Cardiff District Tech Time Meeting Notes~Monday, June 6th:)

The last :( Cardiff  District Tech Time Meeting was held on Monday, June 6th, at 3:15 pm at Cardiff Elementary and the following were highlights:

•  The District Tech Meeting was held on Tuesday, May 31st and it was decided that each school would have a separate Tech Talk Meeting, due to individual school-needs and focuses.
• It was suggested that regarding next year's meetings, it would be helpful to send out an agenda for possible topics.
• It was also suggested that the focus for next year to be a sharing of information on Google Docs/email, in addition to district business and other sharing.  It could possibly be included in the school staff meeting.
• Kim and Margit shared a new app-Dragon Dictation, that will allow a person to use voice-to-text capabilities.
• Jeff shared QR Reader, an app that locates information and allows a person find phone numbers, email addresses, etc.  He uses it as an instant link to his website. 
•  Scanner-Pro and Turbo-Scan are scanners to use to scan documents and saved. 

*That's all until next year!!!

Caroline Casey: Looking past limits | Video on TED.com

http://www.ted.com/talks/caroline_casey_looking_past_limits.html

Cardiff District Tech Time Meeting Notes~Monday, May 2nd:)

The Tech Time meeting was held on Monday, May 2nd and the following were highlights:

• Margit attended an Urban Sites and Network Conference and presented a Writing for Change Academy film she made with the MAC class on QuickTime.  She took the footage on the Flipcam, then imported it to iMovie and exported it as QuickTime, entitled:  WhoWeWant2Be.  
• The class also created mini movies, based on the I Have A Dream speech, by Dr. Martin Luther King, created on:  Little Bird Tales:  http://littlebirdtales.com
• Glogster is an online tool where you can create an interactive online poster:  http://mackids.edu.glogster.com
• Keith showed us all the new blog:  http://www.cardifftech.blogspot.com 
• Jackie showed us how to subscribe to the blog by going to the bottom of the blog and clicking on the subscribe button and choosing iReader or iGoogle.
• Tammy showed us how to make a new library in iphoto:  hold down the option key
• Then Tammy showed us a photo-editing program for creating pictures (like kidpix):  Sumopaint:  http://www.sumopaint.com/app/  There is a symmetry tool that will create a mirror image on pictures. 

The next meeting will be Monday, June 6th, at Cardiff Tech Lab at 3:15 pm:)
      

Final Two Meetings of the Year

Tech Time has a new name!!!!!! It is now called Tech Talk!!! Our last two meetings of the year will be on the first Monday of May (May 2nd) at Ada Harris in the Computer Lab and the first Monday in June (June 6th) at Cardiff School in the Computer Lab. Both meetings will be from 3:15-3:45ish. Bring any fun end of the year ideas. We are looking forward to seeing you there.

Tech Notes from March 28th Meeting

The Tech Time meeting was an interesting one.  Thanks to everyone for updates on the CUE conference and the following tech ideas:

1. Dropbox - This is a website that you can download and transfer files up to 100 gb (2 gb for the free account), similar to Google Docs.  Kim tried it with a rather large avi file and it worked! 

2.  Discovery Education Streaming - This is not a new site, but Jeff heard about a new way to use it:  Gather text from a famous speech and paste it into Wordle.  With Wordle, the more often a word is used in a paragraph, the larger the word appears.  This allows you and your students to look at which words were used most frequently in a speech such as "I Had a Dream" by Dr. Martin Luther King.  You could also paste in student's writing to see which word is being over used.

3.  SeaMonkey - This is a browser (like Safari or Firefox) that Jeff uses because it allows him to do minor editing of web pages he's going to print.  Ask Jeff, if you have questions.  :)

4. Tammy Worcester's Technology Tips for Teachers - This is a website by Tammy Worcester that has great tips for teachers using technology that Jeff saw at CUE.   The tips are listed under the "What's New" section.  She also has a separate blog page that lists her Favorite FREE Web Tools.

Thanks to Carol Williams for taking our minutes!