SMILEBOX

Smilebox is a website that uses your pictures to allow you to make create slide shows, ecards and scrapbooks. It requires an install that is very simple and once you complete that you can produce some pretty amazing things. Of course like all good websites, they give you the basics and you can increase your ability to produce with a fee...however the $4.99 a month seemed pretty reasonable if you really made use of what this site can offer. Regardless, there was enough free stuff to keep me pretty entertained for quite a while. Anyone who has digital pictures of anything will enjoy this site.

Make a free ecard!

TEACHER EXPRESS

This site is nothing fancy to look at but WOW does it have a lot of information. Someone took the time to categorize and pull all of these resources into one place. I found it quite interesting and make sure to scroll all the way down. It looks like it stops but it seems to just keep on going.

http://www.teacherxpress.com/

LOONY FOR LULU

Do you have an author some where inside of you? Do your students? Have you ever wanted to publish your own book? LULU is a great website that allows you to write and publish a book. I won't bore you will all the details here so go and check it out. BUT WAIT!...maybe you don't want to write a book...what about making a photo book of pictures? You can do that as well-what a great present. You can add captions and they have different layouts per page. I have priced many photobooks...lulu comes in pretty low. You can order from them OR you can print to a PDF-which means you can print them anywhere....
Think about it...how neat for :

• students to have a book published from works they have written
• students make a book based on a topic they are studying
• a photo journal of your year in the classroom
• students collection of short stories, poems etc...

Oh, they also have a nifty customizable calendar feature (like everyone else) starting at $11.30...very reasonable.

I am loony for LULU!

Video On Demand

Learner.org offers a slew of staff/professional development videos on demand for all grade levels. Here you can gather some great ideas for many of the concepts that are taught in your classroom . They pursue this mission by funding and broadly distributing multimedia resources for teachers to help them improve their own teaching practice and understanding of their subject. Take some time to check it out...keep in mind...all the video you watch is streaming- SO if you are over a wireless...see if you have the option to hard wire.

GOOGLE STUFF

Well Google has done it again...although only in the Beta stages they have developed a new feature in their searching. It is called timeline. You can type in any topic and then type view:timeline. You will get a great list of events contributing to your event. By no means is it perfect nor is it guaranteed to be extensive, but it sure is a great start!

Snoop with Snopes

Ever get one of those emails that you are just unsure of? All of those spammers out there love to send sob stories, miracle stories and other types of emails that make us want to believe in something. Look no further...you can debunk that junk with SNOPES. Snopes is a website that specializes in collecting what are called URBAN LEGENDS...and lets you know if there is any validity to many of those emails sent. The best part about it is that it picks apart pieces of the email and tracks its origin and determines if any part of that email is true. The next time someone wants you to take part in that science project or boycott Starbucks because they don't support the war go to Snopes first.

Digital Pictures

A friend enlightened me this weekend that my 13,000 digital pictures that I have taken over the past 4 years of owning a camera may be in jeopardy. If you are a digital camera owner, have you thought about your pictures? Where do you store them? How do you back them up? If you are putting the CD's like I have been-then you have a problem. Apparently data on CD's and DVD's (depending on the quality) has a shelf life of 2-10 years. So what do you do? Interestingly enough-I was again enlightened by another friend that the Library of Congress is categorizing every known song to man...on LP's! Why? Because they last. So as you ponder and panic about your photos...fear not-here is what the expert's say....

1. Buy an external hard drive...and back your music, videos etc...
2. Buy a flash drive that you use in a limited capacity.
3. Buy online storage from a reputable and well known website.
4. Consider still using CD's and DVD's but invest in the quality-and after several years-back those up again.
5. When you do back up media-keep it in alternative places. Store CD's and DVD's in dark, cool, dry environments...and keep a copy outside of your home.
6. SHARE...most articles encourage you to share your images with family and friends-give a CD for Christmas or birthdays that they too will hopefully download onto their computer. This extends the copies of your images in case yours are ever lost.
7. Back up your backups...if you buy an external hard drive-also store them on DVD's etc...
8. Some of us used to actually print photos-which again-is always a great way to preserve your images.

Here are some great articles about preserving digital photos...

http://www.picnam.com/Articles/PreservingDigitalPhotos.html

http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2005-01-20-digital-memories-sidebar_x.htm

http://www.pcworld.ca/news/column/a1ac9c720a01040800b24c9a7f5ded73/pg1.htm

Quick Maps....

What a great tool... quickmaps allows you to take a map-off of Google Maps and add captions and then take the site and embed it into your website. Take a look...

BUBBLE SHARE

Upload your pics and share you images in a fun slideshow using Bubbleshare. You can take these slideshows and put them on wikispaces, blogs or share by emailing links etc... One of many excellent slide show components that you can find on the web.

CYBER SQUATTING...

WHAT? Cyber squatting-learn your lingo. So often you have been told to NOT go to whitehouse.com. (Yikes-hope this doesn't snapshot!!!) Anyway-when a hacker/spammer tricks people into visiting a website that mimics the REAL URL of a site-it is called cybersquatting. Usually the wrong site is pretty obscene. Goggle.com is another-and then once you get there-they make it difficult to click off of these and leave. They also charge obscene amounts of money to the sites they are mimicking to own the URL. There is actual legislation against cyber-squatters....hmmm we sure have come a long way. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/property00/domain/legislation.html

MIXCAST

Wow-an amazing multimedia tool for slideshows. Allows you to bring in video from a webcam and pictures to make a great multimedia element for any webpage. There are some really neat templates that allow you to theme your show. Of course-because this is a free service-there may be some less appropriate types of mixcasts in the Library. If you keep your kids focused on theirs and not what others did-that should not be a problem.
http://www.mixcast.com

YOU TUBE ANYTIME

Worried about watching YOUTUBE because strange things might come up. No fear, zamzar is here. You can take the URL of any you tube video and then convert it to any format of video you want. You then can go and download that video and have it to show safely. http://www.zamzar.com/ can convert anything to anything.

NEWSLETTERS ARE US!

Who would have thought it would ever be so easy to produce a professional looking newsletter in a manner of minutes. Oh the amazing uses this could have for you and your classroom. Think of the possibilities. http://www.letterpop.com/ allows you to save and publish up to 10 newsletters at a time. You can pick from over 250 templates, then write a title and text and import pictures from your own computer to share. Once you do so you can save it to view online, print, or email to anyone. All for FREE! ENJOY...