741.5 Make a Wimp of Yourself!

Go here and "wimp" yourself!
Stay on the site a few extra minutes...it's fun watching yourself!

My wimpy self in action

A trailer of the movie coming out on March 19th is also available here.
Included at the site are some other fun things related to the movie and book.

551.5 Weather iMovie: Another Adventure with My MAC

I had an opportunity to work with iMovie and have some expert help around while I doing it. I used an idea from D#1 as inspiration for the project. It isn't the best example, but did allow me to start understanding the process. Although it is more intense than PhotoStory, it helped that I had experience with the Microsoft product.

I was able to import a series of images from several sources and add sound effects and music from iTunes to fill out the project. Nope, no voice over yet...time ran out. Yes, I know I have said I don't like to record, but this time I really was going to do some, but the unit will be over if I take anymore time with this...and I have another much more important project to create. So voice-over will have to come later.

I did save the project several ways so that it could be played in on a MAC or PC or directly from my channel on YouTube. Again for practice. Also the reason for adding it to my blog...practice, practice, practice!

One thing I did notice...when saving images, save them at the largest file possible. I usually save Flickr CC images at medium size or around 500 psi, but I noticed some of these images were blurry when I viewed it in full screen. So I will check that out on the next one I do.

Enjoy!

P.S. If you have suggestions for better productions, please share.

UPDATE: I took the YouTube version down becasue too much was cut off on the right side...and this version, an mp4 upload makes it hard to read some text...o, well...I'll do better next time!

741.6 Another Image Generator: Seasonal Fun!

Candy Hearts Generator

371.33 Blog Anniversary: Three & almost 2/12 Years & Counting

Yes, this anny post is WAY overdue...any post on this blog is now way overdue. I hadn't meant to let things go this long. I REALLY meant to post my anny review post during the Thanksgiving weekend as usual. I had several postings I wanted to share that now will remain forever locked in my brain because I let too much time and brain cells escape to make sense out of what I wanted to share.

I really can't point anything in particular that lead to ignoring my little piece of the blogging world. I still have 24 hours in every day like always. My job is still as busy as ever and not really any more demanding that it always has been at its high points. My family issues remain the same and their long distance relationships haven't gotten any longer or farther. My dog continues to demand his meals at the same rate as always and his outdoor visits no more than normal. And I still mange to sleep 6-7 hours a day, whether it is on my couch or in my bed.

So, let's see what else could have steered me in another direction the last few months...

the transformation of our libraries has occupied a lot of thinking time...we deployed (the district's term, not ours) lots of MacBooks and iTouches to our 39 campuses...have been fielding lots of questions and sharing how-tos because it is has been a long while since Apple products were part of our resources. I was re-learning right along with everyone else.

Part of my "free" time was taken up with Facebook. The district opened it up last Spring and we initiated some professional development opportunities for librarians, teachers, and others. I have a small group of friends and family and I continue to explore the finer points with them...admittedly a little more since Daughter #1's wedding this summer...used Facebook to share adventures and have continued playing around with the tool more than I thought I would.

And I have techno addiction that HAS robbed some of my free time...I have always played a few word games on the computer, but I got hooked on online Scrabble and I do know it did use some of the time I used for blogging! I guess I could say that it is a technology application that I have gained knowledge of, but really and truly it has just become an obsession. I am working on cutting back...I really am! Hey, I'm writing this blog post and I have not played one game of scrabble this evening or checked FB...in the last hour or so. :-)

Ok, enough ramblings. As with my other anny posts, let me quickly review some of the high points I found in my little corner of the tech world.

Animoto continues to amaze me...with the new pieces it adds and the various productions people in my circle create with it.

The new fun thing in my world is Glogster...if anything can bring about the demise of posterboard projects, this glitzy, colorful, razz-a-matazz, cool tool could be the one to do it! It is a great way to bring lots of things together in one place and the structure prevents the "death-by-PPT" syndrome of a presenter reading too much text and boring an audience to "death."

