Audacity and Podcasting

I actually have had some traing on audacity. (Thank you Jason). I have had each student make a mini movie reading what he/she was thankful for during the month of November. Then I showed these mini movies to parents at conferences. Then, parents asked if I could post it on my web page which I did ( remember use only first names). You can check out the results on my webpage under the heading Thankful Movies. My students really picked up on their writing skills when we did this because they knew they were going to read it and be filmed! We are now working on geting a class set of headphones for the computer lab. I also filmed myself singing happy birthday. I saved this on my desktop. I did this as a fun thing to try out audacity. My plan was to send it to colleagues on their birthday, but I have some Center students that attend my class. One in particular was absent on his birthday. I sent the birthday video message to him via email to his mom. She said he was absolutely thrilled. It is because of learning audacity that I became more interested in technology for my classroom.

Web Page Info

For reading month, our school has a lot of activities planned based on the Olympic theme. Students are to read to turn in medal of minutes, etc. They also have reading challenges. One of the challenges requires them to visit teacher webpages and do a puzzle or word search posted there. Many of my staff ( including me) did not have puzzles and word searches posted. I spent the last couple days creating some on my web page. ( Coolidge, Mrs.Cooke Puzzles). I offered to teach my colleagues, but many wanted written directions. I typed it out at work today. It's really pretty easy. You could actually figure out the word search part on your own.If anyone wants a copy of the directions please email me at work , identify who you are and I will email the directions to you.

Have a great weekend!!

Essentials #7 Posting Pictures

I am very excited about the things I looked at in this essential. I plan on going back often. I really like Pics4learning.com. Wow! There was so much useful stuff. I just started my class doing their first slide show based on a simple exercise they wrote in class. My goal is to put their completed slideshows on my web page. We just started today and it was difficult to find pictures using only google images. Pics4 learning will be another option for them. I also liked the fact that there was lesson plans in there.

I did my slide show of my classroom tour today. I used smilebox.com to do it though because you don't have to resize the pictures which can be time consuming. Plus, smilebox puts it in a creative slideshow with music ( that you pick out). I started to use Picnik but because of time constraints I quit and opted to do smilebox because I had recently learned how to do it and as I said I did not have to resize my photos. It took me a total of 15 min to learn smilebox and i can now whip up a slideshow using pictures from my digital camera in about 5 min. I have other slideshows in my photogallery ( of my class) if anyone wants to check it out.

Essentials #6 Web Pages

I enjoyed looking at the sample web pages. It made me feel good actually. I try to update my web page about every two weeks, sometimes sooner. I felt that my web page was right on line with some of the web pages I saw. I added the calendar page to my web page. I want to add some puzzles for reading month. I mentioned before about www.smilebox.com. It is so easy to use and I have added a lot of classroom pictures to my web page using it. If you visit my web page ( Mrs. Cooke) click on photo gallery to check it out.

Essentials #5
Wow.Endless possabilities for google docs. I am not sure how I would use this with my own classroom but I can see how useful it would be with my peers right now as we are gathering data for NCA accredidation. I can't wait to show it to my staff.
I read an interesting blog today by someone else who did their google doc and it sounded interesting to me. However, I have no idea how to access his/her google doc. Hopefully that will be explained to us by the techies.

I had my first call today using skype. Very neat!!

Skype Continued.. Well, I did look through some of the links associated with skype from The Essentials class. The possabilities are endless. I also watched a getting started with Skype vidoe sent to me from Jason (thanks Jason). My webcam still does not work so I am not sure what I will accomplish. Not sure if Skype is my thing but I definitely like Blogging. I asked my 13 year old to help me with my profile picture. Prettu easy stuff I discovered. Next time I will try to do it myself.It is a picture of yellow flowers so if you see that picture following you it's me. I am following quite a few group B blogs.

Side note: If you do not know about smilebox.com youu should check it out. I have created 3 slideshows of class pictures and posted them to my school web page for parents and children to access. It's a free site and has really cool slideshows. My first attempt took me 15-20 min but now I can do it in 5 min. I took pictures of my class at their Valentine party then posted during my lunch hour.

Essentials #4

I started my skype account tonight. I thought I would have all day to play around and explore (snow day) but my children and friends had other plans for me. Went tobogganing! Anyhow, my name on skype is a little different. It's techamateur1. I guess my name was taken. I actually added several people I knew that was taking this class and I think I added my principal too. Now, I just have to find the time to see what I can do on this. My test on my computer ( home laptop) said that my webcam did not work. Now I have to figure out how to turn it on. Any suggestions??