The Digital Wave conference is tomorrow and it is one of my favorite days of the school year. I find it exhilarating to learn about new tool and ideas and to be around people who want to learn the same. This year I am presenting at two different sessions. The first one is called "Moodle on Fire" and it consists of a panel of teachers who have figured out how powerful Moodle and online learning can be in the classroom. Even though we may run our classes differently, we want to share our experiences with others so they would be afraid to stretch their teaching style and try a new tool like Moodle. My second presentation is called "Whoa! I didn't know Google could do that!" and I will be showing others some of the neat new things that you can do with Google. Including blogging and making money, advanced searches, creating and using forms, turning forms into graded quizzes. Even though the conference is tomorrow, I am sharing my presentation now so it will be re...

This blog post was written by Madison (Mady) MacPeek, a 9th grade Living Environment student at Lancaster High School, Lancaster NY.      The students and teacher in S11 have been getting very green lately. For the 2013 Erie County Department of Environment and Planning Earth Day Rain Barrel Painting Contest they have done just that. The Coca - Cola Bottling Company of Buffalo provided the blank barrels, but the students in Mrs. Balling's Biology class gave it personality. The rain barrel was first sanded and primed with Glidden Gripper. Rain Barrel primed with Glidden Gripper.      The design concept centered around the idea that water is necessary for all life on Earth, and the students painted the barrel during 5 minute class breaks between periods.  The design sketched out on the barrel The paints that we used. The parts of the design were color coded to match paint colors that we had available. ...

Since the day we moved in I have HATED this garage door. It just made our house look so boring. I have always wanted a garage door that has windows and all of the cute details that adds charm and curb appeal to a house. However those charming carriage garage doors cost some major money and replacing a garage door that works just to buy one that looks pretty seems like a pretty big waste to me. I read about painting fake windows on this blog and decided that I had to try it. After all, it's only paint.  http://foreverdecorating.blogspot.com/2011/04/carrige-house-look-garage-doors.html Before I read her post I had never noticed that garage door windows always look black. So they are really easy to fake. Her garage doors were already small rectangular panels which lead easily to small square "windows." My garage door is just 4 flat boards which meant a LOT of measuring but it gave me the flexibility to choose whatever design I wanted. Today was a beau...

We did this last year and my boys have been so excited to do it again. I bought some jelly beans and the boys and I planted them in our backyard on the day before Easter. On Easter morning after they found their Easter baskets (it took a really long time last year look at the frustration on that face)  do you see it?  The Easter bunny left footprints... We went outside and found that the jelly beans had grown into lollypops! The first place I saw the jelly beans idea was on this blog: http://cjaneblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/cutest-easter-tradition.html originally posted on ballingwithballing.blogspot.com