Prezi Convert

OK, so I was so inspired by those who shared their presentations with Prezi that I decided to give it a shot myself and created a Prezi based on the 4-H Experiential Learning Model.  It took me a little "playing around" as Helen would say to figure out how to lay out what I wanted and get the font in as I wanted it.  Getting it to move in the direction I wanted was easy enough, but now I am trying to figure out how to link my Prezi to my Moodle in the section on Experiential Learning.  I messed around with it a bit and was able to link it (like I am here: http://prezi.com/jlnicibjs-p9/experiential-learning/, but it is a version people could still go in and edit...

Amy, Danny, Marti, others...help!

Uploaded a voice memo to my Moodle Course today!

Thanks to Helen's wonderful video instruction, I was able to post a test memo to my Moodle course today...of course initially I thought that would be the hard part but now I realize it wasn't...it's figuring out exactly what content I want to use that will be the challenge.  At least now I know when I get the content done for the real voice memo, the upload will be a cake walk. :)

Sophia's New Dance Moves

I don't think I've tried downloading video yet onto my blog and I got some really cute video of Sophia dancing on Saturday so I'm going to try downloading it to share with you all.  And just for the record, no, she did not get her dance moves from me...Sophia has always loved to dance, but she's getting much more creative now-a-days.  The arm thing she's doing in the video is new; Saturday was the first time I saw her do that move. Her dad is in Wisconsin working (he's been there since Thursday) so I sent him the video via email and he watched it like 15 times.  I thought it was pretty cool I could share something like this with him when he's gone.  I think it made his day...

Teleporting...is there an app for that?!?

Really wishing there was!! I am on the road again and making a MUCH needed stop in St Cloud for coffee! Am heading to the Cities for 3 days of training and meetings. Was up late working last night (got to bed around 1AM) and then up before 5 to get ready and out the door by 5:45. If there was an app to teleport, I could have gotten 2 more hours of sleep...sigh...oh well, maybe next year that app will be ready...

Thank you Pri for telling me about Foxit Reader for reading PDFs instead of Adobe! I LOVE that I can highlight and makes notes on what I'm reading in Foxit...don't have to print things to read anymore; saves LOTS of trees!! 😃

New house!

So Helen had a great idea & that was to share pictures of our new house on my blog. I haven't had a chance to walk on the trails around the house (we are on 25 acres), but when I do I'll take more pics and post them! :)

Love the camera on my iPhone!

So today I was helping with 4-H archery training in Mille Lacs and I took a picture with the camera on my iPhone. It actually turned out too! Whenever I used a regular camera in a gym, it always turned out dark & was hard to get a good picture. No such issue w/ my iPhone camera!

Evernote

So I've been trying out Evernote (as I'm a "list" kind of girl! ;) and I found it to be very handy when I was making my "to do" lists for moving. I had one note for the things we needed to do at our old place to get it ready for new renters (since we own it & are now renting it out), and another note for other moving related things I needed to do. I am now using it to try & manage all the school related assignments & tasks. I also am going to try to use it to track my travel/ mileage for work throughout the month (tho I've missed inputting a few trips so that hasn't gone quite as planned).

Is anyone else using Evernote & if so, how have you found it to be helpful?

Podcasts

So for the last few weeks I have been checking out different podcasts on my iPhone while driving to some of the communities I work with (which is at least 90 minutes one way, so I can listen to quite a few).  I have a found a few I like, but was pretty bummed when I tried to download an MPR podcast on my iPhone and it didn't work (it said something about it being over a certain size).  I'm going to try it again when I know I have a good connection to the Internet and see if that makes a difference.

Downloading Class Readings to my Kindle

Yesterday I figured out how to send readings for Fong's class (PDF formats) to my Kindle.  There is a way to send them so they are exactly as you see it in PDF, and also a way to "convert" it so that you can make notes, highlight, etc in the document.  What I found is that it wasn't that difficult to figure out how to email them to my Kindle (I just needed to send them to my Kindle email), but when I tried to open a few of the "converted" documents, there were words missing and the formatting was a bit crazy.  So then I tried to read some of the original PDF files, but they were too small and I couldn't figure out how to make the text bigger in a way that still made maneuvering the document easy...Not all the original PDFs were hard to read (just some of them) and not all the converted files were all jacked up (just some of them).  I do like that I no longer have to fire up my computer every time I want to read for class and it's easier on the eyes to read on a Kindle than the computer, so I'm excited about using this for class readings.

