Week 7 - Thing 16A & 17

I posted #60 entry in the California sandbox. It is about a wiki for a school district's teachers to use to quickly access those site everyone needs - like differentiated instruction, learning support, ELL, etc. Since wiki means quick - quick easy access, one stop shopping for the hurried teachers. My colleague and I plan on doing this for our independent proposal this year.

Also, like Mary, I too could not sign into the PA sandbox since we did not receive an invite key. I sent an email to PBwiki and being impatient, decided to post now. Too many things to do since summer is ticking away too quickly. BIG sigh. What I would post under applications is VoiceThread. Last year a teacher asked me to book talk 30 books (2 literature circle units combined) in one 40 minute period. Well, I can talk fast, but doing the math, that just wasn't going to work out well at all. Enter Voice Thread. I could record my booktalks, the students could access on their time and listen to the books that appealed to them, or not. This was very successful and I didn't have to booktalk the same 30 books four periods. Time saver!

Week 5 - Thing 10

Some of the mashup tools I already did in previous weeks using the Warholizer and the plastic bead maker. None of the others, right now, looked interesting on that site, so I moved on to the Comic Strip link.

My first attempt was the cartoon bubble. Not too difficult but instructions are rather sparse. I wanted to move the thought bubble and couldn't find out how to do that, so it is where it is. ugh - I hate that saying "It is what it is." Really? Thanks for telling me that one. I digress..

Looking around a bit more, I saw the special effects page and loved these ripples - like a hypnotic trance - so I saved the picture with the special effects, went back to the cartoon bubble and entered the text. Then, I looked around some more, being distracted every step of the way with characters like Homer, Stewie, Darth Vader, Storm Troopers... thinking I'd add one of them on the image. They distracted from the visual message - that sense of overwhelming, head-spinning, can't possibly keep up - of Web 2.0.

What I decided to add was a border, also available on the same site to the picture with the cartoon bubble and the special effects. So, this image from my digital camera, has three manipulations - the speech bubble, the special effects, and the border. I am sticking with this one. I like it.

Looking at this just gave me a thought of how to use this in the curriculum. One of my dear friends, an English teacher, is constantly looking for new ways to integrate technology into her lessons. Visual literacy is also something we feel the kids need to know. Creating an image such as this, instead of a power point (yuck) or MovieMaker (which can be bothersome) students could find or take a picture, "mash-it-up" to present their message. Technology, visual literacy, synthesis all rolled into one project. To take it even further, an accompanying essay could explain the picture to focus on great beginnings, supporting details, etc. to reinforce writing skills.