Put It In a Slideshow

This week in the technology world has led me to stumble across some pretty amazing stuff. Do you ever look on the web and notice neat slideshows of digital images embedded on their sites? Well I certainly did. Luckily this week has opened my eyes to the digital image world. Picasa Web Albums is a great place to store your photos on the web. The best part about Picasa is that you can access your photos from any computer with a web connection. Picasa also allows you to tag photos so that others can access them more quickly (if the pictures are public). It is important that people explore ways to create digital storage for photos on the internet. People have been collecting photos for years. When there is a fire in a house, most people go after the photo albums first. Now, pictures aren't lost so easily. One of my favorite things about Picasa is the fact the it allows you to embed your albums on a website. I currently have my scavenger hunt photo album on my classroom website. The embedded file automatically scrolls through the pictures in slideshow form along with the captions. This obviously has many applications in a classroom. Teachers can now store appropriate digital images and create an attractive album for students to view. It also allows a simple way for students to have fun with images on the web. I am very excited to discover so many ways to play around with pictures on the internet. This class continues to amaze me at how ignorant I was as to the tools available on the internet. I say bring on more tools!

Discover a Whole New Wordle

This was another interesting week in the world of web technology. We are beginning to take a deeper look at many different tools available on the web. This week managed to be a very educational class for me. Some of you may have heard of Wordle but may have not used it before (like myself). Wordle is a great tool for classrooms. One of my favorite strengths about it is its simplicity. It can be used at any age and for almost any topic. Wordle creates a word cloud based on words you enter and the frequency in which they appear. It doesnt "just" generate a word cloud, it creates a colorful and theme based cloud. I also learned just how many ways there are to customize your cloud. One of the weaknesses I have noticed is the fact that you can not go back and edit the words entered in the cloud. So it is important to be sure of what you have typed before you generate the cloud. I am very interested to explore it's uses in mathematics. I think it could be a fun way to create a cloud of random numbers to be put into equations. or even and answer bank for some equations. I haven't gotten a chance to explore all of it's uses in math but it seems to be a list of many so far. I look forward to learning about the other tools in the following weeks. I have a feeling that some pretty amazing things can be done with the combination of so many different tools. There may even be undiscovered uses!

 

Web 2.0 Tools

This was another adventurous week in the technological world. I have been briefly introduced to a plethora of tools available on the internet. I have only had the opportunity to look deeper into Google Forms. Google Forms is a great way to create quick and record surveys.You can even send out RSVP invites to whomever you wish via web. Although you have to have a Google account in order to access Forms, it is free to register. Registering will permit you to access many other tools from Google. I was unaware of of the free tools available for those who have access to the web. This will be great for teaching in the future. I can use each of these tools to better almost any lesson. Luckily they are user friendly enough that even the students can use them. These tools allow you to do anything from making a movie to creating a survey. I look forward  to the next few weeks where I will be able to gain a deeper understanding of the other tools.