Diigo and RSS

Guest Post by Marjorie Wagner.

Is your “Favorites” list on your computer overflowing, or does it take you ten minutes to find that great web site you wanted to share with your class or another teacher? Then YOU need to become a social bookmarker! Is there a blog that has great insight into your subject matter or a web site that keeps you updated with the latest news? Then YOU need to start aggregating your sites through RSS feeds! 


Michelle Ward invited me to share as a guest blogger this week some of the new technology I have been learning. (Thank you, Michelle!)  I decided to share social bookmarking and RSS feeds because I feel like they are both great time savers and collaboration tools for teachers as well as students. 

Social bookmarking is a way to save and organize sites on the web so they are available to you wherever there is Internet access. It is a great tool for students to use with group projects, or a way for you to direct your class to resources past the first two items in Google (come on, you know that’s where they look :)) you don’t want them to miss. You can create lists, annotate the content, add tags denoting the subject matter, and share them with others. Below is a short slide show explaining a little more about social bookmarking, and the last slide offers some websites you can use. I personally prefer Diigo, but there are many other sites out there, including some subject-specific ones. 

Here is a link to my Diigo list of Middle School Webquests so you can get an idea of how the site looks.

I’m sure many of you have seen this button on one of your favorite websites, blogs, or Facebook pages. It is the logo for RSS: “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary.”   RSS is an address one uses to "subscribe" to the feed of an information provider. This subscription allows you to automatically receive any newly posted information. You use a piece of software or Web site called an "aggregator" such as Google Reader to subscribe and to read the feeds.  Here is a Common Craft video that explains RSS in simple terms. RSS is a great way to follow the blogs of experts in your field, or news services that broadcast breaking news throughout the day.  

I hope these two technology tools will help you and your students use information from the web more efficiently, and save you time that could be better spent enjoying life! – Marjorie Wagner

StoryTime, Taxes, CarrotSticks, Twisty Noodle,and the Royal Wedding

It has been quite a while since I have written a new entry on available technology resources. Tuesday seems to come around quickly each week. :) Spring is a great time to clean out your old lessons and to try something new.  Below I have listed five websites that I hope you will want to add to your collection of resources.

Story Time For Me 

is a wonderful resource that I was not aware of until today.  (http://storytimeforme.com/).  It is a free reading program designed specifically for beginning readers.  It allows them to read and listen to enjoyable, online interactive picture books. I love the animations!  You can choose between three story topics: Fern the Fox, Flame the Dragon, or Ben the Mouse.  Check this site out.  It has not been around long, so I am sure that the content will expand as time goes on.

Where did my tax dollars go? 

This is a common question that is asked this time of year.  The site http://www.wheredidmytaxdollarsgo.com/ provides students with a fun activity to work through to see exactly where taxed income is distributed. Check it out for yourself.  I found it to be eye opening. 

  CarrotSticks

According to the website, CarrotSticks (http://www.go2web20.net/site/?a=CarrotSticks) is an online Multi-player game that improves math skills for students in grades 1-5.  This site will allow them to practice basic math facts and compete with their peers from around the world!  I think that our younger students will enjoy this site as well.  They will all LOVE designing their own character and earning points by solving problems.  I have set up a classroom account for our school that you are welcome to use.  Simply go to http://www.carrotsticks.com/pulaski1 or you can set up your own by clicking on the link in the  upper right corner of the site.  Initially, students will be prompted to create a user name and password.  AN email verification is not required, so they can begin playing immediately.  With the educational free license, students can practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  Check it out!

 Twisty Noodle 

(http://www.go2web20.net/site/?a=TwistyNoodle) has thousands of coloring pages and worksheets that will be great to use with our ECS students. You can customize your own coloring page or worksheet by changing the font and text. Change the font to block, D'Nealian, or cursive for great writing practice. Check out the Mother's Day coloring pages!

