Insights about Myself After This Blogging Experience

Where to begin? I've grown so much since my first posting in September! This experience helped to renew my zeal for technology integration, and opened my eyes to so much more that is available but not in frequent use. I find myself reading more about technology integration practices and collaborating with others worldwide. This practice has simply renewed my quest to find some way to help educators implement technology into their classrooms seamlessly, either as a technology integration specialist or otherwise.

Applications of Blogs To My Practice

As an educator in my school district, I am already familiar with blogs and their usage, as I am required to maintain a blog presence on the internet in order to communicate with parents. Unfortunately (or upon further review, fortunately) the district does not provide any type of direction as to what should be included in our blogs. This activity gave me ideas and direction on how I can use my blog in my classroom. In January, my goal is to incorporate blog usage regularly in my classroom, and upon successful integration, provide assistance to my colleagues on successful blog integration.

Significant Postings from the Blogging Experience

As I near the end of this blogging experience for my Fall course, I reflected on the postings I created. While I felt all the postings were important, the most significant to me was the Google Earth postings. The information I shared about Google Earth Pro with my fellow readers, I felt, was important and they would immediately be able to benefit. The information about using Google Earth to highlight the Darfur crisis was timely as well, considering the fact that a majority of 7th grade Georgia educators begin studying that region in early December.

My colleagues' blogs have been filled with thought provoking posts as well. While our topics were on opposite ends of the educational scale, we all shared things that all could relate to. If anything, my colleagues' blogs allowed me to learn more about their content area specialty.

Give a laptop, Get a laptop.

(image courtesy: One Laptop per Child Foundation)

Lately I've been seeing on television advertisements that are asking people to aid in donating laptops to children in developing countries by either purchasing a laptop, by spreading the word, or by hosting a fundraiser. I remember hearing about it initially back in 2005 (remember the $100 laptop?), but it's presence is finally being noticed, thanks to a partnership with Amazon.com.

From what I gather on the website, it seems as this initiative is finally taking hold, as there are photos and videos uploaded on the One Laptop per Child Foundation site showing children in developing countries using the laptops. Click this link to view the slideshow.

This sounds like a great idea. Hopefully various schools and organizations would consider hosting fundraisers to purchase laptops for those who can benefit in developing countries.

Another Great Web 2.0 Tool...

I've been on vacation during this past week, thanks to our district stakeholders voting for an entire week off during Thanksgiving. While browsing the web, I stumbled on another great tool that can be used in the classroom.

VoiceThread is a "collaborative, multimedia slideshow that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to leave comments in five ways: voice (with a mic or a telephone), text, audio file, or video." Users can also share their slideshows with others, and slideshows can be embedded onto websites or even exported for archival purposes.

This is a perfect site to upload digital stories, or even oral histories from individuals. Considering the fact that yesterday was the National Day of Listening, this site would be a great tool to use in conjunction with keeping a digital record of stories people tell about their lives. Of course, there are other uses for this site as well--collaboration among students, enhanced lecturing, etc.

Take a look at the video below. It gives a bit more detail about VoiceThread and how it works.

Working Smarter, Not Harder...

Image courtesy Poway Unified School District

Sometimes as educators, we live within the bubble of our own little classroom. Sure, we may speak to the fellow teachers whose rooms/offices are near ours, but most of us do not regularly visit other educator's classrooms. In my nearly 8 years of teaching, I found myself to fall victim to this phenomenon. I promised myself this year I'd take the time to visit other educators and see what they're using in the classroom.

Today I visited my a fellow 7th grade teacher. He introduced me to a nifty tool called a Grade Cam. Basically what this thing does is it scores student work in real time, provides data analysis, and allow educators to give instant feedback to students about their progress in the classroom. Another interesting tidbit he shared with me is the fact that by using this, you eliminate the need to use and purchase scantrons, as the scoring sheet can be printed on your computer. In addition, the scoring sheet can be enlarged for students with writing difficulties! Considering the current budget shortfalls in education, the return on investment can be realized rather quickly.

I was definitely impressed. I found more information about the hardware at GradeCam.com.

What do you think? Is this something you could use in your classroom?

Sailing in the Vendee' Globe-A Race Around The World

During my surfing on the net for new and/or noteworthy educational materials I happened upon a great site for geography and science purposes. Sailing in the Vendee' Globe with Skipper Rich Wilson is a real-time blog written by Skipper Wilson as he sails around the world. His bi-weekly postings on his blog provides science and geography tidbits related to his location at sea, as well as teacher resources for each topic discussed.

