Page Turning Software

Have you ever wanted to turn one of your PDF documents into a cool page-turning book? Well, now you can! And it's completely free. I was asked by my school to find a way to turn our back-to-school brochure and professional development catalog into a page-turning document. After doing some research, I was about to give up on ever finding free software that worked with PDF files, but today I found Issuu. This site is extremely easy to navigate, allows you to edit your documents online, share your documents with friends, add advanced features and embed your document directly onto your own website.

You can page through the document using the thumbnail that is on your site, or you can click on the center of the document to launch it full screen for easier reading. As one of the reviewers said, "It's like the YouTube of the book world!"

Here is a sample of what Issuu can do:

Open publication - Free publishing - More brochure

KONY 2012

Our school had an assembly today and shared this video with the entire student body. The more people who know about this, the better are our chances of finding Joseph Kony and stopping his crimes against humanity.

Technology at Roosevelt Intermediate School

Recently I was asked by my district to create a video using my students to showcase the many different ways we use technology at my school. I am very proud of these students for writing their own scripts and taking time out of their day to help create this film!! This will be part of a series of videos that will appear on our local television station - TV36.

One of my favorite projects that my 8th graders create is the "Music Video". Students select a song that they like and print the lyrics for it. Then they find images that reflect the words or create their own images using Adobe Photoshop Elements. Then using Adobe Premiere Elements, they insert all of the pictures on one track and the song on another track. The hard part comes when they have to time the images so they align perfectly with the words of the song. Once that's completed, students add transitions and effects. Watch a sample above and to see more go to my Music Video Page.

The world has lost a passionate and inspirational man. Steve Jobs will leave a legacy that will be remembered for generations to come. Rest in peace.

Woodshop Meets Computer Class

Last year our woodshop teacher offered the staff at my school the opportunity to work with one of her students to create a special project. I partnered with an 8th grade student, Zoe, who created a wall plaque for outside my classroom. It is an exact replica of a computer keyboard (with a few exceptions) with my name on the "monitor". Of course, it has a heart above the "i" and a pointer just like the one you see on the computer when using the mouse. I am so grateful to Zoe for all her hard work. Everyone who walks by my room and all the students who enter my classroom comment on how beautiful the plaque is. Thank you, Zoe!!! Here is a close-up picture:

Using Surveys for Pre-Assessment

Recently, I began using surveys to pre-assess my 6th grade students.  The students come from three different elementary schools and I have noticed that their computer experiences vary depending on the school and the teacher they had. By using SurveyMonkey, I was able to determine which software programs my students were familiar with, what tools they knew within each program, their keyboarding skills, and the type of websites and search engines they utilized in school. Using the results of my survey, I can spend more time teaching new skills rather than re-teaching something my students are already familiar with.

It's very easy to create a survey. Question types include multiple choice, text boxes, rating scales, drop-down menus and more. There are many different backgrounds to choose from, too. When your survey is completed, you can stop collecting responses, analyze the results, and use this in your classroom to enhance your instruction.

The Teacher's Handbook

September signifies the beginning of the year for me - not January! As a teacher, I enjoy my summer but always look forward to meeting my new 6th grade students and welcoming back my 7th and 8th graders. I also begin each school year with a renewed vigor and determination to be the best teacher I can be.

A colleague of mine, Dr. John Hrevnack, has written an excellent book for first year teachers, but this book can also provide ideas and encouragement for any teacher. The Teacher’s Handbook provides a foundation for those entering the teaching profession. It emphasizes the development of the lesson plan, unit plan, and classroom management through the integration of theory with practice. 

Here's to a great school year!

The Last 18 Years in Rap

This video was produced by Flocabulary using Vimeo
Congratulations to all graduates of 2011.
The Last 18 Years in Rap 1993-2011 from Flocabulary on Vimeo.

Videography in Education

Videography

View more presentations from pfriedman729.

This is the presentation from the Montclair State University Classroom Reset Conference on May 20, 2011.

Bubbl.us

Bubble.us is an awesome website. According to the site, the goal was to create a "simple to use and easy to learn tool to help people organize ideas in a way that makes sense to them." The cool part is that you can share your stuff with collaborators, save your projects online, change the colors and sizes of the bubbles, add/delete arrows, and move the buttons around on the page. This site was created in 2006 by two guys from Russia, Kirill and Levon. Educationally, teachers can have students use this site to organize their ideas or to visually depict concepts in reading and writing. Graphic organizers are a powerful way to communicate ideas visually. Here is a sample that I created using the site:

Technology and Language Arts: Idioms

As a computer technology teacher, I am always looking for ways to integrate other areas of the curriculum into my own. One of the units I teach to my 8th grade classes is Graphic Design. Students use Adobe Photoshop Elements to create many projects in my class. There are numerous ways to use a program like this in education. One way I did this was to have my students research idioms. I shared with them an Idiom Website where they could find many different idioms and their meanings. Once they made their selection, the students opened Photoshop and began illustrating their idiom literally. They are learning about a key concept while also practicing their technology skills!!

Weebly - Create a Free Website

I started using Weebly this year for my students' web design unit. It is such a fantastic site that I am featuring it on my blog this month. Weebly is completely FREE. The interface is extremely user friendly, with a drag and drop type of editing. There are over 70 designs to choose from, or you can completely customize a template or build your own site using HTML & CSS right in the Weebly editor.

