Wylio and Digital Citizenship

If I had a penny for every time I "found" a new website that would be great for a teacher to use, I'd be a bazillionaire! With just a little bit of reading up on educational news sites, I found the PC site to search for "free to use" images. They may be copy-righted, but they are free for anyone to use. The site is called Wylio and it acts like a search engine for free pictures. The picture below is an example of one of the images in their database. It's a great resource for students to use when they need images for their multimedia presentations.

Using technology comes easily to students, but do they really know how they should be using technology in today's world. Let me ask you this: how many of you have been in the movie theatre only to be blinded by someone's cell phone screen at some point during the movie? We are so digitally connected that we don't even think of how we are going about using and abusing technology. Wylio is a great site to reinforce respecting other people's work and giving credit where credit is due. Find out more about Digital Citizenship (norms of appropriate, responsible behavior with regard to technology use), including lesson plans, on the website Digital Citizenship Education. Another great source of information on the nine elements of Digital Citizenship and lesson ideas is Mike Ribble's website on Digital Citizenship.

Image found using Wylio. (Free) aAccount creation needed- linked to Google.

Infographics as a Creative Assessment

I just saw this great video from Kathy Schrock. She presented her idea at the 2011 ISTE Conference about using Infographics as an assessment tool. Kid are inundated with visuals throughout there whole day, so this is a great way to combine digital images with educational content. Here is Kath's website for more information and resources on using Infographics.

Infographics as a Creative Assessment from Kathy Schrock on Vimeo.

Our Web 2.0 Lives

Computers and technology have made our lives easier in many aspects. However, most days I feel like I'm on information overload. I go into work, turn on the computer and have to check 4 different email accounts. Then there's Facebook status updates and Twitter updates to take care of... every few hours?? Google and YouTube are amazing resources, but they draw you into their sites. You only went on to "quickly look something up" and before you know it, you're watching a mock video about the a BP Coffee Spill. I dread turning on my computer at night. I just want to be without having to tune into the rest of the world. As I was watching the VMAs on MTV, there was one FB status update after another about them. It was nice to watch the award show with so many people. Before I knew it, I was 'liking' and commenting on the hundreds of posts throughout the night and missing the actual award show. Welcome to Life 2.0... where you have to multi-task and somehow manage your time while using all of these Web 2.0 resources.

3D Presentation Tool

http://www.prezi.com

Today I learned all about creating a 3-D presentation using prezi.com. It is a free online tool that allows me to create presentations. I signed up for an account and before I knew it, I was creating a prezi! I double-clicked where I wanted to add text. Then when I click on the text again, there were three circles. If I wanted to move the text, I clicked on the inner-most circle. If I wanted to resize the text, I clicked on the middle circle and moved my mouse up and down to resize it. The outter-most circle allowed me to rotate the text so it could be in any direction I wanted. I am LOVING this website as a tool for presentations!