Turn .pdfs into Flipbooks

I stumbled across a new site in one of my many readings... It's called Flipsnack. This tool turns your .pdfs into cool-looking flip books.

I'm thinking about using this tool in a few different ways.  Students often produce pictures in Kid Pix in Kindergaten and Grade 1 to show their learning.  A great way to display their pictures and share on our website would be using Flipsnack.  What do you think?

Nutrition by KP

50 Ways to Integrate...

Wow! Another long list...  50 Ways to Integrate Technology into your Classroom Tomorrow.  I found list list linked on EdTechToolbox.

50 Ways to Integrate Technology may seem like a lot and overwhelming, but it's worth a glance, you may have already done some of the activities listed on this comprehensive list. A few that I have used...

Spelling City is a fantastic tool for students.  I've used it with 3rd, 4th and 5th graders practicing their spelling words of the week.

BrainPop is a subscription-based service with short animated video clips that cover an array of curriculum areas.  We have a subscription - see me and we can try it together in the lab.

Wordle is one of my favorites.  We have used this in almost every grade level at Runkle. We have created word splashes in social studies, spelling lists, name plates, class lists, just to name a few.

Ask me about this awesome list. I'm happy to share some ideas for how to bring these tools to your classroom practice.

Interesting Ways Series

The Interesting Ways series originally created by Tom Barrett, but contributed to by many, is chock full of rich technology integration ideas for the classroom. I have viewed many of the presentations on this site and have used some of the ideas with students almost immediately.  A few that I would recommend are:

• Use Google Docs in the Classroom
• Ideas for Class Blog Posts
• Use Audio in the Classroom
• Use Voicethread in the Classroom
• Use Wordle in the Classroom

Which one is your favorite?

Top 50 School Technology Blogs

Just came across this extremely comprehensive list of Top 50 School Technology Blogs that I thought you might be interested in perusing at your convenience.

Classroom 2.0

If you haven't checked out Classroom 2.0 yet, you should definitely put it on your list of resources to investigate.  Classroom 2.0 is a free, community-supported network hosted on Ning for educators interested in Web 2.0 and Social Media in their classrooms, created by Steve Hardagon.  They also host Live and Interactive Webinars almost daily on Blackboard Eluminate to expand your learning even more.

Each time I log in to Classroom 2.0 and check the forum questions and answers I always find something  relevant and useful.  When I have posted a question in the past, I have answers within minutes.  I have also participated in one of the webinars and found it to be incredibly useful.  I hope you check it out and let me know what you think.

Did You Know 4.0?

Have you seen this yet?  What do you think?

Try Something New This Summer?

My favorite blogger has been at it again, putting together another information-filled document for you to check out and try some new tools.  Take a look, check out some of the links, and maybe try a new tool to use in your classroom this year. If you see something that catches your eye, let me know, maybe we can work on it together!

Biographies, Poems, Journals Oh Joy!

I am so proud of the hard work that has been going on in the lab this spring.  Our new favorite tool has definitely been Glogster.  I was lucky enough to sign up for Glogster and was offered 200 student accounts, all on the free account. Students have their own username and password all under one teacher, myself.  They love the creativity aspect of creating a glog and are always teaching me something new!

Check out the work of our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders on Runkle Technology.

Check it out - Khan Academy

If you haven't checked out Khan Academy yet, it is definitely worth a look.

Khan Academy includes a library of videos that covers K-12 math, science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and even finance and history. Each video is about 10 minutes long and meant to be viewed on a computer.

This is an extremely informative blog post written by Dolores Gende about Khan Academy and how it could be used with small or large  groups in an educational setting. 

Sign-Up Genius

Sign-Up Genius is tool I learned about through my network of Technology Specialists. We learned about teachers using this tool to set up their parent/teacher conferences and wanted to share with you!

From what I can see, it is pretty easy to use. A few teachers have used it already and said it took minutes to figure out and enter all of their conference dates and times. Within minutes of setting up their "Sign-Up," parents were signing up for times. Easy and efficient. Every teacher loves a tool like that.

Try it out and let me know what you think!

