The Walrus and the Carpenter

Throughout my time here in Wonderland/The Internet I have come across a whole myriad of people that have helped me find my way back home. As I look back on it I want to be able to share my stories with those that do not want to go back and read about my previous adventures in Wonderland. Tweedledee and Tweedledum told me the story of the Walrus and the Carpenter. To tell the story they used two interesting Wonderland tools. Tweedledee used http://storybird.com/ and Tweedledum used http://www.digitalstoryteller.org/ . These tools were used to tell me the digital story of the Walrus and the Carpenter. Storybird is a site that has preset pictures associated with different themes. One could use choose a theme and then choose pictures to tell their digital story. Digitalstoryteller is a site that allowed Tweedledee and Tweedledum to add their own voices, text and images to their story and make a digital movie. After they showed me the digital story we recounted the story of the Walrus and the Carpenter. The Walrus and the Carpenter were walking on a beach where they came across a bed of oysters. The Carapenter befriended the oysters while the Walrus tricked them into a pot of boiling water and then ate them. Digital storytelling has given Tweedledee and Tweedledum the tools to overcome their dyslexia and showed me a new way to show my adventures in Wonderland to anyone that has chosen to follow me on this crazy ride.

Return of the Cheshire Cat

After my run in with the Red Queens Knights I continued my journey deeper and deeper into Wonderland. I felt like I had been walking for what seemed like forever, when I heard a voice next to my ear. It said, “Not lost are we!” I turned and I say the Cheshire Cat smiling at me. “Why no I am not lost at all Copyright Cheshire Cat. I am just wishing there was a way that I could talk to other people down here and back where I came from.” The Cheshire Cat was happy to inform he, in his stylish way, that there were many different ways to communicate with other people. He told me about a few different ways. I found out that there is a Global Student Community on Facebook and there is ePals Global Community. This is a site that you can connect with students in over two hundred different countries. This is also a place that I will be able to collaborate with other teachers around the world and students can communicate with other students. There is a forum were both teachers and students can talk about projects. There is an area where students can share work, it is amazing how many different things are on this website for both teachers and students. When the Cheshire Cat and walked through this site and it was just amazing. Last the Cheshire Cat told me about
http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/. here is where kids can pick a country to find a pen-pal. Here you have to register. Here students can connect with other students by the use of blogs and emails. Here they can talk about a variety of things ranging from their community to their life in school and school work. As I left the Cheshire Cat I felt like I was not alone here in Wonderland. I am now able to share this with my students and friends. Once again the Cheshire Cat has made me feel not so small and gave me great tips and advice to survive here in Wonderland.

Painting the Roses Red

Through out my time here is Wonderland/Internet that I have found to be really interesting and informing. Form the start here I have been in contact with a few other people, that are also down here. The next group of people that I came upon was the Red Queen/techfridge.com Knights. They were going around spreading the word of the Red Queen and painting teh roses red. When they saw me they came up and started taking about a whole bunch of things. There were a few thing that they were saying that really stuck with me. One of them was when they were talking about Mobile Math Apps. These apps are cool because they can solve problems and learn the math functions that they will need all the way through high school They made a great point that now days almost every student has a cellphone with them and now they can have math in their pocket. The second Knight was hanging up a variety of poster. Now these poster were awesome, they can be seen at http://teachfactory.com/?p=766. They all have motivtional saying on them, my favorite said “To live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong.” Last the third Knight was talking about, the coolest thing so far, creating you own choose your own adventure video. I was informed that I YouTube had and an area were I can upload videos to an interactive. using the spotlight annotation tool in the YouTube video editor you can insert into your videos a hyperlink to other videos or websites. Next I inserte multiple links into your videos you can create "choose your own adventure" series of videos. These were almost my three wise men but, that is a different story for a different time. But, these Knights gave me a lot of great ideas to share with the youth that I will be teacher in the super near future. This information, they gave me, will help me become a more engaging teacher. I will now have the ideas and soon to be knowledge be be a teacher that kids want to learn from. I really like the idea of having students create their choose your own adventure video. I was so happy and excited about the info the Knights gave me, I helped them paint the roses red,

Assisting Tweedledee and Tweedledum

The last time I checked in with you I had mentioned that I had run into two wild and crazy twins, named Tweedledee & Tweedledum. These two rollie pollie guys was so much fun and it turns out that I have a little in common with them. It was hard for me to believe that I would ever run into someone in Wonderland that I would have something in common with. First off I had met these two guys on a path that was leading me to, what seemed like, nowhere. I had turned a corner, by this huge tree, and saw these two guy having a argument with one another. As I got closer and closer I was able to hear what they were arguing about. It was one of the silliest arguments that I had ever heard. The were arguing about how to read a book. As I got closer to them I realized that one of them, I could not tell which as they were twins, was dyslexic. I knew this for two reasons first I myself am dyslexic. Second I have done a little research over the years, to find out about dyslexia and I have come across a few signs that point to dyslexia. The twins were misreading and sometimes leaving out short words. And when I saw short I mean short words, words like on, on, saw, and was (http://www.k12reader.com/dyslexia-symptoms/). They were also stumbling and just plain skipped some big words in the story they were reading.

