I’m always on the lookout for new ways to use digital photos. Recently I’ve been experimenting with making them into jigsaw puzzles. The results are many different puzzle making options, including templates in IntelliTools Classroom Suite and HyperStudio 5 formats, PDF Puzzle Patterns for off computer puzzles, and a links to pages where you can make online puzzles, all using your photos.

For beautiful nature photos, take a look at a website by John P. Sercel. John has set up an online gallery of images including mountains, water, wildlife, flowers, and more. And you can download them free! I’ve put a link to his page under the Free Stuff links you will find when you scroll down and look in the right-hand sidebar of this page.

I’ve found a web site that is a treasure trove of free online activities in areas across the entire curriculum. I was particularly excited about her mathematics activities. Besides math practice, she has pages that illustrate symmetry and various types of patterns. The link at the foot of this page leads to an index of Jo Edkins’ many separate educational pages.

Brianna is a bright young lady who daily faces great challenges, and does so with style! Now she has her own web site where you can watch her at work. She and her mother Dinell Stuckey hope that the videos on her site will be valuable to others who are helping kids like Brianna to develop study skills. I’ve put a link to her site at the foot of this page.

Intellitools Classroom Suite® is such a powerful application that you may wonder how you’ll ever learn all that it can do. The answer is, you can’t–but you really don’t need to learn everything to be a power user. One of the best ways to learn is to be a detective and dig into a finished activity that has a function you want to use to find out how it works. This workshop will equip you with the strategies you need to be an efficient detective. Bonus: A handout with 8 strategies!

This resource is a contribution from Karen Schweitzer, a freelance writer and copy editor who is the Business School Guide for About.com. 15 Slide Show Tools for Teachers is an article that links to a selection of useful (and free) sites that can be used to create, present, and publish slide shows. Bonus: Links to three more sites with free resources!

I’ve begun to create activities in HyperStudio 5® and find much to like about this new version of an old and beloved multimedia application. The biggest difference I saw right away is a modernized interface, making it much faster and easier to build activities. Bonus: Links to download players for both new and old version stacks!

Experimenting with what HyperStudio 5® can do is an integral part of using it. Saving often is the best plan, but when you’re having fun creating, you hate to break the flow of ideas. Roger Wagner gave me a quick tip on how to make a quick backup while you are working in HS5 on Mac. Bonus: A link to Roger’s Facebook page!

There is a wonderful timesaver hiding in the Edit menu of HyperStudio 5®. It’s the Group Card option under Ready Made Cards.
Image©2009 ABS Screen shot of HS5 Edit and Ready Made Cards menus showing Group Card option
Once you understand how Group Cards work and how to create them, you can make a stack much faster, come out with a much smaller file, have the layout on each card automatically match, and have a way to change settings in objects on all the cards in the stack at once. Bonus: PDF Quick Guide!

This Classroom Suite® activity has a new frame animation, a spinning boomerang, to use in creating IntelliMation® in your activities. It also explains how to save the boomerang button into your User Library so that you can grab the boomerang from the Picture Library whenever you need it.