Are you ready to jump back in time?

Have you seen the Caleb's Creek Media Matters blog?  That is one place that Holly DuBois shares interesting resources as well as book activities she plans to use.

Looking at her blog one day, I came across a resource that I had not heard about before .... so I thought I would share the information with you too!

Here is a part of the blog post Jump Back in Time:

Using the America's Story section of the Library of Congress resource, you can click into the Jump Back in Time feature. (I have talked about other parts of America's Story before here and here if you are interested and missed them.) Using the Jump Back in Time feature, there are a lot of neat things you can do. Of course, the main part included links to all the major historical eras of the United States, broken down into sections from 1492 to present day. Each era link will take you to information along with many links to other stories related to the same time period. I like the way this is done because you can see history as a string of many stories that fit together rather than a bland history book paragraph listing the things that happened.

There is also a Fact or Myth question when you are on the main page with a different question each time you visit the page. It explains why it is a fact or myth. You can also choose a date to visit to see important things from that day. It suggests using your birthday, but this could also be fun to do each day to see what happened that day. You could also do the Fact or Myth question and use both as an opener to the day or something for those last few minutes after you pack up at the end of the day. The Super Sleuth game is fun but short. Famous photos of historical people have had something added to them that doesn't fit the time period and students have to find it.

This is a great place to start with introducing a time period, giving context to an era a book might be set in, or just for the history buffs!

I can see some great Social Studies and History connections for this resource from the Library of Congress. This would probably be a good place to find some nonfiction reading material.

I encourage you to look at Caleb's Creek Media Matters ....

We enjoy highlighting posts and/or blogs in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School System .... if you have any to share, just let us know!

We also like to share where we learned new things, so the next time you learn something new and/or interesting, let us know and hopefully we can share it too!

How many ways can we journal?

Journal writing was something I strongly encouraged in my 4th grade classes (so many benefits). Some years we (me and students) would write in journals for 15 minutes at the beginning of writing class. There would be music playing and students knew that this was a time for thinking and working not asking questions. One year, I had students write in journals at the end of the day about things they had learned or things that had happened that day. Students had to share those journal entries with someone each night (in an attempt to avoid the "What did you do at school today" and "Nothing" conversations). My last year in a classroom, my students used blogs as "thinking logs" or as a type of journal. Journals can take many forms, and, as much as I like to encourage writing, they don't even have to be in written form.
I got to thinking about all the ways students could do journals after watching my 4 year old daughter walk around the house carrying a Flip camera. According to her she was making a video to send to a family member. When I started listening, I noticed that she was telling about her day, her toys, the weather outside, and a little about herself. Those are the things I remember writing in a diary or things my students wrote in journals. I guess my little girl was making a type of video journal ...
Realizing that caused me to think about the ways various technology tools could be used for "journals":

• GlogsterEDU could be used to create "A Day in the Life" posters or even a "What happened this week" poster
• Student created blogs could easily be used as a replacement for the spiral notebook journals in my classroom ... as a teacher, I used blogs to keep track of the things I tried in the classroom that did or did not work
  
• The "A Picture Each Day" project many participate in could be seen as another type of journal ... pictures could even be posted on things like VoiceThread where narration could be added
• Programs like Animoto or PhotoPeach could be used to pull together photos to be used as a visual journals
• Interactive Timelines could be used used as journals

I am sure my short list is not very comprehensive. What other things can be used for journals?

image created using Wordle.net

So I found a neat classroom blog today with some great projects and pictures on it (I mentioned it in another blog post).

What is interesting though is the way that I found it. Where do you look for ideas and neat examples? I have places that I generally look, but I wasn't really looking this time, it just kinda found me ...

