Computer Problems

Hello all! Long time, no post! I wanted to get an update in here. I've been missing this.  

    Many who were following my blog know that I had been complaining of computer failures for awhile.  My now husband, had been trying to figure out the problem, as it was messing with my school work, for a long while.  Being an IT guy, he was getting extremely frustrated in not being able to locate the problem; diagnostic after diagnostic was fruitless.  Finally, towards the end of the semester, he realized the problem and was amazed and ashamed at how easy a fix it was and that he didn't catch it sooner.  My computer was not getting enough power!
    I run MMAANNNYY different windows and programs at once because of the school work I am doing now and my computer couldn't handle the pressure! So as a result it would shut off, and I would sometimes lose work! It also would sometimes not auto-recover!  Since he has found the problem and has put in a new power strip that allows for more power to be processed it hasn't had really any problems.  I do forget to turn it off and will occasionally have to restart because it freezes up but no where near the issues I was seeing over the summer.  SO YAY! and if you are having similar problems with yours, try the power source. It just may be the solution to your problem.

-For the love of learning-
Jessi

Word Clouds

So this was disappointing.

For the past three months, I have been learning a lot of things, some of which were simply how to navigate online classes, I did not previously know about literature and the internet.  That part has been phenomenal.  However, while trying to do all this learning I was having some major problems with family health and my computer!  You might remember from some of my last posts my complaints about it, but only now do I realize how difficult it was making my work.  I have a post that I made that is no longer here.  Either it was erased while I was in the middle of writing it or who knows with my luck with electronics.  However it happened it is gone.

So let me replace it now.

I was introduced to two tools, word clouds and Answer Gardens.  Both of which I had never used prior to this experience.  Word Clouds are neat because, depending on the producer, you can make them into any shape, use URLs to create them or type in your own text.  I like them for introducing new unit words to students.

Here is a reproduction of the word cloud I did before.  I chose a famous quote from Shakespeare:
        All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.
I always liked that quote.  At first i just did a randomization bu then saw that you could choose the fonts and colors. I chose this palette mainly I think because these are my favorite colors and I thought they would look good on the blog. I clicked through different fonts but then I saw one that had JSL at the beginning.  Those being my monogrammed initials I had to try, and low and behold, it looked like something out of Shakespeare.  So I kept it because it fit the theme.  



The other tool is called an Answer Garden.  Similar to a cloud, this tool, instead of typing in text to make a picture, you have a set question or topic and then invite people to add answers or ideas to it.  I think I would use it to scout what students knew before a unit was started or to take classroom votes.

Cinderella

I am hoping I can understand how to post this before the clock strikes midnight and my ballgown turns back into rags.

https://docs.google.com/a/odu.edu/presentation/d/16k-j76ntKGcHNuoYdrnXU-mKgtVyy_9MFRMoNsZzs48/edit?usp=sharing

Let's hope this works..

Ok Let's try this instead...



YAY!!!! It is so nice when technology decides to finally work for you.  Hope you enjoy my presentation of an introduction to 4 different types of tool that are accessible via the internet to help educators integrate technology in the classroom. The presentations explores word clouds, answer gardens, embedded audio and visual tools, digital storytelling and info-graphics as well as the use of images with a creative commons license and a way to manipulate pictures. The target grade level presented is mainly K-4, however many of these can be used for older children as well. The target audience to be presented to would be librarians wanting to help collaborate with elementary teachers as well as any elementary teachers that want to collaborate with any Librarian Media Specialist.
 

A dream Come true!

  I had to share this because I Finally was able to get an audio that worked.  I somehow missed this one link and when going through the last bit of my Portfolio Project I came across AudioPal. The most fantastic website!! I am going to use this, or try to at least in my project, but I wanted to post it here as well because Iwas so excited that something finally started working for me!

Update on my computer, my tech guy found some corruption and has since remedied the problem of it freezing every two seconds and shutting off.  It was a real struggle to get work accomplished because of that. So yay for that!
 
awww shucks, I just previewed this and its not showing... Let me know if you can see it in the comments!

