thorpe used the Flip video and Windows Movie Maker. She was amazed at how easy it was to use the camera and then to import several movie clips to make one video. Now you know who to contact if you would like to make a video with your class!

Mother's Day Project Ideas

I have been following a blog called Making Teachers Nerdy. It is mrssmokeonsugar's blog. She is awesome! She shares so many great ideas.  She posted Mother's Day project ideas and I want to share all of those great ideas!

http://mrssmoke.onsugar.com/3089996

befunky

Really fun photo editing site. Very easy way to turn your pictures into artwork!

http://www.befunky.com/

Flip Video Converter

I love my Flip video camera except for the fact the it automatically downloads to an AVI and it isn't easy to find them after they are downloaded! Today, I discovered a way to easily convert them and to browse to the exact place you want them to be downloaded to. If you close out the Flip program right after it starts up and then go through explore and navigate to the E drive you will see a folder that is named DCIM. Or, the AutoPlay window will pop up and you need to select Open folder to view files. Open the DCIM folder and then open the 100VIDEO folder. You will see a list of your videos. Right click on the file and then click on Convert video file. The first time it will take you through the process of downloading the Prism Video Converter. After it is downloaded you will add your file and down at the bottom left corner of the window browse to the folder you want them to go to. Then you select the output format and then click the convert arrow. It will go through the conversion and beep at you and it is done!

http://www.nchsoftware.com/prism/plus.html

PhotoScape

I found this free photo editing software tonight.  A friend wants me to make her daughter's table decorations for her gradutation party. The project requires some photo editing and I did a search for a free photo editing program. I found PhotoScape and tried it out. It is really pretty easy program to use.

http://photoscape-download.com/new/home/?affebnid=147&gid=&ovid=&yid=&msid=&hop=howgood

Thirty Interesting Ideas For Using Wordle

http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dhn2vcv5_157dpbsg9c5

These are wonderful ideas for Wordle!

Animoto

Animoto is a great site that allows you to create videos made from your pictures. You can easily choose images and add sound to your creations.

http://animoto.com/

Google For Educators

You should try out the Google for Educators page. Google is exploding with great apps that will so awesome to integrate into the classroom. Check this link out and explore!


http://www.google.com/educators/index.html

Search Cube

Search Cube is a graphical search engine that presents search results in a compact visual format in three dimensions.

http://www.search-cube.com/

Classroom 2.0

I encourage everyone to become a member of Classroom 2.0. There are so many great educators to follow and learn from. It is a great place to begin building your personal learning network. 

www.classroom20.com

delicious A social bookmarking site

Have you ever heard of delicious? delicious is a social bookmarking site. I have found so many valuable websites through delicious. It is especially helpful to share and use your friends and collegues bookmarks through the network.

http://delicious.com/

Flip Video

The Flip video camera is a great little camera that allows you to take videos very easily. It has a pop out usb port that plugs directly into your computer and you download from the camera. There are no tapes, dvds or anything! It is very light weight and would be easy for students to use it.

Wordle

Try Wordle. A first grade class brainstormed USA symbols and ranked them by importance. They came into the lab and typed them into Word. We only had about a half an hour so we wanted to be able to save their work. You cannot save you text in Wordle ( I don't think). They copied and pasted the words into Wordle and created wonderful patriotic word clouds that we printed out and they have on display.

http://www.wordle.net/

Playing around with Animoto

Yesterday I was playing around with Animoto trying to come up with a project for the First graders to do in my school. In the past we have made Powerpoint slideshows to integrate technology into the teaching of Animal Classifications. I feel like we need to go a step further and teach a few more skills to the students. I am real tempted to sign up for the $30 account on Animoto so that we can have full access. I think that students would love to make a presentation with Animoto.

My First Post

I have been reading a great book by Will Richardson called Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerfu Web Tools for Classrooms. It explains all of these Web 2.0 tools in ways that are very easy to understand and gives practical ideas for how you can use these tools in the classroom. It is highly recommended that you try all of these tools  yourself since your students are using them. I have started a Facebook account (much to my children's dismay!) and I am using igoogle and delicious. It is quite something to think about how the web has changed in just a short amount of time. 

Post Options

I want to be able to share all that I have learned with the teachers so that they can teach our 21st century learners in engaging ways. We have to be able to keep their attention and interest. We are being given technology tools, so it is of the utmost importance that we learn to use them.