Group items tagged

Make a plaid background!

Stripe generator - great tool for creating backgrounds for presentations!

Has anyone ever used something like this in his classroom?  I have students that greatly enjoy having some music playing in the background (I limit it to classical piano, mostly).  Anyone know of a study that demonstrates if this helps students learn?

I've used Simply Noise in my classroom of 5th graders and I have had mixed results. Some kids really like it and some hate it. I tend to prefer the brown noise as opposed to white or pink noise. I think I might make less of a deal of it with my next class next year and just use it for a little longer period of time to get a better read on its effectiveness. I took my students to on a field trip to Environmental Systems Inc in Brookfield, WI and they use brown noise generators throughout their office/cubicle area to mask ambient noise. I found it very soothing. They used to have it timed to go off at 4pm and they found that their employees subconsciously sensed it was time to leave for the day. Not wanting to encourage them to leave early, they decided to gradually bring the volume of the noise down over the course of 30 minutes and that took care of their issue. Not necessarily applicable to what you were asking about, but kind of interesting.

For my Android device friends - Sounds pretty cool! From a Netted e-mail: Everything.me is a new launcher that can change which apps appear on your phone based on your current needs. The kicker? You don't even have to install the apps; you can use them right from the cloud.   So let's say you love the new Vampire Weekend album. Plug it into the search bar and Everything.me will pull up SoundCloud so you can listen, MetroLyrics so you can sing along, and Ticketmaster so you can see them live - regardless of whether or not you've installed those apps.   And Everything.me tailors each app to your search result. Each app opens to the relevant Vampire Weekend page. Heck, even the background will be Vampire Weekend. Your phone effectively reinvents itself based on what you're doing right now.

A good, and brief, background things to consider with your tech team being prepared for handling the tech at worship services.

Great music available for free under the Creative Commons license. Good for video productions, etc. There are all different genres available for whatever mood you wish to strike. Many classic pieces that would be suitable as a background pre-service or pre-function filler. Curated by WFMU radio station.

If you have a projector, set a background of a famous printer for the children to see.