Robin Martin is a STAR member of the Discovery Educator Network

Make Fun of Yourself!

BeFunky.comIf you have not created a cartoon animation of yourself as an elf, Santa or trekker, then here is your chance. Make a fun avatar for use on your website or send an e-card to a family member. These are fun, but check them out completely before using with students. Some sites contain partial nudity or characters in skimpy outfits. In addition, be careful of some of the ads that are used with these web sites. You too can be an avatar and be ready for the sequel.

  1. Yearbook yourself
  2. Create your own Marvel Comic SuperHero
  3. The Hero Factory
  4. Bless This Chick
  5. Spud Yourself
  6. Simpsonize Me
  7. Elf Yourself – not available until November 1st
  8. Terminate yourself – turn your face into “The Terminator”
  9. Madmen Yourself – men and women
  10. 12 sites to cartoon yourself – preview yourself – not sure about some of the images for school
  11. Santa Yourself
  12. Scrooge Yourself - available at holiday time
  13. Many many create yourself and make items site – preview before using with students
  14. Jib-Jab
  15. Animate yourself – preview before using with students
  16. Trek Yourself – make yourself a StarTrek character
  17. Build your Wild self
  18. Make an Anime
  19. Lego Yourself - make a LEGO character
  20. Create an M&M piece
  21. My Avatar Editor
  22. Monster Mash by JibJab
  23. Make a Western Style Wanted Poster
  24. Mr. Picassohead
  25. Make a beast!
  26. Diary of a Wimpy Kid! – wimp yourself too
  27. Avatar in video using webcam

Posted on March 31st, 2010 by Robin Martin
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Wild Pacific

I didn’t know there was such a critter as the sea butterfly? Or that in 40 years seafood would be off the menu. How about underwater gardening? All of this and more can be viewed on the Discovery Show “Wild Pacific”. Not only is it filled with facts and critters you have never heard of, but the filming is extraordinary! It has been on for hours and to me one of the most interesting segments was the one on “How they filmed Wild Pacific”. Not only can this show be used to show science facts and study of oceans, but it can be viewed as a critique for film making. Obviously we can’t take our students to Fiji to film sharks eating the Albatross that floats on the sea, but the description of filming techniques was really moving. By the way, the underwater garden was a beautiful display of coral growing on special tables. They are replanted into areas that need a boost. This in-turn makes the reef healthier for the life-cycle of the sea. Look for this on the DiscoveryChannel. Not sure if it will make it to the streaming library, seems like it would be a great DVD for sale.

Posted on August 21st, 2009 by Robin Martin
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More and Muir Green with Lance Rougeux

10 things you can do to become a GREENER Teacher

  1. Blackle.com instead of Google.com, black background on the search page. Blackle also has games. Does Blackle really save energy?
  2. Green resources from DiscoveryStreaming. There is a documentary about the tornado that hit Greensburg, Kansas narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio. This is how the town rebuilt with environmental impact being a requirement.  Also, PlanetGreen has a series by Bill Nye “Stuff Happens”.
  3. Photo essays – created by animoto, photo story, PSA, comic, use DES clips to create something or Tips for a greener planet.(recycling)
  4. Share materials through MediaShare – don’t use trees to print
  5. Glogster – multimedia posters – BUT create it through glogster.com/edu
  6. GoogleEarth – you can create a scavenger hunt for students to travel around the Earth.
  7. Thinkgreen.com/classroom – A new partnership with DiscoveryEducation. This site has tremendous resources for teachers about recycling and sustainability including details about which type of glass is best recycled. This includes good lesson plans, worksheets, writing prompts and other links and resources. Be sure to get the ThinkGreen widget to show how much energy you saved. You can take the widget and put it on a website, or on a GoogleEarth placemark. How cool is that?!? Have some students count the recycled cans and/or bottles and post it on your school web page.
  8. www.wecanchange.com – Siemens created a”We can change the world Challenge”. Great contest for kids/schools. There are fantastic resources for setting up the process in your school. There is a contest where the winners will be on the Discovery Show “Planet Green”.
  9. donorsChoose.org - find funding sources from places you may not even know about.
  10. teacherpaperless.blogspot.com – Follow this blog for ideas about how to teach without using paper. You can find all the presentations from the DENLC and DENPC on the National Blog on Monday.

