A Picture's Worth . . .

Aren't digital cameras wonderful? I love the fact that I can take tons of photos, trying different angles, different lighting, messing with settings on the camera, etc. and not have to pay a cent just to see how they turned out! Remember when we took pictures and had to wait 10 days to have them developed? I remember being disappointed so many times in the pictures that I took!
Thank goodness that has all changed! Now I'm amazed at the numerous tools we have available to enhance our photos! iPhoto on our Macs is one of those tools. In iPhoto you can easily edit your photos, removing red eye, straightening photos, changing the saturation, and much more. Within iPhoto, books, calendars, and cards can be published - either through Apple or on your printer!
There are many web-based applications that also provide more options for editing photos!
Take a look at Picnik. This is absolutely FREE and has lots of features to choose from. This photo was taken by Kathy E. at Dillon Nature Center and enhanced in iPhoto then embellished at Picnik.
Dumpr is another one of my favorites. I don't recommend putting students' photos and their names online. By using dumpr to change a photo to a pencil drawing, an avatar (computer representation of oneself) has been created. The avatar can then be used on classroom webpages, in VoiceThread, and other online settings. This is a great substitution for real photos of students.

This photo was edited with the celebrity paparazzi option.







How are you using digital images in your classroom? I have several ideas for you, but those will have to come in another blog post!

LookyBook

Teacher Printables

Well, the title says it all. This is a site where someone has spent hours upon hours creating awesome printables for teachers, from booklets to calendars t0 research organizers. The research organizers are my favorites! Even if these are not exactly what you need for your curriculum, you'll be able to get some ideas so you can design your own. If these spur on your imagination, open up Pages in your iWork 08 folder and get started. These are all in pdf (see earlier post: Pretty Darn Funny) so you will download them to your laptop and print them.
http://www.teacherprintables.net/index.html

Make sure you check out Rosemary's Blog: http://outoftheordinarywithrosemary.blogspot.com/

Constitution Day

Our United States Constitution was signed September 17, 1787. Since 2004, September 17th has been set aside as Constitution Day and schools all across the country must teach about the history of the constitution.
Here are some resources to help you:
Constitution Day Wiki - this has resources divided according to grade level. Be sure and look at the Barney Fife video. Students would love seeing that video in a Keynote presentation as an introduction to Constitution Day!
Constitution Day - Celebrate the Birthday of Our Government - scroll down to the section for Educators. You'll be able to search for activities, lesson plans, events, books and more for your grade level. Great resources here!
Signers of the Constitution - this is a mural of the signers of the constitution and their names. Wouldn't it be fun to create a mural of your students with those poses? Could your students write a constitution for your classroom?
Teaching with Documents: Observing Constitution Day - this has many activities for Constitution Day!
National Constitution Center - 4 interactive games that students will enjoy!
Congress for Kids - As you might imagine, this one is very kid friendly!
Interactive Constitution - This is pretty amazing! Students can choose the amendments to the constitution and see the original text along with an explanation. They can choose various court cases or search for topics. This site is more for grades 5 and higher.
Happy Constitution Day!

PicLits

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com
Now this is lots of fun! PicLits is a wonderful visual literacy site.
First of all sign in as a new user. Then choose a picture from the scrolling pictures. Now you have two choices of how you will add text. The drag-n-drop method is a little limiting but I think it would be great for students to choose from different parts of speech to form a complete sentence. The other method is freestyle. By clicking on freestyle you'll be able to type your own message.
Wouldn't this be great with a poetry unit? Have students choose three photos and write a haiku on each one. Then choose another style of poem and add it to photos.
You could also add your own quotes. What about quotes, thoughts, or ideas that center around any one of the six pillars of CHARACTER COUNTSsm?
Make sure you click on Learn It and you'll find lesson plans to use with PicLits.
Have fun with this one!

Research Recipe

There are so many phenomenal tools available on the web for use with research. This wiki, called Research Recipe, was created to showcase some of those tools.

Google Tools have led the way in creating an environment of collaboration among students and teachers. Bibme is a collaborative citation creator so when students are working as a group on a project they can each access their group's bibliography and add to it as they go. Lexipedia and Visual Thesaurus help students select more accurate, descriptive words. Many more tools like these are found in the Research Recipe wiki. Enjoy!

Wordle

Now this is downright fun! Create your own wordle. Put in any words that you can think of related to a topic. I chose technology for my example. But wouldn't this be great to use for your students at the beginning of the school year? Have them type the words that tell who they are. What do they like to do? What adjectives describe them? What places did they visit this summer? Who did they spend time with? And the list could go on and on. I'm even thinking about making one for each of my own children, printing it, and framing it. You can change the fonts, the colors, and the word arrangements. Explore the site. It is very user friendly.
Go to wordle.net
Bob Sprankle created an awesome video on wordle on his blog which includes a little tutorial and several great ideas for using wordle.