As of this writing, Skipper Wilson and his shipmates are currently on Day 10 of their adventure and are near the Cape Verde Islands.

To learn more, visit: Sailing in the Vendee' Globe.

Do you teach or know any Tech-Savvy Girls? Read more...

The National Center for Women & Information Technology and Bank of America wish to recognize girls at the high school level for their contributions to digital society. Winners will receive $500, a laptop computer, and a trip to North Carolina to attend the Bank of America Technology Showcase and Awards Ceremony in March.

For more information, visit http://www.ncwit.org/award. Application deadline is December 1, 2008!

An alternative to YouTube for the education field

As many of us are aware, there is a plethora of information on YouTube that is suitable for classroom use, and there's also a plethora of information on YouTube that is NOT suitable for classroom use. Substitutes such as TeacherTube.com have popped up over time, but unfortunately some of these sites load very slowly and are not effective when it comes to effectively utilizing the precious bit of time that educators have in the classroom.

I found an effective alternative--Edublogs.tv. This site allows you to grab the videos you want from YouTube, and show them in your classroom. In addition, there is some semblance of oversight--the powers that be on Edublogs.tv do review upload videos and delete inappropriate content if necessary.

Online Postcard Exchange Project using GoogleMaps

A Catholic school in Beaverton, Oregon has started an online postcard exchange project using Googlemaps. It is open to classrooms of all ages and in any location. For more information, visit

http://sites.google.com/site/postcardgeography/Home

Teachers' Domain-Digital Media for the Classroom

While it seems that United Streaming has the lion's share of streaming digital media for the classroom (and is not free--an annual site license is approximately $1500 per K-8 school, and over $2000 for a high school building) there is another resource available.

Teachers' Domain is an online library of over 1000 free media resources from public education broadcasters. There is a K-12 edition, a New York K-12 edition, and an edition for higher learning. Teachers' Domain also provides resources for professional development for educators.

Visit Teachers' Domain and learn more.

Digital Learning and the Special Needs Student

While I love teaching Social Studies, first and foremost I am an inclusion teacher. I am responsible for ensuring that my charges with Individual Education Plans are succeeding in the regular education class to the best of their ability. I enjoy learning more and reading about ways technology can better help students with disabilities.

One of my favorite sites on my RSS feed is EdTech Solutions-Teaching Every Student. The author of the site is an assistive technology consultant, and she posts about various tools she learns about at conferences and in her practice. If you teach special education students, check this blog out.

Blogging For and By Visually Impaired Students

I found a great article that touches on the topic of blogging for visually impaired (VI) students. Many times we as educators find so many tools that can be used in the classroom, but we fail to keep in mind that we need to ensure what we use is accessible to all students. The article found at the link below describes a teacher's challenge with finding tools that were text-reader friendly.

http://techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=196604790

Another tool I discovered that would aid VI students in accessing blogs on the web is http://www.talkr.com/, which converts text-only blogs into podcasts. This would be a good tool for non-readers as well. Check it out!

Quick links--great sites to check out this weekend

Here's a list of great sites to check out over the weekend!

WiZiQ: In a nutshell, online learning, mostly for free. People can take classes on just about any subject imaginable. A quick search found the following topics: GIS Coordinate System, Technology in TESOL education, and a session on the cell cycle.
Common Craft: Explanations in plain English! Find videos on a number of topics. One that I'm sure many recently used was Electing a US President in Plain English. Their educationally relevant videos can be found on TeacherTube as well (great for those schools where Youtube is blocked!)
Student Reduction in Paperwork Act: This is basically a proposal by the Director of Instructional Technology of El Paso's Independent School District. Interesting read, but I personally don't know if it would be totally feasible, but I do support some aspects of the idea. His blog entry also links to a wiki that provides a few links that give digital equivalents to tried and true classroom assignments. This looks like this may be something to watch over the coming months.
Curriki: Collaborative curriculum sharing in a nutshell. You can find lesson plans, wikis, unit plans, you name it related to your content area.

Do you know of any other sites worth a read? Post them in the comments section!

Embracing the use of Ipods and MP3 players in the classroom

If you visited my school on any random day, this is what you'd see:

(image courtesy: ELIYAHU GURFINKEL/ANN ARBOR NEWS)

Kids connected--with Ipods and cell phones. As a special education teacher, I'm well aware of the fact that many of my students do NOT sit well with the idea of sitting at their desk and studying for a test 20th century style--with pages of notes, re-reading them silently.

