I'm back from the big ISTE conference! I'm still not sure I've processed everything I've seen. I met some incredible people and I fell in love with the city of San Antonio. It's kind of amazing how many bloggers I met while I was there. I'll be posting more pix from those meet-ups really soon.

I have to start blogging about everything I learned before I forget it all y'all! <---like that little Texas twang I added there? Don't worry, it won't last. And really, I didn't hear it all that much while I was there.

I'm starting with something easy to use and share. It's called FutureMe.org. 

Future Me is a way to send an email to yourself at a pre-determined time in the future. So, I could email myself right now all the things I did and saw in Texas and a year or five years from now I'll get an email from myself in the past!

The concept is cool and all, but how can you use it in your classroom right? Well, I have come up with a few ideas:

In the interest of full disclosure, I can see two potential hang-ups with using the site with early elementary kids. First, they can't type! It's almost painful to watch them hunt and peck to write a simple sentence, let alone compose a lengthly letter to themselves. A parent volunteer might come in handy here. You can have your students write in their writers' notebooks and have a parent, older sibling or student needing service hours type for them at some point.  You can even have the students write their email using any email program to you and you can cut and paste the letters into Future Me for them. Just be sure to have students date the letters so that you can choose an appropriate date to send it to the future.

Secondly, the site isn't specifically designed for children and users can choose for their letters to be displayed randomly on the site as "public but anonymous". Most of those letters are displayed on a separate page though. Any of the above options would help out with that concern.

Despite some of the concerns above, I think the idea is a pretty cool one that can have many educational uses. I emailed them about adding a kid-friendlyversion of the site. Maybe they'll see the potential too!

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Every year I create an end of the year slideshow to show at our final Tasty Tuesday (which I'll be blogging about soon, promise!) 

Let's start at the start. I'm a Mac girl, so making the slideshow is seriously easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy-super-breezy! I import my pictures into iPhoto and add them all to one folder. Then when you click on that folder, you'll see this - look at the bottom of the window. Just click that slideshow button and DONE! No joke. It's that easy. If you're a PC person, it's ok. We can still be friends and all, but you will have to skip way down to the bottom of this post to see the Dropbox part. Unless of course you want to see the awesomeness that is Mac, then just keep reading ;)

That button will play a great little slideshow in which you can choose the transitions and even choose music from preloaded tracks or your itunes library. 

Now if you want to go one step further,  click on that "create" button over on the right and choose "slideshow"

Then you can choose the theme for your slideshow. The great thing is that the themes will randomly insert your pictures into cute frames or collages wherever they fit best!

Then choose your music...

And finally, under settings, you can choose things like having the slideshow repeat after it's finished, the length of time to play each slide or timing it so that the pictures end when the music does. It really does a remarkable job of making a professional looking slideshow SUPER easy.

Now...the big question. The parents always love it and they always want a copy. The usual route is to burn a dvd for cd for each child. This of course, requires time and a major expense. This year I wised up a little. When you are done making your slideshow with the steps above, you'll see the "export" button at the bottom of the screen. When you click that, the menu below will pop up. I chose medium and export. It just takes a couple of minutes, and then your slideshow will be on your desktop in a sharable format.

Here comes the genius part  (that I have to credit my hubby with). You'll need a Dropbox account. It's free and you can sign up for an account here. It's a great way to store and send files online. Once you're in Dropbox, drag the video to your Public Folder <--- that's the important part. Don't just put it in  your general Dropbox files, it has to be the Public Folder. (Edited: Accounts started after October 2012 no longer have a public folder, but you can share a link from any folder. Much easier actually!)  Then after that, control-click on the video in the public folder and you'll see the option to copy the public link. Do that.

Then it will give you a link that you can email out to your parents! Then they can see the video on their computer and even download it themselves. See, told ya it was easy!

I sent it to all 20 of my families and they've all been able to see it, otherwise I would be a little hesitant to share this with you. We've got about 2 weeks to go here, so things are really starting get hectic. Being able to free up all that time and energy (and money) I usually spend making DVD's has been a lifesaver. Hope it helps you a little too!

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Three day weekend on tap for this girl! How about you guys? My big plans include lots of coffee and snuggling up with the hubs. It's supposed to get COLD here this weekend. It's going to dip down into the low 40's. My friends, that is headline making news around these parts. I'm not even kidding.

