Sunday, November 20, 2016
Monday, November 14, 2016
Monday, November 7, 2016
Introduction to Blogging - Class One -
The Semester's Blogging class has started.
Here are the lecture notes from the first class:
Class Schedule
Class 1 - The Basics - Planning and Getting the blog Started
Class 2- Creating Posts, Blog rules - Content, tags, images
Class 3 - Generating traffic - Getting advertisements, making money
Class 4 - Taking it to the next level, Hosting your own blog, customizing
Your Homework for the first class is to go to Amazon and read a book on How to blog... the link is below in the lecture notes.
Your Homework for the first class is to go to Amazon and read a book on How to blog... the link is below in the lecture notes.
Here are the lecture notes from the first class:
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Newspapers.com... who knows what you'll find
Newspapers.com is making a valiant attempt to digitize old newspapers and make them web searchable. For those of us who remember looking through the "The Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature", it is amazing how the technology works.
Of course, scanning in old publications comes at a cost, so searching Newspapers.com is not free. For $80 a year is it well worth the expense. My friend Audrey turned me onto the site. To demonstrate how much information it contained, she searched my name - Kim Cronin.
Now we all have those moments that we remember from our past. As you re-tell the memories, things may change and you start to wonder if it was really like you remember.
One of those pivotal moments for me was my sophomore year of high school. I was a nerdy kid and struggled to fit in. I even switched high schools between my Freshman and Sophomore year because I was bullied so badly at Wellsville High School.
A new student at Scio Central school, I was trying to fit in. After being cut from the girls' basketball team in the fall, I decided to try track in the spring. I didn't do that good in any of the races the coach put me in, so I ended up in the two mile run. My first time running the two mile was at a track meet at Alfred-Almond High School. Their track was in the front yard of the school.
Of course, scanning in old publications comes at a cost, so searching Newspapers.com is not free. For $80 a year is it well worth the expense. My friend Audrey turned me onto the site. To demonstrate how much information it contained, she searched my name - Kim Cronin.
Now we all have those moments that we remember from our past. As you re-tell the memories, things may change and you start to wonder if it was really like you remember.
One of those pivotal moments for me was my sophomore year of high school. I was a nerdy kid and struggled to fit in. I even switched high schools between my Freshman and Sophomore year because I was bullied so badly at Wellsville High School.
A new student at Scio Central school, I was trying to fit in. After being cut from the girls' basketball team in the fall, I decided to try track in the spring. I didn't do that good in any of the races the coach put me in, so I ended up in the two mile run. My first time running the two mile was at a track meet at Alfred-Almond High School. Their track was in the front yard of the school.
The two mile run is eight laps around the track. We had a team superstar, Mary Root, who won any distance race you put her in. So when the race started, Mary took off in the lead. I was just another runner in the pack and another sports superstar, Ellen Ann Coughlin was in second place. Her dad was a coach at our school and Ellen Ann excelled at any sport she tried.
So I just kept running with the pack doing loop after loop in the race. At around the 5th time around the track, as I ran by teammates Lynn and Jeanette, they started encouraging me..."Kim, you aren't even breathing hard..everyone ahead of you is struggling..run faster...you can do it".
I still remember their encouragement and I realized that maybe I was better than I thought and I could do it. So I picked up the pace and ran harder.
I passed Ellen Ann. She was a superstar and I didn't think I was good enough to pass her, but I did. Newspapers.com stored that memory for me:
Reading it... it all came flooding back, my lack of confidence and how that day I realized to believe in yourself, that you have to try harder. It is still one of my favorite memories from High School, being told by my teammates that I could...that I should try harder. And then believing in myself that I could.
Thanks newspapers.com for storing that memory for me. It's a good one!!
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Blogging - Adult Ed class on the Riverhead Campus
I'm so excited that my Blogging class is running again this semester at Suffolk Community College. We still have space in the class if you are interested. Here is the link to the Course Catalog: http://www.sunysuffolk.edu/gallery/Continuing_Ed_Spring_2016/
My class is on page 13.
Below I'm listing some of the blogs that my past students have created. I love to see the blogs continue. The last link is a blogger who changed from Google's Blogger to Google's Sites as a result of my class.
Past Students:
Monday, February 1, 2016
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Audiocity - The power of Sound recording - Lesson Plan idea
One of my favorite classroom lessons is on Sound. I created a lesson for fifth grade that explored sound and the students had a blast!
I had each of my students pick a primary book that had sound in it. The Elementary librarian really helped me pick out books. Some of the books we used were:
The students read their book to the computer. It was a loud class with all the students reading at the same time, but audiocity is wonderful in the way it shows sound waves as it records the sounds. The program is set by default in Stereo, so there are two sound tracks. To make it simpler for the students, set the program to Mono and you will only see one track. As the students read their book, they simply read the words and the sound effects.
We played with the pitch settings a little. I wanted to reinforce the vocabulary that we learned from BrainPop Jr.
At the end of the class, the students had files saved, named after the book they chose.
In preparation for the next class I download all the sound files that I though they would need. There are many feed sound files available online. Here are a few:
I didn't want to send the students to search the websites, so I downloaded the files and stored them in a shared folder.
So when the students arrived for the second class, I had them open the file that contained their reading of the book. They found the "sound" areas and selected it, muting that section of their recording. They the loaded in an appropriate sound file and positioned it to correspond with what they had read.
It was a lot of fun
Here is one of the student's work the I uploaded to Podomatic.
Honestly, we had limited success. They students had a great time doing it, but few of them finished cutting in all the sound effects.
Still the class taught them a lot about sound and they had fun doing it.
I had each of my students pick a primary book that had sound in it. The Elementary librarian really helped me pick out books. Some of the books we used were:
- Billy Goat Gruff
- Click, Clack, Moo
- Wheels on the Bus
- Mr. Brown can Moo, can you
- LuLu Loves Noises
- Pitch
- volume
- wave
The students read their book to the computer. It was a loud class with all the students reading at the same time, but audiocity is wonderful in the way it shows sound waves as it records the sounds. The program is set by default in Stereo, so there are two sound tracks. To make it simpler for the students, set the program to Mono and you will only see one track. As the students read their book, they simply read the words and the sound effects.
At the end of the class, the students had files saved, named after the book they chose.
In preparation for the next class I download all the sound files that I though they would need. There are many feed sound files available online. Here are a few:
- SoundJax: http://soundjax.com
- FindSounds: http://www.findsounds.com
- SoundJay: http://www.soundjay.com
- Soungle: http://soungle.com
- Sound Bible: http://soundbible.com
- FindSounds: http://www.findsounds.com
- Flash Kit Sound FX: http://www.flashkit.com/soundfx
- Amazing Sounds: http://amazingsounds.iespana.es/asenatural.htm
- sshhtt: http://www.sshhtt.com
- The Free Sound Project: http://www.freesound.org
So when the students arrived for the second class, I had them open the file that contained their reading of the book. They found the "sound" areas and selected it, muting that section of their recording. They the loaded in an appropriate sound file and positioned it to correspond with what they had read.
It was a lot of fun
Here is one of the student's work the I uploaded to Podomatic.
Honestly, we had limited success. They students had a great time doing it, but few of them finished cutting in all the sound effects.
Still the class taught them a lot about sound and they had fun doing it.
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