City Walk with Pixlr

This for the I Love to be IRL (In Real Life)! series of quests on 3D Game Lab. I used some pictures from a trip to Seattle. I love Seattle; I think along with Boston, Seattle is probably my favorite city in the United States. I can't say they are my favorite cities in North America because I've only been to Winnipeg (and that for a conference with precious little time for exploration)as other cities in North American but not within the United States. Of course, I'll readily admit that the two cities could be my favorites because they are among the few cities that I've traveled to for reasons outside of my volunteer work with Red Cross Disaster Services. There is something about seeing cities during disasters that tends to make them "not favorite", even if the people living and recovering from the disaster are amazing. Picture #1: I took this from the hotel room I stayed at during the Microsoft Innovative Teacher conference. Pixlr made it VERY easy to get rid of the one part of the picture I hated, which was the reflection from the plate glass window. I'm so glad I was able to get rid of it, because it is a gorgeous photo.

Picture #2: This picture was taken from the base of the Space Needle (if that wasn't obvious already!). I'm terribly scared of heights, which has ruined several opportunities for awesome picture taking, including from the top of the Berlin TV Tower and the St. Louis Arch (although this was achieved thanks to the students who were with me on that trip who grabbed my camera when it was clear that I was only up there because I felt it was my duty to make sure they weren't killed while that far up in the air!).

Picture #3: This was supposed to be a good photo, but wound up misaligned and far too orange. Pixlr allowed me to rotate it, put a dark frame around it, and tone down the orange... now its a great example of "good bye" and "thank-you" in different languages!

Microsoft Forum, Scrapblog

Okay...

This looks like something that I was hunting for earlier this season (see the posts on 'All About Me' and videos from august). In any case, this was an assignment for one of my graduate classes. I think I may update it... It worked fairly well despite a steep learning curve.

Enjoy.

Microsoft Forum

I will come back and add some descriptions, but for now, here are pictures...
Microsoft Forum Pictures on Flickr

All of the pictures are now posted, and tagged in Flickr. If you don't want to look at individual pictures, feel free to look at the post after this and enjoy the scrapblog.

I'm still behind in actually posting details from the Forum, because I managed to get the cold that was being passed around... I might get to that this weekend.

To Think I Met Them On...

Well... we've posted the first short video for our Salute to Seuss project. These projects are tied to the book, "To Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street", and became "To Think I Met Them On Park View Street". The students have, for the most part, done a quality job with these. I'm pretty impressed since this is the first time that we've gone through the whole process at all... Last year, I did a lot of the editing and putting things into PowerPoint for them, but this year, they're doing it. And not badly. I just wish we had more than 2 computers that could really run the projects. My old laptop is just so slow at this point that the student that is using that one gets frustrated and winds up just waiting for one of the desktops to be available.
Oh well, I can wish... its a practical wish since we're working on a grant for more hardware to do this kind of activity.

Integrating Web 2.0

We are starting the school year doing the Geography of the United States. One reason for this was to do some cross-themed programming with our English units for the Salute to Seuss project, but another reason was to give the students plenty of opportunity to explore what blogs were and how they were used.
We have a clustrmap on our classroom blog page, and we also have a huge US map hanging on our bulletin board. We're using Avery's 1/4" clear, removable dots to track people who visit our blog. We're not changing sizes or colors the way Clustrmaps does. At some point, we might add a world map to the bulletin board, but for now, I think the US Map is a good way to start.
This unit is also giving me the opportunity to help my students understand time differences, and learn a little about other places in the United States. We're starting with the West Coast, because of my trip to Redmond in about a week. As I mentioned in the last blog, I've left work for my students to do that relates to my trip. I've also promised to post pictures and details. I will actually post pictures and details here as well, although the classroom blog will have top priority for me.
In any case, if you're interested in looking at one of the activities the students will do while I'm gone, you can go over to my wiki and find this activity: Track A Flight.

The amazing power of web 2.0...

I had a revelation a few days ago when I was writing lessons plans for the substitutes who will be with my students when I go to the Microsoft Teacher Forum at the end of this month. The flash came when I realized that I could leave assignments for my students to do that connected with my absence from the classroom...
My students are aware and involved, because, after all, the project we submitted for the Forum was their work with the digital cameras last year!
The lesson plans that I left for the substitutes have the students answering 2 questions on each of the two days that they would have seen me: The Day 1 questions are:
What do you think Ms. Shepley will pack in her suitcase to take with her to Seattle?; How long do you think it will take Ms. Shepley to fly to Seattle? and Day 2: What 2 questions do you think Ms. Shepley should ask Microsoft while she is there?; Name 3 things that you have learned about Microsoft. The students will also be doing some other activities with our problem solving posters, some math, and working on memos and fax cover sheets.
It took a little explaining for them to understand about the time differences, but not as much as I thought it would. I might get an extra clock for the room and set it for Seattle time for them. We also had to talk about how I could access the Internet from where I would be, and be able to read what they wrote. In exchange for what they are posting, I'm going to try and post pictures of the events and some summaries about what we have done on our classroom blog page. This will be a first,