Powerpoint and Voicethreads

Well, my voicethread is taking longer then I thought.  I was hoping that the students were going to be able to move around by themselves after showing them.  Again they were forgetting to change the person that was speaking so it would show up as someone else.  Again this worked better with me sitting there and doing it for them....very time consuming!  I am excited about our session last night.  I love creating things like that.  I can't wait to get started on our project for that.  

PowerPoint features

Our training with John on advanced features of PowerPoint was interesting. Many of the skills he presented I had already used but it was good to get new ideas of how those tools can be used productively with students. I had never imported clip art into the PowerPoint library - I love that feature and wish I had found it or known about it long ago. Anyway, I'm thinking of purchasing Tammy Worcester's book on Ppt. She's a true wonder!

MICCA

I thoroughly enjoyed the conference again this year. There is always something new to discover as technology advances. I attended a presentation on web 2.0 and learned of several new cool widgets, gadgets and websites. For example, photo editing made fun at http://www.picnik.com. This site allows you to get creative with pictures by adding special effects, fonts, shapes, frames and other decorations to photos. I have been having lots of fun at this site. My students also enjoy customizing their pictures. Look carefully at our STEP team photo of the Beltsville Bulldogs. Our names have been artistically embroidered onto our green shirts thanks to picnik.

MICCA Ideas

MICCA was wonderful again this year. I enjoyed the Garage Band 9.0 session and will see if we can acquire the new Office 2008 for Mac for the laptops of our STEP team. Selena Ward from Benjamin Tasker always presents great new technology info in a fun, off-beat way. A couple of web sites she showed were quizlet.com, which allows teachers or students to make flashcards, blabberize.com, in which you can choose a face and the mouth can move to say whatever the student records (a use could be for historical characters, etc.), and xtranormal.com, in which you can type a script and actors act out the story with camera angles, gestures, expressions, etc. (like Hollywood?). To access her info, go to wallwisher.com/wall/MICCA2009

MICCA

This was my first year going to MICCA and I have to say I really enjoyed it.  The majority of the sessions I went to were very informative.  I am amazed at all of the technology out there.  It would be nice to have some of that in our classrooms.  The active slates were my favorite.  The clickers were pretty neat too.  That would make life so much easier.  Maybe even get kids that are too shy to respond.  I hope I get to go again next year!

Happy Feet!

I am glad I had the opportunity to participate in the MICCA convention again this year. I really get excited about learning new things and I can't wait to try it out in my classroom.

I learned about a free program called Community Clips that allows you to make voice recorded videos of your desktop and other Microsoft application such as Powerpoint. It seemed very easy to use but it is meant only to use on a PC! =(

I got a lot of good science and social students simulation websites and I have added some of them to my class Wikispace.=)

I know I really, really, really, really want the county to upgrade iMovie to '09 because it is soooooooooo cool!

Come to think of it, I saw a lot of things that I really want. I guess I have to hope for a miracle like winning the lottery...oh well, at least I have Happy Feet!!!

From MICCA

It was great to see the Beltsville STEP team taking advantage of the great opportunities at the MICCA conference in Baltimore.  Enjoy both days.

Froguts and Physical Science

I added simulations to the wiki so that students can practice science concepts.  They enjoy learning about the parts of a frog at Froguts.  I also added physical science simulations from PHET and Funderstanding.

STEP Tomorrow

This is the last day of my spring date. I have so much I wanted to accomplish this past week and most of it isn't done. I'm spending my whole day doing some intensive work setting up my podcast and working on my wiki. It's fun but I need to be painting!

To create banners on my STEP wiki pages, I created what I wanted as a headline in MS Word, then, using Apple/Shift/4 took screen shots. I launched Adobe Photoshop, then opened the screen shots on the desktop, changed the image size and saved as JPEG. These files were then imported into the wiki and could be resized there.

I did it myself!

I want to display more student work on my wikispace but I can not find the time.  I need to train my students to be more independent but when?  We need to have a training session for students, teach them how to use the equipment so that they can work alone in the classroom.  I have to spend a lot of time helping a student one on one and it is very time consuming at this point.  Maybe it will get easier down the road.  

Spring Break

Taking a chance to work on the computer, including SchoolMax attendance and grade managing prior to next week's report card window. I'm also getting fairly comfortable with this blogging, although it seems like a stream of consciousness activity/journal. STEP is next week and I'm giving more thought to the worthwhile use of a podcast. A student-recorded Pledge will be very useful but I'm not sure whether I also need to produce my own generated podcast or not. We have 2 different sets of instructions. We'll find out next week, I guess.

Spring Break

Well, I sure am enjoying my time off!  The invites went out on Saturday and I had my final dress fitting then.  I should be working more on my STEP projects but I am having too much fun catching up with people I haven't seen or talked to in a long time.  

Survey Gizmo

I added a quick survey to my wiki using Survey Gizmo.  I found it very user friendly.  I did notice you can not have too many questions when you are embedded it in to a page.  I only put three.  It records your results.  I am still looking around to see if I can find another survey site because I might need to make a longer survey next time.

Baby tomorrow!

Unless Marné has her baby today I get to spend tomorrow at the hospital waiting for my grandson to arrive. I wonder what his name will be?

I haven't spent much time this week thinking about the STEP team because I'm still deeply embroiled in MSA record-keeping, although a great deal of it is on my laptop. Thank goodness for Excel, and being able to scan the booklet barcodes has been fun (?) and worthwhile, albeit quirky.

Constellations

Well the students enjoyed create their own constellations.  I took pictures of every student and their picture although now I feel kinda overwhelmed with it.  That is a lot of pictures to upload.  I think I may just choose 4 students work and put them on there and let the rest of the class respond.