When I got closer I really wanted to help them and I felt great about helping because I had a little knowledge about dyslexia. When I had reached the twins They welcomed me and asked If I would like to read with them. I was so happy to say yea. But, before we even got started I asked the twins if they have ever heard of assistive technology. By the looks on their face I guessed the answer was no. So I went on and explained that assistive technology was technology that is used by a variety of people who have disabilities that makes preforming tasks difficult or impossible, like dyslexia (http://www.washington.edu/accessit/articles?109). Their eyes lit up like two kids finding they were getting a puppy. So now I need to find a great assistive technology that can help out Tweedledee and Tweedledum. There are a lot of different assistive technologies, that will help with dyslexia some are: electronic dictionaries, audio books, reading pens/handheld scanners, voice recognition software and text to speech software. The coolest one, for the twins was, the reading pen. This thing is so cool, all the twins had to do was take the pen and highlight to word and the pen reads it out loud. So with a reading pen in hand I sat and read the book, Charlottes Web, with the twins.

Now before I left Tweedledee and Tweedledum I wanted to give them some advice on dyslexia and what they can do to keep up on the information about dyslexia. The easiest way for them to stay on top of it is to keep traveling through Wonderland/the internet. There is always new information popping up here and there that is always helpful. New techniques and technologies are coming out of the woodworks that people are saying is the new best thing for battling dyslexia. The best way to know if these things, or tricks, will work is to travel through Wonderland. No matter where you go you there is a good chance that you will meet or help someone, like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, that have dyslexia. As I was saying goodbye to the twins they thanked me profusely. They were telling me that they had delays in their speech, a lot of ear infections, had a hard time mastering tying their shoes, they were rambunctious, had a hard time sitting still, and the list went on and on. They were so happy to hear that these are signs of being dyslexic. It is important when a chid has these symptoms, they are not a troubled child, they just might be dyslexic and have trouble reading. So, as I told Tweedledee and Tweedledum, it is important to look past someones behavior and look deeply at them and it just might be a simple answer. This is a great thing to do when you meet people in Wonderland/students in your classroom

The Caterpillar and the Word Cloud

It has been awhile since my last note, to the people who are down here in Wonderland with me. Well it has been an interesting few days. I came across a two really fun but, a little odd twins.. If I remember right I think their names were Deetweedle and Dumtweedle. No, that's not right what were their names........ Oh I remember now they were Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They were a riot. So I hung out with them for a bit and they showed me a lot. But, I will get back to them at a later time. The most interesting thing that I came across was this caterpillar, and the strange thing was, he sounded like Professor Snape from Harry Potter, I hope you are smiling with that one. Anyway, this caterpillar was a laid back insect sitting on a leaf smoking up a cloud that just caught my eye. Now I know what some of you might be thinking at this point but, I assure you it was nothing bad at all. Every time this caterpillar blew out a cloud of smoke it was a different color. Well that at first made me want to go and check it out. As I was getting closer and closer the smoke did not look like smoke at all. It was the strangest thing I had seen in awhile. Now if you have been following my adventure now here in Wonderland you would know that was saying something. As I got closer and closer to the smoke I noticed that the caterpillar was not blowing smoke at all. The caterpillar was blowing words out of his tiny little pipe. Once I got close enough to talk to the caterpillar I asked, “Who are you!”. He took a big deep breath from his pipe and replied, “Who are you?”



Now this was just plan awesome I mean it was more than awesome. It was redonkeylously awesome. So, the very next thing that I asked the caterpillar was, “How did you do that?” He looked up at me and said, “Well my good boy, it is easier than you thought. All you have to do is go and look for a website called Wordle.” So, what is wordle you ask he. Funny that was the same question that I asked the caterpillar. He told me that Wordle was a sight were I could create my very own word clouds. A word cloud is a type of text that helps people quickly preceive what the most prominent terms are. When I went to walking around Wonderland to find out more about Wordle, i found out that there are a number if cool ways to use Wordle in a classroom. The coolest way for younger kids to use Wordle is to use it to write an “All About Me” at the start of the year. Another way to use it is to create a learning poster with the weeks spelling words on it. One more way to use Wordle is to use them to help with self-esteem and improve relationships in the class. One of the best things about this site was that it was absolutely free. Last before I left the Wordle website I created my very first word cloud about my travels in Wonderland so far.

