Wizard of Apps

Cute use of students to get message across - intellectual property.. VERY LONG!

http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=443

Probing the Possibilities of Paperless Pedagogy

Interesting hearing about making a classroom as paperless as possible - using Google Apps, a flip cam (I wonder if we have one in school). I love his quote about classrooms become a tree eating machine! I like the way Jason goes through to describe how he has made his social studies class paperless, assigning the classroom in the computer lab. His focus is Moodles - touting the flexibility of the program. Teacher tube, Bubbless, ODO, Bubblemaps, xtimeline, igoogle, voicethread. Am going to have to investigate all of these. Scribed, slideshare - use for Office docs - puts into pdf.
Moodle, igoogle rss feeds, delicious social bookmarking, voicethread
Assessment tools - traditional and whizzler & studio

Paperless
Accountability - teacher & student
Increased engagement

Results, success and failures
Criticisms - access to technology - both in school and at home - each with his own
Implementation speed of tools - too fast and too slow

Lessons learned -
Don't do it all at once! Don't use all tools at once.
Partnerships with students.
Embracing failure

Definitely worth viewing
http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=438

Building a Web 2.0 Culture

"PROFESSIONAL CULTURE OF TRUST, RESPECT, AND RESPONSIBILITY"
New Tech High - Culture empowers, project based learning, technology... I'm not sure this would work in a middle school setting.
Trust: Students are trusted to "do the right thing." Are our students mature enough to handle this?

I find it amusing that this presenter is talking at the camera the whole time while describing the New Tech High and its building of a Web 2.0 culture. The beginning of the talk spoke about old fashion learning where the teacher lectured at the class... funny, that's kind of what he did! Don't check this one out... not worth visiting!

K12Online09 Day 5 Presentations: 11 December 2009-
Just finished viewing "Building Analog Success with Web 2.0 Technology. Found it interesting that this success was at a private school using a wiki as a place to post information only (not a webpage..still not sure why you'd use the wiki over the webpage), Noodle tools, a flip cam and voicethreads as the reflection tool. According to the teachers, the students were engaged more because of the opportunity to research online and have immediate feedback for the 6 week project. I found it interesting that the lead teacher for the project was still having the final piece be a hard copy of a book!
Link: http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=545

Andi & Corey December 31, 2009

Charleigh & Sam

Random Thoughts

Periodically during the course of a week, I'll go on line and view various links on the innovations wiki. I end up getting lost! I found a great site which mentioned Moodling, but didn't record where I was going - since I was just exploring. I spent time going through my history, but decided I'd best move on. My problem? I get "lost" in viewing sites. I've decided to make a concerted effort NOT to do this any more as I try to leave a digital footprint on the internet. Writing is not my forte - so this footprinting is a struggle for me. I've promised myself that I will visit my classmates blogs for starters - moving on from there. So, here goes!

Interesting Sites

I just added a clock from http://www.clocklink.com/ - not a gadget available on Blogger. That felt good!


Interesting sites to visit: iLearnTechnology - an edublog about integration of technology into the classroom.

http://www.learner.org/interactives/

One minute countdown timer: http://www.triptico.co.uk/flashFiles/oneMin/oneMinTimer.html

Horizon Report

Interesting notes about technology in the k-12 schools. Lack of training, preparation time, and collaboration with peers makes this more difficult to happen.

Google & Big Bird

It's the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street. My kids grew up watching this show and many times I joined them. After clicking on Big Bird's legs today, I found an interesting blog entitled "Does Sesame Still Have Legs?"

The blog author quotes Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell "Sesame Street was built around a single, breakthrough insight: that if you can hold the attention of children, you can educate them." Sesame Street was the first children's show that structured each episode and made "small but critical adjustments" to each segment to capture children's attention long enough to teach them something. Each segment is like a commercial.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfmoms/detail?entry_id=50958#ixzz0Vz7MtEQH

So, is this how we must teach today? Skillful teacher "teaching time" is what, 10 minutes of information, then 3 minutes processing time? When we teach to that model do we in essence create mini-infomercials?

21st Century "Logo"

While I was attempting (and not really succeeding) with Xtranormal - it dawned on me that this was actually a programing piece of software! We were programming the figures to speak and move in various ways. I started laughing when I realized this. Memories of Logo, Hypercard and Hyperstudio came to mind. I realized that to create an Xtranormal video, it would take much more time than I had just put into it.

My Attempt at Voicethread

Here's my first attempt at VoiceThread.

Where There's a Will, There's a Way!

Curriculum night was fast approaching and part of my presentation to the parents involved the live webcam at the Panama Canal. The cameras were down. I searched the website high and low to find a way to ask about the problem. Finally, I was able to find an email address of the webmaster. I wrote that the website was an important part of a presentation and asked if it was going to be back up and running soon. Much to my surprise, I received an email back that yes, it had been down and would be up over the weekend. Unfortunately, it didn't go back up in time for me to share it with the parents, but I did with my students. There are so many times we send emails and they are never responded to, I was amazed!

Online High Schools

Online High Schools

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125374569191035579.html
This is an article on online high schools and whether it really works for students. I found it interesting that while there was a great appeal for those who wanted to study more in depth, according to the article, students missed the personal face to face contact with others.

"She enjoyed the academics but eventually found she was lonely. She missed the human connection of proms, football games and in-person, rather than online, gossip. The digital clubs for fashion, books and cooking involved Web cams and blogs and felt more like work than fun. Last winter, Ms. Ray left the online school and enrolled at a local community college for a semester."

No cost technology video tutorials

woopid
http://www.woopid.com

...hundreds of no-cost technology video tutorials dealing with both hardware and software; great for quickly learning a new skill (the site is ad-based)

Another interesting Help for Busy Teachers site from Kathy Schrock.

Differentiated Instruction

"I love the way we can learn and still have fun."

"It was neat to do all different kinds of activities."

"Lots of fun yet we still learned."

Thanks to Sally, who was really my first year mentor here at SMS, my students are able to review their prior knowledge and have fun while they're doing it. Sally introduced me to the world of "stations."

I have 12 stations set up around the room - everything from creating with playdough, identifying landforms and water features from a Powerpoint, putting together paper puzzles, and sketching. Students work with a partner and rotate at the sound of the bell. They record their answers, then check them right at that station. This provides immediate feedback. Students collaborate on their answers and talk about geography. It's fun to watch and exciting to see!

The only downfall of this set of activities is the time it takes to create, set-up and maintain. Provisioning at its best!

Minds on Fire post

I had read this article last week and wrote sticky notes, but the only place I could find what I noted was through diigo. This is why I copied and pasted it here. Don't know if this is the right way to post.

Minds on Fire

Simple Middle Advanced

10 Oct 09

Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE

Writing/analyzing for an audience makes output/research more authentic and therefore encourages the author to articulate thoughts/ideas more carefully. It makes sense that working with real scientists would make students more invested in their learning.

www.educause.edu/...162420

#i3cs21

• The Internet has also fostered a new culture of sharing, one in which content is freely contributed and distributed with few restrictions or costs.
• The project’s website includes reports of how students, under the guidance of professional astronomers, are using the Faulkes telescopes to make small but meaningful contributions to astronomy.

Well, I just spent oodles of time creating a new blog page that would be student friendly, not for personal posting. I feel like I'm re-creating a web page. Interesting. I guess the difference would be that people can post to what I have written.

Wordle

I just played with Wordle - found out that if you add a tilde (~) between words, it keeps the words together! Also read that word size was directly related to the number of times it is written! We are headed to Australia for our first continent of study. So here are the territories and capitals along with the states and capitals.