ED632 Blogfolio

Connecting with 21st Century Students

2009-04-28T23:42:00.000-07:00

This year I have explored the use of a Wiki in the classroom with my sixth graders. Along the way we have also looked at other Web 2.0 tools, some with great success and others we decided just did not work for us.

Next year I will continue to build on what we have learned this year in using the Wiki in class. Each student will have their own page, possibly making it public so family can share the learning with us.

Please visit the Wiki at:
"A Classroom Wiki"

Goals, ISTE NETS*T:
1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity

a.	promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness.
c.	promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students' conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes.
d.	model collaborative knowledge construction by engaging in learning with students, colleagues, and others in face-to-face and virtual environments.

2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments

a.	design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity.
b.	develop technology-enriched learning environments that enable all students to pursue their individual curiosities and become active participants in setting their own educational goals, managing their own learning, and assessing their own progress.
c.	customize and personalize learning activities to address students' diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities using digital tools and resources.

Activities:

Maintain a class Wiki that students can use to collaborate and communicate about subjects they learn throughout the year.
Make discussions available for students to use to answer questions and engage in dialogue with their classmates and other members of the Wiki.
Create team pages for students to develop in Science and Social Studies.
Have time for students to learn the Wiki, how to use the Wiki, edit pages, upload pictures and files, wait their turn to edit.

Evaluation: (screen shots of rubrics)

Rubrics from Read•Write•Think: Wiki & group participation
Online self-assessment
Written self-assessments

Second Life

2009-03-24T22:12:00.000-07:00

I've been in SL for a few months and have done quite a bit of exploring, learning and meeting new people from all over the world. I've gone to lectures about Special Education, about science... I've seen concerts, learned about composers... I enjoy going to the museums, one of my favorites is the Abyss Museum of Ocean Science. I'll never dive to the bottom of the ocean but in SL I can walk around on the bottom, click on links to research and learn more information on the Web and I can come face-to-face with all kinds of creatures of the deep.

What I have found:
•Universities from around the world in SL
•Other countries represented in SL: Israel, France, Turkey...
•NASA, NOAA, ISTE, Discovery Education Network
•Science Friday from NPR
•People to practice languages with...
•Live music, theater, movies, dancing...

The possibilities of SL are endless and will only grow for me as a teacher. As a teacher of 11 & 12 year olds, I am unable to take my students into this world but as they get older they will get there. I am fascinated by the work of a colleague and his teen grid island 13-18 yrs old in which he teaches them computer science, robotic and applied technology. The things these students are creating are amazing!

If you are logged into SL you can use a Slurl to go to the Abyss Museum of Ocean Science.

An article I found in Transforming Education Through Technology had a good piece on Second Life, what it is and how it is important to education.

Gaming

2009-03-19T21:11:00.000-07:00

Gaming can and does have its place in the classroom if the game enforces a skill, provides a usable assessment, or encourages discussion about content according to T. Snyder. Moderation and vigilance should be used when using games to help alleviate the fear of inappropriate games. Educational games can help supplement the curriculum or be used to review skills. Teachers must teach students the games within the context of the curriculum.

•Girls game too and look for roles that are powerful and independent.
•Games can challenge us ethically by seeing behavior in a virtual space.
•Gaming is educational.
•Games can be used for teaching global issues.

As a teacher, I am always looking for ways to hook my students in the curriculum. Educational games that are available online in many forms are a way to achieve this. I also find that I like the games too and will take time to learn some of them to help my students become successful also. Games have always been a part of school and in this century they can be incorporated with technology. I think that there is an education that needs to take place besides just getting the students interested. The parents also must be included in the games and why they are important.

Social Media

2009-03-13T13:35:00.000-07:00

There are lots of rewards and risks involved with social media but 21st century skills need to be included in the curriculum and can be taught using social media. Whether children are taught blogging in school or taught how to navigate a social network they are going to be involved at some point. Educators should be incorporating these in their classes. Resources like the Guides to Social Networking: Rewards and Risks and other literature on the website for National Institute on Media and the Family, are good places to start a conversation with other teachers and with parents.

•Parents must be aware of what their kids are doing, online or offline.
•Students must be educated in Internet safety, by teachers and parents.
•Blogging is a form of communication along with texting...
•There is a lots of fear from change, especially with regards to the Internet.

As a teacher I need to also be aware of social media, even if I don't use it in my classroom. I need to be aware of the different sides to the issue and know what my students are talking about. Ideally I can use it to their advantage to help them learn and be excited about learning in a way that is engaging and even fun.