So, when I was at FETC last month I saw some really amazing things that I fully intend to share more about as soon as I play with them enough to know what I'm doing. But there is one thing that just cracked me up that I have to share. If you're the person lots of people come to for help, you'll appreciate this one.

Now don't get me wrong. I love talking to people and helping them learn new things, but lots of times the things that people ask me to help them with could be answered by a simple Google search. Sound familiar to anyone else? If so, then you are going to love this as much as I do. Imagine this scenario, which usually doesn't involve coffee, but you get the idea:

Friend: Hey Denise, can you help me for a second?
Me: Sure, what's up?
Friend: Oh, I was just wondering if you could help me. I know you drink a lot of coffee and stuff.
Me: I sure do. What do you want to know?
Friend: Well, I was just wondering, can you tell me if coffee has caffeine?
Me: Well, check out this link. It's pretty helpful.

Bwhahaha!! Is that a crack up or what? It's seriously called Let Me Google That For You. In their own words, it's for all those people who find it more convenient to bother you with their questions rather than google it themselves.

As funny as I think it is, I'd feel too mean to actually use it with someone who really needs help, but it might be fun to send to a friend. This article on CNET has a little more about it along with some pretty good techy April Fool's Day pranks. It's never too early to start planning a good prank!

In other odds & ends...
You might want to pick up this President's Day Word Work Freebie. Just click on the picture:

And, I finally bundled some things that people have been asking me to for a while, so click {HERE} for the 1st grade Weekly Word Wizard bundle and click {HERE} for the 1st grade Weekly Math Magic bundle. And lots of you will be happy to know (I hope!) that I'm hard at work on a 2nd grade CCSS aligned Weekly Word Wizard set! I'll be offering those in 9 week sets and as bundle to be released all at the same time. It's a lot of work, but I'm obsessed with it. I'm a nerd. I'm ok with it.

There's still time to enter the All You Need is Love Giveaway that lots of my friends are participating in. Visit this post to see the details. My prize is a $25 shopping spree at my tpt store, and there's lots of other goodies up for grabs too.

And in other giveaway news, Ashley P was the winner of the MeCorder giveaway!

Have a great weekend my friends!

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Welcome to the Hop! I am so fortunate to belong to an amazing networking group of bloggers that have truly become friends of mine in every sense of the word. Today we're hopping to each other's blogs for a little visit! I am crazy excited to welcome Erin from Kleinspiration today and you'll find my post on a Common Core math activity over at Lynda's adorable Curls and a Smile blog. At the bottom of this post, you'll also see a bunch of my other blog buds who are blog hopping today and would love to have you visit!

Tiny Tech Tips: by Erin Klein

I'm so excited to be a part of the Blog Hop and to be featured on one of my favorite blogs, Sunny Days in Second Grade!  Denise and I are great friends, and it's an honor to be featured on her blog.  I must admit, I've been a Sunny Days fan since the beginning, and I am always in awe of the terrific resources Denise shares.  

I'm the author of Kleinspiration, a technology resource sharing blog.  I often post about sites and resources that appeal to a K - 12 audience.  I do, however, teach second grade.  I welcome you to click here and connect with me through my social networks and become a follower of my blog.  I love meeting and collaborating with teachers.

Where is the best place to find appropriate technology tools for lower elementary?

Two resources that I adore are: Twitter and Pinterest.  I find that both sites offer a rich array of teachers to collaborate with, ideas to build from, a platform to ask questions, and mentors to learn from.  Today, I will focus on Pinterest; however, if you're interested in getting started with Twitter, I've created this ten minute Twitter tutorial: click here to view.  

Pinterest: a bookmarking tool

In effort to stay organized, I use Pinterest to bookmark my many great technology finds.  For example, when I'm at a conference or workshop and hear of a great website, I 'Pin It' to one of my Pinterest boards.  At first, I struggled with setting up my boards.  Many great Pinners set their boards up differently.  

In regards to technology, I've found that the following categories work well:

• EduTech resources
• iPad & Mobile Devices
• Technology Projects
• Social Media
• Tech Gadgets
• Social Media
• Flipped Class
• Android

My largest technology board is my EduTech resources category.  This was my first technology board I created.  After I realized that most of what I was Pinning could be sub-categorized into the above sections, I began to create the additional boards in effort to maintain a better stream of organized content.  Of course, this is still a work in progress - as it should be (I'm adding content daily and revising as each board grows).

