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