Thing #12

Google calendar allows teachers to produce master event lists of planning student activities.  Like all other Google extensions it is easy for novices to navigate and produce amazing results.  As a single mother, I have so many irons in the fire that they are difficult to manage.  Google calendar provides a means of visually depicting doctors’ appointments, staff meetings, homework due dates, school events, and many more activities I have to track.  It can be accessed easily.  My calendar is on my phone and whenever I open up my email at work I can view my calendar.  

Google translate is a good way for teachers to keep their foreign language parents informed.  Anything can be translated into any other language.

Google Translate

Thing #11

Google has always been my favorite search engine, so I chose to explore one of its extension sites.  Remembering that Google is user friendly with multiple listings under each topic, I chose Google Blog Search to begin my exploration.  Google’s counterpart proved to be as easy to navigate and I found a wide range of information.  While using Google Blog Search I realized that as with all research the better you define your topic, the higher the quality of data provided.  Google Blog Search produced a multitude of educational resources.

Next, I ventured onto Technorati Blog Search and was able to navigate around the site with almost the same as easy as Google Blog Search.  This site provides several useful blogs of interest to me.  Unfortunately, http://www.topix.net was not only more difficult to use, it had a limited amount of topics of interest to me.  The most interesting blog I found was http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/blog/ because it has the best art related curricula for me.  It is very easy to maneuver around the site as well.

Thing #10

Really Simple Syndications (RSS) is a time saver for busy teachers.  Since I serve four hundred plus students every week, I need access to multiple websites with creative art ideas.  Sometimes, I spend an hour researching sites for projects and finding related academic information.  RSS provides opportunities for instant viewing of comparable topics.  The free Google Reader allows me to access information readily and leaves more time for planning/teaching.  I felt compelled to share this resource with my fellow teachers and they had the same opinion.  This is not a resource for students, but they benefit from the information provided.

Thing #9

This assignment was a fun way to brag about my daughter.  My beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter has taken up Motocross racing.  The contrast is unfathomable and this application allowed me to capture those feelings.  I chose to place her photograph on a Seventeen magazine cover.  She has sent this to all her friends to announce this new phase in her life.

Since I am a new at using Flickr, I had to have help placing the photograph on the magazine cover.  Unfortunately, when I attempted to position the picture it misaligned the magazine title, so I was not able to drop the picture below the print.  It also would have been more fun if I had control of the text so I could title the lead story “Teen Model Takes Up Extreme Sports.”

You can find this application on http://www.fakemagazinecover.com, which provides access to Flickr.  Parents would enjoy seeing their children’s class on the cover of their own magazine.  Each student would be responsible for publishing an article about class events and include photographs.  Their families would treasure printed copies.

Thing #8

Life is a puzzle and this unique site lets you turn your pictures into puzzles.  http://www.imagechef.com allows you to create very dramatic images with the click of your mouse.  This was a very enjoyable site to use and it is user friendly.  The picture I chose to use was a mural that I painted in my high school gymnasium when I was a senior there.  I chose this picture because I took it when I was teaching chemistry there last year.  Not only can it be used to create novel reminder notes for your students, it can also be used to decorate your classroom.  Students could employ the graphics on this site to paint covers for reports or to initialize their plan books for assignments.  When you make homework fun, the students enjoy it and retain more information.  Creative writing assignments could be replaced though allowing students to create their own picture puzzle.

Thing #7

After searching through multiple photos, I found several pictures that interested me.  Unfortunately, this is not a site my students would have access to because our school system bans Flickr and other similar sites.  I had to use my own computer to view the myriad of potential educational pictures available.

As an artist, I have always been drawn to black and white photography.  As one can see in this Flickr image of barbed wire, the sepia film creates a stark somber tone in the photograph.  The film depicts the subtle effects of the texture of the smooth, sharp twisted steel and contrasts it with the blurred background of the field behind the fence.  When producing this picture, the photographer paid close attention to the time of day it was taken and composition he saw in his viewfinder.  (Color would have lost the intent of the photograph.) The sharp pointed barbs offer protection to the cattle housed behind the fence, yet a clear view of the tempting grass lying behind it.  The farmer who installed it hoped the cows would respect the sharp points of the wire, when in reality they do little or no damage to the cattle’s hide.  My father’s fences have strands of hair all in it.  Need-less-to-say, he is constantly mending it.  The barbs tear his clothing and scratch his arms, but in order to keep the cows out of his hay field, he must constantly maintain the wire.  His bull leans on the wire applying a little more pressure each time until it snaps.  The cows carefully place their heads through the spaces between the wires and eat as far as their necks can stretch.  The calves just step over the bottom wire and duck under the middle strand.  For that reason, I have dedicated this photograph to all the cattle ranchers who fight this battle every day.

 

Barb wire oldschool by isfppoet at http://m.flickr.com/#/photos/isfppoet/4379880854/