Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

Last week I worked with K-2 teachers in preparation of Read Across America Week teaching them how to use the Doink Green Screen App  with Dr. Seuss characters and book covers.  In the training I placed them into iconic Dr. Seuss book covers...much to their delight! We are using this concept for a Seuess themed family literacy night as well.  One question I repeatedly received was how I was able to mask the image on the cover. In all honesty I got the idea from an art teacher I follow on Twitter - Tricia Fuglestad . I have her blog bookmarked and I love all her ideas...particularly the ones related to green screening.  The difference between Tricia and me is that she is SUPER artistically talented and sadly I am not. She is also an iPad wiz and, while I have an iPad, I am more comfortable with a PC. So when I see her projects I am always thinking...how can I duplicate it on a PC? When she masks the covers of books she uses an iPad app c...

Picture Source If you have not heard of the app Novel Effect you may want to give it a try for Read Across America Week. The free app brings popular kid's books to life by playing sound effects, music, and character's voices as you read out loud. Novel Effect works when you read aloud from the corresponding book using voice recognition. I heard about the app while attending the TCEA conference in San Antonio earlier in the month. I was recently a guest reader in a fifth grade class and decided to give it a try. I downloaded the app to both my iPhone and iPad. I looked through the list of books in the Novel Effect library of soundscapes and found a corresponding book in our school's digital library (Overdrive). If I had a hard copy of the book it would have worked as well. I then practiced at home. I had the book  (Rosie Revere Engineer) open on my laptop and the Novel Effect app open on my iPad. I also tried reading the book from my Overdrive app on my iPad...

Tonight I am having fun making Bitmoji Valentines for an upcoming staff training that happens to fall on February 14th. I used the Bitmoji extension in Google Chrome and put it together in Google Drawings. I could insert a 2x4 table into Drawings to get my dimensions set for printing (I printed four to a piece of card stock). I used the Google add on "Magic Rainbow Unicorn" to make the word "magical" rainbow colored. The add on only works in Google Docs but I cut and paste my words into my Google Drawings.template. I bought the lollipops on Amazon but I am not sure I would recommend it. A lot of them were broken in the shipping process...which was packaged really poorly. I really wanted the twisty lollipops and couldn't think of any place in town that would sell them. There are several Bitmoji characters that would have worked for Valentine's Day cards. Here were my runner up ideas: If you plan on making Valentines for your staff or studen...