Thing #15

Delicious is a great bookmarking site that allows people to tag their bookmarks to help others search. It was very easy to type in a few keywords and find sites that I wanted to visit. I ended up finding some Creative Commons websites that will help me find images and music for future use. I have always wanted to incorporate more music in my classroom but was afraid to because I didn't know the law. However, it has been my personal experience that delicious is blocked by MISD servers since it has a Yahoo login. Because I don't want to override the firewall every time I want to look at my bookmarks at an MISD computer, I find that Xmarks is much easier for me. I will continue to use my Delicious account from home to search for more websites that will help me, but unfortunately, I will not be installing it on my work computer. If you would like to see my shared bookmarks, you can find them here: http://delicious.com/pvzeta3 . 

Thing #7a

I have found many interesting things on my Google Reader. I have so many stars on items because as I scan, I find so many new things I want to learn about and incorporate in my classroom. One of the latest ones was about School Safe ClipArt. I am always looking for more ways to bring visuals, especially for my ELLs and SpEd students as well as for the visual learners. From the same feed, I came across Ad-Aware which is free anti-virus protection. I wondered why no one else has thought to make protection free since everyone needs it and most anti-virus software costs an arm and a leg. Of course, since its free, I automatically began to doubt its scanning prowess. When it comes to technology, my husband always assures me that "you get what you pay for". 

From a feed that I added purely for my own interest, I found an article talking about foods that boost your mood. I thought this was interesting because certain foods (CHOCOLATE!!!!!!) have always made me happy and I wanted to see what research shows about mood-enhancing food. Although this article slightly disparages my claim that chocolate is the ultimate feel-good food (said that it would more likely prolong a bad mood- how lame is that, seriously, eating chocolate even while in a bad mood has always brightened my day), it did have some healthy meal and snack ideas that included links to the recipes. I really appreciated those links because it gave me the option to try one of the mood boosting foods to see if it could compete with the endorphin high I get from chocolate. (...I wonder if anyone can tell how much I love and think about chocolate...)

Thing #14

I tried 2 different tools and loved them both. The 1st one I tried was Wordle. I have seen the collages that other teachers made and thought they were cool, but assumed that I would never have the time to make one myself. Once I got to the website, I realized that they were much easier to make than I thought. I believe that I will use this as a word bank when I have my students working on fill-in-the-blank things. I think this would be a fun way for them to see the words and it would really be entertaining for me to watch them read while turning their heads to read sideways.

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

The 2nd tool I tried was MixBook. Of course, since I had issues finding science related pictures I liked from Flickr, I decided to use some of my own photos to create an album. Since I am a newlywed, I decided to make an online wedding album. Because I have about 800 pictures to choose from (my photographers were very thorough), it took a while to pick the photos I wanted to upload. Once I did that, I decided to let the program "Randomize" the album out of curiosity. The album came out great! With minimum effort, I now have an online album that I can allow my friends and family to see. I haven't decided if I will allow them to edit it or not since I would like to keep peace. I am also thinking about asking for help on adding the text so I might let them view and ask for comments for suggestions about the text. Either way, the album is not finished and by the time it is, I will have another decision on whether or not to buy it so that I can have a physical copy. Please feel free to comment and give me ideas.

Thing #13

Dummies Book Cover Maker 2010

Comic Strip Generator

Custom image generators are fun ways to create classroom visuals. Making these images online was fun because instead of searching for images related to a specific topic, I can make my own! At first, it took a while to figure out what to say because I was so used to living in the dark ages where images were generated for me. However, once I created a few, I immediately saw all the possibilities of having images generated to spice up boring PowerPoint presentations, using image generators to help students find visuals for projects, or even using a generated image to inspire a group conversation. Image generators will without a doubt be heavily used in my classroom.

Thing #12

No Child Left Understanding Science by Colin Purrington
Science Fiction Museum by ricardo.martins
Pentaindenocorannulene by Ethan Hein
Fields of Science by Image Editor
Science! by Andrew Huff
USA 2005 (September 09th) Washington, Seattle, Pacific Science Center by Paraflyer

Creating a slideshow with captions nearly had me in tears because I am a perfectionist. I originally started out using Rock You!, but became annoyed with it because it would not save the changes I was making to the slideshow. Once I finally got the preview to look the way I wanted and tried to save it, the website told me that my slideshow had already been saved and I had to log on to change it. Imagine my frustration due to the fact that I had not registered for the site, hence no login information. Needless to say, because that site was not user-friendly, I had to move on to make a pikistrip because I at least wanted text, if I couldn't have all the glitz and glam (not to mention music) from Rock You! Because of all the change and the time it consumed, I decided to change the original intent of my presentation to "helping my students understand the importance of science". Hopefully, the end product satisfies its purpose because it cost me a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. I am not sure if I personally will use this in the classroom to make  a slideshow for my students, but I might use it as an option for a project that my students have to present to me.

Thing #11

from "Spell with flickr" by kastner

Uploaded from flickr, photo by Image Editor

Browsing flickr was more of an experience than I thought it would be. I thought that it would be really easy and simple to find a few pictures about science and then I would be done with this topic quickly. Instead, I ended up finding out that people tag their photos with very generic things that may or may not be related to the word I used for the search. When I typed in "physics" and "chemistry" I kept running into construction site images, when all I was really looking for were images of people performing interesting experiments. The topic I want to create a slideshow about is the different ways that science can be fun and not just a difficult subject that you are forced to take in order to graduate. I plan to use the slideshow as an introductory tool next year or as a writing prompt for TELPAS. I will use the Flickr website next time I want graphics for a presentation or if I want to show my students some examples of vocabulary. I appreciate having another source for finding photos, especially one that only allows you to search for those that already have the Creative Commons license. 

Thing #10

Creative Commons is one of those things that as soon as you hear about it, you wonder "why didn't I think of that and become famous?" It will definitely impact the educational world because now we know who doesn't mind us using their work and who wants us to gain permission 1st. I have used pictures and video clips in my classroom from sites that were referred to me by the library. Now that I know about the websites that collect information for this specific purpose, I can use those to search the next time. I can also refer these sites to my students when they are working on projects. I can let them know that they will not have to ask about the author's permission as long as the Creative Commons license permits it. I also learned about fair use with regards to transformativeness. I always assumed that if I used material that belonged to someone, that I could not publish it publicly because I would need to make sure that I had permission to do so. Now that I know that if I have transformed the work, I can publish it as long as I make sure to cite the original author.