Animated Bayeaux Tapestry

Ok, I admit it, I love history and always have.  That's probably why I was a history teacher until I got this job.  I'll admit it, I love educational technology, too, and when you can find the two together, it's bliss.  Today's offering is the Bayeaux Tapestry, animated, from Open Culture's YouTube Channel.  The story picks up about half way through the tapestry at the appearance of Halley's Comet and just before the Norman Invasion.  My family went to Hastings several years ago, which gives the whole thing a totally different perspective. Enjoy!

Death to Dull Powerpoints!

A colleague came to the lab yesterday to tell me about this really fantastic presentation he had seen another of our colleague give in class.  The presenter had used a tool I'd read about, called Prezi.  Prezi lets you create slides, zoom in on key points, emphasize ideas, and animate your text.  Here's one I did.  To run it, click the left and right arrows or hover over the word "More" and select "Autoplay."




Frequently, people complain about having to sit through PowerPoints presentations.  None of us likes to have a presenter read, word for word, the text on the slide.  Yawn.  Just let me read it--I can read faster than you can speak! 

I always use the 6-6 rule.  No more than 6 bullet points per slide, and no more than 6 words per point.  This forces me to summarize succinctly and it requires me to know my material well.  Guy Kawasaki, a venture capitalist, has the 10-20-30 rule.  I'll let him tell you about it.

Origami in Math

 

Any one who knows me know that Mr. Math and I are not very good friends.  In fact, we barely have an acquiantance, which is why it seems odd to be posting a video about math.  This beautiful, 2-minute film is about the mathematics of origami and is worth the time just to see the fantastic creations that can be constructed out of paper!  I may need to go home and pull the origami books out of the kids closets!

(To view this full screen, right click on the video and select "Full Screen.")

Learning on the Sly

I spent a fair amount of time this week working on my Online Activities page.  The kids at my school aren't allowed to play computer games, but there are some really, really good learning activities online that I think students should be allowed to do.  Besides, we don't really have a playground for the younger students to use after lunch, so they flock to the lab to "play" games.  The reason I spent so much time working on the page this week is that several students had suggested new activities, so I wanted to look at them and then update my page.

One of the new activities was suggested by a colleague.  It's the game page from the US Supreme Court.  I know.  It sounds like a major yawn, but the 6th grade is crazy about these games.  They are fun and very educational, although I suspect some of the kids like to be able to go home to their lawyer parents and correct them. :)

Another new addition to the page is a library of physics activities.  Physics Games has dozens of activities that are fun, and teach the principles of physics at the same time.  Some of the older middle-schoolers love these activities, not realizing the great lessons they are learning about the physics of a trebuchet!

Finally, this set of activities comes from one of my Twitterpeeps, samorra. Edheads has several beautifully designed games that teach all sorts of lessons:  learn how to resurface a hip and learn human anatomy, help the state police investigate a serious car accident and learn all about the physics of high speed crashes, or, build a cell phone and learn all about where the materials used come from and their impact on the environment. 

I love the internet!

 

In Defense of Twitter (or, why I Tweet)

A colleague recently asked me why I use Twitter and how I could possibly have time to read tweets and do my job. I told him that I see Twitter as a part of my job. You see, not only should we be using the applications the kids are so we understand what they are doing, but Twitter is an integral part of my Personal Learning Network. I don't have personal friends or family in my Twitterfeed, but through the feed I am connected to hundreds of educators all over the world. From them, I learn about issues in education, helpful tools, effective techniques and much, much more. I depend on my PLN for information about new trends and applications, too.

I follow several dozen people on Twitter. That could mean that I could spend a lot of time reading the tweets (they're limited to the number of characters that a text message can handle-140). I don't really. There are several folks that I know have really great things to say and I have their posts sent to my phone by text. The rest I check in on a couple of times a week. Who are my Twitterfaves? rmbyrne, kjarrett, jennyluca, and dwarlick. All are experienced and respected educators who are doing the same thing I do: trying to improve education by encouraging effective use of educational technology in our schools.

The Wonder Wheel

Earlier today, our librarian and our Chinese teacher were working on a small project for one of the Chinese classes. I've recently won over our librarian to Clusty a search engine that not only brings back fewer and better hits than you usually get from Google, it also suggests related searches. Clusty and I have been search partners for several years now, but the librarian has just discovered it, too.


So, while the two teachers were working on the Chinese project and talking about using other search engines than Google, I remembered seeing the Google Wonder Wheel sometime last spring. It took me a while to find it again, but once I did, I started playing with it and I have to say, it's pretty interesting!

So, how do you get to the Wonder Wheel? Type in a search term, and when the results page comes up, you will see "Show Options" at the top of the page. Click on that and a menu appears with other ways to conduct your search. Wonder Wheel is one of those options. The wheel would be a useful tool for visual learners, plus it has some nifty related search terms that you might not have considered!


Another slick tool in the "Show Options" menu is the Timeline. This shows a nice timeline related to your search, and would be very useful to a student doing research, to help get an idea of the progression of events.

Great tools, Google!

Fun WIth Photos

Today's nifty web tool is called Tilt-Shift Maker. Despite what it sounds like, it is not a ride at the State Fair. It's actually an interesting tool to edit photos with. You adjust where you want the sharp focus to be placed and then the rest of the picture is in soft focus. It's really an interesting way to draw they eye of a viewer to a particular detail, and students could certainly use it in photos they make for lab journals, geography or history projects, or even for illustrations of their creative writing.

The website does allow you to change the width of the sharpness window, adjust the sharpness of the focus and to smudge the soft focus parts of your picture even more than the default.

You have to love all the great "toys" out there these days!