Story Time For Me has free online stories that your children can enjoy. The sound and picture quality is exceptional. I enjoy the large kid-friendly controls for playing and pausing a story. The site seems a little advertising heavy; if you plan on turning your kids loose on Story Time For Me, show them which items are ads and which items are stories. If you don’t mind navigating around some ads, you’ll  find about 12 animated, controllable, read aloud stories.
Enjoy.

Don’t forget to sign up for ext alerts from Fox 41! Click here for the form.

Also,  JCPS is tweeting these alerts, but Snow Fox is a great tool for staying on top of alerts for other counties, U of L, etc. Stay warm!

Report card time is just around the corner. Don’t forget to remind your students that they can get rewards for good grades. They can earn six free donuts at Krispy Kreme, a kid’s scoop at Graeter’s, and a free movie rental at Family Video.

Are there other area businesses who offer similar promotions?

If you take pictures with your smart phone, chances are that weeks go by before you “do” anything with them. I just learned a great way to instantly and automatically back up those photos.

As you may know, Google has re-branded Picasa web albums as part of Google+. I don’t do much with Google+ but I do like the improvements they have made in the online photo albums.

My favorite new feature is Instant-Upload. If you install the Google+ app on your smart phone, and enable Instant-Upload, each photo you take will instantly and automatically move to an online album. The online album is not publicly viewable. Obviously once they are in your albums you can easily share them, edit them and print them.

A step by step can be found here.

I have been thinking a lot lately about whether to start including mobile apps on TabletTalk. I have avoided discussing iOS and Android apps so far for several reasons:

1. The intended audience of the blog are JCPS teachers, who are Tablet PC users

2. JCPS hasn’t seen a large-scale adoption of mobile devices (yet)

3. It seems like everyone else is already listing and reviewing favorite apps.

With that out of the way, I want to mention one that has saved my work day twice this week.  As you know, we are experiencing considerable connection challenges with our network.

The Android App PDA Net allowed me to use my phone as a wireless hotspot. I got through two days of embedded PD, demonstrating what I needed to, updated my blog between sessions, and even stayed on top of my mail. Without the app I wouldn’t have accomplished much at all! The app allows you to connect via Bluetooth or connect with a USB cable.

The app is not free; but it is free for two weeks. I will almost certainly shell out the purchase price when my trial ends.

If you have an Android phone with unlimited data, and need to get online with your Tablet, this is the app for you.

Available in the Android Market.

I immediately thought of Infographics (sometimes called Infographs). An infograph is simply collection of data displayed in a visually appealing way. They are increasingly popular online; and as you can see below are even spoofed:

A well designed infographic can convey a great deal of data. Consider projecting different infographs for your students and challenging them to interpret them. Some places to obtain them include:

http://visual.ly/   (My favorite; they are categorized and searchable)

http://www.coolinfographics.com (Source for image above)

http://www.fastcodesign.com/tag/infographic (Especially graphic design oriented)

My all-time favorite one:

How To Use An Apostrophe

Tagged: charts and graphs, Common Core, visual aid ]]> http://tablettalk.info/2012/01/10/teaching-with-infographics/feed/ 0 tablettalkblog http://tablettalk.info/2011/12/24/merry-christmas-from-jeremy/ http://tablettalk.info/2011/12/24/merry-christmas-from-jeremy/#comments Sat, 24 Dec 2011 18:35:07 +0000 JR http://tablettalkblog.wordpress.com/?p=1707 ]]> Merry Christmas folks. Hope it is a great one!

If your school uses Math Investigations, Pearson has provided new SMART Notebook resources that correlate with each lesson for grades K-5. To access these resources you need to have an account at www.pearsonsuccessnet.com.

If you have an existing account, but haven’t logged-in recently, you may have to create a new one.

To create a new account you will need an access code. You can get your access code from your Math or Technology Resource Teacher. There are three codes for each grade which give you access to the leveled readers, teacher’s edition, and electronic teacher resources.

The SMART Notebook and Gallery collections are located in the Teacher Resources link. The SMART Gallery has gallery items for SMART Notebook and the Zip File contains all SMART Notebook lessons for that Unit. You will have to download each unit individually and you may want to be connected via Ethernet since the files are large.

In addition to the SMART Notebook resources, Pearson has created web based versions of the Close to 20, Close to 100, and Close to 1,000 games. You can play them online or on a mobile device. If you are on a mobile device remember you can add a URL link to the homepage so your students have easy access to the activity. Here is the URL:

http://www.pearsonschool.com/live/images/custom/investigations/Investigations_widget1.html

After a (very quick) inspection of the site it appeared to be stable and user-friendly. It will be interesting to see if the “free” account proves to have adequate storage and features for teacher and student use.