• So it started with when Marlo Gaddis found and shared EDU Symbalo.
• In EDU Symbaloo, there are collections of links and webmixes. EDU Teachers and EDU Tools are two of the ones automatically in your creation when you start.
• While looking at all the sites linked to those webmixes, I came across another collection called TOOLS4teachers.
• On TOOLS4teachers, one of the boxes has a title of Blooming Questions
• That box took me to a Storybird Creation that uses questions to introduce Bloom's Taxonomy to children
• I look and saw the creator of that Storybird is janeh271
• So I went to twitter and searched to see if I could find janeh271
• When I found that twittername, I saw this tweet: http://7rcs.blogspot.com/ added new revolver map to blog, pls check in so we can add to our map and track in classroom!
• So I clicked visited that blog to show up on the map
• Little did I know what a great blog I would find!! There are all kinds of great web2.0 projects, pictures, and ideas on this blog.
• I tweeted about her blog on twitter (she tweeted back thanking me for nice comments)
  
• Then I wrote about her Storybird Creation on my blog about Bloom's Taxonomy
• Janeh271 has now added to her blog also: Creativity ... a mixture of Teaching a Photography
  
• And now I have written a blog post about how I found her great blog ...

Look at all the ways things are connected ...

You never know what you will find ... even when you aren't looking ...

image fromhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/29875101@N00/3363502084/

Collaboration Corner

Most of the time when I think of classes collaborating, it involves talking or working on the same project at the exact same time. The many technology tools that we now have available make it even more possible for classes to collaborate even when on opposite sides of the world.
I stumbled across the Collaboration Corner Blog one day. This blog is an example of two classes in opposite hemispheres (one in America and the other in Australia) collaborating.
From a page on this blog:

Since early 2009, Mrs Yollis' third grade class and Miss McGeady's grade two class have been blogging buddies.

We created this blog at the start of 2010 to collaborate and learn together.
***

We are finding that through technology, the barriers of distance, time zones and cultures can be broken down and collaboration is a very powerful tool!

***

Have a look at some of the great things we are doing and leave us a comment!

On that blog, you can find clocks that show the current time for each school. (I think that would be a great way to introduce time zones.) There are a couple of projects both classes are completing throughout the year.

Project #1: What's for lunch? This project involves each class posting pictures of descriptions of the contents of a student's lunchbox a couple times a week. There are questions on the blog for students to discuss after seeing and reading about the lunches.
Project #2: Our School This project both schools posting about about various places around their school each week. The students in each class are hoping to learn more about their blogging buddies.
***Notice the variety of web 2.0 tools used for posting videos and pictures in the blog

Summertime Blogs

The summer can be a great time for reflection and planning for implementing new ideas for the upcoming school year. Teachers often use the summer months as the time to try out some new things and plan for how to integrate technology into their lessons. So as the school year begins to wind down for 2009-10, I'd like to suggest my Teacher's Top 3 Blogs for Summer Reading.

These are all blogs I've been following that I feel provide easy ways to incorporate technology into your classroom, whatever grade you teach.

• I've mentioned Richard Byrne's www.freetech4teachers.com before as a great blog to follow for reviews of tech tools and ways they can be used in the classroom. His blog posts are concise and often don't just discuss the tool but also ways it can be used for educators.
• Kelly Tenkely's http://ilearntechnology.com/ blog is another blog worth following. I think Kelly's Promethean Quick Tips should be required reading for teachers in our district who have activboards. But her audience is not just teachers with activboards. Her blog often highlights a site or tool that any classroom could use.
• Vanessa Cassie's blog moved this year to http://sharpsav.com/blog/ . She offers several posts for the SMARTboard users, but like Kelly offers a lot of tips for people using any interactive whiteboard or even none at all.

