Making a Wii Smartboard

Just when I was just about finished with my Excel in a Box Blog, I found this little seed “Making a Smartboard from a Wii.” I could probably be diagnosed with ADD because I can easily get pulled off task, but I think that this is a good thing.

There are tons of links and movies related to this.  Johnny Lee  came out with this evidently in July and developed free software to support this. Teachertube recently posted a video on how to do this for $48.

This morning I brought this little find to my tech committee and to the attention of Dave and Bob.  Actually, Dave told me about this a month or so ago and my response “Yeah Right!”  Well he was right and this project fits perfectly into the competitions  that TSA enters. This is a gold mine, especially in financial situations that we find ourselves  in today.

I have Wii, so that takes care of a big part of the expense, my computer is also Bluetooth ready, so my estimate on the cost is under $10.  Actually it will cost me more in time than anything else.  But what a great thing to have and share  if I can pull this off.

Related links:

Teacher Online Training

Ted: Ideas Worth Spreading

Teacher Tube

Follow a Blog

Technology isn’t just for integrating, it is for learning.  Not just a student’s learning, but for each and every one of us.  I have said in an earlier post that so much of the information I’ve learned has come from others.  If you want to learn something new, find a Blog of another teacher and read their thoughts.  

Best of the Web Blogs offers an extensive list of blogs created by teachers. I found two that I really liked and found some really useful information. On Successful Teaching blog I read about 3 successful tips for parent/ teacher communication. From this blog I found another blog, which was cited, on technology called 21st Century Learning an entry entitled “Why Change.”  She states it so nicely about the use of technology in the classroom that I wish I had said it.  

Read a blog, enlighten yourself, get inspired.

Wednesday Website

50 Ways to Tell a Story http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools

There are more resources than 50 and I almost felt overwhelmed scrolling down the page.  

Website of the Week

I am going to institute a new thing at DeWitt and here on this blog; Website of the Week.  This week I am going to highlight Print What You Like. This site is free and allows you to remove any advertising, frames, etc from a website.  You just type in the URL, then you can select what you want to remove from the page.  I can’t count how many times I have copied and pasted into Word, then I have to reformat.  YUCK! Now it’s so easy and it saves paper too.

8 Places To Visit: A Little Something for Everyone

Happy Vacation Everyone!

I’ve found some interesting sites that I wanted to share with the staff.  

 1.  Ever need paper? Graph paper, chord paper, lined paper, Cornell Note-Taking paper.  Printable Paper  has something for every department.  The best part it’s FREE!

2. Parody Motivator Generator.  At this site you can upload your pictures, add a background, or add a motivational message. Download and print. It’s free, but you can order a 11×14 poster size for $13.

3. If you have some great photos, like Laurie VanVleet, you can get them published at National Geographic.  Everyday they select a few of the photos  submitted to make their website or even the magazine.

4.  This is a fun site if you’re looking for something to do with your photos. It’s called Mushy Gushy.  You can upload your photos, capture the head shot and make some funny cards to send. 

5. Many social studies teachers probably are familiar with this site, but it is also useful for other disciplines as well. Digital Vaults is an interactive collection of primary sources.  

6. The next site I found off another teacher’s blog.  It’s called Mathway and it’s helped my daughter when she had trouble solving a math problem. What I like about it is that it shows and explains how to solve the problem step by step.

7. I stumbled across Larry Ferlazzo’s blog this summer when I had a strong base  of ESOL students in my summer school class. Basically his site is for teaching ESOL, but he recently posted The Best Science and Math Web Sites for 2008. Worth Checking out for sure.

8.  The next site is for anyone interested in receiving some selected free books. The only catch is that you have to read it and submit a review. The Picnic Basket is primarily picture  and YA books, but I’ve found some that apply to my interdisciplinary units.  Some picture books worked well for Six Traits writing.  I even assigned one for the kids to review.

A Goody Bag for the English Dept

Here a few sites that I put together.  I think that they may be of interest.

Free Technology Toolkit  This site has lots of great links; study tools, literacy tools, reading tools and more.

Voice Thread You have got to check this one out. 

I don’t want to overwhelm anyone, but there is lots more where that came from!

Technology Tech Mentor Day + English Dept Meeting

Technology Tech Mentor Day + English Dept Meeting

Animoto.com

Technology Tech Mentor Day

Technology Tech Mentor Day

Blogging + Text to Speech

I am way behind updating this Blog, and I need to just put in the schedule.  I think Will Richardson suggested it. One thing and probably the most important thing I’ve learned about Blogging is learning from others.  This summer I googled “middle school teacher blogs” and found some great ones.  I found some unbelievable ideas and resources.  

One thing I found was Text to Speech.  I found it on Ms Teacher.  She has Teacher Tip Tuesdays which is worth checking out.  In one of her postings she talked about how Adobe 9 has a speech function. WOW! What a great tool for my English class, especially editing or for those that need directions read to them and more.  Then, I found out in the MAC version of Word04 there is speech toolbar built in.  So I tried it with my Read 180 class.  I had the kids type a writing assignment, then had them playback their writing listening of course for errors. One kid couldn’t believe how scant his writing was and went back to add more details.  Another picked up on all the omitted words she left out.  Great Tool.  And the best part was that after showing them this, I don’t have to be hovering over them pointing out changes.

I shared these tools with the special ed dept at school.  They thought it was so cool, they invited me to a dept meeting to present.  They loved it and now they don’t have to wait for piece of software to be purchased, installed, and learned.