Elf Yourself.....and your family & friends

I made one of these cute little videos a couple of years ago, inserting all the cousins' faces onto the elf bodies and cracking up as they danced a little elf song.  Well, I just came across this site again this year and will be doing it again.  The kids are a bit older, so not sure if it will hold the same cute-factor or not, but I am willing to give it the old college try.

So, have some fun and elf yourself! 

Visit:  http://host-d.oddcast.com/elfyourself2012/home.php

They even have an APP!

Happy almost New Year

Well, it is that time of year, when we take a moment or two to reflect on the year.  I finished my teaching certification and am almost done with my library media certification and am working in my first teaching job (well, where they actually pay me as a teacher) and my family is healthy, doing well in school and all together for the Christmas break.  A ton has happened in the last year and there is so much more to come.  I am thankful.

T ogether we can make a difference
H elp and support from and for my fellow teachers
A wesome family and friends in my life
N etworking to continue my own professional development
K indle books, Nook books, print books, audio book, oh my!
F earless dedication to move forward and make things better
U seful web 2.0 tools to make my job easier and more fun
L ots of love and joy in 2013

Cheers to 2012!

Glogster

I am finishing my library media certification and am doing field work in a high school library.  Not only do I get a chance to see how the 'big' kids do things, I'm learning about new ways to do things and about some old/new tools.  While reviewing how the library is using LibGuides, I ran across a familiar name: Glogster.  My children used this in middle school, and I always meant to play around with it, but never found the time.  Until now!  I signed up for a FREE education account and love, love, love it!  This is a great tool to bring all your resources together in a single place:  audio, video, images, text.  Then, use your imagination to make it visually appealing for students.

Here is my first attempt at creating a Glogster to use to recap our Polar Friends unit with my kindergarten and first grade library students.  I can't wait to use this tomorrow!

Video Editing [by fire]

Well, I have been thrown in without warning to being a video editor!  The naive me thought that I would just record the kids at school singing their Chanukah songs using my ipad, send it to the computer and ta-da it would just work beautifully on the PC to show to parents!  Needless to say, it did NOT work that way at all!

First off, the MOV file extension is the Apple version, which words great in Apple's Quicktime Player, but will not load to Windows Movie Maker for editing.  Therefore, I had to find and download a converter program (I found an article on eHow that directed me to the FormatFactory tool) that would convert MOV to MPG, which again did not load to Movie Maker, even though it is an acceptable format (not sure why this did not work).  So, I reconverted all the videos from MOV to AVI and some of them loaded to Movie Maker, but not all.  Again, I am at a loss as to what was wrong.  But onward I must move!

Then, of course, I had to figure out how to edit the video clips in Movie Maker to cut some parts out, as well as to concatonate all the good footage together.  The goal is to rip the final product to a DVD, so that the teachers can play these videos on an endless loop in their classrooms during our Chanukah Around the World evening.

So, lots more work to do, but I really hope that the final product looks and sounds good for the parents.  The kids worked really hard on their songs!  Now, I just have to hope the teacher's computers will have the needed video player and bandwidth to play the videos!!!!

I am thankful for...

... All the great stories and resources available to me!  This includes my family, all the wonderful people in my PLN, the many fun and helpful web 2.0 tools and the oodles of great reads out there!

We had a pre-Thanksgiving gathering last night it was wonderful to discuss all sorts of topics with four generations of my family:  great-Nana and Papa-John, Grannie, myself and my husband and our two children.  It was great to have intelligent conversations, from a variety of viewpoints.  And one of the best parts is, we get to continue the conversation tonight over turkey and a post-dinner game of dominoes!

Of course, I'll be taking pictures and videos of all the happenings this holiday.  I love using Animoto and Photostory to create videos to share our Thanksgiving memories and Shutterfly to create beautiful photo arrangements and photo books.  My iPad is the easiest way to capture photos and video.  I love that I can email photo and videos right away, without having to convert anything or download them.  I can instantly share with family members who couldn't make it in person.