I have been totally absorbed with the Royal Wedding.  Emory University provides a wonderful overview of the history behind such an event.  Take a few minutes and enjoy this video. I am sure that there is a good history lesson in here somewhere.... it can't be just for fun. :)

Reading and Writing in 21st Century Classrooms

Diane Lafferty, guest blogger

Literacy 2.0:

Literacy 2.0 represents a shift, not a replacement. Where literacy 1.0 was about access to information, literacy 2.0 is about finding, using, producing and sharing information. Literacy 2.0 builds on the concepts and operating systems used in older versions, but does so in different venues. New methods and new venues required knowledge of 21st century skills pertaining to and allowing students to collaborate, create, listen, view, share, locate and store information. Thanks to the internet, our audience is larger than ever and students need to be aware of their increased presence on this public stage. The dividing line between literacy and technology has dissolved, and teachers are now responsible for understanding this dissolution to effectively educate 21st century students and prepare them to function at higher cognitive levels. Learning in the 21st century can no longer be limited to mimicking existing knowledge; it requires innovative applications of timeless functions.

Three-Dimensional Reading:

Critical to teaching students about reading and researching via the internet, is understanding the concept of three-dimensional reading. With print based reading, we read in two dimensions – right to left and top to bottom. For much of today’s reading, which is Internet based, we read in three dimensions: across, down and into. Hyperlinks to other related (or not related) content allow readers to journey through much more than the originating webpage. Students and teachers alike need to expand their three-dimensional reading skills, because two-dimensional skills are no match for the searching, filtering, and reading requirements of Internet based learning.

Modeling with Wikipedia:

While many educators believe that Wikipedia articles are full of inaccuracies and often forbid students from referencing the site, recent research reveals that entries in Wikipedia are only slightly less accurate than those found in the Encyclopedia Brittanica. There are a number of ways teachers can use these online encyclopedia entries to model thinking. Modeling should provide students with access to academic language and thinking as well as information. Wikipedia can be used as an excellent resource to model with, and serves as a jumping off point for further research.

Example scenario: a teacher opens a Wikipedia article, the image related to the topic activates the teacher’s background knowledge and he is able to make predictions and inferences from context clues, and create connections between the Wikipedia article and information provided in the text book. The Discussion tab on a Wikipedia page is an excellent tool that can be used to analyze ways in which people engage one another. Often these discussions model expected behavior in the classroom regarding civil, educated discussion. With a Wikipedia article open, a teacher may select a hyperlinked word that leads to related content such a word origin, term definition, and references to similar content.

Briefly view the Pulaski Academy Wikipedia entry to see a variety of hyperlinked items.  Clicking this link is an example of three-dimensional reading.

If you need a little clarification on what Wikipedia is and it's purposes, here is a great summary of the site including some tips for getting started in your search. http://websearch.about.com/od/referencesearch/qt/wikipedia.htm 

Internet & Tagxedo,

Create!

The last two days have been filled with what I like to call "The GOOD Stuff". The  CREATE level of Bloom's is alive and well at PA and I am so excited about it. 

Yesterday, day one after spring break, I spent the entire day in the MS building with students and teachers integrating technology perfectly.  I witnessed 5th grade students making PREZI presentations based off of the content from their research paper on a country of their choice, US Spanish students creating a GLOG on a famous spanish-speaking person, 6th grade students creating digital stories with original footage, and US English classes using the on-line library resources for research.  That was just MONDAY and in one building - WOW.   I am so proud to work with each of you integrating technology tools and resources into our everyday curriculum.  Yesterday was not a special day or especially technology heavy.  It was just a normal day at PA. GOOD STUFF. It makes me wonder what awesome things I missed.

The Internet

The IT Dept. is often asked questions regarding the Internet.  If you are interested, please read through the document below.  It is titled How The Internet Works by MakeUsOf.com    I found it to be a very informational document that answers a lot of the commonly asked questions. I especially like the following sections:  History, Current Trends, Who runs the Internet, and How the web changed the world.

