Teaching and Tech Tinkerings of a Special Educator: 2009

Friday, September 4, 2009

Post Graphic Software to Blogger via Image Embedding

This is a sample student home-school communication entry written in PixWriter.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Go Global with ePals

The ePals site safely connects classrooms around the globe via teacher-moderated e-mail and blogs. Students have opportunities to work collaboratively on projects with students from classrooms in other locations. There are several safety features embedded into the program, but teachers should remind their students not to provide last names, school names, or locations.

Within five minutes, I found a project appropriate for our first and second graders for their internationally-minded maps unit. They will host a stuffed bear that will travel around the world. We will mark its journey on Google Earth.

Summary of key features:

teacher-moderated e-mail and blogs

collaborative projects

pen pals around the world

provides home-school communication

Monday, August 10, 2009

Seeking a Way to Insert Video into Google Site

Help Needed! Anyone know of a way to insert video into a Google site? I'd like to place videos on my class site so my students can review at home. I prefer not to upload to YouTube or similar sites. Thanks.

Friday, July 31, 2009

Relax, Play, and Create with E-Sand Art

A great break activity. Create your own sand art. A mouse click causes the sand to fall and Ctrl C lets you select another color. ***** When you start, the screen will appear blank. This is your blank canvas. Click and hold...sand will begin to pour on the page.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Teach Vocabulary Relationships through Wordle

This image, and others like it, can be created at http://www.wordle.net/. Simply type in words you wish your students to link to a theme and click "go." It's that simple.

Need a phrase to appear? To have the words "papyrus paper" appear together, connect them with ~. For example, enter the text below:

papyrus~paper

Want to make a word appear larger for emphasis (perhaps the theme of your unit?) Just type the word multiple times. It will only appear once, but larger than your other text.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Grab Your Students' Attention-Fast and Easy to Use

What can you do for free? Simply upload your own photos or download creative commons licensed photos from sites such as Flickr, add a soundtrack, and Animoto will automatically create an amazing show that lasts up to 30 seconds. Are you an educator? Sign up for an educator account and create full-length presentations for free.

Click on the heading above for a better version of the video below.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Home-School Communication

Students can type a sentence or two about their day in a graphic word processing program such as PixWriter. Just copy and paste the text into your blog. Then parents can read what their child did in school today.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Portaportal

Here's a great site for keeping all of your links together on the web. Students can access the websites they use in class from links on your portaportal site.

The link above is a sample.