katie.christo.blog

I’ve been looking at a lot of lists out there and am working on getting my summer reading list going – the six below are the ones I want to read most!

• Beyond Discipline by Alfie Kohn
• Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton Christensen
• The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson
• Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson
• Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative by Ken Robinson
• Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Here are two lists I found helpful:

• NPR’s Summer Books 2009
• Read Like Your Hair’s on Fire: An Educator’s Summer Reading List

What is on your summer reading list?

I am really enjoying reading on my iTouch and I have to say that I was a “paperdork”(Aaron’s fabulous term) before I downloaded Stanza on my iTouch.  Stanza is a free reader for your iTouch/iPhone.  I’ve tried out many different free apps on my iTouch but Stanza for me is the best.  The only thing I don’t love is that you can’t annotate text yet but I know many users have asked for that function.

I especially like that while in Stanza you can download ebooks right to your iTouch/iPhone with their Online Catalog.   The Online Catalog links to many different online sites but by far my favorite has been Feedbooks.

Feedbooks is a universal e-reading platform compatible with all mobile devices where you can download thousands of free e-books, publish and share your own content, and create customized newspapers from RSS feeds and widgets.

One of the other great things (thanks Kim) to do with Stanza is to use ePub2Go to convert your PDFs.  You simply go to the ePub2Go site and either upload or link to a PDF you want.  Once you have uploaded your PDF and it has been converted you will get an option: “I’d like an e-mail sent to my iPhone so that I can download the book to Stanza.” Then you just open your email, click on the link, and the PDF is downloaded into Stanza.

Also don’t forget to check out some free PDFs to add to your iTouch/iPhone using ePub2Go.  Check out The Manuals and ELI 7 Things You Should Know.

Links:
Stanza – http://www.lexcycle.com/
Feedbooks – http://www.feedbooks.com/
ePub2Go – http://www.epub2go.com/
The Manuals – http://the-manuals.com/
ELI 7 - http://www.educause.edu/Resources/Browse/ELI7ThingsYouShouldKnow/33438

I’ve been working on a page for my Middle School students to access for a little while now.  Through a lot of revisions and talking to kids I think I’m starting to get a page together.  The rough draft of it is on my wiki where I keep adding content: http://katiechristo.pbworks.com/Student-Page Currently I’ve got information on copyright, downloads, online identity and general FAQs. The site students are accessing now is here: http://bit.ly/TCv6m

What do y’all think?  Suggestions?  Things I’m missing?  Links to your own student sites?

I’ve written a post about the 6th Grade Health project and they have gone great – see the post here: http://katiechristo.edublogs.org/2009/05/08/6th-grade-health-project/. The 7th and 8th Graders also did technology integrated health projects.  All resources for the projects are here: http://katiechristo.pbworks.com/Health-Projects

The 7th graders were working on Responsibility and were responsible for their own baby (our babies were watermelons) for a week.  They had to take their baby watermelon everywhere, arrange babysitting, and take photos of their week with their baby watermelon.  The students then created a Photo Album that they presented to the class last week.  Many students used http://smilebox.com/ to create their photo albums, others used Windows Movie Maker or PowerPoint.  The presentations were great and the students had a great time with the project!

The 8th graders were working on Substance Abuse and created a Public Service Announcement.  The students used Windows Movie Maker and had to use all copy”right” images and music.  Their projects also turned out great!  The students were introduced to the project by watching many PSAs on YouTube.  Below is the playlist of 10 videos shown for the project.

Do you have a card or something to hand out to all the cool people you are going to meet at NECC?  If you don’t I’ve got to suggest Moo MiniCards! I’ve been using them for a couple of years now (mainly as my art business cards) and I just love them.  Moo MiniCards are little cards smaller than a business card and much more unique!  For around $25 (including shipping) you can get 100 cards with a different full color image on each.  On the back of your Moo card you can provide contact information and even your Flickr profile image. 

Designing your Moo MiniCards is wicked easy!  You simply choose your images from a site like Flickr or Facebook or upload from your computer.  You then choose how your images get cropped, personalize the back, and you are done! 

Check out this Flickr group to see how people are using them: http://www.flickr.com/groups/moo/

Moo also prints business cards, post cards, greeting cards, and stickers!

Image Attribution
Image: ‘Porta Cartões Moo‘
www.flickr.com/photos/89142790@N00/2535695565

I have just fallen in love all over again with Google’s Picasa! With the release of Picasa 3 you can now do even more with your images.  At this time of year when putting together slideshows of over 100+ images this is a truly great thing.  

Here’s how I’m using it:

• I’ve used the Star button to go through all the folders of images and star the best ones.
• Then I use the Star Filter button (green bar at the top of the screen) to show starred images only. 
• I then grab those images and use the Hold button (little green push pin) to keep them in the Photo Tray (bottom left). 
• Once I have all the best images in the Photo Tray, I use the Export button to save them in a folder on the desktop. 
• Finally I open that folder in Picasa and click the Play Full Screen Slideshow (green play arrow), set my timings and transitions, and the slideshow plays! LOVELY!

If you wanted to you could even make a movie from the folder with the Create Movie Presentation button.  Just a great little program and so useful at this time of year!  Anyone else using Picasa to get their slideshows ready?

I have the task yet again that I know many of us in Instructional Technology face each year.  What songs do you use for the end of the year slideshows?  I’ve already decided this year that I will be making individual movies in Animoto.  Now I just have to pick the songs and make sure they are “cool”.  This year I’ve figured out a new strategy – iTunes Genius.  I’ve found one song that I know the kids like and am using Genius to suggest other songs.  Whew!  What a relief! 

Anyone else have good ideas for picking those “cool” songs for slideshows?

I’ve just started working with 6th grade students on a video they are making for Health.  Students have to make a short (no more than 2 minutes) Public Service Announcement style video on either bullying or self image.  We introduced the project by showing students the videos below.  The project is going well and I can’t wait to see what the students create!

HEALTH – SELF IMAGE YouTube Playlist (5 Videos)

HEALTH – BULLYING YouTube Playlist (5 Videos)

After I gave my Presentations 101 training to my staff I was amazed at the amount of interest and how truly transformative it was.  The next day I had two teachers show me presentations they had made that night, two more are in the middle of creating a presentation, and one had even put their presentation up on SlideShare.  See below!

We are doubling the staff at our Middle School next year and my principal and I thought it would be a good idea to create a handbook we could give to new and returning teachers explaining how Instructional Technology works.  I’ve been working on the handbook for the last couple of months and it is finally ready to go!  I’ve found it a great exercise in really laying out what we are doing and where we are going next.

I’ve included the handbook as an attachment to this post (I’ve taken out the How-To section and any references to passwords).  Feel free to use and adapt – hope this helps some of you out there!

Technorati Tags: handbook,instructional,technology,middle,school,aup,standards