Through Twitter I've gathered lots of great teaching ideas for Thanksgiving.  I was able to use some this year with my students and have saved some for next year.  Those that I follow are always sharing great websites, apps and tools.  It's one of the first places I check for new ideas.  Now, to keep up with my goal this year of compiling and organizing these resources, so I can easily find them when I need them!  I've created a Weebly site (very, very easy to use) to help with that....www.onegalllibrary.weebly.com.

Finally, I needed something good to read during these couple of days off of work, so I turned to a cool website I found for a little help.  http://www.ujhs.com/booktalk/historical_fiction.html is setup along a timeline and helps you find post-Civil War historical fiction.  A second website I use for finding historical fiction is http://dawcl.com/search.asp.  You can tailor your search to find just the right time period, character ethnicity and more.  Take a look and find your next great read.

So, I am very thankful for many things.  I am off to relax with a warm cup of coffee and a good book. A little quiet time before the Thanksgiving meal and talk-fest!

Happy Thanksgiving!

International Children's Digital Library (ICDL)

 URL:  www.childrenslibrary.org

This powerful website provides access to thousands of digital books!  Take a look today and see how you can integrate this awesome resource into your classroom.

The mission of the ICDL Foundation is "to promote tolerance and respect for diverse cultures by providing access to the best of children's literature from around the world."

Whether you are reading for pleasure or sharing a digital book with your class, this digital library can support your diverse needs.  The ICDL collection includes over 4,600 titles, in 61 different languages!

You can use this awesome resource for free.  You are able to register and setup an account if you'd like. Some of the benefits of having an account include:  create a personal bookshelf; the last page read is saved, so you can pick up where you left off; and you can setup your language(s) preference.

Possible classroom use:

• If you have an interactive whiteboard in your classroom, you can show these digital books to your class. The benefits are that the pictures and text are larger, for all to see, and these titles are available anytime (no need to check them out or find that they are already checked out by someone else) and from anywhere you have internet connectivity.
• These books could also be used with small groups or individuals. If you do stations in your classroom, this could be a, ‘independent reading station.’ Students would be given the website address and directions on the title they should read or students could be given the selection criteria for finding a book they could read independently (or in small groups).

This is screen shot of the simple search feature (accessed by clicking “Read Books” from the main page). As you can see, you have many options for your search: By language, age, types of characters, picture vs. chapter book, length of book, Search by Collections (which gives you many additional options, like genre) and Browse Exhibition (books grouped by theme). They even have a search by the color of the cover (not sure what you might use that for??). In short, there are many ways to search and browse this expansive collection.



The ICDL also has an ipad and iphone app, as well as an app called StoryKit, for creating your own electronic storybook.

delirium (a great book....and how I feel right now)

It is Sunday, before the Packer game, and I am sitting in the Sunroom on this cool, sunny fall day.  The radio is on playing a Train song, I have a pumpkin spiced hot coffee (tastes and smells wonderfully like Halloween), the sun is shining through the window on my feet, making them toasty warm, A piece of leftover chocolate candy from trick-or-treat, and I am kicking back reading a good book. Can it get any better than this?  It is delirium.

Dictionary definition:
de-lir-i-um (noun)
1. An acutely disturbed state of mind that occurs in fever, intoxication, and other disorders.
2. Wild excitement or ecstasy.

Let's go with the "wild excitement" part of the definition....no intoxication this early in the day and no disorders that I know of!

I am about half way through Lauren Oliver's "delirium" and I am hooked.  If you liked Scott Westerfeld's "Uglies" series or enjoyed the heart-pounding action and suspense of Suzanne Collins' "Hunger Games," you need to pick up this dystopian series!  The first half of the book sets up the plot and setting of this restrictive world where at 18 years old you receive "the cure" for the disease 'amor deliria nervosa' or more commonly known as LOVE.  Lena's mother walked off a cliff rather than submit to another operation (the first several did not cure her).  Will Lena follow in her mother's footsteps (literally)?

