Shout Out to Melanie Holtsman

I love this gal. She is smart, funny, quick and fabulously sarcastic. She is also someone who takes technology and runs with it. She is the Digital Literacy Coach at Chet's Creek Elementary School, and a good friend who teaches me endlessly through her blogs and connections. She has been the bridge for me from my stint as stay at home mom/ consultant to my current role as obsessive-about-learning-through-technology. Geek, whatever, it's all good. Anyhoo, if you want to keep up with her, and therefore keep up with a comet, or a rising star, go here . Thanks, my friend!

I'm officially addicted to learning...

about learning.

There, I said it. Now you know why I have dark circles under my eyes and why I always seem to be doing SOMETHING. I am never still, and I am exhausted, but I can't stop!

This site has free images-- generally a tough thing to come across. I don't know how much money I have spent on stock images, but I am sure I could drive a nicer car if I had the money back. Anyhoo...drumroll...

www.morguefile.com

From the site: The term "morgue file" is popular in the newspaper business to describe the file that holds past issues flats. The purpose of this site is to provide free image reference material for use in all creative pursuits. This is the world wide web's morguefile.

More Cool Things

Yes, more cool things! This means kids in the media center and kids in the classroom can be working on the same activity (possibly research) and it all comes together on the virtual notepad.This looks like a great tool. This is free.

http://etherpad.com/

Here are some ideas how it can be used in the classrooms. (taken from various sources...thank you!)

Using it with Guided Reading groups, where maybe 5-6 kids are reading the same book. Instead of having a group meeting where we all start discussing what the kids read, we begin by having the students all write their thoughts on Etherpad and begin responding to each other. Then, in our meeting, we already know the basics and can move right into the more in-depth issues where perhaps the group was not in agreement. We get more out of our in-class reading sessions as a result.

I was facilitating a workshop session where teachers were creating a lesson plan from scratch. At the beginning, on person was typing everything into a Word document. Other teachers were making suggestions and recommendations but the typist had a hard time keeping up with the process. I quickly created a new "pad" and sent the URL to all the teachers in the session. After they got to the site, they all were able to edit the document, make additions, and generate a well-structured lesson plan that they could all take with them. In this situation, not only did EtherPad help the process move faster, but it also gave everyone an opportunity to collaborate, and consequently, design a better lesson.

Student can use the tool to work on collaborative writing project.

Students can partner with other students in locations around the world use the site to generate / create documents products independent of physical location.

Students can invite subject matter experts to work with them on projects.

Another amazing tool for digital storytelling—
http://education.animoto.com/
It is free. Yes free. The sky is the limit when we can use these tools to engage our students!

Okay, Two Du Jour's! Jing

A must have to create tutorials on just about anything! (It is what I used to capture a previous post about how to set up a blog.)



http://www.jing.com/

Educational Tool Du Jour: VoiceThread

My school district has this blocked right now, but it is my hope to get it unblocked so we can use this amazing tool for collaboration. It is basically a free online tool which allows teachers to lead a discussion and then have various means of commenting, via the web, in real time. The teacher is the administrator and can set parameters and filter commenting. A true Web 2.0 tool.

http://www.voicethread.com/