Everyone's posting... What I learned!

Yesterday came a flood of blogs for me to read - about what everyone's learned this past year. Someone from #kinderchat put it out as a blog challenge, and many took them up on it!  Yes, I too learned about the importance of blogging, Genius Hour, and Twitter, but I'll putting a twist on my post - I'm just going to write about what I learned YESTERDAY!  Let's try a list, to make it easier to follow...

1. Flickr - Two great educators in my PLN, Denise Krebs and Laura Coughlin put me up to this. Denise has been on at least two "groups" in Flickr for awhile now - #365project and #JJAProject - where teachers go to post a picture they've taken that day. I LOVE my Canon. I love my long-range lens. But I hardly every upload pictures until the week-long trip is over, or it's time to print some out. So, I just looked at their pictures when they posted them on Twitter, and then moved on. But a tweet from Laura finally pushed me over the edge - she encouraged, "JOIN the group!" with the website attached. Okay, okay!  I had nothing else to do... I read the older posts Denise had about the group, and then jumped in, knowing I'd learn as I went. I uploaded my Detroit Zoo pics first, from Spring Break 2011 - just because I loved them so! 

2. Diptic - On the #365project group, themes were listed - and one of them was collages. This led me to my iPad, on which I'd downloaded Diptic. It was another tweet from Steve's blog - Teaching with iPad, that led me to download this app. I'd downloaded it, then left it. But it has a way to easily create collages, or combine multiple images onto one image, so it was finally opened and explored today. And this is what I downloaded to Flickr.




3. Dvolver - I then explored what was already on a growing list of tech to try during my summer - I started a GoogleDoc at the start of summer, and thought I'd better start playing at what I put on it! After all, it is 102 degrees outside... Just by stopping by the website, this is what I created. It's not the most versatile tool, but it's quick and simple. How would YOU use it?

4. Incredibox - More from my GoogleDoc... This was FUN! And so EASY! Check out the song I created! You can use this in your slideshows, or as background music for anything. I don't know how long your song can be, but it's great music - now I just have to learn how to record it so I can use it.





What I've learned this past year? To TRY NEW THINGS. Just experiment. The computer won't break. Explore what others say is valuable, and it may just work for you, too! Enjoy the journey, as always!