A New Generation of Readers? December 21, 2009

Well….I’ve been worried as an educator that we may truly be losing our love of books. However, after surfing the web and reading a few blogs, I have found that there are a lot of books on the net to read. The question is: Do our generation of readers know about these? In order to keep the love of reading and learning alive, maybe we need to advertise the many amazing adventures reading can take us to by looking at some online.

In my blog, I found an article about a site called Fan Fiction. After visiting this site, I was amazed at how many books are available. So after looking at this site, I decided to surf the net to see how many more are out there. Here’s the list I have compiled:

 

http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/

http://www.freeonlinereading.com/links.htm

Technorati Tags: http://www.fanfiction.net/

 

So, now that I’m aware of these, I will definitely be using these sources for my speech team, and ask that my students use these during reading center time.

Screenr- Wish I would have knew about this before i started my EDUC 685 final!!! December 18, 2009

Oh my goodness! I have found the most awesome tool! It is called Screenr. You can access this tool at www.screenr.com. This tool allows you to capture your computer screen, and record the screen and audio while doing so. It is so much better than trying to use a digital camera, like I had tried to do when creating my tutorials. You can truly see the screen well, and hear ones voice clearly.

Screenr does have a 5 minute limit, but is great for short, brief tutorials. I love this device! It is super cool. Dr. Lowell, if you are reading this…..I’m adding this to my online tool box, even if class is over!!!

Renovating Our Schools

Technorati Tags: http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2009/12/14/kfc-and-mcdonalds-reinvent-themselves-why-not-our-schools/

    After reading an article about how fast food restaurants are updating their furniture, decor, etc the question was asked, why not reinvent our schools? I’m not sure, “reinvent” is the right word, but I truly think we might be ready to renovate. After a house gets very old, sometimes we have to remove and tear out some of the older materials and framework, and replace them with more sturdy materials that can be purchased at retail stores. The same is true with our schools. As technology and new knowledge becomes available, we must often remove some of our old strategies and techniques, and replace them with new strategies that fit our students.

    Not only do we need to replace some strategies with newer ones, but sometimes we may need to change the layout of our classroom, the furniture, the materials (such as textbooks) to fit the age in which we are in. While some may think this may be a bit frivolous, it may be exactly what is needed to reignite the fire of learning in both students and teachers.

     Don’t you feel refreshed and even alert when you walk into a place that is eye catching? Don’t you feel more comfortable and more engaged with this environment than you do in environments that have dingy dim lighting, old seats, smelly restrooms, etc? There is a difference isn’t there? Well, what makes us think that our students don’t feel the same way.   Students of this generation have been raised in a technology driven age, and while I was born a bit before this age and can learn in many of the traditional ways in which I was taught, our new students may not always be able to do this.

    Think about it….what gripes might most teachers have? My students never seem to pay attention. Students seem bored. Student hand writing is atrocious! Well, when students are raised to be able to operate a computer at nearly 3, while playing games, talking on the cell phone, and listening to an iPod at the same time, what must one expect? They learn to multi-task at a whole different level. While many of are used to paper pencil activities and reading a book, many of the students today are a bit bored with that approach. So what do you think, is it time to renovate our schools approach to learning?

Check out my final project! December 8, 2009

See these links to view:

http://jbstechclass.com/ningtutorials.aspx

http://jbstechclass.com/wikitutorials.aspx

http://jbstechclass.com/blogtutorials.aspx

We made it!

Wow, I cant’ believe we have arrived at the end of the semester! I’m super excited. I have had a great semester. It has been difficult at moments, but others have been a thrill. I must say I have enjoyed this class. I think online classes are truly for those who are self motivated and self directed learners, and if you really want to learn and can in the self-directed mode, then you are absolutely in Heaven with these online classes. We have the advantage of spending virtually no gas money, and being able to do our assignments in our pj’s whenever we need to. I’ve loved it! I truly have. I’ve learned a lot, and hope that everyone has had the same experience.

Weekly Project Status and rationale November 27, 2009

Well, since this has been Thanksgiving week, I haven’t gotten as many videos completed for my tutorial project as I would have liked. Thus far, I have completed a tutorial on how to initiate and maintain blogs, and a tutorial on how to add RSS feeds to ning. These were a little more challenging to do than the first few tutorials, because they required going beyond the surface of basic computer menu’s. I know that when I begin the tutorials on Wikispaces, I will be much more challenged as wikispaces are a little more foreign to me. I’m enjoying these projects though. While they have been time consuming, they have made me take time to really think of how to use these tools in the classroom, and create resources that my colleagues can utilize as we stretch into newer areas of technolgies use in the classroom.