Posted on June 27th, 2009 by Robin Martin
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Wufoo

Many DEN groups are using the FREE web application, Wufoo.com for event registrations, gathering information about who is coming to an event. You may use it for short contests as well, “Send the answer to this question in the next 24 hours…”

After you log in you will see a list of forms that have been created by others. You should duplicate and change name of form and you can customize it to your needs. You should delete documents when finished because the whole country of DENLCs will be using Wufoo for their events too. It will get crowded with everyone’s events here.

In the data, you can add/delete information. When creating a form, be aware of what you want to call the form because it directly relates to the URL which is created. You can embed this form into your blog to collect information/registrations. You can export the data to that it is live and other members of the LC can see the registration information. This is important because you want to tailor your PD to the attendees. If you have 11 HS Chemistry teachers registered, you don’t want to present sessions on 3rd grade language arts.

Notifications can be sent if you check and set up the information. The notifications can be sent text, email or RSS feed. Have one person as the receiver of information. You can take the code and embed it into your blog. And finally, make sure you uncheck the Enable Payment box in the upper right corner.

Posted on June 27th, 2009 by Robin Martin
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Learning Through the Funnies With Bran Fountain

You can use the funnies or comics for a timeline, historical figures, instructions, dialogue punctuation, character analysis, plot analysis, storytelling, pre-writing tool, post-reading tool, and teaching concepts. After a field trip to the zoo where kids take photos of turkeys, create point of view about Thanksgiving. Also teachers have used it for creating digital citizenship, point of view of planets talking to planets, world languages, and drawing.

Verbal linguistic learner – visual images from DES and point of view, placing characters in sets and backgrounds encourages spacial learning.

Mathematical/Logical - how would you create the layout

Kinesthetic/Bodily -  using Goanimate (some questionable content) you can create action figures, use with grammar, science concepts, replay stories or book reviews in student’s point of view,

Interpersonal: Who are your characters friends? Using software called Pixton. Can have photos of people talking, animals conversing,

Musical/Rhythmic: personal stories, poetry illustrated

Comic Life now available for the PC as well as the Mac. Pixton is web based. FTC has a book of how to use Comic Life by a DEN STAR. Stop by their booth at NECC. You can export them to the web. Use for life cycle of cateillar, photo sharing, step by step process(FCS cooking or science lab example).

GoAnimate – put DES in the background by using images, photos or movies. Can grab images from flickr.com and cut part of it to your screen. You can use audacity to add voice. BE aware that this is not an education only site.

Xtranormal -Text to speech animation video. You can put it on DES images or chose the backgrounds they have in their set. You can select the voices, but it is very computer-like. Can use it as a conflict-resolution scene, can use as a book report, weather report. BE CAREFUL there are some inappropriate actions or already created videos. You should create and download yourself to YouTube. There is a pay version for about $30 per year. Teryl Magee is in contact with them to work with an educational version and she will let us know what happens. The FREE version has 2 characters and basic backgrounds.

Pixton – They have a school version and it is FREE. You can move the individual body parts by clicking on them – be careful what your kids will do with it!

Brads presentation is available on MediaShare “Learning through the Funnies!!”

Posted on June 27th, 2009 by Robin Martin
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Get Your Goggles On-Tech Ideas for Science With Patti Duncan

Patti uses wikis with her classes and kids are paired with others from class and must complete all conversations online through the discussion boards. All rubrics are on the wiki as are the handouts for kids to print on their own after they lose the first one they are given. You can also lock the wiki editing at 11:02 so no more changes can happen. Then you can give points for their contributions. She also has “How to” on the wiki as well.

