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FotoViewr is a cool new site that I came across today that allows you to access your photos from your Flickr or SmugMug account, create a slideshow, and embed it into your blog or website.  Why do I like FotoViewr?

1. You don’t need to sign up or create an account to use the site.
2. Easily access your photos by entering your username and the “tag” of the photos you wish to view.
3. Pick a “gallery” tool to showcase your photos.
4. Embed the slideshow using the code Fotoviewr provides for you.

The transitions remind me of PicLens (otherwise known as Cool Iris), which is a new way to search for multimedia on the web.  The effects are very similar to what I see in FotoViewr. If you can’t see the slideshow below, try viewing this blog in Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.

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Welcome, Fall!  October is here! 

To get into the Halloween spirit, why not carve a pumpkin online?  There are two sites that I have found that are fun. 

 The first one located at theoworlds has the most options for your pumpkin.  It gives you to option to cut “freeform” or with straight lines only. When you connect the lines of your cut, then the piece automatically falls out of your pumpkin.  You can change the background picture, add your own message, print your pumpkin, save it to view later, or send it to your friends in an email.  Don’t forget you can turn on and off the spooky background music! As you can see from the picture above, the pumpkin is realistic instead of a cartoon.  I like it!

The second pumkpin site is called the “Pumpkin Simulator“.  You have a cartoon pumpkin to carve on, and when you are finished, you click, “done”.  At that time, a lit candle is added to your pumpkin and spooky music plays.  It doesn’t have any of the other options as the first pumpkin site, but it still provides entertainment!  Happy Halloween!

Often teachers come to me and ask for a way to resize their pictures at school.  Luckily teachers have access to Image Blender, a photo editor by Tech4learning that allows them to do this, but they only have access to it in the computer lab.  If teachers want to resize or edit digital pictures from the comfort of their own home or classroom, Pixlr is a great option for them.

There are several online photo editors. What makes Pixlr so special?  It’s one of the only free photo editors that allows you to resize pictures in pixels. This is incredibly handy if you are trying to find a picture to fix exact pixel sizes for avatars or icons on websites.  Pixlr was created for non-professionals and has many features including: resizing, cropping, layers, filters, etc.  When you are finished with your picture, you have the option to save in JPG or PNG format.

Kitzu is my newest find!  I mentioned it briefly in an earlier post, but I finally had a chance to look at it this weekend.  Kitzu offers free, copyright-friendly, and educational media packages for teachers and students to use in multimedia projects.  Most packages include about six pieces of media around an educational theme from the 21st century that can include images, documents, audio clips, video clips, and illustrations.  As a teacher, download one of these kits to use with your whole class.  You will be amazed that each student uses the media differently to create a unique project.  For teachers who do not know where to start, Kitzu is the perfect first step for integrating with PowerPoint, Photo Story, Movie Maker, or Adobe Premier Elements.

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On Wednesday, August 13 I traveled to Silver Spring, MD for “The Day of Discovery” at the Discovery Communications Headquarters. In addition to breakfast, lunch, and wonderful door prizes, we were treated to two keynote sessions and three break out sessions that taught us how to incorporate “Discovery Streaming,” a paid subscription to a site that is packed with educational multimedia for teachers to use.

Scott Kinney presented on “The Media Evolution”.  He supported the idea that media should be incorportated into the classroom as an instructional aid since 8-18 year old children spend 6 1/2 hours a day with media of some kind. Many teachers do not realize all of the skills that are needed to create media for school projects: researching, locate and gather resources, prewriting, writing, editing, storyboarding, and reading fluency skills.

Hall Davidson, Director of the Discovery Educator Network, presented on “Digital Media with Students in the Classroom.”  He discussed scaffolding the use of digital media in student projects until students are comfortable with the skills.  For example,

1. Begin with creating PowerPoint presentations and embed videos from Discovery Streaming.
2. Create slideshows from your digital images in Photo Story.
3. Create videos and movies with narration in Movie Maker.
4. Finally, create movies in Adobe Premier Elements and introduce chromakey skills to the kids.

In addition, Mr. Davidson told us about Kitzu, a website of resources for digital media for student projects and Jakesonline, a site of wonderful tutorials to get you started.

Matt Monjan presented “50 Ways to Integrate DE Streaming”.  While most of this was a review since I saw matt speak a few times before, I still learned a few new tricks.  For example, I discovered that you can now insert embeddable code, or widgets, into DS’s writing prompts and you can add more than one image.  Also, if you search “AFI” in Discovery Streaming, you will find several film making video resources to use with your students.

Hall Davidson also presented on “Teaching with Cell Phones”.  I spent most of the time on my phone so I forgot to write most of it down. However, I learned that you can podcast directly from your cellphone using Gcast.com.  You can also upload video directly into YouTube from your cell phone.  And did you know that you can take a poll from your phone using text massaging and see the results live on polleverywhere.com?   I tried this out – SO COOL.  Or try this one – if you send a text message that includes a fast food restaurant and a menu item to 34381 you will receive a message with all of the nutritional information about that food item.  For example, text “McDonald’s Big Mac” to 34381, it will tell you how many grams of fat you are about to enjoy.

Dennis Swain presented “Embedding Multimedia: PowerPoint Presentations that Pop!”  While I knew that we cuold embed videos and hyperlink to videos, I didn’t realize you could embed videos and still have all of the controls of Windows Media Player available (play, rewind, fast forward, etc).  To do this, open PowerPoint and go to a slide.

1. Click the “View” button on the top toolbar.
2. Click “Toobars” and “Control Tool Box”.
3. Click on the “hammer” button.
4. Scroll to “Windows Media Player” and select it.
5. Crosshairs will appear.  Draw a box on the slide where you want the video to appear.
6. Right-click the box.  Choose “properties”.
7. Click on the three dots on the box. (…)
8. Browse to where your downloaded movie is on your computer.  Select it.
9. Under “playback options”, uncheck “auto start” and check “stretch to fit.”
10. Click OK.

Now you will see the embedded video with the Media Player controls. While the video is playing, you can right-click the video and choose “Zoom” and “Full screen”.  Ta-Dah!

Thank you, Discovery Education!

I came across a site today called Light Doodles, where an artist (Lori Stotko) uses LCD lights in a dark room to create light pictures. This is possible by setting the camera on an extended shutter speed so that it can capture the movements made by the light. Stuart Nafey is the photographer that documents these pictures. An example of one is below:

Even more amazing is the tutorial page that allows the visitor to see the process that Lori goes through to create a light doodle and how to create light drawing pens.  There is a 20 second video that shows Lori at work and is worth checking out.

Art and science teachers can use this site to explain basic concepts.  Art teachers can use this to show lines and photography objectives. Science teachers illustrate concepts of light using this site.  Check it out, and order some cool notecards with Light Doodles!