AKA Riptide Furse

People want to down play the socializing in SL. I say hooey. Socializing is the core of SL and the professional development commes along for the ride. See how much fun we had at the Halloween party put on by the DEN in SL.

It’s easy to search for “Halloween” in DE streaming and getting a few videos, several segments, a couple of songs, etc. What many of my teachers forget to do is also search for related words.

Doing a search for “pumpkin” returns even more videos, segments, images and even a pumpkin quiz.

A search for “witch” again brings out some nice related materials such as folktale and math videos.

What are some other words that can lead to other treats? Let me know in the comments.

Image: ‘Scary finger cookies‘
www.flickr.com/photos/35034358497@N01/283869088

Green and Black’s want to help us remember to set our clocks but also want to gives some chocolate to enjoy during that extra hour. So here’s the deal:

http://www.appreciatethedarkness.com/

As Americans get ready to turn back their clocks on November 4th at 2 a.m., Green & Black’s is inviting consumers to appreciate the extra hour of darkness by experiencing the intense, cocoa-rich flavors of Green & Black’s chocolate. Consumers can log on to www.appreciatethedarkness.com to receive complimentary samples of Green & Black’s Dark 70% and Milk bars that provide a truly unique and intense chocolate experience. This special offer will only be available from Saturday, November 3, 6 p.m. EST to Sunday, November 4 at 6 a.m. EST. 

Go to the web site today and sign up for a reminder.

Music Community : SoundPedia

  Right now I am relaxing listening to Doris Day. Yeah I know, but after listening to a teacher’s daughter’s CD of Tool and a line of teachers with problems it is nice. I just found Soundpedia and am trying out some things. I still haven’t looked at how they get around the legalities of allowing you to play full versions of songs.

I know I will be sharing this with a lot of teachers. I have shared Pandora and Last.fm with them. Those sites are more random. This one at least allows you create playlists. If you have used Soundpedia let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

I spent a few hours attending different session in the DEN Stream-a-thon. It was a fantastic day. I began in the morning by emailing all of the instructional technology coordinators in our district to remind them about the day.

I made it into The Builders session with Matt Monjan. Even though I have done numerous workshops on all parts of DE streaming, I still learn something new from the experts. I peeked at the attendees list and kept seeing all these people I work with. There were about 5 of us in there together. We started a backchannel chat for those of us on Skype. That way if any of us missed something another person would fill them in.

Our district is way behind in implementing Google Earth but all of us have been chomping at the bit. I sent an email about 30 minutes before the start of the session. I also twittered it. Hall Davidson had a packed house of over 100 people. Scanning the attendee list I was blown away that there were 10 of us on. Then there was a round of hellos from my fellow Leadership Council members. There was even a teacher from my building that was on during her lunch. Breakthrough! Her first webinar was the stream-a-thon.

Learned loads of stuff from Hall. The time seemed to go so quickly. Elaine Plybon shared file of lessons that was great. I was able to get it but I think it got so many hits that the link got overloaded. I ended up having to leave right at the very end of the session to actually implement that session. I was scheduled to work with a 4th grade class on creating a presentation about the rain forests of the world. Their presentation tool of choice - Google Earth.

I wasn’t able to attend one of the sessions that I wanted to do to travel time home. That was leading a workshop.

Later on though I went in for the Stealing from the STARs session with Lance. Most Excellent! I got loads of ideas so I really will end up stealing (borrowing) from them.

Here are just a few of many. Watch for the posting of presentation for more. Hall Davidson came back in and added to tips about using DE streaming and closed-captioning and also using iPods with DE streaming. He has everything on his Media Matters blog.

Moonk where you can create slideshows and flash movies easily.

Plotbot for script writing.

Much, much more…

Finally things began to settle down with DEN Town Hall meeting. Lots of info and exciting things planned for the DEN. I ended up heading into Second Life and did a little bit of decorating and playing. We have college philosophy class discussing utopias using our courtyard. They liked our decorations even with the screaming witch. BTW, we are giving away L$1000 every 30 minutes for our Halloween party this Sunday. Hope to see everyone there.

I want one of these for the blog widgets.

Commentt.com live audio and video messages and comments

Nicely done video on how to use the Mac software Camtwist and Ustream.tv.

So I have been trying to figure out how to do stuff with the new blogging system. Over at the DEN in SL we have been using Animoto but couldn’t figure out a way to embed the videos. The normal embed codes didn’t seem to work. Going through their help system I found the Wordpress plugin for Firefox from VODPOD. Didn’t seem to work either. The videos didn’t show up. Today after a long weekend I gave it another go. VOPOD also has a bookmarklet for posting videos. BINGO it worked. So head on over to VODPOD and get your bookmarklet. It should work for most videos sites.

Win Lunch at YouTube for Helping Fight Illiteracy

 The top fundraiser gets round trip airfaire for two, to go anywhere in the world, as well as a piece of artwork donated by the Spar Street, a tour of YouTube and lunch with co-founder Jerry Yang, and a 3-month appointment of a virtual personal assistant to help you handle your business. See here for more prizes.

This is a pretty nifty tool. Extremely easy to use. I just posted the code in this entry to get it to appear. Don’t forget to click on the banner.

Free Website Ribbon Generator - For Your Site Or Blog

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