Clay Sharky's TED presentation "How Social Media Can Make History" is worth 17 minutes of your time, maybe more than once!

I wonder what the next year will bring!

Photo credit: Flickr CC by Pink Sherbet Photography D Sharon Pruitt

741.6 Glogster: A Different Way to "Present"

770.79 A Burst of Photographic Fireworks

Happy 4th to all!

I played with this particular image generator Tag Galaxy awhile back (months, years?) but just came across it again. It uses photos from our friend Flickr...who doesn't?

If you are in a playful, messin' around mood just go and throw out a keyword or two and see what happens. You will have to pull yourself away!

No, I don't have any ideas how to use it in an educationally settings...not sure how you would pull pictures off (except thru screen print) and even less how you would credit them.  Sometimes, things are just fun ...and should be enjoyed just for the fun! 

It is as simple as this:

371.2 Certificates & Awards: End-of-Year Activities

I will admit to almost being a image generator junkie these days. I LOVE all the free stuff you can do with pictures these days like here and here and here...and more ideas here.

But, boy, o boy, here's JUST what any one with end-of-school ceremonies, award assemblies, and parent programs luming on the horizon needs...a huge fantasitc, easy-to-use FREE web site full of certificates and awards called My Award Maker.

Go have lots of fun!  (And save yourself a lot of work!)

745.5 Voki Fun...and Questions

Was helping someone set up a blog with avatar today. She selected a Voki. So I made the one you see in an attempt to answer questions that came up as we did hers.

Does anyone know if you can remove the comment button on the frame?
If you have tips and can point me to any help, I'd appreciate them.



Get a Voki now!

027.8 Librarians at Play: TLA Presentation about 2.0 Tools

A 23 Things friend asked me to visit her TLA presentation during TLA conference last week. I am glad because it was a great discussion of using things pre-K /12 and I saw some ideas that were new to me...and fun and exciting!

There was a group of private school librarians who were presenting 2.0  things that they had used with their students during the past year. Some of them work in schools where every student has access to a laptop and nothing on the internet is blocked. Others operate with similar roadblocks that the rest of us must endure. But everyone encouraged the audience to do what they could!

As a group, they realize that security, working within the context of existing tools, advertising issues on some sites, filters, and time are all things that have to be considered with learning new things and teaching them to students.

Some statements that stood out to me were:

"Try everything! Try a few things, but try something!"

"It is ok to fail."

"Joyce Valenza for real people" --paying homage to the queen of library 2.0 matters, while recognizing that not all of us can do it at her level!

My friend presented the project that her 2nd grade students did with Flat Stanley and tied it to a Google maps activity. They mailed Flat Stanley to long distance family members and asked them to take him along on an adventure and send pictures back. Here is a link to an Animoto about the project. 

Her 4th grade students studied about magazines and then created a magazine cover using animals and other science topics as the themes for their magazines. Here is an Animoto about them.

Another presenter uses Library Thing to advertise the new books that have been added to the school's collection. If my notes are correct, she scans the bar code on the back of the book and that pulls up a cover which she adds to other titles to make a collage. The collage is placed in emails to students and teachers and she also prints out a copy for reference when students come in. They often refer to the books by cover rather than title! I am not familiar with this procedure myself, but I'm sure it something for which there is more info. She also writes about books in her blog Print Matters.

Another librarian talked about the benefits of Google docs, especially with middle school students who can't drive themselves to collaboration opportunities. She told the group that her students come form 28 zip codes!!...and to do group projects is often impossible because the students live so far apart. But Google docs eliminated some the problems. She did mention that Google docs dow not support PPT 2007, but they found that Zoho docs does so when they need to, they use that resource as well.

A few more topics covered in the presentation included:

Creating a ning for historical people of importance. Group them according the time period. The students write profiles, etc. based on the individuals they are studying.

The Horizon Projects...a wiki with lots of things from the educational 2.0 world.

Pandora.com...radio and music for the library

LinkBunch.com...bunch links under one link to make sharing easier. 