Scramble and Write: Find images in DES print, laminate and put with students on a table. Kids must put the photos in order and write about it. Example: frog life-cycle. Notes for Smartboard – put vocab on side and image in center, kids put words on right part of the image.  Can use as pre assessment or post assessment.

Teach with music: from DES next to the search box choose audio. Find songs for frog life cycle, water cycle, Mendelev, and Marsh.

Play the sounds of a biome as kids enter room and have them guess what biome and why. This can be a writing activity. Save PPT show as PPT show then they will not be able to edit or change the preso as it is online. This is good for differentation lessons or slow learners who want a LOT of time to process information. Give them a note guide to fill in as they watch the video.

Frog Glog: Create a Glogster about the frog cycle and kids can click to different activities to learn each section. You can put a voki widget into a builder. You can create a voki of yourself reading the directions for the writing prompt. You can also create an avatar get the html code and embed it into the builder assignment.

Posted on June 27th, 2009 by Robin Martin
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Media Sharing Session at DENLC

Media Share at the DiscoveryEducation will be found through the Educator Resources tab. MediaShare is a digital media management server;  a place to organize internal documents, files, forms, a publishing platform, internal memos, and/or presentations.

This would be nice for presentations and workshops so that all pieces are bundled together on one page and you don’t have to have  10 tabs open. In the description field, you can place embed code, such as VoiceThreads or Glogsters. In addition, you can publish Blabberize, Glogster or other documents here, to keep students from getting lost viewing things on a site that may not be educational (Blabberize as an example). DES has uploaded many presentations from over the years, such as the virtual conference in April. It also includes the chat window that matches the presentation.

There is a direct link to these files from outside the DEN. You can create a complete lesson and give the URL to your students and they can create a user name (anyone can get into the education resources by creating an account), and view what you wan them to see.

When searching for lessons that have already been uploaded by other DEN members,  search the DES MediaShare to find information for you such as:  8th grade/images/world languages.

Subscribe by RSS feeds as well.  Especially if you like one person’s resources and want to know when they post something new.

Posted on June 25th, 2009 by Robin Martin
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More on YouTube

Did you know:
“From 1948 to 2008 NBC, ABC, CBS broadcast more than one million hours of programming. In the past 6 months, individuals posted more than a million hours of original video on YouTube alone-more than the networks broadcast in the previous 60 years combined”

The above quote from ISTE magazine Learning & Leading with Technology provides some useful tips for teachers to consider when adding a video project to their curriculum. Everyday, people carry devices that can be used to document the world around them with cameras, or movie recorders. In addition, they can watch assigned videos on these small devices anywhere, anytime! Today’s student had the tech savvy and hardware to create a short video anywhere, anytime and we need to provide some educational foundation to their process.

A great example of using video, from the article mentions Abbott and Costello’s debate over how to share 29 donuts with 7 people fairly. This B&W video clip might be just the right hook for starting a math lesson on fractions. Finding the right clip to enhance you lesson is time consuming, but there are hundreds of sites that provide this information.

Additionally, not everyone is a creator of video, so providing the right snippit of learning material can help students with visualization of concepts of science, cultures of the world, geography, or the motion of sport. You should know by now what wonderful resources DiscoveryEduation streaming provides for classrooms.

Try using a 1 minute video to introduce a concept or connection to your lesson.

Posted on June 5th, 2009 by Robin Martin
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Free Keynote and PPT Templates

Finding new templates can be a tiresome task. Now there is a site that has many in one location!
These templates can easily be used by PPT or Keynote. There is a unique newspaper style template and there are many many more on the links on the side of the page. They are all FREE and some of the themes include birthday, trains, maps, soccer, education, Easter, Christmas, more, more and more. There are over 100 different templates from which to choose. Enjoy browsing and make sure you have a lot of time because you will get lost in looking!

Posted on June 1st, 2009 by Robin Martin
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