…ok…well, not EVERYTHING. But today during our afternoon session, Mom did teach me something. It is definitely a short cut that I will be showing my 4th graders this year while in the computer lab. When I have students go online to gather pictures for a multimedia project, I always send them to the Microsoft Clip Art site. This site has high quality stock images that have no copyright restrictions for student work. It is also SAFE. I have never seen any inappropriate images on this site.
Once the students find the image they want to use, I have them copy and paste, or drag and drop the image into a powerpoint slide. The students then right click on the image and “save picture as…” to the desktop or some other easy to find location. Today, while demonstrating Animoto, I showed this method of gathering images to our group. Mom asked, “Why don’t you just drag it into a folder?” My response was something like…awkward pause…”Uhhhh….I didn’t know you could do that.”
What you heard next was a rambling mixture of my mom saying, “Try it,” and me sighing and making remarks like…cool…and duh!
So there you have it folks. Another useful tip learned during a workshop with my mom! Here are the screen captures of the exact picture I “tried” during our session.
If I am the late to the game in using this new method of downloading images…well…better late than never. If you didn’t know about this, you have my mom to thank!
Thanks Mom.
Oh…I almost forgot. She also shared a new online timer with me today. I know there are many available, but I hadn’t seen this one. Egg Timer Check it out for yourself.
My niece, Allison, came into our lives thirty years ago. She has provided us with a glimpse of another world that we can’t begin to understand, only because we are limited in both our intellect and ability to “see” things the way she does. As a child, Allison “danced with the fairies” and was lost in thoughts that we could only wish to share with her. She was first diagnosed with significant developmental delays with “islands of ability” or possible “childhood schizophrenia”. When Allison was five, her pediatrician called my sister, Diana, at work. He had just returned from attending a conference in California and was very excited to have found an “answer”. Allison eventually was “labeled” autistic, and was placed in special classes in schools in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Diana worked as a political consultant at the state and federal levels, and used any and all connections she had to educate herself on autism. She became an officer in the Autism Society of America, and became proactive in securing the best help to enable Allison to become all she could be. Eventually we learned that Allison’s symptoms were best described as Asperger’s Syndrome, and she was not only very high functioning, but had an IQ that was far above anyone else in our family. When she was twelve, Allison described to me a book that she was reading about “parallel universes” in terms I could understand. My “Allison Stories” include finding piles of miniature notebook pages under her bed with hieroglyphics of different thoughts and messages filling each page, all easily translated by her at the age of eight. On a visit I took her to buy a bathing suit, and she absolutely needed the black one-piece with a huge beautiful sequined pineapple filling the front. How could I refuse? She loved nothing more than to sit in front of the television under a huge open golf umbrella watching Comedy Central and laughing with the audience. Her humor is quick, dry, and catches you off-guard bringing you to your knees. She has been to “Burning Man”, belonged to a tango club, belly-dances, and has taken Diana and me on a trip to southern France for the “Gathering of the Gypsies”. On our trip to Paris, her first request was to go to the cemetery to see the grave of Jim Morrison. On our trip through the Louvre, she was our personal guide. Just this past Sunday her post on Facebook read, 
I can not tell you how many times I heard those two words last week during our hosted workshops. And NO it wasn’t in reference to Mom and me 😉 15 new MSi Wind netbooks were getting all of the compliments. Quite frankly, they were well deserved! Not only are they very cute little computers, they worked very well for our hands-on sessions where we want each participant to be working on a computer while we guide them through the workshop. We hosted 7 hands-on sessions last week where the Winds got their first workout. I could not be happier with their performance. We did hear several participants comment on how small they were, but in order for us to have a portable lab that is easy for us to manage, we had to go small. Now if I can get my hands on 20 more for my classroom…that would be GREAT! MSi Wind people…are you listening?
The participants during our sessions were delightful. It was fun to see so many of them taking notes and asking questions about our ideas and how to implement them. We really enjoyed the morning and especially enjoyed getting to meet one of the members of our PLN (Nadine) in person. In fact, she is the one who took this picture!
Mom and I usually like to go out to eat for lunch after our presentations as a way to reflect and enjoy one another’s company. Today we made a trek down the road to Whole Foods, the Mecca of healthy eating grocery stores. I think I may have heard the Hallelujah Chorus play as I pulled into my parking spot (thanks again to that GPS for getting us there with NO problems!). We did some shopping for things that I definitely can’t get in Central IL and then had lunch in the cafe area where they have the best selection of hot and cold bar foods from which to choose.
