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Be Awesome – Be Inspiring

Posted by Kathy Adkins on November 30th, 2012 No Comments

Signs of inspiration are posted everywhere these days. From stenciled quotes on walls to decorated images and photographs, meaningful text is shared to provide encouragement and direction. On a recent walk through at one of our schools, you could not help to notice the artful displays created by the school’s art teacher to encourage young learners such as the “Be Awesome” at the water cooler. Many of us do not have the talent to paint on walls but there are many resources to draw from, no pun intended. Krissy Vensodale, shares free posters for the classroom on her blog Venspired and even provides how to directions on a previous post - Make Your Own Classroom Poster. What kind of inspiration can you share with your learners? Will you inspire them to be creative with their own artwork and meaningful text? What will you want them to be?

A Few For Friday – Creating with Meaningful Text

Quozio creates a beautiful image from meaningful words. No account, sign up or email address is needed to quickly create signs with different styles to promote the words.

Cool Text is a great logo generator. Text can be generated and downloaded to save. You can also copy and paste or drag the text into your word processor.

Visual Poetry is an IOS app from Image Chef that allows you to create collages using text, images and symbols to convey the message. The only draw back is the $.99 cost.

A Dozen Words for 2012, a previous post, shares more ways to use meaningful text. Be Creative!

Art work above provided by Julie Hubbard, Chestatee Elementary’s Art Educator. Frame created in Adobe Photoshop Express, a free IOS app.

 

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Art Journaling

Posted by Kathy Adkins on October 12th, 2012 No Comments

Pinterest continues to be a source of great ideas for inspiration. On a recent timed browsing trip, Melissa Taylor’s board, Art Journaling for Adults and Children was discovered. Taylor’s board and pins lead to more discoveries and a budding interest in art journaling. Dina Wakley states on the get it scrapped blog, “Simply put, an art journal is a journal in which you combine art and words to express yourself.” She also shares, “There are no mistakes in journaling so leave your inner critic at the door.” With more exploration, ideas for classroom journaling and creativity resonated from the usage of old texts and printed paper to how our BYOT classrooms could utilize many of these ideas for written expression on mobile devices from doodling, to collages and photo snapshots. From Kristen McKay’s Journaling Ideas, to using the one little word, from Monica Wright, these ideas will inspire your design and thinking of ways to share art journaling in your classrooms. Connecting the arts with content areas and bringing together these teachers could only make the learning experience more engaging for students. How will you use art journaling in the classroom? See more ideas at the Incredible Art Teacher and inspire others.

Five for Friday – Places to Share Photos, Doodle and Journal

Common Sense Media shares reviews on Journal Apps, Online Dairies and Digital Scrapbooks for different age groups. Some of these are costly and others are $.99.

PicMonkey is a free online feature rich photo editing site that contains a collage section. Create individual images and then load into the collage maker. You can check out some of its features at Constant Contact.

Big Huge Labs has a variety of output for digital content from a mosaic maker, motivational poster to magazine cover. Take a learner’s creation from a doodling app or take a photo of a paper creation with a device to import and share.

Image Chef App for IOS can do amazing things with photos and text as shown by the image above. It is free and has additional layouts you can download.

Skitch is free and its integration with Evernote makes it a great tool for art journaling.

Related Post – Let them Doodle – Tools in Hand

Image above made with Image Chef App

 

 

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Diversity of the Leaf and Learner

Posted by Kathy Adkins on September 28th, 2012 No Comments

Fall color is in all its splendid color in some regions and just beginning in other areas. The Miracle of Fall provides many links to follow leaf change with web cams and foliage updates. You can even watch leaf change in less than 30 seconds. This month’s National Geographic article, “The Glory of Leaves” by Rob Dunn takes a closer look at why leaves look the ways they do, from different shapes, colors, size, texture and taste just to name a few attributes. Leaves are very diversified in nature due to climate, competition and defense and as noted in this article, a work in progress. As we observe their majestic fall beauty let us be reminded of their diversity and beauty. Let us also remind ourselves of the diversity of all learners and what shapes their growth. Just like leaves, they are also a work in progress. Let’s do our best to provide the best climate, instill competitive spirit and model best practices in online safety as we guide them in learning. Take a closer look everyday.

Five Apps for Friday – Collage Creators

Photo Collage

Frame Magic

PolyFrame Lite

Photo Wall Lite

Diptic $.99

These collage creators are just tools but a choice for students to share learning.

