Thing #19

There were a lot of fun tools on the Web 2.0 Awards List. I thought the One Sentence True Stories site was an interesting concept. It is just like the title says: people submit one sentence stories about themselves, like, "My dad stopped complaining about my bad grades when I won $100 for a short story I wrote out of boredom during math class." It might have been good for teaching main idea or elaboration, but most of the posts I saw were not appropriate for children. Maybe we can use a spin-off of the idea on a class wiki page.

Yourminis has some fun widgets you can add to home pages and blogs. I added Shoutcast Radio by AOL onto my iGoogle page. You can use it to listen to live radio. In the "easy listening" genre, there is a link to BirdSongRadio.com. Maybe my class can listen to it while they're working on research projects next year. (What would we do without our bird unit?!)

Picnik is the tool I played with the most. It is a photo image program. It provides basic services for free. It is a little like Mosaic Maker and some of the other photo image tools on Big Huge Labs, but I found it easier to navigate. Here are some fun things I could do with uploaded pictures:

(normal, heat sensitive, and neon)

You can use up to 5 pictures at a time, and the pictures don't have to all be in a row like I have them. The children could use this tool to illustrate writing projects, show time progression, or make flow charts.

Thing #10

Thing #10 is so much fun!!! This bird joke was made with Comic Strip Generator. The search feature made it easy to use.

This magazine cover was made with Fake Magazine Covers on Custom Sign Generator. It was not quite as user friendly as the Comic Strip Generator, but the results were really cute! This is my dog, Daisy.

I'm not sure how either of these could be used as educational tools in a primary classroom. I suppose the magazine covers could be used as covers for student stories or autobiographies . . . but I think the magazine covers on Big Huge Labs would be easier for the kids to use.

Custom Sign Generator's Your Face on a Different Body was really hard to navigate, at first. Once I got the hang of it, it wasn't too bad. It took me a while to figure out that I needed to click on the red words "Flash Navigator" to be able to slide my dog's picture around behind the body templates. One of the body backgrounds was a face on Mount Rushmore. Our school's 3rd grade teachers have the children write about who they think should be on Mount Rushmore. Maybe the kids could use this program to illustrate their compositions. Wouldn't be easy, though.
The images below were made with Image Chef. The first one is Beach. (An animated version is on the sidebar to the right.) I don't think either of these have much educational value, but they sure are cute and easy to use.

This is Make Word Mosaic:

The kids could easily make shape poems with this program.

A video made with Image Chef is on the sidebar to the right. They only had three to choose from, but you get to create the ending message, yourself. Not too educational . . .

The poetry blender on Image Chef looked like it would be a great way to display student poetry on the computer in an animated fashion. Maybe on a class wiki? I have an example below this post. (I didn't know how to attach it to this one.) Look for the falling leaves.

This is a wordle:
You either enter a paragraph of text or just type in words, and the computer creates word art with it. The more a word is encountered, the bigger it appears on the screen. This would be fun to use in the classroom to display attributes of characters . . . or even for Mother's Day gifts! I really like this font, which is called Grilled Cheese. It reminds me of the Brady Bunch. Didn't they use the same font during the opening credits?

Thing #6

My school's technology coach and librarian introduced us to trading cards this past school year. The 2nd graders made bird trading cards that were reduced to a smaller size of 4" x 2 3/4" and laminated. They were distributed randomly by teachers for good behavior. The kids traded cards every day right before recess. They absolutely loved making the trading cards and trading them! They even made them at home through a link set up on our school's website. The kids also made magazine covers from Big Huge Labs for the covers of their animal reports. They wrote two questions about their animals on the front to tease their readers. They enjoyed this activity, as well.

I tried FX on Big Huge Labs. It lets you play with the picture's appearance. It was fun, but I'm not sure it has any educational value.

Jigsaw was fun, too, but . . . The calendar activity has possibilities. Maybe the kids could create group calendars with animal pictures and facts (by adding text boxes).