Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Tech Tuesday: Kerpoof, Storybird, and Google Labs

Don't worry--You haven't lost your mind--It's actually Wednesday. I had this post scheduled for yesterday, but I hadn't factored in that I'd lose my mind and accidentally post Forgotten on the wrong day. By the time I realized it, the post had comments I didn't want to lose, so please pretend it's Tuesday if you like. :)

Last week, I mentioned the very-giggly "Surfer Boy" in my fragmented vlog. The day I noticed how much he giggled was the day I showed the kids Kerpoof, so I thought I'd share it with you today. Kerpoof is a free site  at which kids can create all kinds of fun stuff like cartoony-type movies and pictures, but the page that had Surfer Boy giggling out of his chair was the Spell-a-Word page, for some reason. You start to spell a word, and pictures pop up of what you might be spelling (I guess). He and his buddy somehow came up with "ROOT," and when a carrot (and later, a radish) popped up, they thought that was hilarious--"Hahahaha! I typed 'root' and it made a CARROT! And a radish!! That's so funny!!!"  I'm certain they had no idea they were having so much fun and learning how to spell at the same time. I'm going to miss Surfer Boy.

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Another really great site that my summer school students loved is one that I just found this recently. It's called Storybird and allows kids (and adults) to choose beautiful artwork to accompany stories they write. Visitors can also simply read books others have written. I highly recommend it.

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Finally, I really love this hilarious feature offered in Google Labs ("Some Crazy, Experimental Stuff"), which include features you can enable for your email. I don't drink, but I know a few people who mind need this:




To enable this feature in your Gmail account, go to your gmail Settings, click on the Labs tab, and find Mail Googles (They're listed alphabetically.).

Sorry--I have no idea how to fix the fact that I suddenly have a margin in my post. I do like technology a lot, but I don't know it all. Feel free to figure it out for me and let me know how to fix it! :) [UPDATE: THANKS for helping me figure that out, MIMBLES! :)]

Have a great day!

6 comments:

  1. Flylady says "Make it fun, and it'll get done." (Plus who know why kids get the giggles over nothing. Their judgement is still developing, I suppose.)

    You do find the most interesting stuff! You and The Goat!

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  2. There's a [div style="...] tag before the image that includes "margin-left: 118px" I imagine that if you go into the html editing mode and delete all the style coding around the image it will go back to behaving itself again.

    (square brackets = < > in the actual coding)

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  3. I love that todays kids are having fun learning it makes the hugest difference at this age to really love school! Way to go Mrs. 4444's you rock!

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  4. The funniest part about the mail goggles is that I heard about something like this several years ago. It was on a morning radio show and they were discussing drunk dialing, texting and emailing and were talking hypothetically (then) about a program that would make you perform math problems prior to letting you send it. I guess it wasn't so hypothetical after all! :)

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  5. thanks for the web site recommendations - I'll pass this on to the parents of the grandkids.

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  6. Hey I still have the last comment on this post. I came back to tell you that I used your Kerpoof recommendation.
    I had a little time with my granddaughter (3) and a laptop. I remembered you posted about a site for kids so I went looking in you blog for it. Actually had thought it was a more recent post.
    Found it and she really enjoyed it. thanks from the little one.

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