Real Binders Drive Me CRAZY!

According to the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for Teachers, one of my goals as a teacher is to engage in professional growth and leadership.  As I follow all these RSS feeds about technology, I can't help but feel like I'm constantly engaging in professional growth.  When I see something that interests me, I click on it.  While at times this leads me to dead ends or useless information, I have been finding lots of great information and tools that I can use to help myself professionally.

My last post mentioned LiveBinders, a really useful tool for organizing information that teachers find for each area of their curriculum.  But another thing LiveBinders is great for is their public binders.  People have already created binders on a plethora of topics, and all I have to do is type in what I'm looking for and BAM!  Suddenly there's a binder (or several) waiting for me.  I typed in "Civil War" (which you might have noticed by now tends to be my topic of choice) and there were over 10 binders to look at, many of which had valuable and well-organized information that I could use when I teach that unit

Real binders drive me nuts.  I love technology.

Technologies I Cannot Live Without (So They Say--Whoever They Is...)

Today Google Reader showed me Edudemic's post, The 15 Education Technologies to Know About This Year.  Since it's now my job to keep in the know about these things, I decided to check it out.  There were some technologies that I'm currently aware of or using (Kidblog, StudyBlue, and Glogster) but there were also several other technologies that interested me.

Flashnotes

Flashnotes is a site that allows students to post the notes they take in class and get paid when other people use them!  How amazing is this??  I wish this had been around when I was a student, because I, quite frankly, was an amazing note taker.  Granted, this is not a useful program for my students in particular, but for students at the high school and college levels, this program could be really useful!

Another great technology is LiveBinders.  LiveBinders seems kind of like Diigo, but instead of simply tagging webpages, you can create entire binders dedicated to areas of your curriculum.  These binders can include webpages, videos, pdfs, and other technologies that you can then organize to your liking.  You can also share the binders, so it would be a great way to collaborate with other teachers in your building or district.  This program, like Flashnotes, does not seem like it will be used frequently in the elementary classroom, but if students are doing a large research project, it could come in handy. Click here to watch a video on the usefulness of LiveBinders.

I thought I'd share these technologies even though they might not be appropriate for your elementary classroom.  Despite that, they would be great as teacher tools, and if you visit the Edudemic website, you can see the other technologies that you cannot live without this year.

The Life of a Civil War Soldier

I finally finished my Animoto project.  The Civil War is a really big unit in our school, and we take it very seriously.  Our goal is to help students understand to the best of their ability what life was like as a Civil War solider.  It will be great to show them this video as a preview to all the information that they learn.

In the process of creating this video, I found a few sites with great pictures of the war and used Diigo to help me keep the sites organized.  It actually worked out really well!

Enjoy Life of a Civil War Soldier

Google Does EVERYTHING!

New to Google Drive?  Check out this blogger's Five Essential Google Drive Skills for Teachers.

Exciting Times in the Blogosphere!

Today I gave my kids a math test and a reading test.  They worked really hard during their reading tests, and I could tell they needed something to do that didn't require them to sit quietly.  I wanted to give them some literacy task that they could enjoy and that would allow them to talk and think creatively, so I decided to introduce their kidblogs to them.  They were beyond thrilled.  They had a million questions (one of which was, "Can we put in pictures?"  What is it with them and pictures??) but they were also asking questions about if they were allowed to blog at home.  I could tell they were excited, so I showed them how they were going to post and lay down some simple guidelines for their first time.  All they were going to do was post.  Their topic was "My Favorite Book".  

I thought that once I gave them an actual topic to write about, they would realize that I was actually asking them to work.  They didn't!  Even better, most of the responses they wrote (or are still drafting...they had to be perfect) are better than their in-class work.  And they ended up working collaboratively to improve each other's blogs, because they were so excited to read each other's work that they were giving constructive feedback.  They were editing and revising others' blogs (kindly).  According to the National Educational Technology Standards for students and the Common Core, working collaboratively using technology is very important, so today, while my kids were having fun, I was actually meeting several standards....just because I started using a blog in my classroom!

