I have been through stages of craftiness in my life. I have gotten into cross-stitching, making beaded items (necklaces, lanyards, bracelets, key chains), painting fabrics (pillows, t-shirts), and many other endeavors. I like being able to make items for other people - either for birthday / Christmas presents or just everyday gifts. I think when someone spends time making a gift it makes it so much more special. I heard a story on the news recently that crafting is on the rise due to the troubled economy. While I hate our economy is in the situation it is, I think it is a good thing that it is motivating people to find less-expensive and more heartfelt ways of giving. On this website you can see what other people are saying about handmade gifts.

I have been spending most of my time on a new web design project but I think I will start looking at crafting again. I can start now making items to give as Christmas presents without feeling rushed as the end of the year approaches.

As I come across neat crafting projects, I will share them here. Maybe they will be of use to others.

I came across this neat project for etching glass. I think I will give it a try after I come up with some thoughtful words to etch. I think this would be cool to do with pictures of pets. I have many friends who share their lives with animals, as do I. Maybe a picture of a pet with a pet-friendly quote would be a good gift.

Wordle is another cool online tool for all grade levels. It creates a graphical display to show the frequency of word usage in a text, web page or document. This is called a Word Cloud. The bigger the word is, indicates its dominance of usage. I like some if the ideas for usage presented on Technology Education Know-How Blog.

1. Students can use it to monitor the frequency of word usage in their own writings. a. How often do they use the same adjectives or nouns? b. Are they overusing words?

7. Self Reflection; If you where to write a story about yourself, what would your Wordle say?

Here is an example from the site - George Washington’s Inaugural Address:

Here is an example I did - Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address:

I just added this cool online tool to my Resources - Links+ list but wanted to share it in a post also. This is such a cool site - and it is FREE. I can see SO many EdTech uses for it!! Have students create animations easily and then save them as Flash files or animated GIFs. Students can tell short stories, give demonstrations, create simulations, and much more. Math students could show how to solve particular types of equations step by step and then share their demonstration.

I am presenting two sessions of this technology workshop at Millington Central High School this week.

Here is the QuickTime version of my Keynote presentation (click to manually advance each slide) - file size is 2 MB.

Here is a PDF of the presentation slides with room for notes - file size is 1.1 MB.

Here are the links provided in the presentation:

• ePals - http://www.epals.com
• iEarn - International Education and Resource Network - 
http://www.iearn.org
• CILC - Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration - http://www.cilc.org
• Global Schoolhouse Project Registry - 
http://www.globalschoolnet.org
• TWICE Videoconferencing Collaborative Projects and Exchange Projects - http://www.twice.cc/projects.html
• K-12 Online Conference - 
http://k12onlineconference.org

If you have never visited AcademicEarth, take a moment to check it out. It has thousands of video lectures from the world’s top scholars in a wide variety of subject areas and it is free.

You can, if you wish, register and make an account but you don’t have to. If you do create an account, you can make playlists of videos which can make classroom presentations go a bit smoother.

If you show any of these videos to your class, connect via Ethernet for a cleaner presentation.

Note that you can also embed these videos into your website or blog.

I came across this blog post on the EdTech Gold Rush website. No sense in recreating the wheel and making a similar set of instructions here so I am just providing a link. Consider setting up something like this if you have your students working on a project and you want to limit their Internet search to specific websites.

I came across this video on dailymotion.com and just thought it was so cute.

And I came across this site when stumbling around the Net: Let’s Be Friends

I will be making a large variety of resources available via my Resources page. You can get there with the link under SECTIONS in the left sidebar.

I started by posting a PowerPoint presentation I constructed when I was teaching middle school General Music many years ago. The students really liked it and it was much more entertaining than just listening to me talk about. If I were to need to teach it again, I would probably make a new presentation and embed additional forms of media - maybe clips of patriotic scenes, a movie of a choir singing it, etc…

As I plan to do with all presentation files I post, I posted the actual presentation file (in this case, a PowerPoint file) and a QuickTime movie file of the presentation. Visitors who do not have PowerPoint can use the .mov file and simply pause on the slides as needed.

I serve as the Technology Coordinator for a high school and part of my duties include holding training sessions for the teachers. I try to make them useful and relevant, giving them tools they can use to further integrate technology into their current lesson structure.

Right now I am preparing for a session on using Skype in education. I am calling it, “Bring The World Into Your Classroom with Skype.”

I have used Skype on a personal level for awhile now. I started using it (and sharing it) with a few teachers at my school just recently. The interest level is finally picking up so I am holding two sessions of this workshop.

We just recently held our first video conference. Two of our English teachers contacted the author of a book their students are reading. A Skype session was planned and, even though it had its hiccups, the experience was invaluable - not only to the students but to the adults who attended. Our local newspaper sent a reporter out and a wonderful writeup appeared in the publication. I absolutely LOVE the opening line by the reporter, Tom Bailey, Jr.:

“Millington students stepped into the future Tuesday to explore the past.”

I expect I will write more about this experience soon. I will post my handout and presentation file for others to use. If you have used Skype with your students, please comment on this article and share.