Photo above created with Photo Collage

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Educator Appreciation – You Hung the Moon!

Posted by Kathy Adkins on May 4th, 2012 No Comments

Looking into the night sky this weekend, Saturday, May 5 @ 11:34 PM EST, the moon will be a Super Moon, a perigee moon, a time when the moon is closest to the earth. The moon will be 14% larger and 30% brighter than other moons for 2012.  You can learn more about the Super Moon of May 2012 from NASA ScienceCast. This year’s super moon lights the way for Teacher Appreciation Week, May 7-11. We are all surrounded by incredible educators that guide our journey and engage our learning everyday. How will you express your appreciation? Will you tell them they have hung the moon?

Five For Friday – Moon Resources

Birthday Moons is an activity to gather data and learn about the phases of the moon. It was created to answer the question, were more of you born on a full moon? Using the links in the web poster and the Excel spreadsheet template, students are given the opportunity to explore and compare relevant data to learn phases of the moon. What kind of relevant project can you create with Web Poster Wizard from 4Teachers.org?

NeoK12 – Moon provides learners with interactives, puzzles and videos to fuel their curiosity of the moon. NeoK12 is a great resource for educational videos.

Photonaturalist, Steve Berardi, shares helpful links on moon photography on his blog, Biggest Full Moon of the Year Occurs this Saturday.

Lightstalking provides 10 great moon photography examples as well as tips for moon photography.

Check out Karen Wheeler’s Moon Phase Pinterest board for photography inspiration. Pinterest continues to grow and provide educators with great resources.

Some Moon Apps

Moon. – Learn About the Moon

Live Moon Pro – Current Moon (Free)

Perpetuum – Moon Phases ($.99)

Photo courtesy irewired. All Rights Reserved

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New PLAYgrounds – Tilt that Seesaw

Posted by Kathy Adkins on April 13th, 2012 No Comments

Old Playground Circa 1897

Assessment weeks are winding away and hopefully learners will have more opportunity to play and explore new learning experiences. A recent post via Daily Adventures, shared global hero, Henry Jenkins – “Play is at the heart of learning – USA” and his influence on educators throughout the world. “Give yourself and your students permission to play, ” say Henry Jenkins. PLAY stands for Participatory Learning and You. Jenkins goes on to state play is the basic human mechanism for learning. Many schools view play as disruption of the educational process but Jenkins notes that play actually motivates learning and provides new forms of engagement. He highlights five core principals to embrace participatory learning. These core principals are key concepts to frame and apply to learning new media literacy’s. Jenkins says, “New media literacies cannot be an option (meaning new media shouldn’t be set aside for the end of the week if the students have been “good”). It is not about the tools or technology; it is about experimentation, more collaboration, more creativity and more play. ” Read entire post about this global hero in education and be inspired. How will you tilt the seesaw and provide new opportunities for participatory learning? Will you wait till work is finished or testing is complete?

Four For Friday – Apps to Take Outside to Play

VidRythm is free app to share learning experiences easily remixing short video clips. There is no actual game to play but it is a lot of fun to play and create. Promote play by sharing play.

Viddy is another video capturing app with cinematic features that allows you to quickly share memorable moments. Viddy is the instagram for videos.  Check out this one titled “Water!”

Kinotopic creates kinos, which are also known as cinemagraphs. Kinotopic allows you to make still photographs and add small areas of movement. Make some playful animations!

Snapster is new app released this week that allows you to take square photos. To improve your photography skills you have to play and take lots of photos plus it is always fun to play with something new!

Photo Courtesy of iRewired – Old Playground in Colorado

 

 

 

 

 

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BYOT Outdoors – The Sky is the Limit

Posted by Kathy Adkins on March 23rd, 2012 No Comments

One of the best perks about having a mobile device in hand is the ability to take it outside. The walls of the classroom are gone and the open space can lead to new conversations. The sky is the limit and the curiosity of the outdoors will lead learners to new spaces of learning. One space to spark outdoor curiosity is Project Noah and its free mobile app. Noah is the acronym for “Networked Organisms And Habitats.” Project Noah provides educators a place where learners can explore nature and document observations. Learners can join missions and become “citizen scientists” solving real world problems. Check out this video on the 2011 BioBlitz to inspire BYOT outdoors. Will you create an outdoor mission? The sky is the limit.