So Apparently Now I'm Blogging for Fun...About StudyBlue

After playing around with Google Reader, I started subscribing to a few RSS feeds that might be applicable to my field.  I started by typing in education and found a few interesting feeds, and then I moved to educational technology.  That's where I hit the jackpot.  Free Technology for Teachers is a frequently updated and highly useful site that shares technology that is great for classrooms of all types and levels.  It's where I discovered StudyBlue, a super handy site where you can make flash cards for FREE and use them on your phone or computer!

Screenshot of front of flashcard

One of the really cool aspects of StudyBlue is that often when you type in terms, other cards that have already been made are recommended to you, so you often don't even have to start from scratch.  The note cards can be accessed from phones or other computers, and the program can be accessed using a web browser, so it doesn't have to be downloaded (which is handy for elementary schools where you have to have administrative privileges to install anything on the computer).

Screenshot of back of flashcard

The notecards can also be printed as a review sheet and the program keeps track of which cards you get correct so you only end up practicing the ones you need to practice.  This program has the potential to make reviewing and practicing tons of fun, even in the elementary classroom!

I cannot tell a lie...I'm addicted to RSS feeds.  I could never figure out what they were before, but now that I know how they work, why wouldn't anyone use one?  There's just one small problem.  Because I subscribe to news that interests me, it ALL interests me.  When I scroll through the stories, I have to check them all out, and I frequently end up starring multiple stories to return to a later time.

I'm really going to have to come up with a great tagging and organizing system.

As Richardson suggested, I chose Google Reader as my "aggregator" (new exciting word that to me means place where my millions of news stories come to land).  After I mucked my way through setting up Reader and subscribing, I thought I'd search for a video that would have been useful before all my hard work.  Of course I found one (see below).  It puts Reader's use into simple terms.



I understand Richardson's explanation about how useful RSS feeds would be in a classroom, but I cannot yet figure out how to use them effectively in the elementary classroom.  All the articles I found (Using RSS feeds in the Classroom, RSS Feeds and Using them in the Classroom) and the book mention having students use specific feeds for their research papers or using RSS feeds to keep track of my students' blogs.  At the elementary level, these applications don't seem practical.

The one thing that did seem like a good idea was using TeacherVision.com's RSS Feeds to bring fresh daily content to my classroom.  My students are benefiting from the RSS feeds, but they are still not using them actively.  I think that they'll do okay waiting to use feeds until they're a little older.

Helping Students Express Themselves Through Technology

Sometimes students need a little work with words.  Many times older students are so used to speaking without filtering their thoughts, and they simply say whatever comes into their minds.  I have several students this year who often speak without thinking.  Not only does that provide for some interesting blunders, but it's beginning to happen so frequently that other students come to expect the often irrelevant words coming out of these students' mouths.

In the past, in order to get my students to think before they speak and to say only what is important, I have given them the "10 words or less" task.  Sometimes I do this as review for tests and sometimes I do it just to check if they have an understanding of a particular concept.  The goal is for the student to create a sentence in just 10 (sometimes less) words that really showcases his/her understanding.


In the past, I have not done this with technology, but with my new-found learning of all the different ways teachers use video, picture, and blogging programs, I am quickly figuring out how to have my students practice thinking about the words they use while creating original works to express themselves.  Haiku Deck is an app for the ipad that allows students to create "souped up" PowerPoint slideshows.  They are more visually stimulating and require students to thoughtfully choose the words and picture for each slide.



Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

Haiku Deck, along with Animoto (and other as-of-yet-undiscovered-by-me tools) could be adapted in ways that allow students to create review sessions for difficult topics. Students could also work collaboratively to create presentations that were thought-provoking and visually stimulating by incorporating music, pictures, and text of their choice.  The possibilities are endless!

E-Reader Technology in the Classroom

Reading books is slowly becoming a thing of the past.  As a book lover, this saddens me, but you can't stop technology, so even as much as I love the feel (and smell) of books, I too own an e-reader (two, even).  We need kids to read.  We need them to be successful at taking tests.  We need kids to read and test successfully on the computer.  To me, this translates into needing kids to do significant amounts of reading on devices.

