Daffodils in the Woods

Daffodils in the Woods
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel.

After what I hope is the last April shower, I looked up from my computer and noticed the sun shining, I grabbed my camera and dashed outside to practice using some of the new features.

Enhanced with Picnik, this shot of the daffodil bulbs that are blooming in the woods in our backyard was taken with the zoom feature of this Sony Cybershot DSC W100 camera.

Tomorrow, I'll be singing the May song in memory of my Dad.

'Tis springtime, 'tis springtime, Cold winter is past;
Warm breezes are blowing and May's here at last;
The birds are returning, Their songs fill the air;
And meadows are smiling with blossoms so fair.

Dewy Daffy

Dewy Daffy
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel.

I used the Macro feature to capture the dewy raindrops on one of the daffodils. The great thing about this feature is that it is a simple press of a button on the camera.

I brought this photo into Corel's Paint Shop Pro X and zoomed in, resizing it to show the full effects of the macro (at 8.1 Megapixels).

I then brought it into Picnik and applied the rounded edge border.

This is a great camera!

Cinco de Mayo

Many classroom teachers tell me that they celebrate the arrival of spring with a festival on the 5th of May. I have a very simple Web page with a few links to help them plan their curriculum activities and lessons.

MEXonline tells us that this traditional day of celebration in Mexico, "commemorates the victory of the Mexican militia over the French army at The Battle Of Puebla in 1862." To celebrate Jessica Shaw gives us a lesson plan designed for grades 3 and 4. Chocolate was highly prized in Mexican history and so that is how I am planning to participate in this historical celebration.

Happy Spring!

Picnik is an online photo editing tool for those who either do not have an application they can use to edit their photos or for those who wish to edit their photos using any computer that is online and access their Flickr or Picasa Web Album accounts. You might need Flash 9 installed to make it work properly.

Do we really need PhotoShop or other expensive software manipulation tools anymore? How many of us have struggled to learn these tools in workshops or graduate classes only to learn of their expense? As time is essential to educators, this tool is simple and quick to learn.

Some features are free and some are available now but will be part of the for-pay subscription service. But, the ones that are going to stay free are the ones that educators will need most. It is uncluttered and easy to figure out. It uses a tabbed interface. You can use Auto-Fix to improve your photos, rotate and/or flip photos, crop them to a particular size, eliminate red-eye and ajust the exposure (which is the brightness and contrast). You can save photos back to your own computer or to a Flickr or Picassa account. I have a Webcam and create a photo using that. Web cam photos are not the best but it is fun!

Here are the links I will be using at my session at Tappedin tonight. It will be easier for participants to look for them here than typing them in their browser.

1. Go to a review of Picnik at Extreme Tech
2. Go to Midge's photos at Flickr
3. Go to Picnik
   

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Hunting for Witches

The Towne Sisters
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel.

Today, I begin a look at some of my most memorable projects. Many of these became successful workshops that I led with groups of teachers. This one, enhanced by graduate work for my Master's is one of my favorites.

My husband and I enjoyed a mini-vacation to Salem in the Summer of 2001, where I did the basic research. We both learned a lot about the history of the area. As a young teen, I visited The House of the Seven Gables with my parents and my grandmother as I was reading it in my high school English class. That visit did much to improve my interest in reading Hawthorne.

Take a visit to my Web page, called Hunting for Witches. Let me know how I could improve this page and what ideas you have for using it in your classroom or graduate class.

Thanks to John Judge, a professor in Lesley's Online Master's in Technology program, this page took a great leap in improvement.

Photo [collection of the author]
The Towne Sisters at Salem's Wax Museum. These three woman, shackled together, were Rebecca Towne Nurse, Mary Town Esty and Sarah Towne Cloyse. They were upstanding women of the church and community and did nothing to deserve being accused of witchcraft.

Posted by: Midge Frazel, 23 April 2007

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April 17, 1907

One of my passions is genealogy and family history. Today is the 100th anniversary of the busiest day at Ellis Island.

On April 17, 1907, 11, 747 immigrants were processed in a single day. As immigration is now a hotly debated topic, educators have this opportunity to promote discussion and comparisons of immigration today with immigrations in the past.

Ancestry.com is providing free access to passenger lists for the period from April 12 to 30th. As this is school vacation, it might be a good time for educators to learn about this type of database and to plan to have students working with creating charts of their families. Where you are a blended family, a family with foster or adoptive situations or a single parent family, genealogy is still about family and all of us need to discuss what family means to us and how the definition of family has changed over the years.

To honor, my immigrant grandparents, I sent to the National Archives for my grandfather's naturalization papers. I didn't gain any new knowledge about them but these papers are often valuable glimpses into the past and promote the importance of keeping precious family artifacts.

Preserve History!

My Web pages about Ellis Island:
Looking for America

Ellis Island Resources

Blog Searches are Fun

I recently set my Bloglines account to search for my own name in other blogs not expecting to get any hits except from my own blog and maybe a few others but sometimes, I get a really nice surprise.

Last year, I wrote an article for LMC a publication for library-media specialists published by Linworth, called "Girls, Goals and Technology". My Bloglines search found me traveling toMrs. B's blog where there was a great discussion about my article.

It's nice to see that my article was read.

The Patriot's Day Tree Adventure

Tree on House
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel.

Today, we were barely awake when a tree from our side yard leapt onto our roof. It was so loud, I thought a plane crashed. Fortunately, the chimney was OK but it took a team of men quite some time to remove it. Now, of course, we must get the roof fixed.

Not the relaxing day I had planned. Of course, the digital camera was put into action and you can see the adventure of tree removal at my Flickr page.

Into life a bit of rain must fall. No one was hurt.