Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Photostory
For my project, I used Photostory to create a story about my recent trip with my family.
I always have my students write about thier families, or things they do with thier families. I also use a prompt about a memorable moment. I think this would tie in well. My students can create a Photostory which hits on the main ideas from the essay they create.
My obstacle will be having students use digital pictures from home.
I've sent home a letter to parents asking if they can send in digital pictures later in the year. I hope that with email, disks, or jumpdrives, they can make it in. I imagine I'm going to have to loan out a camera as well.
I found Photostory to be rather user friendly. This is the first time I've used it. The music portion worried me, but it was easy to use. I used a song thet is put out by the resort, so I thought it worked well. The narration was simple. I would like to be able to record a portion that spans two slides instead of slide by slide. Maybe the purchased version allows this.
I'm also thinking about having my students do a project using our classroom rules and expectations. The narrative aspect of this program would allow them to add their ideas.
Neat program!
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
I finished my PowerPoint
Wow!
That was a lot of work!
You can view my PowerPoint here in google docs:
http://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0Ae-tVYzPWgUcZGZ4aDc3dHJfMjRxbjduN2dn&hl=en
That was a lot of work!
You can view my PowerPoint here in google docs:
http://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0Ae-tVYzPWgUcZGZ4aDc3dHJfMjRxbjduN2dn&hl=en
Friday, September 18, 2009
making a PowerPoint
PowerPoint Project
For my PowerPoint, I decided to begin a series of presentations on the parts of speech. My students are just beginning to get into this in English, and I’m having them construct a flipbook to keep in their wrting folder this year. Instead of writing everything on the board, I can use this. Then I can show this on the board and allow students to use the clicker to advance it while completing notes.
I have never created a genuine presentation of my own before. I’ve altered many canned presentations from staff developments, but never my own. I found it very user friendly, and the smart graphics options really give the slides some visual interest. It didn’t take that long to create it either, so I’m going to work on a chapter three one tomorrow night.I was worried when saving it however. I always save Word documents as a 97-03 document, so it can be opened by others who may not have Vista, but when I went to save my PowerPoint as a 97-03 it told me that by doing so I may have a few slides which would not work. So, I saved it as a regular PP presentation.
For my PowerPoint, I decided to begin a series of presentations on the parts of speech. My students are just beginning to get into this in English, and I’m having them construct a flipbook to keep in their wrting folder this year. Instead of writing everything on the board, I can use this. Then I can show this on the board and allow students to use the clicker to advance it while completing notes.
I have never created a genuine presentation of my own before. I’ve altered many canned presentations from staff developments, but never my own. I found it very user friendly, and the smart graphics options really give the slides some visual interest. It didn’t take that long to create it either, so I’m going to work on a chapter three one tomorrow night.I was worried when saving it however. I always save Word documents as a 97-03 document, so it can be opened by others who may not have Vista, but when I went to save my PowerPoint as a 97-03 it told me that by doing so I may have a few slides which would not work. So, I saved it as a regular PP presentation.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Paying with Pollock- creatin a painting
I first tried the link from the activities list in the class. I thought something was wrong, but once I started moving the mouse, the painting began. I would have liked more tools or colors, but nothing can be seen on the screen.
Here is a link to the site:
After screen capturing the image, I cropped it in Word, but couldn't get the word document to load the this site, so instead, I copied it into paint and saved it as a JPEG. I signed mine with the pencil in Paint.
Check it out!
I'm going to look for other sites which do this as well, because I would be more inclined to let my students use it if they could print or save.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Picasso picture
I'm letting my friends know about this site... hilarious!
I did have trouble with the email function. I've done it three times and still haven't recieved the email with the link. (two to myself and one to my wife) I did however screen capture (print screen)it and will be posting it here. Once I get the email link, I'll post it as well.
PhotoShop.com
Photoshop.com is what I will refer to as a cooltool. I liked how simple it was to create an account. I uploaded a photo and twisted it. I bet my students would like to use this.
Here is a link to my recent picture project:
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Picassa Album
I've tried Picasa albums for my project. It seems pretty user friendly, but I would like to know how to work the link option at the bottom right portion of the screen with my blog for now, I'm posting a wed address here:
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
NAEP charts
I could not get the charts to copy from word into my blog so I screen captured them so the would show up.
This will still not show. There appears to be an error in the upload. I will try again with a different method.
This will still not show. There appears to be an error in the upload. I will try again with a different method.
