Chicago

It was a quick drive from Oaklawn in South Chicago to Elk Grove in North Chicago, so I am already settled for the evening and ready to catch Gray's Anatomy as soon as I do a little last minute "tweaking" for tomorrow's workshop.
I wanted to tell you that if you are just checking the blogs occasionally, that you can scroll down to the very bottom of this page and subscribe right here to the blog. You do not have to use bloglines. When you subscribe here, it will save it to your Favorites on Internet Explorer. You can then go to your Favorites and see if there is an update to the blog.
Being in Illinois, I realized that although this website is mentioned in the book and on my website, I could not leave Illinois without putting this website front and center. The University of Illinois Extension Website has a terrific section that is Just For Kids. Much of it entails educational information about the outdoors from A Walk In The Woods, The Great Plant Escape, The Great Corn Adventure, Let's Talk About Insects, Secret Life of Trees, My First Garden, The Adventures of Herman the Worm, and The All Star River Explorers. Each of these provide animated, multimedia presentations and activities that all elementary students will enjoy. The site is wonderful and I cannot believe I was in Illinois and didn't mention it. You can find it at http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/kids/index.html. I guess that is what this blog is for!

Circling Illinois

I am spending the entire week in Illinois, enjoying meeting some really nice participants in both Champaigne and Springfield. In Champaigne I commiserated with the Illinois fans of the University of Illinois football team's loss and they comforted me on the "beating" that the Cleveland Indians received at the hands of the Boston Red Sox! My hubby is in mourning and maybe it is not a bad week for me to be "on the road".
We drove around some of the historic sights of Springfield and then drove on to Peoria where I am right now in the quaint Stoney Creek Inn. At least it is not so quaint that it has wireless internet service.
As promised, I have entered the web addresses for Flickr, Voice Thread, and a a site to Create Your own Stationary on my website http://www.techteachconcepts.com under Workshops 2007/2008 and then to BER K-2.
The last site mentioned just came in my email at lunchtime today. I mentioned that I always regret when I find a new website after I complete a workshop. So, in keeping with the purpose of this blog, let me tell all of you about Create Your OwnStationary, a site that I really think the primary students will love. The student can choose a border and the looks of the person pictured on the stationary, then print it out for their use.
Thanks for checking on this blog. I will be updating it as I come across things that I think the participants in the BER workshops and others reading might be able to use.

On The Road Again

I have not updated this blog for awhile, because the true purpose of this blog has not really begun as yet. I will be mainly writing this blog as an update to the content of my technology workshops for classroom teachers, administrators, media specialists and technology specialists. Most of my workshops are presented through BER- The Bureau of Education and Research. I begin the first of my 36 workshops for the year on Monday, October 22nd. in Champaign, IL. I then go on to Springfield, Peoria, and Chicago North and Chicago South next week. There will be two sources for my updates. First of all, I never leave a workshop without learning something new from the participants and I also learn form the many blogs, listservs, and newsletters that I read each night after a workshop. I so often say to myself, "I really wish I had this idea, website, etc. when I did today's or yesterday's workshop!" Now, if the participants subscribe to my blog, I can keep the workshop virtually all year and who knows how long into the future?

I just found something tonight that I will now add to Monday's workshop. It is a website with the cutest, educationally sound, and motivating online stories and songs about science. It is called Science Story Books and can be found at http://msnucleus.org/membership/guide/storybooks.html

Starting Monday night, you will hear more about the workshops, my travel woes, and about the wonderful people I meet along the way!

Sketchcast

I receive every Sunday morning one of my favorite online newsletters. It comes from Teachers First and a Sunday never goes by that I am not overwhemed by what new is out there on the Internet free for use by teachers. The entire Teachers First Website is amazing, but today I want to tell you about a recommendation that came today about a free online tool called Sketchcast. This tool allows you to record yourself illustrating a concept to students and then have them play it as often as they would like in order to understand the concept. The implications for using this tool are endless. I am sure you creative teachers out there will be thinking of many, many more uses. My preview is really very, very ameturish, but I want you to see what I could produce in about 2 minutes. I will be practicing for later showings. Check mine out at http://sketchcast.com/view/vbd3VbR and do subscribe to the Teachers First newsletter.

Put This On Your Calendar

September 28th. (this week) is the day that registration opens for Jennifer Wagner's Technospud Project The Pumpkin Seed Count. Without much preparation on your part, your students can gain many skills and develop concepts while participating in a project with many other students from all over the world. The project is for Grades K-3. You can find a "sneak peek" at the project at http://www.technospudprojects.com/Projects/ps2007/ps2007home.htm

Jennifer does a fantastic job of providing activities to accompany this project and your students can become a part of a world-wide community of learners. If you have never participated in an online collaborative project, this is an excellent place to start.

An Online Science Project - Journey North

I think anyone who has heard me speak knows that I am passionate about the online collaborative project. I believe that allowing your students to become a part of a world wide community of learners has benefits that will fulfill standards and beyond! One such science-based project will meet standards in all areas of the curriculum including map skills, learning about many cultures, numeric data, and definitely all of the communication skills. That project is called Journey North, it can be found at http://www.learner.org/jnorth/. With the motivation of wildlife migration and seasonal change, students will track happenings within their own environment and then track the animals and plant life as one season goes into another. There are activities for every age group, maps, email updates, and many classroom activities. This project has been going on since the mid-eighties and just keeps getting better and better. Your class can choose any level of participation.
The beauty of this and many other online collaborative projects to me is two-fold. First of all, students are studying what is happening in real time with real data, and secondly, they are compiling and analyzing data coming from many sources throughout North America, rather than experimenting just within their own classroom.
A project like this, provided free of charge to all of us is a win-win situation! Give it a try!

Picture Puzzles -"Cut Up" With Digital Pictures

Picture Puzzles - "Cut Up" with your digital pictures! With Labor Day weekend behind us, I still get that willful feeling that I really wish I was starting a new school year and that I would have a roomful of excited children looking at me for making their year memorable. Alas, I chose the retirement and workshop route and although I miss those smiling faces and the comaraderie of colleagues, I must admit that I still enjoy my flexible schedule.I have been sorting and playing with digital pictures that I took throughout the summer and I thought I would share with you one of my favorite things that I like to do with images. Using www.jigzone.com I go to My Jigzone Space. By uploading pictures, I am able to make them into an online jigsaw puzzle, from 6 to 120 cuts. I can then try to solve the puzzle online or email them to my grandchildren who love to try their hand at solving them. When my four year old grandson, David, told me he wanted to do one of the puzzles in a 120 piece cut, I thought he could never do it, until he showed me the "Auto-Solve" function listed on the left. I had never seen it.Jigzone also has many puzzles (a new one everyday) that you can become addicted to doing. However, when the picture is that of the child or a familiar area of the classroom, the kids love to try to solve them. I think there is also the ability to use the mouse benefit.Try Jigzone as one more thing to do with digital images.