Fun with Christmas Photos

Since Christmas is only six days a way, I thought now would be a good time to introduce you to Befunky.com. This site is a great place to take those Christmas photos and alter them to look more like a cartoon or avatar. I have altered a few pictures with the tool. It is easy to use, nothing to download (other than your finished photo), fast, and it's free.

There is actually a classroom use for such a tool. You know how as teachers we would like to put student photos up on our websites but are afraid of privacy/safety issues? You can take a student photo and alter it using BeFunky to such a point that you can clearly understand what is happening in the photo but would have difficulty identifying the students unless you knew them.

Another great classroom project is to have students create a comic strip with pictures they have taken depicting a scene from a play or book or even a historic event. I believe there is a site out there to create comic strips too...that's another blog entry.

Here's our FBLA Basket Auction Committee:

12 Safety Tips on Blogging for parents and kids

I found these tips from Microsoft. The short article contains some simple tips for parents and kids that use blogging. It can easily transfer to teachers and students.

http://www.microsoft.com/protect/family/activities/blogging.mspx

Quote from the article:
"Recent studies show that teenagers write roughly half of all blogs today, with two out of three providing their age, three out of five revealing their location and contact information, and one in five revealing their full name. It should go without saying that there are potential risks in sharing this type of detailed personal information."

Wetpaint--Wikis in Education

As I was finalizing my web2hotspot wiki for my final presentation in the Web 2.0 grad class, I came across this great resource for wikis.

http://wikisineducation.wetpaint.com/

This site has an abundance of examples for using wikis in the classroom. It does offer free wikis for educators, but I haven't had time to compare it with more popular wikis such as wikispaces and PBWiki. In the next few weeks, I hope to take a closer look at this site.

Google Earth

Google Earth is a great way for students to travel any where in the world to see exciting places or historic landmarks. Many large cities and important landmarks have street-level panoramic views. Google Earth is an easy and very inexpensive class trip.

Here are two really good sites to learn how to use Google Earth and even download a variety of pre-created Google Earth Tours.

Google Earth Lessons: A Free Public Resource - Providing Teachers with the tools needed to enhance their instruction using Google Earth®

Google Touring: This quick tutorial explains how you can create a Google Tour yourself.

Kudos

Our LHS CFF teachers are off to a great start. Our Promethean boards are just over a week old and the laptops have been in the classroom for about two weeks.

Great Job--

• Mr. Hicks is our Promethean board Guru.
• Visit Mrs. Meckley, Mr. Gantz, and Mr. Finafrock to see the boards in use almost every period. (We better order spare projector bulbs!)
• Mr. Morse and Mr. Garofalo are the laptop pioneers and were the first teachers to let their students loose on the computers. Mr. Gantz is close behind.
• Mr. Meckley has begun CFF and TPR evaluations on CFF teachers. How he'll have time for all those observations--I have no clue.
• Mrs. Smith has dived into our new LASD Moodle server with her AP English class. She will be using Moodle's Forum feature to let students collaborate with various readings for her Global Literature Round Table assignment. Our moodle is located at moodle.lasd.k12.pa.us Check it out. It will be an area of growth over the next few months.
• Mrs. Lawyer received the first CFF camcorder this week. Rumor has it that her producing skills will rival Speilberg and Lucas.
  

Again, great job to all.

The Prose of Blogging by Rama Ramaswami

Mr. Dipiano gave me the November, 2008 issue of The Journal. In it was very good article on Blogging and the educational pros and cons. Here is the link to the article online:

http://thejournal.com/articles/23562

Here are some quotes:
"We don't start out by saying we want to start a blog," he says. "We say, 'We want to do X or Y-- what's the tool that makes the most sense to use?'"

"The kids know the technology. What they don't often know is how the technology can change them as students. Just because they understand Facebook doesn't mean they understand how to be a better student of English or history.

"Blogging for the sake of blogging is fine, but what is the value added?"

...set out to show that blogging could improve students' writing skills by making them write more frequently and comment on one another's work.

"The teacher used blogs for the students to keep as a journal and flesh out ideas for point/counterpoint argument," Bachenheimer says. "There was interaction among the students and there was writing all day long, before school, during school, and after school. That was a bonus."

Stay tuned for more about this article in later posts.

21st Century Skills in the English Classroom

Here is a link to an article dealing with integrating modern skills sets in the English curriculum.

http://www.thejournal.com/articles/23643

Converting PDF Files to Word

How many times do we receive a PDF form from PDE or some other source that requires us to fill in information? The problem is that most of us cannot type directly into a PDF document. Now you can. All you need to do is go to: PDF Undo Online. Once there, use the Browse button to find the PDF file that you saved on your computer or thumb drive. Then click the Convert to Word button. Wait a few minutes and a link will appear that will allow you to download (or open) your file as a Word Document. Now you can edit the document. When you are done editing, you can use CutePDF to convert it back to a PDF (that's another post for later) or simply print.

Teacher Application: Often textbooks come with printable activity sheets in PDF format. If you want to alter the activity sheets, you can now convert them to Word and make whatever changes you need.

Word Menu Tip

Microsoft Word sure can be annoying at times. One thing that absolutely drives me nuts is when I click on a menu such as the File Menu and I don't see all the options. I have to click on the little down arrow at the end of the menu. To expand a menu to show all the options when you click on a menu is relatively easy. In Word, go to the Tools Menu and select the Customize option. In the Customize dialog box, go to the Options tab and select Always show full menus then press close. Now every time you select a menu you will see all the options available.

Photo Story 3

Need a quick and easy way to create a photo slide show with music, voice narrative, text, and transitions? Photo Story is an easy program to use. It is a free program from Microsoft. Yes. I said free and Microsoft in the same sentence. It's easy for teachers and students to learn within minutes. Photo Story can be downloaded at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx

Classroom Application: Take a photo of each of your students handmade project and create a photo slide show for parents during parent/teacher conferences or open house night.

Classroom Application: Have students script and storyboard a story using pictures of stuff animals, take pictures of the animals in the scenes, create a photo story using the pictures and have student act out the story through a narrative.

Classroom Application: A great beginning-of-the-year activity is have students bring in vacation pictures and create a photo story detailing their vacation or summer trip.

Purpose of this Blog

The purpose of this blog is to help LASD teachers use updated technology and applications in their instructional classroom. It is my goal to post weekly comments that will help teachers use technology in the classroom to engage students in creating and collaborating and giving teachers the ability to use authentic assessment. eacher comments and ideas are always welcomed. By no means am I an expert on the subject.