Ok, so I should be working, but a friend sent me a challenge and I am a sucker for word games. Here it is, how many words can you make from TECHTOYLAND? I stuck to three letters or more. Here's my list so far:
teach
toy
land
lane
lynch
lance
dance
dane
don't
dot
dole
yodel
chat
hand
hat
hot
tot
coy
candy
can
con
cat
cad
cay
chant
the
then
ate
ado
attend
lady
lace
laced
lot
let
leach
lye
clay
cloy
locate
day
date
hate
hated
cheat
nay
any
lay
cane
yon
don
ton
hone
non
none
not
they
chad
hay
hey
hen
note
noted
notate
nod
node
nad
notch
notched
tote
toted
total
totaled
toe
that
than
honey
only
ode
ocean
octet
oath
hate
hated
had
hale
today
toad
tone
cone
coat
handy
dandy
end
etch
eat
heal
teal
deal
dealt
tat
late
latch
latched
deny
chanted
code
dote
delay
total
totaled
doth
Can you find any more?
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
SlideShare -- Sharing PowerPoint on the Web!
I found a new toy today! I also found some GREAT examples of presentations that I hope to use to get my students out of the rut of "boring" presentation mode. I'm anxious to start using some of these ideas myself!
From: thecroaker, 3 months ago
Fighting death by PowerPoint... How to make a presentation and not to bore your audience to death.
SlideShare Link
Death by PowerPoint
From: thecroaker, 3 months ago
Fighting death by PowerPoint... How to make a presentation and not to bore your audience to death.
SlideShare Link
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Another cool video -- Especially for Kindergarten Teachers!
So what do you think? Just one of those things that makes you go, "Hmmmmm..."
Friday, October 5, 2007
Jing-a-ling!
I am really excited to pass along two different sites this week, TeacherTube and Jing. Since one of my classes is working with digital video, I've been pretty immersed in that technology these past two weeks. The sites I'm sharing today are ones that I think no teacher should be without!
If I could share just one link with you today, it would be TeacherTube. Hey that sounds a lot like YouTube, you might say. Well it is, only it's for teacher's! TeacherTube provides videos on various topics, from electromagnetism to music. Just think, a place to find some professional development video without having to worry about polar bears or kittens playing with string. (Check out the Diet Coke and Mentos video if you get a chance. What kid wouldn't get excited about that kind of experiment after watching it? Too COOL!)
The other link is for a new project by the people at TechSmith called Jing. Here's waht their site has to say about the project, "The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere." And that is exactly what it does! This little program holds such vast potential for instruction, especially techology instruction. After all, who hasn't had to type directions for how to use a specific program's functionality? They get to be so long and we invariably miss something important. And although screen shots are nice, they take a lot of memory in our documents and emailing memory intensive items can be tricky for a lot of servers.
Enter Jing! Jing looks like a little sunshine sitting at the top of your desktop, at all times ready to capture what's on your screen at a moments notice. Who wouldn't love a way to video the steps in formatting or creating a chart in Excel? It sure beats typing the 25 instruction steps that it might take when sharing those same directions verbally. And what a boon for the visual learners among us! Finally, we can SEE how to set the homepage of our browser to a page other than the default.
Jing makes this possible by capturing the screen image or video and then saving them to screencast.com A screencast is a recording of the computer screen, sometimes narrated, that is usually used to instruct or demonstrate. A link is then posted to the clipboard on your computer and you can share that link with anyone via email, IM, in your blog, etc. Jing can even be embedded into blogs and other webpages for easier navigation. How cool is that?!
Check it out and see what you think. The people at the Jing project want your feedback so they can make Jing even more "Jing-a-licious."
Oh, and did I mention the very best thing? It's absolutely FREE and works on both PC and Mac platforms. Now go out there and get Jing-ing!
If I could share just one link with you today, it would be TeacherTube. Hey that sounds a lot like YouTube, you might say. Well it is, only it's for teacher's! TeacherTube provides videos on various topics, from electromagnetism to music. Just think, a place to find some professional development video without having to worry about polar bears or kittens playing with string. (Check out the Diet Coke and Mentos video if you get a chance. What kid wouldn't get excited about that kind of experiment after watching it? Too COOL!)
The other link is for a new project by the people at TechSmith called Jing. Here's waht their site has to say about the project, "The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere." And that is exactly what it does! This little program holds such vast potential for instruction, especially techology instruction. After all, who hasn't had to type directions for how to use a specific program's functionality? They get to be so long and we invariably miss something important. And although screen shots are nice, they take a lot of memory in our documents and emailing memory intensive items can be tricky for a lot of servers.
Enter Jing! Jing looks like a little sunshine sitting at the top of your desktop, at all times ready to capture what's on your screen at a moments notice. Who wouldn't love a way to video the steps in formatting or creating a chart in Excel? It sure beats typing the 25 instruction steps that it might take when sharing those same directions verbally. And what a boon for the visual learners among us! Finally, we can SEE how to set the homepage of our browser to a page other than the default.