A Few For Friday – Grow Curiosity

Share You Tube Time Lapse Videos of Plant Growth such as Time Lapse of Plant Growth. Time Lapse of Flowers in Growth is incredibly beautiful and a must see!

Visit sites that are interactive and engaging such as The Life Cycle of a Plants which has a whiteboard view. Science Kids has an interactive page with drag and drop features for life cycle. Plants is another short learning experience for younger learners. Note that many of sites contain Flash and using Rover, an app browser on the iPad, works for viewing on IOS devices.

Visit sites with lots of photos to inspire your young phoneographers. Arkive is an incredible site with lots of earth images and videos for student exploration and learning.

Photo collage created by irewired with Diptic

 

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Phoneography Inspiration

Posted by Kathy Adkins on February 3rd, 2012 No Comments

This past weekend 259 students participated in our district’s annual Technology Fair with over 206 projects in 14 categories ranging from project programing, robotics, and animated graphic design to digital video production and digital photography. What a great day for students to share their technology passions outside the normal school day. As a judge, I was privileged to view the photography expertise of fifth and sixth graders. Not only were their photos amazing, their passion for taking great photos was evident as they shared their projects.  What was surprising was the low number of entries in the digital photography category. How can we promote digital photography learning? There are great lessons online that weave the art of photography with curriculum as well as how to’s. A great place to start is the Digital Photography School and 13 Lessons to Teach Your Child About Digital Photography. Whether it is a mobile device or digital camera, learners need to capture and share their views of the world. How can you inspire young photography artists?

A Few For Friday – Phoneography Tips and Tricks

iPhoneography is a great site for inspiration on using iPhones. This Week “Through the Eyes of an iPhone” shares a variety of photos from the amazing flickr group – Through the Lens of the iPhone.

Photojojo shares 10 Tips to Make Your Phone Photos Amazing. Practice some of the techniques shared with filtering and exposure and apply with split frames. Great app recommendations are shared as well as some easy tools for photo shoots.

Welovephoneography.com is a great blog to follow from Photojojo. Super cool ideas are shared for different mobile devices.

Sunsets, Relaxing and Recharging with Mobile Photography, a previous post, provides more ideas and apps to keep the shutter snapping.

 

 

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A Dozen Words for 2012

Posted by Kathy Adkins on December 16th, 2011 No Comments

Last year, Michael Bungagy Stanier, Senior Partner of Box of Crayons, shared 11 Words for 2011. This 48 second movie shares an upbeat tempo to inspire and uplift. “Laugh, Explore and Partner” were just few highlighted to “Provoke” (another one) and inspire. Has your 2011 embraced and framed these words? As this year winds down and 2012 approaches, now is a great time to reflect on where we have journeyed and how we want to move forward. What would be your twelve words to live by for 2012? What would be your learners’ individual dozen words for 2012? How can you inspire creativity and guide learners as they share words for 2012?

 

A Few for Friday – Creative Ideas to Share Words

Five Word Cloud Creators would be one quick option for learners to showcase a dozen words for 2012. Check out more uses of Word Clouds at a previous Friday Flash – Learning on the Fly. The image on this post is from Image Chef another great cloud tool.

Word as an Image is a video that shares the talent of Ji Lee and his book by the same name. He challenges you to use only the letters of the word itself to create an image. The rule states:Use only the graphic elements of the letters without adding outside parts. Individual images are shared on his Word as an Image Facebook site. Students could collaborate and create their own word videos.

The Project Lettering Book by Robert Ainsworth shares examples of using letters of the word plus added images. Here are some examples used to teach recognition and spelling. Learners could draw on paper and take snapshots to create flashcards or share with a slideshow application such as Prezi.

Wordfoto is a great app for IOS devices that can turn a photo and words into amazing typographic works of art as shown with the image above. Unfortunately it costs $1.99 and will only let you input 10 words. What a great way to take an image of a learner and add their words. See more about Wordfoto at Nashworld.

For fun use Iconscrabble and Flickr Spell to create words online with images and photography. This can inspire learners to make personal word images from photos using alphabet photography as shown below with Happy New Year courtesy of Sukanto Debnath. There are sites such as Alphabet Photography that will create the word art for you at an expense. Learners can discover alphabet photography around them and create their own word art for 2012.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image at top Courtesy of David K

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Falling into Place – Welcome Change

Posted by Kathy Adkins on October 14th, 2011 No Comments

The Castles photo created with Diptic

Fall is an incredibly beautiful season in many parts of the country with the changing of the leaves. In high elevations change happens rapidly to aspens as shown by the two photos taken of the West Elk Castles of Colorado. The snapshots were taken only six days apart and provide a great visual of the color change.

