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“Enchanted Music” from the Real World Guest post from J.L. Bryan Music has always held tremendous power over human beings, offering solace, inspiration, and a little something to help you fall in love.  Music is both an escape from life and an enrichment of our lives.  We can hardly have a holiday, festival, or even a war without music to accompany it and bring everyone to a shared emotional tone. With the powerful effect music can have on us, it’s no surprise that stories of magical music have been with us for thousands of years.  Amanda’s new Watersong  series draws on myths of sirens, beautiful women whose fatally attractive songs endangered ancient Greek heroes like Jason (of Argonauts fame) and Odysseus.  My Songs of Magic  series was inspired by a tradition of fae folklore that describes people being enchanted by irresistible fairy music, sometimes wandering off with the fairies forever. Instead of looking at mythology, though, I thought it might be fun to look at

Finally... a week where I'm not battling the clock in an attempt to post the Technology Tuesday tutorial before midnight! I really didn't have much of a choice, though, since today is my wedding anniversary (one year married, nine years together!) and I don't think my husband would have appreciated me rushing out of our dinner reservations to come home and write up this post!  I do love my blog, but I love my hubby more! :) This week, the bloggers united to vote for how to add a pin it button to your blog! I initially found this tutorial at Mayura4Ever , which has some amazing tutorials for bloggers.  I kept the same steps, I just added pictures to make it nice and easy to follow! I'm going to start uploading the tutorials to TPT since a lot of people have asked how they could download them.  Click the link below to download this tutorial as a PDF!   I have to say, I was really surprised by this one coming up first in the poll... I have been so hesitant about putting

The first week of Under the Seapalooza has gone by, and there's been a lot going on. There are too many giveaways to list in one post, so check it out the Under the Seapalooza tab.  Also, it's only ONE week until Wake comes out! It's crazy how fast/slow time is going by. I cannot wait for it to hit shelves, though! The book trailer for Wake is set to premiere on August 1st. Until then, stills are being revealed over at my Facebook. There's been six so far, and in case you missed them, I've posted the first three: here , and now I'm posting the next three. Still #4 Still #5 Still #6  Also, just for fun, I'm posting a picture of the newest, most adorable member of my family. Meet Sophie!  Sophie is a birthday present from my mom, because I was talking about getting another cat. She's a rescue from the Mower County Humane Society , where they have many other adorable cats and kittens who need homes. Sopie's been with us for two days, but she's adj

I've been meaning to blog about classroom management for a while, but I just haven't gotten around to it!  This week I am determined to knock off a few ideas from my To Do list and post some fun items! Like many other teachers, I use a clip chart in my class.  I updated my clip chart and uploaded it to TPT for only $2.  And... it includes a parent letter to explain the chart to parents.  Check it out by clicking the picture below. I won't go into too many details on the chart above, but I do want to take some time to talk about one of my FAVORITE classroom routines... the most points! This is one of my favorite routines because it’s really fast, and really easy! We all know how much kids love positive reinforcement and praise… it’s so easy to say “I love how so-and-so is sitting” And they just love getting little tangible items, like pencils and stickers. Now, what if we combine these two ideas, and each time you praised them get got something that was tangible? It

When Amanda asked me if I'd like to write a guest post for Under-the-Sea-palooza, I thought it was serendipity, as I'd just returned from my annual family vacation on the Oregon coast. Normally, I wouldn't think about posting my vacation pictures on someone else's blog, but this year at the beach was particularly interesting. The Oregon coast is, tsunami-wise, lined up with the north-east coast of Japan. When the devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami occurred in northern Japan in March 2011, people all along the west coast of the U.S. were evacuated. Fortunately, we never saw more than slightly higher waves. Until now. Several months ahead of when scientists predicted, debris from Japan is washing up on our beaches. The largest of which is a dock . Agate beach saw 10,000 more visitors than normal the first weekend after the dock appeared The dock was able to float across the Pacific Ocean The dock was able to float across the Pacific Ocean due to its Styrofoam

I've been working with WebSphere Portal for many years and I always wondered about the format of the URL, but never took the time to track it down. Last week I stumbled on this interesting document that laid it all out. The short if it is that the typical URL http://localhost:10039/wps/portal/!ut/p/b0/04_Sj9CPykssy0xPLMnMz0vMAfGjzOKd3R09TMx9DAwsTC0MDTwdPULNzYJdjAxczfXD9aPwKnE0hiowwAEcDfT9fPLT01NT_EtL9Auys9McHRUVAdjo3OY! is an XML representation of the portal page compressed and encoded with a proprietary algorithm. It turns out there are several alternate URL schemes for WPS, but this one is the most common variation that everyone is familiar with. No need for me to go into details - the document explains it quite well.