Some of the many features include: picture galleries/slide shows, YouTube videos, contact forms, custom HTML, Google AdSense and blogs with full comment moderation.

My students learned the essential skills of web design, while creating informative websites at the same time. To see the sites from the Fall 2010 classes, click on my Students' Weebly Sites page.

Good Searching

Here's a new easy way to raise money for your favorite cause. Just start using Yahoo! powered GoodSearch.com as your search engine and they'll donate about a penny to your favorite cause every time you do a search!
In addition, do all of your shopping through their online shopping mall, GoodShop.com, where you can shop at more than 900 top online retailers and a percentage of your purchases will go to the charity or school of your choice. You pay the same price as you normally would, but a donation goes to your cause!
Here's the web site — http://www.goodsearch.com/. You can also read about GoodSearch in the NY Times, Oprah Magazine, CNN, ABC News and the Wall Street Journal

Teach Parents Tech by Google!

As a Google Certified Teacher, I couldn't be more excited! Google has just launched a new site, Teach Parents Tech. The purpose of the site is to explain, in layman's terms, how to do many comon tasks, like how to copy & paste, resize a picture, and how to crop pictures. This site is host to over 50 videos, most of which are an average of 40 seconds long. I have watched every single one of these informational videos and have come to the conclusion that they are NOT just for parents. As a matter of fact, I am a parent of three children myself and probably know way more than they do! (Of course, tech is my life...but that's another story). The videos are short and to the point. They cover topics from How To Make A Blog to How To View Live Traffic. When you visit the site, you will be able to send an email to someone, attaching the relevant videos. You can also just watch the videos on YouTube's Teach Parents Tech. There are 51 videos, and each one is narrated by a "young person" explaining in very clear terms how to perform different tasks. Enjoy!

Free Rice

I have been using Free Rice with my students for a few years now. According to their website, "FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Programme. Our partner is the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University."

So far, nearly 83 billion grains of rice have been donated. If you are wondering how that translates to how much food that is, it's enough rice to feed more than 4.3 million people for one day!!

Here is how we use it at our school: Students go to the website and choose a subject. The choices are: Art, English, Chemistry, Geography, Language, and Math. There are a few sub-categories so for example, if you are interested in Language, you can choose from French, German, Italian, or Spanish. Once they have chosen their category, the students begin answering questions. The answers are always mutliple choice and begin at an easy level. As students answer questions correctly, the questions slowly become more difficult. You can change the subject at any time without affecting the amount of rice you have donated. For each correct answer, 10 grains of rice are donated.

I usually have the students spend 10 minutes on the site and the average number of rice donated is 800 grains per student. What a great way to help feed the world and learn at the same time. According to NBC News, it is "a simple way to bring kids to the Internet for a good reason, a way to feed their minds and . . . to feed a whole lot of people . . . helping fight world hunger, one grain of rice at a time."

The World Food Programme has created a site just for Students and Teachers. Teachers can register, create a Group and have their students compete against other classes to try and donate the most rice.

As Thanksgiving approaches, let's all try to remember that there are many people around the world who are hungry and need our help!

Audacity

I have been using Audacity in my classroom now for several years. Audacity is free, open source software that can be used to record and edit sounds. My students use this program to create podcasts, and to record voiceovers for their video projects. It is also compatible with many different operating systems.

Below is a sample of a student who recorded a commercial for a fashion store:

Below is a sample of a student who used Audacity to record his voice and then added music:

Storytelling Alice

Storytelling Alice is an animation program developed by Caitlin Kelleher, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University. According to her website, "Storytelling Alice is a programming environment designed to motivate a broad spectrum of middle school students (particularly girls) to learn to program computers through creating short 3D animated movies. To enable and encourage users to create animated stories, Storytelling Alice includes: High-level animations that enable users to program social interactions between characters. A story-based tutorial that introduces users to programming through building a story. A gallery of 3D characters and scenery with custom animations designed to spark story ideas"

I have begun using this software with my middle school students and the results have been extremely positive. Students are beginning to understand the concept of programming, and are creating their own animations. To download the software for your classroom, go to Alice's download page.

Life Round Here 2010

This year I participated in a global project created by Chris Craft entitled "Life Round Here". The purpose of this digital storytelling project is for kids around the world to tell each other what life is like in their town and in their school. According to Chris, this global collaboration was created because it was "a desire of mine to help students understand the differences and similarities between their own cultures and the cultures that are foreign to them." The only requirements are that the students should be between the ages of 8 and 15, the videos must be in English, and must be published to SchoolTube. The submissions this year are astounding and I invite you to watch them at the Life Round Here 2010 Completed Projects Page. The submission from Roosevelt Intermediate School can be seen below:

We Love The Flip

After my third Handycam broke, I decided that there had to be another camera that my 7th graders could use for my filmmaking class. I needed something easy to use, light weight, inexpensive, and most of all - easy to upload. The Flip meets all my criteria. I was worried that the quality wouldn't be as good as we were used to, but to my surprise, the clips look great and the sound is clear and loud. If you're interested, there is a Flip Video for Educators site with a list of preferred resellers. I ordered the Flip Ultra with a recording time of 2 hours, 8 GB of internal memory, a 320 x 240 LCD screen, and a 1280 x 720 resolution. The video format is mp4, which can be a problem if you use Movie Maker. We use Adobe Premiere Elements and had absolutely no problem uploading the clips directly to this program.