In our office today one of my colleagues, @web20classroom, decided that we were going to try something new with our Smartboard. He decided that we were going to live stream video from the beach to give us a new perspective on how to use the board. This has now become our window to the world.So I began to think a little bit of some ways that images can be used with your Interactive White Board (IWB). It was a great idea to put the live shots of the beach on the board because everyone that has come into our office today has commented on what...
Friday, 29 July 2011
Starting today is the Reform Symposium. It is 3 days full of free, online professional development. Started by several of my friends, most notably Shelly Terrell the Reform Symposium brings together educators from across the globe to learn from and with each other. There are several keynotes over the 3 days, lots of panel discussions and you could even win an iPad.You can read more about the Symposium itself here and be sure to check out the list...
Tuesday, 26 July 2011
Do you ever assign projects and activities to go along with the books your students read in class?Do you ever share information about the author of those book?What about projects other students have done related to that book?I enjoyed sharing that type of information with students when we were working with a book. I think knowing the background information and seeing how the book was interpreted by others adds to the comprehension ability.I did have trouble deciding how to share all that information. At times, we used journals, posters, powerpoint...
... is not a reason to use a technology tool. There should be an educational reason and purpose to use technology.If the teacher wants to use GlogsterEDU, their reason shouldn't be "because it's cute". What would be some good educational reasons to use GlogsterEDU? Let's look at a couple:NC Essential Standards for Information and Technology Skills K-5.TT.1 Use technology tools and skills to reinforce and extend classroom concepts and activities.NETS...
Monday, 25 July 2011
After attending Simple K12's webinar, Spark Creativity and Innovation from @timeoutdad, I became a big fan of Kerpoof. Kerpoof is a free webtool that is kid friendly and allows students to create original works of art in a safe environment. Students can create pictures, animated movies, stories and more! Teachers can showcase student work by downloading their art as a JPEG file and embedding it into their website. Teacher accounts are free and...
Friday, 22 July 2011
I watched an online seminar yesterday on Virtual Field Trips that made me rethink an earlier post that was written on our blog may need a refresher.So what is a Virtual Field Trip? In my reading I came up with this definition as to how I see it from my standpoint. It is a series of webpages that have been organized and grouped together to show students information, places, things that they may not have been able to experience on their own. Ok, we have a quasi definition of a Virtual Field Trip what is next, how do we get started, what is the...
Thursday, 21 July 2011
As a former social studies teacher, I had a tendency to primarily use timelines to sequence major events we were studying in class. I've always wanted to use timelines across different subjects areas but, often found myself lacking time and resources to find other uses for them in the classroom.I've been reading Steve Johnson's, Digital Tools for Teaching, and have been highly impressed with his style and all the great resources he shares with his...
Over the past few weeks I have been helping out and working with our Instructional team to put together a great collaborative event with Matt Barfield of Promethean called Camp Inspire.The morning of the event our department showed up in our camping gear ready to start the day. With a tent at the font door we welcomed our happy campers to Camp Inspire. Day one went very smoothly with many different sessions that teachers were able to choose from to attend. We heard lots and lots of great comments from teachers that were in attendance. Not...
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
I wanted to share some of the things that I found recently when looking a the netTrekker blog:Even though the title of this post mentions netTrekker being a good resource for future teachers, I think many of the ideas presented are great for all teachers regardless of experience level: Five Uses for netTrekker as a Future Teacher. In that post, Rachel shares so many great ideas that I want to just copy them all to share with you, but since that would be a copyright violation, I will just strongly encourage you to go check out her very helpful blog...
Friday, 15 July 2011
Interested in learning more about how to use Learn360 videos, resources and customized playlists? Looking to gain access to a community of online learning tools? Learn 360 is offering informative 30-minute webinars where participants will learn how to create a 21st Century Multi-Media Classroom using Learn360.Participants will be introduced to the essential basics of Learn360 from searching for media to creating customized playlists and slideshows....
I have to admit that I had been overlooking a tool in ActivInspire for a long time until just recently and now it is something that I use almost daily. That tool is the Screen Recorder.What the tool allows for is two different modes of capturing what you are doing on the computer at a time. You can choose the Fullscreen or Area screen Recorder. Fullscreen is obvious but the Area screen recorder allows you to pick a location on the screen by dragging...
