EdTechSec

Some help for teaching with your iPad

2011-12-11T21:35:00.000-08:00

Earlier this year I came across this great wiki called teachwithyouripad. For those of us using iPads in class for the first time this year, this simple wiki is a link to a wealth of possibilities for helping students to use these as true learning devices.

On the main page of the wiki are four short sections, from the simple (#1. What is an iPad?), to the more useful for those of us who have fully implemented them (#4. How do I teach with it?). The number 4 section has one link, which opens to a list of 14 sample projects, links included, that could be easily implemented into any classroom.

The bottom of the main wiki page includes a link to a full "Teach With Your iPad" online newspaper, which seems to be regularly updated, and is a wealth of ideas, articles, and app lists for all grade levels and subject areas.

I really like that none of the options or projects presented are complicated. The iPads are a pretty straightforward device, and both the wiki and this online newspaper seem to be in keeping with the idea of keeping the mystery OUT of them.

Why can't kids search?

2011-11-27T16:28:00.000-08:00

I recently came across an article in Wired Magazine called "Why Kids Can't Search". I'm always interested in this particular topic, because it's something I struggle with in my middle and high school classes constantly, and I know I'm not alone in my frustrations.

Getting kids to really focus on what exactly they are searching for, and then be able to further distill idea into a few key specific search terms is a skill that we must teach students, and we have to do it over and over again. We never question the vital importance of teaching literacy, but we have to be mindful that there are many kinds of "literacies". An ever more important one that ALL teachers need to be aware of is digital literacy. I could go off in many directions on this, but for the purpose of this post I'm focusing strictly on the digital literacy of searching.

In the past, we spent a lot of time in schools teaching kids how to do library research, and how to use a variety reference materials like dictionaries, encyclopedias, microfiche, card catalogs, public records, anthologies, and other sources too numerous to recall. Many of these forms of reference are no longer used, as they (or incarnations much like them) are all now available to us on the internet.

However, when we made this switch to internet-based resources, we somehow left a gap in education and made no real focus on teaching kids how to find valid, credible, useful resources online. The result is our frequent frustration with a generation of kids who will still type in the word "Egypt" and grab the first search result that pops up on Google when studying anything remotely related to the topic.

As they get older, kids often employ the tactic of typing a question into the search bar - "How do I find out about mummies in Egypt?" This actually gives Google a little more to work with - namely the word "mummies", but this additional boost is thwarted because the search is in the form of a question. Top results yield links to Answers.com, YahooAnswers, and other equally useless (academically speaking) results. Anyone - you, me, a 2nd grader, or a Kardashian, can post an answer on these sites. True the internet is becoming more semantic all the time, but we are far from there yet, and these kinds of searches are almost always a waste of time.

The real answer? SPEND TIME teaching your kids the digital literacy skill of proper searching. It's never too early for them to learn. Are they old enough to learn to use a dictionary or an encyclopedia? That's the time! Here are the levels that need to be taught:

1. It begins as a critical thinking and language skill - narrowing their focus to a specific idea, and then selecting the few key terms and some alternatives that will help them.
2. Utilizing the various "search help" tools that many search engines offer - Google offers the ability for kids to narrow the search by time, type (images, news, dictionary, reading level), and also offers a nice advanced search tool. Some simple Boolean tools, such as +, "and", and - are still extremely useful to know.
3. Critically sorting through the results - is the top result always the best? Often the answer is no. Google sorts its results based on the amount of hits a URL gets and sorts that way. It's not so much academic as it is a popularity contest. Remember, Google can't think (yet), so it's still up to us to make the determination about what will be useful. Taking some time to teach kids about credible resources, scholastic research-based resources, and most importantly valid resources, is a worthwhile and necessary exercise. As an example, my students blog, usually about academic topics they are studying in school. If one of my students posts a movie of their re-enactment of Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address, their post will likely pop up in any given search about Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address. Are they a valid scholastic resource? Are they experts? 'nuff said.
4. Sometimes, supply your kids with the internet resources you want them to use. If your focus is on finding the information within a given resource, maybe it's not necessary to always pile on the extra step of searching for the resource - especially if this is still a skill they struggle with. You can go old school and write the links on the board, or the easier route of pasting or embedding the links into your class webpage. Either way, this practice actually sets a bar for students - they become more accustomed to the type, format, and quality of resource that is valid for academic research. Obviously, they need to learn and use search skills, but this "calibration" every once in awhile is actually a good thing for setting expectations.

Here are some links that offer some resources for teachers trying to teach students the digital literacies involved with searching.

How to Spot a Fake Website
Great Tech Expectations: What Should Elementary Students be Able to do and When?
Boolify Project: An Educational Boolean Web Search Tool (very visual)
Boolean Searching on the Internet
Rockwell Schrock's Boolean Machine
Web Search Strategies in Plain English
KidRex - a Kid Safe Search Engine

No Excuses for not learning something new!

2011-11-19T10:52:00.000-08:00

The "No Excuse List" is a simple page with a list of not-too-many links (I like that) of some great resources for learning. Links include some of the best resources out there right now in the areas of academics, music, programming, how-to/DIY, languages, and other links. If you want access to some great resources for building your own knowledge, adding to your own units or lessons, or resource links for your students, this site has narrowed the field to a manageable browsing list.

I am always leary of sites that include things like "The Top 100" of anything - it's just too much to look through all at once! I like this list because it is not too long, and has done a pretty good job of selecting some of the top credible sites that are out there right now.

Want to learn more? There's No Excuse now!

Quick Check-in with the Iditarod

2011-03-08T20:04:00.001-08:00

I'm sure it has not escaped anyone's notice in Alaska that the Iditarod has begun. As of my last check, most of the leading racers were out of Nicolai, while the leader, Martin Buser is out of McGrath. I know there are many teachers who do big, involved units of study and projects on the Iditarod, while others do some parallel activities like keeping maps, or doing some readings.

Those teachers doing the big stuff are already well aware of the Official Site of the Iditarod. For those of you who'd like to give your students some peeks into the race and treat it more along the lines of current events, the Official Site of the Iditarod is great. Simple to navigate, with a list of short, relevant videos right on the front page, as well as current race standings - this page can give your classes some quick but exciting insight into the most famous sled dog race in the world!

Just plug your projector or SmartBoard in and bring your class instantly to all the excitement!

Want more depth? If students get interested, there are plenty of great links within the site for even more information about the race and the racers!

Download and/or Convert Video

2011-03-06T12:17:00.000-08:00

Recently in our district, teachers were given access to video channels. Since we don't have a lot of bandwidth in our schools, streaming is not recommended as it will bog down the system for all, and it will also probably be a very frustrating experience if you are trying to stream video for students.

It is recommended that if teachers find video they want to use that they download it to their computers and then share it with their students via their desired medium.

A couple of easy sites for downloading video:
1. KeepVid - this site is super simple - Find your video, copy the URL into the space at the top of their page, hit the "download" button. It may take a couple of minutes depending on the size of your video, but very soon it will be on your computer.

2. Zamzar - still easy, but an extra step or two - copy the URL of your video into the space they give, BUT then you can choose the file format you want (you many want only the audio from a video - so convert it to an MP3 file) or any of the many video formats such as wmv, mp4, mov, flv, or whatever your particular needs are. Zamzar will convert it and send it to your email. From there you click the link they send and it will download to your computer. Besides being a good site to download videos, Zamzar is also a handy file converter.

Showing video to students

Of course the simplest way to do this is to project it on your screen or IWB for the whole class. But what if you want to "personalize" the video? Ideally we can easily give students different videos, allow students the ability to stop, start, and replay the video to suit their needs. There are a number of options for doing this - here are a few easy ones;

1. Drag the video clip into a Pages document with some questions or directions and distribute it to students via a thumb drive, Remote Desktop, or emai (all AGSD teacher Macs come loaded with Pages - if student or school Macs for some reason don't have it ask Jason. It can be loaded easily).
2. Load the video to an iPod Nano, or an iPod Touch for individual use.
3. Upload the video to your class blog or wiki site allowing students access to it anytime and anywhere.

Store all of your video downloads in your iTunes - simply open iTunes and drag your new video to it. iTunes will store it into your "movies" library.

Most of the time we just need some movies that are a few minutes long that enhance or reiterate our lessons, and that will help the students. Don't forget that any videos you or your students create can also be added to your movie library!

The Technology is Not the Thing

2011-03-05T08:27:00.000-08:00

I recently entered a competition in which I submitted some lesson plans that use technology. The idea was that a certain number of the "best" lessons would earn a significant sum of money for their school to spend on technology. I don't usually get into these things, but the prize was grand enough that it definitely seemed worth the hour or two it would take to sort through some old lessons and upload them to the contest site. I obviously use technology a lot in my classes, and have a ton of lessons to draw from - so there was nothing new I would have to create. My thinking was, I'd submit 10 of what I considered my most successful lessons. Not my flashiest lessons, just my most successful. I wasn't sure if I'd win - I knew that was a crap shoot.

I didn't win.

The winners submitted lessons that ultimately involved big video productions of what can only be described as technology orgies. The winning entries had a mammoth project theme. There was a teacher at the front of the room doing amazing magic on an interactive white board, students were doing things on the whiteboard, students were doing things on their computers, they were videoing each other, they were working together on the laptops, they were interviewing each other with podcasting mics, and it was all put together in a beautifully edited iMovie production complete with music and transitions so that the contest judges could see all this exciting classroom action. It was definitely awesome stuff.

It did not escape my notice that the winning lessons were videos typical of the kind of lessons that are often presented to teachers as the "ideal" or model of what technology in the classroom should look like. No wonder some are afraid - those videos made me afraid!

I wasn't surprised that I didn't win - I just had my fingers crossed anyway. The real surprise to me was the feedback I got on the lessons I submitted. Here is the gist of those comments;
"The students are not learning about the technology." "You do not say how the use of technology in this lesson creates learning." "This lesson could have been taught without technology."
...and so on -ish.

The first thing I realized was that I guess I could have explained some things more carefully in the plans I submitted - I just submitted the plans as I had originally written them for myself.

But the more important thing I realized was that we are entering a phase with technology in instruction where many teachers who have been using it for awhile have integrated it into their teaching style. It's apparent to me that I have done this.

In my classroom, the technology is not the thing. Make no mistake, my students use technology every single day - I teach in a 1:1 school. They use Web 2.0 tools to create content about what they are learning in class. The make short videos of what they have learned and post them to teach their classmates a quick lesson. They routinely share Google Docs online with classmates to work collaboratively. They email and chat online with me outside of school about assignments. They blog. They write with embedded links to enhance and deepen their work. They keep their school work organized by using digital portfolios. They have an expectation that I will bring experts into the room through video and Skype. And so on.

However, my students don't come into my classroom every day saying, "Yay - we get to work on a big project!" I like projects, and sometimes we do projects. But in my classroom, the content - the learning is the thing. The technology just helps us to do that a lot better for every student.

I like the analogy of classroom technology and cell phones. Our cell phones are not some golden toy (unless we are using them to kill time in an airport playing games on them). We need them. We keep calendars on them, we keep notes on them, and - by the way - we communicate with them. Many of us have incorporated them into our lives to the point that we cannot imagine going without them. Of course we could, but our life would be missing some connections, some organization, and some powerful and useful tools that we had become accustomed to having at our fingertips, in our purses and pockets.

Remember your first cellphone? Some people are still viewing technology in the classroom with the same kind of awe and wonder. The reality is, cell phones are now ubiquitous. But much of the perception of classroom technology is still in the "first cell phone" phase.

60 Sites

2011-02-22T16:49:00.000-08:00

I recently did a fun presentation at the ASTE Conference (Alaska Society of Technology in Education). Usually when I do these it is more of a "how to". Those are fine and I like to share share share, but this year I decided to do something fun. Teachers, including myself, like good resources. At any kind of conference, we love those little sessions where someone is just giving us some straight up good resources - it's like free candy. That's what I tried to do this year in my section called "60 Sites in 60 minutes" - it was the free candy session. Here is the link to the wiki I put up for the sites - all links are embedded. Enjoy!

60 Sites in 60 Minutes

Simple, virtual, booklets for your students to create

2010-10-25T07:34:00.000-07:00

Simplebooklets is a great site in which you can create any type of virtual booklet. It's easy to insert text, pictures (maps, graphs,etc), sound, and video. Although the booklets are simple to make, they have a very sophisticated look to them.

Simplebooklets reminds me of Glogster - a virtual poster app, but it's much, well...simpler! Also, it loads and runs much much faster than Glogster.

The booklets are easily embedded into a blog or a wiki, and have the little tab in the upper corners for easy page turning by the users.

For those of you looking for students to make great visual presentations using posters, slideshows, or books, Simplebooklets is an easy way to go. Students will love the ease, and also love how creative they can be!

Take a look at this book I embedded from the Simplebooklets site.

The Classroom Camera

2010-10-03T08:05:00.000-07:00

Although your classroom may be tech-poor, chances are you can gain access to at least 1 digital camera - even if it is your own - even if it's just a cell phone camera! Although more would make certain things a little easier, one is really all you need to do a lots of great things! There are some activities that can be done as a class and the teacher takes the pictures, and some where you could group the students and then easily stagger their picture taking time. What kinds of great things can you do? The things that make learning more personal, engaging, and visual for your students. So for the purposes of this blog (the need to get tech ideas in a sec), we'll keep our list short.

1. Visualize the spelling/vocabulary list for the week. For elementary students, this can be a fast but fun activity. Put the list of words up and talk about them a little. You can ask the students to show what a word means through some kind of pose, use of props or other creative means. Take a picture! Do that for all of the words on the list. This picture activity not only visually documents the students' interpretation of the words, but the act of "acting out" or visualizing the meaning of the words is an activity that will help the students to better learn the words. You can print out the pictures and post them by the list, or load them into a simple PowerPoint that your run on your overhead projector whenever you do a review of the words. Students can see the pictures and then use their own paper or mini dry erase boards to guess and spell the words. Lots of fun - especially when the students themselves are in the pictures!

2. For older students, split up a word list - and give a pair or threesome of students their word group. Let them take the camera and get a shot of their own interpretation of the words (they will have to discover the definitions on their own). Either print the pictures or project them. Have other students guess what the word is - or have the students who took the picture give clues or describe the meanings. This often becomes a contest about creativity among the students - figuring out the most interesting way to interpret a word visually.

3. Picture scavenger hunts - especially useful when teaching an abstract concept, like "democracy". Students can use the camera to set up a scene that is meant to capture a key concept like equality, majority rule with minority rights, etc. This is a great way to teach students to think metaphorically as well, and modeling for them ways that a simple visual image can convey many ideas without being literal.

4. Story board planning - really fun for group stories! Set up a story board for students to work with (individuals or groups could easily do this). Have students plan their plot, characters, and scenes by using photographs. The story boards can be digital - in Comic Life (installed on all teacher Macs), or even on a simple slide show like PowerPoint, or Google Presentations. The story boards could also just be a large chart of paper - pictures could be printed in black and white and tacked up onto the story board. Students can visualize points of plot, characters, and order. There are also tons of great online digital storytelling tools if you want to go that route, like Storybird, Picture Book Maker, or Kerpoof, just to name a few.

5. Summarizing - learning to summarize the key points of a story or piece of information is an important skill for students. Summarizing using a picture or two can help more visual students hone this skill. After reading a chapter in a book or a section or scene in a story, ask the students to come up with an idea for a scene that would capture the essence of the message.

The great thing about using photos this way in the classroom is that you can have a lot of fun discussions modeling how pictures can tell many stories. Put together a simple PowerPoint for the projector and fill it just with images that you can discuss with the students. Google Images, Flickr, and Picasa are fantastic sources of crowd-sourced pictures that you can easily narrow down by category. Select a set that you think would make for a great discussion (depending on what you are teaching - i.e. summarizing, metaphorical representations) and just drag those photos to your slide show - no need to type any text. Or, you can even snap your own photos of people and places the kids know around town or the school for the same effect. This makes even a modeling lesson engaging and lively!

The Google Classroom

2010-09-25T07:57:00.000-07:00

Whew - it's been awhile since I've posted 'round these here parts, but I'm back with more EdTechSec info! As always, I'd like to remind you to just scroll through old entries and the archives - you'll surely find something useful!

So - Google! Yes, Google is "The Man" and Google is taking over the world, but this is a case where world domination is actually working for some of us. Google has become like our favorite superstore - everything under one roof. That's pretty handy - having a Gmail address gives you access to everything they've got!

Google Classroom is a nice little wiki set up to give you a quick rundown of Google's apps that work great in the classroom.

Of course we all know about Google Earth, but there are lots of other useful classroom goodies as well. The Google Classroom wiki gives a simple rundown of only the apps that have really proven useful in classrooms - not the whole Google bag of tricks. It's descriptions are pretty simple. When you click on one, for example Google Earth, it will take you to another wiki page where it explains some suggestions for ways to use the tool in class. You are given just a couple of links that will help you get it, and some nice short video tutorials telling how to get started with it.

