Saturday, December 22, 2007

I am Elf... See me Dance...


Of course I could not let this website get by without a comment! Oh what fun it is to make yourself into an elf this holiday. The site is called Elf Yourself!
Thanks to the people at Office Max, I am now an elf and you can see me dance! It actually is quite fun and you can do more than one elf at a time. I will be playing with this website with more family pictures over the holidays!

Another fun holiday site is from the US government of all places. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) who guard what you value most has been tracking Santa for children since 1955. Back then a misprint in a Sears and Roebuck advertisement for the Colorado Springs store published NORAD's number as a special hotline number for kids to call Santa. Those were gentler times, the NORAD staff was not on alert for terrorism and the staff joyfully checked the radar and told children who called an update on the Jolly Fatman's location. That started a wonderful NORAD tradition and now they have a website complete with games for children to play. On Christmas Eve things really heat up as the NORAD crew tracks Santa's every move with special updates all evening long.
Not only that, NORAD is an international site, tracking Santa in 5 languages in addition to English. Have a little fun with the children in your life... track Santa with them on Christmas Eve and then Elf them! Let me know how you like being an Elf!
Other sites to help you have a Merry Christmas are nothpole.com, Santa.com, and the merriest place in cyberspace, Claus.com.

Friday, December 21, 2007

New Scholastic Venture with Rick Riordan

Wow…multi genre has nothing on Scholastic’s newest venture with author Rick Riordan. Riordan is the author of the Percy Jackson series, the normal New York kid who finds out that he is really a half-blood and his father is Poseidon. Percy goes on hero quests much like a modern day Hercules. But in this new venture with Scholastic, Riordan will pen a mystery book called, The Maze of Bones, that will have a collectable card component as well as a web component. There is even a contest with 39 clues. If teachers are not motivated to add technology to their curriculum, Scholastic will do it for them. This is really a multi media endeavor and if successful, it could lead to an entire new way to market books. My only problem is that Scholastic seems to be forgetting about the library. I hope they will reconsider and maybe offer some of the cards exclusively at libraries. I know they want to sell books but libraries buy books too!

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

How cool is Moby?

I took part in a webinar on Digital Movie makin' this afternoon with Joe Brennan. It was fun and pretty interesting. There were about 50 people in the webinar. Afterward, I was checking out Joe Brennan’s Digital Storytelling Blog from Discovery Education and he has a short blurb about Moby and how he is offering his music for free for not-for-profit film and video makers and that means education as well. Check out his website: http://www.mobygratis.com/film-music.html. All you have to do is sign up for an account, check out the music, download what you want and “the music is free as long as it's being used in a non-commercial or non-profit film, video, or short". So, if you do video with your students, try some of Moby's music for free!

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Holiday Concert

For those of you like me who never grow tired of those School Days Holiday Concerts... this one is for you... Happy Holidays...



Enjoy your School's Holiday Concert... show your support for the music department in your school!

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Facebook backs down...

It took a little over three weeks, less than a month. I was wondering just how long it would take for users of Facebook to get fed up with the social networking site’s decision to publish their purchases to other members on the site. The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima labeled her article, “Feeling Betrayed, Facebook Users Force Site to Honor Their Privacy.” Nakashima says over 50,000 Facebook users signed a petition calling on the site to stop broadcasting people's transactions without their consent. And, Facebook backed down. They now will ask permission before they broadcast to the world when and for what you are plunking down your hard earned money. Check out Nakashima's story:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/29/AR2007112902503.html?nav=rss_technology
or: http://tinyurl.com/33l6d7.
With all of this commercialism on the Internet, is it any wonder that Internet2 is becoming so important to educational institutions?