Website

I wanted to post the practice website of mine here. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed creating it. Except for that small part where I was so frustrated and had no idea how to work anything I near cried... But the end result I am proud of. The Giving Library

Time to Wake Up

This has been a roller coaster of a journey for me.  These past few months have been an intense learning process.  Many of the things needed to accomplish these goals I had no experience in.  I went from never having nor starting a blog to creating and expanding it.  I had never before used any video making websites or audio websites and now I have many of these bookmarked.  This class has taught me numerous tools to use in the classroom and in other presentation settings.  It has calmed me about presentations.  They are not to be used as the speakers script, but to accentuate, to explore, expand and invoke the speakers story.  The presentation is not just a regurgitation of facts but a story with a beginning, middle and end.  We are natural storytellers that have forgotten our roots but are persistent in our dreams.  I started working towards my dream taking these classes and I feel as though I have more knowledge to share as I work to collaborate with teachers to bring students to a higher level of learning. I will continue to post here more things that I learn as I have found this is a great tool for me to look back at ideas or discoveries I have had. Happy learning to all and to all a good day!

O-clair. "Hinata's Waking up by O-clair on DeviantART." DeviantART. Kishimoto, 18 June 2010. Web. 03 Aug. 2014. <http://o-clair.deviantart.com/art/Hinata-s-waking-up-168107740>.

License

Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Like stars in the sky....

...is how much technology is at an educator's fingertips today.  I spent some time looking through the AASL's best websites and here are three that I found to be quite interesting:

https://getkahoot.com/  This is a website called Kahoot.  I have actually been able to witness this in a classroom and when I saw that is was on the list was super psyched about it.  This website gives the educator the ability to make fun quizzes that students can play on their phones!! together in the classroom!! It truly was the coolest thing I had seen in awhile... well next to the visit from the cryogenics lab...

http://whyfiles.org/ This is my next pick. Have you ever wanted a cool science website made for enrichment? Then you should absolutely check this out.  They have great articles and "games" that shows how rainbows are made to how a livable Earth is made.

http://www.vocabulary.com/ Vocabulary is my third pick.  I love learning new words, and a fun game I love to play is making words from the letters given in generic license plates, so seeing this on the list was a no-brainer pick for myself.  The website gives new vocabulary and sarcastic responses that is really quite entertaining; especially for younger students who are chalk full of witty remarks ;-).

Upon perusing different blogs of librarians I found a few that interested me but only one that was truly my style.  The blog freetech4teachers gives a new website that is fit for enrichment in the classroom.  Each post has a new one and is short sweet and to the point. The other I found that interested me as well was 2 cents Worth of seeking the Shakabuku. It was just very organic and had an almost spiritual voice to it that made one think more on how we educate.

I hope others find this of use! Sweet Dreams!

In the middle of the niiiight... I augment realityyy

I was excited to read I would be learning more about augmented reality and QR codes. I thought instantly that with QR codes in the library, one could be taken to book review sites of books they are browsing, even to Amazon to purchase the book.  They could also be taken to the author's own website if one is available.  The augmented reality would be awesome in a library for the most epic library scavenger hunt! The librarians could also create different learning games with that tech in the libraries. I just had to get these ideas down so I wouldn't forget them.  It has inspired me to try that in my own if it be possible one day!

Ok, so I was interested in the QR voice so I decided to try it out.  Here is the link to it:
http://my.qrvoice.net/1mhBy9A

and here's a pic of it... I don't know if I can post it here and it still work, so let me know in the comments!

Day is Done...

So I had my taste in making videos this week.  The animoto was quite fun actually and easy to use.  I could definitely see myself getting an educator account to be able to make longer presentations with this.  This would be great on a school library page to showcase the events in the school. I tried to embed the video here, but either I needed a better account with them or I am just not quite savvy enough yet to.  So the address is the best I could do for now.

http://animoto.com/play/9cXtVWQzLhoilcHZQwJlCw


I realized that I never got to come back and tell you about the other two video websites I played in.  www.powtoons.com is SO much FUN! I could play on there for awhile.  I will be using this with my children.  THis is an excellent use of making ebooks, or animations, or sharing poetry! I tried to upload it in my google+ account, but it the window wouldn't change, and I never found it, so I will have to play some more with that.  However, I did figure out how to publish it on youtube.com. Maybe I can find it and post a link here.  Until then here is a pic of the final slide, and Ill give you the poem I just made up on the fly to test this site out:

A single candle sits on the sill,
Keeping the night away and the ghostly chill,
Snow begins to fall and the ghost says, "Oh, Nose!
"I can't feel my fingers, and I can't feel my toes!"

