Tech+Ideas

Have you seen the **tag clouds** posted by each of the front office staff members' doors? Mrs. Smith created them. Google "tag cloud" and you will get serveral websites to get started. Speaking of Mrs. Smith, did you see her Vodcast on the school's webpage? Great job. Vodcast, now there's another idea.

Podcast --audio. Vodcast --video. When I think of podcast, I think of a recorded lecture. BUT, that is not the case. Have your students create podcast as a book report, recitation of a poem. Create of vodcast of an experiment in action. You know they want to tell their other teachers about just what happened in class today, so SHOW it!

[|Blabberize.com] is so FUN!! Using a picture, you can "make" it talk. Check it out. I saw uses of this where a students blabberized a drawing of an animal and then discussed the habitat and other information about that animal.

Have you heard of [|Webquests?]I define it as a scavenger hunt/research project. The teacher provides the project overview online. The students use the internet to find the answers and create their presentation. In same cases, the entire class participated in completing a large project. [|Here] is a site for amazing tutorials and examples.

[|"The Monster Project"] I recently read an article that used the same principal as an activity I did in 9th grade. We wrote a descriptive story, one that described a monster or alien. We accompanied this story with a drawing of ours. The teacher traded our stories with those of another class, but did not give the drawings to the reader. The reader then drew the monster or alien, based on the descriptions in the story. The original drawing and story were returned to the author along with the reader's drawing. In this article, rather than drawing the monster or alien, the classes used the "Paint" programs to draw the figure and type the story.

I just had a great idea about using [|www.livestream.com] for my school's morning announcement. We don't have a broadcasting network set up, but by using this online source and all of us tuning in, we could stream the announcements. We could even have "correspondents", as my sister suggested, in various classrooms in the building to get one site news!

Ever get to the computer lab without the URL you needed? Consider **online bookmarking!** As a site like [] you can create your favorites or bookmarks online! This is especially helpful when you have a list of sites for the students to use. Create a bookmark page for a certain topic or class!!