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night began a little differently than normal. Tony was flustered
because he was in a meeting all afternoon and didn’t have
his flip chart prepared. We forgave him because he is always well
organized and prepared!
Scott was missing in action. I am sure he was hard at work at
home on his Palm lesson. To replace his spot at the table, we
had two visiting teachers from Willowdale who joined our class.
We welcomed Mindy and Carol with smiles, introductions and the
positives about Palms.
The class
began sharing downloads that we found on the internet. Erica shared
a statistic program that will help her coach at Creighton. This
program helps the coaches keep track of stats and information
about players. You can find this at www.stats2win.com.
Anne shared
multiple programs she found while surfing the web. The checkbook
program will help her students keep track of money and can be
used for the million dollar project. She also shared a book
log program and a homework program.
Tony briefly
touched on issues with handhelds. There were some battery issues
that were brought up. Next week we are going to talk more about
troubleshooting Palm Powered handhelds.
Concept Mapping
was one of our big topics of the night. We received three new
programs: Inspiration,
PicoMap,
and Idea
Pad. We broke into groups to try out the new concept mapping
programs while diagramming an article of our choice about Palms.
Tony gave us each two copies of Education
In Hand magazines that included great articles about Palms
in the classroom. Pico map costs 20$ per year per handheld, but
Sketchy also comes with it. To get these you must subscribe to
the handheld learning environment. The program was simple to use,
but had limited functions.
Inspiration
also costs money, but the class agreed it might be worth it for
the extra perks of the program. With this program you can type
as many letters as you need, use colors, and can add motes. You
can also drag the boxes around.
Idea Pad has
limited functions. The formatting is weird, but the program is
FREE! One of the downfalls of the program is that you must tap
up on the screen to see the boxes you have created. This program
is easy to structure and organize information.
One of the
main disadvantages with all of the programs was that it was hard
to see your whole graphic organizer because of the limited screen
size. On most programs you could zoom out, but then you couldn’t
read the words. Another disadvantage is that you couldn’t
change the font size.
The dinner
was absolutely fantastic! Becky made a wonderful white chicken
chili topped with cheese and tomatoes. She also prepared a fresh-lettuce
salad with a special dressing that left us craving more. Her best
surprise was her secret chocolate cake. It was excellent. Thanks
Becky!
We learned
how to make eBooks
for the grand finale of the night. Tony took us through the main
tips and ideas of making E-books. He used the eBook
Studio program to guide us in this journey. This program can
be used on Macintosh or Windows. eReader.com
is a helpful website to find products and other fantastic things
for the Ebook creator. The eBook seemed simple to make. Pictures
you ask? Yes! eBooks can have pictures as long as they are 310x310
pixels or less. KidPix was a recommended program for illustrations.
Tony passed around the example he made right in front of our eyes.
That was our
class in a nutshell. Until next time, happy blogging to you!
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