I'm going to do a "meet a character from Watersong " post. It's just a quick questionnaire that introduces the characters, as well as a pictures of actors that resemble how I imagined them. This week, it's Gemma Fisher, one of the leads in Watersong. Alexis Dzeina would play "Gemma" in my dream cast Gemma is also on the cover of Wake Real name : Gemma Anne Fisher Birthday : April 11th Age : 16 Zodiac : Aries Boy or Girl: Girl High School : I'm going to be a Junior at Capri High School College : None yet Job : None Hair Color : Brown with golden highlights Eye Color : Light brown Height :5'3" Piercing/Tattoos : Just my ears are pierced. I had my cartilage pierced when I was 14, but it got infected. No tattoos yet ;) Boyfriend/Girlfriend : None right now, but I do have a crush on someone... Best friend : Either Madison from the swim team, or my sister Harper Last person you talked to : Coach Levi Last person you texted : Harper Last person yo

While planning for Under the Seapalooza, I was trying to come up with some fun ideas for things to and asked for input. Nikki Jefford (author of Entangled and the awesome guest post & giveaway, which you should check out: here ) came up with the idea for weekly "Show & Tell" memes. Here's how it works: Unlike ongoing meme’s, this one is temporary - every Thursday throughout the month of Under the Seapalooza. Each week, I'll show off my favorite something (this week it's bookmarks), then you show off your favorite thing and enter to win a prize. This is the schedule for Show & Tell Thursdays: July 25th - Bookmarks August 2nd - eReader Skins August 9th - Journals August 16th - Book Trailers While I do read a lot on eReaders now, I also enjoy reading the old fashioned paperbacks, too. Lots of times I end up using Post-It notes as bookmarks because that's what I have handy. I do love Post-It notes. I don't actually know why this Post-It is in the

Thanks to everyone who entered my 500 follower giveaway!   The winner for part one was Mrs. Diane.  Diane, I need your email address so I can send you the gift card for the items!  Please leave a comment on this post with your email so I can send you your prizes!  Diane, send me your email so I can send you your goodies! The winner for part two was Katie, who wanted to learn about how to "use technology effectively to manage grades, anecdotal notes, assessments, etc."  Katie, that's a very interesting topic and I'm excited to blog about it.  You can all expect a post next week (most likely on Wednesday) about this topic! As for all of the other requests for a technology Tuesday post, I'll put them on my list and add them to the poll eventually!  Thank you so much for your input!

It's only the third day in Under the Seapalooza , and there are already a number of giveaways going on. Make sure you check them out: here . The book trailer for Wake is set to premiere on August 1st. Until then, stills are being revealed over at my Facebook. There's been three so far, and in case you missed them, I've posted them here. Still #1 Still #2 Still #3

You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you that at 2:00 this afternoon, this post was almost completely written!  Then... I got sidetracked for eight hours (doing something fun and exciting for a friend... a surprise)!  Now, here we are again, posting the Technology Tuesday post so close to the stroke of midnight that it's almost a Technology Wednesday post! Regardless, I am SO excited by being able to blog about How to Make a Collage of Words in Any Shape!  So many people know about Wordle which lets you make awesome "word clouds," but today we're going to play around with a fun website called Tagxedo , which in my opinion, is like Wordle on steroids!   This option swept the technology poll, leaving us with yet another landslide! Now, onto the tutorial!  Head over to Tagxedo to play along!      You can download this tutorial as a PDF by clicking this picture! Note: This tutorial is hosted on Google Docs.  To save it from there, just open the file and click