Special effects used on photos

I took a picture of my friend Maureen and I and found this cool special effect and made the picture into a rubic cube - I thought it was awesome all the ways that you can change an image using dumpr and the other sites

YouTube prezi tutorial

When teaching my students how to use prezi in school, several of the tutorials on the website were blocked because they were YouTube videos.  I sent a request to WVDE and had it unblocked so that my students could work together and learn as partners how to use prezi.

Wordle thing 5

Wallwisher.com :: Ways to use TED talks in the classroom thing4

Tech steps Tech steps Tech steps.... post 8

April has been another exciting and challenging month.  A large focus of April for myself and one of my colleagues has been  tech steps.  We have worked together to complete the 7th grade RLA tech steps on creating comments on a document as well as an image project.  I must say that I am still surprised that this project is being completed in 7th grade as I did not obtain these skills til college.  However, having the students working with partners has made the activity easier and they learned from one another.  The 8th graders have been even busier with 2 tech steps projects.  The first one we completed was issue to action.  This project had students research a problem that we are facing currently either globally, nationally or locally and then come up with an action plan on something that they could do to help benefit the cause.  I did feel that the research emphasis in this project was very beneficial to the students as it helped me teach them where to find reliable and accurate sources, however having them actually attempt to complete the project in my mind was unrealistic.  I only have 30 some students and I can't imagine trying to monitor their progress let alone if I had a larger group.  The concept of the project is a fantastic idea but we have all learned just because it looks good on paper doesn't necessarily mean that it will actually work the way you want it to.

Another exciting project that has been in the works and I should be able to share with you soon is my blended delivery project so stay tuned as I will be sharing soon on the overall design and outcome!

The Loch Ness Monster - in a new light Post 7

This month my geography students have been learning about the United Kingdom - and we paused briefly to focus on the Scotland.  The as we were discussing the lay of the land my students got hooked on the lochs particularly Loch Ness and the Loch Ness monsters.  We then took a short time out and investigated the Loch Ness monster and compared it to America's Loch Ness monster "champ" by creating prezis to show their similarities and differences.  To learn how to create prezis the 7th graders went to prezi.com and for the first time independently watched tutorials that taught them how to create prezis.  (My purpose of this project was not just to have them learn the new skills, explain the region of Scotland, but to also feel out how to teach themselves a new technological skill by using tutorials.  As they were learning we discussed how the majority of things that they would like to do or learn that they can probably find a tutorial online for it!  I discussed how my brother learned a program for an online class through a tutorial, my sister learned how to create a website through a tutorial and my boyfriend had even learned how to tie a tie through a youtube tutorial.  The students are actually presenting their prezis in class tomorrow so hopefully after they are finished I can post a few links so they can be seen.

February exploration Post 6

This month has been another busy month!  I did have some time to explore readwritethink.org - one of my colleagues encouraged me to take a deeper look.  I had my students do a little exploration of their own to see what they liked as well.  The majority of them were drawn to their comic creator - they liked making their own mini stories and creating characters that fit into those stories.  Another activity they liked was the pamphlet creator.  They really liked how it was easy to do and that they could play around and figure it out on their own.  I will continue to explore and definitely use this site in the future.  Another upcoming event that I am looking forward to is an ARCGIS training that I am going to in March.  I have some basic training on this program but am looking forward to learning more and feeling more comfortable with it.