Restaurant Dining meet Technology

Well you know that technology has made an impact when your dining experience has been enhanced through the use of technology.

How many times have you been to a restaurant in a group when the conversation dies out?  Have you been out with your kids and they are fidgeting around at the table and don;t know what to do with them?  Most people pull out their cell phones and will hop on the internet, check voice mail or texts or go to their favorite social media outlet as the conversation dies or to keep your children's attention.

Well Applebee's seems to have hit the mark on giving you an interactive dining experience with their "Ziosk" table system.  You have the ability to order your food, pay your bill and even play video games.  Yes I said play video games.  For a nominal fee you can play video games while you are waiting for your order to be brought to your table.  Great idea for those nights when you are dealing with both hungry and fidgety kids. 

The Ziosk display unit looks to be a 7" tablet that has been mounted in a sturdy base with a card reader so you can pay your bill by gift or credit card.  Seems to run on a standard OS with a simplified POS system running in it for you to order and pay your bill.  When I paid my bill I was given the option of getting a printed receipt or having one emailed to me.  I chose to have it emailed to me, I don't know about you but I hate walking out of a restaurant with three or four paper receipts.  Within a minute of submitting the payment I received the email with the receipt.  Now there is a catch you do have to offer up your email address to the Applebee's Ziosk display but as of yet I have not received any junk email from them.

So if you are looking for a fun, and interactive, dining experience head on over to the new and improved connected Applebee's nearest you to try out their new menu items and the the on Ziosk table display.

Making the Elections Relavent

As this year's Elections draw closer and closer do your students really know what is going on?

With all of the ads on TV, radio and the internet it may be difficult for your students to see the big picture as you explain the election process to them.

Although this can be discussed in all grade levels it is more prevalent right now for students that are in the eighth grade. How might you ask?

Students in the eighth grade are currently learning about the Revolutionary War and the events that happened immediately afterwards. Those events helped to lead us to our first Presidential election. Again you may be asking why is this an important event in the lives of these students. The answer is simple, during the next elections cycle they will be High School Seniors and may have the opportunity to vote. So it is important for them to understand the process and how they can make a difference if they choose to vote, remembering to tell them that it is their choice.

Here are some resources that can help make the difference in how your students perceive the Elections and how they can get involved and make it relevant to their lives.

• Have your students create Political Cartoons using this Arts Edge Lesson that brings in a cross curricular component to the normal Social Studies curriculum.  As well Arts Edge has a great Lesson on the Election Process to help enhance your instruction on how the process works.
•  You can use Read Write Think as a launch point to provide a number of resources on the Election Cycle and ways to get your students involved.  Some of these resources discuss using Avatars to create political cartoon skits.
• You can use this Themed Resource page from Smithsonian's History Explorer to give your students some more background on the election process.  See how Mass Media plays a role in the election process with this resource from Smithsonian. 
• Try all of these resources that Thinkfinity has gathered together for you regarding the election process.
• Here are a lot of Election Lesson plans and activities from EDSITEment that go along with the Social Studies curriculum.

So even though I am talking to all you eighth grade teachers out there, anyone can utilize these resources to help make the elections relevant to your students by having them become involved through some of these activities.

This will help drive home the importance of the subject material and even help them to understand the current events that are going on in the world around them.


photo credit: The Suss-Man (Mike) via photopin cc

Starting the Day with a Wonder

Let me tell you a little about how I like to find fun things for students to do in class to start the day off right.  I think that the old saying is that Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and that students need it to start the day off in a good way.  Well I think that we also need to start their classroom day off right as well.  Something that feeds their minds when they get to school just as much as breakfast does before school.

About a year and a half ago, give or take a month, I was introduced to Wonderopolis by a co-worker as a site that offered up something different.  What they offered was short video clips that talked about some things that most people just wondered about.  I learned about the site in January of 2011 but the site had been up since October with its first wonder, Why are Flamingo Pink? That launched on Oct 4, 2010.  Wonderopolis is… “a program brought to life by the National Center for Family Literacy, engages and inspires families in the pursuit of education and learning together.” It also a product of Verizon Thinkfinity which… “offer comprehensive teaching and learning resources created by our content partners – the most respected organizations in each academic subject and literacy.”

In January of 2011 I started talking to teachers about how to use Wonderopolis in the classroom and how it could benefit the students as the day begins.  I talked to the teachers and showed them the website and their eyes were wide open by all of the information.  Many times I would show the site to them and they immediately would start talking about how to connect what was on the site with what they were working on in class at the time.  As this was going on I would show them how they could search through all of the Wonders either with a keyword search or through the category options along the left side of the page.  The teachers were amazed at how much information was available to them as they looked at each of the wonders.  There is a description of the wonder, some additional questions, did you know section, some vocabulary words and even some fun project ideas to go along with the wonder of the day.  

