Thing 7a

I really like my History is Elementary reader. She does a great job of finding interesting links about history. If you check out this link about the Great Depression be sure and have your sound on. While her comments are okay the music with the pictures are incredible....

Thing 16

Okay, Library Thing is really cool. I went ahead and created an account and found a couple of books. If you are interested her is my library. 

My favorite thing was the groups. For all you Twilight fans there is a group for you. They even had parodies for the phenomenon. 

Students could use this site to find out other works by authors, look for books on a topic. Teachers could also make lists of books that would be okay for a book report project. Also, check out the 50 book challenge.

Personally, you can make libraries of the books you read, your favorites, or just keep a list of books you want to read. 

My mother-in-law loves to read and I am going to tell her about this site!

Thing 14

I really liked wordle. I have always used wordsplashes in my class. This is where you have a student read a passage and then have them right words all over a paper that have to do with the topic. I could definitely use this in a classroom by having them do what they have always done, just this time on the computer. 

I also liked the tadalist. I made a list of places I would like to go visit for fun. This has a ton of possibilities. You could have students make list of writing topics, steps in a procedure, make a list of words they don't know in a reading passage, and so on. 

What I like most about these sites is that they are free!!!

Thing 13

This was a lot of fun!! I went to most, if not all, of these sites and it was interesting to learn all of the tools that are available out there! 

My favorite was probably Trading card maker . I made one for both my kids. With trading cards I was thinking that in the classroom I could make cards for parts of speech. I could also make trading cards for characters in the story or historical figures and have the kids complete details. 

I also loved the Spell with Flickr. I have seen where people have created those with photographs so it was really cool to quickly put in a whole bunch of words, which I did! I don't really know the academic implications but it was cool!!

Another site that I thought was neat was Flickr Color Pickr. The only way I can think of using this academically is when I help my ESL kids with color words maybe they can pick something out to review colors. 

Custom sign generator had a ton of options. I did have problems getting some of my pictures to work.  I would need to reduce the size of my pictures. 

Finally, I had a lot of fun with Imagechef.com. You could do a lot of encouraging things for students. This could be a great way to create fun notes for kids!

Honestly, I have spent way too much time on this thing!!!

Thing 12

  This slideshow was a cool thing to create. I am looking forward to making something  more personal next time. I used  http://rockyou.com/ to make my video just because it looked pretty easy to use and it was.  I had a hard time finding music that I thought worked with the subject but I like the song so I hope you appreciate it.  You can find it here.       

Thing 11

Okay, Flickr seems pretty cool. There are a ton of pictures, some of which I have to admit I am thinking why did someone post that? On the positive side there is a lot of really talented photographers out there. I especially like how you can search using Creative Commons.

I decided to look for pictures about tornadoes since my 4th graders have a unit on storms and specifically a fiction story about two kids hiding in a storm cellar during a tornado. It was very easy to find pictures. however, in trying to look for pictures of Texas tornadoes I was not as lucky. I was able though to find some really cool pictures. I have included one for you. i have not included it but I was even to find an old storm cellar that I will use next time we read the story.

I really like the idea about using Flickr for vocabulary by Teacher Dude. I would have to modify the lesson somewhat but I may use this for my ESL kids. I also like to idea of taking pictures and creating works of fiction as in Doorbells of Florence.

I see how this could be a great tool to let out students learn about. However, we need to shoe them how to use this education so that they do more than look for goofy pictures.

My picture is Tornado and lightning by by tlindenbaum and you can find it at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindenbaum/328304747/

Enjoy!