So rather than having to navigate all of Google's vastness, Google Classroom keeps things nice and tidy - a great time saver for teachers wanting to know more about using Google in the classroom, but have felt like they just don't have the time to tackle it all.

Of the 18 tools listed on Google Classroom, I personally use 8 of them pretty regularly with my students - and there 3 more that I've used for myself.

Google is "the Man" for a reason! I'm a lifelong fan (until they start charging!)

So many cross-curricular resources in one spot!

2010-01-06T22:28:00.000-08:00

No matter what you teach, if you are looking for a lesson or a unit for a particular concept, chances are Curriki will have something you can use.

Curriki is a collaborative website containing tons of curriculum for math, language arts, science, and social studies.

If you're a giver, you can contribute lessons or units you've created to Curriki. The site definitely depends on the givers out there to amass the wealth of resources they have.

If you're more of a taker, you'll find plenty of good quality lessons and units here. I used parts of several units from Curriki this year for some history lessons on the spread of Islam. I was able to download the background info I needed to teach some lessons, and also some great individualized projects to go with it that were created by a contributing teacher. They were so good I wrote him a thank-you note/comment on the site!

If you're both a giver and a taker, then you'll love the collaboration aspect of this site. It's possible for you to work with one or more teachers in your content area to contribute materials and create a joint lesson or unit!

Becoming a member of Curriki is simple - just the usual name and email information. I can tell you from personal experience they almost never bug you with info or updates. I've gotten maybe 2 emails from them since I first joined last August.

I can tell you that the site is really easy to navigate, and more new materials are added all the time!

Wordle for All!

2009-12-02T22:20:00.000-08:00

Wordle is one of those cool applications that is so simple that at first glance you might not think it has much use in your classroom beyond making something interesting looking. I'll admit that it's a tool I've kept on the back burner since last year, only using it a few times. Every time I get into it and toy with it I wish I was spending more time with it in class - it has so many possibilities! It's definitely one of the simplest, yet most versatile tools available on the web right now.

Here is a Wordle I made by pasting in the Lewis Carroll poem "Jabberwocky".

What is Wordle? Wordle is simply a word "cloud" tool - you copy text into it and it arranges the words into a cloud - usually prioritizing by frequency of text if applicable. It then creates a beautiful word cloud that is visually interesting - and telling - depending on what you are looking for!

I've used Wordle several times in my French class, and find it to be a nice tool for working with new vocabulary.

Last year when I was teaching 3rd grade I used to put my spelling lists on a Wordle each week and print out several copies. I'd hang them around the room for the kids to find - they enjoyed seeing their word lists in this interesting display, and used it as a kind of puzzle to find their words.

Here is an example of a Wordle I made with a 3rd grade weekly vocabulary list.

So, there have been a lot of other ideas I'd like to try with Wordle, and as I write this post I've got a few new things churning around in my brain!

Using Wordle: One thing I do know for a fact is that Wordle couldn't be easier to use. At the Wordle home page, hit "create". Then you just type or paste in your text into the box and hit "go". It gives a pretty immediate result - and if it's not quite what you're looking for, or you just want to play around a little, just keep hitting the "randomize" button at the bottom to get different styles of "clouds". Or you can edit it yourself for font, layout, and color.

Tons of Wordle Ideas for K-12: What I'm going to give you now is a couple of links, each with a bonanza of great ideas other educators have put together for Wordle. Hope you find something you can use - quite a few of these are very appealing to me! These resources will give any k-12 teacher an idea for using Wordle in their classroom!

Forty-Three Interesting Ways to Use Wordle in the Classroom

Wordle Ideas

Looking for some quick and easy projects before Christmas? Wordle makes fantastic Christmas cards! Have your students write a holiday poem, jot down their favorite holiday memory, or just make a list of everything they associate with the season - paste them in to Wordle and ...ta da! - festive card or decoration!

Can you guess what famous Christmas poem I've "Wordled" here?

Student Blogging - starting discussions

2009-11-23T20:19:00.000-08:00

My lucky middle school students! Even though they are new bloggers this year, they have had the good luck of some early (and timely) traffic to their blogs!

For those of you who may not know, I use Twitter, and every once in awhile I put out a "tweet" asking other educators who follow me to check out my student blogs and give me some feedback (my students also like to see the dots pop up on their ClustrMaps). This has generated a lot of good discussion for me - I have had several teachers contact me to ask questions about my students' blogs, and also make comments and suggestions about them.

Recently, I have had several emails from educators in the U.S. and Australia wondering why there were so few comments on my students' blogs. Excellent question, and one I have been wrangling with for awhile now.

Up until recently, most of my work with the student blogs has been technical in nature - I want the kids to learn how to embed videos, upload pictures, copy code, etc.

After that, I want to give them varieties of applications to know better - that way they can make choices about which kind of application (video, slideshow, animation, mock interview, virtual tour, etc) would be the most effective at getting across their information with the style and voice they are trying to project.

But the teachers giving me feedback are absolutely right, and their questions couldn't be more timely for me AND my students. Time to start commenting!

When I explain the purpose of blogs to my students I use the example of a nice poster with pasted on pictures and information about the Mughal Empire hung up on my bulletin board. I ask them if it looks good - they agree it does. I ask them if they have looked at it closely or read it - they admit they have not. I ask them if they have any comments or questions about it - no, not really. I ask who will see this poster - easy, everyone in this classroom. I ask who will give feedback on the poster - also easy, just me. I ask them what will happen to this poster after the unit is over - they know it will come down and never be seen again - we are done looking at it and any possibilities of talking about it are definitely over. I ask them if they would like to have some kind of discussion if there were any new or interesting information on the poster - they think maybe they would. I ask them how that discussion would take place - not sure.

Then I remind them, that with a blog, the answers to these questions are much much different. They know that from their own experiences with blogs this year. The questions we need to focus on now are the questions about feedback and discussion. Because a good blog can be a conversation starter.

To that end, the students are now beginning to practice commenting. We are starting in what I call a "forced" situation - they are required to comment on two other student blogs each week. Comments must be somewhat substantive and related to the post. They can be observations or questions about the content itself, or the technical aspect of the post. There was a little groaning initially. I feel their pain on that - I really hate taking a class where a requirement is a forced posting on a blog or ning. I don't feel like it's authentic conversation - not at all like when I read a blog that inspires me to comment or join in the discussion. However, we all have to start somewhere. I have a feeling that students will begin to enjoy seeing the comments about their work from their peers.

When they become a little more used to putting it "out there", we'll begin reading other blogs and entering into those conversations. As I said at the beginning of the post, one real piece of luck my students have had is getting an immediate audience, and knowing it. Although the excitement has worn off, that awareness of audience has not - it gives them confidence, and helps them to self-assess their posted work very critically. I think the commenting aspect will take that a few steps further.

What do you think? For those of you who run student blogs, how do you move students from a strictly presentation mode to a more participatory conversation mode?

If you have time, check out the posts and comments on my students' blogs (the links to them are on the right side of my class blog). What do you think? Are they moving in the right direction?
For those of you thinking about beginning student blogs - this is a bridge you will eventually have to cross - some planning ahead would be useful!

Thoughts and ideas about student blogging and commenting are most welcome!

Internet4Classrooms is a wealth of resources

2009-11-19T21:18:00.001-08:00

There may have been a few of you who have already happened across this fabulous site. Internet4Classrooms is definitely worth your time to check out! You can choose your grade level, choose your subject area, and even choose your focus of study and you will find a mind boggling amount of great resources.

What makes the resources on Internet4Classrooms great? One - it is easy to narrow down your choices to find what you want. Two - all of the resources listed are usually visual and interactive in nature - you won't just find some web page full of text. There are web quests, explorations, and all kinds of interactive activities for all grade levels to let students really explore a particular strand of content. Their symbols tell you quickly what kind of resource link you're looking at.

Just take a second to go to Internet4Classrooms and see what they've got!

Class Blog or Class Wiki?

2009-11-04T20:57:00.000-08:00

For people who are just deciding to get something set up for their classes, a big question seems to be blog or wiki? And of course my answer is - "depends"!

I'll try to give you some points to think about that may narrow your decision making process so that you can get something that will work for you. So, here are some questions to consider...

1. Who is your primary audience for this site? I will say that if your primary audience is parents - my opinion is that a blog is the way to go. They read just like a newsletter, they are easy to navigate, and the posts show in dated order, with the most recent at the top. People can easily navigate back to earlier posts, and the information never goes away, it is just archived. Blogs can host links, pictures, videos, and other embedded programs, and they are very easy to use. You can also have "guest bloggers" (like students) to get a little student voice. Side bars are handy for helpful links and other widgets like polls.

If your primary audience is students, then next question...

2. Will the site be used for news updates for students? If the site will just be used for news updates, like a "scrapbook" showing highlights of student work (articles, student pieces, videos, pictures, etc.) then I still think a blog is probably the way to go - same reasons as for question #1.

If you do not want to run a general student "bulletin board", then next quesion...

3. Will the site be used for regularly posted class information? Do you just want a place to post the homework assignment? Your lesson plan? One or two important links students will need for an activity? If this is the case, a basic blog will still do the trick. Daily small doses of information in the form of text or links would work nicely in a blog. Students could easily navigate back to previous days, or access assignment or class information when they are absent.

4. Do you want to host a class (or classes) online - posting assignments, project outlines, class calendars, syllabus, links, places to categorize units of study, classes, and student work? Definitely go wiki. Wikis are great in their versatility. They can work like a blog, but work great as a way to categorize and add to a growing body of information for your students. You can give your students access to certain parts of a wiki too if you want - then they can post information as well.

Of course my answers are not the RIGHT answers - many other people have some pretty creative ideas for ways to use these. I would suggest that if you are just beginning with this (and you are a middle or high school teacher) that you pick one class to start with and go through the decision making process I have just outlined. As your comfort level grows, expand your class, or add more classes.

I personally use a combination of blogs and wikis for each of my 6 classes. I use a blog as my "portal". This is a central place that all of my students in all of my classes go. The blog serves as a general newsletter - mostly for students, but parents may enjoy the "lite" news on there as well. I try to get lots of pictures of the kids on there - students and parents like to see that. I use the side bar on that page for links to each of my class wikis (I host a wiki page for each of my 6 classes). I also use the sidebar of the blog to post links to all of the student blog pages. The blog is a central page where all of my students can get to anything they need.

Each of my class wikis is like a growing online "textbook" for that particular course. I have a main introduction page, then a page for the class calendar, and different categories - an assignment page, and different pages for different units of study.

That works for me - I would definitely suggest you use the guiding questions I have posted above to find your starting point and go from there.

You've made the decision - now what?
Two good free and easy blogging platforms I could suggest are Blogger and WordPress. I have used both, although I am more familiar with Blogger (this blog is hosted by Blogger).

I highly recommend Wikispaces for a super-easy wiki. They are simple to set up and very easy and versatile. I have found them to be a very dependable wiki host.

Using Timelines

2009-10-27T20:54:00.000-07:00

Teaching kids the proper way to make time lines is like a rite of passage for history teachers. Choosing what increments of time you'll use, how those will be represented (inches? centimeters?) and the trial and error. Sometimes it seems like the whole point of the lesson - to see when events occurred relative to other events, to create a custom time line, or to analyze events - gets lost in what you never intended to be a weak math/art activity. And let's face it - when they're done, they are not too exciting.

Internet to the rescue! Thankfully there are now some easy time line tools that are very accessible on the web, easy for kids to use, and you get what you want - the results for kids to look at, compare, and analyze. Best of all, kids can really bring some creativity to the table with these time lines. They have the opportunity to make sense of historical events in ways they can see, hear, and explain to others. If they made some new connections, or have some new theories, these tools are the ultimate way for them to express this new learning.

But where will they put these beautiful new time lines? Who will see them? Easy - more and more of you are building class blogs and wikis (haven't done this yet? Ask me how and I can help you set one up in less than 5 minutes), so that's where these beauties will go. If your students have their own blogs, they can go right there. One thing you will NOT end up with is a whole bunch of same-same generic time lines. All of them will be unique interpretations of a particular student's understanding and connections of that time.

Here is a time line tool called TimeRime. TimeRime is a nice "starter" time line, in that it looks a lot like what we expect time lines to look like - a line with spaced out increments. BUT TimeRime brings more to the table, like the ability to add pictures and pop-out information. Here's an example of a time line made on TimeRime about the history of immigration (scroll along the bottom)...

Xtimeline is another fun time line tool that is similar to TimeRime - kids can incorporate images and more pop-up information into their time line. A cool feature of xtimeline is viewing it as a scrolling time line by moving the cursor along the bottom - when you click on an event a slide can pop up with more information and pictures. This is an xtimeline of the history of Coca Cola (scroll along the bottom)...

Finally, the rock star of online time line tools - Capzles! Capzles is by far the most creative of the 3 tools presented in this post. Students can choose a background for their time line, build the time line with information, pictures, and NARRATION! Yes - that's what I said - students can record music, text, or their very own voices to guide and narrate this slideshow/timeline. Here's a great one about Paul Revere - it is the history of events in Boston involving Paul Revere. The background is an old map of the area, and the time line pictures and events are guided by a voice narration reading of "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere". Soooooo many possibilities with this! (Click HERE to see this one).

So let's change up those old boring time lines - make them what we always intended them to be - a learning tool created by students that presents their unique point of view of a history.

A real teleprompter - just like they use on the news!

2009-10-20T21:13:00.000-07:00

How much do you hate to have students do quick skits, role plays, mock interviews, etc. (live or filmed) when your only options are to have them memorize the script, or read it from a piece of paper? I hate it A LOT! It takes all the hard work that has gone into the research and creativity and made it look chintzy, not well thought out, and unprepared.

Cue Prompter is a nice little web application where students can quite easily type scripts into the prompter (no registration necessary, just go and start using). They can set the size of the script, the speed at which it scrolls, and even the color - white print, black background or vice versa. It turns their computer into a professional teleprompter machine! It is great for programs and presentations, but I have been using the heck out of it for all things we video.

My geography class recently filmed some mock interviews about social issues in Canada. A lot of research and planning had to go into these, as well as careful script writing. Piling on a requirement to memorize the interview would have added an unnecessary difficulty. The students used Cue Prompter and had some very smooth looking interviews! They are starting to post these on their class blogs - check out some of the 8th grade blogs (right side of the page, scroll down a little) to see these "professional" interviews.

Any time you are having students present short monologues, presentations, mock interviews, or any other video projects, Cue Prompter erases a lot of speaking stress for students!

Professional Development - A "How To" manual for leaner meaner times

2009-10-14T09:06:00.000-07:00

Many teachers long for the "good old days" when Alaska school districts were flush with cash. They were truly good old days - no one had to fund raise for anything, teachers had thousands to spend on classroom supplies without spending a dime of their own money, and there were plenty of perks too.

One of those perks that many long for was "the conference". Every year, Alaska districts would send teams of teachers to lots of conferences - all expenses paid - and we could do fun things like listen to textbook companies show us fun kits and manipulatives, or get training in an exciting new classroom strategy that we were under absolutely no obligation to use or even tell anyone about once we got back to our home districts and classrooms.

And now, those days are long gone.

Now, conferences are not often "offered". Those that are (Dept. of Ed.) don't even remotely resemble those of the past - sessions on RTI, state standards, SBA's, GLE's, accountability systems, data-driven instruction, and curriculum alignment have replaced most of the "fun" stuff.

Now, much of our traditional professional development takes place in-district during our required inservice days, often utilizing the expertise of "in house" employees - which goes over like a lead balloon with some because everyone knows that no one is an expert at anything until they are 50 miles from home, and if it takes place at home it is somehow not worthwhile.

But there is hope - if you truly want to develop as a professional and improve your practice, and you want that training to come somewhere other than in-house - there are more alternatives and opportunities than ever before, even in these leaner meaner times. First however, you will have to let go of the notion that "good training" can only take place on a fully funded district junket.

Let's take a look at the standard conferences that are offered each year, such as the State Literacy Conference, or various smaller conferences held by the Science Consortium, the Writing Consortium, or the Math Consortium. The easiest way to become apprised of what these organizations have to offer is to join them. Some require a membership fee - usually nominal, and almost all would like you to attend their monthly meetings via teleconference. If you are willing to put in the effort on that front, you are usually well aware when they have conferences coming up, and you know what they have to offer. Almost all of these organizations provide some kinds of opportunities for you to attend their conferences at their expense if you attend a series of their workshops, write a series of lesson plans, participate in grant work, or are willing to work on some of their other in-house development projects.

Let's talk about membership in outside professional organizations. Whatever your area of specialty, certification, content or interest, I guarantee that there is a professional educational organization out there dedicated to your interests. Step 1 - join them. Yes - there is often a yearly membership fee required which pays for their publications and their professional development offerings, which is what you really want. These organizations always have national conferences, which are usually out of our reach unless we pay our own way. However, many of them also have state affiliates, which you can easily take part in and offer a variety opportunities for you to attend conferences in state which they will fully or partially pay for. Step 2 - take advantage of what they offer you, no matter what form it comes in.

