This week's assignment is optional--you only need to complete it if you missed one of the previous weeks' posts. In the spirit of the holidays, I thought we'd give someone who isn't in our class the gift of something you've learned. Here's how it works:
1. Look over the past posts and find something you think you'd like to pass on to someone else. 2. Pick a person on your staff to receive your "gift of knowledge." 3. Visit that person and say, "Hey, do you have minute so I can show you this cool thing I learned?" 4. Show them. (Don't forget, let them "drive." Only in dire situations should you take over the keyboard or mouse of another person--we learn best by doing.) 5. Come back here and tell us what you shared and why, and a little bit about the experience. 6. Enjoy your break!
Every teacher in our district has the ability to create a teacher website. Teacher websites can be use to communicate information to parents and students, provide information and resources as documents or links and to create discussion through a discussion board. Photos and videos of students can be added for families to view. Events can be added to the calendar, practice quizes can be created and grades can be shared.
Did you know that you can lock a document? Any file that is uploaded to the documents section can be locked by clicking on the padlock to the right. You will be prompted to create a password. This password can be shared with individual parents so only they can access the file (audio, video, word document). When someone clicks on the file, they must enter the password in order for the file to open.
For this weeks post: Look at how other teachers in the district are using their SWIFT site. Look at other teachers in your grade level/specialty. Report back how you currently use your site and what you would like to add to enhance your site.
OneNote is a wonderful program found on our laptops. It is a Microsoft Office program created to work as an electronic notebook. "OneNote is a place for gathering, organizing, searching, and sharing notes, clippings, thoughts, reference materials, and other information." As a teacher I have created notebooks for my class of students, committees and groups as well as print shop and report cards.
When you open the program you will see that there is a notebook already created for you. It is the user guide for the program. There are two tabs, each with several pages. (Start, All Programs, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office OneNote)
For this weeks post, view the OneNote 2007 Guide notebook. If you are new to the program, review the Getting Started with OneNote tab/pages. If you are a currect user, review the More Cool Features tab/pages. Report back and share how you could use this tool as a teacher.
If you haven't checked out Google Street View yet, the time has come. You’d be surprised where you and your class can go. Reading a book set in Iowa? Might as well “drive” down Temple Ave. in Shell Rock so that students can get a glimpse of the vast terrain. Or maybe “drive” by the Guggenheim on 5th Ave. in New York City. Or if those options are too luxurious for you, you can also walk to Starbucks from Lake Wilderness. It’s easy—just visit Google Maps, plug in an address or just zoom in on an area you wish to “visit.” Look for the little yellow guy (Pegman) and drag him over to one of the street views that are available in that area (available streets will be highlighted in blue).
This week, tell us how you might use Google Street View in your classroom. Be creative! OR If there isn't a way you could use Street View, visit the Google for Educators page or the Google blog(side note: it's really amazing what Google offers beyond search) to learn about some of the other great resources Google offers that might be useful to you and your students. Let us know what you find and how you might use it.
Well, we're at the halfway point. How is it going? For this week's assignment, I'm asking you to do three things:
1. Provide a little bit of information about your experience so far by answering these questions:
On average how much time do you spend on the assignments?
Do you check back after you post your comment to read other comments?
2. Revisit the previous blog posts (find access to the archived posts in the lower right corner hand of this page), and read through the comments. Find at least one thing to comment on and "reply" to that comment by clicking "reply" and leaving an insight, answer, or suggestion to thatcomment. One of the benefits of blogging is the conversation it allows for. Imagine if we had done this class via email. I could have sent you each week's post in an email and you could have responded to me with a reply to that email. However, notice how much richer it is to see and respond to each other's thinking using the blog instead.
3. Leave a comment to this post with your "mid-term" reflection. Anything you want to share is fine, but here a few questions you might want to consider: How is this set up working for you? How does learning this way stack up next to more traditional ways of learning? Have you learned anything about the way you learn that might impact how you teach? Any suggestions for the second half of the class? Remember--commenting on someone else's post counts.
There are times when I come to a lesson and think one of two things: 1) How can I make this lesson more relevant for this year's group of students or 2) I have taught this lesson roughly five million times and I want to change it up a little. In an attempt to remedy one, or both, of these dilemmas I often get on the web and open up Google. I always think I can quickly search the web for a simple addition to a lesson plan, but more often than not this consumes much more time than originally planned. This leads us to the focus for this week.
Teachers First is a teacher resource site that can eliminate the pain and agony of investing a great deal of time trying to figure out how to spice up a lesson. The resources found on this site are endless; from entire grade and subject-specific lesson plans to the "websites of the week" section. This is a website that should be on your favorites list.
Your assignment for this week is to check out the website and post about a tool, lesson plan or idea from the site you found useful or that you could possibly use in the future.
Some of you may be using the discussion feature on your SWIFT site to communicate with parents and/or students. (If you want to learn more about using the discussion feature of SWIFT, see page nine of the SWIFT User Guide.) However, one of the limitations of the SWIFT discussion feature is that the discussions aren’t threaded. This means that as parents/students post comments, the comments simply appear in chronological order, making it difficult for the teacher to respond to a particular comment that may have appeared early on in the discussion. Threaded discussions allow people to respond to particular comments; they allow the conversation to branch off into different directions. Specifically, your reply to a particular comment appears directly below that comment, tabbed over.