Again all these blogs are short reads that yield a lot of valuable content and would be great sites for those who are just starting to following blogs. There are several others I feel could be added to the list, but it's the summer after all, so I'll keep the reading list brief. Just a little extra education for that much-deserved vacation. :)

"Tweaking" a Project that was "Tweeted"

I regularly find good ideas on many of the blogs that I follow, but some of the blogs, like Digital Tools for Teachers, share great resources almost all the time. When I looked at Stephanie's blog (@artysteph26 on twitter) a few days ago, I was not disappointed. One of her recent posts was about a Character Scrapbook Project that she found on Scholastic. The project provides a way for students to analyze characters from the books they have read. I am a big fan of "Reader Response Projects" where students are asked to "do" something with the information they have read (something more than just answering comprehension or recall questions). I think challenging students to create something encourages a deeper of level of thinking.
I posted (tweeted) about this Character Scrapbook Project on twitter yesterday since I wanted to share it with others. Today someone (@lisamonthie on twitter) sent me a message that she took the project I tweeted about yesterday and "tweaked" it by using the idea to create a glogster project. Information about that "tweaked" project can be found on Lisa's blog, Learning 2.0 in a post called "A Few Twists on a Great Lesson". Since I am also a big fan of glogster, combining a reading response project with a glog only made it better in my book! I taught glogster workshops at an elementary school a few weeks ago, and I can't wait to share this project idea with those teachers (and you)!
By the way, look at the various forms of technology communication that were involved in the creation of this project: I used my RSS reader to read a blog about the character project, then I tweeted about the project, someone read my tweet about a project someone else found, then used that information to create another project which she wrote about on her blog, and then sent me a tweet on twitter to let me know. Who says teaching is independent work? I have never met any of the people mentioned in this blog in person but we somewhat unknowingly collaborated to create a project to increase critical thinking skills for students!
I feel so fortunate to learn from others!

image from http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/scrapbook/

Blogging Alliance

I have recently become part of a blogging alliance formed by Kelly Tenkely (twitter @ktenkely) who writes the iLearnTechnology Blog that I have learned so much from this year. Those of us in the blogging alliance regularly read and comment on each other's blogs. That has added an extra motivation for me to write more in my blog . . . and it is exciting to get comments! But even more exciting than the comments that I am now getting is the excitement of learning so many things from so many people!
Here is how Kelly (who I often refer to as the "friend I made on Twitter from Colorado") describes the alliance on her blog:

• "Just about a month ago, I proposed the idea of a blogging alliance between educational bloggers. The response has been incredible. To date there are 73 educators involved from around the world. In this month of reading and commenting I have learned a great deal from these amazing men and women, I have built new friendships, and started new conversations. It has truly been an incredible experience to have educators, passionate about learning, coming together to support each other. If you are looking for some excellent educational blogs, may I recommend those in our alliance? "

(please see her blog for even more information about this alliance)

One of the blogs I have found from this alliance is "Digital Tools for Teachers: Strategies to help create fun and engaging learning for the 21st Century Learner" by Stephanie Hendy (twitter @artysteph26). This is a blog I might never have found, but I am glad that I did since I have gotten so many great ideas. I got several ideas from one her recent posts concerning finding out what her students were interested in to help her plan. She gave each student a red, green and orange card. Students wrote answers to different questions on each colored card. She used these answers to create Wordles (which are on her blog). Using the answers this ways allowed her to see which ones were mentioned the most (larger in the wordle). I really liked the way she did this with her students. She does a much better job of sharing her experience, so please go read this beautiful-looking blog!

image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/barnett/2836828090/

180 Days in Kindergarten

Spending just a few minutes in a Kindergarten classroom wears me out, so I can't imagine spending 180 days in there, but that is just what Leigh Anna Voigt (Forest Park Elem) does. At the end of each day, she blogs with her students (who she calls her little friends) about what has happened in their classroom that day. Just from reading that class blog (180 Days of Kindergarten), I can find out what was for lunch, who had a good day, what games were played, what books were read, and even see pictures and videos of these little learners in action.

Leigh Anna uses her blog as a time of reflection for her little friends to remember and share about their busy days. A few weeks ago, Leigh Anna's blog was recognized as the class blog of the day on twitter by Tom Barrett, who is an educational leader from Nottingham, England and author of the edte.ch blog. Leigh Anna's little friends learned about Tom sharing their blogs with others. They looked on a map to find England where he is. He visited their blog and left a comment. I did not do a very good job telling about their experience, so here it is in their words!

