Thing # 7

Well, I tried a couple of Google Tools. I used the Google notebook to collect different pictures of landforms to share with my students while studying Landforms -- They loved the pictures and info that i found. I also used Google Earth to zoom in on differnt views of mountains, glaciers, and of course volcanos (which was their favorite.) My students as well as myself liked clicking on the little markers that show you actual pictures others have taken so we were actually able to view some eruptions of certain volcanos. I also like the tilting effect so that you can see it not only from above but have the ability to turn the picture so that it can be seen from the side and you can even turn the image all the way around to see it from all sides. Of course, I had to show them how we could zoom in and see our school.

Both items were really cool.

I recently leaned about something called a thumb drive that lets you take the chip from your digital camera and download your pics from any computer you happen to be working on. So i went out and bought myself one--only $10.00. This will now give me the chance to use some of the Photo albums online that we have learned about. I look forward to sharing photos of my son with my family but I have also learned to take my camera with me when I attend Proffessional development sessions so now I can share those photos of the ideas that were given with my team and others teachers in my school.

I will play around more with these different Google tools in the future when we get our new laptops at school. Well I am off to Thing#8.

Thing #6

I don't know that I would ever create my own mashup but playing with some of the ones already created was interesting.

Mashups are web applications that combine data from more than one source into a single integrated tool. Some examples I explored are: Mappr, Flickr Color Pickr, and Mosaic Maker.

I experimented with Mosaic Maker. The result was pretty cool. I actually asked the program to put pictures of specific landforms into a mosaic. My students would probably enjoy seeing the variety of photos given for each landform.

One application I explored that intrigued me was Bubblr. This application allows you to add cartoon speech bubbles to photos and displays them like a comic strip. It had some cute ones to view in their archive.

I really need to get with it and figure out how to transfer my photos from my camera to the computer and try some of these sites with my own photos.

Thing #4

Becuase of the trouble I had with Thing #3 I had a little trouble registering my blog as well. Again, my friendly librarian came to my rescue and now I am registered. YEA!!

Thing #3

I thought I set up my Blog by myself without any problem but then i hit a few little snags like it being titled as my first entry ( my easiest habit...) so i had to have my handy librarian came to my rescue but it turned out he wasn't real sure of things himself. But we went to his Blog and checked out his dashboard and figured things out so I think I am set now. At least I hope I am.

Thing#5 Flickr

Flickr looks like it is a great way to share and display photos for my friends and family to view.





I have two problems: 1. I don't have a clue how to transfer pictures from my digital camera to a computer and 2. Our computer at home was purchased in the year 2000 and I can not even find a place to put a memory chip or a memory stick into it.

As far as what I learned:

Tags are labels or keywords you add to photos to make them easier to find.

Groups are sets of people you want to share your photos with. (ex. family, friends, Library2play players, etc...

Libraries are sites that different libraries have set up to display what they have done or used Flickr for.

I need to solve my two problems before I can actually get into Flickr to use it for sharing photos of my son with our family and friends. I hope it is easier than it looks.