April Activities

The month of April brought many fun things and great learning in my classroom. Take a quick look at my blog to see what we've been up to.

http://thebrainiacsinroom14.blogspot.com/

Blog Riddles

To keep things simple and easy for myself, I used our class blog for student products this month. I did a collaborative project with Melissa and Michelle in second grade geometry. Our students wrote shape riddles and we posted them on our class blogs. Now, the other classes will look at those shape riddles and leave comments and answers. If you or your students also want to answer those riddles, we are always happy for more comments.
Kellogg Class Blog
     I used the same format for my English Language Development class. They wrote holiday riddles and drew pictures. Please take a look at those as well because we don't have any comments yet.
     Also, in my classroom we use the SmartBoard all the time. My students are quite comfortable with Notebook software, so I usually have one of them at the board any time we are doing something routine. I have presentation or air mouse, so I can stand in the back of the room and quickly click to correct something if necessary without having to run up to the board. It's quite an excellent set up. I recommend getting a presentation mouse if you don't have one.

Class Blog and VoiceThread

Well, can you tell it is the end of November? Suddenly we're all posting.
Both my team members and I have already posted about our joint project. I had not yet made a blog for my class this year, so first I had to quickly put one together. Now I can share that address and you can check out our VoiceThread. As Melissa and Michelle have posted, our next steps are to have our students comment on each others pictures and write doubles addition sentences.
http://kelloggclass09-10.blogspot.com/

I'm enjoying reading what all of you have been up to.
-Lisa

Purdue University in the Hotseat

I recently came across this article about social networking, specifically Twitter, at Purdue University. (This one, too.) Seems that their IT people have developed their own social networking program called "Hotseat." The students in the classes are able to send out questions, comments, and so forth via this program, and from what I can tell, it also posts to their Facebook and Twitter accounts.

This has some very interesting possibilities within the classroom. I would likely use Edmodo for my classes since it is more secure and controlled, and it would take a good bit of training and reinforcement, but I can see where this might work. As I am delivering the lesson, students could post their comments and questions on the Edmodo account, which would be displayed on a separate screen. The students could then answer each other's questions, posting links and whatnot related to the class discussion.

Of course, this would take some training and practice, particularly with my younger students since the temptation for "What up?" and other non-related and therefore inappropriate messages might be too great. Perhaps if/when I roll this out, I would start with my TOK class, then moving down to the sophomores, either not using it with the freshmen or waiting until perhaps fourth quarter to introduced them to it.

Which brings me to my struggle this year. With the new district policy around pacing, I am supposed to be pretty much doing the same thing as the other classes in the building (aside from TOK, which is unique to IB). At least at first glance, this precludes the use of blogs and other technology in the classroom which is a huge disservice to my students. As Will Richardson has observed, those who aren't publishing (online) aren't a part of the conversation. We saw the use and power of technology in the last federal election cycle and in the protests over the election in Iran; if our students do not know how to utilize those and other 21st century tools, they will not be able to be active citizens in their own democracy. While this may sound like hyperbole, it isn't. It's simple fact. I'm seriously worried.

Our Favorite Widgets

Here are some ideas of widgets to add some life and personality to your blogs:

Playlist: http://www.playlist.com/

Voki: http://www.voki.com/

Clustermap: http://clustermap.com/

Weather Pixie: http://weatherpixie.com/

Shelfari: http://www.shelfari.com/

Any other ideas?

Student work on our blog

Hello. Some of you may remember that I was working on a "pigeon letter" project at our last training. I ultimately put the still picture into Movie Maker and put the audio recording in and saved it as a movie that Blogger lets me upload. I got permission from most parents to publish work and sent the website address home to families on Monday. The students are very excited, though we have no comments yet.

Also on the blog, is the beginning of the collaborative project Sara and I are working on. We decided short video questions and answers would be an easier way to get them interacting.

