0 Think Before You Post

I saw this graphic on one of the blogs I follow (Thanks Educational Technology Guy). I believe the graphic speaks for itself.

0 Super Book of Web Tools for Teachers

This free online ebook, “Super Book of Web Tools for Teachers” is a compilation of Web 2.0 resources by eleven prominent bloggers, teachers, and school administrators.  It provided excellent resources to introduce educators in using technology to the K-12 classroom.

Check it out!

0 GoAnimate for Schools

If you liked the GoAnimates which I create for our technology staff developments…you are going to love this! GoAnimate4Schools now has a kid friendly site.

The Free GoAnimate4Schools account includes 1 teacher account, 100 student accounts. As part of the TeacherPlus account, there are no limitation to animations or duration created by the teacher. The teacher may upload music, images, videos, record voices and use the full GoAnimate text-to-voice feature (including all 16 different voices). The teacher may also create any number of characters to use in animations.

Students have access to 20 default characters for in their animations. Animations maylast for a maximum of 2 minutes and may contain uploaded music, recorded voices, text-to-voice, but not images or videos.Students may create their own characters which provides an endless supply of unique characters for each story.

Your kiddos will absoulutely LOVE this site. Imagine the possiblies for projects! Here are just a few ideas:

• Instead of requiring the traditional report, diorama, or poster plastered with pictures and information. Students can create an impressive alternative book report by creating an animated book talk, interviewing a character from the story, or re-creating an important scene in the story. ( http://ilearntechnology.com/?p=3406)
• Students can display their knowledge about a historical figure by “interviewing” the historical person of interest or an eye-witness of a historical event. ( http://ilearntechnology.com/?p=3406)
• Students can write a screen play and then transform them into animations.
• Animations are also a great way to illustrate vocabulary words and story problems in math. ( http://ilearntechnology.com/?p=3406)

Sign up now for your FREE teacher/student accounts. Also check out the Lesson Gallery for some great ideas for using GoAnimate with your students.

0 ABCya's PaintGo - A Great Alternative to MaxPaint!

ABCYa is a fabulous and FREE website which offers educational computer games and activities for grades Kinder through 5th. For this post, I would like to pay particular attention to ABCYa’s PaintGo online program which is a great alternative to MaxPaint. Perfect to use for the tech projects so many of you do for Open House! With PaintGo, students may create an array of pictures from simple sketches to complex drawings using the various tools this site has to offer. Best of all, you can save it as a jpeg to the computer or share drive. Check out PaintGo - a great alternative to Max Show!

0 Telescopic Text

Telescopic Text: I saw this in a "twitter tweet" (that's a mouthful - say that 4 times...) and thought it was so cool. This would be PERFECT to show students sentence elaboration...check out the video below to get an idea of what this site does. If you refresh your page, it will go back to the orginal simple sentence. Now, how cool is that?

1 Photovisi: A FREE Online Photo Collage

Photovisi is a FREE and super easy online tool to create photo collages and as of right now, no sign up is required.

Once you enter the site, you can choose from  48 templates - all which are fantastic! 

Once the template is selected, you upload your photos (the number of photos uploaded depends on the template you use). From there, you may customize by dragging items around, adding text and background.  After the collage is finished, it is available for download and print! Below is one I created for our dog.

What a great way to showcase photos from your classroom to share with parents or on a blog!

0 Want to Simplify Your Life? SignUp Genius

An Online Sign - Up List

 I came across this from another blog and wanted to "reblog" it. (Like retweet - ok, so it is a made-up word but hey, it kinda works).

Ever have a classroom party and ended up with 10 of one thing and 2 of another? Need to sign up to bring a dish to a staff luncheon? How about getting chaperones for a field trip? Need folks to RSVP for that Holiday party? Well this online sign-up list is the way to go!

SignUp Genius is free with customized themes/templates and an easy wizard which guides you through. You may choose from different options on how folks sign up. I personally like the Private Password feature. This allows you to make it public but only folks who have the password may utilize the form. It also offers options on email preferences from notification emails to reminders.

Once completed, you share the url and folks start signing up! Below is an example for a luncheon. Now how cool is that?

0 Need a Break? Got 5 Minutes?

Please view the GoAnimate info-commercial for our Fall 2010 Technology Staff Developments.