Their TLA conference handout Get Busy: Unique Challenges in Private Schools and Web 2.0 is not active yet, but if it does become available, I will hot link it here.

027.8 Teamwork & School Librarians...With a Little Multi-tasking Thrown In

Today was a busy day at TLA. The Strong Libraries, Strong Scores Administrators' Conference was held today...more about that important event in detail a bit later! That necessitated a committee of school librarians who were willing to give of most of one day at conference to help this mini-conference happen.

And this year, this all-important volunteer opportunity fell on a group of librarians from my district, who, when I asked, stepped up to the plate and said yes to whatever! Some parts of the morning were busy, some parts were a tad stressful, but most parts were just plain boring with a lot of sitting around...waiting, and waiting much more patiently than I!

But never let it be said that this group of librarians ever let an opportunity for bonding, relationship building, collaborating, and /or sharing go by. Some were sharing knowledge about personal learning devices (aka fancy phones!), some were learning tips and tricks from each other while allowing a colleague to practice a presentation, and others were just taking time to get to know each other a bit better...all at the same time remaining poised to take on any conference task that bubbled to the surface.

The group of librarians in my circle of influence and my learning community are the greatest, and today only proved the point one more time! Nothing, absolutely nothing did they let go by...they took care of details, large and small, and with smiles on their faces. They counted and recounted simply because I asked; they made trips down the long halls or over to the convention center just because I needed something checked on...again! Some of them even babysat lunches...while important sessions over in the convention center went on without them.

They know who they are, but here is a visual record of my all my right-hands from today. They insisted that I had to be part or there would be no visual record. I am proud to be among them even though I did grumble a bit!

And now for the multi-tasking part: I took advantage of sharing their smiling faces along with how proud I am to call them not only colleagues but friends, but to also showcase two samples of image generator sites...one new to me-- BeFunky, and a favorite Dumpr and a particular technique found in both. Pretty cool don't you think?

P.S. Thanks AGAIN to the team...and to BF, a helper from a neighboring district!

741.6 WriteOnIt: Another Image Generator

Librarian Philospher passed this site on to me! Write On It.

Played around a little.

Add it to your image generator collection.
Caution: some of the frames may not be appropriate for young kids!

P.S. That's my Copper in the middle and the azaleas outside my front door in the bottom one! Springtime IS here!

741.6 ObamiconMe: A "Sign" of the Times

The Obama Hope campaign poster ...and the more recently created inauguration poster ...by Shepard Fairley have inspired another creative group to develop ObamicomMe, an image generator where you and I can play around with the technique. Here are few of my favorites from the gallery of creations.

From these examples above, I see lots of ways they can be used in libraries and classrooms. Don't you?

Here are some of my efforts.

It does require you to register in order to save your creations, but it is super easy and a whole lot of fun!

image 1 & 3 of my creations: Microsoft Clipart

image 2: personal colection

551.72 Snowflakes: Generate you Own Pile

Those of you who live with snow day in and day out for several months a year...forgive me. One more fun activity generated by the excitement of our recent snowfall.

Make-a-snowflake image generator. Use virtual scissors to cut out your own creation from a piece of virtual paper...and no mess to clean up! Possibly the cleverest part of the whole activity is watching the computer take the "paper" and magically fold it for perfect snowflake cutting! ( Hey, simple pleasures...what can I say!)

You save them or upload to the gallery...which contains thousands and thousands of entries. That is my one contribution at the top of the post. And below is an Animoto slideshow where I pulled samples from the gallery for your viewing pleasure.

551.57 Snow: A Surprise Visitor

The weatherman kept saying it might happen...and it did! Snow fell within the city limits of Houston today...the first time in over 4 years!


It was a major news event all day...and caused all kinds of excitement...it actually feels like Christmas around here! (as opposed to the feeling one gets in December when you are STILL swatting mosquitoes.)

It was a good feeling...my old dog Mr. C was actually frisky after walking today...another new neighbor and I met each other for the first time and actually stood out on the sidewalk and let the flakes accumulate on our jackets as we exchanged our first neighborly tidbits...it brought out the bloggers around here and here as well!

