Word Cloud

Just for fun, here's a word cloud for this blog so far.  This was created in Wordle.  I'm quite happy that "students" is the one of the biggest (and therefore most used) words.

Simple Voice Recording

It doesn't take much to record your voice while you are presenting to students.  If you have a smartphone, you have a recorder.  On my Android phone, I downloaded Easy Voice Recorder (free, or Pro version for $4).  You can use this program to record notes for yourself any time with the built-in microphone.  With a phone headset, you can record yourself while you are explaining something in your classroom, then upload that file to your class website so students can listen to you again (or for the first time).  For iOS, try SuperNote (free or $2 paid version), which does simple voice recording along with text or picture notes.  You can also use Evernote for voice recording, on either Android or iOS.  Think about how many times you explain something in your classroom.  Then think about explaining it once and letting kids listen to it over and over and over and over .........

Free and Fair-Use Photos and Soundtracks

The September/October issue of Learning and Leading with Technology has an article by Keith Ferrell that gives four resources that students can use to find free and fair-use photos:

• Pics4Learning.com
• flickrCC
• FlickrStorm
• Fotopedia

Not everything on these sites is royalty-free, so make sure students are using advanced searches to find noncommercial or Creative Commons images.

The article also references a site (www.soundzabound.com) that students can use to download royalty-free soundtracks.  Try these out the next time your students are putting together a presentation.

Twitter hashtag for SDUHSD

If you'd like to get started using Twitter (and I recommend it), here's an easy way to do it.  Sign up at www.twitter.com, and enter "#SDUHSDtech" in the search box.  We'll use that hashtag for discussion specific to our district this year.  You don't have to follow anyone if you don't want, but you can follow me (@kfairchild6) if you do.  This is a simple way to get your feet wet, and once you're used to Twitter, you can explore more.  Remember, though, that you should consider everything you share as public: there's nothing private on Twitter.

Edmodo - great resource to connect with teachers everywhere!

Edmodo is a great resource to connect with other teachers on a varity of topics. Join our Flipped Classroom community. Here is the group code for the flipped classroom: 0ywjwj
Go to www.edmodo.com and sign up for FREE.