Check out these cool strategies! November 25, 2009

Read the article for more:
Cut and stick games
webquests
memory games
board/dice games
20 questions
matching cards
card cycles
wikispaces
creative stories
reflections/blogs
activity preferences
role-playing

Writing about another article: Getting out of a rut!

I’ve been moaning and groaning in my head lately about how I truly feel like I am in a rut! I don’t feel as motivated to design elaborate lessons, motivating activites, and stations that will completely and totally engage the students. That mentality gets to you after a while. For the past couple of weeks, I have used some traditional strategies: jigsaw, notetaking, demo’s, powerpoint jeopardy, brainpop, handouts, etc which are all great strategies, do not get me wrong….but have you ever felt like students get used to how you teach? Well…I feel like I need to stretch, and differentiate my instruction a bit more, and get out of the rut I feel that I am in.

Now don’t get me wrong. This begins a time consuming stage of being after school a while, working late, and giving something in my life a bit of a back burner to my students. And…this is ok…sometimes you just have to make yourself get out of a rut. SOOOO…I found an article on Teaching Today to read. It’s title was: How to Differentiate Science Instruction.

One of the ideas that really stook out to me was the idea of creating an agenda array of activities for students. Although it sounds like a load of work, it may be a really cool way of mixing things up. For one lesson, you create  a few options (anywhere from 3-4) types of activities to complete to accomplish an objective. This allows students to choose activities that best meet their needs or learning styles. I think that’s kind of cool! You can differentiate to kinesthetic learners, auditory learners, visual/spatial, etc.

Another idea I thought was really cool was the idea of role play. Now…I have used this in the past when I’ve taught younger kids, but I thought how cool …role playing for older students. I found an article that I will comment on later next week after taking the time to read it thoroughly. But at least now, I have some ideas for getting out of this rut. Again, I think being able to collaborate with teachers on Ning is going to be fabulous as well!!!

Ok, well my whole chart idea has been done….. November 24, 2009

In my last post, I spoke of creating a chart of ways to use wiki’s so that I could refer to it during teaching, and well I might make a smaller more accessible one, but I found a chart already done at http://www.smartteaching.org/blog/2008/08/50-ways-to-use-wikis-for-a-more-collaborative-and-interactive-classroom/. These are so cool! If you haven’t made a wiki, you need to check this site out. I copied and paste just to give you a glance at these, but please note the author of the site is authored by several people. When you go to the link above, each use can be clicked on, which will take you to the original source. Take a look; I would actually print this page out, and use it as a resource.

Resource Creation

Using these ideas, your students can collaboratively create classroom valuables.

1. Virtual field trips: Have your students research far away places they would like to go on a field trip, and get them to share images and information about the location.
2. Create presentations: Instead of using traditional presentation software, put presentations on a wiki.
3. Write a Wikibook: Make it a class project to collaboratively write a reference book that others can use.
4. Study guides: Ask students to create study guides for a specific part of the unit you’re studying.
5. Readers’ guides: Have your students create readers’ guides to share their favorite and most important parts of works you’ve read in class.
6. Solving wiki: Post difficult math problems, such as calculus, so that the class can collaboratively solve them.
7. Glossary: Get your class to create a glossary of terms they use and learn about in new units, adding definitions and images.
8. Class encyclopedia: Ask your class to create an “encyclopedia” on a topic, adding useful information that can be built upon through the years.
9. Create exploratory projects: If you’re teaching a new subject, ask your students to collect and share information in the wiki so that you can learn together.

Student Participation

These projects are sure to get your students involved.

1. Exam review: Encourage students to share review notes and other helpful pieces of information on your classroom’s wiki.
2. Peer review: Allow students to draft their papers in a wiki, then ask other students to comment it.
3. Student portfolios: Assign portfolio pages to each of your students, and allow them to display and discuss their work.
4. Correction competition: You can post a document riddled with mistakes, then have students compete to see who can fix the most errors fastest.
5. Peer editing: Ask students to edit each others’ work for spelling, grammar, and facts based on a style guide or rules you’ve defined.
6. Vocabulary lists: Encourage students to submit words that they had trouble with, along with a dictionary entry.
7. Get feedback: Ask students to post comments on wiki pages.
8. Share notes: Let your students share their collective information so that everyone gets a better understanding of the subject.

Group Projects

Allow wikis to facilitate group work by using these ideas.

1. Group authoring: By asking groups to use central documents in a wiki, you can ensure that everyone’s documentation will be uniform.
2. Grandma timeline: Have your students create a history timeline using Grandmas as units of time.
3. Organize ideas: Allow group members to post their ideas in a wiki, and you’ll cut down on duplicate ideas, while at the same time allowing them to build upon the ideas.
4. Fan clubs: Start fan clubs for your students’ favorite figures from history and ask them to contribute their favorite quotes, photos, and other tidbits together.
5. Track projects: With wikis, it’s easy for students to see which tasks have been completed and which ones still need to be fulfilled.
6. Track participation: Assign a wiki page to a group project, and then individual pages for each student to show their participation.