GoAnimate.com: Fall 2010 Technology Professional Development by Dovewhisper

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

0 Study Jams by Scholastic - CHECK IT OUT!!!

"Study Jams is an online learning tool by Scholastic. It was created with the intention of teaching math and science to grades 3-6. Its use of real-world examples allows for the application into everyday life and the assistance to classes and school to become easier." 

I was amazed at the quality of the information and how easy it was to navigate through the program. Your kids are going to love this plus what a wonderful tool to use as a whole group activity!! I plan on adding these to the Dovewhisper Computer Centers. So keep an eye out for them.

The Math section has the following topics with numerous skills associated with it.

And the Science section has the following topics with numerous skills associated with it.

For teachers, it offers four topics which provide lesson plans and teacher guides on the following topics:

• Water Cycle
• Solids, Liquids and Gases
• Fractions
• Determining the Missing Operations

You gotta check it out!

0 KidsTube: An Alternative to YouTube

KidsTube 

"Kids Tube is a video sharing hosting and sharing site designed for hosting content produced by kids and content about kids. Kids Tube monitors all submissions and monitors comments left on videos. To encourage students to develop their videography skills, Kids Tube holds weekly videos submission contests. The contests are arranged around a theme and one winner is selected by the Kids Tube team." http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/08/kids-tube-monitored-video-sharing-for.html

They have over 500 Educational videos from School Rock - The Preamble to Great Composers.

Check it Out!

0 Still Trying to Figure Out Who to Follow on Twitter?

Trying to figure out who to follow on Twitter can be a task all in itself. Honestly, If you are like me, I could not care less when someone is getting their haircut or what they are eating at that moment. I want to follow folks who are relevant to my interest (which of course is.... educational technology related tweets). Here are a few suggestions on trying to figure out who to follow on Twitter.

Consider signing up with Mr. Tweet. - "Your Personal Networking Assistant!" This site recommends "twitter-ers" relevant to your topic of interest.

Another one is: WhoShouldiFollow which was designed to suggest people who are similar to those you already follow.

If you are interested in keeping up with Technology News - Consider visiting, "Top 50 Twitter Feeds to Follow Tech News”  a blog posted by Carolyn Friedman. This blog post outlines different folks to follow according to the following categories: Check it out - this is a great place to start if you are interested in Tech News!!!

• Top Twitter Feeds to Follow Tech News
• Top Media Twitter Feeds to Follow Tech News 
• Top Individual Twitter Feeds to Follow Tech News
• Top Industry Twitter Feeds to Follow Tech News
• Top Geek Twitter Feeds to Follow Tech News
• Top Twitter Feeds to Follow Tech Shopping 

Last but not least, once I find someone to follow, I check out to see who they are following and visit that person's tweet to see if they are a person of interest for me!

Happy Tweeting,
ke

2 Booking Around with Web 2.0 Tools

01May10, I presented a session on facilitating an online book study utilizing Web 2.0 tools. The session was designed to share how to develop/conduct (as well as lessons learned) an online staff development. It was great practice as I hope to present at TCEA 2011 in Austin. Below was an Animoto that I created for it.

Thank you to Ann Marie, Brooklyn, and Kristy for your assistance. I could not have created it without you!!!

1 Blogs as a Learning and Teaching Tool by Guest Blogger - David Andrade

This post is from David Andrade and we were partnered up for the "I Heart EdTech Blog Swap". Please read his post below and visit my post on his blog - Educational Technology Guy.

Blogs are a great learning and teaching tool. They can be used to communicate with students and parents as well as have students post work and discuss it. Blogs can allow students to share their work with a wider audience and get feedback from outside of their classroom.

I use Blogger for my classroom blogs, but there are a variety of blogging services available including WordPress and EduBlogs. (These are all free or have free versions).

2 Move Over Wordle...Hello Tagxedo

What a fantastic and cool alternative to Wordle, Tagul, and Word it Out! Tagxedo is word cloud generator with total pizzazz!

Like Wordle, you can insert a web address or type in your words to generate your word clouds but unlike Wordle, it offers one to upload a text file. The menu is so robust. You can choose various theme colors, change the font - you can even upload your favorite font too…How cool is that? Additionally, you can change the directional layout or respin to your heart‘s content!

The Options area is very nice! You can change the shape and since it is in beta version – for a limited time - you can upload your own graphics. Check out the Dovewhisper logo in this post!