Lastly, I want repeat how great United Streaming can be. Our story this week is about rock formation. I downloaded a few United Streaming videos on rocks and rock formation into Movie Maker. I picked out only the pieces that directly refer to concepts in our story. All three of our second grade teachers showed the video and gave our second graders a quick dose of background knowledge and raised their interest (with video of lava and volcanoes, you can't go wrong). It meant they had already heard "igneous rock" several times and had a visual in their head before they had to read the word.
Thanks,
Lisa
http://kelloggclass08-09.blogspot.com/

New favorite question

My new favorite question that I get asked on a regular basis: "Mr., can I blog today?" I hear it much more frequently than might be expected, and the students who ask are actually blogging, rather than surfing or trying to get on MySpace, etc. This is definitely something I wish I had started a while back. I'm absolutely thrilled that my students want to write on such a regular basis!

For now, the blogs have been pretty basic and have been limited to simply answering a question of the week. As the year progresses, I will be adding expectations to the blogs and get closer to the ideas presented in the Richardson book. We're off to a great start, though!

CLAS this spring

I've been invited to be a presenter at the CLAS Regional Spring Conference this March. Subject: the digital classroom in the 21st century. I'm psyched but nervous at the same time. I mean, it's obviously something I'm super enthusiastic about: I'm going to talk about Google Docs, blogging, podcasting, and so forth, but still... it's in front of GROWN UPS, not teenagers! EEEEEKK! (ha ha!)

I'm also looking into the possibility of getting up to that other high school I'd mentioned in an earlier post to train their teachers on digital classrooms. I mentioned the whole thing to Stevi Quate (you know her if you've been involved in the UCD teacher candidate program), who, as it turns out, is familiar with that school and their staff; she "knows people" there, and so is going to look into getting them up to speed as well... stay tuned on that one.

What have I gotten myself into?? ;-)

On a side note, I've recently written an article for an online magazine, Elephant Journal, about digital classrooms. It's the first of a series on education that I've been asked to collaborate on with them. If you're interested, you can check it out here, but you'll likely have to do it at home... last I knew, the SmartFilter blocked it at work. And check out the shirt in my pics. ;-)

Woohoo! Got another one to blog :-)

So I'm pretty proud of myself. The one teacher that said she would never use blogs in her classroom has started blogging with and for her students. :-) I sat down with her after school one day and worked her through the process. Her next step is setting up a class webpage, which she says she is open to doing also. Yay!

On the other hand, my son's best friend attends Horizon High School and wants to start getting his teachers involved in technology. He asked his history teacher for their email address so he could email assignments to them, and was rebuffed with a rather unclear explanation: "something about the school email addresses not being able to do it for some reason." That may be true, but at the same time I wonder if it again is simply fear and unwillingness to use new technology. I'm tempted to see if I could do a presentation to the district 12 teachers on green classrooms. Perhaps I could get Blake (my son's friend) to see if his teachers would be interested in a training along those lines. After talking with Zach about CSU going green and his instructors use of technology, the idea that teachers aren't using technology when they can is rather disappointing. I've been invited to be a presenter at the CLAS conference this spring around the use of blogs, Google docs, etc., but I would like to get the ball rolling on this sooner... besides, if I can get in to do a training at district 12, then I can get practice before I do it this spring. :-)

Lesson learned

So today I learned that if you want to podcast, it's important to make sure that the battery in the receiver is actually charged. I accidentally left it on all weekend and totally killed the battery. Woops. To paraphrase the Seinfeld Soup Nazi, "No podcast for you!" :)

On a side note, here is the link to my class webpage. It's a pretty basic site, at least for now, but it has links to the subpages I set up for each individual class (including links to the podcasts) as well as links to my teacher blog, my students' blogs, the climbing team website, and even the climbing team blog. Feel free to peruse and comment. The students' blogs still need a good bit of work... I haven't yet had the chance to work with them around various concepts, including what is and isn't school appropriate- I am seeing a good number of "wat's up, yo" entries, but with time, I think they will get it, particularly once I have some exemplars to show them (aside from mine, which I think they don't think "counts" since I'm a teacher and all...). For now, I'm just pleased that they actually want to do it... it was much less of a fight to get them to write than I thought it would be (as I've mentioned before).

My blog addy

I don't know if I posted it before or not, but if I haven't, I do have a professional blog that I started at the end of this past school year. The link to it is right here. Feel free to leave comments, questions, etc. :-)

I finished my research proposal

Yesterday I presented my research proposal...hopefully I won't have to change anything!
my question is: "what happens when English Language Learners are taught to blog?"
my sub questions ask:

• Will writing achievement be affected?
• will students see them selves as part of the classroom community?
• Will students be more reflective about the content?