A professional development delivery that many state, national and international ed. organizations are adopting is webinars. Webinars are cheaper and easier for organizations to present, and they can easily adapt to the needs of more members this way than by hosting only a few big expensive conferences. Webinars are widely available, and you often don't have to be a member of the presenting organization to attend. If you are a member, the webinars are usually available to you at a reduced cost or free. If you are not a member, they may cost a little money. They are often hosted by recognized experts in the field, and attended by a cohort of teachers with your same interests across the nation. You often have the opportunity to interact live with the presenters and other teachers participating. I have attended several excellent professional development webinars delivered by NCTE, ASDN, and ASCD.

Last of all, if your vision of "Professional Development" only narrowly includes a conference (complete with a keynote speaker and a nice buffet lunch) in another town during the school year, then perhaps it is time to widen your perspective, or rethink what you really mean when you say "I want professional development". Professional development is something teachers must be empowered to get for themselves when they need it. This can include the traditional conference, but these days it more realistically will include professional memberships, teleconferences, webinars, professional reading (books, magazines, online publications), reading groups, online networking with others through established ed. networks, educational blogs, Twitter, etc., and even what you can learn from collaborating with the person right next door to you.

Here is a short list (I'm leaving out a lot) of professional organizations and links - some right here in our state, some national, some international - all excellent sources of professional development in many forms.

Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development - ASCD
Alaska ASCD (the state affiliate)
Phi Delta Kappan - PDK
Alaska Math Consortium
Alaska Science Consortium
Alaska Statewide Writing Consortium
Alaska State Literacy Association
National Council of Teachers of English - NCTE
International Reading Association - IRA
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics - NCTM
National Science Teachers Association - NSTA
National Council for the Social Studies
Alaska Staff Development Network - ASDN
Alaska Society for Technology in Education - ASTE

Again, this list is SHORT - my apologies for not including more, but I could literally spend hours listing the possible educational organizations to which a teacher can belong and/or seek professional development opportunities. Although you may not be aware of it, many of your colleagues probably have some association with these organizations or others, and have taken advantage of their professional development opportunities. This is a potentially great database of information for teachers to share with each other!

Another great source of information for professional development is professional publications - many of the above associations also publish their own materials and distribute them to members, but there are plenty of other educational publications you can subscribe to in print form or online (usually free). Again, probably more of your colleagues than you might guess probably subscribe to a few - ask!

There really is no shortage of resources if you really want good professional development - it may not come in the package you prefer, and may not be delivered to you unasked for with a ribbon on it, but you have to ask yourself what it is you really want, and then go get it.

Jeopardy Labs - make the boring stuff fun!

2009-10-12T19:21:00.000-07:00

I've blogged about this particular site before, but today I dug out Jeopardy Labs again. There are always times when we need to build some basic background information about something, and let's face it - that's not always exciting - but it's no reason it can't be fun!

My 8th grade World Geography students are studying issues about immigration and will be soon be looking specifically at Canada's long and interesting relationship with immigrants, and how that has shaped their country. That's all fine and good, but before I can get near these larger issues, I first want to be sure my students have some basic knowledge about Canada - provinces, regions, population distributions - that kind of thing.

Jeopardy Labs is one great and easy tool to liven these kinds of studies up. I've included a short two minute video below so that you can see how this worked out.

I wanted to make sure they knew how Jeopardy was played, so I showed a short clip from a Teen Jeopardy show on YouTube - you could also just explain it pretty easily.

I divided the class up into two groups (I had a small class today - if I had a larger class I would have done three or even 4 groups). The groups then used their info from the links and created their own Canada Geography Jeopardy game using Jeopardy Labs. We used an overhead to project the game board. Here's how it went...

As you can see - a basic review exercise was turned on its head! I also posted some highlight clips on my class blog for the students to enjoy.

Shakespearean focus in moviemaking

2009-10-06T19:59:00.000-07:00

I had to hold back tears today from laughing in my 7th grade history class! My students have been experimenting with an online text-to-speech movie making program called xtranormal. This is a gem of a little program - and it's real genius lies in its simplicity.

Xtranormal has some limitations, which are precisely what make it so great. Here are the main points of xtranormal;
1. You can only make a movie with two characters.
2. You can select only from a limited number of "sets" and your movie must take place in just one.
3. Because you type your script, and it is later converted to speech, you must spell everything correctly and not use slang, or the characters just spew gibberish.
4. There are several basic animations and expressions you can use, but there are many actions you cannot incorporate, like running or "big" action - it's mostly talking and small gestures and expressions.

What's so great about all these limitations? They lend themselves to a production that is very Shakespearean in nature. Big action and death must take place off stage - the dialogue has to accomplish the effect. It's limitations force a focus of subject and dialogue - you can't jump from scene to scene, and you can't have a bunch of characters crowding up and confusing the storyline. The limitation of scenes make for a very metaphorical (thus Shakespearean) interpretation of roles or scenarios that are being enacted.

End result? PERFECT for students!

My 7th grade history students have been studying about the cultures of the Ancient Americas - specifically the Aztecs and the Mayans.

After we had done some brainstorming, we came up with some specific scenarios that could have happened historically within those particular cultures. In order to act out these scenarios, students would have to incorporate some specific information they have learned during our studies, and also "get into the heads" of people back in history.

The students then took a scenario and, using xtranormal, wrote a short screenplay in one act in which that scenario was acted out.

I wasn't laughing because they were all so humorous, although some really were. I was mostly just over the top at the range of creative ideas these kids had made into a reality using this technology. Xtranormal is very simple - no student had difficulties with it technically. And although I anticipated students having trouble with the idea of taking the scenario and making it into a worthwhile enactment, there was no problem there either.

As of this afternoon, only two of my 7th graders had embedded these in their blogs, but during the next couple of days the rest will (all of a sudden they have become perfectionists!). Just go to my class blog, and the student blogs are on the right side of the page (for 7th grade just scroll down a little).

Xtranormal is truly a tool for the treasurebox - sooo many possibilities! I will pull this winner out again and again!

Why I love online slide shows for students

2009-10-04T20:25:00.000-07:00

In this day and age when most of us think of slide shows we usually think of PowerPoint. Now PowerPoint has gotten a bad rap lately, and I partly understand why.

Usually when we see a PowerPoint used by adults, it is to show us a very boring bulleted list of information that they READ TO US - even though it's right up there for us to see. They also usually give us handouts of the exact slides we are looking at. Why why why? I don't know, but because of this horrendous abuse of PowerPoint by adults, most of us don't get too excited when we walk into a meeting or a workshop and see that projector set up with a stack of stapled handouts sitting next to it.

Perversely, some of us may THINK that it's a good idea to assign PowerPoint presentations to students because it's a nice alternative to a paper or a report. However, we often don't spend time considering how much time it will take for all students to present these slide show presentations to the class. Worse, if a student has not met the expectations or requirements for their presentation, it can be even worse than sitting through an adult PowerPoint.

I don't mind slide shows as a supplement to a wider project - but there is still the problem of taking up class time with an audience that is less than receptive.

Online slide shows can be a great alternative for students who are presenting information with visuals, text and audio. The really great part about online shows, is that they can be posted to a student's blog. This increases motivation for students to do a better job - as their audience is instantly bigger than just their class. Also, I have found that one thing students love to do is check out their fellow students blogs. This means that for students presenting all types of different information, there is a better chance of it being seen and heard.

Two online tools I use frequently in my classes for online slide shows are SlideShare, and VoiceThread.

With SlideShare, students can use the familiar PowerPoint, then make an MP3 file (a simple podcast) on GarageBand. They upload both to SlideShare and can easily synchronize the audio with the slides. When they are done, they "publish" the show and get an embed code to put the show on their blogs. It's quick and simple.

With VoiceThread, they just need to upload their images from a computer, the internet, or even a thumb drive, and can add the audio right online. VoiceThread has a lot of other capabilities too, but it works quite well as a basic online slide show, and is super simple for students.

On my Weisz Teacher's Blog I have links to my students' blogs on the right side of the page. Most of these blogs are pretty new, but many of the 8th grade blogs and the French class blogs have VoiceThread or SlideShare presentations on them - check them out to see how easily students can share info!

Last year, my 3rd grade class used VoiceThread to make a collaborative slide show of inherited traits that we posted on their class blog. If we had made this just on PowerPoint it would have been viewed exactly one time - by who I don't even know. However, once we put it on the class blog, the students watched it many times as they loved seeing the pictures we took in class and hearing themselves and their classmates narrate it. They remembered the information a lot better after viewing it so many times.

Breaking out of the confines of school - part 1

2009-09-27T23:02:00.000-07:00

One intriguing aspect of using technology in education for me, is how we can use it to break down the walls - so to speak. By this I mean to go beyond the confines of the brick and mortar building - it's 8:30 start time and 2:45 finish time, and it's 50 minute classes.

To me, these confines have always smacked down strict limits on not only what our kids learn, but when and where they learn it. If you really think about it, it seems ludicrous to think that a 7th grader will be at the optimal moment to learn history between 12N and 12:49pm, and that they will actually learn all that is planned in the lesson within that exact time limit, and in that precise place.

That is what I love about technology - the possibilities it opens up for time, space, content, and use. Technology is one way that can provide for students the opportunity to learn at any time, and on their own time. They are not restricted to trying to learn it within a 50 minute class period, and only with the specific textbook they are issued by the school, and only by reading that textbook, or listening to the teacher talk about what's in the textbook.

So to that end, I'm going to spend more time on this blog discussing the idea of breaking out of our brick and mortar confines. One way I'm making a purposeful effort to do this during this school year is with the student Gmail accounts and GoogleChat. As I've blogged about previously, I've set up all of our middle school students in our 1:1 program with Gmail and added the requirement that they check it every day. So for my part, I have made it a point to send them email every day. I usually do this in the form of a group email to the classes where I remind them about an upcoming quiz, or there have been a couple of times when I have sent out some questions like, "What do you think of our seating arrangement in class?" I want to get them used to the idea that we can have learning discussions outside the physical confines they are used to - to the idea that learning can take place any time and anywhere.

I often send emails to individual students initiating discussion on what to do about improving a grade, finding more resources for a project, or what they are further interested in studying in class. These emails have generated a lot of good conversation. Initially, a few were a little hesitant about communicating with me this way, but I was pleasantly surprised to find how many of them were just bursting to talk outside of class! And they actually wanted to talk about things we we are doing in class!

Another tool I've made available is GoogleChat. All of these tools come with the caveat that they must be used for school related communications, and that if it is abused, it will have to go away. I'm hoping they keep up their end of the bargain on this, because already GoogleChat is proving to be an even more exciting tool than Gmail! Since I've introduced it, not an evening has gone by in which I haven't spent time chatting with students about classes - questions they have, critical discussion about something we are studying, or even social issues they are dealing with at school. Remember, I'm not talking about high school seniors here - I'm talking about 6th, 7th, and 8th graders - and from my perspective, it's not much of a stretch to imagine this scenario with 4th and 5th graders either!

Now some people might look at the evening stuff as a downside. Teachers have to have a life right? Well I thought about that too, and decided that it was worth the time to really find out what kind of value this communication would have. I've been straightforward with them at the times when I've cut off the chat because I'm spending time with my family, eating dinner, or busy with other things. None have seemed offended by this, and it seems I am right back on chat with them the next evening anyway!

I don't really look at these evening communications as "work" - so far they have been very enjoyable! If I've got the computer open in the evening I'm either doing work - in which case what does it matter if it's chatting with a student or planning a lesson? Or I'm just cruising Facebook or Twitter - and again - chatting with students can be equally as engaging, often times more so when all I'm seeing is how my friends on Facebook are scoring on Farmville or Mafia Wars.

We'll see where this goes, but I'm extremely interested to see what impact this will have on their performance and attitude within the brick-and-mortar confines. Will they really realize that it is only a small part of the picture in their learning? That everything is open to them? I hope so.

Listen to your blog!

2009-09-23T19:46:00.000-07:00

It has occurred to me plenty of times that there are certain students in my classes who may struggle a little to read or understand some of the information I put on my news blog and my class wiki pages. Since my students depend so much on those sites, I've been looking for ways to help them out, just in case the reading is a barrier to their understanding. Of course we discuss much of our content and ideas in class, but when a student is working with the material outside of my class, the material should still be accessible to them.

So to that end I've been looking through a lot of different text-to-speech players to see what I can use on my main blog and on my individual class wikis. Earlier this week I came up with two solutions.

Solution #1. For the main class blog page, I've installed Odiogo. Odiogo is a "media-shifting" technology that transforms the text on my blog into a high quality, almost human sounding voice that reads the text of my posts to the students. This couldn't have been easier to install - all I had to do was put the url address of my class blog on the site and viola! When parents or students go to my class blog they can just click the "listen now" button and a very nice human-like voice reads my blog post!

Solution #2. Odiogo is a beautiful technology for blogs, but it doesn't work on wikis, so I had to find another alternative. I ended up using a little text-to-speech editor I found last year and posted about called itcansay. Itcansay is very simple text-to-speech technology which was originally created for ESL students. Simply copy and paste the text you want read into the box on the page, click "read it" and you hear a very computer-sounding voice (not as nice as Odiogo) read the text that was pasted in. There are several other good text-to-speech sites, but what I liked about itcansay is that there are not a lot of bells, whistles, or distractions for my middle school students.

*note - although the note on their site says conversion may take a few minutes, I have not found this to be true - conversion takes only a few seconds at most.

So all I did was put itcansay on each of my class wikipages as a link that will open in another window. I showed the students how it worked by having them copy and paste things into it like some directions I wrote, some text from another link I put on the wiki, and even a question I wrote into a Googleform on their assignment. Now they can always have itcansay open in another tab, ready and available should they need to listen to some text as they are studying.

Text-to-speech in class can be a little distracting, so we have invested in $2/pair earbuds for each class. I put each set of earbuds in a baggie with the students names on them, and keep a basket for each class at the back of my room. The kids get them at the beginning of class if they wish and keep one earbud in to "hear" text if they need to and one earbud out so they can hear me.

Right now about 1/3 of the students in my classes regularly use the earbuds and the text-to-speech tools, which is enough to make me glad I installed them!

iGoogle, You Google, We All Google!

2009-09-21T20:25:00.000-07:00

Today marked the final day of setting up iGoogle pages for the middle school students! All of the students now have Gmail accounts (we have the passwords) which of course gives them access to one of the most powerful free web tools available.

In our school we have a 1:1 program for our middle school students, but setting up an iGoogle page is a pretty handy thing even for students who don't tote around their own laptops all the time. If you have some "resident" computers in your classroom that the students can access, it's still pretty worthwhile to have students create their own iGoogle pages.

I consider iGoogle pages to be the equivalent of a digital locker. Students can pick their own theme (and change it about a million times before that gets old). They can also pick their gadgets that suit their fancy. So far this year, I've seen the total sports page with a sports theme and plenty of sports feed gadgets and sports related game gadgets. I've also seen the "monster lover's page" with some relatively weird theme (they have to be appropriate), strange quotes feeds, and "monster of the day" images! This is the great thing about the iGoogle page and the reasons why students LOVE them. They are totally personal - finding their identity is a big part of a teenager's life, so an iGoogle page can say a lot about who they are, which is great for them as they are constantly looking for an outlet for this!

What's in it for teachers you ask? Well, it's a good opportunity for us to get our own interests in. I have several gadgets I require students to have. One is a gadget that links to my class blog page and our class wiki sites. Another is their gmail gadget so they can always see their inbox. Right now I have had them all put a to-do list gadget on the page as well. Coming very soon, they will also be required to have a Delicious (bookmarking) gadget, and a gadget for their Google Calendar. All of the gadgets I (and their other teachers) require MUST be above the fold so that students can see and access them easily.

Our 1:1 students set these iGoogle pages as their homepages. I do have one class of students not in 1:1. They also have iGoogle pages, and like them very much as they can access their "homepage" from any computer with an internet connection. Even at home, they can access this page and all of their important gadgets.

If you want to get a better idea about how these pages work, try setting one up for yourself first. You just need a Gmail account (easy to set up). Then go to iGoogle and set up your page. It's that easy. I use mine as my homepage too!

Have students create their own descriptive maps

2009-09-16T19:09:00.000-07:00

I have been playing with Scribble Maps off and on throughout the summer with my original plan being that I would somehow use it for map quizzes. Well I haven't been able to do that yet because it always gives the names of places, BUT - I have found a lot of other uses for it in class.

Scribble Maps is a mashup - that just means it's one big application - in this case Google Earth - that is "mashed up" with something else to make another specialized application. I have blogged about these before.

So here is what I am doing with Scribble Maps right now - my 8th grade World Geography students are doing a small project to learn more about economic indicators. After they learned about a few indicators and gathered some data, one of the steps in the project was to represent their data on a map.