Wikis

2009-02-28T17:02:00.001-08:00

Anything I want to know about anything is on the Web in a wiki. I’ve found wikis on role playing, knitting, furniture, giraffes and of course education…

This collaborative, editable by anyone Web 2.0 software is a good way for teachers to engage students. Students can share their work with a real audience for a purpose beyond the classroom. Groups of students can take ownership of pages. They can work together beyond the classroom even if they can’t get together physically. Students and teachers can work together from all over the world. There are so many benefits to creating a wiki and being a part of one. All the tech standards can be taught through wikis, any subject in school can be a part of a wiki.

Wikis:
•editable
•collaborative
•easy to use
•fun
•creative
•free

As a teacher I can guide my students towards all kinds of Web 2.0 tools with wikis being one of them that we are currently using in class. The wiki lends itself very well to the classroom. I can have my students use it for all subjects we cover, it is a place where we put our class agenda, all the homework is listed. Students can learn how to do so many things through a wiki. The main thing for me as an educator is that it fits my teaching style, it fits the students learning styles and we have lots of fun learning what the wiki can do and what it can’t!

Podcasting

2009-02-26T23:54:00.000-08:00

Looking at podcasting has been a very interesting experience. I’ve had to wade through many different sites to find ones that I can use in class. I find that I get off track fairly regularly as I enjoy listening to many different podcasts and what they have to offer not only my class but for me personally.

We’ve used Audacity to create a short enhanced podcast and will be using GarageBand to create podcasts also. Both programs have been fairly easy for my students to use, though GarageBand is more fun!

Podcasts:
•are easy and fun to create.
•are found everywhere.
•are made by everyone, all ages.
•can be downloaded.
•can be listened to at anytime.

Like many tools on the Web, podcasts are abundant and available for me as an educator. They are easy to find but must be sifted through and listened to before using in the classroom. There is so much out there in the world of podcasting and I’ve only touched the surface. I look forward to the day when more of my students have MP3 players to be able to use this resource even more!

Podcasts for educators, schools and colleges:
The first site I looked at, besides some of the ones everyone else has mentioned, was a site from the UK. I used a podcast once in my class from England. The kids loved listening to someone else's English. This was a good find for me. This site has all kinds of podcasts from different schools in the UK, from elementary to college level. There are also links to resources and to how-tos on creating podcasts.

Smithsonian Global Sound Podcasts
One of my interests is exposing my students to music from around the world. The Smithsonian has a collection of podcasts or rather vodcasts as they include video and a short interview. I might use this as a start to our morning to get the kids focused and ready for the day as something different than the regular morning work.

The third place I went to was a site recommended last week on the NASA Website. My next science unit will be on astronomy so it was a good place for me to look for some new things to add to the curriculum. There are a variety of topics and I'd link it on our class Wiki for the students to use.

I think that podcasts have their place in a classroom just as textbooks and other resources! My goal would be to use more of them in my class and integrate them into what I do already.

Using Wordle for Fun!

2009-02-07T23:01:00.000-08:00

Here is my very short How-to Create a Wordle for a fun way to present a spelling list.

Wordle is a fun way to share a list of words with the world or just your class. It is an online tool that allows one to input words or text into a box and then click create and a Wordle, a picture using the words is created. Common words are taken out, this works in other languages too. I tried a Hebrew Wordle. The first time I used it in class, I created a spelling list for my students.

Wordle allows you options:
•Language: take out common words, use all caps or all lowercase
•Font: a huge variety of fonts
•Layout: vertical, horizontal or any which way for the text
•Color: choose from preset colors or create your own

*It is easy to use.
*Wordle is creative.
*It gives students a fun way to practice their spelling.

I took a paragraph and put that in, Wordle left out the more common English words leaving the main ideas basically. It is fast and fun to use. There are options on saving, do a screen shot and make a jpeg or save it to the gallery for the world to see. I would not use it to make a list of my student due to privacy issues.

Anyone can use it, and the gallery is open for all to peruse, be careful of the lists, some are not G-rated! I'm using it for a vocabulary review for a number of subjects.

I've found this quite valuable for our class and for me as it is so easy to use.

Below is the Wordle that came out when I pasted the paragraph above:

Reflecting on Web 2.0 tools...

2009-02-07T19:30:00.000-08:00

There are so many applications available out that I find I can spend hours digging through them and trying them out. But in the end only one or two become really useful. I will come back to them later, I have no doubt. This is what happened with Wikispaces. I learned about Wikis awhile ago and only the past few months have I got our class Wiki to a place that it is usable for the students and me.

I came upon one that I think might be good, Class Marker, an online quiz maker. It is free and fairly easy to use but I won't know how useful it is until I have students try it out. Back to setting up user names, passwords and getting them out to the students.

One of the tools I have been using more and more is, Google's Notebook. After I download the Firefox add-on, the Notebook shows up in the lower right corner of my screen, always accessible for me to take notes, add links, pictures, whatever I need. I can also share it with others so we can collaborate on projects.

