the yawn spot

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Blog#13_2010BP_reflectivemediaasset_week3

photos http://www.fotolia.com

Blog#5c_2010_web2.0tools

I have another great website. It can be found at http://sketchup.google.com. This is a marvelous tool to teach students how to draw from 2D to 3D. The free version is more than enough to get started. It has tutorials, which show how to use the tools and does examples of drawings. I plan to use this with my 8^th graders when they do their clay unit on buildings. They have to design a building on paper, construct it out of tag board and then build it out of clay. This will be another step before building it out of tag board.

This site would also be great for helping students to understand one point perspective. The application uses different planes for drawing. The application will not draw unless what the student is drawing it on the same plane. However, my students will probably understand it better than I think they will.

Blog#5b_2010_BP_web2.0Tools

The next tool I have chosen is found at http://visualthesaurus.com. This site offers a word of the day. I know that will not thrill my students, however there is another feature they will enjoy. If you type in a word, this site will do a word map that shows other words and their relationship with the word you typed. I plan to have my students use this when they ask what a word means.

This site would be great for my ELL students. Oftentimes it is hard for them to understand words when you try to relate it to another word. This thesaurus would show them the relationship from a word they know to other words. It would also show them what a word means that they didn't know and the relationship to a word they did know.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Blog#12_20091011_Web2.0Tools

	Welcome to your new ComfyPage Edit pages by clicking on Edit page at the top or bottom of this page. Images can be edited by right-clicking on them while editing the page. Insert new images by clicking on in the editor. The Site manager is the central point for managing your site. Click on in the toolbar. Your ComfyPage has a header, footer and left and right margins. Edit the borders by going to the Site Manager and clicking on Borders.
©2009 ms. yawn"s art class

Site manager Edit page RSS Wondering how to make a website?

This is the home page for a website I created on http://www.comfypage.com. This is another free Web 2.0 tool that I plan to use in a different way in my classroom. I have decided to use this site as an information site for the parents of my students. I plan to use this as a daily forum to keep parents informed as to what is going on in class.

It will take some time to build this site like I want to, however here are some things I plan to do. The first page will be what we did today. Each grade level will have a snippet of what we did in class that day. The next page will be a homework page. Each grade level will have the project we are working on and when it is due. I will also have the sketchbook assignment and when it is due.

The next page will have a video of student work. This will be a gallery of art work. This will be entirely student produced. I will give this project as part of the 8th grade art grade. They will pick the pieces of work, video the work and publish it on the site. They will also be responsible to interview students outside of class and write the student's reviews of the work and put it on the site.

Even though this is a work in progress, I think this will be beneficial for the students and parents alike.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Blog#11_20091011_Web2.0Tools

BP9_2009102_Google Reflective Media Asset

My all time favorite Web 2.0 tool!

2 comments:

RenaJ said...: This is great!!! Thank you!; October 12, 2009 10:51 AM
pyawn said...: I really like your video. Your images, music and audio are a perfect fit and get the message across in the exact one minute allowed. Great job! I know if I showed this to the teachers at my school, it would make them curious to know more. As a matter of fact, I'm going to show this to my media person at school and then ask the principal if we can use it for a faculty meeting. then use the rest of the time talking about Web 2.0 tools.
Thanks for making me think...; October 16, 2009 6:28 PM

Blog #10_20091010_blog_web2.0

I love springtime when the new leaves come out, much like this one. I chose this image because it describes the web 2.0 tool I want to talk about. It is called wikispaces and the url is http://www.

wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers.

This site began 2 1/2 years ago as a free, private and having unlimited use wiki space for K-12 teachers. As of today, they have given away 332,189 free wiki spaces that they used to charge $50.00 apiece for. How they do this, I haven't a clue however this photo generosity has allowed educators to experiment and excite their students with wikis.

It only takes a minute to sign up and once you do that you are on your way. You can have as many wikis as you want. You can set it up any way you want. You have complete, unlimited use. This is available all over the world.

The site is constantly being improved. They mentioned that soon there will be new features available. They also host online live events. There are tutorials and there is a link to something called sandbox wiki which helps you to get started.

I have signed up for a wiki on this site. I plan to use it as a teaching site to introduce my students to a wiki. My first site will have artists that tried to use perspective in their paintings and drawings. It will be easy to build this site because the images are easier to upload online than getting actual reproductions.

After that I plan to take my students into the computer lab and we will work on a site together.

We will use Flickr and upload images of art they like. We will then discuss them and talk about the Elements of Design and later the Principles of Art and why that is the reason they like the images. This kind of discussion will precede their projects on the Element of Art and the Principles of Design.

I am glad that they are constantly improving this site. I plan to experiment and really try some different things to get my students to try this new medium. As far as I know, and I plan to ask our buildings media person, none of the teachers in my school are using wikis for education. I will report back later how this goes.

photo http://www.fotolia.com

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

blog #9_20091009_blog_web2.0

The web 2.0 tool I want to brag on today is Google Earth. The url is http://earth.google.com. It takes a while to download, however it is worth the wait. This tool has possibilities for many educational activities. Science, geography, art and history to name a few.

Earth science was the first subject I thought of. Exploring the topography of different oceans is very exciting. This would get your students excited because you would have explained that all of this is from satellites and that it is in real time. This has real world application. Recently there was a tsunami that destroyed part of a country. The science teacher could take the class to that part of the ocean where there was the earthquake and show how it builds into a tsunami.

The second subject I thought of was geography. I've always wanted to go to the Grand Canyon. I looked at it on Google Earth and it looked so real. This is a geography teacher's dream. (photo www.fotolia.com)

Just think of it, to be able to actually show that Italy is shaped like

a boot or that Hawaii is so far isolated in the Pacific Ocean would be much more interesting than looking at it on a wall map.

Art has some great sites in Google earth. There are 3-D buildings. Cathedrals, art museums and castles and palaces would be great places to see in art history. There are also great historical places to visit, also. A great history lesson could be on the places where the olympics were held. there is a 3-D Beijing Olympic Stadium.

Google Earth is by far my best web 2.0 site. I cannot think that there could possibly be another tool that I could find so many uses for.