What is Storyline Online?

Greetings

Storyline online is a great web site that has Hollywood stars read to you. You will find the following stars reading to you: Betty White, James Earl James, Tia & Tamera Mowry, Amanda Bynes, Sean Astin, Al Gore, Esai Morales, Hector Elizondo, Lou Diamond Phillips, Elijah Wood, Jason Alexander, Haylie Duff, Amber Rose Tamblyn and Camryn Manheim. This web site keeps growing. As of today, they have 23 stories all read by the Hollywood stars above. Storyline online is funded through The Screen Actors Guild Foundation.

The books that are read by the stars have related activity questions, ideas and concepts to help your child learn even more. You can also download activities guide that have the story and ideas in a pdf format. They also have a newsletter you can subscribe to where you can get updated information on their web site. You can also purchase the book for a nominal fee. All stories read, last between 5 – 10 minutes. You and your child will enjoy this free web site to improve your child’s reading skills.

When you decide to let the video play, it will stream the video at speeds of 56K for dial up, small; 150K for broadband, medium; 300K broadband, large and 512K broadband, best quality. When the video plays, you can also choose the option to show the captions. The captions allow you to see the words and sentences being read to you. You can also pause it, rewind, fast forward it to your favorite part of the story.

You will also notice as the person reads it to you via video you will see pictures that zoom in and out from the book. This unique video concept will make it a memorable experience. Try it out today at http://www.storylineonline.net/ Hope you enjoy the site. I will see you next week about another exciting topic in technology.

30 in 48 Days!

Greetings,

Hopefully you are having a great Labor Day today. This week I will be sharing with you the exciting trainings I have been involved in over the summer. Yes, it is true that I had the opportunity to take over $11,000 of advanced technology training classes and received 25 software books with lessons, exercises and online files.

Our technology department was so kind and gracious to purchase Summer PassPort Passes from New Horizons Computer Learning Center for a few of our Computer Lab Teachers. New Horizons is a technology learning center where you can take classes for a nominal fee. I participated in almost 30 advance technology classes. Some of the classes included Adobe CS4 software like Photoshop (web and print), Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver and Acrobat. Other classes included, Web Design with XHTML, HTML, CSS and SharePoint Designer 2007.

I can not forget the MS Office 2007 classes I took, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher and Visual Basics Application (VBA) Programming. VBA is a class where you learn how to create macros or type code in MS Office programs. Out of all these classes I participated in, I had the chance to take Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced classes. Most of the classes were anywhere from 7 hours to 14 hour classes and daily classes would be from 8AM - 4PM, Mon. - Fri.

I knew a lot of the MS Office software programs, but this gave me a chance to brush up and review key concepts, tasks and ideas. I did not realize the value of these classes. If you were to take these classes on average it would cost you around $300 and if you were to take the Adobe classes it could run you nearly $700. What an investment! If I had to add the total instructional hours it would total over 200 hours!

I am sharing this information with you not to impress you, but to impress upon you to really achieve, and reach your goals and to continue to learn in whatever field you are in. I now have build up my technology library and created a reference library. These are invaluable resources and references that will assist me to create additional tasks and exercises for all my teachers and students.

I also met some great instructors and students at New Horizons. I hope to continue my education and attend New Horizons next year to take MS Office 2010 classes and Adobe CS5 classes. For additional resources for your training needs, please visit http://www.newhorizons.com/ or you can get a subscription for online learning video classes at www.atomiclearning.com Hope to see you next week. Have a great week!

Making Professional Movies with Digital Pictures/Videos for Free!

Today, I am going to share with you some valuable resources on how to make free movies or digital stories with your computer. There is a free software program the Microsoft has installed on all computers that have Windows and most people do not even know that this program is on their own computer. The name of this free program is called Windows Movie Maker (2).

So, what do you do with all those digital pictures and videos you have taken over the past holiday? You can turn them into a professional movie by using the program above. To find the program on your computers you click on Start -> Programs -> Accessories or you can find it in your Programs menu. Look for this picture to the left, when you are looking for it.
Now, I can go over the program and explain all the details of how to add pictures, add video, edit, clip, copy, cut, combine full-motion video, still images, narration, music, effects, titles, and transitions to create your own movies or you can learn it for free by viewing the following link through atomiclearning: http://www.atomiclearning.com/moviemaker2 When you click on the link you will watch professional videos on how to use the program step by step. You can watch from the comfort of your own home, then follow along step by step. Hope you enjoy the free tutorials (they are priceless). Here is another tutorial in which you can read step by step on how to use Windows Movie Maker (2): http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/default.mspx With this program you can also learn about Creating Digital Stories with Windows Movie Maker 2 Just click on the link above and it will take you to the University of Houston web site on Creating Digital Stories. Hope this helps and we will be sharing more and exciting and free info. in the future with you.