On May 24th, my school district has our technology fair to showcase the technology our students and teachers are using to improve learning. We give some type of gift to the participants to show our appreciation, and this year we will be giving ear buds with our technology fair logo on it.
As we were speaking to our vendor, she asked if we had a logo and yes we do. She said that was great and to send to her it as a vector file. A what? As good technology coaches, we did not ask any questions and said sure we could. Two seconds later we googled it and learned what it was. From what I can best tell, a vector file is a graphic design image that can be placed onto pens, cups, ear buds, flash drives, etc, and one of the file extensions is eps.
So how do you create a vector (eps) file from jpeg? Using Online Convert, you upload your image and the website will convert it for you, no sign in required. You can simply download the converted file. However, how do you view your new file without a vector or eps program to run it?
Voila, you can Microsoft Word to view it; I am using the 2010 and not sure if it works on older versions of Word.
Go to Insert
Insert a Picture
Where it states "All Pictures" choose "Encapsulated PostScript" - Long for eps.
My district's curriculum math coach and I passed this along to our teachers, but I forgot one thing. Many teachers do not know how to embed widgets, videos, or other web 2.0 tools into their websites. The tutorial below will go through the steps on how to embed a scientific calculator (or something else) into your website.
By the way, if you are not already reading Richard's blog or following him on Twitter, I suggest you do.
Learned something quite easy today and new. We have an IT work order system in our district. However, it does not work using Internet Explorer (IE) so up to now we have opened Firefox to make it work. Now, you are probably asking, "Why don't you use Forefox or Chrome all of the time?" Well, IE works for most of our websites and the others do not. I guess it has something to do with our Firewall, but I'm not a IT person.
So back to the original problem, we have to open Firefox to use our work order system. One of our techs saw this and said, "Why don't you click on the 'compatibility view' in IE?" What is the compatibility view you say? When you are in IE, if the website you are at does not work fully in the current version of IE you are running, you will be what looks like a page break in the address bar. You left-click on this once and Bam!, the website will become fully functional.
I'm sure those of us at GCSD will be happy to hear less to solve websites problems, "Try another browser."
This short video gives you step by step instructions on how to embed a Voki into your PowerPoint presentation. It's as easy as creating a Voki...sharing the Voki by "publishing" your avatar, copying the embed code, and inserting it into your PowerPoint. Although it will look as though it didn't work when you first insert it, it will load and show as soon as yoou begin the Slide Show.
Watch the webcast below to see how easy it is to enhance your presentations. If you want to download the step-by-step instructions, I have it in a PowerPoint, just go to my website and download the instructions. Click HERE to get to my Tech tool of the Month. The Tech tool of the Month will change in April, but the PowerPoint Instructions for this Blog will remain on the page.
We have been sharing with some of our teachers lately, a
tool that allows them to showcase their student projects. The tool is called PADLET,
formerly known as Wallwisher.It is located at www.padlet.com.Most often, we have created the sites or “pages”
with teachers so the students can post notes to the page in response to a
question or to share thoughts.Now we have started using the
online bulletin board tool as a way to share things like the students' respose to an essential question,
written documents, posters, Power Points and Weebly Web pages.We make sure to adjust the Privacy Settings
so a teacher has to approve a piece before it goes live on the web.Be sure to observe all of the precautions for
Internet safety for our students, conforming to the CIPA and COPPA laws.
Watch the very basic video tutorial below and start showcasing your students’ work online.
Chapter 5 in Daniel Pink's book To Sell is Human: The
Surprising Truth About Moving Others is titled "Buoyancy." It is
the second chapter of Part II in the book titled, "How To Be."
Many of you reading this post are teachers, instructional
coaches, and administrators who are leading the way in integrating technology
effectively.As we are on our journey,
how many of you can describe situations similar to that of a door-to-door
salesman.“He found door-to-door selling
especially brutal.These rejections came
fast and ferociously, often in the form of a rude comment and a slammed door.”
(Page 99 of 260, Loc 1190, Kindle App for iPad)Now I’ve never had a teacher slam a door in my face but many emails go unnoticed.
In order to stay positive in our quest to integrate
effectively, Daniel Pink suggests we stay buoyant.
1) Have Interrogative Self-Talks – Example – How can I best
persuade the teacher to have his/her students write online?“Can I move these people.” (page 117, Loc
1399)
2) Positivity Ratios – Be positive about what you are trying
persuade teachers to do.Negative
emotions narrow people’s vision while positivity broadens it. (page 105, Loc
1286).Also, you need to believe in the
positive effect that technology integration has on the learning for students.
3) Optimistic Explanatory Style – “View your rejections as
temporary rather than permanent, specific rather than universal, and external
rather than personal.” (page 111, Loc 1369)
Practicing buoyancy is going to be important for me.Many times, like today, I get dismayed when
only a handful of teachers welcome me into their classrooms to share ideas of
technology integration.However, I need
to be positive, have interrogative self-talks before entering a building, and
be optimistic to help myself be persistent through the tough days.
Finding ways to keep the interests of students is certainly challenging.For years, “manipulatives” were hot items
because they occupied the mind and hands of students, allowing them to connect
the different modalities in one lesson.Today’s students are a lot more tech savvy and seem to get bored
quicker.I continue to search for ways to
engage students while exposing them to content.With that being said, here’s an interesting way to use a “word cloud”
tool to focus on content, vocabulary and spelling.The site is www.tagxedo.com.
Tagxedo lets you build word clouds, but with an additional spin.You can import shapes and pictures, or choose
from the stock shapes on the website to create a picture using words.You’ve heard the expression, “A picture
paints a thousand words” haven’t you?Well here is proof!
Here are two project ideas:
1)SELF-PORTRAIT. What you will need:Laptops or computers, list of words
describing themselves, a picture of the student either on a Flash Drive or on
the computer hard drive. Part 1:Have
students create a list of words that describe themselves.Have other students in the class contribute
to the list by adding positive attributes that a student may not list about themselves.This is a cool activity for programs like “Capturing
Kid’s Hearts.” Next, have the students use all of the words created in the list
to write an autobiographical paper.Part
2:For the follow-up activity have
students open www.tagxedo.com.Once there, students can import their
picture, load the Tagxedo with the list of words or even better, the autobiography
and watch as the words spin a likeness of the student using words.Save, Share or Print out.
2)FAMOUS PEOPLE/SPEECHES IN HISTORY.What you will need: a famous speech and a
picture of the person who delivered the speech.Part 1:Find an important speech
from history.Discuss what was happening
around the time the speech was delivered, and the importance of the
speech.Now, after doing your research
about the speech, the person, what was happening in this time period in history,
and the impact of the speech…use the words to the speech and load them into
Tagxedo.Import a picture of the person
who delivered the speech. Watch as
Tagxedo spins a likeness of the person using their own words from the speech.
Watch the video for the basics of
how to use Tagxedo.The program is pretty
intuitive, and in no time at all, you will be creating all kinds of really cool
projects on your own.