Off to read the rest of this intriguing novel......need to find out what happens to Lena and her BFF Hana.

- delirium
- pandemonium
- requiem (Spring 2013)
- hana (novella, available as an ebook)

Check this series out and let me know what you think.  Kick back in the sun with a great cup of coffee and enjoy.   I hope you experience the delirium too!!

Weebly

We have chosen Weebly to use for the school-wide "Chanukah Around the World" project.  Helpful links and tools are being collected on the WIKI.  Each grade is researching their own country and will present their findings in traditional and technological ways.  Students will explore:

• Geography
• Literature (both secular and Judaic)
• History (secular, but with a focus on Judaic)
• Culture & Chanukah Customs 
• Integration of technology and information resources

A culminating event will be held on for parents, family members and the community, so that they will be able to experience "Chanukah Around the World."

Weebly is easy to use and its free!  Take a look and sign-up today!

URL:  www.weebly.com

FlipSnack is Deliciously Easy & Fun

FlipSnack is a great tool for use in the classroom.  Remember those great class books that you create with your students in kindergarten and first grade?  Well you can now make them into a flipping book (no profanity intended) to share with students, parents and grandparents on your school website!

It is so easy.  I like the idea of still having the kids draw, color and write their own page.  You can still compile the printed copy for use in the classroom and then you can also create a digital copy to share on your website.  All you have to do is scan each child's page and save as a single PDF document or as individual PDF documents.  Then load the PDF document(s) to www.FlipSnack.com and publish!

Who doesn't like to see their own art work published on the web?!?!?  Give it a try and wait for all the great feedback from your students and families!

Here is the start of a quick one that I started.
Step 1:  I used MS-Word to create each individual page.
Step 2:  Saved each page as a PDF
Step 3:  Logged into my FlipSnack account
Step 4:  Loaded the PDFs
Step 5:  Published & Shared -->  http://snack.to/fzh52utv

Slidestaxx

Perusing the web today (trying to meet my SMART goals :) and ran across this fun tool called Slidestaxx.  Simple to use and great way to organize your images, videos and websites into a slideshow.  All you have to do is create an account, login and begin creating.  You can even embed your Slidestaxx onto your blog or classroom webpage.

Here I created a very short Slidestaxx to present our school's new WIKI for Chanukah.

Setting my SMART Goals

One of our final assignments is to set some goals that incorporate the knowledge we've gained from our class.  I am writing my goal in SMART format, to help ensure that I can achieve the goal(s) I set for myself.

I've decided to focus my goals on using a couple several of technology tools we investigated and used during our class.  I believe that these tools will keep me connected to best practices and what is going on in the world of education, as well as provide me with new ideas that I can use in my classroom.  Additionally, these tools will help me form and express my opinions.

My SMART goals for 12/13 School Year:

S	Specific	I will continue to use Twitter and Google Reader to stay current on topics in education and technology.	I will keep my WIKI and Blog current.
M	Measureable	Garner 2-4 apps, links, or articles to re-tweet.	Minimum of 2 postings per month.  Incorporate items/knowledge culled from Twitter and my Reader.
A	Attainable	Set aside ½ hours one afternoon per week to read/explore Twitter/Reader.	Set aside ½ hours one morning per week to post to my WIKI and Blog.
R	Realistic	This is do-able, as long as I set aside the time.	This is do-able, as long as I set aside the time.
T	Timely	This is a weekly goal for the entire 12/13 school year. Assess at end of December.	This is a weekly goal for the entire 12/13 school year. Assess at end of December.

What it all means (week 5 reflection)

I really enjoyed reading the “What It All Means” chapter of Will Richardson’s book this week for class. It helped me wrap my head around a couple of things.  With the increasing amount of information available online and the collaborative nature of content creation, as educators we need to prepare students for their life after school, which includes more than just reading and writing literacy.   

