Things 24 and beyond

Just returned from TCEA and I'm still digesting what I heard and saw. A lot of attention to blogs and wikis but I wanted to list here a few of the other things that caught my attention. I haven't had a lot of time to play with them yet so a listing is not an endorsement, just an note to take a look. Of course, you'll probably need to sign up for a free account or two!

Mixbook - make a digital book. Look at the World War I book by a high school class.

Kerpoof - digital storytelling in cartoon format. You pick a background, pick characters, tell them what to do. I played a little bit, it would take more but the kids would would probably be faster! There's a section for Fairytales.

Gcast - Haven't has a chance to look at this myself. The presenter said it was podcasting over the telephone so the kids were able to podcast straight from their field trip in real time-ish. They called, spoke and the podcast was up for others.

Flickr-storm - This allows you to search Flickr, select photos to put in your tray and then it gives a URL so that the students can be focused only on the photos you selected for the project. You can filter the flickr photos first by non-profit so you have the creative commons permissions.

Scrapblog - Another way to present info using your photos, text and voice if you choose. Haven' t had achance to play with it yet but the presenter said it was easy enough to use with his young daughter. You can embed your project but not download. Meet the teachers? Welcome to 3rd grade?

I'm sure I haven't done these programs justice in my quick explanations. There were many, many more of course and many of the more are listed on presenter Randy Rodgers website.

Thing #7 (for real) - Google

I google therefore I am. I do believe that you could spend a week doing nothing but exploring Google and still not see it all. I have been to other trainings, conference sessions and looked at things that were not part of this exercise. I've been using the advanced search for a few years to pull up powerpoints on lessons that I'm working on to see what others have done or to get some background info. I'm pretty sure I learned that at the TCEA Conference which everyone should have a chance to go to someday. I set up some Google Alerts but I realize I have no life anymore because there wasn't anything I was interested in enough to really care about being alerted to it! However the emails have come in and I see what it is about. I showed my UT student husband the Google Scholar about 2 months too late but there's always this semester. I set up a public Picasa Album which I can't seem to embed even though I can read and follow directions just fine. After fighting with it for 40 minutes, I'm done. It's public, see if you can find it. It's called Evolution of a Reader.