Monthly Archives: February 2012

Tagxedo Header

Ed. Tech Resources, , ,

Final Product By: Charlie

I was inspired by Melelani Spencer when I had the opportunity to work with her students the other day in her 6th grade Hawaiian Studies Classroom to create my awesome I ♥ edtech header.  Students were finishing up a unit on Kauikeaouli (Kamehameha III) and Kumu Mele wanted them to create a Tagxedo of Kauikeaouli’s Kingdom of Hawai’i Constitution of 1840.  Before we could go there, however, we needed to make sure students knew how to use Tagxedo.  So here’s what we did:

 

  1. Created a text file of their name in PowerPoint
  2. The slide was exported as a jpeg
  3. The jpeg was uploaded to tagxedo

And here’s a sample of the finished product:

Click here if you’d like a copy of the instructions we gave students.  It’s in word so feel free to make any changes.

We were going to use Photoshop to create the jpeg of their names, but decided using PowerPoint would save us some time.  Just something to note when you’re using Tagxedo, it requires a silverlight plugin to run. Our Middle School is on Macs so we needed to make sure the Plugin was installed before we started this project.  Even with our planning ahead, the silverlight plugin crashed on a handful of computers which threw a wrench in our lesson.  If it happens to you, here’s what you do:

  1. Click on your Macintosh HD
  2. Click on your home (little house with your name)
  3. Open your library folder
  4. Open the Internet Plug-ins folder
  5. Drag the silverlight.plugin into the trash
    Note: If for some reason you can’t find it in the Internet Plug-ins folder, just do a search for it.
  6. Re-install the silverlight

LiveBinders in the Classroom

Ed. Tech Resources,

Our most recent technology workshop was on using LiveBinders in the classroom.  What are LiveBinders you ask?  They’re basically virtual three ring binders where you can organize all of your websites, documents, movies, and images into tabs and subtabs and then share your “stuff” on the web. Click on the binders below to see some examples:

We’re using LiveBinders as ePortfolios, but here are some other ideas:

  • Class Resources – Don’t just bookmark your resources, but LiveBinder them and share your binder.
  • Create a Presentation – Use LiveBinders to present your information.  Don’t make handouts, share the link to your binder and embed it in your blog.
  • Create a Webquest – so easy to navigate through the different tasks!
  • Have your students collaborate on a Binder as a final product of a unit
  • Use a LiveBinder to demonstrate the writing process – create a tab for each draft/activity

But the best place to find ideas on how to use LiveBinders is to browse the featured binders on their website.

Now here come the resources…

LiveBinders
Teach with Web 2.0 put together an awesome resource to get you started using LiveBinders.  In fact, their Wiki is an incredible Web 2.0 resource in general…as the name suggests.

LiveBinders 4 Teachers
This workspace was created for educators to share and categorize livebinders by subject, grade-level, and whatever else makes sense.

LiveBinders Tips and Tricks
Here’s a great place to information on how to make your LiveBinders even better.

Free Tools Challenge #15: Organize and Share with LiveBinders
Edublogs has an awesome teacher challenge for those interested in learning more about Web 2.0.  This one is on LiveBinders.

Printable LiveBinder Tutorial
Please feel free to use this and edit.

Presentation:

LiveBinders in the Classroom

Hints –

  1. Think of the layout of your page as a PowerPoint layout.
  2. Re-size your images for the web before you publish them.
  3. LiveBinders doesn’t have a classroom account yet, however, check out this blogpost from Mark Brumly on how to use gmail to create student accounts that you can control.

Tell us your ideas for using LiveBinders!