Friday, January 28

ASSIGNMENT 1

• Create a post with two examples of something you created from Image Chef. If it is animated you will have to copy and paste the code. If it is a still image - you may want to take a snap shot and upload the picture into your post.

• Explain to your reader what he/she can do on Image Chef - what is it all about.

• Include a link to Image Chef.

ASSIGNMENT 2

• Log onto your Symbaloo account. Add a bookmark for each tool that we have covered in class. Please have a separate page for the tools we go over.
• Tools we have gone over so far: TextAnim, Wordle, Image Chef, Add Your Blog, Class Blog, Firefox Personas
• Take a snapshot of your Symbaloo page and upload it into a post.  
• Explain what Symbaloo is (a Social Bookmarking website, etc)  
• Include a link to Symbaloo.

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Image Chef - Word Clouds - Customize Items

Image Chef

Make Word Mosaic Write a comment or poem in the shape of hearts or other symbols.  Send a greeting or post to MySpace or your blog.  You can also change the background color and create your initials! 

You can also write a Short Message in Flowers and send it as an e-card or post in on your website or social  networking site! The writing may be in flash or still format.

Add your text or photo to various items.  There are various categories to explore.  Have FUN!!!!

To see more examples

TextAnim

TextAnim - click here to create your own!

On this website you can create animated text that you can place on your blog, wiki, email it to a friend, post it on facebook/myspace etc.

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Activity


Create animated text to add as a gadget at the top of your blog


Your text may say:  your name or a welcome saying, ie: Mrs. James, Blogging with Mrs. James, Welcome to My Blog!, etc.


After you generate your text, click "Get the embed code" at the top of the screen.  Copy and paste this as a html gadget on your blog.

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Word Clouds

WHAT ARE WORD CLOUDS?

A fun way to show words!  Words are art!

Created on Wordle

A word cloud is an attractive arrangement of randomly positioned words, where the most important words are bigger than the others.  Word clouds visually represent the frequency or importance of a word in a given text.   As you can see in President Obama's Inauguration speech that someone created a word cloud from.  Example:  President Obama's Inauguration Speech Created from Wordle

Word clouds can be used for educational and fun purposes.  You can place them on your blog, website, social networking site.  You can also print them automatically onto items: a great idea for making custom gifts - printing on T-shirts.   They are a fantastic tool to summarize large documents (reports, speeches, questionnaires, etc), as well as websites.

There are various websites available on the Internet to create word clouds.  Word clouds can be created from sentences, whole documents, web addresses and on some websites even from tables.

Read article on ways to utilize a word cloud:  Click Here 

More ideas for the classroom:  Click Here

WORD CLOUD WEBSITES WE WILL VISIT/EXPLORE

Wordle

Tagul

Tagexdo

TagCrowd

ToCloud

Textorizer

Word Sift

Text Tag Cloud

Image Chef

Worditout

ABCya Word Clouds


Famous Speeches: Enter the text of a famous historical speech into Wordle. Analyze the results by looking at the most commonly used words, or even the words that are not used. What does this tell us about the orator and their intentions? Go to http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/previous.htm or http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html for a list of historical speeches you may want to get started with.

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Activity

Create a word cloud on Wordle.net
Create a post

• Description of tool
• Example of a wordle that you created - (take a snap shot)
• Link to wordle website
• Explain the word cloud that you created

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Avatars

Today you will create a post - title it Avatars.  Your post must contain the following items:

• Picture of Avatars
• Link to website so that viewer may create their own.
• Description of what an Avatar is.

In a post you can post code or the picture itself.  If you post the code you can not wrap text around your item.  If you place a picture into your post, you may wrap the text around the picture.

Sometimes you may have to take a snap shot of your picture to place into your post.

Apple + Shift + 4

Today you will also - add a list of your classmates blogs onto your blog.  You will utilize my blog to get to your classmates blogs.

January 18 - Avatars

Today you will explore websites that allow you to create avatars.  Visit our class wiki to see more examples of avatar websites - or explore the web and find your own!  Class Wiki


My Avatar Editor

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Activity 1

• Create at least three avatars and post them onto your blog.  
• Give a description of what an avatar is - why would someone utilize an avatar?
• Share links to websites that one could visit to create an avatar.

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Day 4 - Avatars

Avatars

An avatar is a digital cartoon-like representation of a real person. Thanks to many free web services, you do not have to pay an artist for your cartoon illustrations. All you have to do is upload your photo, or perform some mix and match.  If you are not comfortable using real photos to represent yourself in any online profiles, you can create a cartoon character of yourself.  It’ll definitely be fun and unique to others when you are representing yourself in a cartoonized way in any online profiles.

There are several websites that allow you to create avatars.  Visit our class wiki site to view websites where you can create avatars. CLICK HERE

Students can create avatars to use with their logins on social networking sites, Google Apps, and other web tools. They can also incorporate their avatar into a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation or add it to their blogs.  

VOKI

Voki is a free service that allows you to create personalized speaking avatars and use them on your blog, profile and in email messages.

Get a Voki now!

Voki enables users to express themselves on the web in their own voice using a talking character (avatar). You can customize your Voki to look like you or take on the identity of characters… animals, monsters, anime etc. Your Voki can speak with your own voice which is added via microphone, upload, or phone or you can use the text to type function.

Create and customize your speaking character to express yourself, communicate and interact with your friends.  Message can be recorded up to 90 seconds.

Use Voki to upload your digital voice recorder files to or podcasts!

Features: Change background - can be animated or still. You can upload your own picture for the background. Avatar speaks. Can use your cell phone or microphone to record your own voice.
 

Add your own voice!

Day Three - January 7

SYMBALOO

A simple way for you to share and organize what you have found on the internet is a website called Symbaloo. This is an icon social bookmarking page, which is most commonly used as a personal start page. By setting it as your homepage on your browser, you can start with your online favorites everyday. You can create your own "web mixes" of your favorite websites - or create them by category.  There is also webmixes already created for you.  This site features top news stories and news stories from the NYTimes, Washingtonpost, CNN and Wallstreet Journal. 

• Discover pages with the best links about a subject
• Create your own pages with favorites
• Share your page with the rest of the world

You can share it with just one person, or publish it in the Symbaloo Gallery!

 

Abilene has their own education symbaloo website!  Visit it here!

Day Two - Janaury 5

Day 1 - January 3