Student Interaction

Get your students to work together on these projects.

1. Collect data: Use central documents to make sure that data collection is uniform and easy to manage.
2. Mock-debate: Pit two class candidates against each other and perform a debate on your wiki.
3. Study buddy matching: Let students match themselves up into study buddy pairs.
4. Multi-author story: Start a creative writing unit, and get your students to write a short story together, each writing a small amount of the story.
5. Choose your own adventure story: A twist on the multi-author story could be a choose your own adventure story, where each student branches out into a different path.
6. Share reviews: Post articles for different movies, books, and TV shows, encouraging students to share what they though about them.
7. Literature circles: Host a book club on your wiki where students are required to read the same book, then discuss it on the wiki.

For the Classroom

Use your wiki to create spaces that are special to your class.

1. Classroom FAQ: Make it a class project to create an FAQ for your classroom that will help new students and those that will come in years later.
2. Classroom scrapbook: Share news, photos, and current achievements in your classroom on a wiki page.
3. Calendar: Create a calendar on the wiki and encourage students to add their own personally important dates.
4. Classroom newspaper: Create your own news outlet on a wiki.
5. Hall of fame: Highlight students’ exceptional achievements on the wiki.
6. Classroom policies: Encourage students to draft rules and policies for the classroom.

Community

Reach out to the community with these resources that everyone can appreciate.

1. School tour: Get your class to take photos of your school and write about their favorite spots on the wiki, then share it with the rest of your school and your local community.
2. Recipe book: Ask students to bring in their favorite recipes from home, then share them with parents and the rest of the community.
3. International sharing: Collaborate with a class from another country and share information about your culture, or even a day in the life of a typical student.
4. Local history: Document historical buildings, events, and more from our community. You can ask students to perform interviews, and encourage parents and other adults to contribute their knowledge in the wiki.
5. Community FAQ: Ask students to create an FAQ for their community, then pass it on to your next group of students.
6. Community nature guide: Have your students collect highlights of plants and animals in your community.
7. Share achievements: Let parents log in to the wiki to see what their children have accomplished.

Other

Here are even more fun and useful ways to improve your classroom with a wiki.

1. Let your students leave their books at school: With a strong classroom wiki, you should have a wealth of information available, so much so that students can leave their books at school and access information online.
2. Use wikis as a hub: Any time a student creates anything online, ask them to link to it or upload it to the wiki so that everyone can use it.
3. Make website creation easier for students: Using a wiki platform, students don’t have to worry about web design, so they can focus on content instead.
4. Organization: Save links, documents, and quotes related to units or your classroom as a whole.
5. Track assignments: If you ask students to put their research on wikis, you can check in on their progress to make sure they’re on the right path.
6. Teacher collaboration: Work with other teachers to create lesson plans and track students’ success.
7. Create and pass a legislative bill: Let students see the back and forth that exists in legislation by creating their own and attempting to pass it.

Weekly Project Status November 18, 2009

Well, I am super excited about my project status. I wasn’t really sure if I could pull video tutorials off, however, I am on my way to a fabulous start! So far I have created 4 tutorials:

How to invite friends

How to add photos

How to add videos Part I

How to add videos Part II

After videoing, I tried to think of how to get these to Dr. Lowell. So I decided to post them on my website that I used with my kids at school. www.jbstechclass.com If you’d like to take a gander at what I have thus far, just go to that site, and click on Ning for Dummies, and you will find the videos I’ve done thus far.
Now, I use www.officelive.com to create websites, so I had to figure out how to work the video feature of this site tool. I found that I had to upload videos by pasting a URL or a html code. I could not directly add them from my pc. So, after uploading videos to my pc, I had to set-up a youtube.com account. Then upload my videos that account, and obtain the URL that comes with those videos. Once I had done that I copied and pasted that URL to my officelive.com video component and voila! Sounds easy doesn’t it….ha ha! Well, it wasn’t at first.

However, now …I am so glad that I took the video approach rather than typing it all out and using print screen to capture my every step throughout Ning. Truly, digital video cameras are a blessing!

So, I will be working on finishing my tutorials next week for Ning. Then, I will begin a series on using wikispaces. I also may include some tutorials for a mimeo board. This is really for teachers at my school, but I know that many schools are purchasing mimeo boards because they are a cheaper alternative to Smartboards. So this info could really be useful to a lot of teachers, as it will be linked or posted to my site.