Thing #7A

When browsing through my google reader feeds I came across one feed in particular that I found interesting. The reason it was so interesting to me is that I am currently participating in this course as well as the Intel Essentials course which is all about using technology in education. This particular article is from the Tech & Learning site and talks about the need to refocus staff developments to include learning how to learn with technology. It includes a presentation and I found that this particular article made me appreciate the current courses I am taking even more.

Thing # 14

The tool I chose to explore was Letter Pop. Every week I send home a science newsletter to parents which includes student expectations, vocabulary, and discussion questions for home. I currently use Pages, but after exploring Letter Pop I think  I could use it as well. I also love to scrapbook and recently got in to digital scrapbooking. This site is super easy to use. You can choose a template, upload photos, and drag them into the template. I played around with some wedding photos from a recent wedding I attended and made a cute little page to send to the bride.

Thing # 13

Wow! I did not know there was such cool stuff to play with on the web! (Okay maybe I did but I never took the time to sit down and play). As I played on many of these different sites I came up with tons of ways to use these in the classroom. I could use them to make generic signs, use them with vocabulary words, make name plates with the Spell with flickr, and much more! Here are some of the cool things I did. 

Click the images to go to the image generator! 

Thing #12

   

This slide show was so easy to make! I have used Rock You before, but my has it changed! I played and played and then finally decided I must blog! This slide show is an example of landform pictures I could show in class to help students visualize them. 

Mountain    toufeeque     http://www.flickr.com/photos/toufeeque/ 

Valley          a.vieth            http://www.flickr.com/photos/30745689@N04/3098619619/

Plateau        marvin908            http://www.flickr.com/photos/marvinok/

Glacier        toufeeque            http://www.flickr.com/photos/toufeeque/

Canyon       Tut99 (Roger)            http://www.flickr.com/photos/tut99/165582741/

Sea stacks  geographyalltheway_phot os            http://www.flickr.com/photos/geographyalltheway_photos/319733495/           

Thing #11

I have to say that I really like Flickr. I have used other sites like photobucket a d rock you to do things with photos, but I really like searching through and looking at other peoples photos. For fun I searched the zoo pictures and the wedding photos. Then  I started to think about what I would use photos for in my classroom. Last year I used google images to  show my students visual examples for our Earth science vocabulary. It was so difficult for them to visualize some of the words so I put them all in a power point and showed them on the Promethean board. I sometimes would not find what I really wanted and did not know of another place to look. So tonight I decided to search for landform photos to see if I found any we could share in class. Here are some examples of some AWESOME photos that I cannot wait to share. 



from Echo_29



from geographyalltheway_phot os



from a.vieth

Thing # 10

Copyright laws have always been confusing to me. I have seen the CC logo before but never knew what it meant. I use google images often in my classroom and in my newsletters. I thing using Creative Commons would be very useful in my classroom and sharing creativity is very exciting. I think that there will always be people in the world who will use others' work as their own and unfortunately it is not something we can change easily. My hope is that if I teach my students about copyrighting and the importance of making sure they are responsible for their own work then that is a start. I have a class blog that I post my newsletters and other information and work to often so this is definitely something I want to look farther in to.

Thing # 9

I have a confession to make! When I first read the instructions for setting up the wiki I was completely overwhelmed. So much so that I put it off for over a week. Then tonight I actually sat down and did it and found out that is was so SIMPLE! The steps were easy to follow and I could not believe my procrastination. I had a little time to look at a few of the wikis and enjoyed answering some burning questions. I can't wait to see the responses to mine.

Kristy's Wiki