Empowering Students With Digital Reading explores the topic of students reading via technology.  The article discusses a district library where digital books were made available to students and were used a significant number of times.  I can understand that; convenience is key these days, and books that are available electronically are often also available instantaneously.  No wait time!  The article delves into a few different e-reading programs that can be used in the classroom and discusses them as options to be used with students.  While I agree that using this technology is important, the article also discusses each program's "assessment tools".  Quite frankly, I think this is less important for students who simply need to read; if we require students who are reading digitally to complete assessments, we are going to take the fun out of reading and defeated the purpose of digitally available texts.

Scholastic's Digital Reading Program

There are great reading apps for the ipad, and the Nook and Kindle are also very kid-friendly.  Even Scholastic has come out with an e-reader app that can be used on tablets (not the Nook or Kindle).  These are great ways to allow kids access to digital texts, but not in the way that I would like.  I would like to begin using e-readers in the classroom.  My teaching partners and I even began looking into the likelihood of being able to fund e-readers in our classrooms; unfortunately, the start-up cost is huge and purchasing digital books does not prove to be more cost effective in the classroom.  In fact, one would think that companies would have deals where a teacher could purchase one license for a book and use it on many devices, but when you use devices for education, each device is supposed to have its own copy of the book.  That's crazy when you consider that an individual can register up to six devices to one account!

Nook in Education

We need to get our kids reading digitally.  That's where they're doing the majority of their reading anyway, and reading on a screen seems to hold their attention better than paper books.  In terms of the classroom, paper books take up inordinate amounts of space and only last so long with little hands tearing at them.  Digital books make sense.  Companies need to make them more reasonably priced for educators.  They need to make them more convenient for educators.

Animoto Makes it Interesting

Since I received my SMART Board last year, I've been trying to use it in an increasing variety of ways to engage my students.  I've scanned in picture books, created a few simple games, and streamed some videos to enhance their learning.  Most of the things I've done with my board, however, have not been created by me, but Animoto seems like a great solution.

I've always watched other people's videos and wondered how they created them.  Short of using a video camera or PowerPoint, how have they made their videos so interesting?  Animoto is a simple, user-friendly way to create videos for home or school, and I've learned that through watching others' videos, and easily creating my own.

Even the first educational Animoto video blew me away. It was a video about the Solar System created by a teacher who wanted to help her students review.  At the same time though, it inspired me.  It made me stop and think about my curriculum and how I could use it to help my students review info they'd already learned, or preview information they were going to learn.  I've already decided to use Animoto to create videos about Westward Expansion and the Civil War for my students.  The hardest part will be deciding what pictures to use, because it's really that easy to do.  In fact, I've already experimented with Animoto by creating a video of a Halloween party I attended.  Enjoy.

Wiki Wiki (Which Apparently Means "Quick") Who Knew?

I read the chapter on Wikis and had to check them out.  Of course I've looked at Wikipedia before but I've never actually tried to edit anything and I've always convinced my students that Wikipedia is the worst place ever to find information.  Now I'm not so sure.  I started out by checking out one of the links that I found in Will Richardson's book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, Wikijunior.  I really like the idea of having a set of "books" that are published for younger children, sometimes published by children.  In fact, I found a topic that my students

have just completed some work on and found that they had information that could be added to the wiki.  If I knew how.  Wikijunior's editing does not seem as user-friendly as I thought it would be.

Because I'm a newbie at wikis, I went off to search for an alternative to Wikipedia and its friend (Wikijunior).  Wikispaces was another place that Richardson had mentioned, so I headed there in an effort to find something user-friendly and classroom-friendly.  Wikispaces seems like place.  It seems like the perfect place to allow my students to become published authors in an more academic format than using a blog.  I'm seriously considering the use of wikispaces to produce a class page of information regarding Westward Expansion and the Civil War (two of our biggest units in Social Studies).  I can already imagine how excited my students will be when they can view their work online and show it off to others.