Scribble Maps has been great for this - the students use different colors for different countries, they circle a particular country and then use the text box to make buttons for the different economic indicators. They also use the pinpoints to label centers of industry and government within the country, as well as points of recent conflict. It's unbelievably easy to use and there's no registration or sign up for the site.

Their Scribble Maps are just one part of the project - they can then use these maps in an online slide show they are putting together that they will narrate and explain the status of several chosen countries using the economic indicator data they have gathered and illustrated.

Scribble Maps can be saved and emailed, printed, or embedded into a wiki or blog.

Less paper = more time

2009-09-14T20:29:00.000-07:00

I had to bear with paperwork at the beginning of this school year for about 3 weeks longer than I wanted to. It took a week or two for the laptops to get set up, and I didn't want to throw the kids into too much stuff all at once, especially since they were adjusting to the laptops, new classes, new teachers, and a new schedule. So I have held back on making my life easier - but this week I took the first steps with my middle school students by using Google Docs for a few assignments.

Within Google Docs is a little item called "forms". It is a pretty easy way to just make a form (i.e. assignment). I embed my forms into my class wiki pages so the students can work on them there, but you can also easily email them to students as well (all high school students and many middle school students have emails - get their addresses!).

All you need to make a Google Doc is a Gmail address - if you have that you have a Google account. Just go to the menu up top and look for Documents. Once there, just click the "new" menu.

Choose "form" from there and begin to create yours (I always make my first question "Type your name here".) You can make fill in the blank, short answer, short essay response, and multiple choice forms quite easily. I can also pick a theme so the form isn't just a boring black and white screen.

I made the first assignment one that would be easy on my students, since this is the first time using an online form for most of them. I made a pretty straightforward vocabulary assignment and embedded it into the wikis for my 6th, 7th, and 8th grade English classes.

Today I introduced them to their new word lists like always, and then I took them to the assignments page and walked them through the basics of this form. I was very happy that unlike the paper/pencil assignments, they seemed pretty engaged in this - they were more focused on using their other tools like Visuwords to match up and try out their new vocabulary, and getting the correct responses typed into the form. Again - this was a pretty simple, straightforward type of assignment - but after using Google Docs daily, it won't be long before these kids are comfortable with anything!

Here is the best part for me - instead of a stack of notebook papers or worksheets wrinkled up, torn, and covered with scribbles and sometimes indecipherable middle school writing, and often put into the wrong inbox, I just get to see this lovely spreadsheet:

Isn't that a thing of beauty? Sure there are misspelled words - but I can read them! I can also compare them to others in the class and at a glance be able to see problems that students seemed to struggle with. Tomorrow in class, I will focus on those particular items, and not waste time on others that the students seem comfortable with.

The second a student hits the submit button at the bottom of the form, I get it in a spreadsheet with a timestamp! Isn't that cool? As I sit here at home tonight I can tab over to my Google Docs and see who has finished their homework tonight and how they've done on it!

Google Docs and forms makes formative assessment quick, simple, and pretty accurate. I know how to adjust and differentiate my instruction immediately from the feedback!

Make student assignments superfast!

2009-09-08T22:12:00.000-07:00

I think I have blogged about this before, but I think this one's worth a repeat because it is such a huge time saver, not to mention a great way to differentiate instruction for your students. It's...podcasting! Contrary to popular belief, podcasts are not the domain of super-fancy special projects - they're everyday stuff. Making them is so so easy - easier than you can imagine, and believe it or not - faster than the way you are making your assignments right now!

First I'll tell you how I use it as a time-saver, and to differentiate, then I'll tell you how to do it.

Using podcasts as a time-saver:
A big way I use podcasts is instead of worksheets, plain and simple. If I want my students to answer questions about something, respond in a certain way, do a simple activity with a partner within the assignment, etc. a podcast is a quick and easy way to do this. I simply create a quick podcast then load it onto an iPod or 2 or 3. Making assignments this way is almost the equivalent of me sitting one-on-one with a student, and talking them through a series of activities. Sure you could do the same thing on a work sheet but that's soooo much typing, and for students that's soooo much reading - a major barrier for some.

Sure there are ways to make fabulous, glamorous podcasts - but what I'm talking about is simple, music-less, down and dirty, one-take kind of stuff. Students can easily make up a missed assignment without you having to repeat or recopy. Very easily adaptable for younger and older students, and a great way to introduce very young students to working independently. You can also easily read a children's book into a podcast and ta-da! You've created a listening center podcast for students to read with. Students can create them too!

Using podcasts to differentiate instruction:
I can make different podcasts for students quite easily - after all, I'm not typing up worksheets, I'm just talking for about 3 minutes per assignment. Students can respond to the activities on my podcast any way I direct them to - through writing, completing some kind of project, doing an activity or discussion with a partner, anything! Best of all, they can pause me and replay me as many times as they need. I can even lecture a little bit!

Quick! Create a podcast in 8 simple steps:
1. Open GarageBand, click "Create New Podcast Episode",

2. Name your project/assignment with an identifier you'll remember or recognize.

3. Once in your podcast screen don't be confused by all the bells and whistles - you won't need them. Just click on the head of "male voice" or "female voice" whichever applies to you.

4. Then click the round red button and start talking.

You don't have to be perfect, but have some idea of what order you are going to do things in. Make sure you state things clearly and pause a little. Make sure you say item numbers so students know when you are moving on to a new activity or problem. Pause for a second or two so they have a chance to pause the iPod.

5. Click the red button again when you're done.

6. Go up to the Share menu and click "send song to iTunes."

7. Name your playlist appropriately so you can save more than one thing to it in the future.

8. Once you've done this your podcast is on your iTunes. Simply go there and the next step is to just sync your "playlist" with your iPod like you normally would. That's it - done! Wasn't that easy?

Where to get iPods? I have saved a couple of my older ones - I use an old iPod Mini,
my last Nano I had before I got my iPhone,

and a 4G Nano I bought on ebay last year for $40.

Any old working iPod will do. How do I let more than one kid listen? I use Belkin splitters I picked up at Fred's for $20 each. They split to five inputs - so 3 iPods become 15!

Once you do this you will see how easy it is . It is so much faster than making worksheets or typing up assignments, and so much more versatile.

Starting the year with class blogs and wikis

2009-09-07T10:04:00.000-07:00

For my class set up this year I have decided to use a combination of a "home" blog (using Blogger), and then linked wikis for each class. The home blog can have frequent general messages to students and parents about what's going on with the 1to1 laptops, and maybe some general info about my classes and expectations. That's where I also post the links to my class wikis in the sidebars. Over time, I'll add more widgets to the sidebar but for right now I'll start slow so that the kids and their parents can get used to the idea.

I've set up some simple wikis using Wikispaces for each class. Again, I'm taking this in baby steps - I haven't invited the kids to be "members" of the wikis yet - they are basically being used as web pages right now as I continue to add content. The kids simply go to those places for some class links, info, and assignments. The only pages I've added to those are a calendar page (Google Calendar), page for our current unit of study that has links, news, and assignments, and on some of them just some extra activity pages.

I foresee these becoming more dynamic and interactive as time goes on, but for now we'll just do one or two things at a time.

If you are interested in checking out what I've done so far, go to my class home blog and click the links on the right to see the classes. When you get to the class wikis, the menus are on the left to see other things besides the class home page.

I'd be interested to hear about other types of set-ups people are using for their classes with free open source stuff like Google and Wikispaces.

A teacher shares her flooding experience in Eagle

2009-05-19T12:05:00.001-07:00

Ann Millard is the principal/teacher at Eagle School. During the course of the flood a couple of weeks ago, Ann was interviewed several times and her quotes appeared in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner.

Of course, Ann has been using her own camera to snap some shots of the event as it was occurring by her own home. She sent a few of those, which I put into a VoiceThread for people to view here. If you want to show these to your students, just pop this up on the overhead, or direct them to this site and they can just hit the arrows to view. If any of you have a VoiceThread account feel free to leave some comments or questions!

For more information and pictures of the flood in Eagle, you can visit this wiki on EagleFloodInfo.

Good resource to help you meet Alaska cultural standards

2009-05-11T20:35:00.000-07:00

A great resource I stumbled across earlier this year is called Alaskool. It's a site chockfull of online materials about Alaska Native history, education, languages and cultures. Alaskool is actually a project developed by the Alaska Native Curriculum and Teacher Development Project (ANCTD). Teams of teachers, elders, and community members across Alaska came together with university-based specialists to develop this curriculum.

This is really in-depth curriculum, and as far as authentic - this is the real deal - not an Alaska curriculum developed by someone who doesn't really know Alaska. There are modules, projects, units, and individual lessons that address all grade levels, all Eskimo and Alaska Native tribes, and huge variety of cultural studies. Back in February I also blogged about another site for studying Alaska History. Alaskool ranks right up there in quality with that particular resource!

For those who think they really know Alaska studies, Alaskool is bound to give you something new. I cannot stress enough the depth and quality of these lessons and units - they are well thought out and just fantastic!

One of the aspects of the site I really like is the aide and support it gives to new teachers and teachers new to Alaska in terms of working in new cultures, and also using their vast resources to write their own custom units that are suited to their unique situations.

One downside is that it doesn't look like the site is being updated any longer, but it was built on a grant from the Department of Education and sometimes those lag a little between funding. However, the information is still very current and very relevant. There are many activities and discussion suggestions for classrooms regarding such issues as AFN, Molly Hootch, and a number of other topical issues. It would be easy to use these as a jumping off point to get into newer current events affecting rural Alaska, and Alaska Natives.

Some of the content areas on Alaskool with resources are land claims, education, languages, government, traditional life, subsistence, biographies. and literature. There are also supplemental modules such as regional studies, timelines, outposts, maps, and a great audio/visual library.
Alaskool is one of the top resource sites I have found with in-depth, authentic lessons and units on Alaska and Alaska cultural studies - I have been cherry picking from it quite a bit this year, and intend to do that and a lot more with it next year as well.

More helpful information about Eagle flooding

2009-05-06T22:22:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have been watching the news, talking to friends, and reading this blog, by now you know about the terrible situation in Eagle. Conditions on the Yukon are still treacherous as the river has so much ice piling up that has yet to break loose.

Local resident and a retired colleague from Alaska Gateway, John Rusyniak, has sent out this email to some Tok residents. I'm copying his email here in its entirety so that people know what is happening in terms of local efforts to give aide and relief, as well as some FEMA efforts, which are apparently beginning.

Here is John's email message:

Tok Residents,
I've been in touch with a number of people in Eagle. I've learned some things and will be moving forward to help.

What I've Learned:

A large number of people are homeless
The Community reeks of diesel oil from dislodged fuel tanks
Many private wells are contaminated
The City well is still ok
People had to leave their homes - many with just the shirts on their backs
This has effected not only the Old Village, but it's up to the New Village as well
They will need help - but not so much yet
Paul Kelly is heading to Eagle this AM with a load of supplies
Francine Lee is arranging another load to leave at 4pm today
FEMA has been contacted and Jack Turk is taking a load up for them

http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2009/05/floods-sweeping-gateways-yukon-charley-rivers-national-preserve

Eagle Village is located about 3-4 miles from the NPS field headquarters in Eagle. Floodwaters have damaged or destroyed many buildings in the village. Additionally, within Eagle at least two employee homes have had water damage and one of them had water up to the second story of their home. An estimated 10 homes in Eagle had been damaged or destroyed, and an estimated 30 of the area's 125 residents were homeless Tuesday morning.

http://www.nationalparksgallery.com/park_news/8198

Actions I'm taking:

As soon as the bank opens I"m going to see if an account has been set up there for donations
If not I'll get one set up and send out details later or just check with the bank
I've offered to be a point of contact to organize work crews when they are needed and can do something

If you have any additional information or questions please contact me.

John

John A. Rusyniak
PO Box 122
Tok, Alaska 99780
907-883-3124 Home
206-724-4591 Cell
305-425-7901 Fax

Make your students aware of nearby flooding in Eagle!

2009-05-05T23:31:00.000-07:00

We in AGSD are devasted by the news of the flooding that has hit Eagle, destroying the old village and wreaking havoc on the nearby community of Eagle. The school has become a haven of sorts - a high ground where many are escaping the devastation and dangerous flood waters.

Although we (adults) are all aware of what is happening in Eagle right now, some of our students are not! Eagle is a neighboring community and part of our school district! Do your students a favor - take a few minutes to bring them up to speed with what has been happening to our neighbors in Eagle.

Here are a few recent news sites that provide the main facts of the story, as well as many pictures (News Miner, another News Miner, APRN, Anchorage Daily News). Ann Millard, the principal at Eagle School, has been interviewed by the News Miner in one of the articles.

Read the National Weather Service updates with your students, and look at Weather Underground forecasts for communities along the Yukon - they give frequent flood warning updates as well as all pertinent weather information.

Get your students on GoogleEarth and have them locate and trace the course of the Yukon River. Have them locate the communities of Eagle, Circle, and Fort Yukon. Use the data you find on the National Weather Service and Weather Underground and have students keep an eye on the news so as to be apprised of what may be happening next.

This kind of flooding has not happened in Eagle since early in the 1900's - a combination of heavy snow over the winter and extremely warm weather is mostly to blame for the extreme flooding that Eagle is experiencing.

Teachers - contact Ann Millard, Marlys House, or Marge McElfresh, our colleagues at Eagle School - ask them if there is anything we can do to help or get the word out about what is happening in Eagle.

Involve your students!

Instead of a blog, have your students try a Glog!

2009-04-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

How many times have any of us assigned one of our favorite alternatives to papers? The one that will allow students to be creative, yet show us their learning - the poster. I know the poster has been a staple of my final project arsenal for years.

Well, I recently found a new FREE application that allows my students to create a poster on steriods - Glogster. Glogster is an online application in which you can make a Glog - which is the web equivalent of a poster. But it's different than a poster because you can add your own pictures or pictures from the web, movie clips, mp3 files like podcasts or music - anything! You (or your students) have instant access to all of the very best multimedia tools you could want to express an idea or opinion for display.

Glogster has a lot of benefits - students can always look at their Glogs on the site any time - and so can others - anyone with a Glogster account actually! Glogster is also a social platform. Kids can "friend" others on Glogster through interest in each other's Glogs. Although a Glog is just one poster, it can convey a powerful message. Many Glogsters begin to develop quite a reputation for a certain style of Glogs! You can also embed your Glogs in a wiki, blog, Facebook, MySpace - anything!

If you don't want to turn your students loose in the wide wild world of Glogster, there is an EDU version in which you can sign up for a teacher account and a set number of student accounts. You can sign up for accounts for just one class, all your classes, or even your whole school (up to 200 student accounts per teacher). This is a little extra work for teacher in that you have to enter your student names in each of the accounts you create. But Glogster sends you the passwords and verifications for each of the new accounts - you can simply give these to your students and keep the email. That way when a student forgets their password you have it. Another control factor of the EDU version of Glogster is that your students can't share and collaborate with the wide wild world - only the other students you sign up. Depending on your comfort level with this, the EDU version may be the one you want.

Either way, whether you go with the EDU version or have your students sign up for their own accounts, sign up is quick and easy, and you can begin building a Glog right away. Uploading images, video, and sound couldn't be easier, and Glogster offers an amazing pallet of backgrounds, frames and effects to choose from so that each Glog is as unique as possible.

I have had my French students making Glogs recently in which they are incorporating podcasts of French language conversations, music, and images. They are embedding these on our French class wiki. The kids are having a lot of fun with them, and several have mentioned that they would like to use Glogster in one or two of their other classes.

Below I've embedded 2 examples of Glogs from the main site (not my students' - theirs aren't done yet). The first is a fun weekly fact glog that allows the student who created it to make friends and interact in a fun creative way with people anywhere. I'm guessing this Glog will also provide her with lots of new food for thought! The second Glog is a tribute to a popular book and movie, "Twilight". This is a well put together fan tribute - a student who has lovingly and carefully compiled their favorite images and songs from the movie to convey their personal feelings about the story. Both of these Glogs are good examples of how Glogs can be interactive, creative, and show the voice of the student creating them.

To students, they are like the very best of MySpace and blogs combined! For teachers - they are a new and creative way to have our students get more engaged with what they are learning in class and personalize it.

Perusing the Glogster site you will see a lot of humor, a lot of silliness, some disturbing Glogs, and a healthy dose of teen angst. But what strikes you most is the amount of work, thought and creativity that has gone into most of these - the self expression is evident - and the possibilities are endless!

Our Students' Online Reality

2009-04-27T22:44:00.000-07:00

A series of videos was published by PBS's Frontline earlier this year, beginning in January. The series was titled "Growing Up Online". The seven part series explores how the modern internet has transformed the experience of childhood.

The topics covered in this series include how much of a teen's life is lived online - and how much of that life is known to, or hidden from their parents. The second part of the series explores how school systems are trying to understand and relate to students who live lives outside of school that are often alien to their teachers. Several of the programs touch on some of the positives of this new online generation - one being the opportunity for creativity - often a kiss of death for a shy student in school - to thrive and prosper in an online environment. Also explored is the fear and myths about online predators, as well as a guide for parents trying to understand and cope with this new world their children are growing up in.