I really enjoy the site and will continue to share it with as many teachers as I talk with.  The site offers so many additional resources associated with the wonders that even though they are meant to be short lesson starters, it is more often than not they can be turned into full blown lesson designed in conjunction with the curriculum.  

With all that being said, go to Wonderopolis and see for yourself.  I can be sure that there is something on the site which will add to your daily instruction.  Who knows you may even explore beyond the site to some of the other resources available from Verizon Thinkfinity and extend the learning even further.

Learning Through the Summer

Now that we are closing in on the end of the school year the big question is how to extend your students learning throughout the summer.  Do you give the students reading lists that you hope they will do?  Do you want them to sit in front of a computer all summer?  Do we have to follow the norm like ducklings behind their mother?  Now don't misunderstand me I am open for online learning, to an extent, but it needs to be done in moderation sometimes where activity can be inserted into the equation.  I know that growing up I did not have all the things to distract me as students do today.  My mother would send my brothers and I out in the morning with a hope and a prayer that we would not get into too much trouble.  Oh, and would come home sometime during the day to eat or at least be home for dinner.  That was my life, but today's students have so much more to occupy their time than just playing in the dirt or running around with the neighborhood kids or even just sitting around in the shade when it gets too hot out to keep running around.  I was fortunate enough that I had a parent at home and grandparents nearby to help keep an eye on us.  That may not be the case today, so what do you do to help your child(ren) continue to learn throughout the summer while making it fun and interesting.

What about some of these activities to help keep the learning going.

The Children's Museum of Winston-Salem Summer Camps
The Northwest NC YMCA Summer Camps
Mad Science Summer Camps
SciWorks Summer Camps
Summer Camp Programs at Creative Palooza
YMCA Camp Hanes Summer Programs

Don't forget about these places in or near Winston-Salem as well

Reynolda House Museum of Art
Reynolda Gardens
The Gardens at Old Salem
MESDA - The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts
The Children's Theatre of Winston-Salem
TangleWood Park and Gardens
The Asheboro Zoo
Historic Bethabara Park

Now these may not sound as interesting or glamorous as playing video games, Facebook, or shopping at the mall but who knows your child(ren) just might surprise you and thank you for taking them.  Learning should never end when you leave the classroom for the summer.  Maybe with a little bit of coaxing you can help your child(ren) to enjoy some non-digital means of learning that can help them to become life-long learners.

photo credit: pedrosimoes7 via photo pin cc

Making the Most of Virtual Field Trips

Have you ever asked your students if they could go anywhere in the world where would that be?  Are you worried about the answers that you might get, don't?  With the budget issues we are always looking for alternative ways students can get an understanding of not only their immediate surroundings but what it is like around the world.  Yes we study World Cultures, US History, Ancient Civilizations etc., but most of the time that is being taught from print materials.  How can we as teachers make a difference in student learning so that it is more engaging and fun for them.  After you ask the students the places that they would like to go around the world and at home, take those choices and start creating Virtual Field Trips(VFT) of them.  If some of the choices closely relate to your current curriculum use them first and save the others for a quick filler activity. You have heard about VFT's for years so you may be wondering what else can be done to make them more engaging for students to get the most out of the activities.  You may already be using web quests so your students can gather information about the areas they want to visit.  So what else can you do?  Here are some quick little changes to what you are already doing that you can use with the students to get them more involved in the VFT.

The first thing that some people think of when it comes to VFT's is the use of Google Earth, an interactive software, that allows you to "..fly around the Earth to see cities, places, businesses, different terrains, images and 3D models."   Some may just use Google Maps to travel from place to place where you can switch between a Map and Satellite view.  You now also have an option to use a Google Earth plugin which mimics the stand alone program through the Google Maps website.  Others will use Web Browser searching for students to participate in VFT's.  Is this enough though to keep students engaged?   What else are you having your students doing while they are traveling?  So how do you takes things one step further.

Have your students create a video tour of their VFT and save it as a project they can add to their student portfolio.  If you are not familiar with these features in Google Earth along the top toolbar are a few things that will allow you to accomplish this.  You have the Placemark button which allow you to put a Pin at a location which then offers you the ability to add a description, images and web links.  Then after the students have placed a number of Pins in their location they can use the Add a Path button to create a path through their location.  Then they can use the Record a Tour button to create a video of the locations that they have visited.  If the Historical Images button is available they can even go back in time during their video tour to show an area through history as it has developed over time.

In Google Maps I recently discussed, in "A New Twist on Google Maps," how you can create your own custom maps and then share them with your students so they can collaborate, add information and update them at any time.  You as the teacher can also share links to the map and even embed it into a website, blog or wiki for your students to share and access.  So this would allow your students to keep a running log of all the VFT that they have gone on during a school year with all of their research stored in the map.