But the WEIRDEST part of it all (and the main reason I ended up posting) is I hit (literally) on this YouTube video THIS EVENING by accident...it was fate! Enjoy!

Pretty cool, isn't it?...and I'm somebody who just doesn't "get" spreadsheets at all...I admittedly have "spreadsheet" envy on something like this!

P.S. I hope this bit of winter weather wonderland doesn't create a mess in the morning for all the drivers!

[Video from the Google Collaborative Spreadsheet Art collection on YouTube converted by Zamzar so it will be visible in district]

006.6 Dumpr: TOO Much Fun!

I have records open on my desktop that I SHOULD be cataloging, but I am taking a few minutes of virtual hookey time to show you Dumpr. Maybe it is not new to you and maybe you are not hooked on image generators as I am, but this one is pretty cool, ridiculously simple, very fast...and mostly FREE...the best kind!

I pulled up an old picture of a friend...those of you who have been in some of our department's staff development will recognize him! Look at all the things I can do to him.

Some of the things on the site do cost $$, but are marked pro so it is easy to tell. They can be saved, printed, uploaded to Flickr, or embedded almost anywhere in the 2.0 world you can think of!

Ok, ok, ok...I gotta get back to my cataloging. Go have fun!

P.S. The squishy one is really fun...you do the squishing. You HAVE to do that one at least!

371.33 Blog Anniversary: Two Years and Counting...

This blog is two years old this holiday weekend. I am fast running out of time to meet the anny deadline, but I am getting it started and will write on it a bit all day as I shoe-horn it in between life in general and the list I set for myself over this long weekend!

I am proud that it exists and that it is two years and counting. In the past I was not comfortable with my writing and very little exits, but this does...mostly because I could write down thoughts to be "used" by others. In my mind that makes it possible to accomplish because it is (hopefully) for the benefit of others.

There is very little original thought here. I simply report what I find or that others share with me (and thousands of others.) One of the BEST things about the online world...the possibility of sharing!

This second year has been a busy one. My team and I came across the 23 Things phenomena that has been making the rounds so we created our own version and have conducted it twice...so far! The first go-round of Library2Play included about half of our campus librarians, a few district teachers, an administrator, and a few brave souls from around the state who heard about it thru the Internet grapevine. THEN we repeated it in the summer...where we were joined by 300 district librarians, teachers, and several administrators along with educators from a wider state circle and 3 other states! What a terrific experience these encounters were and continue to be...several participants have kept their blogs active and share their online adventures with all of us.

I got to attend NECC this year, basically because it was right down I-10 in San Antonio and I went to the EduBloggers' thing the Saturday before the official conference began. I got to be in the same room with SO many of the bloggers who I have admired from afar...it was a BLAST!! It was THE highpoint of this two-year experience. And the rest of the conference was an adventure itself!

And yes, I do consider myself a part (a tiny part, but a part nevertheless) of the revolution in learning!

And of course, there was that little event in December which gave me an opportunity to visit a bit in Second Life...all of it... from the "surprise" beginning to the virtual world visit was so surreal.

I have gotten to meet so many wonderful people thru the blog...first establishing a relationship online and then thru events like TLA Conference, NECC and staff development trainings, I have had opportunities for face-to-face encounters. Several have become long-distance friends now. The blog will also be the vehicle to keep up with one special friend who been transplanted east...WAY east. I will get to see her sing and dance and watch her grow! O, yeah and keep up with her mom, too! :-)

Animoto remains my favorite tool...not necessarily the most effective or efficient tool in my toolbox, but it is so fun...and gets better and better! I couldn't live without my Reader, my various wikis that I have created to park various bits of info and Google Docs. Most of it all relates back to my blogging experiences in some form or fashion.

Now we are trying to experience FAceBook from an educator's point of view and how we can help students use it properly and safely. I'm a bit behind the circle with this particular social networking tool because it's just a tad too much for me...tends to be too "up close and personal," but I have put it on my list...and yes, that includes going thru the long list of friends-in-waiting!

