AKA Riptide Furse

Here is just another example of the great people I have met through Twitter and the DEN.  @CLykowski shared this photo with me that her daughter took because of my name. This TOTALLY made my day!

Full size

You Are a Comma

You are open minded and extremely optimistic.You enjoy almost all facets of life. You can find the good in almost anything.You keep yourself busy with tons of friends, activities, and interests. You find it hard to turn down an opportunity, even if you are pressed for time. Your friends find you fascinating, charming, and easy to talk to. (But with so many competing interests, you friends do feel like you hardly have time for them.) You excel in: Inspiring people You get along best with: The Question Mark

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

TEXTANIM - animated text generator

This is a really fast and easy way to get some movement (not too much now) to your web page or blog postings. Just make your different choices and click GENERATE. You are given a preview and then a download link. I also liked the Preview link for the fonts. Clicking the preview link opened a new page with a preview of all of the different fonts you can choose from. It made picking a font very easy.

Here are some samples.

Technorati Tags: sites, links, animation, animated, grphics

Flickr: Flickr 888

I love, love, love Flickr. I think if a teacher wants to have a digital camera in their classroom they must sign up for a Flickr account. There are just too many ways to use the photos not to require it. If I could, I would forbid printing the pictures using the color printers at school. You take digital pictures - USE THEM DIGITALLY.

Well now Flickr also does cool projects that you can say you were a part of. So join in the fun. Coming up in just over a week is Flickr 888. How cool is that? Here here is what they posted on their blog.

How can you participate? Take a photo any time during the twenty-four hour period that’s August 8th where you are and then share it with the group. We’ll accept one (1) contribution per Flickr member into the group from noon PST Friday, August 8th until Tuesday, September 2nd, noon PST, 2008.

NASA - Solstice Moon Illusion

Heads up or at least look to the horizon to see the moon appear extra large. So grab your cameras and start snapping those photos. If you get a picture then put a link to it in the comments.

Check out the NASA link above to see an explanation about why the moon looks bigger during the month of June.

Picture -

Uploaded on April 28, 2007
by ~ Hypatia ~

Spread Firefox | Download Day 2008

How would you like to tell your family and friends and grandkids that you helped break a world record? Well you can next Tuesday. Just download Firefox 3 to all of the computers that you manage on Tuesday, June 17. That’s when the new version of Firefox 3 will be released. It will be awesome so come join the party.

Technorati Tags: firefox, download day, world record, browser

About Add-Art | Add-Art

I really love this Firefox extension. I strongly recommend Adblock Plus which hides most of the advertising that you see on web pages but I am now a believer in Add-Art. Now you can get the ads replaced with art.

Tag Galaxy

Tag Galaxy is another amazing way to view Flickr photos. I’ve covered other cool ways to search the web and Flickr before. Space Time was introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show this year. I little bit later I found PicLens thanks to Kevin Jarrett.

So here is the next great thing - Tag Galaxy. Instead just doing a screenshot this one really needs it’s own screencast to be appreciated.

Check it out!

MyStudiyo.com - MyStudiyo Prizes & Comptetitions - Create a quiz, embed it on your site or blog, all in just 5 minutes!

My StuDIYo is a great web tool for creating quizzes. Do you see how it works in STUDY and DYI (do it yourself)? I know! I didn’t either. Well take a look and give it a try. Send me your link or put it in the comments and I will promise to take your quiz and maybe pass it along on twitter and beyond. Take a look at who is behind this great contest too.

All the songs this month are 1 minute 30 seconds long. I think I forgot to say something about that.

Here is #139 05-17-08.mp3

2008 Summer Reading - Barnes & Noble.com

2008 Summer Reading - Barnes & Noble.com via kwout

Here are the details for this year.

1. Kids read any 8 books.

2. Kids use the Summer Reading Journal to tell us their favorite part of each book. A parent/guardian signs it when it’s complete.

3. Children bring their completed journal to a Barnes & Noble store between May 29th & September 2nd, 2008.

4. We’ll give them a coupon for a FREE book! They choose from a list of exceptional paperback titles.*

* Eligible books will be listed on the coupon. Choices must be made from eligible stock. No special orders. Limit of 1 form per school-age child (grades 1-6), please. Incomplete forms will be ineligible for free books.

Send Your Name to the Moon

Send Your Name to the Moon via kwout

NASA is going back to the moon and your students can go along. Well their names can go along. If you register at the site for the mission NASA will send the names of all those that register on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, spacecraft. You even get a certificate to show that your name was sent to the moon!

Find out more about this mission and the Send Your Name to the Moon project at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/main/index.html

I’m going! Are you?

Coastal America

Coastal America via kwout

This would be cool for any student. Their artwork would be hanging in the Smithsonian. This is a quote from an email our science lead teacher forwarded to me. Don’t misread it. It is not Grade 5 but five different categories.

 ART CONTEST FOR STUDENTS (K-12, College/University) - This is an opportunity to compete in 5 grade categories, with winning paintings, drawings, photographs, or other visual art work displayed at the Smithsonian’s Ocean Hall, opening this fall. Submissions must include an explanation on how they reflect one of seven essential principles of ocean literacy. For full information, see the attached flyer, or contact Maggie Hunter, Coastal America, 202-401-0045, margaret.e.hunter@usda.gov, or go to http://www.coastalamerica.gov/2008artcontest.html

The Seven Essential Principles of Ocean Literacy:

1. The Earth has one big ocean with many features.

2. The ocean and life in the ocean shape the features of the Earth.

3. The ocean is a major influence on weather and climate.

4. The ocean makes Earth habitable.

5. The ocean supports a great diversity of life and ecosystems.

6. The ocean and humans are inextricably interconnected.

7. The ocean is largely unexplored.

Cheers!

Laura

Laura Grape

Senior Environmental Planner

Northern Virginia Regional Commission

www.novaregion.org

Ploik is my little buddy that I created very quickly at Pictaps. It took a few trials and lots of errors to learn the drawing tools but if you’re not too persnickety you can have a drawing dancing with the crowds. Give it a try!

I just signed up for Photojojo. Why? For fun. Do you remember what you were doing 6 months ago? How about a year ago? 2 years ago? Well if you take a lot of pictures and use Flickr, Photojojo is the person that takes the photo album off the shelf, blow the dust off, and says “Remember this picture? Wasn’t this fun?”

It really was easy to do and fun to see the photos they picked from a year ago. Psssst I think they made them look better because I don’t remember taking such great looking photos.

Here’s what you see at their web site. http://www.photojojo.com/timecapsule/

Then you get an email with a few of your pictures from a year ago. Wait! At the bottom is a text box where you can actually send yourself a message that will arrive with your photos in a year or two years depending on the time frame you set. This is what mine looked like.

Once you click the Talk to the Future button you get this page.