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Your students just recorded a poem with Audacity, and they swear that they saved the MP3 file in the right location, but they don’t understand why the program is asking them to save it again. What’s happening?
This is a common experience with Audacity, Photo Story, Windows Movie Maker and many media-creation tools such as Photoshop, Premiere, Flash, etc. What happens is that Audacity (we’ll use that as an example representing all of these types of programs) wants you to save a “project” file where you can keep editing your work in ADDITION TO the final audio (or movie) file that gets posted on your website or played using Windows Media Player.
If students are simply creating a one-off recording of what they did in science this week, then they should just create the MP3 file and not bother saving the project file. As long as the MP3 file is created first, it’s okay to close Audacity without saving the project file.
Photo Story and Movie Maker are a little different. With those programs you SHOULD save the project file. This allows you to return to the editing of the photo story or movie and make minor changes or simply create a final version that can be played on a different device. For example, let’s say a group of students makes a video of their Reader’s Theater performance. They add opening titles, closing credits, and some music. They save it to show the classs on the SMART Board. You like it so much that you want to put it on your website. The problem is that it’s such a huge video file; what can you do?
Because your students saved the PROJECT, you can open the video project in editing mode, and go to the final step to export the video as a smaller file size. This is a really convenient way to modify files for use on the web.
 Putting our educational technology tools to use in the language arts classroom is never a challenge when you use the Lesson Activity Toolkit in SMART Notebook!
Robin Van Der Linda, a sixth grade language arts teacher at CMS, recently put together an entire review lesson using the Lesson Activity Toolkit in the Gallery tab. Her students (and one of the vice principals) enjoyed plenty of interactive fun as they moved answers around on the SMART Board.
 Remember that logo? For many of us, research began in the library with a trip to the reference section’s gleaming World Book Encyclopedia. It’s many volumes glistening with gold leaf and promising all the knowledge we needed at our fingertips.
Well, times have changed, and I was in a school yesterday whose library didn’t even have an encyclopedia! What’s a kid to do when it comes time to write that report (or make that Power Point slide) about African Elephants? Google just isn’t reliable, and sometimes even NetTrekker doesn’t provide a student with the right websites for the job.
Fortunately, World Book Online is here for students to use. Lafayette School and middle school students are able to log in (see your teacher for the password) to see not only the core content of the famous World Book encyclopedia but also videos, timelines, research folders, and monthly updates to all sorts of entries.
One of the neatest features is the “My Research” area. After signing in, students are able to create a space for them to store bibliographic information, notes, and entire World Book articles.
So no more looking at volumes S-Sn and So-Sz! Log onto WorldBook.com today and try searching for the quality information you need and can trust.
Sometimes the content you want to show on a web page is pretty small, and even with the SMART Board you wish you could enlarge the text or image on a web page.
Your wish has been granted! Most browsers allow you to easily enlarge a web page by simply holding down the Ctrl key and tapping the + or – key to enlarge or reduce the content on a page.
 Find this in the lower-right corner of the browser window. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has a zoom menu in the lower-right corner of the browser–try it!
You can see the Ctrl + and – shortcuts at the top, but you can also select any of the preset zoom levels.
Again, even though this is Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera also allow you to do this.
What qualifies as new media for Media Monday? Certainly photos, video, web 2.0 applications come to mind, but would you consider the blog a part of new media? Of course!
How can you harness the interesting educational possibilities of the blog? Your Schoolwires Centricity teacher website is the perfect starting point, and the latest Tech Talk instructional video is a hilarious romp through the steps required to use this simple, yet powerful, tool. Episode 8 is posted now, and you can browse all our episodes at Tech Talk’s blog.
 How are we the same? How are we different? It’s easy to have that discussion among the students in our classes, but what are kids like outside Chatham? Sandy Kelly, Michelle Monahan, and Jennifer Lehotay-Taylor have regular visits with fellow third grade students in Illinois to find out.
Using a webcam and Skype, a few students eagerly take their places in front of the computer to exchange questions and comments with third graders in Mrs. Palm’s class at the Greenbrier Elementary School in Arlington Heights, IL, outside Chicago.
The latest exchange between the students was about being responsible at home . Colin shared how he is responsible by taking out his dog, Coal , twice daily. Michael shared that he is responsible for all the household recycling and maintaining his room, and Carly shared how she also took her dog out for walks and cared for her own belongings and room.
Mrs. Palm’s class is compiling information about the 50 United States, so each week, our students provide facts about New Jersey to their friends in Illinois. Are you interested in interesting facts bout New Jersey? The official state facts are here, but for things you didn’t know about New Jersey, try Hangout NJ which is sponsored by the State of NJ.
Just a reminder to check the Tech Talk video blog at http://techtalk.chatham-nj.org, and that we’re now on YouTube with our own channel at http://www.youtube.com/sdoctechtalk.
If you’re looking for something you haven’t seen before, how about an online community for interactive whiteboards? Your SMART Board is part of the general category of “interactive whiteboards” because there are SMART Boards, Promethean boards (also called Activboards), Hitachi FX-Duo boards, mimio boards, etc.
The Interactive Whiteboard Revolution (http://iwbrevolution.ning.com/) may be just the source you need for finding resources and connecting with other interactive whiteboard users. It’s a Ning group, so you may join it if you like!
 With six more months of school, it’s time to think about updating your teacher website, but what can you do to make it more interesting to students and teachers while using your time effectively? How about incorporating student work into your website?
While reading Helen Keller’s Miracle Worker, Lisa McTague had an interesting challenge on her website for her students. One student would use sign language to spell a word or sign a phrase while another student videotaped the sign language. Lisa then posted the video with a challenge to the students: “Send me an email telling me what the sign language video means.”
Have a look by visiting her website HERE.
Yes, we’re still without the fancy features for the blog, so I’m going to capitalize on that fact by introducing you to FAST websites. Yes, many moons ago when many of us only had dial-up connections, web pages needed to load quickly, so a clean site didn’t have many photos which made a site load slowly.
If you have a slow or older computer, use a netbook or smart phone, or you are just impatient, you may enjoy the many STILL USEFUL text-only websites or the text-only versions of media-intensive sites (like BBC News for example).
For your web-surfing pleasure: http://www.lesswaiting.com/info118.html
We’re still unfortunately without our fancy features for the blog like photos and embedded video, so today’s Tech Tip is a Text Tip: Next time you are typing something in Microsoft Word (or many other programs), try changing the size of text by highlighting it then hold down the Ctrl key and tap either bracket key (the brackets look like [ and ]. They are to the right of the P key. Pretty cool, eh?
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