In today’s classrooms we see change but visually it is slow. Social media, mobile learning devices and online learning are a few influencers that are slowly shaping how instruction is being delivered in the classroom and beyond the walls. Enjoy the season of fall outside and inside and welcome change.  Things will slowly fall into place. If you take a snapshot now and later in the year, will you see change?

“You must be the change you see in the world.” Ghandi

Four for Friday – Ideas to Engage Learning

Adobe Education Exchange – Become a member of Adobe Education Exchange and view and rate the 2011 teaching innovations submitted. Once a member you can save favorite lessons and ideas to engage your learners. Adobe does showcase their products but compatible applications can be used to complete many of the innovative ideas.

Interface Magazine – This publication for New Zealand teachers provides a wealth of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) for their teachers. The Lesson Plans and Free Tools are places to explore new tools with suggestions on how to implement in the classroom.

Interactive NETS*S – This wiki site was presented at ISTE 2010 and contains lesson ideas created by Kansas educators. Lessons are tied to the National Educational Standards for Students. Use the search feature or the navigation bar to explore the NETS*S framework and locate lessons and ideas.

Georgia NETS-S Performance Tasks – Here is a collection of resources at GeorgiaStandards.org that align the Georgia performance standards with NETS-S. These tasks were created by Georgia educators.

App Resource – The above image was created with Diptic, an IOS app for arranging and combining photos. ($.99) This is a great photo tool to share contrasts and comparisons. How could your learners use this to springboard learning?

Photo Courtesy of irewired – West Elks Fall of 2011

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Sunsets – Relaxing and Recharging with Mobile Photography

Posted by Kathy Adkins on May 20th, 2011 No Comments

Photo taken with iPhone

As the sun sets on this school year, thoughts move toward vacation and time to relax with family and friends but the question often surfaces whether to find time for professional development. Do you decompress and relax or do you seek time to embrace new learning and expand your horizons? From experience, refueling by taking breaks from the load of the school year keeps you energized and recharged. However as life long learners, turning completely off doesn’t really happen. A recent Edutopia Poll asked, “Should teachers spend their summers developing their skills or relaxing?” With just over 1300 votes, 87% replied “Both – Ideally, teachers should spend time engaging in both educational development and non-work-related recreational activities.” How do you relax and recharge for the new school year? Whether you are chilling or refueling your skill set, keep that camera close by and capture the moments and the  glowing sunsets.

Comment from Poll – “What’s “relaxing?” I need to be thinking and learning to be happy!” Bonnie Yelverton, Secondary Math and Science Teacher

Motivational Poster Feature Using ezimba

A Few For Friday -
Mobile Photography

Mashable recently posted Mobile Photography - 20+ Resources for Apps, Snaps and Inspiration that will recharge your thinking and learning mobile photography as an art form. Why not create an A-Z Photo Gallery of your summer journey?

Ezimba is an incredible online web photo editor that creates so many art forms from an original photo. Be sure to undo before you apply a new effect unless you wish to layer effects. See some of these effects at Digital Diva/Digital Dude or all on this Flickr Ezimba Search. Create posters with the online version.

iPhotography is iphone photography and videography blog that reviews useful iphone apps. Check out the 6×6 App Review and one of many – Through the Lens Challenges. Could this challenge you this summer to develop your skill set and design a “Through the Lens Challenge” for learners?

Favorite Photography Apps

Photoshop Express – Quickly edit and share your photos. (Free)

PhotoPad – Works with iPad, ipod and iPhone to quickly edit photos with several options. (Free)

ezimba free – This is a fully functional free version of ezimba for the iPhone. For androids click here! (Free)

Color Splash – Quickly convert photos to black and white and retouch with color splashes. ($.99)

Videolicious – Turn raw video clips and photography into great looking videos. Check out the web site for more details. (Free)

Photo Transfer App – This is a great photo transfer app that allows transfer to computer or other device. ($2.99)

Friday Flash will be traveling to relax and recharge. As you travel this summer, remember it is not about the destination but the journey.

Photo courtesy of irewired. Taken with iPhone on a recharging trip to Charleston, SC on May 14 aboard the USS Yorktown at Patriots Pointe.

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