What this means for students:

• Students need to be critical reviewers of the information that they sift through, no longer can they depend on the publishers and editors of the print world to validate the information.
• Students need to understand the ways that they can publish and share their ideas.
• Students need to learn how to manage the heaps of information that they consume everyday; they need to learn to do this safely, efficiently and effectively.
• In the end, if the education system is successful, students can learn how to use the internet’s connectivity to change the world or at least impact it in a positive way.

What this means for educators:

• As educators, we need to help connect students with the content they need, as well as connect them with other knowledgeable experts (and experts can take many, many forms).
• As educators, we need to model the skills that we want our students to learn; we have to coach them. This includes creating our own content and continuing to build our own PLN.
• As educators, we need to use the internet resources to be true collaborators, in order to grow ourselves and provide the best for our students.
• As educators, we need to be a part of the change we want to see.  Embrace technology and take responsibility for our own learning.  Isn’t this what we are preparing our students for?

So, what does that actually mean to me.....?  One of the things that I want to do is create a WIKI (which also happens to be an assignment of ours) to help me organize, collaborate and share the many tools that we’ve learned about in class.  For example, I played around with Voki, Yodio and Screen-o-matic tools to create podcasts/screencasts for the new student management software that our school staff uses.  I want to collect these useful “How To” items in one place and ask my fellow teachers to create their own pod/screencasts to add as they learn about a new feature of the student management software.

Off to create I go!

So many useful tools...(reflection week 4)

This week we've looked at so many awesome tools that will be useful to me, especially in my work life.  We looked at Twitter, Google+, Weebly, Diigo & Delicious and podcasting/screencasting tools.

A couple of weeks ago I setup my Twitter account (onegall) and begin following people.  I am following my fellow classmates and other educators that have great and interesting things to say.  I really like this tool for gathering and finding articles and resources to stay current on educational and technology tools/research/issues/topics.

Google+ is an evolving thing for me.  I recently began using just Google Chrome as my browser and am finding that using Google products does seem to make things more integrated and a little easier for me.  I just need to spend a little more time to see how I can use all these resources.

I recently started setup a Weebly site to gather great websites that I think can be beneficial to other teachers in my school.  I am working to organize them into logical groups, and add my notes about these resources.  I will keep adding resources as I learn about them through Twitter, blogs, etc.

Social bookmarking......I tried this with Delicious a couple of years ago, but it never amounted to too much. So, I decided to start over with Diigo.  I really like the sticky note feature and how I can find what others are bookmarking based on similar tags we both use.

I was excited to try my hand at a screencast.  At school we have a new student management tool and I wanted to create easy-to-follow instructions on some basic functionality that all teachers will need to become familiar with.  I used Yodio to create a short how-to screencast.  The cool part was that I added the audio via the phone!  This will be great for when I don't have access to a microphone.  I tried my hand at Screenr, but it does not appear that I can make the screencast private. Since I am using my account for the how-to, I didn't like that my picture/bio/login-name would be out there for all to see.  Some of the other tools (Vocaroo and JingProject) required me to download software to my laptop, which I'm not interested in doing.  If I were to use this with students, it would be too much s/w management to download the s/w and keep it current.  What tools have my classmates tried?  Which do you prefer?

So, the most fun and useful thing this week was the screencast tools.  This is something I've been meaning to investigate and having it as an assignment just popped it to the top of my list!  Creating how-to screencasts (screen shots + audio) is quick and easy and I hope the teachers will find them helpful!

I LOVE word clouds!

I found this great tool for creating word clouds and I've embedded one on my blog (see top right hand corner).  www.AnswerGarden.ch is a great brainstorming tool that can be used in the classroom.  You pose a question and the answers appear real-time in the square.  As answers are duplicated, they appear larger.  This could be fun to post a question to your students on your school website, or use during Professional Development with your staff.