Unfortunately, Blogger (the tool we’re using for this class/blog) also doesn’t offer threaded discussions, making it difficult for me (or you) to reply directly to someone’s comment. (See image on top right) However, a solution was found! Last year, Kimberly added a program to the blog that allowed for threaded commenting. (See image on bottom right.) We are using it this year. (If during our class you see someone else’s comment you’d like to comment on, go ahead—that can count as your comment.)
So this week’s lesson has two themes (see below). Chose one to comment on this week (each theme has two prompts to choose from).
Theme 1: Using online discussions (SWIFT or other tool) with students or parents a. If you have experience with online discussions, what tips do you have to share? What have been the benefits? OR b. What might be some ways you could incorporate online discussions into your class? If you’re new to this tool, what questions do you have for those who already use it?
Theme 2: If you believe it should be possible, it probably is—all you have to do is look. (Back story: Kimberly knew Blogger didn’t offer threaded discussions, but she figured that she was not the only person who wished it did, so she Googled “adding threaded discussion to Blogger.” That led her to a blog post about third party applications she could add to the blog to increase interactivity. That’s where she learned about Intense Debate—the application we're using to provide threaded discussion for our class on this blog.)
There is a solution out there for most of our challenges if we look and are willing to invest in a little risk taking. If Kimberly had seen this issue as a problem, she may have just accepted it (no threaded commenting) and would not have investigated further. However, she felt comfortable taking matters into her own hands and did some self-directed learning—something I think we (and our students) are going to be expected to do more and more of in this new digital world. In my role (as a teacher, TTTL and now as a tech coach), I am confronted by this day after day. I can't tell you how many times I have started a Google search with "How do I..." With that said...
a. Share a time you went online with a question/challenge and “taught” yourself how to do something new. OR b. Do it now . . . what’s a question/challenge you have in your class right now? Go online and look for your solution. How did it go?
A virtual field trip is a guided exploration through the web that organizes a collection of pre-screened, thematically based web pages into a structured online learning experience. It is an inter-related collection of images, supporting text and/or other media, delivered electronically via the World Wide Web, in a format that can be professionally presented to relate the essence of a visit to a time or place. The virtual experience becomes a unique part of the participants' life experience. (Nix, 1999)
It's always easier to use someone else's definition than to come up with one of your own. We have been hearing the importance of incorporating technology into lessons in order to make them more engaging for students. However, this can prove to be a difficult, time-consuming task, often leaving one foaming at the mouth shouting expletive deleteds at the computer. Virtual field trips can help curb this anger.
Virtual field trips can look quite different, depending on their creator. There are virtual field trips that create a 360 degree atmosphere where you can navigate the page, almost like you are walking on the Great Wall of China. Then there are virtual field trips that are several pages, much like a powerpoint presentation, that incorprate pictures, words, sounds and/or videos.
Your blog post for this week should answer the following questions: How easy/difficult would it be for you to incorporate a virtual field trip into one of your units/lessons? Did you find a particular virtual field trip that you might use in the future?
Some of you may be wondering either a) what are the benefits of setting up a classroom blog or b) how you can improve the classroom blog you already have in place. Edublogs.com is a website designed specifically for educators who are interested in using technology as a tool to communicate with students and parents. Each year they choose the top blogs for several different categories, such as best student blog and best teacher blog.
For those wanting to know more about the benefits of blogging, you should check out the top 10 ways to use blogs to teach. Technically, this link will lead you to the top reasons to use “edublogs” to teach, but they are applicable to any blog you may create from any site. Also, you don't have to search far and wide to find good blogs; just take a look at what our very own Melissa Morlock has created for her fourth grade class at Lake Wilderness.
After looking over these reasons, check out the awards for the top teacher blogs for 2009.For the post this week, please tell us about which teachder blog you found to be your favorite and why. In your post, please include the link to that blog. Before you post your comment, please be sure your first and last name is on your post or your first name with your last initial. This immensely helps the process of making sure you get checked off for class credit.
Although the discussion for this class takes place on a blog, the primary focus for this class, ironically, is not blogging; we are merely using this blog to foster discussion and unearth new technologies that may be useful in your classroom. If you currently have or are planning to create a classroom blog, please take a look at these helpful hints, guidelines and other policies through sharepoint: Intranet, Teaching and Learning, Technology, Teacher Technology Resources, Blogging.
Over the course of the next 10 weeks (excluding breaks, of course), I'll be sharing a variety of technology tools and resources with you. I'll be using this blogging format to post a new "lesson" each week (on Tuesdays). Along with reading and following the directions in each week's post, I'll prompt you to offer a comment related to that week's lesson.
Since we're using a blog for this class, this week's lesson is intended to help you become familiar with how blogs work. Begin by watching this short video from the geniuses (I think) at Common Craft:
As mentioned in the video, one of the perks of blogging is the community it creates. One way we'll be taking advatage of that feature is through commenting. Commenting on a blog is easy. Simply look for the comment link at the bottom of a post. Click on it to leave your comment. After you've typed in your comment, you will be asked to identify yourself. This video shows you how:
So there you have it! This week's lesson is nearly complete. But before we're done, you need to post a comment. Since we're just getting started I'd like your comment to introduce yourself. Include why you're taking this class and what you're hoping to learn. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them.
Just a reminder, comments are due by Tuesday morning, 8:00 a.m. NO LATE WORK. (However, I do know that sometimes life gets in the way of even the most interesting of blog posts, so during the week of Thanksgiving and again during the winter break, I'll post an optional prompt. These two posts will not be required required for clock hours UNLESS you have "make up" work to do because you missed responding to a post (or two).) Have a great week!
