All About Mrs. Snow

Mrs. Snow is the technology teacher at Somewheresville Elementary. She has been teaching students to use technology resources for 4 years. Mrs. Snow grew up in Middleville, Michigan where she graduated from Thornapple Kellogg High School in 2003. In 2008, she graduated from Western Michigan University with a degree in Elementary Education. She now resides in Middleville with her husband, Dustin, daughter Emersyn, and 2 dogs Patch and Myah. Mrs. Snow's hobbies include scrapbooking, camping, and coaching cheerleading.

FREE APPS!

Picnik

Picnik is a great free app, with a lot of features, HOWEVER, Picnik is shutting down as of April 19. The company merged with Google and will now be a part of Google+. Its difficult to see what this merger will look like, but because of the change Picnik users are being granted free access to premium features and a full refund if they purchased a premium membership. Aside from the impending shut down, Picnik has lot to offer when it comes to photo editing. You can add text, clip art or "stickers", frames, and make your own touch-ups. All of these features offer the ability to change size, direction, flip, and much more. I posted an example of one of the photos I played with. In my picture I added text, a few stamps and increased the sharpness of the photo. I was also able to "tan" the skin and add highlights to hair. When I was finished editing my photo, I was given the option to post it to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Photobucket, or save it to my computer. I did experience a few technical difficulties while editing, the program seemed to freeze in some instances, and a few of the touch-ups were a bit extreme and made the people in the pictures look fake by over-correcting problems. Regardless, I would definitely recommend this program, if it was sticking around, for a simple classroom or home editing program. It's definitely not a professional quality program that photographers would use.

ZOHO

Zoho has a lot of elements to offer it's users. There were so many different programs to try for business, productivity, and collaboration, I focused on two that I thought would be helpful to me. Zoho Writer and Zoho Show. I have already been using Zoho writer for the majority of the semester. I do not have Microsoft Word on my laptop, and it is WAY to expensive to purchase. A friend introduced me to Zoho Writer and i have to say it has been useful. While I do experience some difficulty with freezing and the spell check, for the most part Zoho Writer seems to work very well as a replacement for Microsoft Word. While some of the same problems exists for Zoho Show, it also proves to be very similar to Microsoft Powerpoint. The one option I found thatZoho Show offers is the ease of sharing. With the click of a button I was able to embed my Zoho Show into my blog for everyone to see. I would definitely recommend Zoho.com to anyone looking for inexpensive solutions for their Microsoft problems. Here's a quick slideshow of some of the features Zoho Show has to offer.

Classroom Website

Mrs. Snow's Preschool Website

This is a link to my classroom website. I originally created this website several months ago, with the intention of using it this year. However, with time constraints and changes happening in my building, I did not get the chance to finish it. BUT it's finished now! I have added some extra features and gadgets to update it. My website is designed for parents to keep up to date on current events, homework, and classroom information. I also included a classroom calendar, links for parents and students, as well as a few carefully chosen classroom photos in a Picasa slideshow. I fully intend to use this website next year as a parent resources, so please let me know if you see any problems or errors that need to be fixed! Thanks!

Plants Concept Map

This week I created a concept map on Plants/How Things Grow using bubbl.us. I wanted to do a concept map showing the basic lesson planning elements my co-workers and I would use. The map is split into three sections: Small Group Activities, Large Group Activities, and Center Activities. From there, I went on to add the elements that would be taught in each area. In Preschool, students learn through play, so many of the centers are set up with activities they can investigate on their own and experiment with. Small and large group activities are, for the most part, teacher-led activities, but still hands on and interactive. Many of the ideas on this concept map are very basic so that they are adaptable for a preschool classroom. It would be easy for a upper elementary classroom to do a similar map with more in-depth concepts.

Tux Paint Screencast

For my screencast created with Jing.com, I chose to show a lesson on Tux Paint. Tux Paint is a program for elementary students similar to Kidpix or the standard Paint program on your computer. Although it holds a few more features than Paint, it is very similar to Kidpix, which was popular when I was in middleschool.

My computer does not have a microphone, so my screencast is silent. I will explain a few things about the lesson here. In my lesson, I would encourage students to use the different features of Tux Paint like lines, stamps and paint to create a plant, like a flower, then use the text feature to label the parts of the plant. In my example, I used line to draw the stem of the plant, paint to draw the leaves and roots, then used the stamp feature to place a picture of a flower on the screen. After the parts of the plant were created, I used the text feature to add the labels to the plant. This lesson could be used in a variety of grade levels based on the expectations of the drawing. While my example reflects a lower elementary level, older students could be expected to make more in-depth drawings of the inside of the flower including the stamen, anther, and pistil. Tux Paint allows a fun and creative reinforcement for what could be a boring lesson on plants.

Here is the screencast video:

Google Maps

As an early childhood educator, it took a few minutes for me to snap out of preschool mode (especially since I had just worked on Dr.Seuss lesson plans a few minutes before!) to plan a lesson for older children using Google Maps. Once i got out of the preschool mindset, I started to think about what could have been helpful to me when I was in upper elementary/middle school. I was always interested in Michigan history, so I thought a map related lesson on historical Michigan landmarks. Here is a quick summary of a lesson

For a long term project, students could be given the task of doing a research project on a selected landmark as a small group of 2 or 4 students. The teacher would set up a google map and add pins to locations of approved Michigan historical landmarks for students to choose from. The teacher could add a sample of interesting facts to the pin as well as suggested websites for students to use. This type of resource could cut down on the time it takes to choose and approve topics for the project, and it could be used year after year.

View Michigan Historical Landmarks in a larger map

Grammar Girl to the Rescue!

Visit Grammar Girl at Quick and Dirty Tips

Have no fear, Grammar Girl is here! I was first introduced to Grammar Girl several years ago in one of my college english classes. Her podcasts are witty and full of spunk, making them easy to listen to and you get a quick memorable english lesson. I hate to be the bad guy here, but Grammar Girl's secret identity and the host of QuickandDirtytips.com is Mignon Fogarty, an experienced "grammar guru". Podcasts are delivered frequently on a variety of topics in the categories of word choice, punctuation, grammar, and style.

In addition to listening to the podcasts, followers are also able to read the podcast in text from. The websites offers a few different ways to follow Grammar Girl, including RSS podcast or article, iTunes, or newsletter format. However, when I tried to subscribe via RSS, I got an error message, which was frustrating. While I was trolling the website looking for another RSS link, I found directions to add Grammar Girl to your blog widgets. Visitors to your blog can listen to the most recent blog or a few previous ones. Again, the follow via RSS option is included on the widget, but the connection does not work.

Grammar Girl is only a segment on the website Quickanddirtytips.com. The site offers podcasts from 18 different experts that give advice and information including the Sales Guy, Diet Diva, Mighty Mommy, and House Call Doctor. While the skills Grammar Girl discusses are geared toward an older crowd, highschool or maybe middleschool aged students might enjoy listening to these segments as well. Teachers and parents might also find experts like Math Dude, Tech Talker, or The Public Speaker helpful as an alternative to ordinary lectures. Aside from RSS technical problems I had with the site, it was a pretty good resource with a variety of helpful segments. I enjoyed alot that the site had to offer, hopefully some of you will too.