Make-a-Flake

My daughter loves cutting paper. One day, I showed her how to make snowflakes. She had a ball. My daughter hates cleaning up. I cannot begin to tell you how much little snips of paper were on the floor.

Luckily, my daughter also loves to "work" on the computer. Next time she wants to make snowflakes, I am sending her to Make-a-Flake.

http://snowflakes.barkleyus.com/

Make-a-flake is a snow flake maker by Barkely Interactive. This flash games folds the paper and gives you a virtual pair of scissors. Snip away at your paper and you have a snow flake. There is a preview option and even an undo button.

After you have perfected your snowflake, you can save it to their gallery, email it to a friend, or save it to your computer. When saving it you have two options, .jpg or .eps. The .eps file can be opened and manipulated in PhotoShop or Illustrator.

The best part, no clean up!

LIFE Pictures Available on Google

Babe Ruth

Google partnered with LIFE and is now in the process of digitizing their photos. Some of these photos date back to the 1750's. Odds are you won't recognize most of the pictures as they were never published. Right now, only 20 percent of the collection is availabe. Over the next few months the entire archive will be online. That is 10 million photos.

LIFE photo archive

Google's blog post

Where the Wild Things Are

In 1963 Maurice Sendak published Where the Wild Things Are. A story of Max, who is sent to his room without supper. In his room, Max’s imagination takes over and he journeys to the land of the Wild Things. It has been a beloved children’s book ever since.

Discovery Education Streaming has the Where the Wild Things Are video. The video is just over 7 minutes long and a teachers guide is also available. Both the book and the video are appropriate for grades K -2.

After showing the video or reading the book, take you kids to buildyourwildself.com to, well, build your wild self. I turned myself into a Gaz-ossa-rusa-frog that likes to play guitar. The site was created by the New York Zoos and Aquarium. Students will have a great time creating themselves into a monster. Since they are using parts from an actual animal, it is easy to bring in science into the lesson. Talking about the places the animals live brings in social studies. Math can be integrated by sorting the monsters. Fans of the Madagascar movies may enjoy that the site was recently updated with Madagascar parts. Don’t worry if you don’t recognize the animals, there is a short explanation at the end. Buildyourwildself.com allows you to save, print, and send your wild self to a friend.

Apple Youth Workshops

Apple Youth Workshops are free hands-on workshops for families to learn how to compose a song, produce a movie, create a photo album, or make a presentation. The workshops are held at Apple retail store locations.

Currently, registration is open for the September JAM and October ACTION workshops. For more information, including dates, times, and registration information, visit http://www.apple.com/retail/youthworkshops/

Summer Tech Conference '08

We just finished our BCPS Summer Tech Conference '08! It was fabulous. We had a huge response and doubled our numbers from last year. Participants also enjoyed the conference and we have received great feedback that we will be posting on the wiki soon. To see what we did and get resources from our sessions go to the wiki! http://stc08.wiki.burke.k12.nc.us/

FREE Typing / Keyboarding Practice

Want an alternative to purchasing keyboarding practice software?

Here are a couple of FREE keyboarding sites for children:

Keyboarding Skills Course http://www.e-learningforkids.org/Courses/Keyboarding_Skills/index.html (Click “Skip Intro” to go straight to the instructions/course.

Dance Mat Typing from BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/ Includes 12 stages.

Also, TuxType is a free typing tutor download for children. http://tuxtype.sourceforge.net/

You CAN take it with you! Workshop Resources

This workshop was all about portable drives and the free applications that can be loaded on them.

Online resources from my You CAN take it with you! workshop.
http://katiechristo.pbwiki.com/PortableApps

ReCAPTCHA

Ok so I’d heard of ReCAPTCHA but I didn’t really get it until listening to this podcast from the Museum of Science http://www.mos.org/events_activities/podcasts&d=1813

It explains ReCAPTCHA and how you can use them – I’m using it to hide my email on webpages. On the right side of this page under Please Join Us – you will see the link to the ReCAPTCHA hiding my email from all those nasty spammers and helping to digitize text!

Want to hide your email address? Get the code here http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/

One of the games that comes standard on the iPod is Music Quiz. It will randomly play a part of a song you have loaded on your iPod and give you a list of 4 songs. You have to pick the correct song in the shortest amount of time.

Just the other day, Apple released iQuiz. Which does the same thing, but with updated graphics. And now today, iQuizMaker www.iquizmaker.com was released. This allows you to make up your own quizzes and sync them to your iPod. You can also download and share quizzes on their site. Right now the software is only on the mac, but the PC version is coming in May.

Free Stuff from PBwiki

I got an email from PBwiki and figured this would be a good place to share. If you don't know, PBwiki offers ad-free wiki hosting for educators.

More information can be found here...
http://pbwiki.com/edu.html
http://educators.pbwiki.com/

They are offering PBwiki Presenter Packs. So, if you're giving a presentation about wikis, they will ship you a free PBwiki t-shirt, an easy-to-read PDF about wikis, a Powerpoint with pictures of real PBwiki users, and 3 FREE Gold Premium wikis to give out to your audience.

They have also posted, self proclaimed, the coolest videos in the world. They filmed real educators using PBwiki and asked the questions: what they like, what they can improve, and common concerns. They have posted 7 videos, including:

How do you use PBwiki?
Is PBwiki safe?
How does collaboration work?

ToonDoo

ToonDoo is a wacky way to get creative with comics. You can now create your own comic strips, share them or insert them in your blogs with just a few clicks and drag-n-drops!

Check it out!
www.toondoo.com

Infinite Thinking Machine

Here is a very cool site/show. Google has made this to help teachers and students thrive in the 21st century. So far, they have about 5 show with some extras. I first watch (and found the site) after watching ITM 5, Calculate This. The show format is pretty basis. It starts by giving some tips, tricks, and questions. It then went to an interview segment showcasing a teacher using Google's spreadsheets.

This is something I really want to do in my district, just need to find some recruits to help me.

Do you prefer Laptops or Desktops?

Found an online poll creator that you can use on your blog! Try it out below:

Get Free Opinion Polls

Here is the website: http://www.vizu.com/index.html

Art Rage 2

Art Rage is a great free painting program.

"You can paint with oils, sketch with pencils, sprinkle glitter, and more. You can paint with gold leaf, silver foil, and other metallic colors. You can even load in your photos as Tracing Images to help you recreate them as paintings."

Check out Art Rage 2 here!