Free Web Based Software

Office Suites:  I am familiar with Google Docs so I decided to review ThinkFree. 

ThinkFree is a nice free online word processor that works as a place to store your documents online so you can view them from another computer or email them from your phone as attachments.  Creating and editing documents in ThinkFree can be done, as in Google Docs and Word, but some of the tools seem slow at times.  It does give a large amount of space to store documents and works well to combine with documents saved in Word.  I personal don’t use my phone for this kind of application so I am content using Google Docs when I need to confer with my daughter in Chicago or my fellow colleagues at school.

Image Editing:  FotoFlexer is top shelf to me.  I have not done much photo editing besides at Snapfish, Walgreens, Meijer and Costco websites. 

When I saw what FotoFlexer could do, I was quite impressed.  FotoFlexer makes it fun to do photo editing almost in a kid friendly way.  The site costs nothing to use and you do not even have to sign up for an account which is very different.  I enjoy the site because it would be easy for my students or grandchildren to load up their images and apply dozens of effects, crop, resize, mirror, flip, rotate, etc. then save as a jpg file back the computer.  It even has an easy to find UNDO button so you can practice trial and error on their images till you get them exactly right. I need to spend more time on this site with my summer photos!

My Screencast is finally accomplished!

With some help from a few great friends I have successfully created a screencast that I will use with my students in the fall.  I will also use it as part of my Final Synthesis Project.  It's not perfect but I can perfect it when I switch it over to Quick Time Pro which we will be using for the same purpose in the fall.  I will use this screencast as a kick off to the assignment called:  Fast Food? Fat Food?  Before having the student read the directions to the assignment I will have them watch the screencast and then practice the activity it leads them in.  Then they will be prepared to complete the assignment using the website demonstrated in the screencast.

My New Teacher Website

My goal is for my students and their parents to use this website to access the weekly agenda and assignments for the three classes I teach. I could see students using this when they know they are going to be absent for an appointment, vacation or if they are home sick. Parents can access the website anytime to see what their child is doing each day for the week or to see if their child really does have homework afterall.

The two clubs that I sponsor could also access this website so students could look for scheduled meetings and any other information I would like to pass along.

You can check my website out at:   https://sites.google.com/a/jpsonline.org/mrs-mervenne/