Have you seen our Structures?

Our third grade students have successfully completed another hugely successful collaborative project - Structures of the World. This is a science unit in thrid grade, but it really is so much more... Science, Literacy, Library, Technology, and Art. Students love researching about their famous structures in the library and in the classroom. Then they re-create the strutures out of all kind of materials.  Congratulations to all students and teachers involved!

See some of their work here:

Structures of the World 2010

View more presentations from Jenny Murphy

Top 5 Tools to Check Out This Summer

I’ve been thinking about what to post for a while now to inspire you for the summer, while you have a second to breathe. Since we can’t enter the OLS for the month of July, I thought I’d share some must-see tools and resources you should check out whenever you have a chance.

1. Free Technology for Teachers. This is an excellent blog that I read almost daily. It is maintained by Richard Byrne, a teacher from Maine, who writes about various technology integration tools, and much, much more.

2. Google Docs. If you’re not already using Google Docs, you should be. Google Docs is a collaborative tool that makes it easy to store documents, share documents, work on documents with others, make presentations, spreadsheets, and drawings too. The third grade team and I have been using Google Docs all year to collaborate on documents and spreadsheets. Here are some useful resources to help learn about Google Docs and what an amazing tool it is.

• Tour of Google Docs from Google
• Google Docs in Plain English

3. Edublogs.org: I started using Edublogs this year and love it so far. Consider a blog as a website for your classroom, or as a way to get students to write more, in a reading response journal for example. 4St has been doing this for 2 years.

• List of teachers using Edublogs
• The Edublogger is a great blog to check out also

4. Ed.Voicethread.com: I’ve written about Voicethread in a previous post, so I won’t go on and on, but if you haven’t gotten a chance to check it out, I highly recommend it. It offers so many potential learning opportunities for students. We found it extremely useful this year in the foreign language classroom. And, Grade 5 did a fantastic project in science using Voicethread. Here are some further links:

• Voicethread4Education
• Voicethread Digital Library

5. Edu.Glogster.com: Glogster is an online poster creation tool. We used this tool in third grade this year and the students took off with it showing their creativity and imagination in ways I never could have predicted. Check out their work!

Hope to hear about something that I shared with you that inspired you as much as these tools and resources inspire me. Happy Summer!

Voicethread Success

I am so excited about our use of VoiceThread this year.  We have integrated this fabulous tool into several grades and many different curricular areas.

VoiceThread is a collaborative tool that allows you to have a conversation around images, videos and documents, and allows you to comment in five different ways.  Teachers are able to create an educator account which allows for unlimited VoiceThreads.  Students are able to use the tool by logging in as the teacher to create their VoiceThreads.

What is a VoiceThread anyway? gives a good description of what the tools is all about and worth a view.

At Runkle, we’ve completed VoiceThreads in Kindergarten, Grades 1, 3, 5, 7 and 8.  One area that has really benefited from this awesome tool is the Spanish language classroom.  The teacher has found that Voicethread is an excellent way for students to practice and for the teacher to assess their oral language skills. 

Useful Tools

I’ve been using Web 2.0 tools for what seems like forever and I’m just learning about a very cool tool!  That’s what’s so exciting about Web 2.0 — new things to learn all the time…

BigHugeLabs is one of the coolest photo enhancing sites I’ve seen in a while.  At first glance, I see so many opportunities for education.  We do so many project with images in education and using a tool such as this, that you don’t have to log into, you can just use, then save your work, is a teachers dream tool.

Lately, I’ve been using VoiceThread quite a bit with students.  Sometimes, students want to gather multiple pictures together in a collage format before uploading them to VoiceThread.  BigHugeLabs is a perfect place to do this in a creative, nice-looking way, instead of plain old PowerPoint, which is always their default application.  There’s a link on the homepage called Mosaic Maker.  You upload all of the pcitres you want to make a collage out of and it makes a nice collage that you then take a screen shot of and save to your computer to use anywhere.