People in our school system saw this recognition and checked out this wonderful class blog, which I would encourage you to do also. Leigh Anna has been contacted by some of them with words of praise. But what motivates Leigh Anna to do this daily blog is not the recognition that it may or may not get, it is the benefits of this experience for her little friends!

The blog button at top of this post was created by Leigh Anna and can be found on her blog.

Skills and Tools

Blogging * WebConferencing * Podcasting * Creating a Wiki

These skill posters and a blog titled "It's not about the tools. It's about the Skills" can be found on the Langwitches Blog: The Magic of Learning.

The message conveyed in these posters is something that I think many teachers hear but don't understand at first. In Reading Class, teachers don't try to make sure that students understand everything they can about the textbook that is assigned to them. Teachers do focus on using stories in that book to teach certain skills that students need to learn to be successful in the future. In a Math Class, the teacher doesn't teach specific problems to prepare students just how to solve that one problem. A teacher uses a math problem to help students discover how to use certain skills to be able to solve other problems in the future. The Reading book and Math book are just tools the teacher uses to accomplish the goals of instructing students on specific skills to help students learn. The technology tools that a teachers chooses to use to assist in his or her instruction serve the same purpose: to help students learn. We don't know all that the future will hold for these students, but we do know the skills we are teaching will be needed for whatever students encounter.

images by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

You might want to grab the images with higher resolution from their Flickr Page:

• Podcasting Skills
• Blogging Skills
• Video Conferencing Skills
• Wiki Skills

Using Your Cell Phone To Blog

One of the challenges teachers must be aware of is the need to reach their students by infusing technology in the curriculum that the students use all the time. It’s no secret that students love their cell phones. It almost seems like they were born with the cell phone in their hand. They talk, they text, they exist!

Blogging is a way to get students to write. The teacher could set up a blog in a number of different ways. The teacher could create the blog and the students could comment. Another option would be to have certain student’s blog and the other students could comment. The students’ roles could change from week to week or month to month.

What if your students could blog from their phone? Would they be more likely to participate? Would they think that was cool? They can. They can write a post from a text message using their phone to bloggr (256447). Then they would write their post. 150 characters would count as one text message. Then they would click send. Blogger will send them a mobile blog URL and a claim token. Then they would go to: go.blogger.com, enter the claim token and the verification characters. They would sign into their blogger account and click continue. Then they would just choose the blog that the post should go to. Remember that the standard costs would be charged for texting by the phone carrier the student has.

Inspiring Examples

Emory shared some great ideas for blogging in schools. I hope you take the time to read and implement at least one of those ideas if you have a blog started. I have spent some time time recently looking at some of our district staff blogs and wanted to share a few jewels I found...

Funniest Teacher Blog: Leah Qualls, South Fork Elementary
http://leahquallsclass.blogspot.com
Ms. Qualls should be published as her classroom stories bring me to tears every time. She shares the every day funny things that children say or do. When I was a classroom teacher, I swore I would keep a diary of those things and never did. Her quick wit and storytelling capabilities will bring a smile to your face!

Breakthrough Administration: Jefferson Middle School
Frank Martin's Friday Notes- http://frankmartintjms.blogspot.com
Weekly Happenings- http://weeklyhappeningsattjms.blogspot.com
The administrative staff at Jefferson is taking on the blogsphere! Frank Martin (principal) and Peggy Dickey (Assistant Principal) are sharing information about what is going on at the school. Principal Martin shares insights to his school and his role in it. Ms. Dickey uses the Weekly Happenings to share with the staff about what is going on in the school each week.

Great Start to a New Year: Kimmel Farm Elementary
http://kimmelfarmelem.blogspot.com/
Technology Facilitator Sam Walker is truly the historian of this new school. His background in journalism helps to make the school, staff, and leadership transparent to the community in which it now serves. Be sure to check out the post on their appeal to Governor Perdue. Mrs. Madison's class is lighting the way for the use of Problem-Based Learning!