Jing makes this possible by capturing the screen image or video and then saving them to screencast.com A screencast is a recording of the computer screen, sometimes narrated, that is usually used to instruct or demonstrate. A link is then posted to the clipboard on your computer and you can share that link with anyone via email, IM, in your blog, etc. Jing can even be embedded into blogs and other webpages for easier navigation. How cool is that?!
Check it out and see what you think. The people at the Jing project want your feedback so they can make Jing even more "Jing-a-licious."
Oh, and did I mention the very best thing? It's absolutely FREE and works on both PC and Mac platforms. Now go out there and get Jing-ing!
Friday, September 21, 2007
Look what I found!
Ok, so some of this may not be really new, but it is new to me! I've been listening to the techchicktips and EdTech Weekly podcasts these past couple of weeks and I'm finding more cool stuff than I could have ever dreamed about. One of my favorite finds this week has been Learning 2.0 If you haven't heard of it yet (I know it's been around for awhile.), Learning 2.0 is a blog started by the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County in North Carolina. As I read about it, Learning 2.0 is "a discovery learning program designed to encourage staff to explore new technologies and reward them for doing 23 Things." What a great way to foster independent exploration of new technologies. Through a program like this, we could easily teach students about new web bases technologies, and then use them for enriching classroom experiences. In ways I was reminded of a Webquest, where you give the kids a "mission" and then provide links for them to follow. Anyway, I was REALLY impressed with the idea, and if you take a class of mine, don't be surprised to see something like this pop up!
I don't want to get too windy, so I'm going to wrap this up here in a moment. However, I wanted to add a just for fun site that some of you might like. Being a librarian for preservice teachers leads me to all sorts of fun technologies and websites. This week I want to highlight childrenslibrary.org This is the site for the International Children's Digital Library. At this site you can select books by age group, kinds of characters, even the color of the cover! After you've selected your book, you can read the entire thing online. I like it because it includes a great collection of international titles. These are books my kids might never get to see or be exposed to. Imagine doing a lesson on Brazil or China and being able to present a book to the class from that actual country. Too cool!
I am just amazed at all the possibilities we have to incorporate rich content into our kids' education. I don't remember where I read it, but one point I liked is that not only can we now read about FDR's fireside chats, they've been digitized and we can now actually listen to them and understand why he had such a HUGE impact on the American people. My point is, we can make a lot of this really come alive to our students now if we'll just take some time to really embrace the technology that's out there. Don't get me wrong, I know time is a precious thing that we don't have a lot of to spare. But, I really want us educators to start thinking about how we are going to reach students who are drenched in technology everyday. Are we going to continue to assign textbook reading and worksheets, or are we going to strive to meet them where they're at and bring these subjects that we love to life for them? Just a few thoughts to ponder!
Until next week, here's a laugh to end the day, (I love the muppets and classic Sesame Street!)
I don't want to get too windy, so I'm going to wrap this up here in a moment. However, I wanted to add a just for fun site that some of you might like. Being a librarian for preservice teachers leads me to all sorts of fun technologies and websites. This week I want to highlight childrenslibrary.org This is the site for the International Children's Digital Library. At this site you can select books by age group, kinds of characters, even the color of the cover! After you've selected your book, you can read the entire thing online. I like it because it includes a great collection of international titles. These are books my kids might never get to see or be exposed to. Imagine doing a lesson on Brazil or China and being able to present a book to the class from that actual country. Too cool!
I am just amazed at all the possibilities we have to incorporate rich content into our kids' education. I don't remember where I read it, but one point I liked is that not only can we now read about FDR's fireside chats, they've been digitized and we can now actually listen to them and understand why he had such a HUGE impact on the American people. My point is, we can make a lot of this really come alive to our students now if we'll just take some time to really embrace the technology that's out there. Don't get me wrong, I know time is a precious thing that we don't have a lot of to spare. But, I really want us educators to start thinking about how we are going to reach students who are drenched in technology everyday. Are we going to continue to assign textbook reading and worksheets, or are we going to strive to meet them where they're at and bring these subjects that we love to life for them? Just a few thoughts to ponder!
Until next week, here's a laugh to end the day, (I love the muppets and classic Sesame Street!)
Friday, September 7, 2007
Welcome one and all!
Welcome to the first of many posts to my brand new blog. I've decided if I'm going to teach others how to use them, then I should probably delve into the world of blogs too! I hope you like the title. If you don't know, my office at PSU happens to be in the basement of the School of Ed building. So what better title for a blog from work, than Views from the Basement?
I'm hoping to use this blog to share newly discovered books, websites, videos and such from the world of the school library and educational technology. Got a comment or question? Feel free to ask! I might not have the answer, but we can always look for it!
I'm hoping to use this blog to share newly discovered books, websites, videos and such from the world of the school library and educational technology. Got a comment or question? Feel free to ask! I might not have the answer, but we can always look for it!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
