RSS and Your Email

On the blog Free Technology for Teacher's there is a new article titled Stop Publishing Your Email Address in Your RSS Feed. It suggests that you don't have to include your email and if you do then you are likely to get more spam emails. It walks you through how to change the default of publishing your RSS by going to your blog's Edit screen and unchecking this option. Your feeds will then include a notation of "noreply@blogger.com". This is very helpful for me to know at the beginning of my blogging experience. I will have to go change a few but will not have to do this in the future.

Digital Story Telling in the Classroom

I am intrigued by digital story telling because I know it is easy yet I have not created one yet! I went to the Digital Story Telling website Lee sent to us and found myself on Microsoft's website on a Digital Story Telling in the Classroom page. I downloaded the Digital Storytelling e-book PDF. I have included a summary here.

*The NETS standards are listed that these types of projects speak to.
*There are examples of project ideas from classrooms around the world, at a variety of age groups and a variety of uses like projects in math, history, music, letter writing and reports.
*Next is a step by step detailed description of how to create a digital stories with individuals and a whole class.
*Then there are even more project ideas for different age groups.
*There is an easy to read table of software needed to use certain tools and then where to get the tools, most of which are free.
*There are tutorials on how to use the tools; power point, photo story 3 and movie maker.
*For each tool there are suggested lessons described as basic, more challenging and expert.
*There are resource links throughout the publication.

This is a great resource full of links to make everything at the tip of your fingers, literally. I will be using this soon for my Children's Literature class. Wish me luck!

Trivia Question: What is the definition of digistory?

Blogs and their impact on me

I am excited about my new blog that I am following about digital story telling. I am also excited about the Aviary site that I have bookmarked. I will use both in the next month to create a digital story recreation of The Mitten by Jan Brett. The preschoolers that I work with love acting out stories that they love. I have a video of them acting out this story. I hope to use these new tools to produce a video for them and their families. I also hope to create a wiki page for our school soon so that I can post the video for all to see.

I am waiting to hear from Christine about the Preschool teacher blog she is following so I can check it out. I appreciate using other people's tried ideas!

Aviary challenging Photoshop?

On the site I follow Free Technology for Teachers a new posting shares a new FREE photo editing tool from Aviary.com that may compete with Photo shop. SOme of the free tools include: These tools include a vector editor, color editor, image editor, effects editor, image markup tools, screen capture tools, and sound recording and mixing tools. Aviary has a sound recording and mixing tool that an alternative to Garage Band. There is a video included that shows one how to use their image editor. Aviary's site is easy to navigate with a lot of examples of how their tools work. I book marked this site!

VoiceThread website

I found another worthwhile website while looking around on the Free Technology for Teachers Site. The article Web2.0 & Students with Disabilities suggests that people with disabilities or anyone for that matter can use the VoiceThread website to communicate verbally and visually with anyone. People can respond on the site interactively by voice, text and video with the push of a button. There are tutorials that show just how easy it is to post something and then allow individuals to comment. I can just imagine using this for online meetings and classes, parent communications, family and friend interactions. I bookmarked it for my kids to play with. There is a system for signing in. I stopped there yet may venture back later and give this a try.

Weblist Tool

Free Technology for Teacher's post today was about a new tool called a Weblist

This application allows you to make a visual list of a group of URL's that can then be offered as a resource for browsing the web but in a contained way. This can help a teacher to limit a student's research to specific sites and/or topics, or keep them from becoming distracted or lost on the internet. The visual thumbnails display the sites and help students to make a choice of site visually. Once in the Weblist application you can navigate and link to one of the sites and then back to a visual of them all yet your original URL is maintained and will keep the student within the Weblist. Just think of all the Weblist topics you could create right now.

I have seen kids get frustrated trying to figure out which site to try based on a search. This type of presort of information I believe will eliminate this problem and allow students to focus and collect information quickly. I also see that a teacher must keep the lists current and do the research to find a diversity of sites to list.

Free Technology for Teachers Blog

I will be following the blog created by Richard Byrne, Free Technology for Teachers.
www.freetech4teachers.com
How can one not. I will try to set up a RSS and subscribe at some point. I found a few things that I would like to bookmark and use more. Like the Math Dictionary Book for Kids looks interesting as well as the Word It One site that is similar to the Wordle site that plays visually with words. This site won as the best educational blog from Edublog awards. The runner up was also a worthy follower. Kathy Schrock’s Kaffeeklatsch site that seems to be a site for New Technologies. I would like to spend more time there to see if the products are specifically educational resources.
kathyshroc.net/blog/

Check them out!