Thing #6

I loved making the jigsaw puzzle. I used a picture of my daughter and me. I thought it would make a great puzzle due to all the blue in the background. I think kids would love this! Matter of fact, I'm hoping that KISD doesn't block it because I would like my publication students to play around with it.

The trading card maker was another awesome tool. I would love to have students use this when they are researching authors, poets, and/or other people. Every year one teacher has the kids make a hand made trading card to give to their favorite teacher. I can't wait to share this site with the teacher so the students can make really professional trading cards next year that will wow the teachers even more. Again, hopefully, I can get to this site while at school because now that the yearbook is done, I think my publications students would enjoy making trading cards.

I have to confess that I still don't feel I have conquered this all this web 2.0 stuff. I had to call a friend and ended up asking my daughter for help. I always find it difficult to get my creations (like the the puzzle and trading card) saved to my blog. As I type this, I started laughing. I feel like I'm on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" and I'm using my lifelines to complete this task.

Thing #5

Thing #5 - Flickr

How did I not know about this site?! I'm the yearbook adviser at my school and I love to work with photography with my students so what a great site!

Flickr is a photo sharing website which is one of the fastest growing sites on the web. Anyone and everyone can upload photos. People can also make comments on photos thus making it an interactive 2.0 technology website. Flickr is also free so what a bonus. Once you upload photos, you can make them private or public. Of course, copyright is always an issue so Flickr has diffferent settings for different photos. As a teacher I would use the Creative Commons part of the website because these photos are not copyrighted.

Flickr uses tags which are keywords you can use to search for pictures. There are also groups where you can find people who have the same interests as you do. People can do so many things with Flickr. Besides uploading and sharing photos you can also edit your pictures. I can see my publications students exploring this site once we meet our final deadline.

I can see myself spending tons of time on Flickr however I have tons of work to do so for now it will have to wait, rats! I found out that libraries are doing many cool things on Flickr. The one that grabbed my attention was the 365 Library Days Project . This is a group which challenges librarians to upload a total of 365 photos. There is a lot of discussions going on within the group for ideas to use with the pictures, etc.

As an English teacher, I love to use picutres as prompts for writing, so again, wow, this site will be great for me. Point of view is an easy objective to master with the use of pictures. I found a great picture of a wet dog in a bathtub. The really great thing is that the dog looks just like my dog. I would love to have my students write from the point of view of the wet dog.