Thing 17

You could spend an awful lot of time viewing these presentations. I think this could be a very useful tool to help you in the classroom so that you can use a great presentation that is out there instead of reinventing the wheel. It is a given that strong visuals make for great lessons. A great presentation from one of these two sources, Slideshow and Zoho, could be just that.

I discovered that the best products come from the Featured Presentations or Most Viewed or Most Downloaded. When you try to search by topic, you can go through endless pages of junk. I searched "technology" and got a lot of junk. I am especially critical as a Computer Education teacher when it comes to professionalism with slideshows, not cluttering the slides, and not writing a novel on each slide. There was a lot of this going on. But I did find some interesting things within the Featured Slideshows section. I found some great slideshows displaying amazing photographs. I added these to My Delicious Bookmarks so that I can send my 6th graders here during our short segment on digital photography. I am hoping they will be inspired by what they view.

I am embedding one of these presentations displaying such photography. I know it is beyond what a 6th grader can do, but I think the shots are so eyecatching, they excite me to take shots of my own. I also think I can use these shots to discuss angles, closeups, and choosing objects to shoot that aren't just portraits of friends. Students will enjoy these photos surely.

Thing 16

I wish I had endless amounts of time to explore all that is out on the Web. It is such a short time to explore and discover, it seems, once I put the kids to sleep and really get to check out new sites that can help with my curriculum, my students, and even me and my family as well!

But here I am, happy to have a nice little list to choose from for Thing 16. After looking at my choices and quickly assessing a few to see where my interest might lie, I decided to check explore bubble.us. I thought this might be a sight that could be a great resource for both me and my students.

The first thing I liked was how I could try it out and decide if it was worth signing up for. I began to create a concept map for my Computer Education curriculum. I created a very quick version displaying the different technology concepts learned from 5th grade to 8th grade. It was very user friendly and allowed me to save it in my account and also share it or embed it on a blog or website. I decided to try it out and save it on my blog that I am currently testing to be used with my 7th graders (Kidblog.com- Thanks Terri!) It was easy to embed although appears a little small even though students can zoom in to their area of interest. I think I will have students use this for their notes during research. They can access it from home and school which is nice and they can easily print it or embed it as well. My seventh graders can even add them to their blogs for me to check over from home...an added advantage (one with less paper peddling too).