Most educators know this is the case...but why haven't we embraced the usage of Ipods/MP3 players in the classroom? I'll admit, I'm guilty of not doing so (in the past), but that was due to lack of time to create a podcast, or things of that nature.

I recently created a podcast for an upcoming test that I'll be giving in my classroom. It was relatively easy--I simply recorded the audio file via trakAx (or another free audio recorder like Audacity), ensured the file was in mp3 format (Download.com has a number of free .wav to .mp3 file converters available), and saved it on a free web based file hosting service (I use DivShare). The end result was this:

The total time it took me to complete this was about...20 minutes. Bear in mind, I'm somewhat technologically savvy (I'm by no means a computer 'geek', but I can hold my own!) With that being said, if one does not wish to complete all those steps in order to create their own podcast, Gcast is another option that allows you to create a podcast over the phone and then embed it onto your website. This is great for those enrolled in schools that do not have many of the required tools to complete podcasts, or refuse to allow podcasting software onto their district computers.

Below are additional links to give you ideas on how to use podcasting in the classroom:

Apple's ideas on how to use the Ipod in the classroom
A podcast on Podcasting in the classroom
Kathy Schrock's Links-Podcasting in the classroom

Social Networking--Does it belong in the classroom?

I recently had an assignment where I was required view Ning.com from an educational perspective. I am familiar with social networking sites--I have a page on Ning, MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn--but I've never made a concerted attempt to use these sites with my students. My rationale for that was the fact that #1-most social networking sites are blocked in my school district, and #2-I was somewhat concerned about the potential repercussions that may arise from their usage in our school. Because of these two things, I was, and still am, wondering how these two sites would work well in the middle school setting. I can see how they would work at the high school and in post K-12 settings, but not necessarily at mine.



Apparently, the University of Brighton developed a social networking site for academic purposes. Elgg.org is an open source program that schools and district can use to create their own social networks. ReadWriteWeb posted a great article detailing exactly how Elgg can be used in an educational setting. Also of note, according to the ReadWriteWeb article, this site will NOT be impacted by the Deleting Online Predators Act, or Georgia's and North Carolina's state bills restricting access to social networking sites.

I wonder if will be a happy medium for some school districts. Will this site cause some district's chief technology officers to reconsider the usage of social networking sites within their district? Will this benefit middle school and older middle school learners?

New Poll

If you look toward the bottom of this page, you'll see that I added a new poll. Check it out, and vote, please. It's related to a posting that I'll do sometime next week.

Google Earth Pro is free for Educators!

While participating in an online discussion with a colleague, I learned that Google Earth Pro is free for educators! After Googling this for verification, I found that it is indeed true. According to Kevin Jarrett, the teacher who initially blogged about this fact, these are the following steps you must take:

Download the free Pro trial version from http://earth.google.com and then email the answers to these questions to GEEC [at] google.com (at=@)

1. Your name (key contact person)
2. Organization / Institution
3. A brief description of the Institution / Organization
4. Full mailing address
5. Telephone number
6. User name (complete email address that will be assigned to the license key)
7. Institution’s web address
8. Your Institution’s Tax ID (if applicable)
9. Your Institution’s 501©3 number (US only, if applicable)
10. A description of the intended application including grade level(s), discipline(s) or subject.
11. What features in Google Earth Pro are important to you and how do you wish to use them in your classroom.
12. Number of computers you are requesting to download this software on.
13. Prior license key information.

PLEASE NOTE: Applicants are required to download the free, 7-day trial version of Google Earth Pro at http://earth.google.com/ before applying. Please be sure to include your Google Earth trial account user name and license key above.

What can you do with Google Earth Pro? Well, one thing you can do is view an overlay map of the Middle Eastern region of the World in 1861:

(image courtesy Kevin Jarrett)

This is simply the tip of the iceberg. Definitely download it and check it out!

Using Google Earth to highlight the crisis in Darfur

I found an excellent resource for educators teaching a unit on Sudan. The United States Holocaust Memorial has teamed up with GoogleEarth in order to provide visual evidence of the destruction in Darfur.

After downloading the overlay file, you can see the location of damaged and destroyed villages, the location and number of displaced refugees in Darfur and Chad, as well as photos, videos, and testimonials.

For more information, and to download the .kmz file, visit Mapping Initiatives | Crisis in Darfur.
To download Google Earth, visit http://earth.google.com/

Schools' Broadband Needs Grow as Ed-Tech Evolves

It's interesting. I was just discussing our district's slow bandwidth speed to another colleague earlier this week.