In the past, I've used www.wordle.net or www.tagxedo.com websites to generate word clouds.  With my fifth graders last year, we used Wordle to create a word-cloud representing a book recommendation.  The students then created an image which included their word cloud (title, author, main characters, setting, feelings, genre), an image of the book cover, and their first name.  I loaded these to a digital picture frame and set it to rotate through the book recommendations.  The students loved making them and the younger students enjoyed seeing them and then choosing their next book based on these recommendations.

REMEMBER - Answer the question and help build the word cloud!

Tools to Collect & Cull (reflection week 3)

Last week we read about following websites, blogs and wikis to stay current on the topics of our interests.  It can be extremely overwhelming to find the time to continually visit these sites to read the new information.  Using an Aggregator and subscribing to the various sites I like to follow has been a great time saver.  Now, I have one place to go to get current information.  I can even group my subscriptions into categories. So, if I am looking for new ideas about technology I can focus on just the updates from the sites I have categorized as technology sites.  I have setup Google Reader as my one-stop-shop.  YEAH!

I had setup a Twitter account long ago, but I wasn't really using it.  Now that I have begun to follow various people on Twitter, as well as created my own Tweets based upon great information I've found, I find that I really like this communication tool.  I downloaded the app onto my iPad, so I am always close to this tool.  I still need to investigate TweetDeck, or a similar tool, to group and display the tweets for quick and easy review.  You can follow me:  @onegall.

Having this large amount of information easily available at our fingertips, anywhere, anytime, brings issues!  Too much information!  Not enough time to read it all!  Stress....anxiety....tears.....hair pulling....sleepless nights!

Like everything else, we had to learn (and we will continue to learn) how to handle this mountain of information.  Over time, we become more accustom to the amount of information and have developed ways to process it.  As educators, we need to remember the feelings we experienced with this information overload and help our students come to terms with it.  We need to arm students with the skills to scan the mountain of information and cull the important pieces (important is in the eye of the beholder) for further review and ignore/trash the rest.  We have to know when to scan, read in detail, and move on.  It is a skill developed over time and it will take practice.  In the words of Kenny Rogers (The Gambler Lyrics at http://www.lyricsfreak.com/k/kenny+rogers/the+gambler_20077886.html) "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away and know when to run."

Happy reading to all, and to all a good morning!

Beautiful Prague!

2012-07-27 07.20.43, a photo by onegall on Flickr.

Prague is beautiful in July. This is a picture of the Charles Bridge.

Wiki Woman: How a Web Tool Saved My Career | Edutopia

Wiki Woman: How a Web Tool Saved My Career | Edutopia

Here's a great article that tells exactly how one teacher implemented technology into her classroom and saw immediate and long-term benefits.  At the end of the article, there are some great PDF files to download that document the step-by-step process of using a wiki and the benefits that can result.  Happy reading!

Collaboration through Web 2.0 - Reflection Week 2

Week 2 was full of interesting topics that will help me in the classroom.  I created my own wikispaces, so that I can follow the advice from our readings, so I can begin using this tool to see how it works and begin figuring out how to use this tool with students and other educators.  I already had a Twitter account setup, for microblogging, but hadn't done to much with it.  However, with this week we were tasked with following and tweeting.  This combined with looking at websites that discussed the use of Wikis in education was a great opportunity to tweet about these great resources we found.

We also learned about aggregators, so I setup Google Reader to gather updates from the websites that I subscribed to.  Setting the Reader up was extremely easy and now I will be able to review updates in a much easier fashion.

As a group, we looked at articles about the use of blogs within school settings.  It was interesting to read a variety of view points on the pros and cons of blogging, as well as the safety concerns that schools and teachers need to be aware of.  If you haven't read Doug Johnson's article "A Proposal for Banning Pencils" at http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/columnists/johnson/johnson004.shtml, you should.  It sort of put things in perspective a bit for me!

