Go Go Gadget Glogster!

Glogster.  It meets the needs of many of the needs of NETS•S.  It's fun, it allows students to organize a variety of medias and information in a way that is creative and interesting.  It's complex enough to allow for differentiation in the way it is used, and it would allow students who have worked collaboratively to collect information to present the information in a way that showcases their hard work.  

A Glogster (Glog???) Showing the Educational Uses of Glogster!

Check out the glog on Beth's blog about "stormy weather"!

I have experimented with Glogster twice.  I haven't found it incredibly user-friendly, but I'm still working on it.  Maybe I'm doing something wrong.  Either way, it can never hurt to watch a video that shows users the different features of Glogster, so be sure to check out the video below.  

You Need It? They've Got It!

Ah...a webpage that has it all...especially The 22 Digital Skills Every 21st Century Teacher MUST HAVE!  The National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) 
require teachers to "update" their teaching.  If we don't, we won't be any help in getting our students to meet the Common Core State Standards.

So the webpage I found lists the 22 Digital Skills Every 21st Century Teacher MUST HAVE! (click here if you somehow missed the first link...possibly you were worried about the mass amounts of snow on the way...)  And then it not only lists the skills we should have but also the tools we should use to practice those skills!  Possibly many of the tools are tools you might already be using!

Here are the skills in the nutshell (there's 22, so it's pretty big nutshell)...
Teachers should be able to:
1.  Create and edit audio
2.  Use social bookmarking to share resources with and between learners
3.  Use blogs and wikis to create online platforms for students
4.  Use digital images in the classroom
5.  Use video content to engage students
6.  Use infographics to visually stimulate students
7.  Use social networking sites to connect with colleagues and grow professionally
8.  Create and deliver asynchronous (what??) presentations and training sessions
9.  Compile a digital e-portfolio for their own development
10.  Be able to detect plagiarized works in students' assignments
11.  Create screen capture videos and tutorials
12.  Use and provide students with task management tools to organize their work and plan their learning
13.  Use polling software to create a real-time survey in class
14.  Understand issues related to copyright and fair use of online materials
15.  Use digital assessment tools to create quizzes
16.  Use digital tools for time management purposes
17.  Use note taking tools to share interesting content with your students
18.  Annotate web pages and highlight parts of text to share with your class
19.  Use online sticky notes to capture interesting ideas
20.  Use file sharing tools to share docs and files with students online
21.  Create engaging mind maps
22.  Leverage the power of digital storytelling in your classroom

The good news is that if you have no idea what one these really important skills that you MUST HAVE is, you can click on the link (here it is again!) and scroll to find a tool that will help you explore that particular skill.

Happy hunting!

Shenanigans on iPads!

Tonight I was checking out another interesting link that I thought might introduce me to some new amazing technology that I cannot live without.  I'm learning a lot in my technology course right now, and I guess I figure that if I can learn even more through my RSS feed, I would be able to really find tools that I LOVE.  

This link was to a page for The Top 10 Articles for Last Month off the Educational Technology and Mobile Learning page, and I've found some really useful tools and sites there in the past.  Much to my disappointment, however, many of the pages or tools that were listed in the top 10 were for iPads!  This keeps happening to me again and again, and quite frankly, it's giving me a complex.

I don't have an iPad; they're crazy expensive!  My district doesn't plan on giving me an iPad (elementary classrooms won't benefit from them--their words, not mine).  I want more tools that don't need an iPad!  (And more tools that are web-based since I don't have "administrator privileges" to install tools on my computer.)

Are you with me??

Kid-Safe Searching

I don't know about you, but I'm always on the lookout for a search engine that will provide ONLY safe search results for my students.  I cannot stand over the shoulders of 23 kids to confirm that what they are looking at is appropriate, and I'm always concerned about exposing them to things they do not need to be exposed to.  I was therefore thrilled when one of Diigo's Daily Updates brought me a page called "Five Safe Search Engines for Kids".  I decided to check out these search engines to see how kid-friendly they were. 

The first search engine listed was Ask Kids.  I've used this engine before, and I have to say that out of the five, to me, this seems like the best choice.  Ask Kids has a kid-friendly appearance and draws the majority of its results from websites specifically for kids.  The only problem I've found with this is that when students are researching certain topics, if there are not enough kid-friendly websites with information on the topic, then there are few results.  Overall though, I found this search engine to be the most kid-friendly and the safest.