A Few Ideas for Blogging

Lately, I've spent a lot of time talking "blogging" with teachers. Blogging is a great way to engage students and can be used in some fashion with all students. Classrooms without a lot of technology hardware can blog and collect a digital portfolio of students writing, while also teaching some valuable Internet safety lessons. Many teachers are interested in blogging but wonder if this might be one more thing to maintain and manage throughout the day. Blogs can be used in a lot of ways to help teachers work smarter not harder.

And sometimes everyone just needs a few ideas for getting started. And while there are many ideas for classroom blogging on the Internet, I'd like to throw out some advice and a few easy ways I've seen teachers in our district blogging with students.

• Keep it simple and ask a simple open-ended question. Remember blogging is not meant to create a lot more written work for the teacher. Post a question and let the kids respond. Some of the best blogs I've seen used with students are less about the post and more about the comments/responses from the students.
• Use pictures. Marlo presented Image Journaling as part of our session for NCTIES last year, and it was brilliant in its simplicity. Post a picture (observing copyright) and have the students respond to a question involving the image. Great for descriptive writing, prediction strategies, summarizing etc...
• Use multimedia. With the popularity of hand-held video cameras (like the Flipcamera) teachers can easily upload lessons and group performance videos to their blogs. This is a great way to showcase some of the events in your classroom, while allowing students to create digital content. Please note large videos can be much harder to upload into a blog.
• Showcase student work. Let the blog be a digital bulletin board for displaying student work. Pictures can be scanned in and student writing can be posted, giving students a chance to show off what they've done in class with a potentially global audience.

It does take some effort in getting started, but the majority of teachers I've spoken with who have blogged with their students over the course of a year really seem to think the blog has helped. Try it and I think you'll agree.

Blogs to Follow

Following blogs and sharing their information is a big step in growing your learning network. One of the steps I take every morning is to check RSS feeds from some of my favorite blogs – a step similar to browsing a digital newspaper. I decided to use this week’s post to share some of the blogs I currently follow related to K-12 educational technology.

Here are five blogs you might consider following:

David Warlick’s 2 cents Worth
Following his blog is not a new idea. His was one the first I began to follow after hearing him at a conference three years ago. I think everyone I know in Ed Tech follows him, but I really think his ideas about education, technology and the future of schools are worth reading.

Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed
Same as above. I’ve detailed my following of Will Richardson in previous blog entries.

Mr. Byrne’s FreeTech4Teachers
Mr. Byrne’s blog is a wealth of tech resources with ideas of ways to integrate them into the classroom. And he keeps getting new ideas. It’s not uncommon for him to post five or six times a day – so be ready. He’s a great scout of new technology and has been a good addition to my RSS reader.

Instructify
I still like to browse this NCLearn’s blog dedicated to finding technology to use in the classroom. Their topics are varied and address a lot of practical tools for teachers. This is another good place to start if you want follow a blog.

Wes Fryer’s Moving at the Speed of Creativity
Wes Fryar, like Warlick and Richardson, is another national figure in Ed Tech. His posts are not always about education or technology (today’s post was on the issue of torture), but many are and I’ve found his views on copyright, Internet safety and digital citizenship to be enlightening.

Quick Disclaimer: Although these are blogs that I follow, they do not necessarily represent the views of WSFCS technology department. And while these blogs are not blocked, some links to other external pages might be.

So dear reader, who are you reading?

Micro-blogging

What is micro-blogging, well before we delve into that one let's look at what blogging is as a whole.

A blog or weblog is a site in which a user posts their own commentary regarding things they are doing, events in their lives, or just their personal views on different subject material. To learn more about blogs you can watch the following video to get a better understanding.