MakeUseOf.com - How the Internet Works

Tagxedo

Thank you to Marjorie Wagner for sharing this site with me.  I LOVE IT.  www.tagxedo.com is similar to WORDLE (which I blogged about last year) with the addition of word clouds in the shape of images.  Check out the one that I created with the PA Bear in the top left of the page and the one next to this entry with the PA shield. I used the primary words from our school alma mater and our core value words.   What a fun activity for student who are studying a particular famous person, place, or invention.  Tagxedo allows you to do all of the following:

• Make word clouds in real-time, and then re-spin it to a design that you like
• Save the cloud as an image for printing or sharing
• Choose from many different fonts
• Download your own fonts
• Quickly switch between different colors and themes
• Constrain the cloud to selected shapes (heart, oval, star, etc. )
• Use images as custom shapes
• Use words as custom shapes (USA, LOVE, PA, BRUINS, etc. )
•  

Here are a few more I created..... I was having to much fun to stop.

 

 Let's play a game!  E-mail me your guesses on who or what each numbered shape is and the person with the most correct by the end of the day today will get a SONIC drink from me!

1

2

3

Student PSA, Writing Prompt, & Digital Natives

CORE VALUES 

As part of the eighth grade technology course curriculum, the students are learning how to complete small video projects.  I always love seeing what they come up with each year.  My class recently completed an assignment on creating a PSA which incorporated one or more core value.  They learned about script writing, storyboarding, camera angles, audio files, and video editing software.  I have selected a few to share with you.  Enjoy!

Writing Prompts    I am a big fan of free-writing.  I think that it is wonderful way to get students thinking creatively and to practice the writing process.  Below I have listed a few websites that you can use as a resource in your classroom.  Free-writing does not have to be limited to the Language Arts classroom.  I think that you should ALL give it a try.

Toasted Cheese - A Daily Writing Prompts Calendar

http://www.toasted-cheese.com/webcal/webcal.cgi This website is a daily writing prompt site that published prompts on a monthly calendar.  There is a different prompt each day.  If you do not see anything you like on the current calendar, no big deal.  You can click through the previous months to find old prompts.  Periodically, TOASTED CHEESE holds writing contests based on their prompts, you can learn about these by clicking on the links on the calendar.

 One Word - Sixty Second Writing Prompts

http://oneword.com/   

This website provides you with an unlimited amount of one word prompts.  You are given sixty seconds to key in your response.  This response can be a definition, or it can be a prompt used for a short story.  A user account is available but not necessary.  This site can be used in the lab with the students keying in their answers, or it can just be displayed on the board in the classrooms and used simply as a prompt for a free-writing exercise with pencil and paper.

The Story Starter

http://thestorystarter.com/

This site provides 1,108,918,470 creative ideas and writing prompts for students of all ages.  All of the prompts are randomly created.  Just as with the links provided above, this site can be used in the classroom or the computer lab.  This is one that you do not want to miss.  There is even a Story Starter For Kids with 729 prompts available to be used.  Perfect for our LS grades.  Enjoy!

DIGITAL NATIVES

Ian Jukes is a speaker who has become increasingly popular. I had the privilege of hearing him speak at a conference last year, and I was blown away by the data that he shared. A lot of his information is regarding brain activity and is very interesting.  Ian Jukes came to my mind yesterday after our faculty meeting.  It is so important that we bring our "A" game every moment of each day for our students.  However, if our "A" game is outdated, it is probably being received as a "B" game by the students.  The video below is a promotional piece for his book/DVD titled Understanding The Digital Generation.  The DVD can be purchased on the website: understandingthedigitalgeneration.com

 

 

The main point being addressed is that young students today are DIGITAL NATIVES and should be taught as such.

 

Ian Jukes - Understanding the Digital Generation from Lee Crockett on Vimeo.

Making a Change, LS Technology Update - Guest Blogger Susan Edwards

MAKING A CHANGE

Below is a video that was created by MS students at  Suffern Middle School.  The students were asked to talk about education and their future.  Listen and learn the bits of wisdom that can be gleaned from the students, if we only dare to ask them.  I am hopeful that you will be inspired to take on a new challenge in your classroom to incorporate one piece that will allow you to extend the learning beyond the bells.  My goal is for our students to benefit from HOW a teacher uses technology to enhance instruction not just WHAT technology a teacher uses.