A Mad Hatter of a Tea Party

Throughout my journey there were a variety of people that I have run into with interesting views of what they think of Wonderland. In fact I recently found myself stumbling onto a tea party with a few of my favorite people that I have ran into, down here in Wonderland. This was one of the funnest things that I have done since I started this journey a few weeks ago. I was wandering around, to tell the truth I was a little lost because I was not paying attention to where I was going. This Internet Wonderland, is huge with so many different things to look at it is easy to get lost. But, I have been lucky to have run into a few blogs here and there that have made my travels a lot more fun. The tea party was probably the must interesting and awesomely random tea party that I have ever been to. But, to be honest I have never been to a tea party before. So for all I know this is how every tea part is. Now I bet you are wondering who was at this tea party. There were five people at the party: Peter, Jessica, Jeanell, and Tom from bionic teaching and myself and we are a little bit of a Mad Hatter. All four of these guest made the tea party so much fun. When they talked there was a lot of great information and a lot of randomness. Everyone really showed me their uniqueness of there own personality. Some of the guest at the party are straight to the point and some are going to the beat of their own drum: singing, dancing, telling jokes, and wearing crazy clothes. I think this is just the same reason why no two teachers are the same. This is why these blogs are so helpful to me and to anyone who visits them. They are all full of different information that can help me in my teaching career. Besides all the knowledge that is being passed from guest to guest (blog/blog) these guest were crazy. Tom talking about introducing randomness, or singing the Unbirthday Song. Then you have the other three guest sing and joking around along with passing on information about copyright and telling everyone about different blogs that we should check out. If anything that this crazy tea party taught me was everyone is unique and brings something valuable to the table, no pun intended. Well now with this tea party over I can not wait to see what I come across next.

The Cheshire Copyright Cat

Ok for those of you that are just now reading about my adventures into somewhat uncharted waters let me get you caught up. Well first I had been hearing rumors about a mysterious world were nothing is what it seems to be. So I took this little red pill to take me inside this “Wonderland”. Once I had taken the pill I was shown where the rabbit hole was that would lead me where I needed to go. So long story short I am now in Wonderland and I am chasing the elusive White Rabbit. I did get a glimpse of the rabbit playing with my iPhone, if you are confused just check out my last entry. Now that you are caught up, and I don’t think I will recap you in future blogs so make sure you keep up. I just kicked open the door to Wonderland and I was amazed to see what this extraordinary place has to offer. I looked left and right but the White Rabbit was now nowhere to be found. Just when I was about to decide which way to start my adventure, I heard a mischievous voice saying “That way has a copyright on it.” I could hear the voice but I could not see where it was coming from. I started to look around and then I thought I saw what was a pair of teeth. I had to rub I eyes and once I opened them again I saw what looked like a cat floating in the air. I had to ask who are you? The cat told me he was the Cheshire Copyright Cat. What or who is the Cheshire Copyright Cat you ask? Well at first this Cat is something that can be very tricky until they are on your side. Once on your side the Cheshire Copyright Cat will protect and give me exclusive rights to whatever I create, when I am in Wonderland.

“So why can’t I go down that path?” I asked

“Because it has a copyright on It my good sr.” he said in a high slick voice.

“So how do I get out of here?”

“Well my dear you must make your own path and make sure you have me copyright it so no one else can steal your path.”

So how do you get the Cheshire Copyright Cat on your side do you ask? Well I found that it is easier than I thought. All I had to do was fill out a form that the Cheshire Cat had. From there it went to the Great and Powerful OZ. Really all I had to do to make my path legally copyrighted was make sure that my signature had been authenticated.

Now that I had my path copyrighted I now had a trail to see what and who I will meet next in Wonderland. You might think that this was all that the Cheshire Copyright Cat did to me but no. As I left he gave me some advice to think about on my journey. The Cat said, “Anything can be have a copyright on it especially when you are here in Wonderland and wherever you find yourself. You will come across things and images that you will want to use. So, make sure that you comply with the laws that are out there. This will make you a good role model to those around you. Last you need to know about TEACH ACT. This is important because it stands for Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization. This will let you use copyrighted material when you teach someone in a classroom setting. Enjoy your journey here in Wonderland and you will be seeing me soon.”

For one strange cat, that came out of nowhere, the Cheshire Copyright Cat was full of information that I had no idea about. Now that I am on my way deeper and deeper into Wonderland I can’t wait to see what and who I meet next. Until next time, see you in Wonderland.