Virtual Field Trip With Microsoft's Photosynth

What is it:  Microsoft's Photosynth takes photos, mashes them up and creates a 3D scene out of them! Photosynth allows you to pan in and out of several two dimensional images, stitched together and create a three dimensional experience. This one allows you to "walk around" a statue of Anne Frank.

How to integrate it: With MS Photosynth, you have the ability to create a virtual field trip for your students. Need to take your students to Philadelphia but you live in Austin? No problem. You could always just whip out a photo of Independence Hall that you found on Google, put it up on your IWB and viola! Instant field trip, right? BORING. With Photosynth, you can take a "walk" in and around the building that our forefathers once set foot in. Take a look a the example below.

If you DO have the opportunity to take students on a field trip, have each student take pictures of the trip and upload them to Photosynth to create a collaborative interactive presentation.

History For Music Lovers

There are teachers who go above and beyond to ensure that their students are hooked on a lesson and then there is Amy Burvall, from the Le Jardin Academy in Kailua, Oahu, and her creative partner, Herb Mahelona.

The two decided to make history fun and exciting by using popular music that they and their students were listening to. So they changed a few of the lyrics, created their own music videos and posted them to YouTube. Want to learn about the French Revolution? "Lady Gaga" can tell you all about it. Does the Black Death sound grim and morbid? Not when "Gwen Stefani" sings it!  

I've got to give it to Burvall. She puts herself out there by getting in front of the camera and singing all of the songs. But it sounds and looks great. Her students must get excited when she is about to introduce the next unit on Cleopatra as "Fergie"!

Here's a link to a recent story in the Washington Post and a link to their YouTube Channel.

ActivInspire - How To Create Containers

Here are a couple of screencasts that I had made last year on how to create two different types of "containers" using Promethean's ActivInspire software. I've also embedded the directions so that you can print them out.

The first screencast demonstrates how to create a basic container that will only contain one object and then reject other objects that do not belong. (Bonus! When I published this screencast on YouTube, I must have forgotten to delete the extra tutorial at the end. So you'll get some bonus material at the end of the "Container Tutorial". Enjoy)

The second screencast demonstrates how to create a set of containers that will each contain multiple objects and reject other objects that do not belong.

  

But... If you want to save yourself some time on creating containers, I highly recommend downloading the two resource packs - Containers Made Easy 1 & 2 from Promethean Planet. Click here for the link to those resource packs. If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

My Flipchart Wiki

Ok, it's official. My Flipchart Wiki is finally up! While there is not much to it right now, it does have a few flipchart templates that I have created for teachers over the past couple of years. I intend to add more flipchart templates as well as content specific flipchart lessons, but I need to slim them down a little. Some of the files are too large.

My goal is to inspire you with customizable templates and resources as well as provide you with content-filled ActivInspire flipcharts!  If you would like to contribute your flipchart lessons or if you are looking for someone to help you develop engaging flipchart lessons, please see my Contact Page.

http://chasingweb20flipcharts.wikispaces.com/

Results of "Office Duck Hunt"

So this is not an educational post by any means. But it does fall along the lines of creating a positive campus culture and creating an environment of collaborative people in education! I smell a playoff!!

First Place (5 Way Tie) 

Deborah A.                       DeRance B.

Beverly T.                        Triena D.

David H. 

Other notable "Duck Hunters"

Angela B.                         Sheryl P.

Anthony T. 

 

Relieve Some Work Stress

I wanted to relieve some work stress, so I decided to make a major purchase for my office. An officially licenced Nerf basketball hoop. It's awesome. Take 2 minutes and snap a pic of your "Nerf basketball hoop" and share it! Happy Friday Eve!

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Sound Bible

Here's a website that allows you access to "free" sound clips to embed into your Interactive Whiteboard lessons. The site is called Sound Bible. Once again, I'll let the YouTube clip do the explaining! Complete with a short tutorial! Enjoy.

Jazz Up Your Interactive Whiteboard Projects

Want to dress up your Interactive Whiteboard Lessons? Here's site that can help you out with that. The site is called Glitter Your Way.  I'll let the YouTube clip do the explaining!  NOTE: It also works with your SMART Software!

http://www.glitteryourway.com/

YouTube Channel - Radford Education

Being a classroom teacher and a Professional Development coach, one thing that I see among all learners is that they all learn differently. Duh. So I was always creating or searching for supplemental resources for my classroom instruction and professional development. As far as interactive whiteboards go, I can "get down" on a Promethean board! But SMART Boards are a whole other ball game. So I started my search for resources.

When I accepted my current position, my district was excited that I had an extensive knowledge on Promethean products. The district had just purchase 100+ boards to install on their elementary campuses. My job was to help with the install planning and then create a comprehensive professional development plan for our teachers on using IWB. Easy right? What they failed to tell me was that we already had 100+ SMART Boards.
With all of that said... my search for SMART resources had begun!

Ok, so to get to the point of this post, I found the YouTube channel for Radford Education. This channel is great! It had very "short and to the point" instructional tutorials on various instructional technology resources. I found just what I was looking for on an introduction to SMART Boards! They have 9 very nice tutorials. But Radford Education's tutorials didn't just stop at SMART. They also have tutorials on many of the Google products. Here's a list:

Google Forms
Google Earth
Google Mail
Google Sites
Blogger
iPod Touch
Ning
SMART Boards

These are perfect tutorials for teachers who like to watch tutorials instead of reading them off of a .pdf. 

Critical Past

What is it: CriticalPast.com was a stie created by a team of professionals in the archival research field.  The site contains over 57,000 videos and 7 million still images from the past that are arranged nicely by date and location. I will note that the images and video are available for purchase but can be viewed from a searching aspect. I do like that you can search by decade through a visual time line at the bottom of the home page.

How to integrate it into the classroom: Bring you historical figures to life by showing students short clips of those figures at various events. Listen to John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address or The Apollo 11 Moon Landing. One downside is that the videos can not be played in full screen mode. But there are some work arounds. 

Thank you to TableTalk for this great find!