Google Docs is a tool I had looked into earlier this year and had planned to use in my 5th and 6th grade humanities classes for sharing and editing documents. Unfortunately, when I attempted to have my students sign up for GMail accounts, I realized there was an age limit of 13. My students were stuck because when they their entered their birthdays, they were not allowed to open an account. I would love to hear from other teachers who have overcome this age problem with using Google Docs.
I had fun experimenting with the different Google Docs tools and began a spreadsheet of my advisees recent student led conference goals. I think it will be very interesting to have all 5-6 teachers read these goals and comment on them. I have also used Google Docs successfully for working with an older student on some catch up work.
I see much use of these tools in the future when we overcome the age problem and look forward to actually using them with my students and not just exerimenting with them myself..
This podcast was a combined effort with a colleague who is also completing this Learning 2.0 course. We decided to create a podcast of our 5th and 6th grade students reciting the poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. This poem is part of our annual Eagle Society meeting of poetry lovers where everyone recites this poem together. We both used the same podcast but included different selections of music.
I first spent some time looking in Teacher Tube for some exciting or helpful videos to use in the classroom. I felt it was clunky and very annoying with the ads at the beginning of each video. However, I did find an interesting video that I will show my class about a student taking over as teacher for the day. It is clear, informative and videotaped well.
The next videos I chose are a three video series on Marco Polo and the Silk Road which we are studying in humanities. This is a retelling of Marco’s journey to China by Michael D Manning, a photographer from National Geographic. I have included all three videos so that I can assign my classes to watch them from this blog site.
Geocaching is one my favorite outdoor activities and this is the introductory site I would recommend to anyone interested in finding out more about this exciting pastime.
I have used podcasts in my classroom occasionally during the past few years. We have mainly listened to these podcasts, but have also created a few of our own, usually to share poetry or to present information that we wanted to share outside of the classroom. I didn’t realize there were so many free podcasts available for school use and enjoyed browsing through the interesting selection at i Tunes, as usual spending way too much time.
I found several podcasts to which I already subscribe, including NPR, and Ted Talks. I did include them in my Google Reader but I like the i Tunes easy format better. I added Coffee Break Spanish, an amusing Spanish tutorial by two fellow Scots, complete with accents. Maybe with the help of their Scottish pronunciation, I will be speaking Spanish in no time.
Thinking about using podcasts more in the classroom leads me to all sorts of ideas for small and large group group work . My colleague and I recently created a podcast (using Audacity) of all of our 5-6 students reciting the poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carol and hope to follow it up with more in a series. When Jabberwocky is in finished form I will embed it in “Thing 18″.
I love reading and encourage my students to read and share their reading material with each other often and in as many different ways as they can. Library Thing could be a great new way to share books in a much wider and more global way. I will certainly be bookmarking this site for more browsing.
I will introduce my classes to this website and see their reactions and hear their ideas for use of this site in the classroom. Perhaps the social aspect of this tool will appeal to them? I wonder how my students would feel about cataloging and tagging all of their own books from home?
This site looks very similar to looking up books on Amazon so it could be useful for me when I am looking for curricular informational books, trade books connected to our yearly themes, poetry on all levels, new children’s literature and much more. I am teaching an embroidery course to some younger students and found some interesting books that may be of use for this course. The reviewers guides were most helpful.
I am not sure that I would take the time to catalog my own vast book collection, but I will revisit this site and explore the possibilities.
I had heard a lot about Delicious but had never tried it until now. The tags are really helpful and easy to use and I found lots of interesting and useful sites while browsing through the K12 Learning page.
Setting up a Delicious account was easy except that I had to sign up for a yahoo email, which I really didn’t want. I saved and tagged several interesting sites and then took the plunge and imported some of my own bookmarks. Seemed simple, maybe too simple, but it worked and they are saved and tagged. Here are my bookmarks, http://del.icio.us/shirleyrinaldi.
This tool could certainly be another resource for student research and it will certainly be easier for me to share bookmarks with my classes, all together instead of each individual site. I assume the students do not require an account to look at my bookmarks. I would also like to share sites with other teachers and even with colleagues in my own school. The social aspect of this tool is probably the most appealing for me.
Learning is Messy is one of my favorite feeds that I like to scan through frequently and usually find that the varied variety content is both interesting and helpful. Through this particular post, I found another feed called our class blog that gave me an idea for communicating with another school. These 4th grade students from Brian Crosby’s class like to skype and blog with other schools all around the world…something my class and I would like to try. I contacted Brian and his students and shared our class blog hoping for some comments and ideas from his class. My 5-6 students would love to connect to other students through their technology tools and this could be their first step.
Wow! So many interesting and weird sounding titles, so how to pick just one of them? This is always the most difficult task for me when we are given so many different tools, sites etc., as I want to explore many more than one and end up spending way too much time on that aspect of a task. Perhaps later when this course is finished, I will have more time to browse through more. I finally decided on Glogster Edu – “a digital “poster wall” to share images, text, music, video and links.” I had seen several Glogster pages in blogs, wikis and other sites that really drew me to the graphics and the final visual effects. This format is very upbeat, modern and appealing to middle school students.
My first project using this tool will be with my 5-6 students who have recently begun writing their own 5-6 class blog. I see this as a useful tool for each student who could create a Glogster page for our blog to introduce themselves and let others know about their lives, their studies, their hobbies with voice, music and creativity. I think the students will be excited to work on this project and I’m curious to find out how easy or difficult it is for them to manipulate these tools .
I think there could be many uses for Glogster in my classroom. I do a variety of art projects with time lines, book projects, posters, picture displays etc. etc., and I think this tool would give another way to create many of these projects. I love the idea of being able to add sound, music and video in a seemingly easy way.
I just spent a relaxing and pleasant evening browsing through some very interesting online conferences in the comfort of my living room…no I didn’t wear my pj’s but sweats are just as comfortable. A cup of tea and my laptop and I was ready to begin.
I first watched Bridging History Using Web 2.0 Tools presented by Robin Beaver and Jean Moore. This appealed to me because of the curricular content…we are both studying Asia. I loved the many primary resources that Jean had available for her students online and the depth of her projects was quite amazing. The student collaboration and the learning aspect of all her activities really motivated me to think more about integrating more similar projects in my own classroom.
Next, with a break for dinner, I watched Brian Crosby and his conference on Video-Conferencing It’s Easy, Free and Powerful. I Really enjoyed this video and how it was divided into very helpful small segments. I have also used Skyp when a student was out sick for a length of time and found it helpful for everyone involved. I would like to use it more for absent students. Using video conferencing when a visitor presents could be so useful and effective for the entire school, the community and further afield. The collaboration aspect of video conferencing was clearly stated in many positive ways and I loved the Harris Burdick project and the interview section with other schools. Students respond so well to this kind of learning and the outcome is so rewarding.
My last conference of the evening was about a favorite hobby of mine…Geocaching. A colleague and I plan to create a student developed nature trail on our school grounds. Students will then compile and hide some geomath, geography and geoscience mystery caches where students will find each cache, solve the puzzle and find the next cache in a series. This video by Beth Ritter-Guth and entitled Unlikely Coordinates? Geocaching Across the Curriculum gave me some new and fresh ideas to get this going. I also want to research more on Dr. Alice Christie, the guru of educaching.
All in all, I spent a very productive and enlightening evening at these conferences and think they are a wonderful idea. I hope to continue to browse through many more and will definitely be back next year to see what new and innovative ideas are out there in these great conferences.
