Back to Work/PB Works Academy

Well back to work today. I completed the PB Works academy last week. I really enjoyed the academy and all the great ideas and wikis it provided. The academy was totally free and very helpful with weekly homework. I also received my Discovery Star Educator packet in the mail! I have so much to do where to start?

Google Teacher Academy

Great New Things (Web 2.0 Tools)

Wow! In the Edutopia (http://www.edutopia.org/) June/July Issue I read some great articles and was introduced to two new Web 2.0 Tools. Now these are not New tools but they are sure new to me one is Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/) and the other is Voice Thread (http://www.voicethread.com/). Scratch was created by MIT so you know this is a genuinely student centered site with wholesome creativity bundled into genius activities. The other voice thread is a slideshow creator with the ability to add voiceover and share with other voice thread members. You can embed your creations and invite others to become users and view your slideshows.

June Stuff

Currently I have enrolled to the PB Works Camp, and decided to complete a 23 things list (still deciding which one to follow) and I read Twilight (I wanted to know what all the commotion was about like a year late, read it one a Thursday night) and I am reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. My summer will begin on June 29! I found a converter yesterday to convert my Mpeg-4 videos to avi so I could import them to Movie Maker 2.1. I know I could have used Movie Maker 2.6 for Windows 2007 but not all our district computers have 2007 so..... It worked GREAT! It was called Pazera_Free_MP4_to_Avi_Converter.

Some tech tools

Today some tech tools were discussed. One of those tools was Zamzar www.zamzar.com a neat converter for those times that you need a change in file type. Another was Penzu www.penzu.com penzu is a creative way of journaling online. It has a neat notebook paper look. The other was a favorite of mine Animoto www.animoto.com its a slideshow creator that is very cinematic. You can add music, text and pictures and it creates a unique slideshow. These tools were introduced by Region One Technology Integration Specialist Sandra Cadena to 23 Language Arts teachers at PSJA Memorial High School. The teachers were awesome they ran with all the tools introduced today. We also used some flipcams and had them create small video clips edited on Microsoft Movie Maker.

I was so positively moved today by Adriana's blog that I took a second look at blogger.com. I have an edublog but blogger has now become better with google on its side. Yay! Today during a Region One training I started brainstoring a way to get others on board with some Web 2.o tools. So here goes nothin!