Saturday, August 15, 2009

Back to School

Time to iron the white shirt, put up my short pants, and t-shirts. It is time to go back to work.

Sunday, March 01, 2009

iWorks Numbers Training


As our middle school students reach the point in their science fair projects where they need to create data charts, our 6th graders learned to use Numbers on their MacBooks. Some teachers asked for step by step instructions for their students and others took a different approach. Instead of direct teaching how to use Numbers, many of our 6th grade teachers teamed up students and spent class time exploring how Numbers works. These student learning communities utilized online tutorials and Help documents. They also accessed posted documents on their student wikis to teach themselves how to use Numbers.

My vision of supporting teachers is to provide teachers with just in time support, links on teacher wikis to resources, face to face instruction of students, and whole class instruction. The key is flexibility.
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Sunday, February 22, 2009

John Blake has shared a video with you

Hi there.

John has shared a video with you: 1 to 1 Laptop Learning Initiative

His/her message:
This is a video highlighting our Central Middle School Laptop Learning Initiative, Whiteville City Schools, Whiteville, North Carolina-- where we are "empowering learners for a globally interactive future".

Sincerely,

John Blake
Technology Facilitator

http://animoto.com/play/rkIMhsXwvFH79uODoenGSw?from=share

If you like it, why don't you try creating one yourself? It's free and really simple, so head over to our site and give it a try:

http://animoto.com

We look forward to your visit! Sincerely,

The ANIMOTO Team

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Glogster

How I Resize Photos on My MacBook Pro

A: Here are several Photo Resizing Strategies I use.

1. Email resizing: In iPhoto, it is easy to select several images and click on the email icon. When Apple Mail launches, a window pops up and asks what size you want to send the images as....using that menu, I select small and compose the message. After that, the images resolve in the message, and I select all the images, then control click and select Save Attachment to the desktop. This is how I do it.

2. Export: You can export photos from an album or your entire iPhoto library to send them to others or import them into other applications.
Read more--; http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1100
If you opt to use this iPhoto Export feature, I here's a clearly written site: http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=294 This is a excellent "steps page".

3. Third Party Apps:
Picasa
The newest photo editing tool I have found that has a great free collage creating tool is Google's Picasa 3.0 Beta for Mac. My students like it too. It has built-in templates to modify the layout and auto scrambling of the images. Picasa has a few other great features like photo effects and photo slideshow movies with basic titles and captions. It is very easy to use. 6th graders just turn it on and go with it.

Resize!

This app is a simple program designed to resize a folder of pictures in one step. It's faster and easier to use than generic graphic programs... and it's free! http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16845/resize!

Comic Life

Bruce Ketcham, middle school history teacher and coach has been using Comic Life to create photo collages and add hip looking titles. His photo collages are mostly from his sports teams. I would love to be able to take these to a commercial photo processor and have posters made for the kids-- need to sell some bottles or aluminum cans I guess to make some extra cash to cover the cost. Comic Life integrates with iPhoto and images are re sized to fit the boxes or panes in the templates in the comic strips when you drag and drop the photos, they pop right in place. Titles can be quickly added with a variety of font styles that can be customized in a snap. Comic Life is not free, but is just a wonderfully flexible tool, I highly recommend it for laptop using classrooms. Students and teachers can invent ways to use Comic Life that are sure to dazzle and amaze the none believers.

Saturday, February 07, 2009

Snow Closes School

 Feb. 4, 2009. This a collage I made from photos taken on our snow day this past week. 
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Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Snow Closes School in Columbus County

Well, today was an optional teacher work day. I am hoping that since school was closed, I will not loose my annual leave day. The last time this happened, teachers that took annual leave ended up loosing that day. And the teachers that just stayed home did not have the day taken out of their pay. I need to ask that question tomorrow!

Enjoy the video.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Fw: MLK Day First Alert Forecast

Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone provided by Alltel

-----Original Message-----

From: WECT@subs.myweather.net

Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 06:55:57

To: Me
Subject: MLK Day First Alert Forecast

John,

It now appears southeast North Carolina could see some light snow late tonight and into early tomorrow! Before we see the chance of wintry weather tonight we have a few weather issues we must deal with this morning. A dense fog advisory is in effect through early morning for the entire area. Use your low beam headlights and don't follow the car in front of you too closely. In addition with the rain we saw yesterday and temperatures hovering near the freezing mark, we could see some black ice on bridges and overpasses so be careful! Later today it will be mostly cloudy and cool with highs in the low 50's. Tonight a fast moving low will move into northwest South Carolina. This storm will race offshore early tomorrow morning. It looks like we will see rain quickly changing to light snow by late evening. Overnight lows will be in the low and mid 30's with some light accumulation possible. Tomorrow morning winter weather advisories go into effect. Light snow will continue through the early morning. By 10 AM light snow will taper off to flurries as the low pulls further away from the area. Arctic air pouring into the area will keep temperatures in the low and mid 30's through the day. Wind chills should run in the 20's with a stiff north wind gusting over 20 miles per hour at times. Bundle up!

A very cold night is coming up tomorrow night with clearing skies and lows in many spots in the teens. A cold Canadian high will be moving into the southeast U.S. With the high near us on Wednesday it will be sunny and still cold with highs in the upper 30's. We expect one more very cold night Wednesday night with lows plunging into the low 20's. As the high slides offshore Thursday it will remain sunny but turn milder with highs in the low 50's. Friday will be even better with mostly sunny skies and highs back in the low 60's. Another cold front approaches the area over the weekend. Ahead of the front Saturday will be mostly cloudy with highs in the mid 60's. We could see a pretty good rain chance late Saturday into early Sunday. After some early showers, Sunday will be mostly cloudy and colder with highs in the low 50's.

Have a nice holiday,

Eric Davis

Click here for a hour by hour forecast for you community.

Meteorologist Eric Davis

Your detailed weather forecast is available. Click here:

http://pmc.myweather.net/PFP2/default.asp?host=wect

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WECT News

WECT is Where News Comes First with the best local coverage of news, weather and sports on Carolina in the Morning beginning at 5 AM, WECT News at Midday, plus WECT News at 5:00, 6:00 and 11:00.

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On this date in 1977 . .

Snowflakes were observed at Homestead and Miami Beach in extreme southern Florida.

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This message was sent to me as part of the WECT Personal Forecast service.

PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL MESSAGE!

Update: We may get 3 inches. OMG! There will not be a loaf of white bread or gallon of milk in Chadbourn tonight...panic time. ha ha Tip: Stay off the roads, this kind of weather brings out the Crazy in people.