And games... we are trying to show how games of all kinds belong in the library and the educational plans of our kids today. I love the Wii...bowling is my favorite right now, but gosh, every time I turn around TV shows us something new! I spent a fun afternoon recently watching kids fool around with Guitar Hero...how fun it was! Card games, board games, online games...they all belong. Watch...I'll be writing about some as time goes by.

Both personal and professional things took time away from my blogging fun. I hope to get things back on track and keep up a little better and a little more regularly. Looking forward to what awaits. Hope you will continue to check in and keep the conversation going.

Here's to Three!

005.2 Animoto: In a Word or Two, the Fun Continues

My favorite fun just gets better and better!

The folks at Animoto recently added the capability of adding text to your creations.
It does cost you a picture here and there if you are using the free 30-second version, but you can solve that by either paying the 30 bucks a year for longer ones or going after the educational "scholarship."

A few days before that, they added a preview feature so that you can look at the details of your pictures while in the design stage. A nice feature...especially if you are trying to decide which one or two has to go to make room for the text.

And now they are teasing that December 2nd holds another new feature...

Here is my not-so-great first attempt to use the text feature. The pictures are just pictures, but I will find another reason to use the catchy litte tune again!

759.4 Can You Picasso? ANOTHER Fun Generator

I just love the adventure of the Internet! Especially when one of the guides leads you to something as fun as creating your own Picasso-like drawing! Go have some fun with Mr. PicassoHead. You are viewing my results.

You can send your creations to others (or yourself.) You can post in the site's gallery. There are only 790,000+ images...created since 2003!

To capture it, you will have to use that magic "print screen" key and an old friend like a PPT screen. (at least that's how I manage it.)

741.5 Comic Book Generator: Check Out the Possibilities

I was introduced to a comic book generator and some online comics from a site called MashOn. Click on Spore on the menu bar to get to the generator. Click on comic strips to get one of 3 sets of strips: Chaotic, Holiday, or Urbaniacs. I have not checked yet (ok--I have forgotten!) to check and see if it is available in district, but it looks worthy of some time even if it is only available away from school. [Hurray! it is open in district!]

No I haven't actually made a comic...yet.

If you have noticed, I haven't had much blogging time either, but I did want to get this site out there so all you adventurous souls can try it out after the turkey dinner is eaten, your favorite football team has fallen in defeat, and the mall holds no interest on Black Friday.


I have be advised that it is kid-friendly. How young-friendly it is, I'm not sure. I am not even sure if registration is a requirement to creating something or added benefit to what you can and can not do on the site.

So, please go try it and see what you think...share what you think!

976.4 Speaking of License Plates: More than One Winner!

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDoT) took advantage of the interactive nature of the Web this month when it held an online vote for the next car license plate. Several choices (including the one released in 2000) were available and 1.2 million "voters" cast their choice.

I voted for the winner!! Although the bluebonnet one was pretty, this one got me in the heart. The media describes it as the one with the big white star or Lone Star. I suspect that many, many of the 400,000 + voters that selected this one saw what I saw...the beautiful mountain range and powerful cloud formation...yup, a west Texas scene won!

O, by the way, changing the design was not the only reason for the change. Seems we have used up all the alpha-numeric combinations possible with the 6 character format. Took us 33 years to do so. TxDot needed to add a 7th character so they decided that it was also a good time for a design change as well. Personally, I'm glad...never cared for the tiny hodge-podge symbols on the current one.

As part of the 23 Things program that the SBISD Library Information Services Department is sponsoring, Players get to mess around with lots of image generators. One in particular is Image Chef that has a license plate (and yes, other states ARE available!) on which you can create messages. My "practice" plate for the 23 Things advertises the program.

Then I just played around a bit more to show you some other ideas for this fun Thing! Maybe the other states could be incorporated into the traditional states' reports we all have our kids do at some point?

Go see what kind of fun you can make!