This video (and the others included on the wikispaces site) is going to be really useful when it comes time to make a wiki:

Could I Be Anymore Ridiculous?

Why am I obsessed with winter weather?  Quite frankly, I am worse than a little kid when it comes to snow. When I suspect snow might start falling overnight, I am literally awake every hour on the hour looking out the window to see if flakes are falling.  Right now, I'm obsessively checking the Weather Channel website  to check if the forecast has changed.  And it has.  Many times, actually.  So many times that I'm actually worried about not having a delay tomorrow when this afternoon, I was positive that there would be.  I hope it snows.

Drum roll please....a short video of me turning around wearing giant, old-school snowshoes.  Fun!

Blogging in the Classroom

Reading about blogging was a little overwhelming.  It was certainly a lot to think about, especially after thinking about blogs I've created in the past.  Thinking about my blogs of the past, I thought at first that they had nothing to do with reflection or conversation.  I didn't consider organization, although I did consider my audience (I assumed it would be friends).  As I considered the blogs and compared them Richardson's definitions of blogs, I realized I wasn't really blogging at all; I was really keeping a journal in a very public way.  Blogs used in this fashion seemed to me to have no real use in the classroom.

So why then should I use blogs in my classroom?  To begin with, when students know they have an audience, their writing improves almost immediately.  I see that in my classroom as I watch some of my students who have chosen to write a classroom newspaper.  When I distributed the first edition, some of my more reluctant writers wanted to then publish their own newsletter.  Why?  Because they could work on the computer to publish it! Why else?  Because then other people would see all this hard work they put into something that interested them.  So blogging gives students the audience that many of them need as motivation.

Blogging is also an interesting way to have a "conversation".  Kids these days are more familiar with conversing through media, whether it be through some type of messaging, texting, or video chatting.  Having students comment on one another's blogs would be closer to the types of conversations they're actually having.

Finally, I should seriously consider using blogs in my classroom because both the Common Core State Standards and the National Council of Teachers of English support using technology for writing.  NCTE's 21st Century Literacies demand that students are proficient in use of technology, and both NCTE and CCSS discuss the use of technology to interact and collaborate with others. To see other reasons NCTE and CCSS support the use of blogs and other technology-related resources in the classroom, check out the links below.

NCTE 21st Century Literacies

http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/W/5/6

Technology Educational Standards

The International Society for Technology in Education has come up with a set of of National Educational Technology Standards for both students and teachers.  The technology standards for students (NETS•S) evaluate what students need to know to live and in a world that is becoming increasingly more global and digital.  These standards stress the importance of students communicating and collaborating by using technology.  The standards also mention that now more than ever students need to be able to think critically, research, analyze, and synthesize information, and use creativity to continue to get ahead in society.  

The National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS•T) ask teachers to be among other leaders of the digital age to help students accomplish the aforementioned student standards. While many of our students may be more comfortable than us at experimenting with technology, as teachers, we are the ones who need to model how to effectively use technology in a global society.  To do this, we must utilize tools like blogs, classroom webpages, and other resources to engage students and facilitate collaboration not only between peers but also between our students and others  in the virtual world.  We should be using digital resources to not only inspire student learning but also to develop new learning experiences and assessments.  Based on what I now know about blogging, a classroom blog could accomplish many of our NETS goals.  A classroom blog could easily be used as a portal to communication with others outside of the classroom.  It could also be used as an assessment tool for reading, writing, or any other curriculum based topic.  I could also easily transform my classroom's current classroom newspaper into a digital newspaper using a blog.  The newspaper topics would require students to complete research, analyze, and synthesize information regarding current events outside of the classroom.  The newspaper would also require collaboration between peers as students planned which articles they would write.  Once the newspaper was written and published, students could invite other classrooms to view and comment on the paper to facilitate communication between those in the virtual world.  

There are many different ways that we as teachers can help our students become better digital learners.  We need to embrace technology and become digital learners ourselves to help inspire our students to do the same.