When the Best is Free: Images

Last week I did my When the Best is Free: Images training for my staff. The training focuses on where to find the best copy"right" photos, images, and clip art. I also discuss some great primary source images and how to use them in your classroom. Participants were also given time to explore the websites.

Interestingly enough the big hit was how to get clip art from Microsoft online, download it, find it in My Pictures, and edit it. I've added directions on how to do this to my wiki.

All of the resources are also available on my wiki here.

I've uploaded the presentation to slideshare here.

Have a great weekend!

<---Cross post from Katie Christo's Edublogs site--->

I need your help!

My K-12 school is looking for ideas for next year for hosting blogs, wikis, eportfolios, forums, etc. I would really appreciate your feedback on my quick What do you use for Web 2.0 applications in your district/school? survey. The survey is here: http://tinyurl.com/7yl9ph

Thanks in advance!

Katie

Update:

The survey is going great - getting lots of responses! Thank you to everyone who is participating - the information is great! I will still be collecting responses through the end of next week. The survey is here:http://tinyurl.com/7yl9ph and the responses are here:http://tinyurl.com/7dxj9x

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.

Map of Future Forces Affecting Education

KnowledgeWorks Foundation and the Institute for the Future have a very cool interactive map of the trends that will shape the future of education. You can click the Go to the map to explore an interactive map or you can download a printable version. Be sure to read the legend at the bottom to understand how the map works. Spend some time clicking around - it is fascinating!
http://www.kwfdn.org/map/
They will be coming out with a 2009 Education Map in January!

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/

The Collaboration Cycle

I just read a fabulous post with an amazingly great resource... the Collaboration Cycle is one of the better ways I've ever seen to explain our role as Instructional Technology Facilitators to teachers and staff at a school. I love that it is a cycle... here is the original post: http://mscofino.edublogs.org/2008/08/28/going-full-circle/
Enjoy!

Wordle in 6th Grade Humanitites

In our middle school we have a Humanities class (SS and LA combined) at each grade. These teachers are doing some really fabulous projects. One of the ones is the use of Wordle to help students explain the 6 Big Ideas of History - Science and Technology, Government, Culture, Geography, Belief Systems, and Economics. The products completed by the students were printed and put on a bulletin board and will be used throughout the year for them to reference as they study any event in history.

The Process:

Students had to brainstorm 20 different terms/keywords that were associated with their Idea. They then prioritized those ideas by which were the most important in describing their Idea. Next, the students typed their keywords into Word (spellchecking was needed) - they would type the most important terms multiple times (Wordle uses the frequency of a word to determine it's size in the final presentation), so "ScienceandTechnology" (all one word) was typed 5 times while a lesser term to describe it say "computers" was only typed 3 times. Each word needed to be separated with a space. The students then copied and pasted their text into Wordle and adjusted the design/colors to suit their tastes and then published their work! We were able to print them off and the students also pasted the url of their published work into their class forum so that everyone could see and comment on them.

Conducting Interviews via Videoconferencing

As many of you by now have figured out I have relocated to Chennai, India. I am working in the American International School here! In the past week we (my husband and I) attended a fabulous presentation for the Madras Day titled the Sea Story, "A special play/performance by the members of Nochikuppam seafishing community, facilitated by the World Storytelling Institute." It was hosted by Eric Miller, Director of the World Storytelling Institute (Chennai). He was nice enough to share a fabulous article he wrote for the education newsletter of the American Folklore Society. This article has great tips for how to conduct interviews via videoconferencing - take a read! http://www.afsnet.org/sections/education/Spring2008/Feature.html

And thanks again to Eric for sharing!

Great Blog Post with Free Resources for Regular and Special Education

Many of these are resources I use regularily. Some of them I've never heard of. This is truly an amazing list and much thanks to Paul Hamilton for posting it!
http://paulhami.edublogs.org/productivity/

Plagerism Videos from Rutgers University

Rutgers University has a great group of 3 videos explaining Plagerism. While they are geared for university level I can see applications at Middle and High School level.
http://library.camden.rutgers.edu/EducationalModule/Plagiarism/

Enjoy!

Summer Hiatus Over

Well, I got so involved as virtual attendee at NECC '08 the end of June, I just stopped posting. And well...then I got so involved having the month of July off, I just couldn't leave the pool to turn on a computer for anything other that minimal email and staying connected with family and friends.
But I am back at work and ready to start back in. I've heard from Katie, Donna and Aaron and they are all getting up and going with new jobs. I hope we can make a go of maintaining the "Think Tank".
I'll be back when I've got some new things to add.

NECC2008 Ning Community

I'm up this morning and gleening resources from the NECC2008 Ning Community. I have joined the groups: del.icio.us and Diigo bookmark sharing at NECC2008, Virtual NECCers, and Digital Storytellers.

The Digital Storytellers have shared several sites in the discussion already. I've now got to take the time to investigate those. I am looking forward to watching their digital storytelling wiki to see what develops.

I have found lots of people to add to my del.icio.us and Diigo networks and follow. I've added feeds to this blog for del.icio.us bookmarks tagged digitalstorytelling and NECC08.

The Ning community has been a great place to start my virtual attendance at the conference. I can tell already that I will be in overload soon and need to figure out how to manage, evaluate and utilize all the information (but that is always the case).

Now I"m "headed" to see what the EduBloggerCon has to offer virtually.

