Weekly Sound Project

Each week my students will be finding words with the sound for that week. Above is the SmartBoard portion of the project we completed in small groups throughout the week. For many, it was a good experience in handwriting (and alignment as the card/board moved). The students were in heterogeneous groups so they could help each other identify/hear words with the short a sound. Students each had to have their own word - no repeats! After a few days of practice, they sounded out their word and wrote it on the SmartBoard and then today we created the attached video. The lighting isn't great, but we truly only had about 10 minutes to do our best! There was a line on the floor, but they all wanted to be right next to the camera, but can you blame them? All so new and exciting.

We'll definitely have some editing thoughts for next week! We used www.flixn.com to create the video. The best parts about this site is that it's easy and the sound comes through great. The hard part is there is no editing!

It will be awesome to watch how much they grow and change in the weeks to come.

SOT---Support our Teammates

One of my teammates is so excited by our efforts she has begun her own blog. Check it out and encourage our teachers to become more reflective and in-touch with the "real world" (even the though the "real world" has gone virtual -- perhaps I will blog about his later...how intriguing)

Check out Nadja's Blog:
http://nadjatizer.blogspot.com

by the way I am very upset that I cannot get twitter to post my messages...from anywhere. I'm beginning to have withdrawal symptoms...this may require an intervention:
"Hello, my name is Tonia, I am a tweet-aholic"

Embedded HTML! Finally!

Ok, for some this may not be a huge deal, but for me the most challenging aspect of learning all of our technology tools has been embedding htmls. Of course now that I have done it on my own, it is quite easy.

Right now we are working on our IB unit called "I'm in Charge". We took a few photos today of students "doing what they were supposed to do, when they were supposed to do it!" I have been very impressed with the reaction of students - they sure don't want to miss out on what comes next!

Check out our slideshow!


Create Your Own

Google Reader Publish to Share

Regina Stewart recently mentioned that she was looking for some good math blogs. Several comments mentioned blogs or websites that were relevant. This got me thinking: if a student was interested in a topic how do we best feed that student's interest? How do we use modern technology to do this?

I decided to create a published webpage of blog entries using Google Reader and method Will Richardson teaches and John Albright has blogged about. Google Reader allows you to "share" any entry in the Reader bin. Once the blog entry or other content is "shared" a static webpage is create with the content. The content can then be viewed like a webpage. A button for this shared content can also be placed on your website, blog, or wiki.

Here is an example using math blog content. The person publishing the content through Google Reader (me in this case) reads through the blog readers and then decides which entries are worth sharing (and presses the share button). Those shareable are automatically published to the shared website. This could be really useful for a principal or department chair to quickly and easily share relevant and previewed content with colleagues. It could also be a cool way for teachers to create shared content for students.

Global Learners Identity Final Comments

Please checkout the four images here and vote for the layout you like best. In the comments portion let us know what color color scheme you like best. This the last opportunity for input before the final logo is unveiled, so make sure you have your input.

First day, First grade, First Smart Board.

Yesterday I introduced the Smart Board to my class. They really enjoyed aligning the Smart Board! They got a lot of practice too because they kept bumping either the board or the LCD projector stand. I started teaching a few students how to set up the laptop, projector and Smart Board right from the start with the goal of having them be able to do everything for me in the future. I'll report later in the year on how that turns out. We did a quick lesson involving tic tac toe and transitional words. So far so good. Check out the details on my blog: http://mrfishergloballearner.blogspot.com/

I also was turned onto a blog on Smart Boards by an educator named James Hollis that is full of resources. Be sure to check it out: http://smartboards.typepad.com/smartboard/websites/index.html

Making the leap

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