 

Collaboration through Web 2.0 - Reflection Week 1

I have been able to experience first-hand that collaboration can work using web 2.0 tools!  Our group was able to connect on Google+ and work simultaneously on a Google doc, when we were all in seperate locations.  I was even in a different country, with 7 hour time difference!

All the readings focused on the read/write web.  It was good to learn the evolution of the internet and the variety of tools available to help teachers and students connect, communicate, collaborate and create.  I am excited to start using Edmodo at the new school I will be starting at.  While doing my compare/contrast paper for the different blog hosting site, Edmodo appears to have everything I'm looking for.  It has a library to store lesson plans, presentations, etc. in the cloud.  It has the ability to create and correct assignments online.  It has the ability for the teacher to monitor student blog responses.  And so much more!

The biggest lesson I am taking away from this week's readings and work, is that I have to use the products/tools to be able to see how they can truly benefit my classroom community.  I cannot just read about things, I have to get in there and figure out how they work, pros/cons, and how it impacts my work flow.  I look forward to digging in.

Reflection - week 5

This week we completed our Pecha Kuchas. I had difficulties getting started, but once I started the storyboard, it got easier. Doing the planning up front made the actual recording of my audio extremely easy. The biggest problem was trimming what I wanted to say to stay within the 20 seconds per slide. I used Photostory as the tool to create my Pecha Kuchas. The tool must be downloaded to your PC, then you simply load your images, record your audio and add music, if desired. I can't wait to watch my classmates' stories. The Pecha Kuchas format is great. It keeps you focused on your message. It helps meet the zen principles we discussed: keeps it simple, focused on my audience. I think this would be a good format to use with students. Another focus during this week was rubrics. If we share the rubrics with our students, we let them know what makes a good project and focus them on the correct things. There are many great tools available online to create rubrics. The thing I need to work on, is continuing to collect all these great resources into a single location and keep it organized so that I can find them when I need them!

Digital Storytelling - Week 4 Reflection

Wrapping up another fun week of new knowledge!  This week we took a look at Prezi.  I had used Prezi before and HATED it.  I now chalk that up to not reading the directions on how to use the tool (aka. user error).  After viewing the short video tutorials, I set right to work and created my own Prezi for my top 6 photos from my picture-a-day assignment.  Once I saw how to create the path, I was sold on this new tool for my toolbelt.

The Zen reading and video was great advice, as usual.  Focusing on the Delivery Stage, I need to be fully engaged in my presentations in order to connect with the audience.  One of the best pieces of advice from this segment was to "leave the audience hungry for more."  Do not go over your allotted time, use humor to connect and view every presentation as a performance.

The DigiTales chapter this week was about technical world of digital media.  Great website resources were shared (they've been added to my ever growing resources list), discussion of the vocabulary used (i.e. dpi, jpeg, tiff, wav, etc.) and some tips on how to search the web for images and sound (i.e. Cow + sound or Cow + jpg).  It is impossible to know every piece of technology that is out there, so you just need to focus on what your need is and find available resources to help you meet that need.  I embrace the philosophy of "learn as you go" when it comes to technology.  It is also great to learn with a group of friends, as you can help each other along the way!

In our groups we tried Face Flow this week.  For our group it was not very successful.  The audio quality was poor and someone was always getting 'dropped' from the group discussion.  I am looking forward to hear what other groups thought of this online tool.

After much thought about the Pecha Kucha, I finally settled on my topic.  I struggled with how to lay it out initially, but once I got going on filling in the storyboard template, it started falling into place.  I still have some fine tuning to do on this, but it is finally coming along.  I like the approach of writing down (pen & paper) what type of image I want, before I start looking.  This will keep the presentation focused on my message I wish to convey.  It will be fun putting it together in the coming week(s).

Off to take some pictures.  We got a tiny bit of rain this morning and the wildlife is on the move this morning.  The squirrel has visited the bird feeder several times, as well as the chipmunks and the little rabbit.  The birds are also enjoying the birdbath and feeder, along with their friends!