Huuummmm...I must remember that I'm Eastern time and San Antonio is Central (Thanks Donna for the reminder)

Virtual Attendee at NECC08

I'm multi-tasking again. Mainly trying to figure out ways to effectively attend NECC 2008 virtually.
Here are just a few ways I've found.
1. Summize - and search the tag NECC to search Twitter for twit posts on NECC. You can also get an RSS feed for the search.
2. Join the Ning NECC Network and join a group or groups that interest you. Be a part on the online community.
3. Check out ISTE Island in Second Life - events here http://secondlife.iste.wikispaces.net/
4. Do a Google Blogs search for these tags - necc, necc08, necc2008.
5. Do a TwitterScan for necc, necco8, necc2008
6. Check out NECClive wiki
7. Check out EdStreamTV wiki "Your TV Guide for NECC 2008"
8. ISTE has the sessions and events that will be available as Podcasts and you can follow Apple's official NECC podcast channel.
9. ISTE also has video-on-demand sessions and events.

Not as good as being there but.....

World's Best Presentation Contest

SlideShare.net is putting on the World's Best Contest Presentation 2008. You could win a MacBook Air, Amazon Kindle, iPod Nano or Touch, or Garr Reynolds book Presentation Zen. I plan on entering, just as soon I some thing inspires me.

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Tips for Conference Bloggers

I came across the e-book, Tips For Conference Bloggers, the other day. I printed it out and finally got around to reading it. I really wish I could put these tips to use at NECC, but I will be at home. I am making plans to attend NECC 09 in DC.

The 6 page book broke the tips down into 15 sections, including Tools, location, prep, style, quotes, context, audience, linking, taging, and several others. I am going to hit the tips that spoke to me.

Location
Don't sit in the front row, as you may distract others. Sit on the side or in the back. IMO, the best tip is to sit near the power outlets. I would also like to add, don't sit close to the outlet that the presenter is using. I once knocked the lcd projector out of the socket, David Warlick's to be exact. Not my best moment.

Preparation
Start the post before hand. I don't know why I never thought of this. I always started with good intentions of blogging a conference, but I never seem to follow through. Google the presenter or check the conference website for some info. Depending on what blog platform you use, it is possible to save this is a draft. Next conference I go to, I hope to have my first paragraph written, even before I arrive.

Style
Spelling and syntax matter.

Quotes
If you are quoting the speaker, make sure you got the exact quote.

Audience and Context
Remember you are blogging for yourself and those who read your blog. Also, assume the it will be read by those who were not at the conference. If they show a youtube video, mention it and try to embed it.

Linking
Link all there is to link. This includes, speaker's homepage, speaker's organization page, speaker's blog, speaker's books/videos, and other relevant posts or pictures. I use a program called Texter on my PC. It allows you to type an abbreaviaton and it replaces it with a phrase. For example, I type "linknecc" and press enter, then "a href="http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2008/">NECC" appears, which when published is just the link (ie NECC). Similar programs are available on the Mac. TextExpander (about $30) and RapidoWrite (free)

Tagging
Tag every post with all relevant tags, starting with the conference name and the speakers name.

Change is in the air

This blog was begun in December of 2005 by Katie after we had attended a NCETC conference. She invited Aaron to join in, Donna was next and eventually I joined. They have done a great job maintaining the momentum.
We all have worked in the same school district and have had an incredible journey exploring, collaborating, and sharing within our district and in the greater edtech world. We have all been transformed in ways that are only partially documented in this blog.
Change is in the air. We won't all be in the same geographical location anymore. In fact we won't even be on the same continent. We have all committed to maintaining this blog (I'll have to start pulling my weight here at the original local) and have disscussed starting a podcast. While I will miss my coworkers, I am excited about the possibilities. The ability to maintain professional and personal relationships with people I admire and love across physical distance will add another dimension to our understanding of and ability to harness this vast new world.

Tablefy

I came across this site while reading lifehacker. Tablefy is a site where you can create a table to compare any number of items. I just gave a presentation on iPods and was looking for an easy way to compare them. Too bad I didn't know about this.

I ran through it quickly. It is simple and was a breeze to do. Beside just adding text, you can give a url of an image. Tablefy will automatically create a thumbnail for you. It is also possible to add a youtube video, among other media.

The site also allows you to save your own tables to edit later. You can also search for other comparisons and leave comments. I can see great uses in education, like comparing characters, geometric shapes, and plants and animals.


go to the table!

The best part, you can embedded in your own wiki or website. There is an also an option to keep your table private, if you don't share well.

SlideShare

From Katie's post, you know we just finished up our Summer Tech Conference. I would have to echo Katie's sediments, it was wonderful. On our wiki this year, we decided to post our PowerPoint presentations. We also did this last year by saving the presentation as jpegs and uploading them to Picasa web albums. We could then embed them as a slideshow.

This year I decided to give SlideShare and Scribd a chance. Both sites allow you to upload PowerPoint files, along with PDF and some open office file formats. Scribd adds support for Word and Excel too. I uploaded my presentation ppt file to both sites. I used a non standard font and both sites changed my font to standard font, not what I wanted. Since both sites allow PDF uploads, I used CutePDF to save my presentation as a pdf file. I once again uploaded them to both sites. Slideshare worked perfectly, but Scribd never took my pdf.

Needless to say, I have become a fan of SlideShare. Even more so, when they featured my presentation on their homepage.

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