Inforgraphic-What?Why?How?

Infographic-What?
It is a way for someone to express themselves or a concept of something through graphics and little word usage.

Why?
I would assume to capture the minds of those who are highly aesthetic. I don't quite get infographics myself. They seem a little complex to me.

How?
You must again be an abstract thinker in order to design one of these things. I can hardly draw a stick man so I don't think that infographics would be something that I could teach to someone else.

However, to each its own. We have so many new things coming out in technology, so I guess I could learn to make an infographic. Why not!

Exploring Goolge for the Classroom

Google is a very interactive site for children and adults. It offers many tools that teachers can use in the classroom to encourage students to participate and become active in their learning. The first site I would recommend for a teacher to use with students would be Google Sketch Up. This site is really ideal for an art teacher. It has many shapes, colors, and is 3-D dimensional for the inspiring artist in your classroom. Or, it could be used for math, science, and or social studies.

The next google site would be google earth. It allows the students to view places on earth via satellite, either from bird's eye view or up close and personal. It shows maps, street views, and you can even see where you live. This is ideal for social studies, geography, even for driver's ed.

Google also have many different tools that teachers and students can use. These are google calendar, reader, images, doc, and maps. These tools can be an alternative to the Microsoft Office that has to be purchased on computers now. Students can use google docs just like microsoft word.

There are also google lesson sites for teachers such as googlelittrips. This site enhances ways for English and Literature teachers to expound on different readings and gives students a different perspective by allowing them to see different parts of the world when reading or researching on a topic. Then, for Math teachers there is realworld math.org. This site can engage students to learn meaningful and practical math lessons. Lastly, there is langwitches.org this is fit for the social studies teacher. Again, it allows the teacher to expand the students learning through different avenues besides the text book.

Four Recommended Educational Blogs

There are four educational blogs that I would like to recommend. I chose these blogs because I have a son who has been tested for gifted and who will be entering third grade. I really like the two gifted blogs because they gave me insight into what gifted children are expose to in the classroom. As well as they gave me some creative ideas that I can do at home with my son. The two gifted blogs are: Get a CLUE and Fultondale Elementary School RLC-gifted. These two blogs also had additional websites for parents, teachers, and students, which I really liked. For example, they gave a website for students called visuwords. It is a free dictionary and thesaurus online. You type in a word and it gives you the meaning and synonyms in a synapes. My son is always asking what a word means and I am always saying look it up in the dictionary. I think this would be a really cool way for him to want to look up words without me telling him to use the dictionary.

The third blog was Mrs. Lewis's Third Grade Flybabies Blog site. This blog also had several educational websites for parens and teachers, but what I liked mostly about it was that it had the classroom curriculum on it. So, if you wanted to know what assignments that your child had to do in advance you could look on blog. How NEAT!!

The last blog is The Great Fourth Grade Adventure. I chose this blog because I wanted to see what things to expect for next year. This site too, had links for teachers and parents, but it mostly had links to other blogs. It also had different catergorizes to blog. I really didn't like this one as much as the others.

So if you get a chance to check these blogs out, Let me know what you think!
http://theedublogger.com/check-out-these-class-blogs/

Get An A On It

I really like this video. It shows how our children can be very creative. It shows how their education is important to them. We always hear and see negative things about what children are doing in school. This is something positive that I wanted to share with others.

MyRetailCodes.co.uk

I found the coolest website called MyRetailCodes.co.uk. This website is perfect for shoppers who loves a bargain or discount. It features the hottest discounts, most popular, and the newest discounts. It also shows when discounts expires and allows for the shopper to print vouchers. What I like most about this website is that it shows featured retailers as well as the hottest retailers, and you can give your email address and receive updates on the latest DISCOUNTS!!!
But, unfortunately, it is only for those who live in the UK. What a BOMBER!!!!

So this would be a good idea for someone to start for the shoppers in the USA.

My thoughts about Igoole

My favorite web tool to use is Igoole. It allows the individual to be creative by offering many design themes for background of your igoole page. It helps with management of time by using the to do list, of which I love, because it allows you to prioritize your assignments or chores that needs to be completed in a timely manner. There are many different applications to use on igoogle that can be supportive to students either through creativity or academically. So I would encourage teachers to use this tool for students in grades 3-6. I have allowed my son to go on my page and play several games and he enjoys it.