The Growing Up Online series is 7 parts long - with each segment being around seven to nine minutes long, so it is easy to view it in short segments. Although your home connection may struggle with this a little, you should have no problem viewing the segments at school.

For ANY teacher - Growing Up Online is a must see. This series offers a sometimes anxious, but often hopeful look at how our students are exploring and innovating within this new frontier.

Helping students get organized - the online dayplanner

2009-04-26T21:56:00.000-07:00

As we begin to look ahead to next year, we begin to have discussions about how we can do things differently and how we can help our students. One thing we have been discussing at our school recently has been planners for our students. The students already have planners - spiral bound numbers that they carry around to write down homework assignments, test dates, etc.

Since we have a 1:1 program in the junior high at Tok, as well as wide-spread access to technology in most of our other classes and all of our other sites, I submit that it's high time for us to explore some of the excellent online planners that are available.

One very good planner tool for students I'll discuss in this post is called TrackClass. TrackClass is a simple planner students can use and it works like this;

Students quickly set up an account (only email and a password - that's it), and then they can begin to use this tool. The beginning of the school year is the ideal time to set this up with your classes - simply have them enter each class they are taking on the TrackClass dashboard, along with the days and times this class meets (this is a nice feature for schools with rotating or alternating schedules). Once the classes are set up, it is very easy to navigate to the different classes.

Let's say a student is enrolled in an English course - they go to that course on their TrackClass dashboard and then they have options that are easy to use and keep up with each day. They can enter assignments with the due date - there is also an easy feature for the student to record points possible and weight of the assignment if the teacher makes that info available. There is a nice help box on the side that actually explains what "points possible" means! It also defines "points scored" and "weight" - handy stuff!

Another option students have within each class is to enter upcoming exams - the entry looks just like the assignment entry - also with room for entering the points the student actually earned if they want to track this.

Here is a fantastic option within each class - a tab called "Notes". Here a student can take actual notes for any class on any day day and they are all kept filed away neatly in the student's dashboard! The Notes tab also works with Markdown - which means students can add links and html into their notes - students can create quite a rich source of class notes with this kind of capability!

Another tab available for each class is the Calendar. This calendar works as an individual calendar for each class, or will compile all classes into one calendar. Best of all - the calendar can be subscribed to by iCal or GoogleCalendar - both of which are easy and available to all of our students!

The final tab is called "Files". This tab allows students to upload literally any kind or type of files from their computer - jpg, PDF, WordDocs, anything at all. So anytime a teacher wants a student to note a particular document for homework or study or in class work they might email it or tell the student where to find it and voila - the student can put it in it's proper place in their class dashboard!

TrackClass is a deceptively simple tool that really has a lot of power! Students could really increase their productivity, not to mention their confidence by having access to a tool like this that can go to work for them.

TrackClass is worth a good look for incorporating for next year's planners.

GoogleForms - a beginning

2009-04-23T22:00:00.000-07:00

By now, some of you may be familiar with GoogleDocs. Very simply, GoogleDocs is a web-based word processor. If you sign up for a simple Google account (same thing as a Gmail account) you can create as many GoogleDocs as your heart desires! There are the obvious benefits of a web-based word processor, such as being able to access your documents anywhere and any time. But GoogleDocs has some added benefits, such as being able to share your documents with others, and best of all - collaborating on the same document in real time. If you can use MicroSoft Word, you can use GoogleDocs - it's even easier than Word.

Part of GoogleDocs is something called GoogleForms. There are many, many uses for GoogleForms, but for the purposes of this post, I'll begin with a useful one teachers will like - making on-line tests. There are lots of ways to custom create your own tests on GoogleForms, but the simplest way is to just create a form from Google's custom template.

Here is an example of how I created one of these for a French Test I gave today. I went into my GoogleDocs, then clicked New>Form. The template opened up, and since my test was all short answer, I chose the "text" option for all of my questions. You can also choose paragraph text, multiple choice, check boxes, choose from a list or a scale.

It was easy to enter my test title, my test directions, and then just enter the questions or problems for the test.

Here was the best part - I had two options for how to use this test - both great. I could email the test to my students, or embed it in my class blog or wiki. I've embedded part of the test in this blog so that you can see what it looks like. My students entered their answers on the computer, and submitted them to me. I received their responses on the form immediately!

The benefits of this? I have one student who is away on a trip - she can take the test while she is gone (under the supervision of her chaperone). This benefit applies to any time I have students absent on test days - easy to make special arrangements this way! I don't have to make paper copies of the test and I have a permanent record of the test. I can easily monitor the integrity of the test-takers in my room via Network Observer, or walking around and looking over shoulders. And dare I mention - students who don't have access to a computer can take the test on their cell phone if it has internet access!

Here is a sample of part of the test I gave today - it gave me an embed code for blogs and wikis that I just pasted in here (I put it on the class wiki for my students). Students can type their answers in the blanks, scroll down to the end and "submit" - voila! I have their test!

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Handbook revision time? Check your cell phone policy

2009-04-22T22:28:00.000-07:00

Like many schools in our district and everywhere, we have begun the process of reviewing our student handbook. Every year it seems there are some items we are constantly trying to fix - attendance and tardies - always looking for the perfect answer. There are also some items we see change slightly year after year in the dress code - we used to ban flip flops, but no longer do. This year will see the disappearance of the ban on "pajama" pants. Odd but unremarkable changes in teen fashion are easy things to make adjustments for. But one item always remains on the "ban" list right along with gum and hats - that is the evil cell phone.

However, this year we may be tossing the cellphones into a different category than their usual company of hats and gum. This year, we may actually be regarding cellphones as (wait for it...) computers! As such, we may be thinking that perhaps something more along the lines of an acceptable use policy such as we have for our laptops may be a more appropriate guideline for dealing with these little nuisances.

Now before you go thinking we have turned the asylum over to the inmates, just be prepared to check a few items out. More and more we are seeing items in not just educational news, but in the "mainstream" news as well about new and innovative ways cellphones are being used in classrooms.

Any adult who owns a cellphone has some idea of the computing power they have in their pocket. Most adults will freely admit that they don't even know how to harness all of the power available to them on their phones.

Consider this - today's typical cellphone is far more powerful than personal computers were even 10 years ago. They are much cheaper, and the majority of our students already own one. Even teaching students how to use the applications that are currently on their phones could go a long way toward teaching them about productivity and making digital tools work for them. But beyond that, there are now literally hundreds of potential uses for cell phones in education.

I'll leave you here with several items to consider - the first and most important is a sample of an acceptable use policy for cell phones. Even if you still consider them a distraction, there is no denying their power - and it's time for them to take their rightful place among the company of computers - not hats, and not gum.

The other items I'll give you are several of the best articles and blog posts I have read over the past year that really bring the cellphone-in-schools phenomenon into perspective.

*Innovative ways cell phones are being used in classrooms
*The cell phone industry (of course!) reminding us how powerful and useful cell phones are as a learning tool.
*8 ways to use camera phones in class.
*Instead of looking for ways to buy those fancy expensive clickers to go with your fancy expensive SmartBoard, use cellphones this way (TextTheMob) and this way (udefn). And also like this (GeoGraffiti) and this (Wiffiti). Same effect, less money (as in zero).

Don't even get me started on using cellphones for GoogleDocs and GoogleForms, text novels, reading books on the phone, and polling students.

This is certainly not to say that cell phones have a place in every class all the time. However, I do believe there is an "acceptable use" of cellphones in school - rather than denying their existence by banning them, we would do well to teach our students the power of their cell phone, and that that power goes far beyond texting their friends who are sitting across the room from them.

*Flickr photo by iBjorn
*Flickr photo by Absolut Leigh

Earth Day - in case you still haven't used any online sites...

2009-04-21T21:28:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago I listed 9 good sites to use for studying about issues associated with Earth Day. If you haven't had a chance to look at those yet, there is still time. As everything I post on EdTechSec, they are all easy to use and it takes just a second to begin using them.

From David Warlick's blog, 2¢ Worth, I looked at two more great Earth Day online learning games that are quick, free, and easy and engaging for kids.

The first is Elf Island. Elf Island is aimed at "tweens", which in game language could mean any kids from 2nd grade to 12th grade would stand a good chance of liking it. Registration is quick and painless, and kids under 12 must use their parent's email address. Absolutely NO personal information is given or exchanged in the game so it is very secure. The idea behind the virtual world of Elf Island is to empower kids to do good. Through entertaining and competitive gameplay, storytelling and social interaction, Elf Island players help non-profit partners achieve their goals on real projects. The more kids are Gaming for Good within Elf Island, the more Elf Island is revealed. Elf Island also recognizes and rewards kids who practice Good in the world through status and awards.

The second game is Emerald Island. Again, just a quick registration which consists of a username (no real name on either of these), an email address, and that's it - ready to play. Emerald Island is for younger students, or intermediate students who may struggle with reading. Students have to "create" their avatar/character, and then they find themselves on the Pirats (yes, that's pi"rats") ship. The Pirats quickly kick the player off the ship and you soon find yourself washed up on Emerald Island, the last green island around. The next few minutes are spent orienting the player to Emerald Island, then you can engage in all kinds of games and activities while you get to know the island and your neighbors. Most of the activities are "green" and involve motivation to keep Emerald Island green.

Both of these games are easy for students to jump right into, and manage to work in lots of educational eco-information in a realistic and thoughtful way.

These fun games can make a great addition to Earth Day activities.

The 3rd grade class at Tok School will be hosting an Earth Day celebration from 1:00pm to 1:30pm on Wednesday, April 22. The students will be making some healthy snacks to share, showing off some of the Earth Day crafts they have made (pencil holders, bird feeders, personalized pet food scoopers, and jewelry - all made from re-used materials that otherwise would have ended up in the landfill). The 3rd graders will also be available to show some of the other elementary students some of the fun Earth Day online games and activities they have learned how to use during the past week.

Quick Geography Quizes and Skillbuilders

2009-04-19T22:30:00.001-07:00

In the past when I've taught World Geography, one of the things I do daily is a map quiz. I've done these in a lot of different ways, from quizzing on major countries, to bodies of water, to islands, to major landforms. I did these for years because the positive side of these daily quizes was the quick familiarization that my classes get with the globe - knowing where something is in relation to something else ceases to be a barrier to learning about the geography of a place. The downside was the actual physical work of these quizes for me - creating the lists, printing them out, printing the maps, correcting them, returning them. Although they are quick, it was still an extra 15 minutes each day on average to do the administrative work that went with these quizes.

There are two web-based geography "games" I am particularly enamored with right now that address this very skill in a quick, yet challenging and fun way. I am looking forward to using both the next time I teach World Geography.

The first is called Find Country. Find Country will really challenge those who have a pretty good idea about the geography of the world, because the biggest challenge to the game is the absence of political boundary lines on the world map. It is a little frustrating, because it may name some obscure (to me anyway) country in Africa - I know approximately where it is, and click on a wide-open map of Africa. I get the question wrong and am literally millimeters away from the correct country. The good part is I get the instant feedback which shows me how close I really was. The bad part is I get no points for being just "close". Find Country is very challenging and the feedback is instant.

The second one I am getting quite addicted to is the Traveler IQ Challenge. In this game, you can select the whole globe or just parts. Your challenges may vary from famous places, to capital cities, to obscure cities, to landforms, or whatever. Any geography question goes in this game and the levels increase in difficulty. The best part about Traveler IQ Challenge is that you DO get points for being close. It will list a location, you click on the map, and it tells you where the actual location is and how close you were in kilometers. You get more points for being close so you can play longer. The game changes constantly so the chances of you getting the exact same questions is very low.

Both of these are great interactives for junior high and high school students who need some quick daily geography practice. There is no sign-in or registration, and both are very self-explanatory. Students can literally go to the sites and begin play. I have no question that these games can easily do as much or more for building a good general geography knowledge than my work intensive quizes ever could.

Learn about Earth Day through online activities

2009-04-15T22:34:00.000-07:00

Earth Day is coming up - April 22 is the date to celebrate! Until then, you can spend a little or a lot of classroom time teaching your students about the history of Earth Day, about recycling, renewable and non-renewable resources, carbon foot prints and all kinds of exciting stuff!

There are a million good educational sites about Earth Day - a simple search will turn up more pages than you would ever care to look at. So for the purposes of this post, and in keeping with the theme of "EdTechSec", I have narrowed the list down to 9 that span all grades, require NO registration or sign up, have been widely reviewed as being high quality, and are EASY teaching tools that students can sit right down and use.

For young beginning readers, Starfall has a great reading activity on their site called "Every day is Earth Day". It is in Starfall's typical format, and kids can use the site themselves to navigate through a story about Earth Day while also learning how to pronounce key words - this is a great independent activity for young kids, and very informative as well.

No Earth Day study is complete without figuring out our "footprint". There are lots of calculators out there, but this one for kids called Zerofootprint is the easiest and most user friendly. Most elementary students can use it unassisted.

For intermediate and junior high grades, Scholastic News has some great (and good reading level) articles about Earth Day, and what kinds of activities and community projects kids are doing in different places around the U.S. to make this day meaningful. These are great independent online readings kids can do as a tie-in to classroom activities.

For older students, the History Channel has a nice page with videos, a section called "What Can I Do" for ideas about how people can get active about conservation, and a tool (more appropriate for older students) for how to calculate your "footprint". There is also a downloadable podcast that kids could listen to (for homework??).

One of my favorites in this list - Starbucks Coffee is hosting a cool site called the "Planet Green Game". This is a pretty neat simulation in which the player must explore a fictitious town called Evergreen to look for ways to reduce CO2 emissions. It's a really engaging game that kids in intermediate grades through high school would really like. There are lots of challenges along the way to help the player earn points. The point of the game is to promote the idea of looking beyond traditional ways of doing business to reduce our impact on the planet. No registration, just click on the link and start playing!

Of course PBS Kids has their EekoWorld site replete with games, videos, and activities that are appropriate for all elementary students. Lots of good information and activities on recycling, air, and water quality that kids can understand. Kids can easily navigate this site.

Another online educational standard - Scholastic - has a neat game called "Virtual Forest Challenge". It takes kids through a typical kid day, where they are called upon to constantly make choices about how their actions will affect the environment. At the end of the game, they can see their score which identifies how much positive or negative impact they had on the environment in a typical day. Great for elementary kids - no registration, just play - very user-friendly.

One more great interactive for older students is a site called Consumer Consequences. The premise is that the earth couldn't support all its residents if everyone lived like a typical American. The activity will give the player an idea of how many planets it would take to support our lifestyle on a planetary scale, and ideas about how to make our footprint a little smaller.

Planet Pals hosts a site aimed at elementary students (and their teachers and parents) that is packed full of information, lesson ideas, activities for home and school, and games. It's all educational, simple to access, and kid friendly!

Finally, a site that is just dedicated to Earth Day arts and crafts - there are a wealth of ideas on here for some easy "recyclable" crafts that bring home the idea of Earth Day. A wide range of ages would enjoy these, and none look difficult. I am especially intrigued by the dog food scooper made out of a laundry detergent bottle!

International Migratory Bird Day

2009-04-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

International Migratory Bird Day is coming soon so mark your calendars and start planning your lessons with an eye to this great educational event! Officially IMBD takes place the second Saturday in May - however, it is recognized that that date doesn't always work well for organizations wanting to plan celebrations around the event. Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge is hosting their Migratory Bird Festival in celebration of the even on the 3rd Saturday in May - the 16th, in Tok.

So far their website doesn't offer any specific information on the project, however, Kay Lynn Odle-Moore and Mary Timm have emailed fliers and offers of their assistance with educational activities for the Bird Festival. You can contact either of them by email - just type their first name, underscore, last name @fws.gov (I'm "coding" their email addresses so they won't get spammed).

You can find out more about IMBD at birdday.org. This great IMBD site offers a lot of resources for educators - lesson plans, art projects, and great links to sites like BirdIQ for virtual field trips. You can also order some teaching resources and very reasonably priced merchandise from their site. I couldn't resist ordering this t-shirt with fantastic artwork for only $12.95.

If you are looking for online resources to use in your classroom, you won't be able to find much better than the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's "All About Birds" website. You can search out information about any bird you can think of - and many you never knew about. Information is complete with pictures, tons of information, some video, and a great feature right on the site - mp3 audio files of the bird song! It's a very user-friendly site for kids as well. Another cool feature of this site is eBird - which is where birders - even amateurs - can submit their pictures, data, and observations! It's like the Wikipedia of birding!

So mark your calendars, contact these educators at TNWR, and check out these sites for a great science and social studies educational opportunity right here in our area that your students can look forward to and participate in!

Another step with RSS - "Readers"

2009-04-07T18:48:00.000-07:00

Hopefully you are not ready to kill me yet - but today I'm going to talk a little more about RSS. In yesterday's post I told you about subscribing to RSS feeds in Firefox and putting them in a live bookmarks folder on your toolbar would save you a lot of time. Hopefully you are already beginning to explore some of these possibilities or have plans to do so soon.