On Thursday nights this summer, Wonderopolis created Camp What-A-Wonder on Twitter from 8:00 - 9:00 ET (follow #WonderChat). Each week is on a different topic. The first night was about camp memories, the second Thursday about bugs, the third Thursday favorite or worst camp recipes, and last night we talked about spooky stories. Wonderopolis shared a couple of lesson ideas from their partner site Thinkfinity, and that got me to thinking. So, I created a glog on Spooky Stories with links to lesson plans from Wonderopolis, EDSITEment, ReadWriteThink,...
Recently, Google created a video for the general public on exactly (well at least as much as they want us to know) how their search engine works. At only 3.30 minutes it is cram packed full of information.(The video is on You Tube so if you reading this in an RSS reader or some place where it is blocked you might not see anything.)They also created a couple other videos on how Google Apps works (great for understanding Cloud Computing) and a video completely dedicated to their AdSense product. You can find those on their How Google Works Page.Did...
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Being a fan of word clouds, I'm always interested in new ways to use them in the classroom. I recently watched a webinar on SimpleK12 by Kim Munoz, a middle school technology teacher in Texas. Kim shared some great resources on her blog to show teachers how they can use word clouds and where they can go to create them. So why should you have students create word clouds? Word clouds are powerful tools for analyzing and thinking critically about text....
Monday, 11 July 2011
I was having a conversation with someone the other day when I mentioned that I have been on a creativity kick recently.I have discovered articles and resources that seem to share the creativity them (I have also shared a lot of those on twitter and on my blog). In the conversation, I mentioned that in my mind, creativity skills and critical thinking skills are very much alike and could even be considered the same thing in many ways.The other person...
Friday, 8 July 2011
Recently I Tweeted out that I was looking for people to respond to the question What is your favorite ActivInspire Tool? I thought it would be fun to see what other people would say was their favorite. I had a lot of responses back and weeded out the duplicates and came up with a top 5 list of the users who answered. These are in no particular order they are just listed as I came across them in my twitter feed.Drag and Drop ActionsExtract TextCamera ToolDual UserHidden ActionThere were many other tools that people sent in that I would like to...
Thursday, 7 July 2011
... A Reflectioncreated from Wordle.netNext Tuesday, July 12, marks my first year as a District Instructional Technologist with the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School System. I have very much enjoyed my first year. I have learned a lot during this year. There have been some highs and lows, but overall a great first year. Blogging: I have been blogging more this year. I am still not great at it, but by continuing to write, I have gotten...
Earlier this month I did a workshop for teachers from across the district on understanding copyright, fair use and Creative Commons. There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding copyright; what it is and what it isn't; what we can use in the classroom and more importantly, what we can not. There is a lot of information out there, much of confusing so what I hoped to do was show how to avoid copyright rules all together and use Creative Commons resources...
Tuesday, 5 July 2011
Recently a Wonder-of-the-Day from Wonderopolis really got me thinking (but I guess that is what it is supposed to do): Why do they call it a "Tall Tale"? Focusing on reading genres, like Tall Tales, was something I really enjoyed when I was in the classroom. We would do genre studies where we would explore many examples of a certain genre type and then talk about the similarities and characteristics we found. I also liked to introduce a variety of...
Instead of "boring" text-based book reviews, 60second Recap offers teens engaging book summaries in 60 second video segments. Why 60 seconds? If you only have 60 seconds to get your point across, you have to think about whats essential and relevant for the reader to know. The Recaps provide a great way to generate class discussions about books and various literary concepts. What makes 60second Recap valuable?The videos are relevant, engaging,...
I enjoy to read, although I don't make enough time for it. And there are any number of excuses I could give but I will spare you. So when I hear about DailyLit, I was intrigued and decided to give it a go. Here is how it works. You sign up using any number of accounts you already have (Twitter, Facebook, Google, OpenID). Fill out as much of the profile as you want, upload a photo, bio, etc and connect your Twitter and/or Facebook if you want to send...
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