The Show History shows all of your "respins" so you can easily go back and view previous examples made instead of losing it in Wordle.  The Skip Words Option is a plus too. Not only is it easy to remove words, it also gives you a word count.

Unlike Wordle, Tagxedo provides you with 18 options to save. Yes, 18 options to save your word cloud…that alone it is a major plus as an educator!!!!

I did not see an option to embed the graphic into a blog but maybe it will be an option which will come out soon?

As of right now, Tagxedo is free but I understand that it will cost to use some of the Pro options (uploading your own graphics and inserting your own word as a shape)  but “…..the creator promises that a lot of the functionality will be preserved in the basic, free version…..” http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/09/tagxedo/. We will see!

Example of the Pro Option:

So, if you get a chance -  check out Tagxedo!

1 Got 4 Minutes?

Please view the Elementary 2010 Technology Summer Staff Developments

GoAnimate.com: Spring 2010 Summer Technology Staff Development by Dovewhisper

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

3 Linoit - An Alternative to Wallwisher

I came across an alternative to Wallwisher which offers robust features which are quite unique and different to Wallwisher.

Linoit.com is a cool web-based alternative to Wallwisher. It allows one to store and organize sticky notes, collaborate on notes with others and set due dates - to name a few. One of the other cool features is the ability to organize notes into different bulletin boards (canvases). For instance, you can keep work-related and personal notes in separate bulletin boards.

Checkout some of the other cool features of Linoit:

• Create sticky notes and use them to manage to-do lists, store notes and collaborate on ideas.
• Group stickies into different canvases/tabs (work, personal, etc.) and use tags to organize them further.
• Create as many canvases and sticky notes as you need.
• Keep your sticky notes private or share and collaborate on notes with others.
• You can share notes with others on ‘view only’ or ‘view & edit’ basis.
• Assign due dates and setup automatic email alerts when someone posts to your canvas.
• Calendar: Use the mini-calendar on the right-bottom of the canvas to browse stickies by due date.
• Customize stickies: change background or upload your own background, color, change font size, assign icons, drag and drop, etc. http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/linoit-create-share-collaborate-sticky-notes/

Note: If I could change one thing, it would be the ability to scroll through the embeded Linoit like Wallwisher and the option to moderate the posts. Other than that, I personally, like it much more than Wallwisher - but check it out yourself and you decide!

An Alternative to WallWisher?

3 Tikatok - Imagine a Story - Create a Book

I came across this fabulous website, Tikatok, to help promote your student’s writing. What a great way to add both authenticity and a real audience for their writing. Please read below from ilearntechnology blog post.

"....With Tikatok each of your students can become a published author, create, share, and gain an authentic audience for their writing and illustrations.

Students have options when creating a story, they can choose a topic and idea to start a story or they can start from scratch with a blank story. The first option allows students to get help with the hardest part of story creation, thinking of an idea and beginning a story. Students fill in blanks about their story and get a basic story that they can embellish and add to. In the second option, students create a story from scratch.

Teachers can register classes and keep track of the stories their students are creating. Teachers can also send students messages and comment on stories. There is also an option for students to work collaboratively on a story. Students can adjust their stories template, colors, text, and images. When students are finished, their story can be viewed online, printed out from a PDF file, or published and purchased for $15-20." http://ilearntechnology.com/?p=815

Check out this example - please click on the below graphic and the next screen will show a quick animation of the story.

1 Word It Out

Transform your text into word clouds with Word It Out!

An alternative to Wordle, Word it Out allows you to insert URL's, sentences and text. Below is a word cloud from this blog. Pretty cool huh?

0 Favorite Web 2.0 Tools

0 Cool Web 2.0 Tool for Collaboration

GoAnimate.com: Wallwisher by Dovewhisper


Check out Wallwisher!
Please see this Wallwisher tutorial - if needed.
Also please visit my delicious bookmarks on more Wallwisher links!

1 Blabberize Me!

Blabberize



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This is a Second Grade Student Example at one of my schools!





Check out these site for some great student examples.

• Another Second Grade Example
• First Grade Examples
• Historical Figures
• More Student Examples

0 Classroom Uses for Wordle and Skype

I presented a staff development to one of my schools (Sem Elementary Rocks) on Using Wordle and Skype in the Classroom. They came up with some WONDERFUL ideas. Below you may find a wordle (What else would I use?) on their collaborative effort.