On-line Graphics: NAEP scores
1. When examining the NAEP data for Reading, the percentage of West Virginia students who fail to obtain proficiency is alarming. According to the History or NAEP Participation and Performance, there has been little to no increase in the proficient scores since 1992. In addition, the students at basic score have remained within a five percentage range for the last six testing years, and advanced scores have fluctuated by only one percentage.
This information directly reflects a need for improvement in the area of Reading. It is my recommendation that further investigation take place in improving Reading instruction in our state’s classrooms.
I chose to represent this data with a separated pie chart. I felt this best because of the size difference which could be easily illustrated with the shapes. As seen in the blue portion of the graph below, it’s easy to see the differences. I used the scale of 100 percent, but don’t completely feel comfortable with creating them in excel like I did. I found the table which you use to create it a little confusing, but I realized that it starts with an example and the user has to alter it.
2. When examining the eighth grade reading scores to the national average for the 2007 NAEP testing year I am disappointed, especially as both a parent and teacher that we are not with the national average. The most recent score for West Virginia is 255, much lower than the national score of 261. I would also like to note that this has been low since 2003. I also find it alarming that only one percent of students met advanced levels during this year as well.
As a parent of two children in West Virginia Schools, I wish to encourage officials to examine why this drop in scores has occurred, yet not occurred in the national average. Before 2003, WV was actually higher than the national average. It is obvious that funding to strengthen our reading curriculum needs to be addressed.
The chart below exhibits this concern:
Figure 1 NAEP Scores: WV Eighth Grade Versus National Average
For this activity, I chose to create a dual stack bar graph. I think the scale of just the differences makes the years 2005 and 2007 look dramatically different. Having a 1-261 would not have looked as drastic. Both of my charts were created in Word using Excel. I thought that seeing the two bars together would be most effective in the second example. I do like that Word allows you to see small pictures of the graphs to help decide which to create.
1. When examining the NAEP data for Reading, the percentage of West Virginia students who fail to obtain proficiency is alarming. According to the History or NAEP Participation and Performance, there has been little to no increase in the proficient scores since 1992. In addition, the students at basic score have remained within a five percentage range for the last six testing years, and advanced scores have fluctuated by only one percentage.
This information directly reflects a need for improvement in the area of Reading. It is my recommendation that further investigation take place in improving Reading instruction in our state’s classrooms.
I chose to represent this data with a separated pie chart. I felt this best because of the size difference which could be easily illustrated with the shapes. As seen in the blue portion of the graph below, it’s easy to see the differences. I used the scale of 100 percent, but don’t completely feel comfortable with creating them in excel like I did. I found the table which you use to create it a little confusing, but I realized that it starts with an example and the user has to alter it.
2. When examining the eighth grade reading scores to the national average for the 2007 NAEP testing year I am disappointed, especially as both a parent and teacher that we are not with the national average. The most recent score for West Virginia is 255, much lower than the national score of 261. I would also like to note that this has been low since 2003. I also find it alarming that only one percent of students met advanced levels during this year as well.
As a parent of two children in West Virginia Schools, I wish to encourage officials to examine why this drop in scores has occurred, yet not occurred in the national average. Before 2003, WV was actually higher than the national average. It is obvious that funding to strengthen our reading curriculum needs to be addressed.
The chart below exhibits this concern:
Figure 1 NAEP Scores: WV Eighth Grade Versus National Average
For this activity, I chose to create a dual stack bar graph. I think the scale of just the differences makes the years 2005 and 2007 look dramatically different. Having a 1-261 would not have looked as drastic. Both of my charts were created in Word using Excel. I thought that seeing the two bars together would be most effective in the second example. I do like that Word allows you to see small pictures of the graphs to help decide which to create.
Friday, September 4, 2009
making some crappy graphs!
I was really surprised by how simple Crappt Graphs is! Extremely easy to use.
I had some fun and created a fake trips to the bathroom from my classes graph. I would have like to been able to set the scale along one of the axis though.
Pretty neat!
Here's the Link to My Crappy Graph
Link to crappy graphics example:
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Screen Capture: An Aha Moment
Image Capture Activity
Chris Ware
September 3, 2009
Ever had one of the D’oh moments like Homer Simpson? That’s about how I felt when I read about the print screen function from the link. I didn’t know it could be used to capture an image. I actually needed this function last month for a PowerPoint presentation, but was told the only way to capture what I wanted was to have a screen capture program since what I was wanting couldn’t be highlighted and copied.