All of my students are ELL who are facing "double the work." According to Short and Fitzimmons (2007), the country is attempting to find solutions to trying to teach content, literacy and language to students at the same time. High-Stakes testing has created an environment where language learners must perform on tests in their second language. They must learn to read and write as adolescents in their second language at a time when they should be using reading and writing as a learning tool. On top of that, they must learn the content provided by the state and district standards.

My plan is to teach them to blog. I will slowly implement blogging as a reflective tool in my social studies classroom. My hope is that by the end of my research they will not only respond to teacher questions but, summarize, reflect, and internalize the course content. I also hope that they visit the blogs of other students to comment and connect.

Blogs and technology are an important tool and resource for our students to learn. Due to technological advances jobs and expectations of employees are rapidly changing. According to former Secretary of Education Richard Riley, I am preparing my students for jobs that do not exist yet.

Okay, small "trailer" of my research. I'm hoping to being to quantify what we all know: technology makes a difference in the engagement and achievement of our students. After watching Darren and other educators successfuly integrate blogs I am excited to capture this process in my research. I believe that blogging creates an atmosphere of collaboration where, as Darren puts it, students become the experts!

blogging literacy

thinking about blogging again...I stumbled upon the REMOTE ACCESS blog and he was talking about blogging as a new literacy; we need to teach students how to read and to navigate...

So I went back and blogged about it

I'm working on blogging as a research project

I want to know how you all are using it....how are you teaching students to blog....and to read blogs? please post lesson plans, ideas, etc.

Classroom Happenings

Hi everyone! I wanted to share a couple of classroom updates with you. First, here is our classroom blog. When we first began this journey, I didn't think I would choose to create a blog, but now I'm sort of addicted! Anyway, check us out! http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=102127
We are not part of the "blogger" system, but you can always find us through our website.

Tomorrow, Thursday evening, is Back to School Night for Alsup. I have uploaded a podcast to our classroom blog. I'm hoping to have some student podcasts done for Back to School Night as well, but that depends upon our day of course!

Lastly, on our blog you'll find a link to a Responsibilities Wiki. If your students, or you, have time, our class would really like to know what responsibilities other people have!

Getting started with blogging and wiki's

On Monday, August 13, at 10:30am I'm going to begin a chatcast using Skype with a first grade teacher from Canada. Kathy Cassidy is going to answer some getting started questions about blogs, wiki's and technology in the classroom. Kathy teaches first grade Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada. Comment if your interested and I'll make sure your invited!

Kathy's Blog
http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=1337&l=1143592742


Kathy's Website
http://news.mjsd1.ca/~kcassidy/cassidyhome.html

Global Learners in High School Math

Darren Kuropatwa is by far one of the most prolific and creative teachers that is generating usable online content and testing emerging technology (and integration ideas). Mr. Kuropatwa is a high school math teacher in Canada that is widely known for his various math blogs. Last year I read the now defunct Ellie's 7th grade math blog (I assume because Ellie has moved to 8th grade). Mr. Kuropatwa used this blog to help teach his niece math. The blog included innovative lessons and opportunities for Ellie to practice skills. A Difference is the blog where Mr. Kuropatwa reflects on his practice and talks about strategies that he is trying with his students. I am blown away and humbled by this individual's extraordinary efforts. He uses wikis, blogs (checkout today's post on probability), vaestro (checkout the thread with the EFL students from China...talk about Global Learners), SmartBoards, slideshare, and any other technology he can get his hands on to reach his students and find ways for more effective learning. My hat is off to Mr. Kuropatwa...thanks for providing a shining light.

Ethics and Blogging

Thanks to the guys over at Profy I was able to read this great article about why people seem so much meaner on the internet. If you haven't yet experienced being flamed on a blog, in IM, or in some other medium you are sure to experience it some time future. Daniel Coleman wrote an insightful article on why this occurs (in a psychological sense). Given John Albright's post yesterday on ethics and classroom blogging I think this article would a great read for all school administrators, school psychologists, teachers, and students.