Digital Storytelling - Week 3 Reflection

This week our focus was on design.  Zen provided great guidelines to use when organizing your presentation, in order to make your message clear and easy to understand; design keeps the end-user/audience in mind throughout the entire process.

It was exciting and very useful to take an existing powerpoint presentation I had and use the design principles to revamp and improve the presentation:  1) reduce noise, 2) picture superiority effect, 3) empty space, 4) contrast, 5) repitition, 6) alignment and 7) proximity.  All of these principles make perfect sense; however, implementing them was not always as easy as I thought it would be.  Space for example was difficult for me.  I am the one that likes to use every available spot on the slide, with a goal of fitting everything on one page if I could!  I had to take a step back, think about what my message was and how best to convey it to the audience, remembering that if my slides have absolutely everything printed on them, then why am I there?

Animoto.....love it!  I can see how this would be easy, fun and educational to use in the classroom.  What a powerful tool for students and teachers.  I've got several project ideas swirling in my head.....biography, autobiography, history projects, book reviews or trailers, etc...  I created a video of my daughter's 8th grade graduation, using a song in Animoto's library and it was just perfect, the combination of song, text and images!  I can't wait to share it with my family.

As always, the wealth of ideas and feedback from the class and professor is great.  The various websites we've used in class, gotten from the textbooks and have shared in the forums will help me build a list of resources that I can use in the future.

Lastly, I continue to have fun with the picture-a-day assignment.  It's fun to see what creative images my classmates have taken.

Digital Storytelling - Week 2 Reflection

Week 2 of class brought several new things for me.  I am slowly finding my way around in google docs.  I will be continuing to work on formatting, which frustrates me!  I like to use tables in MS-word to organize and group things and I find that these lovely tables don't always copy nicely into google docs.

We got a chance to play with Voicethread a bit.  We loaded an old powerpoint presentation into VT, which we will use later and we created a new one related to the Civil Rights Movement.  I wasn't too impressed with VT, in that I ended up creating my short presentation in powerpoint first, using visuals I found on the web (free) and I added audio.  Unfortunately, the audio did not copy into VT with the presentation, so I ended up re-recording my audio.  I do like the feature that others can leave voice comments.  I see opportunities for this tool in the classroom.

We looked closely at standards too, seeing how multimedia standards are woven throughout the subject area standards.  Searching for project ideas was fun and it helped reinforce for me that the web provides many, many resources that teachers can use daily.  You do have to be selective though, and most likely any lesson plan you re-use will be modified by you, to fit your own teaching style and the learning style of your students.  I can't wait to take a closer look at lesson ideas my classmates have posted!

It is always great looking at the websites provided.  I get tons of ideas about good storytelling by watching these.  Story Corps was interesting and provides a good example of a format that you could use with students.  It would be awesome to have them record a conversation with a grandparent/great-grandparent/ parent, to preserve a memory.  Sir Ken Robinson uses humor so well in his presentation and I totally agree that we need to help children maintain their creativity and that Art is just as important as Math.

Zen's discussion on preparation was a good reminder for me.  Sometimes I just have to put the computer away and pull out the pen & paper.  I really do feel that this provides a great way to clear the mind, focus on the message and gives flexibility in brainstorming (can group/ungroup, gives a visual, can cross-out or add back in easily, etc.).  I've sharpened a bunch of pencils and have them ready on my desk!

It's been a good, but busy week.  I start summer school tomorrow....so will be juggling a bit more throughout the rest of the class.  I view it as keeping the mind active!

Digital Storytelling - Week 1 Reflection

I have enjoyed the start of the Digital Storytelling class.  I have already been exposed to several new (new to me anyway) tools:  Blackboard, Posterous and Skype!  I like to learn new things, so this has been a good start to my summer.  Plus, I get to take and post a picture each day.  In the past I have been mainly a people picture person, so I am going to focus on photographing  interesting things around me, which may or may not be people.  My first two pictures have focused on close-ups.

