Week 5--Thing 12 Rollyo

I can see where this might be a handy tool. I played around creating a search for the webstites I had in my favorites for finding booktitles. While it worked fine on the Rollyo Site it didn't work when I pasted the code into my blog.

The other interesting note was that I tried to play with Rollyo at school when my summer school students were taking a test. It's blocked by the filtering software, so I couldn't even get to it.

This may be a place where Google's custom search tool might be better. I played with that a little after someone posted about it on Calib. I used Tom Kaun's custom math search several times last spring when I was wanting activities to use in my classes.

Week 5 Thing 11--Google Docs

I decided to play with this option because of my summer school class. I'm using another blog as a webpage for assignments because I don't have server access at the new school yet. I've been frustrated because there wasn't a way to link documents because I didn't have a server to upload to, so absent students have to wait until they return to get the makeup work.

I decided to upload an existing worksheet to google docs so I could see the quality and how it might work in the classroom setting. While the math symbols didn't translate perfectly, it's acceptable enough for the student who is absent or lost a paper. It would work for documents that are straight text.

I can see a lot of positives here for collaboration. You can make the documents available to others for editing. Working with a teacher collaborator you could both edit in real time and not have to worry about emailing back and forth newly edited versions.

Another possibility is to have some "standard" worksheets that teachers might want to use across the curriculum. They could then have easy access and be able to edit and modify for their own headers.

As a classroom teacher I was often borrowing from colleagues, but would often retype or literally cut and paste to make it fit my class. This would be a great way for teachers within the same department to share documents. While many schools have common server files, staff cannot always access those files from home.

The possibilities here are endless.

Week 5--Thing 10 Image Generator

I have five days off to play, so decided to not grade papers tonight but am playing on the computer instead.

First: Here's a sketch of my cat from the sketch generator. It actually looks much better than the original photo.



Second: I like the Name in Lights generator. This would be fun on the library page just to attract attention. Even though I copied the "silent animation" there is still sound. (so I'm taking it down because every time I go to this page I here popping sounds and it's annoying me). In addition there are illegal fireworks going off near by. I haven't heard the sirens yet, but I expect them any minute. The cat has run for cover.