Does anyone else have a Kindle and do you know what I'm talking about?  If so, have you figured out how to enlarge the PDF document in a way that is still easy to read/ maneuver?  Any feedback would be helpful... I was also wondering if anyone knows if there's a way to put documents in folders, for instance I'd like to have all of the readings for Fong's class in one folder instead of taking up a whole bunch of pages on my main reading/ book page.  It would also be helpful to be able to break that down into additional folders so I can put readings for week 1 in 1 folder, readings for week 2 in another folder, etc.  Does anyone know if this is possible?

I am thinking about getting the new touch screen Kindle.  Does anyone have experience with it?

Well, off to the next task for the day...lunch!    

Google Reader

Today I finally added everyone to my Google Reader...have to rename so I know who is how.  Are you following me Matt?

So many new technology tools...

At the conference I'm at, today I learned about some other new social media and technology tools that I am going to be checking out over the next week.

• Evernote and/or Onenote:  used to organize notes (which you can either scan in or take a picture of and import), pictures, files, voice notes, etc.  I guess you can share notes with others using this tool as well.  http://www.evernote.com/
• Zotero: a online bookmarking and research tool used to gather and organize resources and sources researched online.  http://www.zotero.org/
• RSS feeds which can "help save time reading websites: for more information on RSS go to http://www.commoncraft.com/video/rss

Also, last night I used Picnik for the first time to resize a picture to post in Moodle.  It took me a few tries to get it right (plus then the Internet went down and I wasn't able to actually post it last night), but I think I figured it out.  Thanks for the suggestion Helen! :)

Twitter

So this week I am at Fall Extension Program Conference (it's for all U of MN Extension Educators and is an annual conference) in Bloomington and they are really encouraging us to "Tweet".  I have had Twitter as an app for the last 5 months or so (since I've had my iPhone) but never followed anyone and never posted myself.  Tonight I made my very first "tweet" and although I ran into a few snags (trying to post a profile pic and getting signed in....all the user names I wanted to use were taken!), I did it and it was pretty painless.

Now, if I can only figure out how to let people post on my blog...hmmmmmmmmm

OK, so my last post via text didn't work...it may have been the smiley face I tried to add at the end of the post.  What I said was that the picture on the left hand side of my blog is a picture my oldest daughter took while we were in Florida this past January.  I was at a work conference and the rest of the family got to goof around and have fun...

I think I might be biased (because I'm her mother), but she seems to have quite an eye for seeing the beauty in ordinary things and capturing them on film.

And it worked!! Wow, sometimes I am in awe of how technology works; which I MUCH prefer to the times it makes me wanna rip my hair out!

OK, so this is my first attempt at posting on my blog via text message...let's see if it works!

Utilizing technology to capture life stories

On my drive home after our class on Sept. 11th I started feeling convicted that during our technology class, I hadn't really shared enough personal information about myself with my cohort because I had been too concerned with being short and concise so we didn't run over time.  I felt like I had cheated you all (my cohort) because you had all shared so much personal information about yourselves and your lives.  That lead me to thinking about the importance of telling our stories and how by sharing those, it helps others to come to understand and know us in ways they otherwise wouldn't.  I my typically a writer; I enjoy writing and have numerous journals (both electronic as well as paper & pen) written.  However, I started thinking how powerful actually hearing personal stories are and thought about using the voice memo function on my iPhone to record personal stories.  That got me thinking that it'd be cool to visit with my dad and my aunties and uncles and record their stories about growing up with my grandparents (who I never knew because they passed when I was a baby) using my iPhone.  It could be a way of getting to know the grandparents I never knew and capturing some of the knowledge and wisdom they had and passed on to their children.

Then I thought would also be cool to just get stories from my dad about his life; anything and everything he's willing to share.  That lead me to the idea that it would be good for me to get my story recorded for my girls so that they can learn about me and know me in new and important ways to better understand who I am and how I got to where I am today.  So, needless to say, I started recording my stories on the way home from class using my iPhone.  I have since made 2 recordings (the first was nearly an hour long, the second 20 minutes).  I will continue to record my stories and then find a way to download them into a file where I can put them together, do a bit of editing (if need be) and save copies for each of my girls.  I am looking for any suggestions for good/ free or inexpensive audio programs I could do this in.

I can't say that I'll post these stories on my blog because they are so personal, but I'd be happy to sit down with anyone in our cohort for the opportunity to continue to share our life stories.