Wimpyourself.com
Here’s a cute avatar maker – wimpyourself.com It’s based on the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books that are a big hit with students. Here’s my creation (this is suppose to be me!)
Gina’s students using the SmartBoard
The SmartBoards are getting lots of use in the school. Gina found some great spelling software that she wanted to use with the kids and within a minute of the image showing on the screen when we were testing it, the kids gathered around and wanted to dive in and start using it. The [...]
New School Year, New Operating System
I recently installed Mac OS X Lion to the iMac that I use so that I could interact with the new Mac mini server that we added to the network. Since installing 10.7, I have to say I’ve come to enjoy it, especially Launchpad. Sure, it’s just like going to the Applications folder but for [...]
Can an iPad 2 replace a laptop/desktop?
I added an iPad2 to my collection of tech products with the hope of being able to replace the need for a laptop as my home computer. Why would I want to do that? The first reason is size – why lug around a laptop when you can just carry an iPad? The other is [...]
Trike View
Just about everyone likes the street view of Google Maps so that they can get a realistic view of a location, but what about areas that aren’t accessible to a car? To visit these less accessible spots, Google created the Trike, a modified bicycle outfitted with Street View equipment. Collecting images since 2009, new locations have [...]
Augmented Reality
Heidi Hill’s Intermediate class had their first look at augmented reality in a classroom setting. Augmented reality was defined in 1997 by Ronald Azuma where reality and virtual are combined in real time and in 3-D. An every day (or at least every Sunday) example of augmented reality is the first down line during a [...]
Body Browser in Google
Yesterday, Google published Body Browser – a 3-d model of the human body. This is one of the recent cool things to come out of Google Labs. To use Body Browser, you’ll first need a Web browser with WebGL support. I went for the latest beta-version of Google’s Chrome then activated the WebGL and was [...]
Google Earth
We’ve been using Google Earth with Beth’s class looking at continents as well as the 3rd and 4th graders in Prudence’s and Heidi H’s rooms. Google Earth is one of my all time favorite applications and the kids seem to love it, too. I have them find specific cities or buildings and with the younger [...]
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive has a Moving Image Gallery which is a collection of some very interesting videos under News & Public Affairs. For example, there’s a collection of three days of TV news coverage following the 911 attacks and the Universal News Reels which go back to 1935 the Lindbergh Kidnapping case. The Internet Archive is [...]
More on Adobe’s Rome…
I’ve been using Rome with Prudence’s classroom exploring what the software can do and having the students develop techniques for exploring new software. Rome combines aspects of all the pieces of Adobe’s Creative Suite. It has a bitmap editor (PhotoShop), the ability to create vector graphics (Illustrator), animation (Flash), page-layout (InDesign), and the ability to [...]