Check out BigHugeLabs and all the tools available on the site.  It looks very promising.  I wonder what other uses for education I’ll find as I explore the site more…

Winter Meeting Reflection

I recently attended School Reform Initiative’s Annual Winter Meeting in Cambridge, MA.  It was two and a half days of pure joy, learning, facilitation, feedback, probing questions, and smiling.

Ever since I attending Critical Friends Group Coaches Training in August 2006, I have learned so much about myself as a learner, an educator, a facilitator, and my profession. My facilitators were Gene Thompson-Grove and Beth Graham. When I started school that September, and gave a presentation about Critical Friends Group, I remember reflecting on that week as one of the greatest professional learning experiences I have ever been a part of.

However, as I continue facilitating, learning and growing, the experiences just keep getting better!  That is  how I describe my learning at Winter Meeting 2010.  I saw some old friends, and made some new ones, but most importantly, I opened my mind and LEARNED!

iPod Nano 5th Generation

The iPod nano 5th generation is very cool and affords us fantastic opportunities in education.  I was lucky enough to receive an iPod nano for Christmas, and ever since I’ve been discovering new possibilities for its use in education.

In my war with what I think is a faulty Flip Video camera (it’s frozen on the startup screen), I turned to my handy iPod nano.  I can take video with this!  And the screen is bigger and clearer, so why wouldn’t I just use this instead of the Flip?  Duh!  I can also transfer the movie files to any computer without launching iTunes.

Another dilemma solved… I have several classes starting VoiceThread projects.  I’m thinking to myself, hmmm, how are all of my students going to record their comments in my one educator account?  I know, my iPod!  Yes, folks it is true.  I can record voices using VoiceMemo on my iPod nano, plug it into any computer, and drag the voice memo files off.  How cool is that?

I am so excited about these possibilities.  Now, to share with my students and teachers!

Word Clouds, So Many Uses

Wordle is a great tool that all teachers can use in their classrooms and use with students.  Wordle is a tool for generating word clouds.  The greatest thing about this Web 2.0 tool is that you don’t need to log in to anything.  You simply go to the website, click Create and start creating your word cloud.  When you are done you can take a screen shot (command+shift+4) of the image and save it to your computer, then print it or add to your website or blog.

Ideas for Classroom use:

• brainstorm starter to a new unit/KWL
• reflections
• poetry
• spelling words
• synonyms
• characters in a book

This is a fabulous  slideshare presentation with many ideas for integrating Wordle into your teaching.

Good luck and be sure to share your wordles with me!

Conference in FirstClass

Runkle School Conference in FirstClass

FirstClass is the email client we use in Brookline.  When you log into FirstClass, you see your FirstClass desktop.  This has many icons on it.  One icon that you should see is the Runkle School conference icon.  A  FirstClass conference allows users to exchange messages, documents in a common location.  This conference often has school announcements from the central office, superintendent, principal, other teachers, and much more.  In the conference there are folders located at the top.  These folders contain documents that might be helpful to you at one time or another.  Two folders that I remind people about each year is the Technology & Library folder.  and the Forms and Such folder.  Check them out!

Printer People

Setting Preview as your default .pdf viewer

Many emails we receive have .pdfs as attachments.  On the Mac platform, we have a convenient tool called Preview that is built to view .pdfs and .jpgs pretty nicely.

To make Preview your default .pdf viewer, control + click (which is equivalent to right-click) on any .pdf, and choose Get Info.  Or, click once on the .pdf and hit command + i (Get Info).

In the section Open with: Change the default viewer from Adobe Reader to Preview by selectingPreview from the drop-down list.  If it’s not in the list, click Choose Other… which will bring you to your Applications folder.  Then choose Preview.
To use Preview as the default, click Change All… at the bottom of this window.

Poetry Anthology

My latest idea for a student project involves a 4th grade unit on Poetry. Each year the teacher and I guide students in a technology integrated poetry anothology. I'm thinking of changing the anthology focus a little to involve this blog, digital pictures and a wiki. I was also thinking of having students create a poetry anthology website. I'm not sure just yet how this will play out in the classroom, but I am meeting with the teacher today, so hopefully she'll love the idea as much as I do!