This past week I've truly tried to find new tools to use but I find myself looking and trying them out and bookmarking them. Maybe a month or two down the road I'll come back to them like I did with the Wiki. There is so much to choose from that it can get to be too much, how to choose, what to choose...

Links in my Toolbox

2009-02-03T18:40:00.000-08:00

Collaboration/Sharing
http://delicious.com/mdoore
http://www.secondlife.com
http://voicethread.com

Communication
http://ed632blogfolio.blogspot.com/ My blog for EdTech 632
http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Mem/ My travel blog that I started when my son and I drove from OK to AK the summer of 2007.
http://akclassroom.wikispaces.com/
http://www.doppelme.com/ With DoppelMe you can create a cool graphical likeness of yourself, your friends, family or any group of people for use as an avatar in forums, instant messenger, blogs and almost anywhere else on the web.
http://www.edmodo.com Edmodo is a private microblogging platform that teachers and students can use to send notes, links, files, alerts, assignments, and events to each other.
http://clionet.ning.com/ This is a Ning that I belong to, it is a good example of how one can be set up.
http://www.skype.com
http://www.myplick.com/ Myplick is a free service that lets you share, embed and discover presentations and slide shows online.
http://www.voki.com/ Talking avatars!

Online activities for students
www.classtools.net Classtools.net provides free, customizable flash templates to embed into blogs, Wikis and Websites.

Posting, publishing
http://www.flickr.com/
iWeb

Production
Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
GarageBand
https://docs.google.com/
iMovie
http://www.jingproject.com/
http://www.mixbook.com/ Mixbook was started with the idea that friends should be able to create books together.
SingleFramer http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/28460 It allows you to capture individual frames from a DV camera or built in camera on computer, either manually or automatically (time-lapse).
http://skitch.com/ see it, say it, share it
http://www.teachertube.com
http://zamzar.com/ free online file conversion

Sources for finding Software
http://www.versiontracker.com

Storage
.mac account

Teacher Tools
http://classtools.net/main_area/template_loader.php?timer An interactive timer that you can set the time to and have music play while it counts down!

From other teachers:
www.sketchup.google.com need to download and install, can't with managed laptops
www.worldle.net
www.mrpicassohead.com
carrotrevolution.com/rotoball
redstudio.moma.org/interactives/remix
scratch.mit.edu

My toolbox, just for fun!

2009-02-01T17:05:00.000-08:00

Web 2.0

2009-01-22T20:48:00.000-08:00

The "world is at my fingertips" when I use the Internet. And Web 2.0 tools make the world be something I can create.

Web 2.0 is the ability to be "anywhere virtually" or "virtually anywhere." It is linking people. Web 2.0 makes us active participants in sharing, trading and collaborating online. Web 2.0 is a
collection of tools that allow all this to happen:

The Machine is Us

Flikr, Google Docs, Google Groups, YouTube, Blogger, Edmodo and many, many, many more! It is the ability to organize the data anyway I want to and share with others if I want to. Will Richardson says it is "connective writing–connective reading. It is not just a passive piece of paper that I read and file or throw away, it begs to be made my own in some way. Web 2.0 is rich and user friendly according to Wikipedia, another Web 2.0 tool.

Blog born every half a second.
100,000,000,000 times a day a Webpage is clicked.
Things are done in Real Time.
What we do should be available to others, with measure.
2,630 links to Web 2.0 tools on Go2Web2o

The video, "The Machine is Us" really brought home to me how flexible the Web can be for anyone. Text, pictures–anything that can be read, written, drawn, designed, created can be put on the web. This is what Web 2.0 is partly about for me.

One of the main components of Web 2.0 is the ability to collaborate with anyone, anywhere, anytime. For education this means we have to change, just as Will Richardson says. I am not going to require my students to only turn work in with paper and pencil but allow them to use any of the Web 2.0 tools that we might be currently using.

The one we are exploring right now is Edmodo–and it has a turn in assignment place as well as an online grading function. How this will all be used in education is constantly being rethought, but that is what Web 2.0 is all about.

A new semester, a new class...

2009-01-05T21:55:00.000-08:00

Second semester-third quarter! I teach sixth grade to a wonderful group of kids and I'm in my 10th year of teaching at the same school.

Along with teaching I am also continuing my own education and am heading into the next two classes for my Ed. Tech. degree, which if all goes as planned I'll have in a year and a half, give or take a few months...

I hope to learn even more about Web 2.0 tools and how to integrate them into the classroom environment. I want to explore all the tools out there but more importantly I want to learn how to evaluate what is really valuable for the classrom.

One of my best discoveries:
This fall I found a teacher in Scotland who uses Web 2.0 tools to connect students from around the world through voice. Each month we have a task to do with our students and then it gets posted on our wiki. Voices of the World has been lots of fun and there are other Alaskan classrooms involved too!