Edmodo keeps making life easier!

It is a fabulous day to be back at work. Now some people may think I am crazy for saying this being that is not only a Monday but the Monday after Spring Break. I am all sorts of giddy because Edmodo has finally integrated Google Docs! WOOHOO!

ALPHABETIMALS

Simple little tools are so often the best tools! Alphabetimals is a great way to get kids to read! It makes it fun for you and your students! There are free resources that you can download. I am thinking I need an Ed Tech t-shirt! http://alphabetimals.com/

Love affair with Learner Response Systems

It is no secret that I am a huge fan of learner response systems. The more I see Promethean's ActivExpression2s the happier I become! They are amazing! Where to begin!?

I love the QWERTY keyboard. Do not misunderstand me the old school form of texting still get the job done on my eInstruction clickers as well as my ActivExpression clickers but oh how I do love to be spoiled by the little things like a QWERTY keyboard.

The screen is backlit! Genius I tell you. It is like the designers of this product have heard me griping in a teacher's classroom about how I wanted to turn the lights of to better show what was being projected but could not becuase the kids could not read their clickers.

The software has not changes greatly which I consider a plus for me so that I do not have to go retrain all the teachers in my district.

I do not know what the battery life is like yet but will report on that after the clickers we have have been heavily used for at least one year.

Now for the Piece de resistance:

During the self-paced assessment the test questions show on the clicker and you can scroll to the answers!!!!

Sigh. It makes me happy.

Mirror Image of Text in Word 2010 Part 2

I love Microsoft Word 2010. I do have one issue. I can flip an image horizontally but I cannot do the same thing to the text. Well I can but it is not done in a very direct way.

I ran into some parents at one of my campuses who wanted to create cute shirts for the kids to celebrate the First Hundred Days of School. They wanted to keep it simple due to time constraints so they were going to use iron-ons. They were running into issues getting the text to mirror image the text in Word. I showed them how to do so in Word which is a rather involved process.


So I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to create a handout with step by step instructions and screen shots!

Mirror Image of Text in Word 2010 Part 1

I love Microsoft Word 2010. I do have one issue. I can flip an image horizontally but I cannot do the same thing to the text. Well I can but it is not done in a very direct way.

I ran into some parents at one of my campuses who wanted to create cute shirts for the kids to celebrate the First Hundred Days of School. They wanted to keep it simple due to time constraints so they were going to use iron-ons. They were running into issues getting the text to mirror image the text in Word. I showed them how to do so in Word which is a rather involved process.


So I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to create a handout with step by step instructions and screen shots!

Our Universe Visualized

I find that YouTube is allowing me to be a lifelong learner! I am in love with a particular YouTube channel called Our Universe Visualized! I am a firm believer in visuals for efficient learning and this site is PERFECT for that! You can tell me all day what something looked like but a 4 minute video that shows it will have a much greater impact for me.

From YouTube:

About Our Universe Visualized

A compilation from numerous sources of science visualizations, animations and videos related to astronomy, physics, meteorology and climate change. All sources are cited at the bottom of each video's text description.

Here is a link to a video about the 1906 San Fransico Earthquake. From their site:

To better understand the distribution of shaking and damage that accompanied the great 1906 earthquake, seismologists have constructed new computer models to recreate the ground motions. The simulations show how ground moved on the two sides of the San Andreas fault and how seismic waves radiated away from the fault to produce the shaking. The earthquake, which began 2 miles offshore from the City of San Francisco, ultimately grew to cause shaking and damage along more than 300 miles of the San Andreas Fault. This movie portrays the shaking over a 155 mile by 70 mile area covering the San Francisco Bay region.

credit: Amit Chourasia, Steve Cutchin, Mike Rossmassler / Brad Aagaard, USGS

source: http://www.sdsc.edu/us/visservices/projects/sfquake/

Parent Tech Night

I am really excited about Tuesday night! I will be presenting at a Parent Tech Night at one of GCCISD's Elementary campuses! I am focusing in PLNs, Microsoft Word, Subscribing to Sites, and fine tuning Google searches. I am really hoping the parents will take away some great information.

To organize all my thoughts and resources I had to make a LiveBinder of course! If you are interested in holding a Parent Tech Night check out my LiveBinder here. It is not complete by any means but it is a start!

eIsntruction has an app for that!

I am so excited that eInstruction has a MOBI app for the iPad now. Check it out here!

