Kristy: ebooks galore

Ever since Kris got me a Sony eReader, I’ve been entranced by ebooks. It’s amazing how many free ebooks are out there for the taking. Perfectly free and legal downloads. Of course, there are a great many for purchase, but you can also get some of the newer releases free from the library too.

I’ve found a lot of educational resources free in ebook form too. Amazing Web 2.0, Digital Storytelling, and Hippo Has the Hiccups are just a few of the recent ones I’ve discovered.

Now, chances are I'll never completely replace tried and true books. There is something about turning the pages and seeing my progress that I love...

Kristy: Wonderful World of Wikis

It took me a while to really jump on the wiki bandwagon, but I'm so glad I finally did. Wikis are so useful in the classroom. It's amazing how many uses there are for them. Not only is it good to have your students learn to responsibly publish content on the web, but it's a great collaboration tool.

Just recently I had my webmastering students create avatars, vokis, and animoto videos and publish them to a wiki. The results were amazing! They also had a discussion on there. I really wish I could share this, but I had to keep it private due to FERPA. (A few students used their photos in their posts but didn't get their parents to sign the proper forms.)

My BCIS students have been creating SuperHeroes or SuperVillains for a PowerPoint project, and they have shared their characters on this wiki:
http://themccoybciswiki.wikispaces.com/. It brought up so many opportunities for positive discussion, and the students are loving the project. There is so much animation in their voices as they compare their Supers and plot out their storylines.

I made this wiki for Kris for our 6th anniversary:
http://kmsquared.wikispaces.com/.

Since you are able to lock the pages, you can often treat your wiki like a blog.

My favorite website for this is WikiSpaces since they have the free educator wikis that allow for removal of advertisements and allow pages to be made private without the fee.

It's so very easy to create and contribute to a wiki. If you haven't tried it you should.

Kristy: Stock Photos and Tutorial Links

I have to admit, I haven't done way too much on my school blog sadly. It's just because I'm such an avid fan of Moodle and utilize it. I thought it might be confusing to have the students visiting my website, Moodle page, wiki, and blog. Regardless, I do have a lot of wonderful links on my school blog at the moment.

Needing free (or mostly free) stock photos? How about Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, or HTML tutorials? Visit Mrs. McCoy's Blog-ful of Links.

Kristy: GoAnimate

Thanks to a recent bookstudy I participated in, I've discovered a great new website called GoAnimate. There are a lot of fun animations already existing that you can browse, you can make your own animations, and you can have students make animations.

Here is one I created for my webmastering blog to introduce the concept of Web 2.0 to students. I recorded my own voice to use in it, and you can have four different layers of sound at once. I think I'll use this next year as part of my Open House speech or even with students at the beginning of the year to introduce some rules.

GoAnimate.com: Mrs. McCoy Web 2.0 by Kristy@fb

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com.

Here is one created by the creator of my Book Study about another great Web 2.0 tool called WallWisher:

GoAnimate.com: Wallwisher by Dovewhisper

Kristy: Widgets

I remember the days when the widget was an imaginary item. Those days don’t really exist anymore. There are widgets for websites, blogs, and more. Widgets are real now, and http://www.widgipedia.com and http://www.widgetbox.com/ have really embraced the concept.

Here’s an example of a widget you can grab:

Kristy: Pho.to photo options

I’ve recently discovered a great website. http://pho.to/ offers some easy photo editing tools, but it also has some great frames for photos. I’ve been playing with their photo presentation widgets today. It’s seriously a fun website for photographers or wannabe photographers (like me).

One of the fun photo options:

More fun photos:





A presentation widget of my Project 365 for the month of January:

January Project 365

A different presentation widget of my Project 365 for the month of February 2010:

February Project 365