Thing #13 Image Generator

I did it! I made this for Stan's birthday and ordered a glossy print from Big Huge Labs. I downloaded it, then chose browse, then went to recent documents and clicked to arrange by date, and there it was! Amazing!

Gray's theme is rock & roll next year. I need to find something for my "Jitterbugs" to do with this.

Thing #12 Embedded Slide Show

I used RockYou.com! to create the slide show. It's easy. The only part that got confusing is to know that the slide show doesn't show until you post, or preview.

Using slide shows to give background information for upcoming science/social studies units will be a good way to use this. The students could create their own slide shows to review multiplication or division facts.

Photos for my slideshow are of places I am looking forward to seeing on my trip to Big Bend in August. Credits go to:
1. Davis Mountains, http://www.flickr.com/photos/cleopold73/3699806366, Corey Leopold
2. McDonald Observatory, http://www.flickr.com/photos/headley/3446515082/Greg Headley
3. Marfa, http://flickr.com/photos/thomassalgado/2269792342/in/pool-marfa, Thomas Salqado
4. Marfa, http://www.flickr.com/photos/thelowestfidelity/4505103507/in/poolmarfa, the lowest fidelity
5. Big Bend, http://222.flickr.com/photos/photo_art/967461537, Robbie's Photo Art

I am looking forward to taking my own pictures and making a slideshow when I get back. I can share this with my students!

Thing #11

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nameless-profile/4729305570/in/pool-bigbend

I can't wait to take my own pics!!

I found this gorgeous sunset of the Chisos Mountains using the advanced search in Flikr with creative commons. I'll be able to use my vacation experience and pictures in class when we talk about Texas history.

Thing #10 Creative Commons

When I was searching for information about Marfa, Texas, I saw a notation for creative commons and wondered what that was. What a wonderful collaboration tool! I wish there was more information in the two video clips about how to cite works (photos, music, text, etc.) when you actually use creative commons in addition to what it is. I am sure I will discover that when I get to the next "thing". Maybe I can use the first clip (I liked it best) to teach my students about copyright v. creative commons, and add my own info about how to cite works that you use depending on the permissions given.

Thing #9 Wiki Cont'd

I am really liking Wiki's alot better by now. The cheat sheet is a huge help -- so thanks for including that! I am sure I'll be using it a lot. The hardest thing was getting the table of contents to work -- I was overthinking that. You literally just enclose "toc" in the brackets and use headings for the section titles. I am using this Wiki to plan my upcoming vacation to the Davis Mountain area -- multitasking (screwing up a lot of things at once)! I can't wait to get to finish this wiki page and look at the images. My address to the wiki page is http://misd23sandbox.wikispaces.com/JitterbugGeorge'sWikiPage. Gotta get to Thing #10!

Thing #8 WIKIS

After reading Vicki Davis's blog post, I am encouraged to try a wiki in my classroom. My initial thoughts are that this is overwhelming (where do you start?) and complicated, but I really want to learn this so I am going to play around with it this summer. I would love to have a wikispace for our egg hatching project as well as a novel study, much like the Go West site below. I really liked these things from these wiki pages I looked at:

• 1001 Flat World Tales The students were trained how to critique their peer's work by not being a "nice" king or a "lazy" king, but by being a "good" king who gives good, thoughtful comments.
• Turn Homeward, Hannalee The technical notes detailed how they used other software within the wikispace. "The students used Powerpoint to annotate all of the photos and drawings in the Idiom Dictionary, Figures of Speech, Object Museum and New Manchester Mill sections. They then exported the slides as JPGs, and uploaded them to Bubbleshare, where they created the photo albums that are embedded into the wiki pages. The Civil War Timeline was created using Timeliner 5.1 and exported as a JPG. The audio clips in Reader's Theater and Aura Lee were recorded using Audacity and the Musician's Friend Podcasting Production Kit #3 (even though they are not podcasts). " I am wondering if we have Timeliner software and am thinking we could use Garage Band to record/include a reader's theater section.
• Go West I enjoyed reading the teacher's reflections. She was genuinely enthused about the wiki project and noted that the students' excitement never waned and that their research skills were honed because they wanted to add to their project.

Thing #7 Importance of Commenting

I have to admit that I am not quick to comment, but as I become more comfortable blogging I will. There is so much out there to read, I have learned that I should only choose things that I am truly interested in. For example, I have always wanted to learn to hatch eggs in an incubator in the classroom. When I saw the duck blog in the first few of our lessons I was really excited about that. I have subscribed to a blog that deals specifically with that. I have posted a comment hoping to learn what type of egg is has the best success rate and whether there is a certain time of year that's better. The 1st 3 learning activities for Thing #7 gave me an idea of how to teach my own students to blog. These guidelines go right along with how we set up our literature circle conversations, so the lessons would easily integrate whether we are blogging or conducting lit circle responses.