A Visual Way To Read The News

There are several sites available that allows you to see current news articles in a different way. I like a few of them, and some of them I don’t understand at all.

The first one is the Spectra Visual Newsreader by MSNBC.com. The best way for me to describe it is a cross between an aggregator and a customized start page. The user has the choice of adding topics that he/she is interested in and the site will arrange your articles in a moving, interactive orb of news. It is hard to capture this as an image since the articles are always moving allowing you to zoom in on different topics. I like the colors and the movement. I felt like a baby staring at a mobile at nap time. Pretty! Pretty!

The next one is World News Maps by TSmaps.com. This one is a bit more simple. You have a world map. Click a country. Thumbnails of articles from that country appear. Simple. Easy. It’s okay. I can’t see myself using it personally. See below.

Third, is NewsGlobe sponsored by Yahoo.com. It looks very similar to Google Earth’s globe, except there are long red poles sticking out of the earth, which represent different news articles around the world. Obviously, this provides a visual representation of where the news is actually occuring at the time, which is helpful when teaching current events. However, I personally would still find myself going to Google Earth to show students the exact location of the article versus an approximate location. I did like how NewsGlobe has an “AutoPlay” feature that allows you to sit back and watch the news jump around the globe or an “interactive” feature that allows YOU to be the explorer.

Finally, there is a site called Doodlebuzz. This site boasts, “DoodleBuzz is a new way to read the news through an experimental interface that allows you to create typographic maps of current news stories.” Basically, you type a word in the search field. Then you start doodling on the screen to get the news to appear. The result, to me, is a huge mess. There are titles of articles all squished together and you have to keep doodling to get the rest of the story. Eventually you can click the article to be taken to the site featuring the article. It’s A LOT of work to get to the news. I don’t get it. I don’t understand why it’s worth the effort. I found this site frustrating, but “to each his own”, I guess.

Says-it.com provides harmless fun

Do you like to personalize pictures to make them look real but don’t have time to dabble in Photoshop? Have no fear! Check out says-it.com. They have many different generators where you can personalize the information printed on them. Personalize a church sign, a McDonald’s sign, or a Danger sign. Add a little spice to your webpage or your blog. I’m easily amused, but if you’re reading this blog, you probably are, too.

ReadWriteThink: Comic Creator

ReadWriteThink is a website sponsored by the International Reading Association to provide teachers and students quality resources online. They have several interactive activities online including their comic creator (see above). Students can determine the number of panels they want for their comic and then add characters, text bubbles, and props to create a funny scene. Unfortunately, the only way to view their finished product is to print it out. Also, the comic creator isn’t as sophisticated as other comic sites and is difficult to get rid of items once they are placed on the page. However, this would be a wonderful site to get children interested in writing. Once they print out their comic, they can color it! One of the nice features is that there are lesson plan ideas and resources for teachers to use with these interactive tools. Check out the other interactive sites by ReadWriteThink:

The list below is only a partial one. To see the full list, see the link above.

Character Trading Cards

Flip Book Creator

Flip-a-chip (vocab practice with affixes and roots)

Mystery Cube

Story Map

Timeline

Venn Diagram

Word Family Sort

Doodle Splash

Construct-a-word

Light Doodles: Amazing Site with Connections to Art

I came across a site today called Light Doodles, where an artist (Lori Stotko) uses LCD lights in a dark room to create light pictures. This is possible by setting the camera on an extended shutter speed so that it can capture the movements made by the light. Stuart Nafey is the photographer that documents these pictures. An example of one is below:

Even more amazing is the tutorial page that allows the visitor to see the process that Lori goes through to create a light doodle and how to create light drawing pens. There is a 20 second video that shows Lori at work and is worth checking out.

Art and science teachers can use this site to explain basic concepts. Art teachers can use this to show lines and photography objectives. Science teachers illustrate concepts of light using this site. Check it out, and order some cool notecards with Light Doodles!

Mandala Maker perfect for math concepts

Yet another cool website can be found through the GirlsGoTech.org page. It’s a mandala maker that allows you to create a symmetrical design using basic shapes and colors, and can be used in the classroom to reinforce geometric concepts in math. As kids work on their design, they can preview the finished design to see if they want to go back and make changes. Here is the design that I created below:

The Awesome Highlighter is indeed AWESOME

I ran across a website called The Awesome Highlighter, which allows you to highlight important text on a webpage in a variety of colors and email it to friends or to yourself. Awesome Highlighter site will also allow you to place notes on the webpage and it will generate a small URL that you can follow to see the additions you made to your webpage. It saves you and your friends time finding the important parts of the website when you want them to view a link. This site can be used in the classroom to teach children to find the main idea/details of a paragraph so that they can take notes easier. Below is a snippet of a webpage where I tried out the highligher. This is what it looks like:

Technology on my mind… Tags are a beautiful thing!

I was looking at a new website I found called Wordle, which will allow you to enter your del.icio.us username to create an artistic rendering of your tags. The result is shown below:

What a great way for people to see the subjects that are important to you and/or your company! I like it. Very artistic.