Facebook project & Template

We've had a lot of fun in my district doing a Facebook project. Teachers from almost every subject have jumped into this.

• Science - create a page for a certain type of rock.
• History - historical figure/group.
• Geography - Country page/profile.
• Foreign Language - country, author, historical figure, featured verb, fictional character.
• Math - formulas, theorems.
• English - Character (fictional/non-fictional), Author.

You can click here to download the Facebook project template.

Here is what it looks like:

The template is a .ppt that should have all the tabs linked to each slide. So it should act like a normal facebook page when you are viewing as a show.

Click on the image below to see a sample of instructions for this project.

Let me know how you like it.

Database for Educators Using Google Wave

If you are like me, you waited and waited for your Wave invite in your gmail. But now that you have it you may not have many contacts to wave with, or have any reasons to use it.

So I put this form together in hopes of finding other Educators to connect with on Google Wave. If you work in Education and currently use Google Wave, please share your info below. To see the live results plese go here.

The best resource I know of for Google Wave is the The Complete Wave Guide by Gina Trapani.

Why your class should use Youblisher.com

In our district (like many others) we are trying to convince our teachers that there is more to technology integration than having the students create a PowerPoint. I found out about youblisher in tweets from @MrR0g3rs & @tomwhitby.

What it does:

• www.Youblisher.com will take your multi-page pdf and turn it into a flash-based book. Keep in mind that almost anything can be turned into a pdf using Cute PDF Writer, or a Mac.

Here is my first attempt (Took me 5 minutes to merge my pdfs, really fast after that.)

I used some workshop flyers I had on my laptop to create a workshop catalog.

Classroom Ideas:

As teachers we could use this with the projects we already do in our classes. Instead of having your students turn in a paper report or present a PPT, have them save it as a PDF and upload it to www.youblisher.com.

• Travel Brochure - Students create a brochure about a location that they are studying.
• Instruction Manual - For: life as a MS/HS/College student, Safe Driving, Electronic device, etc
• Any Report/Paper - Give the student the feeling of being a published author (great motivator)
• Photo flip-book - Create a photo journal from a field trip, science experiment, or other class activity.

Have some lesson suggestions of your own? Please leave me a comment.

Book Trailers instead of book reports

A teacher that I work with came to me with an idea to have the students do a book trailer instead of a book report. We decided to use Microsoft Photostory 3. Here is the best one created by one of our students.