So if I've already told you about how to subscribe to RSS feeds, why would you need an RSS reader? Well, a reader is handy for a couple of reasons - some people like having all their feeds from all of their publications together in one handy place. For Safari users, this is probably your easiest option for RSS feeds. I think the best reason is because readers are web-based. Part of the same reasons that Delicious and Diigo are great bookmarking sites are the exact same reasons RSS readers are...no matter what computer (or iPod, or iTouch, or Blackberry or any kind of smartphone device) you are on, you can always have access to your RSS feeds.

A reader is just an aggregator that "collects" the headlines and news feeds you subscribe to all in one place. Different readers have different benefits, so you'll have to decide which one has features (or look) you like best. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm only going to discuss web-based RSS readers - because the point is "portability".

I use GoogleReader, and I'll shamelessly plug Google here - it is a simple reader and if you already have a gmail account you already have access to it. However, there are other very good (web-based) readers, such as My Yahoo, and Bloglines.

Once you have set up your reader account - usually a quick and simple affair - you subscribe exactly the same way I told you in yesterday's post. If you are in Firefox, you can hit the button in the browser bar, and if you are in Safari, look for their RSS "chicklet" near the top or side of the page where "subscribe" information is. In Firefox, when you hit the little RSS button you get a new screen that looks like this;
And in Safari, when you hit the RSS button you want to get to one that looks something like this;

In Firefox, click that button that says "subscribe to this feed using" and you'll get a menu pop up that looks like the picture below. So if you are using the Bloglines reader, you would click that, the My Yahoo reader - click that, or the Google reader, click that - pretty simple. Next you'll be taken to a page where you just confirm you are adding the feed to that selected reader. Then it's done - very easy.
Same with the Safari pop-up menu - choose your reader and it's all done!

If you were going to put this blog, EdTechSec, into a reader - for Firefox users, just click on the blue RSS chicklet in the browser bar and go from there. Or for Firefox AND Safari users, just click the "Posts" chicklet on the top right hand column of this blog and you can do the same thing. Now EdTechSec will be in your reader.

Now, you can stay on top of your reading anytime any where, any computer - you can login to your reader, and there are all your feeds, all cozy together in one place!

Classroom Connection - If you use any online publications regularly in your classroom or would like to - such as news magazines, or any kind of regularly published kids magazines - have your students set up an RSS reader and have them subscribe to the feeds you want them to have. This makes it easy to assign regular readings from the publications or just have them handy for the students to look up. My French students each have Google readers and have 6 subscriptions to French news and entertainment publications that I want them to have for class. They also use the readers to subscribe to publications of their personal choosing - I don't care, as long as they have the publications I have required feeding in! Huge timesaver in terms of classroom management and materials management for you and your classes!

How many blogs and other publications do you read? Do you RSS?

2009-04-06T20:32:00.000-07:00

How many blogs, online newspapers or magazines, or other online publications do you follow? How many would you LIKE to follow, if it didn't take much time and was easy to do?

I read (scan is more like it) around 30 educational and edtech blogs, about 5 educational news publications, and 5 regular online news publications. I don't read the whole things, and I don't always check them every day. They are all so good I hate to think I might miss anything in them, so I subscribe to their RSS feeds to make sure I can scan quickly to see if there is anything pressing I really need to read.

IF, at this point, you are saying "What is an RSS feed?" welcome to this discussion which will show you how easy this is. If you are saying, "I have RSS feeds", then please check back in tomorrow and maybe I'll have something new for you!

RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. Knowing what it stands for doesn't help our understanding, so just forget that and remember "RSS". If you are reading any online publication that you enjoy, and in your browser bar you see this symbol;

then you can easily subscribe to that publication. Subscribing to their RSS feed simply means you can check their headlines whenever you want. They won't email you (you don't even give an email, a name, or sign in or up or anything), you don't pay, you won't get junk mail, and it takes about 5 seconds to subscribe.

I'll explain how I do this, because for me this is the easiest way to keep my publications in sight so that I remember to check my feeds.

First - I set up a folder right in my bookmarks toolbar (in Firefox) - just go to "bookmarks" and create a new folder right in the bookmarks toolbar menu - you can put it anywhere, but for me, keeping it in my bookmarks toolbar means it's right in front of my face. For starters, just name it "RSS Feeds". Later you may want to make several folders, depending on your reading habits - one for regular news, one for educational news, one for blogs, etc. The possibilities are probably endless.

Anyhow, lets start out with something simple - Education Week is a good publication that covers a lot of topics that are current in education. When you go to their site, you will notice that their browser window looks like this;

That little blue box at the end is their RSS feed button. This is the very most simple way to subscribe to a feed. Simply click that button. You will immediately get a little pop-up menu with a couple of items - usually they say "Subscribe to RSS", and "Add RSS as a live bookmark in Delicious". We learned a little about Delicious yesterday, but today we are just talking about very simple RSS - so as long as you are going to be storing it in that folder you made in your bookmarks toolbar, just click the option that says "Subscribe to RSS" (sometimes it will say "Subscribe to RSS 2.0"- also a good choice).

So, as soon as you choose the "Subscribe to RSS" option, a new page will immediately load, and at the top you will see this;

The folder you have created in your bookmarks toolbar is a "live bookmark", so you don't need to change this option. Just click the "Subscribe now" button. As soon as you do, this little window will pop up;

The blue highlighted portion is the title of the publication - it is highlighted because if you want to change it to a shortened form that is easier for you, this is where you can - you can also change it later in your bookmarks folder when you organize them. Underneath the name, is the part where you select your folder where you are putting this feed - in this case it will be the new folder you created in your bookmarks toolbar - so click that folder, then click the blue "add" button.

That's it! Now, when you click on that folder you created in your bookmarks tool bar called "RSS Feeds" or whatever you named it, you will see Education Week - when you roll your cursor over it, a list of the latest headline "feeds" will pop up with the latest at the top. You can now quickly peruse the headlines and click on the one that interests you - it will immediately take you to that specific article or post. How much easier could this be? You can put a lot of RSS subscriptions in your folder - I have 30 in my "EdBlogs RSS" folder alone and have room for more!

With my RSS feeds organized this way, I can very quickly scroll through all of the headlines of my favorite publications and pick and choose what I want to read (usually based on how much time I have available).

If you are new to this, here are some good "starter" feeds for your educational reading pleasure!
Edutopia, Alaska Education, and of course a very good blog I know of called EdTechSec (by now you may have noticed that little blue RSS button in the browser bar!).

Ok Teachers - Post #1 to put you on the road to a more organized tech life

2009-04-05T15:40:00.000-07:00

For those of you who already know this - please be patient - when I'm done with this series I will go back to posting useful things for your students. However, I have decided to post some things that will be really useful for teachers (although your students would probably benefit as well).

Bookmarking is a topic that seems to come up frequently in my technology related conversations with teachers. I have seen bookmarking done every which way - some I would consider quite creative, some pretty crazy, and some downright scary, as in, I would rather just not bookmark than do it that way!

We can all agree that bookmarks are EXTREMELY useful in helping us to keep all of this information organized. My problem a year or so ago was that I simply had too many. My Firefox bookmarking capabilities were stretched to the limit and even though I tried to be very organized with my folders, I simply could not find things any more. Also, on the occasions I was on someone else's computer, I felt almost blind without access to my bookmarks - I couldn't do anything!

Social bookmarking was the answer. Social bookmarking doesn't actually have to be "social", although that is a helpful aspect of it that you can always explore later. If you use a social bookmarking service, you simply "tag" a page you want to bookmark. The service will pop up a little window for you to add tags (like cross referencing in the old library card catalog).

There are many social bookmarking services out there, and many offer other services besides just bookmarking, such as newsfeeds, blogs, and social networks. Even if you don't care at all about the social aspect - the web-based bookmarking is just too handy to ignore. Two of the most widely used social bookmarking services are Diigo and Delicious (which I use). I strongly suggest that whatever service you use, download the add-on (either on Safari or Firefox, whichever browser you use) to your browser toolbar. When you are on your own computer, this makes adding, tagging, and searching extremely simple because it adds their buttons right to your toolbar. This is what my Delicious buttons look like installed on my Firefox toolbar;

Let's consider a previous post from this blog - the YouTube video of "Did You Know". When I found that video, I hit the Delicious Tag button in my tool bar, and then this little window popped up. I skipped the description (usually the tags are enough of a description) and entered my tags at the bottom (often there will be suggested tags - just click on them to add them).

Now, I keep my bookmarks in my sidebar view so that I can always find things when I want to. If I can remember the name, I simply search alphabetically through the bookmarks themselves. If I can't remember the name, but can only remember what it was about, I search through my tags and can easily narrow my search that way.

Another nice feature is that when I am on a different computer, I can just go to Delicious, sign into my account, and there they all are.

I now have over 700 bookmarks in Delicious, so you can see how this helps me to keep things organized. Using the Firefox based bookmarking system seems unwieldy now. I could never do it with this many bookmarks!

Here is the important classroom connection - have your students (junior high and high school) get social bookmarking accounts! I cannot stress this enough! How many times have you written looooong URL addresses on the board (several times) only to have students ask you for it again and again when it comes up in class. If your students have Delicious or Diigo accounts, they can access them on any computer at home or at school, and there are no more excuses for forgetting a URL or writing it down incorrectly. My French students all have Delicious accounts and it is a LIFESAVER!

Did You Know?

2009-04-01T22:29:00.000-07:00

This video by Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod made a big splash when it came out a few years ago. Some of you may remember I showed it at at an inservice in 2007. Anyway - it has been updated slightly and I think it is worth viewing again.

*NOTE - two things that struck me in this version -
1. It doesn't mention the semantic web - which is fast bearing down on us and will soon come to represent "web 3.0".
2. It mentions the amount of news in a New York Times - this is also ironic considering the Times in its print version perches precariously on on the brink of extinction - as do many print newspapers.

Things are changing even more quickly than the "Did You Know" video can keep up with!

Take your kids on a Dinosaur Dig

2009-03-31T21:59:00.001-07:00

This is a fun site I used recently in class with my 3rd graders as we were studying fossils - it's called Dinosaurs and it's on the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History site. This tidy looking little site is actually jam packed with information about dinosaurs that is very accessible to kids from 2nd grade through high school.

On the Dinosaurs site, kids can learn just about anything they ever wanted to know (and never knew they wanted to know) about dinosaurs. There are tons of great pictures from the museum's archives as well as the many digs and expeditions that supplied the information.

There are some slideshows documenting some of the various digs, as well as some of the more prominent dinosaur collections at the Smithsonian NMNH.

What my 3rd graders were enamored with was an interactive "dinosaur dig". After we studied fossils, looked at some real ones, and then did a little play simulation with some clay and toy skeletons, they were ready for the dinosaur dig. The interactive takes kids through the basic procedures of a dig - from the first clearing of the surface to determine how big the site is, to the use of finer and finer tools to carefully get to the skeleton, to the plastering and transportation of the bones to the museum. Once they have successfully cleared, covered, and transported their "specimen", they then clean it and protect it in the museum's lab. After that they are ready to assemble the skeleton - they can use the clues about the various bones to help them find the proper placement. Once their model is finished, they can see different drawings and representations of what that dinosaur (a Stegosaurus) might have looked like.

This is a really engaging site and very easy for kids and their teachers to navigate. What I really liked was that none of the links take you away from the site - they are all built by the Smithsonian NMNH, so all of the information flows and connects really well.

Look out it's....TIMEZ ATTACKS!

2009-03-30T22:38:00.000-07:00

If you happen to be looking, you will know how hard it is to find a really good simulation game that is educational for younger kids. There are obviously the Sims games (SimAnt, SimEarth, SimFarm) and the like, but they are so multifaceted they require a lot of time investment for teachers and students. We know these games are engaging, but our inner critic is not crazy about letting kids spend a lot of time on them unless we know there will be a definite academic benefit too.

I think I have found a good one - Timez Attacks. Timez Attacks is a simulation developed by Big Brain Software. It is usually available for purchase, however, they are offering free downloads to teachers for multiplication facts 2 to 12. Teachers get one free download per email address (so I have actually gotten 3).

In Timez Attacks you (the player) are this little mutant-ish creature who is in some castle-type thing. The object is for you to always be trying to get out of the chamber you are in. To do this, you must master some multiplication facts. The cool thing about Timez Attacks is that it is not merely fact memorization - your character is presented with a troll or something bearing the symbolic representation of the problem, say 2 x 2. It then releases 2 snails. Your player must catch each snail. When you catch the first snail you will see a "2", and when you catch the second snail you will see an "4". Your player can then throw the snails and when you do, 2 items will splat on the cave wall. Each will be a box containing 2 dots - you are now conceptualizing the multiplication problem as "2 two times". You may then post the answer "4" on the troll's chest or the dungeon wall or whatever.

It's actually quite simple - and fun! Kids love this and it goes beyond just memorization of facts. As you learn more facts and break through more chambers, you are constantly challenged on the facts you have already learned.

For teachers who have students learning multiplication facts (anywhere between 2nd grade to middle school kids who still need practice), Timez Attacks is great - they will BEG you to let them practice their math facts! I have a few third graders who are already getting addicted!

The free download only takes a couple of minutes and then that little green creature head on your desktop will always be there - ready to play!

A model of the solar system - better than papier-mache!

2009-03-29T22:32:00.000-07:00

Gunn Interactive Web Design has built a fantastic visualization of the solar system. Simply begin this Planets site and the clock starts to tick! The slide arrows at the bottom give information about what is happening and explain how the model shows different perspectives of the solar system. As this commentary is going, the model is still moving along with the time and date ticker going.

Planets would be a great visualization to use with any class from elementary to high school that is studying any aspect of astronomy or the solar system. For elementary students it is a great way to see how the earth and the other planets orbit the sun. For other students it can present lots of great problem solving "quests" where the students can use the model to try to determine how many rotations other planets make in comparison to earth, and other such relative questions about orbits, speed, and time.

Planets is one of the best visualizations of the solar system I have seen online - you can control lots of elements about the model, such as the speed of the orbits, the scale of the planets, and best of all, which object you are following. This really will give some great perspective on the movement of the planets relative to each other and to the sun.

You have to try this - as soon as you get to the Planets site the visualization begins!

Read this for me! Quick tools for text-to-speech help

2009-03-27T00:40:00.000-07:00

Do you have younger students who need to have things other than stories (like certain texts or class info) read to them? Do you have older students who still struggle with reading independently? Do you have students who need to have directions read to them?

Those of you who have ever experienced these situations in your classroom understand the frustration a teacher may face because ultimately, we can't be 10 places at once. As much as we may want to individualize our instruction, it's not possible to always do it to the extent we would like all the time.

Well - as you might expect - I'm going to tell you about a couple of tools that can help you out with this reading dilemma a little bit.

The first is an extremely simple online text reader called ItCanSay. Simply copy and paste the text you want aloud into the box and click the "read" button. A fairly boring sounding computer voice will read it in a surprisingly understandable way. You can even download it as an mp3 file with the click of a button. ItCanSay is a site created for English language learners, but I'm sure it's obvious it has many other applications. There is nothing fancy about the sight - and I've just described it's only bells and whistles. There some ads on the page for wrinkle removers, but if you don't like that, just download the mp3 file to your computer to avoid it.

The second option is another online text reader called Expressivo. Expressivo uses text-to-speech technology called Ivona Voice. You can actually choose different voices (male or female with different accents) that you want to read your text. Same thing as ItCanSay, but slightly nicer computer voice. For short pieces of text - up to 200 characters - Expressivo is free - just use section #1 and go no further. If you want it to do long pieces you have to purchase it.

Of course there are other options for text-to-speech that are fancier, but I found these two in particular to be about as simple as possible, and FREE.

New history textbook =$60: ushistory.org=free

2009-03-26T00:10:00.000-07:00

We've surely all seen this day coming - the day when our textbooks become obsolete. Not just in the sense that they are old or outdated, but obsolete as in GONE - we don't need them any more.

I think that, theoretically, we could teach courses now without texts, but that would be a pretty big leap for some people who are still not comfortable with the technology. However, comfortable or not, I think that day is coming - and it will arrive more quickly than we probably ever guessed.

Many teachers already rely heavily on web resources to supplement their texts. In some cases the web IS already the text - the teacher must be a critical reader, compiler, and organizer of a wide range of information - but it is completely possible to put together a rich course curriculum this way.

A year or so ago I became aware of a site called Connexions. People (educators mostly) can contribute and freely use all of the content there. It is set up so that it is mostly scholarly in nature and meant to be used as a textbook type resource comprised of "modules". When it was first developed, there were were very few such sites of that magnitude. However, during the past couple of years, these types of shared sites have exploded. The content - and most of it very good content - is free and there for the taking.

