My new favorite thing

I seriously love Pinterest.

My biggest hobby is making things and I can't even list all the ideas I've gotten on Pinterest for things that I've made...not to mention the recipe ideas, outfit ideas, classroom ideas, or new blogs to read that I've found there.  I often make things to solve some problem I have and I find now that when I have some problem that needs fixing, I'll often remember something that I saw on Pinterest.

So on Friday during first period I remembered this pin, which led me to this blog post.  The idea is to turn an iPad into a document camera.  It is a stand that holds the iPad above a table and to use it all you need to do is connect the iPad to a projector and turn on the camera like you're going to take a picture.  Boom- instant document camera.

I've been teaching using my iPad and a projector and it's working out great, but this idea just took it to the next level of awesomeness.  My school has a lot of resources so I knew there had to be a way to make something like this happen.  So second period I asked a couple people for help who were SO nice to go out of their way to help me and they found me some supplies from the science department to create this masterpiece:

So it's fairly self explanatory but it's a stand from the science department with a ring clamp on it.

The original idea had a clamp holding a clipboard to use as a stand but my clipboard wasn't too sturdy. Also note the rubber band holding it all together, very high tech stuff.  But the reason for the rubber band is that the VGA cord that I use:

doesn't stay connected to the iPad very well.  Without the rubber band it falls out really easily if the iPad moves even the slightest bit.

You may also notice the high tech projector screen in the picture- it is large sheets of white paper taped together.  Now this all may not look very fancy, but it's how I roll.  If I want something, I figure out a way to make it happen.  I'm certainly not going to go out and buy a screen and I really don't even want to spend the $13 to get a sheet of showerboard to put up there.  The paper was free and perfectly accomplishes what I wanted.

Instead of complaining about what I do or do not have, I think that my time is better spent coming up with creative solutions.  The added bonus is that I end up crazy proud of the things I make, regardless of how silly they might look.  For the whole rest of the day Friday I was pretty excited to show off my creation to all of my classes.  They looked at me like I was crazy, but that's ok.  :)