I found an image on a blog of the making Fiends cartoon. My kids and my students really enjoy them as well as the podcasts. I captured the screen and placed it in Paint, then cropped out most of it. Then playing with some of the tools, I turned the picture into a decorated comic strip. I think this would be a good writing activity to use with my students. I could just imagine some of the pictures they could capture and write dialog for. They could create comic strips, political cartoons, or captions. I even made a very rudimentary speech bubble. Paint seems a little crude, but I guess you could zoom in to work in more detail.
I saved this image as a JPEG, with a file size of 49.3 KB. It opens on my computer with Windows Photo Gallery.
Chris Ware
September 3, 2009
Ever had one of the D’oh moments like Homer Simpson? That’s about how I felt when I read about the print screen function from the link. I didn’t know it could be used to capture an image. I actually needed this function last month for a PowerPoint presentation, but was told the only way to capture what I wanted was to have a screen capture program since what I was wanting couldn’t be highlighted and copied.
I found an image on a blog of the making Fiends cartoon. My kids and my students really enjoy them as well as the podcasts. I captured the screen and placed it in Paint, then cropped out most of it. Then playing with some of the tools, I turned the picture into a decorated comic strip. I think this would be a good writing activity to use with my students. I could just imagine some of the pictures they could capture and write dialog for. They could create comic strips, political cartoons, or captions. I even made a very rudimentary speech bubble. Paint seems a little crude, but I guess you could zoom in to work in more detail.
I saved this image as a JPEG, with a file size of 49.3 KB. It opens on my computer with Windows Photo Gallery.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Creating a graphic to use in the classroom
Creating a Graphic
Chris Ware
September 2, 2009
For my graphic source I wanted to create my own so I created a picture mosaic. I would use this activity in my English classes as a writing activity. I truly believe my students would enjoy this activity. My students could bring in digital pictures or sign out our classroom camera so they would have digital images to use with one of the mobile computer labs.
I used Microsoft Publisher for the first time to create this. I wasn’t sure which I could do it in, but other than paint or my Interwrite software, I wasn’t sure I had anything else I could create in. It took a little bit of time, but once I figured out how to layer objects and bring them forward or send to back, it went much smoother. Without those functions, I think it would be harder for my students to create a mosaic. I could really see my students getting into this.
An idea I had was to place three text boxes in the mosaic which describe your family. These three words would then be the main ideas for the three paragraphs which tell about the family. My students can than share their essay, while also displaying the mosaic in the room. This would also be a good item for students to display at our spring heritage fair.
I wasn’t sure of the best way to save it, so I tried saving it as a JPEG, File Interchange Format. I only did this because I’m used to seeing the JPEG name on files. Otherwise I don’t know much more to it. What I did like was when I open it; it looks like a finished product. Nothing can be moved around, and none of the editing lines show. I would have like to add some kind of design behind it, but I really didn’t like the objects available with publisher, and I was nowhere near a signal to use the Internet. There was the option to alter the designs provided in Publisher, but it only changes the color.
My file size is 243KB. I discovered this because I right clicked on the file and it allowed me to open a properties box. When I open it, it opens in Windows Photo Gallery.
Chris Ware
September 2, 2009
For my graphic source I wanted to create my own so I created a picture mosaic. I would use this activity in my English classes as a writing activity. I truly believe my students would enjoy this activity. My students could bring in digital pictures or sign out our classroom camera so they would have digital images to use with one of the mobile computer labs.
I used Microsoft Publisher for the first time to create this. I wasn’t sure which I could do it in, but other than paint or my Interwrite software, I wasn’t sure I had anything else I could create in. It took a little bit of time, but once I figured out how to layer objects and bring them forward or send to back, it went much smoother. Without those functions, I think it would be harder for my students to create a mosaic. I could really see my students getting into this.
An idea I had was to place three text boxes in the mosaic which describe your family. These three words would then be the main ideas for the three paragraphs which tell about the family. My students can than share their essay, while also displaying the mosaic in the room. This would also be a good item for students to display at our spring heritage fair.
I wasn’t sure of the best way to save it, so I tried saving it as a JPEG, File Interchange Format. I only did this because I’m used to seeing the JPEG name on files. Otherwise I don’t know much more to it. What I did like was when I open it; it looks like a finished product. Nothing can be moved around, and none of the editing lines show. I would have like to add some kind of design behind it, but I really didn’t like the objects available with publisher, and I was nowhere near a signal to use the Internet. There was the option to alter the designs provided in Publisher, but it only changes the color.
My file size is 243KB. I discovered this because I right clicked on the file and it allowed me to open a properties box. When I open it, it opens in Windows Photo Gallery.
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