From the desk of Mr. Walters

Okay, I'd like to give y'all a chance to learn from my successes and failures over the last two weeks, so here goes. If you want students to use Diigo for class and your school doesn't have / support student email, sign up for an educator account . FAQ Get your students' info.  Use a google form with fields set up in this order: name, email, username, password. Download the resulting spreadsheet as a csv.  It should look like this . (Diigo's sample csv doesn't load) Hints for Success: Make sure to have students add school initials to their usernames; there are a lot of Diigo users out there. Create a class group and upload your users.

...that aren't overdone. This year, my colleagues and I moved into a renovated building. One of the upgrades that every teacher experienced was a classroom equipped with a ceiling-mounted computer projection unit, a Mobi (mobile whiteboard), and a Laptop.  As a result, the number of us using PowerPoint for every lesson has grown exponentially. The explosion of Power Point aided lessons has in some cases led to an exponential growth in students placing Power Point on the same level as thick worksheet packets and lengthy standardized assessments. Further, many teachers are starting to feel the same way after being subjected to poorly constructed and delivered presentations by students. What happened to this tool that at the start seemed so engaging and dynamic? Essential Question: How do teachers navigating this new world of projection screens, Smartboards, etc. keep things fresh? Let's look at some presentation tools and techniques available to any teacher with an Internet ...

Hey Mr. Reck's Candy Unit kids, Here's a wonderful treat for you. I've made two vector candy bar wrappers for you to Photoshop.  They work similarly to the Sneaker templates used in my class. I intend to add a screencast to this post soon on using the templates. Templates This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License .

Here's a shout out to all of the eighth graders working on Reck's Candy Unit. Helpful Articles Designing a killer logo Choosing a name 10 Principles of the Logo Design Masters Inspiration http://www.thedieline.com/blog/category/industry-food http://logofaves.com http://creattica.com/logos http://www.logospire.com Tutorials Logo / Identity Related: Text Effects in Photoshop Text Effects in Illustrator Step-by-step Logo Design Logo Design Process Logo Design Tutorial Logo Process Tutorial Identity Package - Illustrator Packaging etc. Illustrator Energy Drink Package Tutorial Snack Packaging

At our district, we celebrate Mix it up day , an initiative of our Project Harmony Club.

In my eighth grade classes, students spend the first few weeks learning the basics of Photoshop and Illustrator. We look at everything from simple drawing and photo editing to adding custom presets and libraries. One of the more nuanced skills that doesn't receive near enough air time in class, is how to use these two powerful applications together. Here's my first part in a series on Illustrator / Photoshop work-flows.

Recent response to request for students to be permitted to post images, screenshots, etc. to forums in officially supported district course management system: There is a way to change the Student Permissions to allow this, however; they then have access to all of the files within that course.  This includes any database records, back-ups and general files related to the course itself.  I do not feel that this is the best option as students should not be allowed to access this information. The idea was raised that you could create a course strictly for Forums.  This would then allow students to access the course and browse all of the files without much of a security threat as there would not be a gradebook or other files that they can get to.  Again, I do not feel this is the way to go as the students may still remove or delete files that need to be kept on the server for the course to run properly.  I could see this being an option only if the students are to...