A good example I recently heard about is ushistory.org. Their website has expanded considerably since first put up in 1995 and serves approximately 3 million page views monthly to almost 1 million visitors. The site receives approximately 22 million hits monthly.

Their latest addition is the U.S. History Online Textbook, which includes 60 chapters "From Pre-Columbian to the New Millenium".

This is a well-reviewed resource, and quite frankly, I have trouble seeing why schools and districts strapped for cash would be dishing out $60 for a quickly outdated textbook when all of this is FREE FREE FREE!

The current economic conditions may push schools and districts in this direction faster than any technology initiative ever could!

How well do we know our own minds?

2009-03-24T23:39:00.001-07:00

Awhile back, while reading Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink, I was introduced to the IAT - the Implicit Association Test. The IAT is a kind of test that measures implicit attitudes or beliefs that people are either unwilling or unable to report. Here is an excerpt about the background:

Psychologists understand that people may not say what's on their minds either because they are unwilling or because they are unable to do so. The unwilling-unable distinction is like the difference between purposely hiding something from others and unconsciously hiding something from yourself. The Implicit Association Test makes it possible to penetrate both of these types of hiding.

Gladwell discusses the IAT in Blink to illustrate some points about "thin slicing" - those split second assumptions or conclusions we come to almost unconsciously. He discusses in particular the "Race IAT" because people who take it and say they do not have a preference for one race over another are often surprised or disturbed to find after taking the test that the data indicate they do in fact have some preference, even if it is on an unconscious level.

There are other IAT tests too, such as the "weight IAT", the "religion IAT", the "gender IAT", the "Native American IAT", and several others - even an "Obama/McCain IAT"!

These sets of IAT's that Gladwell refers to are from the Project Implicit site. You can read more about that at their site.

How can you use this in your classroom? This, to me, is really fascinating - and I think that high school students could definitely benefit from the discussion this would generate. Some carefully structured lessons, debates, or role plays and discussions, along with an IAT test, would really be a rich study for students in exploring not only the attitudes of the particular society and culture in which they live in (American, Alaskan, community, family, affiliations, race, etc), but how that has shaped their own attitudes, whether they think it has or not. In junior high and high school, it is not uncommon for our coursework, somewhere along the way, to come across the issue of stereotypes. This is an opportune time (teachable moment) to use the IAT as a springboard for that discussion.

You can take any IAT as many times as you wish - the results usually don't vary much with re-takes. If you answer too slowly the test will simply say the results are not valid.

CAUTION - although I would really encourage the type of discussion, tied in with some relevant curricular study that this would generate, I would strongly recommend that teachers follow these guidelines;

1. Don't require students to take the IAT, although they can certainly participate in the discussion. They can always take it privately at home if they wish.

2. Don't publicize results of anyone's IAT. I personally think it's best if you tell the students specifically NOT to share their results with anyone - even you.

3. Coach students on how to discuss and respond without being judgmental. This is a good time to reinforce the idea behind the IAT - to bring out attitudes that we sometimes don't know ourselves that we have.

4. Don't dwell on it - the main point is the self-awareness and further thinking this will generate. Know that even though the activity and discussion may be short, those wheels are a-turning!

No Really - How much is a trillion???

2009-03-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

We all know that a trillion of anything is quite a lot - and I for one just love when someone comes up with a good analogy, metaphor, or visualization that really brings those kinds of numbers home. I used to have a professor in college who always had one of those in his back pocket - about how many times a million dollars would circle the earth, or go to the moon and back.

A few years back, Paul Harvey had a good one that explained the difference between a million and a billion, but I haven't heard or seen anything new or interesting since - until now.

I happened upon this little gem called "What does one TRILLION dollars look like?"

In these times of a tumultous economy and the words "billion" and "trillion" being thrown around so often - it is difficult for adults to really get our minds around this concept - let alone our students. Pop this slide show up on the overhead or the SmartBoard and have a good discussion!

Got an identity problem? Try using a Voki!

2009-03-12T21:38:00.000-07:00

Vokis are like an avatar on steriods! Voki is a free web tool where you can select a "Voki" - they can be people, weird cartoon characters, animals, digimons, etc. Once you pick your little alter-ego, you can customize them a little - with the people you can change hair color, skin color, eye color, nose and eye size and also pick out clothing. For all Vokis you can pick from a wide selection of backgrounds. Kids absolutely love creating their own Vokis. The best thing about Vokis is that they will speak either computerized text that you type in, or your recorded voice for 1 full minute. Their lips move, their heads move - it's hilarious! Making a voice recording on Voki is called an "oddcast". What in the world would you ever use a Voki for? Well, I've included my own Voki here - note - be sure to roll the cursor around her even when she's not talking. See what she does:

I use them with my third graders so that they can give oral reports without having their faces appear on our blog - here are links to some of the Vokis my students have made - Check out Voki's from Allen, Kiara, Kade, Kevin, Megan, Melissa, Marrin, Jessie, or Hunter. (I had to list them all or there would have been hurt feelings!). Take it from any of them - Vokis are great. Now for every project we do the first question is "Are we going to get to make a Voki for it?".

That's what I call motivation!

Animoto: The end of slideshows

2009-03-10T22:03:00.000-07:00

First of all, let me just say this - if you have dial-up and decide to use Animoto, you are officially the most patient person in the world. Ok, that being said, Animoto speeds along just fine on our school connections, so as long as you do Animoto projects at school you shouldn't have any problems.

What is Animoto? It is a "video" program (for lack of a better word) that will take your photos to make either a beefed up movie clip or a not-so-boring slideshow. Here is a sample I made pretty quickly using some pics (not great pics) I snapped at my daughter's Choral Society performances this year:

Animoto was created by video and film makers, so there are lots of special features you can use. But the most basic features (the simple ones I used to make the above video) are Upload, Add Text, Add Music, Finalize. That's it. I made a video short which is 30 seconds and requires about 10 to 15 images. No two videos are ever the same. It analyzes the images and music you choose to orchestrate a custom video. You can also Remix it so it will change.

Animoto takes what would be an ordinary slide show and makes it a professional quality video. Animoto in the classroom is a fun and easy way for kids to use digital photos to express their stories.

Be sure to watch some of the many samples they have on the site to get a better idea of what they can be used for. You have to sign in with an email to register, but it is free.

Anyone can write stories or poems!

2009-03-10T01:05:00.000-07:00

Remember those fun kits of refrigerator magnets? They have a ton of words or phrases, people put them all over their fridge and everyone plays with them to make stories, poems, phrases, etc.?

Well, Magnetic Poetry has put their kits online for your virtual refrigerator writing fun! They work pretty much the same as the actual kits - on the left hand side of the screen is your fridge - you can pick the background. And on the right hand side is all of your magnets you have to work with.

The kids section has a poetry kit, a first words kit, a best friends kit, and a story writing kit.

This is great for kids who are still struggling with writing, but can read at a basic level. It's also a good tool for practicing sentence structures and playing around with poetry - a very risk-free environment to compose in!

Students can save their creations too. No registration or sign in. Simple to use, ready to go as soon as you go to the page, and very self-explanatory - kids can dive right in and start playing with Magnetic Poetry.

It's Iditarod time again!

2009-03-08T18:22:00.001-07:00

Those of us here in Alaska Gateway know dog mushing season is here again. On Saturday, March 7, Tanacross had their big dog races, the Great North American is coming up next week, and the last weekend in March is Race of Champions - and that's just in our neck of the woods!

As most of you are well aware, the biggie, The Iditarod, had its official start this weekend in Anchorage and then the restart in Wasilla. I know there are many classrooms here in AGSD that follow the race and run lesson plans and learning activities to coincide with the race.

For the EdTech portion of your classroom Iditarod experience, here are a few extra resources.

Of course there is the Official Site of the Iditarod complete with history, photos, live broadcasts, and current race standings. For classrooms who are doing activities with mapping race progress or graphing distance and speed of certain racers, this is race central - check it daily or several times a day as the information is always current.

For some ready made lesson plans and their accompanying resources, check out the Alaska Educational Program's "Alaska: Learning Taken to Extremes". They have a great Mushing in Alaska Unit with some nice looking resources.

The Discovery Channel Site has a nice selection of video shorts on the Iditarod. Last time I checked, there were over 30 of them to choose from - checkpoint info, caring for the dogs, interviews with the mushers, trail conditions, etc.

One other nice online classroom resource I will list here is Idita-Read. I know several teachers in AGSD have used this over the last couple of years and reported that the kids really enjoyed the competitive reading activities and the tie-in with the race. Idita-Read students rely on reading minutes to travel the distance along the trail from Anchorage to Nome.

*Flickr photo of husky by ozczecho

How much do YOU know about the Nobel Prize?

2009-03-04T23:13:00.001-08:00

We hear about Nobel Prize winners once in awhile - we might even be able to name a few if we think about it for a minute. But many adults and most kids don't really understand what the Nobel Prize is or what kinds of people get it. NobelPrize.org is a pretty cool site that breaks down the actual prizes (physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, economics, and peace - the one we probably hear the most about), includes information about past winners, and features many educational games associated with the prize winners and their fields.

Here is a little blurb about the actual founder:

At the age of 17, Swedish Alfred Nobel spoke five languages fluently. Nobel became an inventor and businessman, and at the time of his death on 10 December 1896, he had 355 patents worldwide – one of them was the patent on dynamite. Furthermore, he had started 87 companies all over the world. According to his will, Alfred Nobel's enormous fortune was to be used to establish prizes to award those who had done their best to benefit mankind in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, five years after Nobel's death.

The rest of the NobelPrize.org site is the really interesting part - the games! These are not just silly games either - they are interesting for junior high and high school students, as well as adults. All of the games have to do with ideas developed and promoted by Nobel Prize winners. One that I checked out was, of course, Lord of the Flies - one of my very favorite books! The game brings out the themes that the author, William Golding, was celebrated for when he won his Nobel Prize. I played and guess what? I do know that book pretty well! The other was Pavlov's Dog - it was a pretty simple demonstration of how his experiment worked but included a lot of other interesting information about his experiments.
There are a lot of games on the site like The Blood Typing Game, Tuburculosis, The DNA double helix game, The Electrocardiogram game and the Malaria game, just to name a few. As you can tell by their titles, there is a lot more "educational" than "game" going on here.
This is a really interesting way to engage students in the field of study pursued by any particular Nobel Winner, and to introduce kids to the Prize itself and the kinds of innovation, creativity, and possibility it promotes.

A way to get students interested in the news

2009-03-03T21:46:00.000-08:00

I never thought it would come to this, but I have to give credit where credit is due. A free video site called "The Week in Rap" is up and running. Their billing reads "A week's worth of news, rapped. New every Friday." And they are not kidding. You can subscribe to these video feeds, watch them right on their site, or embed them in a blog (as I am doing here). Most of them are just 2 or 3 minutes long, focus on one or two big serious headlines and a few lighter issues, have good visuals (actual newsfile pictures) with the rap playing over. Unlike other rap, there are no "no-no" words, and it's very understandable.

The Week in Rap is good. It would be a fun way to inject a little current events on a Friday afternoon (or any day). Teachers could review the rap before-hand, give a brief overview of the current event(s) addressed in the rap, or even tie it in with another web/current events tool like Newsmap. Then you could play the rap on an overhead or your Smartboard for your students. Or, it could be used as a quick activity to begin or end class.

There is a print version available of each rap with the click of a button, so students can follow along. It's definitely the kind of news students will listen to.

Dr. Seuss is Everywhere!

2009-03-02T22:03:00.000-08:00

Noticed anything funny about your Google searches lately? It seems Dr. Suess characters are everywhere - for good reason. March 2nd marked the beginning of Read Across America week - which kicks off with Theodore Geisel's birthday (aka Dr. Seuss). He would have been 105 today.
There are events going on at bookstores across the country (unfortunately not in Alaska) hosting events to celebrating reading and children's literature.

Just because we have no bookstores in our state hosting RAA events does not mean we cannot partake in the fun activities that celebrate reading and Dr. Seuss. For starters, you can visit the Seussville Playground for Dr. Seuss click and play games. Students who are familiar with the Seuss characters can enjoy games like The Grinch Grow Your Heart game, Sneetchball, Sam I Am Says, Fox in Sox Matching game, and others.

One of the highlights on the Seussville site is the Seussville Story Maker, with characters from Horton Hears a Who. Students can choose Seuss-like settings, characters, theme music, scenes for their plot, and very quickly create a fun Seuss-ish digital story.

For more Dr. Seuss integration/celebration, check out the lesson ideas on ReadWriteThink (the site hosted by NCTE and IRA).

A cautionary tale for your students about their social networks...

2009-03-01T21:08:00.000-08:00

This is a post copied from Seth Godin's Blog. Seth Godin is a sort of internet and marketing guru and author of several books, including the recent bestseller, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us (it applies to lots more than business and I highly recommend it).

We know that many of our students have social network spaces on services like MySpace and FaceBook. Many of us don't know enough about how these social sites work, but it seems as though we should be giving our students some guidance regarding their use.

This recent blog post from Seth Godin is an excellent starting point for discussion with your students. It is a story that illustrates so many points about social networking perfectly. There is nothing wrong with social networking - but kids need to be aware just how "out there" their information really is. There are a lot of positives to be gained from social networking, but like anything else, kids need to use it responsibly.

Do your students a favor - share this story with them:

Personal branding in the age of Google

A friend advertised on Craigslist for a housekeeper.

Three interesting resumes came to the top. She googled each person's name.

The first search turned up a MySpace page. There was a picture of the applicant, drinking beer from a funnel. Under hobbies, the first entry was, "binge drinking."

The second search turned up a personal blog (a good one, actually). The most recent entry said something like, "I am applying for some menial jobs that are below me, and I'm annoyed by it. I'll certainly quit the minute I sell a few paintings."

And the third? There were only six matches, and the sixth was from the local police department, indicating that the applicant had been arrested for shoplifting two years earlier.

Three for three.

Google never forgets.

Of course, you don't have to be a drunk, a thief or a bitter failure for this to backfire. Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you're on Candid Camera, because you are.

2009-03-01T08:35:00.001-08:00

This post is a demonstration of Blogger Mobile. What that means in a nutshell is that I am writing this blog post via text message from my cell phone and posting it to my blog. This EdTechSec blog is written on Google's blogging tool called Blogger. With Blogger I can use their service called Blogger Mobile. I simply text the body of my post - what I'm doing right now - to 256-447 (that's the number correlation of "bloggr"). And there it is! A post made right from my cell phone.

For those of you who have your own blogs, the reasons this will be handy are numerous. First and foremost being that you don't need Internet access to post - just phone service. If your students have their own blogs, they can keep up on their posts too - even if they don't have computer access!
This is the kind of "tech" I like - it's not extra, it makes your life easier!

EdTechSec Podcasts #1

2009-02-26T22:36:00.001-08:00

Gabcast! EdTechSec Podcasts #1

*WOW! For any of you who have ever made even one podcast, or any of you who have ever made just 1 blog post, you can attest to how easy it is - they are the kinds of things that once you do them you go, "Hey, that was a lot easier than I thought it would be!". Well for those of you who have ever taken that just one step further and put put an mp3(sound) file on your blog - still, the feeling is, "Hey, that was not hard at all!".

Those were my reactions to all of those things when I first learned them. They are now operations that take me literally only seconds to do.

Well, today my world just got a little easier with Gabcast! This section I am posting (beginning with the asterisk) was my own addition to a post CREATED FOR ME with Gabcast. I made that call, said my message, crossed my fingers then came to this site. And here it was - posted and ready to go. This is the easiest blog post AND podcast I have ever made - I think I could get to like this!

A tool for teaching kids to be discriminating about information from the internet

2009-02-24T23:27:00.000-08:00

All About Explorers was developed by a group of teachers to teach students to be critical readers of the content they find on the internet.

All About Explorers is a series of lessons for elementary and junior high students (can be explored by a single or several lessons, or as a webquest) that demonstrates that just because something is out there for the searching does not mean it is worthwhile.

For example, if a student is doing a search for information about Christopher Columbus, typically they will just do a Google search or type something like www.columbus.com. If you click on this link, that is not helpful. Neither is www.columbus.org, which takes you to the Columbus, OH, Chamber of Commerce.

This site carefully takes students through what looks like a typical research project or webquest, and has plenty of opportunities built in for students to make choices and look critically at the information they are finding.

It's easy to use for teachers and students - for teachers wanting to see what is offered, the site is easy to navigate.

A physics interactive to challenge all levels

2009-02-24T00:42:00.000-08:00

Fantastic Contraption is a web interactive where your challenge is to build a machine from simple parts to move objects to a goal. Yes - physics is the main focus of this activity but anyone (even teachers) can test, test, and re-try with this! There is a short tutorial that explains the simple parts and what they do and explains the objective (move your machine to the pink box). The controls are easy to manipulate and you will find yourself building a Fantastic Contraption before you know it.

Fantastic Contraption is a great tool for elementary students studying simple machines - you can easily incorporate the concepts into this interactive play. There are endless levels, so even more advanced students in physics will find ample challenges.

