#19 Image Generator

Now here is an area where a person can spend some time. I was blown away by how many different generators are out there. I played around with the Star Wars Crawl one for awhile and checked out the other sites you suggested. There are some pretty funny ones. In the end I decided to post to this entry on my blog a photo that is made to look like it is old time. This particular photo is of Joanne and I around a campfire on a horse camping trip a couple years ago up along West Cady Ridge in the Index area of the Cascades.

#18 Flickr

Really enjoyed looking around the site. Think this might be a great place to post family pictures rather than having everybody emailing them back and forth.

I picked this photo of a rock climber http://www.flickr.com/photos/jandiro/2230249683/ to comment on because it is one thing I've never been tempted to try. In fact I have never even been able to understand why anyone would want to do this to themselves. I know and can relate to all the arguments about the challenge and the adrenaline and the adventure but it is still beyond me why anyone would choose this particular sport.

#20 Newsletter in LetterPop

I am waiting for an email from LetterPop activating my account so I can put together a newsletter. More later. 6/21

6/22. Well, Beth let me log on using her information and I was able to play around with building a news letter. I worked on a flyer with information about my carving class but didn't really have enough pictures of the kids to make it work. I ended up doing a simple flyer about our annual family camp out and here is a link to it. http://letterpop.com/builder.php?newsletter_id=91178

Lesson # 17 (Swivel and data analysis)

This looks like a site with alot of potential if you can find the data set you are looking for or if you have a set of data to analyse. I was going to try to upload something from my computer but realized that all my data files have student names included in them and I didn't want to post that information "out there" even though there would be no real way for anyone to track the names.

I can see this site being really useful in conjunction with a student research project or as a source of slides for a Power Point presentation. Its pretty cool to be able to rearrange the way the data can be viewed.

I spent most of my time on comparing gas prices over the last few years, the number of shark attacks in the U.S., and a look at the higest paid athletes.

Lesson #16 (Thinkature & Concept Mapping

I'll come back and edit this blog after I've completed it. I have to wait to hear from Beth re: an invitation to concept map.

Well I'm back. Pretty interesting. I'm glad to know where I can go to build one of these maps. I've got a feeling I'll have a use for this site at some point. It would be perfect for flow chart, or to illustrate the relationships between people in an organization, or maybe the groupings and responsibilities of students in a class.

Lesson #15

This is an experiment in that I am creating this document in Google Docs and will attempt to "publish" it to my blog.

I find it very interesting that these "productivity tools" are now available on line. It will be even more interesting to see how this technology evolves in the future and what uses it will be put to. For the most part, right now, it seems to function ,in its behavior, much like the software applications now residing on my hard drive. It is hard for me to picture, at this point, exactly how I might use it in the future but I believe the experts when they say that it definitely has its place.

Well my attempts to publish this directly to my blog failed. I think it might have something to do with the blog info settings being not quite right. That can be a question I'll ask at the next Thursday help session.

Lesson #14 (Teacher Tube)

I watched a lot of videos at both sites but spent most of my time on Teacher Tube. One thing I like is the categories around which they have organized the site. One thing I found frustrating was that there were very few Tech Ed type videos. But it seems that's the way its always been even back in the days of the old film videos available from the ESD.

I chose a video titled "Forging an S Hook" wherein a student makes a hook using a forge, anvil and blacksmithing techniques. I chose this because it is something I think the kids would be interested in and we do have a small forge in the shop.

I've always wanted to make my own safety videos so that I could make them specific to our program here in LaConner and so that I could emphasize the points that I thought were the most important. Maybe the students could help make them and this could be a venue for displaying them.