No Poster Printer? No Problem!

We've been preparing for our upcoming Technology Academy and have been looking for an economical way to print posters advertising our sessions. (Let me start by saying that we have a budget of $0.00 ... yes, seriously.)

I called a local printer who would be oh-so-happy to print the posters for a mere $115 each. One hundred fifteen dollars each! After I regained consciousness, I started looking around for other options! We can have them printed at a variety of office supply or photo stores, but those posters still range $15-25 each. Since we need 25 posters printed, this is quite a bit over our budget (of zero).

I was thrilled to read about Block Posters on Free Technology for Teachers this morning. This free, web-based tool allows you to upload a high quality image and then determine how large you want the final poster. It then "slices" your images into full-page size chunks and you can immediately download a PDF version of your poster. You can then print them out on a regular printer, trim edges, and tape them together to make a poster.

Remember the What About Me? infographic I created a few weeks ago? Here's how Block Posters has sliced it to print on individual pages:

Try it out ... see what you think!

Dollar Days at Scholastic Teacher Express!

It's that time of year again ... Dollar Days at Scholastic Teacher Express! Better hurry though, because the sale is only good through Wednesday, 3.28.12.

These downloadable "e-books" and "e-pages" are PDFs and can therefore be read on a computer or most mobile devices.

You will need a Paypal account to make your purchase, but as soon as you do, you will be redirected back to the Scholastic site to download your items (including the items you downloaded last year if you took advantage of their Dollar Days then!)

I just downloaded two books ... what about you?

Tech Tip Tuesday ... I LOVE PDF!

I Love PDF is a quick and easy way to merge multiple PDF documents into one or split an existing PDF into sections.

Merging PDFs
You can merge up to 10 PDF documents into one by clicking the Merge PDF link, selecting the documents (from your computer), and clicking the Merge PDF button. When it's finished, you can download the and rename the new document.

Splitting PDFs
Do you have one large PDF file that you'd like to split into smaller separate files? Just click the Split PDF link, select the original PDF, identify the page ranges for the new documents, then click the Split PDF button. When it's completed, you can download a zipped folder with all of the individual files.

Tech Tip Tuesday ... PDF to Word

PDF documents are fabulous - anyone with (free) Adobe Reader can view PDFs, whether they are on a Mac or a PC. PDFs are often smaller in size and better to upload to websites or send as email attachments. PDFs are typically not editable, which is often a good thing. From time to time though, we may find ourselves needing to edit a PDF. If you've ever been in this situation, you know that it's not the easiest thing in the world ... until now!

You can now easily convert a PDF document into a Word document in just a couple of simple steps.

Save the PDF document somewhere on your computer.

1. Go to BCL Converter
2. Browse to find your PDF document.
3. Click Upload and Convert Button.
4. When the conversion is complete, click the Right-Click Here link (just a regular click works fine!)
5. Click Open to view the Word document now, or Save to save the Word document to access later.
6. Edit away!

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Another great option is PDF to Word Converter. The only difference is that it emails the file to you. It took about 30 minutes for me to get the file, but if you're at a conference or away from your own computer and would prefer to get the documents later, give them a try!