Our school district has subscribed to Discovery Education Streaming, however, using it during the school day is rather hit or miss. Educators (including yours truly) have experienced a complete loss of connection while using it, or, the website would be blocked altogether for weeks at a time. (Yes, this occurred last school year.)

Education Week published a great article online a few days ago about this very topic. Here's a quick snippet:

Now that Internet access is pretty much standard in most schools, the next hurdle districts are facing is the speed and capacity of their connections. With the rise in popularity of YouTube and other video-streaming Web resources, many school districts are struggling to provide enough broadband to handle those bandwidth-heavy applications, and experts say the demand will only increase as new technologies are revealed.
http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2008/09/30/01broadband.h02.html

I agree wholeheartedly with the views shared in the article, however it leads me to ask the following question: With our economy in such financial turmoil, and knowing that the budgets of school districts across the nation are affected by the lack of revenue that this economic turndown has brought with it, how will school districts fund an upgrading of technological infrastructure? Is this doomed to fall to a lower level on schools' priority list?

Budget Hero-from American Public Media on PBS

I found an interesting tool that social studies teachers (especially those who teach economics) would be interested in. PBS has posted on its site an online interactive game that allows individuals to balance the budget and postpone its "going bust" date. One can play in order to win various badges, such as a Green badge, a McCain badge, an Obama badge, etc. In addition, after playing the game, students can compare their results across age groups, income brackets, states, and party lines. I played it a couple times, and I must admit it's interesting. This game can make for interesting conversations in the classroom, and can definitely supplement current teachable moments that current national events are bringing to our classrooms.




Check it out at the following address: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/features/budget_hero/

CPS (And no...I don't mean Child Protective Services!)

Last year, a colleague of mine asked me, "Have you ever heard of CPS?" Immediately, I thought of Child Protective Services, but she then told me what she meant. After she told me about it, she showed me how to use the hardware and software, and gave me a chance to try it out with my students. They LOVED it. They were engaged in the lesson, and it gave me immediate feedback on the areas of the curriculum in which they were weak and needed extra assistance.

What is this thing I speak of?

CPS, which stands for classroom response system. In a nutshell, CPS is a wireless, interactive response system that gives educators immediate feedback from their students. It uses a wireless remote, a portable receiver, and a program that can be installed on a teacher's computer which allows teachers to input a list of questions that students can answer, or even an interactive PowerPoint. Some teachers even use this software to keep attendance records. Think "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" or "Family Feud" for the classroom.

I will use the software tomorrow for the first time this school year. I plan on using it to provide formative data on my students' mastery of our unit on the Middle East. I will update this post with pictures that show this being used in the classroom.

For more information about CPS systems, visit http://www.einstruction.com/index.cfm or http://www.mhhe.com/cps/index.shtml

(image credit: McGraw-Hill)

Syncing Up with the iKid...why infuse technology in the classroom?

Edutopia posted an article by Josh McHugh that makes the case for connected teaching.  The article provides a bit of background on the type of kids we have in our classroom (generally, VERY technologically savvy) and ways educators are successfully reaching them.  One item that stood out for me in this article was the fact that the learning power is shifting from the traditional center to the fringes--in other words, the teacher is becoming more of a facilitator versus keeper of knowledge.  It seems as if schools in general are reluctant to release some sort of that power, which explains the restrictions on things such as blogging and using wiki's in the classroom. 

The article can be viewed at the following link: http://www.edutopia.org/ikid-digital-learner In it there are great ideas on how to use technology in the classroom, and background research on WHY we need to use technology.

Introduction...our purpose...and a reflection on what I'd like this blog to be...

I'd like to welcome everyone to Social Studies Connected Teaching. The purpose of this blog is to discuss issues and best practices as it relates to technology and social studies education.  As many people are aware, technology is an ever growing player in the field of education, and its components change so rapidly...it's imperative for those in this field to keep abreast of the issues and changes.

I thought long and hard when asking for contributors.  I wanted the contributors of this blog to provide viewpoints from all aspects of education.  In the end, I received support from 3 social studies teachers (including myself)--one in elementary education, one in middle grades education (me!) and one employed at the high school level.  In addition, there is a media specialist on board, and finally, 3 individuals from the higher education arena.  2 are professors--one from Hampton University and one from University of West Georgia--and one educational researcher from New York University who works extensively with charter schools.

It is my goal as owner of this blog to share my thoughts and best practices on technology as it relates to social studies education.  Perhaps I will introduce a new idea or concept to someone, or spark intelligent debate amongst education professionals and pre-professionals.  Please continue to visit and comment on posted topics that interest you.

Again, thanks for visiting.