Pinterest: a tool to find resources

There are so many wonderful teachers to follow on Pinterest.  If you're looking to follow a few Pinners who often share great technology resources, I highly recommend the following:

• click here: Shannon Long's Tech for Teachers
• click here: Eric Sheninger
• click here: Tina Wahlert
• click here: Denise Boehm's Tech Stuff

There are many more great EduTech Pinners, these are just a few that I learn from daily.

Pinterest: a few of my favorite EduTech finds

Introduce Content in an Exciting Way: tons of pre-made trailers per grade level

Make green screen movies in your classroom!

48 great sites for you to use in your classroom

A wonderful, must have resource to learn from and to connect with teachers

Tons of Interactive games for your SMART Board and your iPad

Thanks to Denise for allowing me to be a guest on her site.  Have a wonderful summer!

Best,

Erin Klein

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When Blogger introduced threaded commenting a while back, I was so excited. It basically meant that could reply directly to a comment left on my blog. However, when I did what I was supposed to do, it did NOT work. I could see the and use the reply button from my phone, but not the blog. I tried just about EVERY "fix" I found online and nothing worked.  I am SO happy that I finally got threaded comments to work!!   If you've done all the normal stuff you're supposed to do and it's still not working, try this {Huge disclaimer alert! This worked for me without changing my blog and it should for you too, but I'm not responsible if it doesn't. Capiche?}

I was nervous that it would change up stuff on my blog and I'd go back to a blank template and I'd have to redesign all my cuteness all over again, but I was so desperate for it to work, that I just crossed my fingers, hit save and voila! The only thing that changed was that the reply feature was now working! Yahoo!! So now I can reply to peeps who are nice enough to leave a comment instead of writing a whole new comment myself! So loving that!

For more technology tips head over to my friend Fern's linky!

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The next time someone says, "You took the words right out of my mouth" you can literally do just that!  Blabberize is a fun little program that you can use to make it look like pictures are speaking the words you input. Here's a little tutorial to show you the coolness. 

This is the home screen. The llama is an example of what you can create. He is cute at first, but gets annoying REAL fast. Go ahead and sign up or you won't be able to save your creation. It's free. You can also just hit "make" and start to play around without signing up. "Browse" will take you to a gallery of others' creations. 

Next, you'll see this screen. You'll have to already have a picture on your computer. I did a quick Google search for a monkey and just dragged it to my desktop (shh...don't tell the copyright police).

After you click on browse, choose the picture and hit "open". Remember I'm a mac girl, so this might look different for my PC peeps.

 Here's my monkey! You can use those pink dots to crop the picture, but I just used it as it was.

Next you'll see this transparent reddish bubble appear. Click on the dots to move it around. You want to do the best you can to cover the area that will move when you record the voice. (If this is as clear as mud, don't worry. Once you play with it, you'll get it!)

 This is me, still playing around the the mouth maker thingy.

The reddish area is the area that will actually move up and down. It's best to choose an animal with a closed mouth. When you browse some of the other ones people made, you'll see why.

 When you like the position of your mouth, click on the pink box with the plus sign eyes (Strange, right?)

Now you get to be the recording star you've always dreamed of being! Or you can just say something in your normal voice. Whatevs. Click on the method of choice. I chose the microphone because my computer has a built in mic.

Click on the red circle, do your thing and then press it again. That's it! Press the play button and see if you like it. Then save & share. You'll see some options about sharing. You can decide to keep it private or share it in the public gallery.  I had a very witty video of this little creature being unhappy with her new faux-hawk, but I forgot to sign in before I started to create, so learn from me and sign in! Kind of odd that you can't sign in after, but it's a free program so I can't complain too much.

Imagine how great this would be for kids to present a report on an animal. You can use any picture - imagine historical figure reports or even inanimate objects, like trees or flowers describing their life cycle!  How about an all about me project at the beginning of the year with the kids using pictures of themselves?  Sometimes our faculty has to present parts of the handbook when we go back to school - how fun would it be to use this to present?  Any ideas popping into your head - feel free to blab about them!

Check out more tech tips at Katie's Techy Teacher Tuesday linky!

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