The last site I want to talk about is Wideo.  It is similar to PowToons, only you can control the animations in this site.  I found PowToons to be more immediate user friendly, however with time, a user can create some amazing animations with Wideo.  I could see this being used in a computer graphics class, or for teacher presentations. If one has more that thirty minutes to play around and need an awesome presentation, I would suggest this one. 

Dream a little Dream of...

Libraries! This past week i searched through library websites and came upon a few I liked, some i didn't and some that didn't even seem like a website at all.. But here are two links of websites that I did enjoy. The first is from GMS library, created by Alison J. Maliszewski: http://gmslibrarywebsite.weebly.com/
I enjoyed this layout.  The background was simple and reminded me of reading in a tree house, as it also has a motif of books lined up across the top of the website.  There wasn't a lot of font change but used color for separation. The pictures were not all encompassing but added to the text.  It was simple yet lead you deliberately through the site.  I'll be taking ideas from this one for my practice.

This next one is from H.R. Moye and the first thing that caught my attention, that I absolutely LOVE and will be doing on my practice and any other website I try my hand at, is the use of a quote in the opening page.   There were subdued colors that let my mind easily feel as though I were walking through the quiet aisles of their library. Excellent choice in my opinion.  The link to Wonderopolis was cool to be frank and how they had the tabs to the other pages were clearly presented which added to the ease of the website navigation.  This website was probably my favorite of the ones I looked at.  The more you scrolled down the more cool links they had as a bonus almost such as Tumblebooks and pictures from the school year.  I just really enjoyed rummaging through all there was to find.  I hope you do too!
http://hrmoyelibrary.weebly.com/ (about the only thing I wish this one had was who created it and when it was last updated more clearly stated..)

Nightmare on Tech Street

This has been a very frustrating week for me.  The multiple audio's I tried never seemed to work or the websites would tell me that I could not download it for some reason.  I've still been trying and am trying to remain optimistic... Maybe today will be the day I figure it out.  Until then, the frustrating madness will continue.  I will be posing the slide doc I attempted today.  Hopefully it is something in the right nature as that was just as confusing and frustrating to me.  With more practice I'm sure I could understand it better but wanted to post my feelings- if only just to vent and come back to a clean slate to work from!
 Here's looking at you kid...

Here is the update! I don't know if I did this right but I really tried.  I have even emailed the author I was doing this on.  I wanted to take the hint and do this on Margarita Engle whom I am doing a Prezi on.  She is a fascinating author with many awards and acknowledgements to her books.  However, finding information on her life is incredibly difficult! So hard that I even found her email and have emailed her with loads of questions to try and learn more.  I don't have Word on my computer so I used the OpenOffice.  I ended up having to snip it because it wouldn't let me download. The graph I could not figure out how to change the dates.  I finally threw my hands up and nearly pulled my hair out.  My hope was to do a sort of timeline on her life.  Starting from when her father went to Cuba, met her mother and fell in love.  She would summer in Cuba and I did find that one summer in 1960 diplomatic relations between the states and Cuba broke down.  It was incredibly difficult to get home and after that communication with that part of her family was restricted.  I'd like to come back to it and keep updating it.   Maybe even getting it to work! Until then, I'm going to try and tackle this audio link, again... maybe this time with success.
One can dream....

Infographic

This was pretty difficult but worth the knowledge learned.  I wish I could have more time to learn more about the tools to improve the product more.  The text boxes were difficult to navigate.  I also didn't like how I could customize the colors.  It's possible I just haven't found the tool to be able to do that.  I really got frustrated and turned in the towel when my computer froze and I feared I was going to lose everything I had worked on.  Luckily, my better half came up with a solution.  He used his great camera and took a picture of the screen.  We then uploaded it onto my computer where I was able to use it as an attachment for here.

"The six aptitudes are: design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning.