Since returning to school at Stritch, I have had the opportunity to meet some great people.   I completed my teaching certification with cohort 20, the LMS cohort welcomed me into what was for most of them their last class, and now I am joining another new team.  I am excited to meet a new group professionals and learn from them (oh, and the professor too).

I hope to “unlearn what we have learned” (Master Yoda) and find better ways to communicate my message!  As I read the books and articles for this week, I realized that I misuse powerpoint.  I tend to spend more time on all the flashiness of the presentation, rather than on what I really want the audience to walk away with.  I need to be more succinct in my words on the screen and use pictures, audio or videos to help get my message across to my audience.  I look forward to creating my own digital stories!

Posterous

I just started a Digital Storytelling class and the instructor is having us use this really cool, free website to post our pictures.  We have to post a picture a day for the next 28 days, so keep checking back to see what I fixated on each day!

http://deborah-w1bdb.posterous.com/

Note:  I was very pleased with my first picture of raspberries.  Yummy!

My Voki!

Ruby Red is a GREAT READ!

I just finished a great book titled Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier.  It was originally written in German and translated by Anthea Bell (she also translated Cornelia Funke's books).  This is the first of a trilogy, so you can look forward to more good reading!

There is time travel, a really great kiss, a budding romance, ghosts and gargoyles, family secrets, a creepy old count, and lots and lots of action.  I couldn't put this book down. I couldn't leave Gwen and Gideon in the past, I had to see where the future would take them.

The not so great part......I have a long time to wait for Sapphire Blue, which doesn't come out until October, 2012!

Check back for my review of the second book in the trilogy!

Photostory

Photostory is free downloadable program that allows you to take pictures, add titles, add your own word and add music. Then at the touch of a button you have a short (or long) video file. It is relatively fast and easy to bring together you photos, your voice and some music to create a photo-story! We had to create an advertisement for the library and I used Photostory (I had vowed to use a new tool). I had tons of pictures from the remodel, library classes and the book fair. Loading the pictures was easy, then I put them in order for display, added the wording and then I selected some background music to add. The tool gives you tons of transition options. I wanted to show how the library is all about DISCOVERY. So, I added captions to the pictures that started with each of the letters in discover. For example, digital learning, information literacy, space for reading and space for meeting, collaboration, our work (we display lots of student work in the library throughout the year), value-added service (book clubs, game day and book fair), every reader his/her book, and read to succeed. I will use this short 2 1/2 minute video to promote the library to administration, teachers, parents and students. Give it a try! I think you like the results.

Blabberize

I have rediscovered blabberize.com.  I was reviewing my notes/links/things-to-checkout and came across a note about doing biography projects using blabberize.  I am in the process of creating my own BIO using this fun web 2.0 tool.  If it works, I plan to see if the 5th grade teacher(s) will partner with me to roll this out as an option for the students' biography projects.  It's fun and informative!  Stay tuned, to see how it all turns out...

Voki

What fun I have had with creating my own Voki.  I'm not sure it looks like me, as much as it is what I wish I looked like!

Anyway......I hope you enjoy VokiOneGall too!

I just made a new Voki. See it here: http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=5823977&height=267&width=200

The Hunger Games movie

Are you as excited as I am to see the movie based on one of my favorite books that I read last year?  So far, all the reviews I've heard are positive and indicate that the movie people actually followed the storyline in the book.

I'm giving it a couple of days for the crowds to settle down a bit and my family and I are headed to the theater to immerse ourselves in Katniss and Peeta's world.  I have goosebumps just thinking about it!

If you've seen the movie, let me know what you thought about it....without giving away any spoilers, for those that are choosing to see the movie BEFORE they read the book.  I still encourage my patrons to read the book, because you get so many more details than they could ever capture in a ninety minute movie.

Grab your favorite movie partner, a big bucket of buttered popcorn and see the Hunger Games!