If you choose to register (you don't have to) you can save your levels of play and your devices and share them on the site, as well as seeing what others have done - there is no one right way to complete the objective!
For those students or teachers who have an iPhone or iPod Touch, Fantastic Contraption is available as an app for $4.99. Try it out online for free first.

Some technology food for thought...

2009-02-22T15:01:00.001-08:00

This is a little side trip from the usual posts about educational web tools.

When we talk about educational technology, I think we have to differentiate between the idea of simply "technology" and the idea of "technology integration".

If we have kids play online skill drill math games, they are using technology, but they could practice those same drills with pencil and paper. If we have kids punch the correct multiple choice response on a computer, they are using technology, but they could accomplish the same learning with a textbook or a worksheet. This is not to say that any of these types of activities are wrong or bad - often they are more time and materials efficient than paper/pencil/textbook/worksheets, and they can be more engaging too.

But relying on only these activities to say "I integrate technology into my classroom" falls short of the real idea of technology integration.

We must think critically about this when we think about educational technology - are we teaching them to use tools that help them think in different ways, create something new, and think in an innovative way? Or are we just using the computer in the same way we have always used textbooks, worksheets, and the library?

The 21st Century Learner by Kim Cofino

View more presentations from Kim Cofino. (tags: learner k-12)

A different way for students to view the U.S.

2009-02-18T23:02:00.000-08:00

SHOW USA is an online tool launched by Mapping Worlds. The website offers users a new way to look at the world by resizing countries on the map according to a series of global issues.

SHOW USA is ready to use - just select a subject from the top menu (People, Planet, Politics, Business, Living and their subcategories) and watch the states on the map change their size. Instead of land mass, the size of each state will represent the data for that subject--both its share of the total and absolute value. Roll you mouse over each state for a quick pop-up of state by state data. Underneath the map is a short explanation of the results, as well as a link to at least one book related to that subject.
After you select the subject and sub-category of interest the map immediately begins to change. For example, when I selected the Living category and the sub-category of Bigfoot Sightings, the map interestingly morphed to this;
Washington has the most Bigfoot sightings? Who knew?

SHOW USA can be a great way for teachers to visually show students data when studying ideas in geography, economics, current events, the environment, etc. It can easily integrate into any subject area as a useful and infomational supplement.

Students could certainly find SHOW USA a useful resource for research - each new map has an option to download or embed into a blog or website.

Young students beginning the study of U.S. geography often find it difficult to grasp the concept that Alaska is the largest, yet the smallest state. A quick click on the People tab and choosing Demographics very quickly morphs the country in front of your eyes - Alaska shrinks, while geographically tiny Connecticut dwarfs it. What better way for young students to really get this concept? Older students using SHOW USA as a research tool would find many ways to use these maps for comparison/contrast studies.

Lots of possibilities here - worth a quick trial run. Easy to play with, no registration or sign-in. Next to the title of this page is also a link to their other site SHOW WORLD, which offers a similar tool for viewing the world map.

Good math fun

2009-02-18T07:54:00.000-08:00

Ghostblasters is one of those super simple math game sites that is great because of its simplicity. It only practices one skill - identifying multiples. You can set the multiple to whatever you want on the ghost that pops up on the screen - then click start and up pop the ghosts! You have to be fast to click on the multiples of whatever you selected (a mouse is probably better for this than a mouse pad).

It's one of those quick and easy things you can use for a reward, or individual practice that the kids just can't get into trouble with. They find it pretty exciting once they get the hang of it.

No ads, no sign in, no registration, no side menus that can lead them astray to other games or sites - just Ghostblasters.

A helpful math tool for all k-12 students

2009-02-16T22:52:00.000-08:00

A Maths Dictionary for Kids is an excellent reference for any student to have handy. From simple concepts like addition to fractions, to more complex math vocabulary concepts like Fibonacci numbers or frustrums (I did not know that one), it would be difficult to find a term, theorum, or concept that was not listed in the Maths Dictionary for Kids.

Don't let the simple layout fool you and make you think it's only for the younger students - it is unbelievably simple to navigate but contains high level terms and descriptions that high school students will appreciate. I went to the A's and clicked on "area" to get this nice visual aide and description.

Besides the nice visual and graphic representations that are easy to read and interpret - almost all have some way by which you can take the concept for a test run - either on the main description page, or the following. For example on the "area" page, I clicked the button on the bottom for "area calculators" and got this handy tool;

Whatever grade you teach, show the Maths Dictionary to your students! Help younger students learn how to easily navigate this tool so that they can help themselves with their math work, and can keep referring back to it whenever they need to.

A study aide that's WAAAYYY more fun than flash cards!

2009-02-15T22:23:00.000-08:00

Jeopardy Labs has a great site that teachers (or students) can build a great study tool on. I'm hard pressed to think of anyone I know who doesn't find a little guilty pleasure in stopping on "Jeopardy" while flicking through channels, just to try their luck - well now you can enjoy it in front of everyone because it's EDUCATIONAL! It's for school!

JeopardyLabs allows you to create a customized Jeopardy template without PowerPoint. The games you make can be played online from anywhere in the world. Building your own Jeopardy template is a piece of cake. Just use their simple editor to get your game up and running. Also no registration, no sign in - as soon as you get on to the site you can use it.

If you are not interested in building your own Jeopardy template you can browse Jeopardy templates created by others - mostly teachers!
I set one up for a French review, popped it up on the overhead screen and we had a good time with it - I wished I had created more than just one! I'll be looking for more ready made ones that suit me - there are quite a few of them!

Good higher level thinking skills for kids too - remember, they are only seeing the answer within a category and have to figure out what the question is...

Math and Google Earth is the Real Deal!

2009-02-12T20:51:00.000-08:00

Wow! That is all I can say about this mash-up resource, so I'll say it again - WOW! Real World Math is a truly awesome website for math teachers grades 5-12 who want to push their math teaching beyond the text. Google Earth is the tool used to accomplish this.

Real World Math's collection of concept lessons uses Google Earth to present math topics like rates or scientific notation in unique ways. The collection of project based learning activities has lessons that requires students to work collaboratively in pairs or groups. The measurement lessons have students using the measurement tool in Google Earth to complete problem solving activities. There are also exploratory lessons which include non-traditional math topics like fractals, topography, or modern geometry.

Real World Math uses Google Earth which is interactive and 3-D. Students can add placemarks, annotations, photos and models, as well as measure distances and draw paths.

This growing collection of lessons (you can contribute lessons too) encourages higher level thinking skills, creativity, technology, and social learning.

Real World Math is very accessible for teachers and students - no registration required.

Another One Bites the Dust!

2009-02-12T15:40:00.000-08:00

Shoot! That's all I have to say right now! I had an almost serious setback at the beginning of class today. Stinto - my beloved easy chat that I talked up so big just a few posts ago is now down for the count. I guess that's the way it goes in web world - easy come easy go.

Luckily, there is always something similar, and sometimes better, that comes along.

A couple of weeks ago, a teacher on Twitter told me about a similar easy chat room called Chatzy. I'd peeked at it quickly, but hadn't tried it - just bookmarked it for later times.

Well, today when we went to get our Stinto chat started, two of my students, in horrified voices, hollered, "Mrs. Weisz! Stinto's down!" like we needed to give it cpr or something!

I said a calming word or two, then quickly checked my bookmark tags for "chat". Lo and behold, up popped the Chatzy site I'd bookmarked earlier. I quickly got the class back on track, rattling off the new url rapidly. They got there before I did and I quickly heard the tone change - "This is a cool chat! It's better than Stinto!" Luckily it is just as easy too.

So, we lost maybe 5 minutes, and a good friend (Stinto), but actually gained a better tool.

If you were interested in Stinto, give Chatzy a try.

Have a web-based Valentines Day!

2009-02-11T21:15:00.000-08:00

Of course, we can't let a holiday like this pass by without the opportunity to sneak in some edtech - that's right - "educational" technology about Valentines Day.

I'd like to use this post to list a few great site links for all ages to play a little and learn a little on this relatively uncontroversial (for schools) holiday.

First up is, of course, the History Channel's offering on The History of Valentines Day. This special page has lots of information from the frivolous to the factual. Students can learn about how this holiday got started, look up famous love quotes from Aristotle to Anais Nin, learn some historical facts such as who are generally recognized as the greatest couples in history, some commercial facts, and even read some of President Truman's love letters to his wife, Bess. If you can get them to work at school (I didn't test them out under the GCI filter), there are some pretty interesting video clips on the St. Valentines Day Massacre, how to make Valentines candy, as well as some video histories. There are of course a few games too.

For intermediate students - have them test their knowledge of Valentines Day and also their vocabulary with this quiz. This is an ESL site, but the activity is appropriate for any students aged 10 and up depending on their reading level.

All kinds of puzzles, wordscrambles, and other Valentines Day worksheets on this site.

Younger students will like this site where they can make a virtual Valentines Day cake. They can email it to someone when they are done, or just save it to the site to show to whoever they want.

The National Zoo has put up some really cute images that kids can print off or send as Valentines Day ecards. It would be fun to do an activity where the students had an opportunity to learn a little more about these animals, and then include the Valentines ecard as an ending activity for the holiday.

High school students might enjoy this MSNBC article on the 5 Worst Valentines Day Gifts - some really great humorous writing pieces with a heavy dose of irony! There is also a little poll they can take.

Another good current events/economics article for high school students by MSNBC - Businesses loving Valentines Day ever more - commentary on the heavily commercialized holiday.

And finally, one for the younger students - they will really enjoy this fun site - My Punny Valentine - which is a sort of animated slide show of the old fashioned Valentines cards with puns - a great opportunity to teach a litte bit about the varied uses of our language! Let them use it at the computer center, or pop it up on the overhead during your Valentines Day party and let them try to figure them out and explain them to their friends.
I'm sure many of you have some great sites as well - I would encourage you to add them to the comments section of this blog post. If you keep checking back and see comments to this post (a number other than zero by the "comments" line at the bottom), hopefully that's where you will see suggestions and links put there by others.

Alaska History - anything you need to teach it!

2009-02-10T20:08:00.000-08:00

For anyone teaching any portion of or any subject matter related to Alaska's cultures, geography, history, etc. - this is your site! Alaska History and Cultural Studies was a site Becky Gallen, the English and Social Studies teacher at Northway, recently told me about. She says she has been using it for her Alaska Studies/History class, and I can see why.

The site was created by the Alaska Humanaties Forum. It can be taught as a course - it has 6 specific units of study with plans and activities that cover geography, Alaska's cultures, Russian territory, the purchase and time as Alaska Territory, government and the state constitution, and modern Alaska.

Within each of those units is a wealth of resources that is easy to search. There are videos, interviews on mp3 files, maps, pictures, slideshows, virtual tours, you name it. Students will have no trouble finding scholarly research information for their studies and projects.

Environmental science teachers will also find many good resources and references here.
Although much of the material is for older students, kids as young as 5th grade could easily use and enjoy many of the interactive activities, as well as the informative videos and interviews.

Whenever I see a site that is put together this way, I think how cool it would be for students to create a site like this to show their learning - a web page with links to searched or created multimedia, good research accompanied by pictures and maps, and appropriate links to sites that give further information. This is an excellent example for our students of what they should be doing!

Anyone who is an Alaskan will find the Alaska History and Cultural Studies site a fascinating search to check out - Thanks Becky!

You and your students can explore any "ology" that interests you

2009-02-09T20:57:00.000-08:00

Ology is a section of the American Museum of Natural History's website for kids. Students can explore paleontology, archeology, water, astronomy, biodiversity, earth, "Einstein", genetics, or marine biology. There are fun activities within these "ologies" to explore, like the live lizard and snake cam, making your own marine biology stationery, describing space and time in the 4th dimension, just to name a very few. Ology is a fun site to play around with for teachers as you can easily find great a great variety of online and offline student projects and activities - directions included.

You have to sign up, but no email is required - it's a simple process to pick your "ology" name (mine is Terrible Tyrannosaur), and a password, so it is kid-friendly. Elementary students of all ages can have a great time studying concepts in science with the variety of activities on Ology.

Students can collect interest cards throughout the activities to add to their own stacks and create a "homepage" on the site that keeps track of these.

Stinto takes a casual chat to a study activity

2009-02-05T23:08:00.000-08:00

It's time for me to bust this one out - it's so simple but it's become one of my favorites recently. Stinto is a chat room, but a very simple one.

You simply click the button to begin a chat and Stinto will give you a 4 or 5 character ending to the URL - for example, your URL will go from www.stinto.net, to www.stinto.net/88b5b. You can tell, or send this URL to whoever you want to join you and if they go to that address they are in your chat room. This ensures that you will have a private chat. No sign-in, no accounts, no registration necessary.

Why would you want to use Stinto? Well, one way I have been using it is for a 5 to 10 minute review at the beginning of French. I need to spend a little time at the beginning of each class reviewing the new vocabulary from the previous day, but was having difficulty getting the students to volunteer (orally) in French. So at the beginning of each class, I have a student open a Stinto chat and write the URL on the board (just those last digits as everyone knows the Stinto address). Now I get 100% participation in these short reviews, and the students are really willing to guess and take chances (this is a short clip from yesterday's class chat).
At the bottom of the chat page is a disk icon so that you can download and save the chat to your desktop. It will download as an rtf file (rich text). Once it is on your desktop, all you have to do is change that .rtf to a .doc, and voila! It becomes a WordDoc (see above example). Besides the student engagement benefits, it's also a great formative assessment tool. I have a good running record of who participated, how they participated, and what they know.
Once the chat is inactive for an hour or two, it simply disappears! I have been encouraging students to use Stinto as a way to get study groups together in the evenings as well.
There are lots of ways to incorporate Stinto into your class. You could use it for small groups that have to brainstorm together - it would be quieter if you had a large class, more kids contribute - you have a record of who participated and what kinds of contributions they made to the group. Think of it as group notes.

Another great vocabulary tool!

2009-02-04T23:03:00.001-08:00

One of the first posts on this blog was for a great vocabulary visualization program called VisuWords. Since then I have heard both good and just so-so feed back - the so-so being that a few of you had some trouble with it running slowly sometimes. Well, Lexipedia is another visual vocabulary tool that has all of the good components you liked about VisuWords, and fast graphics.

Lexipedia is a pretty fun vocabulary tool. Just like VisuWords, you type in the vocabulary word you want to search. Lexipedia immediately pops up a web with the vocabulary word in the middle and surrounded by the noun forms, verb forms, adjective forms, synonyms, antonyms, and something called "fuzzynyms" for that word. On the left is a menu that gives the information in a more formal thesaurus type format.
You can click on the key so that you can only view certain forms of the word. Roll over that form with the mouse and you'll get a pop-up that uses it in a sentence. It's extremely simple, very fast, and really fun to play with! Give Lexipedia a try and I'm sure you'll see what I did - a great tool for your students!

Teaching young students how to use a search engine

2009-02-03T23:09:00.000-08:00

Finally, a search engine that mimics the format of "grown up" search engines, but doesn't get cluttered up with "grown up" search results. KidRex emphasizes kid-related webpages, is powered by Google Custom Search, and uses Google SafeSearch technology.

I liked the initial search page with the colorful dinosaur picture - this is a draw for the young kids right away! I typed in a search for "animal habitats" and got these very obviously safe results right away;
For teachers who are trying to teach young students how to use a search engine and how to analyze their results, KidRex is a great introductory search and also offers a great way to teach these valuable skills to young students.

How to find books boys ("Guys") will like

2009-02-02T22:03:00.000-08:00

A big question in literacy circles lately seems to be "What can we do to get adolescent boys reading?" I think this is a question that extends both ways beyond the adolescent years. For whatever reason, in general, it seems that boys are a little pickier about what reading material they are interested in.

Enter author Jon Scieszka and his helpful site - GuysRead. It's a great resource for determining great age appropriate selections from little boys all the way through late teens. This can help ramp up the interest level of a course reading list, or also serve as a handy resource for suggestions for boys. As an author of kids' books, a teacher, and a parent, and a guy, Jon Scieszka seems a credible source of information on this particular topic.

Scieszka has the site set up to navigate through suggetions for different age levels, to do a search, or to set up your own GuysRead group or list. The graphics are fun and the site is interesting to navigate - very Scieszka-like, so students will find it easy and fun to use too. They can search based on a book or an author they already like and get recommendations for more books they should try out.

A great, comprehensive American History resource

2009-02-01T21:19:00.000-08:00

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History for Teachers and Students is a sort of prepackaged US History curriculum that is free online. It has some great resources, lesson plans, and interactives for teaching US History. You can get online quizzes, primary source documents, and TWENTY (yes twenty) very quality comprehensive units of study complete with visual aids and links to additional resources. They've done much of the leg work for you!
One very neat feature is their series of podcasts called Historians on Record, which has famous authors speaking on their favorite US History topics.

Many of the activities and resources on this site not only inform, they also help students find ways to create their own projects for learning.