Searchy Pants, Mymunka, Kidzsearch, and KidRex are other search engines that are supposed to be specifically for kids.   They all appear to be powered by Google, though, and when students type in the topic they are looking for, many advertisements are in the results.  When I typed in the word "salmon", those four search engines brought back recipes, the names of school districts, and other unimportant, unrelated information about salmon (the fish).  Ask Kids did not bring back any of these search items.

This is not to say that Ask Kids is the only search engine that is worthwhile.  The other search engines are most likely very safe for kids. And they are also probably very helpful when looking for a lot of information about a particular topic.  But if you are looking for a good search engine for younger kids who have trouble assessing the validity of resources, Ask Kids would be a good choice.

Check out some other search engines for kids so you can decide which you like best!

We Rock at Animotos!

The Manchester Cohort of Educ 584 rocks at making Animotos!  I've been super impressed with the Animotos we've been making so I decided to make a page that linked to everyone's!

Jess's Severe Weather Animoto

Lea's Phases of the Moon Animoto

Lea's Wampanoag Animoto (made by her class!)

Kelly's Three Dimensional Shapes Animoto

Stephanie's Social Skills Animoto

Stephanie's Nonfiction Text Features Animoto

Beth's Homonym's Animoto

Karen's Circle Time Rules Animoto

Ann's Character Traits Animoto

Gail's What Is a Good Human Animoto

Elena's Civil War Animoto

Mckenzie's Steps to Making an English Muffin Pizza Animoto

Lesley's Math in 2nd Grade is Fun! Animoto

Lori's Idioms Animoto

If I missed your Animoto (or you made another one and are currently hiding it...I swear I saw other ones that I'm not seeing today), let me know!

Doing the Diigo

I've found Diigo to be a very useful tool for keeping my information straight for class.  I found it very easy to use when I was compiling images for my Animoto, and I've also found myself using it to tag sites for later perusal.  With Diigo, I don't have to worry about being able to find a site again later among my millions of bookmarks; instead I can tag it so that its topic shows.  When I set out to look for that great site on Wikipedia, I can just check my Diigo tags to find the one I was looking for.

My classmate (and awesome sister-in-law) Ann (visit her blog here) shared a video on how to use some of the more detailed features of Diigo.  Up to this point, I've been using it merely to tag sites or save them to read later.  Watching the video made me want to try out the highlighting, inserting shapes, and screen capturing features which are actually really easy to use...for the most part.  I had some difficulty figuring out how to save what I was doing; for some reason, the save icon was not working for me, so I'm going to continue playing around with that.
While I will most likely not have my students create Diigo accounts, having a classroom account would be useful for times when I want my students to visit particular pages.  Instead of having them type in the frequently rather cumbersome URLs, I can have them visit the Diigo page and click on the link there.  I could make folders that the students could access with appropriate websites that were relevant to what we were doing as a class.  This seems like a great elementary use for Diigo since I know from experience that giving kids a URL to type in usually turns out fairly unsuccessful for about half the class.

I haven't created a class Diigo yet, but I already know it's going to have great application in my room.  I'm almost wondering if it would be better to just create a grade level one so that my teaching partners and I could add links and share them with each other as well.  Until then, you can check out my Diigo library (which is still in its beginning stages).

I've Created a Monster (or 22)!

Take a quick look at the number of comments on the right hand side of this picture.  Are you noticing practically a million comments?  I am.

Today I had my kids watch a video (see below) on nice ways to comment. Then I allowed them to comment on one another's blog posts (they only have one post so far...we're still learning).  They had a blast.  They were kind, they were excited, and their comments were appropriate and enthusiastic.  I explained to them that commenting was like having a conversation on the computer which caused many of them to start replying to the comments others had left for them.

It's all fine up to there.  But then they were begging (literally begging) to blog from home.  What could it hurt?  So I said yes.  Actually I said, "If you want to share ONE interesting thing that happens to you over the weekend on your blog, you may.  And if you want to comment, you may".

I just checked my gmail.  I had 53 (53!!) comments to moderate.  I'm excited that they're excited.

But I'm also afraid I've just created 22 blog monsters!