Another Technology Video

I plan on showing this one next week.

Technically, it's an ad for Samsung.  I think it's a pretty cool way to remind students that we are using technology to overcome barriers. 

This will take some intro. . . . in part because it IS an ad.  Our school does have hearing impaired students so it will be relevant in their world.

Don't forget to paste it into safeshare.tv!!!

Turn Clip Art into a Paint Color Sheet

Students love to use Paint.  Sometimes I have the perfect color sheet to go with a lesson, but it doesn't translate well as a color sheet in Paint.  Depending on the image, the colors don't fill in the space completely when you use the fill tool.

You can fix this and turn any clip art image into a Paint color sheet.

1.  Paste your image into Paint.  (You can put it in Word first and recolor it to be outline only.)
2.  Save your image as a monochromatic bitmap.

3.  Open the monochromatic bitmap image.  You will notice you have no colors!

4.  Save the image AGAIN as a PNG file.

5.  Use your fill bucket and color!  Just make sure to open the PNG file in Paint and you can do what you want to it, no weird white spaces.

My favorite way to use this lesson is when I teach an internet safety lesson to Kindergarten.  I've created a color sheet that goes with a book I read, Little Red Hoodie.  Fortunately, Little Red Hoodie has a karate chopping Granny who is a little more internet savvy than she is, and Little Red ends up just fine.    We read the book, discuss, then color our sheet in Paint.

iPad Tips Bulletin Board

The big bulletin board in the hallway. . .

I reused my snowman from last year.  He lost part of his arm somewhere so I printed out an iPad for his hand.

The snowflakes are different "tips" for iPad use.
 
1.  Double tap the home button to view open apps.
2.  Press and hold to save or copy.
3.  Press the home button and lock button at the same time to take a screenshot.
4.  Press and hold letters to type accents.
5.  Four finger swipe to alternate between apps.
6.  Double tap to highlight.
7.  Double tap shift to keep it pressed.
8.  Hide the keyboard (I put a pic of the button)

I still don't have the hang of the panoramic feature on the iPad camera but I'm going to get it right one of these days!

Updated Shortcuts Posters

I've had a lot of requests for the updated 2013 Office Shortcuts posters.

Shortcuts stayed the same.  Title of the posters changed.

Here they are:

Office Shortcuts Poster 1

Office Shortcuts Poster 2

A Few New Posters

Links to the PDFs of the posters are in blue above the posters. . .


TEXT FEATURES

And I have two posters for next year finished. . .

SUBWAY ART RULES
SUBWAY ART WHAT WE'RE LEARNING

My "Two Ways to Delete" poster for Delete and Backspace

DELETE/BACKSPACE

As always, please don't sell my work!  You are welcome to use it in your classroom.  Thanks!

Posting Photos Online Dangers

Every year I do lessons on internet safety.  A couple of years ago I saw this news report on my local channel and realized I needed to show this to my students.  It's pretty scary.

Don't forget to paste the link into safeshare.tv for your students to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vARzvWxwY

Plan on more than a few minute discussion.  I show this to third through fifth grade and talk about Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and the other "flavor of the month" apps that are going around.  This video easily generates a half hour conversation.  The really awesome thing is that I always get phone calls and emails from parents who thank me. . . their kids have gone home and shown them how to turn off location services on their camera and explained the dangers to them. . . they're grateful!  It's pretty gratifying.

Second Quarter Bulletin Boards

I am woefully behind in posting!  We're on the fourth (or fifth. . . I've lost track) week of our second quarter.  Here are my newest bulletin boards:

Big bulletin board on my back wall. . .

Poster explaining the different "drives" we have on our computer.

We just got Office 2013 so I redid the posters from the 2010 version.  I will post links to those soon. . ..

This one doesn't really have a big bubble in the middle.  I was playing around with the panoramic setting on the iPad camera.  I couldn't get it right. . . but this one was the best.  The iPads are poster board, silver wrapping paper and print out of apps.  The words were printed in Word as an outline on scrapbook paper, cut out and laminated to black construction paper before being cut out again.

I will post links to the posters soon. . . please send me an email if you would like them and I haven't gotten them up yet!