Saucy Science Blog for Educators

This week I was looking at different search engines for kids to use. Since my school is a one to one campus, our kids always have access to the internet. Some of you may think that is a bad thing, but it's really about teaching them to be responsible on the internet. I looked at several kid-friendly search engines: Kidrex, Wonderopolous, Slime Kids, Kidtopia, and Infotopia. I noticed that many of these search engines don't give a video option like Google does. I tried to look for one more geared towards science but to no avail. It got me thinking about an activity we were doing in a fifth-grade class about force and motion and the scenario talked about a catapult. So, I thought how fun would it be to find a short video showing a pumpkin catapult contest! These search engines that I mentioned above brought up different science experiments and articles to read about catapults. However, I wanted them to see an image or a short video. I ended up really liking Kiddle, which is the k...

This week's digital image manipulation project was very interesting!  At first, I thought, oh I can easily photo-shop a picture, I mean I am a selfie taker after all!  Plus, I am an expert at Snapchat and all the snazzy filters! So, my first site to check out was adobe photoshop and it just honestly seemed like too many tools.  Then I ventured toward picmonkey and kept having internet issues, so I looked at pixia, coredraw, and paint tool.  They were fairly easy to navigate.  Then I read further down the list and saw GIFS!  I love gifs, and have used them on my iPhone, but was eager to try and create one.  I decided I would create a gif of the butterfly life cycle to show metamorphosis.  It was very easy to search and save the images.  I decided to use IMGflip.com and it was super easy!  I added the four images I wanted and called it Meta-cool-changes.  Science is fun and easy to engage learners. Using this GIF is a great way to ho...

Blog Radio...What? This week's assignment was very interesting and challenging at the same time!  I learned so much with Audacity, in fact, I learned that it was not my favorite.  However, I still was engaged enough to spend over an hour just learning to navigate the tools.  I even had a little fun recording my voice and playing it back.  I ended up making a digital storybook and that just blew my mind. I was able to make a quick All About Me book with pictures, add my own text and add my own voice to narrate. Talk about empowering the learner!  I can see students enjoying books that are created for them and also have some fun creating their own books.  You must check out story jumper.com. Here is the link to my All About Me Book: https://www.storyjumper.com/book/index/59426495