My addiction to Google grows stronger everyday! - Flubaroo rocks!

With paper becoming an expense we can no longer be liberal with, GCCISD is having to find creative ways for students to record their answers, responses, thoughts, work, etc. without always using paper. Believe me paper is still being used but, we as educators, must find ways to cut down on its uses.

It is an amazing thing to see just how creative educators are when faced with problems. I hate seeing our teachers have to deal with a lack of funding but it brings out some the most awesome teaching solutions! As a math teacher, I always loved for my kids to use dry erase boards to show work, problem solve, answer questions, etc. and I have seen science teacher now use those type of boards for group work but with large whiteboards (like 3 ft by 5 ft and the materials were acquired from Lowes - how awesome is that!). They found this to be a more successful tool than the individual dry erase boards, and much more cost effective than chart paper (at about a dollar per page).

I tend to push classroom response systems on my teachers to help cut down on the paper use. They work the same as the whiteboards in many ways. Of course we do not have enough systems to go around at this point in time. We do have a few computer labs per campus as well as a few mobile labs. Thus, I have also recommended to my teachers the use of Google Docs. The draw back was that you still had to grade your responses by hand, but you at least saved on paper and had all the responses organized on a spreadsheet.

This has now changed thanks to a wonderful little thing called Flubaroo! It is a script you run on your Google Form's submitted responses and it grades it for you (only for multiple choice)! Teachers have very little time to grade as it is and this will allow them to grade quickly so that can have time to actually analyze their student's work.

Check it out. It is free, and I am in love with it. Now if I can find one that will grade short answers. It is out there or will be soon.

Holiday Family Letters in Microsoft Word

I am working with some parents here in GCCISD. I am teaching them how to use Microsoft Word by having them create Christmas letters. I went online just to see what people are being charged for the pre-formatted ones at Walgreen's, Wal-Mart, Sam's etc. I was surprised at how high the cost was for these items, as well as, the lack of control you have over the document. If you do not care about the cost or are not an anal control freak like me then those places are awesome. On the other hand if you like to make something exactly how you want it without exception or feel that you are being overcharged then Microsoft Word is for you! There are great templates already available on Microsoft's website, and with a little manipulation you too can create great letters and cards. I have some samples of what I taught below.

Internet Safety for Parents

I came across this great blog about The 3Ps of Online Privacy.

I think this would be a great resource to share with your students, administrators, fellow teachers, and parents.

Thanksgiving activities for the little ones (or the little ones at heart)

Here at GCCISD the kids have the entire week of Thanksgiving off. So what are they to do? Well at Funschool.com they have some cute activities that may help keep the kids entertained. My personal favorite is the online coloring book. Gobble Gobble

To all my teacher friends who are trying to get through the next two days...

Spelling City

Spelling City has been around apparently since 2008, and I just learned about it today from Highlands Elementary's Family Involvement Coordinator, Mrs. Lovett! This site will allow your students (or hey - you) to practice your vocabulary list. It will spell the words out, say them to you so that you pronounce them correctly, and use them in a sentence! SpellingCity also will take the terms you type in and allow your student(s) to play games with just those words! It allows you to play matching games with sentences, Hang Mouse (uber cute), and many more activities. The best part is that it is FREE! You can pay for Premium Activities if you would like but there are lots of great free features on this site!

Vocabulary

I am trying to come up with ways to help our teachers with our students vocabulary when it comes to testing. So I made a video using goanimate.com to try out a way to help our kids. Our students tend to do well on the terminology that the teacher is enforcing in that class but they get lost when it is a term they are unfamiliar with or they normally see in another content area.

GoAnimate.com: Vertical Vocabulary by megill

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

Digital Storytelling Addiction

I am a digital storytelling junkie. I admit it. I can burn hours looking for great digital stories, but in my defense truly well done stories are hard to come by. I was at a Tech Apps conference yesterday and a presenter showed the video below. I have to share it as I am in looooovee with it! The creator is C. G. P. Grey and you have to check out his other videos. I am going to post more because - THEY ROCK!

Symbaloo

I am always interested in finding a better way to look at my favorites. I also want to be able to share them quickly and efficiently with my staff and students. If you register with Symbaloo you too can create your own personal internet desktop. I have included mine below to show you what it can look like. Now remember I am just getting started!

I think I may have found my favorite Prezi of all time!

Sweet recipe to solving problems on Prezi

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