Now that you have learned a little bit about what a blog is let's talk about micro-blogging. In a nut shell micro-blogging allows users to send short text descriptions about what they are doing, what is going on or things happening around them etc. Users key in a sentence or so description that then posts immediately. Why go with micro-blogging? Some may think it is easier than keeping up with a blog website. Others may think that this could be their in route to the whole blog universe. Me, I am on the fence as to its use. I regularly post blog entries but tend to not use the micro-blogging options available to me.
Micro-blogging seems to taking off like a rocket in recent months. Or at least it has come to the forefront with all of the media attention that it has been getting lately. So, where do you go to micro-blog? Well some may not even realize that they are doing it while others are reading this and saying that I am crazy because they have been doing it for a long time.
If you have a Facebook, MySpace or Bebo account you already have an avenue for micro-blogging by telling people what you are doing or how you are feeling right then. Probably the most notable micro-blogging site is Twitter which advertises that you can let people now what you are doing in 140 characters or less. Twitter has thousands of users on the web and even some very famous user like Oprah Winfrey, Clark Howard, as well as news and sports shows. There are other micro-blogging sites out there in the world wide web that you can use as well. Here is a list of some of the available sites as offered up by many different search results I have looked at.
Twitter
Jaiku
Pownce
Tumblr
Moodmill
IRateMyDay
Yappd
Hictu

There are many others out on the web but these are a good starting place for you to get your feet wet. So go out there and jump in the water and start micro-blogging.

video provided by Commoncraft

Blogging About Our Blogs

Educators at several schools have been setting up some great blogs that not only engage kids in blogging as a tool for instruction but showcase some of the great things they are doing in their classes and school. Blogs can also be a great way to share a quick video with your students, parents and visitors to the blog. I've included a short video clip from a recent blogging workshop.
Although it is not a comprehensive list, we have included addresses of some of the blogs in our system at wsfcs.pbwiki.com/blogs. Interested? Sign up for a workshop and start blogging.

Twitter: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

The more I use Twitter, the bigger fan I am becoming. Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging tool. Users send updates or “Tweets” that can be no more then 140 characters long. Although there is the usual personal banter, someone will “Tweet” something about instructional technology that I am interested to learn more about. For example today I was reading Tweets from Kathy Schock about Google Sites http://sites.google.com/ being launched for gmail users. Being able to make contacts with other educational technology specialists from different parts of the United States has increased my learning about 21st Century skills. What a great networking tool to ask questions and to read what others are doing in instructional technology and also to learn about the new Web 2.0 tools they are using.

Commoncraft, the people behind the “in plain English” series have created a new one for Twitter. View the video to learn more about Twitter and to learn how to create your own Twitter account.

Track The Information You Want With Bloglines

Bloglines.com is a free news aggregator offered in 8 different languages. All you need is your email address and a password to sign-up. The site allows you subscribe and manage news feeds, web blogs and audio. It tracks information you want to hear or read about as it happens and puts it all on your customized web page. Bloglines collects syndicated feeds from tens of millions of online sources and makes it available to you in one location. All you do is put a check next to the feeds you want to add to your web page. You can receive your email newsletter subscriptions through a free blogline email account so it will not affect your current email. You can import your existing list of subscriptions (if they are in the OPML format). Blogline supports RSS 0.91, 1.0, 2.0 and Atom. You can create clippings which are articles (or sections) of a blog so that you can find them at a later date very easily. You can also create clip blogs. These are blogs that you create and share inside of blogline by simply clicking on the clip blog link. You can also track your friend’s blogs inside blogline.

Web filters...to scream or not to scream?

After trying for several days to fix some formatting errors in our department blog on Wordpress (including contacting their tech support-which offered no help at all), we finally narrowed down the problem to our web filter, which I am usually very happy with. However, in this instance, any template I use is being blocked which in turn creates havoc with the formatting when someone from the district uses their student or teacher login to Active Directory. Kevin and I tried diligently to figure out what URL was causing the problem, but had no luck. Then I checked my son's blog through the student login and it worked! No formatting issues. I guess Google really is a powerhouse!