THANK YOU to Susan Edwards for agreeing to make a guest blog entry this week.  Susan has shared a recap of the integration activities that are going on in grades 1-4.  The LS students each attend a technology class once a week.  The focus during this time is to use technology resources to enhance curriculum topics that are being covered in the core classrooms.

Technology Update for LS:

The 1^st graders are learning about Mexico in their classroom so in Technology this week they will each have a sentence that tells facts they have learned and they will illustrate it in KidPix. We will make their illustrations into posters to hang in their room!

The 2^nd graders will be finishing up a slide show about a president next week. They each researched a different president and created a PowerPoint about him. They learned so much about adding and formatting text, WordArt, adding pictures and so much more! Once they have added their transitions, they will begin a dinosaur project where we will use the Random Name Choose in SMART Notebook to pick a dinosaur for each student.  They will be given a website to research that dinosaur and create a poster in  Microsoft Publisher displaying the facts and pictures about their dinosaur. They will look up things such as what it ate, the time period it lived, how long or how tall it was, etc.

The 3^rd graders just finished creating glogs about “Communities”. They learned how to use Google Maps and link websites to their glog! They defined the term communities as it is in their Social Studies book.  They also gave examples of fun things to do in their community. I was very proud of their completed glogs! To see an example, go to ttp://s3rck2n.edu.glogster.com/comunties/ to see a completed one. We used www.edu.glogster.com to create these glogs. You can create an account for free if you have an email address. The students love them! With the premium version, you can create portfolios/presentations of glogs as you can see by clicking here.

The 4^th graders just finished creating PowerPoints about the Southeast Region. They have been posted on Edline under 4^thGrade Enrichment on the LS Parents Page. They are currently working on creating a glog about the Midwest Region. They are learning about the United States in Social Studies
so they are creating glogs about specific regions! They have to list the states included in that region and give examples of physical features and major industries found in that region. They are linking websites and creating fascinating glogs! I can’t wait to share them!

World Math Day, Grammaropolis, Library of Congress, & Graphic Organizers

WORLD MATH DAY

What it is: According to the website, TODAY is March 1st which means that World Math Day is here!!  The official competition runs for 48 hours, as long as it is March 1st somewhere in the world. So - tomorrow is your last chance to participate.  World Math Day is a live worldwide math competition for students.  Students login to the World Math Day site and compete against each other in real time to see which country can answer the most mental arithmetic problems the fastest. Each game lasts 60 seconds and students can play up to 100 games. Students who answer the most math problems correctly get featured in the World Math Day hall of fame. There are 5 levels of mental arithmetic competition each with 20 games, there is a something for every student K-6 .  Registration is easy and quick, during registration, you will also be signed up to have your students participate in World Spelling Day which is March 3, 2011.

GRAMMAROPOLIS

This website is in it's own little world.  It really is super cute and a fun way to introduce or review the parts of speech.  The part of speech is personified and their personalities are inspired by their grammatical roles and responsibilities.  The Characters interact the way the parts of speech interact with one another in the sentence.  There are songs, books, videos, and games.  Check it out at:  http://www.grammaropolis.com/  

Below is a page from the book.  I think that our little ones will LOVE it.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Did you know that the Library of Congress has a virtual tour.  How cool is that?  You can take your students on a field trip as often as you like.  You will be able to visit each of the following locations:

The Thomas Jefferson Building

The Great Hall

The Main Reading Room

The Bibles Gallery

The Family Gallery

The Poetry Gallery

The Northwest Pavilion

The Northwest Gallery

The Southwest Pavilion

The Southwest Gallery

The James Madison Memorial Building

The John Adams Building

Have a great trip!!  http://myloc.gov/ExhibitSpaces/Pages/Default.aspx

(I also recommend visiting the Teachers and Students tab for lesson plan and activity suggestions.) 

GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS

Graphic organizers will help your students classify ideas and communicate more effectively. You can use graphic organizers to structure writing projects, to help in problem solving, decision making, studying, planning research and brainstorming. This website  http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/ provides a long list of PDF links that can be printed and copied for you to use.  Check out all of the available options below:

** All of the files are also available in SPANISH.