Mastering these aptitudes is not sufficient; leveraging these aptitudes has

become necessary for professional success and personal fulfillment in today’s

world." (Presentation Zen)

    I hope that I was able to portray this kind of leveraging in my first infographic.  It was a learning experience.  The design was not an afterthought, but purposeful as it is suggested it should be in the text. I stopped and thought of what I was trying to give to the reader.  This was how poetry helps readers or even if it did.  I had looked at a lot of infographics but when I accessed them on my own computer, I couldn't get the ones I truly liked.  This ended up being a happy accident because the few I could I found this one which I liked but had different information on it.  I realized it was perfect for the information that I had.  I changed some to help with its simplicity.

      "What we need are people who can recognize the patterns and are skilled at seeing the nuances and simplicity that may exist in a complex problem."  (Presentation Zen) The symphony of this piece was my attempt to show the difference between average and special education as well as how poetry reasserts itself in adult readers. 

    "The dull, text-filled slide approach is common and normal, but it is not effective. The problem is not one of tools or technique—it is a problem of bad habits. While some tools are better than others, it is possible to present effectively with the aid of multimedia tools." (Presentation Zen) I was trying to stay away from a great amount of text but found it incredibly difficult.  Maybe its my bad habits.  Looking back I could have tried to find pictured to represent some of the written text that was beside the pictograph I used.  But I am unsure if that would have been effective there or just distracting and confusing.  All in all, I'm rather happy with this first attempt and want to use it more and more effectively. I will definitely be tinkering more with these.

     

Sweet dreams are made of these...

What are these girls doing out so late,
like the witches in folklore?
If you were to witness so many falling stars,
What would you wish for?
-Poem by Jessica Robinson

Image found at:
Beautiful Night Sky. Digital image. Desktop Nexus. N.p., 4 Jan. 2012. Web. <http://www.desktopnexus.com/dl/inline/677557/1920x1080/foha68fcmnr11b1igi5car6nu75387e89c428e0>.

Original picture:

Artist's Concept of Exoplanet Orbiting Fomalhaut. Digital image. Hubblesite. ESA, NASA, and L. Calcada (ESO for STScI), 13 Nov. 2008. Web. <http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2008-39-d-small_web.jpg>.

I used Tuxpi Photo Editor to modify the above picture.  I first added text. What text to use? It came to me immediately.  Plus, I've been on a Cosmos kick... I then went to the color and contrast option.

I decided to play around with the brightness, saturation, contrast and hue.  The contrast I used first to accentuate the dark and light, as well as the brightness.  I messed with the saturation but ended up back where I started because I just didn't like the darkness that it pooled in.  I did however change the hue as well to bring back in some of the red undertones but keeping the brightness.

Presentations for teachers would benefit the students in my own community as many have access 

to the different interactive white boards that are available such as the Promethian Board.  

The web is at their fingertips.

Therefore enhancing a multitude of Webinars from PowerPoint presentations to Jeopardy

 games.  This skill could also be passed onto the students as part of presentations they make.  It is critical that our students are exposed to help better prepare them for the future. With jobs leaning more

 heavily on computer skills challenging students to incorporate 

digital graphics will give them the edge to achieve their dreams.

A single grain of salt...

This will be my first post of my first blog! I'm excited to venture into a new realm of learning and only ask for your patience as I become more e-literate... Oh dear, no pun intended. 

In regards to Presentation Zen, by Garr Reynolds, I was blown away by the first page.  He had me at, "Japanese beers."  Not only could I tell how much I would enjoy this author's voice but to add to it, my love of Eastern culture? Bonus! I found myself fully drawn in and was also retrospective in presentations I gave and how I fared.  Also, recalling presentations I had seen that fit the bill on the one he described was his inspiration for the book. 

It makes absolute sense, and anyone who has witnessed a PowerPoint presentation knows, that you simply can not read loads of bullet marks unless the speaker is reading verbatim.  In which case why are we reading this? Or why are you here and not a memo? I absolutely agree with this.  This is what is off-kilter with many presentations today causing all parties involved to suffer.

I hope to echo this concept of minimalism and naturalism.

" A single grain of rice can tip the scales.  One man can make the difference."- quoted from Mulan, a Chinese proverb