Having a play with Picasa 3

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The first positive you will notice about Picasa is that it is FREE. The second positive; Picasa locates all of the photos on your computer and brings them to one place. This means that you can view a lot of funny photos that you had forgotten about 🙂

While exploring Picasa I came across the ‘People’ feature. This feature uses ‘face-matching technology’ to recognise each of the faces within your photos. While it isn’t always accurate I still think this is a great feature. Students or parents could use this feature to easily and quickly find photos of themselves, or in the parent’s case, their children.

Picasa could be used within a school setting to share photos with students, teachers and parents. This tool would be a great way to keep parents up to date with everything that is going on within their child’s classroom. Picasa could also be used by teachers as a visual record of activities they have produced within the classroom. Teachers can share ideas with each other by uploading photos to their web albums (although I am not sure how private these web albums are).

Students could also use this software to:

  • Create their own photo albums
  • Upload and edit pictures from the internet to use in school projects
  • Upload and edit their own photographs and create their own albums to share

While the effects in Picasa are not all that amazing, they are still easy to use, making Picasa easily accessible to primary school aged students.

Back to school with PhotoPeach

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I just had loads of fun making this show on PhotoPeach. While my show is not very educational, if at all I can see the benefits of this type of technology. Tools such as PhotoPeach could be used by students to create:

  • Digital stories- Students could write dialog for a short story, have fun taking some photographs to match their dialog, then combine the two to create a digital story on PhotoPeach. Student’s drawings could also be scanned onto a computer to use within a digital story.
  •  Quizzes- Students can create a quiz on a unit of work for their peers to complete. For example, in a mathematics unit of addition students could design a number of worded questions involving addition. Students not only benefit from creating the quiz but also from partaking in it.
  • Recounts- Younger students could use photographs from a recent excursion to create a recount. Each student could be given a photograph and asked to write a sentence about what they did on the excursion.
  • News on the Ultranet- Students could share a recent excursion or activity within the classroom by creating a slideshow to display for parents watch on the Ultranet.

Check out the ‘PhotoPeach for Education’ page to see some of the advantages of using PhotoPeach as well as some examples.

While I had fun making my slideshow on PhotoPeach I do have one complaint. I would have liked to download my slideshow with the song I had selected from Youtube but I was unable to. I then decided I would upload the song from my computer but, I was unable to do this unless I upgraded. However, PhotoPeach makes it very easy to share your slideshow on blogs and social networking sites without having to download the clip.

Would love to hear your thoughts on PhotoPeach 🙂

Using edublogs.org within the classroom

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Hi everyone,

I would just like to share with you this blog titled SBEC Chemistry and Physics created by chemistry and physics teacher, Tammy Skinner. I think this is a wonderful example of how edublogs.org could be used within the classroom. One post I found rather interesting was ‘Chemistry Lab Safety Project’. Tammy’s blog depicts edublogs.org as an extension of the classroom; a place where students can find resources, information on class projects, course outlines, ask questions and receive answers, all when they are not at school. While this is an example of a blog for secondary students I think edublogs.org could also be used with upper primary students in the same way. Check it out 🙂

 

Teachers and social networking

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A recent comment on my post titled ‘sharing information on the internet’, sparked my thoughts on teachers and in particular the social networking site, Facebook. What are the issues with teachers and Facebook? For me there are two issues that stand out. The first is students and teachers adding each other as ‘friends’ on Facebook. What are your thoughts on teachers being friends with their students on Facebook? Should it never happen or are there exceptions? Can teachers be friends with their students on Facebook if the student no longer attends the school in which the teacher works? For me, I think that creating exceptions for particular students seems a little hazy. In my teaching career I think I will steer clear of becoming friends with my students on Facebook to avoid the haze.

The second is teachers keeping their personal lives personal. I know a few teachers who, after entering the teaching profession have had to up the ante on their Facebook privacy settings to avoid students becoming involved in their personal lives. I think it is important for teachers to do this in order to keep their personal and professional live separate. Steps to change these privacy settings? I have no idea.

Check out the following article from the Sydney Morning Herald titled ‘Facebook opened up to school teachers’ to see some of the benefits of teachers using Facebook in schools as well as some of the warnings.

Please feel free to share your thought on teachers and Facebook or even other social networking sites.

Thanks for reading 🙂

Uploading a Youtube clip to your edublog

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To upload a Youtube clip to your edublog follow these steps. You may find it helpful to perform each step as you read it.

Step one-

Locate the Youtube clip you would like to embed in your Edublog post.


 

 

 

 

 

Step two-

Click on the ‘share’ button located under the Youtube clip.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Step three-

Click on the ‘Embed’ button to obtain the embed code for the clip. This code will be used to embed the clip onto your new blog post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step four-

The code you need will appear below the ’embed’ button. Copy this code.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step five-

In your new post on edublogs.org click on the ‘HTML’ button, located to the right of the screen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step six-

Paste the embed code that you have copied into the HTML tab area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step seven-

You can change the size of the video by altering the numbers following ‘length’ and ‘width’ in the embedded code.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step eight-

To view the clip in your new post select the ‘preview’ button or ‘publish’ the post. You may also chose to add text to the post using the ‘visual’ tab either before or after you embed your video.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hope this helps 🙂

I am using Audacity

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Hi everyone,

So I had quite a bit of fun with Audacity this week. I had a go at using most of the effects, including changing the pitch and speed of my recording as well as creating an echo effect. I have also added a bit of a daggy song to my Audacity recording which I found on Youtube.

The song is titled ‘Technology song for kids’ and is sung by the Polka dots, it’s a bit of fun. I was able to change the volume of the song and fade the music out at the end, all thanks to the helpful Youtube clip titled ‘Using Audacity’. Hopefully if all goes well I will be able to upload my audacity recording to my blog. Here’s hoping you can see it now 🙂
audacity 1

Helping students be cybersmart

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Hi everyone, just a quick post to share a website with you. I found a website titled ‘Cybersmart’ on the Department of Education and Early Childhood development website. In the words of the ‘Cybersmart’ website:

‘Cybersmart provides activities, resources and practical advice to help young kids, kids, teens and parents safely enjoy the online world. Cybersmart also offers training and resources for schools and materials for library staff. Developed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, Cybersmart is part of the Australian Government’s cybersafety program.’

Will also post this website into our Diigo group.

Click and enjoy 🙂


Sharing information on the internet

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I have recently updated my profile page on Diigo by adding an avatar and writing in my blurb. While doing this I felt a little hesitant to add a photograph and share information about myself. Is anyone else worried about the privacy issues related to all of these difference websites? When adding your information to each of these sites how often do you think about who will read it or what you are sharing? I think this is an issue that needs to be explored with students in this internet age. What steps would you take as a teacher to make sure your students are being safe on the internet?

This comic if from the website ‘off the mark’ for more click here.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading 🙂