Another fun thing you can do in the planning process for your VFT is as you are gathering the location data you can put it into a spread sheet and then import that into a website called Batch-Geo.  This website as discussed in, Quick & Easy Mapping Made Easy, will take the spread sheet data and create an interactive map from it.  This can provide your students with a visual representation of all the locations they can choose from for their Virtual Field Trip.

Lastly, if you really want to get fancy with your VFT you can have your students create short videos about the location they are working on.  You can create green screen videos of your students flying over to the location and then stand and give a quick introduction about the place all the while in the background people see them flying and then pictures.  The students could even do mock interviews with people on the street, athletes and leaders from the area you are visiting.

Here is another blog article about Virtual Field Trips from @dbates479

This blog, Internet Explorers: Virtual Field Trips Are More Than Just Money Savers from Kara Platoni on edutopia shares even more.

Just a few things there that can help keep your students engaged.  Now as always I invite you to comment about other ways you are using Virtual Field Trips in your classroom below.

How do you Edit a Photo?

Now that Digital Cameras have image resolution capabilities up to and beyond 18 megapixels what do you do when you want to edit those pictures after you have taken them.  How do you take an image that is 4000x3000 and reduce it or compress it so that it can be put somewhere else like a webpage, blog, etc.  What tools are out there to do this? There are programs out there that can help you out but what if you cannot afford to buy a program what is your alternative.  Well up until recently there was a website that offered the ability to edit an image on the fly for Free, Picnik.  The site offered more than basic editing features for images that some pre installed computer software could handle.  But as you know websites come and go everyday and Picnik was caught in that wave of passing websites recently.  So what do you do now if you were an avid user of Picnik?  What are your options now, some sub par or expensive software that will either not give you what you want or go way over the top and give you so much more that you will never use all of the it in your lifetime.

Recently Mashable put together a small list of viable alternative websites that will allow you to edit your images on the fly on the web, Free and without the need for a registered account.  I took a look at them and these are some really robust and feature filled websites to allow you to edit pretty much any aspect of an image you want to.  The only issue that I founds that might come up is that Thumba requires you to have the most recent version of Microsoft Silverlight.  I think that you will have a lot of fun editing images on any of these sites.

• PicMonkey
• BeFunky
• iPiccy
• Pixlr Express
• Sumo Paint
• Thumba
• Psyko Paint

Now if you are a teacher and are going to use any of these in the classroom with your students then make sure that you take a look at the sites ahead of time.  Some of them do have ads along the sides which could be of questionable material out of the grade level you are in which could cause some questions to come up from your students.   Some even have Apps that you can download to your Smart or iPhone.  Not that I want to promote any of these over another but PicMonkey does not have any ad space on its site that I could find as I was using the site.  But you make the decision on which one will be the best fit for your situation and comfort level.

photo credit: austinevan via photo pin cc

My First Edcamp Experience

This past weekend I was able to attend my first Edcamp in Raleigh, North Carolina.  I was not sure what to expect and really did not know how things were going to work since I was told that there was no agenda.  No agenda I thought to myself, how will I know what I want to do and where I am supposed to be throughout the day.  If you do not know me, and my co-workers and friends can tell you, I am a very strict timeline follower.  I am used to doing thing according to a schedule and when that is disrupted I am not one that can appreciate the change rather quickly.

I was told that there was no solid agenda with no specific content to be covered or topics to be discussed.  It was up to the participants to choose what was going to be discussed.  Choose, I said, what do you mean.  Well how things work is that there is an "Idea Wall" where anyone attending the Edcamp could come up and write down a topic of discussion that they felt passionate enough about that they wanted to have a session dedicated to it.  Then hopefully you will have enough topics to cover through the entire day with enough diversity so that people have lots of choices to pick from.  So I figured why not, so I threw a topic up on the wall for a session time.  I was not sure if anyone would even show up but that is also the catch at an Edcamp.  You may have a session that everyone wants to come to and you may have one that is not attended at all, and it is all OK.  You may have people coming in and leaving during your sessions and that is OK as well.  There are no hurt feelings and the opinions of everyone are valued and not squashed. 

I was prepared for the worst case scenario being that no one would attend my session.  I just was not sure that there would be any interest and I since this was my first Edcamp I would have been fine with no one attending.  But when the time came I was surprised that I had some people walk in to participate and the game was on.  I felt that it was a really good session with lots of discussions in it and I even got a round of applause from the few people that were there.  All in all it was a great day and I feel that I will attend more in the future and even sign up on the "Idea Wall" to present a session again.

I have a confession to share with you know.  I can now say that at one point in time I was very concerned and unsure of myself as a presenter.  Now I can say that after presenting at a number of conferences I am feeling more and more comfortable with being in front of people. 

Image provided by: @bethanyvsmith, NCSU