Interested in Science Resources?

One of my many favorite web sites is Science NetLinks. They have just renovated their web site. Let's take a look at their front page.

Across the very top is the "Go In Depth". One that I thought was very interesting is "A Matter of Pattern". This one is listed for the K-2 classroom. The purpose is to predict patterns using snowflakes. This looks like a very interesting lesson. Lots of hands-on activities. With the holiday season fast approaching, snow flakes would look good hanging around the classrooms!

The Search Bar is next. Search for science lessons or science tools on the front page. Want to listen to Science podcasts? Listen at Science Updates. The science update today is on Big Cold Animals.  

The Image of the Day is Rock Erosion. If you click on the image, you can see some information about rock erosion and links to interactives and a lesson plan. Also, you can select another day to see what that image was. The Recent Tools section has the latest tools that is in Science NetLinks. 

If you click on the Lessons tab at the top of the page, you will see the lessons that have been the most popular, and the most recent lessons. You can search by keywords, grade level, theme, or content.

Image by: mage: 'AIA First Images [Still]' http://www.flickr.com/photos/24662369@N07/4541419996

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Why Diigo Rocks!

Recently, I was asked why do I use Diigo for my social bookmarking tool. The more I thought about it the more I needed to write about all the great features Diigo is not just for regular ol' users but has some great features for educators too.

First, what the heck is Social Bookmarking? Most people are familar with favorites or bookmarks in their browser. Basically, when you come across a website you want to make sure you come back to later or want to visit a lot, you bookmark it (or for you Internet Explorer users you favorite it). But there is a flaw. Unless you have some add-on installed or special program, your saves don't travel with you from computer to computer and device to device.

Enter Diigo. When you save to Diigo your saves go anywhere because they are saved to the cloud. Sounds mystical doesn't it? The social part is because you can make your saves public and share the wealth of knowledge with others. Say you are a science teacher. Your fellow science colleagues can go and view your saves because you have made them public.

There are loads of other features as well, like highlighting on a webpage, adding sticky notes to pages, saving pages to read later without actually adding them to your collection and so much more.

One of the most powerful features is the tagging. Basically, if I save Google.com and don't tag it, I will have to remember the name of the site or something in the address. That can be tough when you start to get 1000-2000 saves like I do. Trying to remember exactly the name of a site I want to share just isn't going to happen. Instead I use tags. With tags I can categorize my saves. So, looking at Google.com I might tag that as "Search" or "Search Engine." So this way I look at my tags and find what I need. Now, I do at this point have too many tags but its super easy to go back in and reorganize things.

Another feature I love is the ability to auto-post to my blog. If you look at the post previous to this one you will see 10 of my favorite saves from last week. I set that up through my preferences. I tell Diigo what saves I want to post (either everything I save or specific tags) and what time I want it to post. And presto! A fresh blog post of resources to share.

And the groups are great too. Have a special interest or area that you want to find resources for and share with? Maybe you have an Interactive Whiteboard or you are interested in Pre-K education. Or perhaps you are in a 1:1 school. There are groups for all these where members can share their saves to not only their inventory but to the group as well. Diigo will email you once a week with all the new content. Pretty neat, huh?

Anyone can do any of those things. Joe Smith off the street can sign up for a Diigo account and do all of those things. But if you are an educator, watch out! So many more features await you.

First thing to do is get a regular Diigo account. Then visit the Educator Area and apply for the Educator upgrade. Once you get upgraded you can access all the new features in the Teacher Console. You can create class groups and student accounts.

The next step is to create a group. This could be one group for all your students or individual groups for individual projects. You give the group a name and it gets a unique URL. And one of the best features is you can make the group private, meaning only who you want to see the information will be able to.

Once the group is created you can create student accounts. No email addresses needed. You create the username and password. Then you can add those created accounts to the group. If you have already created accounts you have the option to just add those accounts then.

The advantage here is that anything the students save goes to the group. So if students are working on a group project they can share their saves together, automatically. Or as a class, if you are working on something everyone can contribute information they find.

There are so many more features to learn about. Check out this video from the good folks at the Palm Breeze Cafe to learn more.



And don't take my word for it. I asked this on Twitter.








And these are a few of the responses I got back...

There you have it. Head over to Diigo and get started.

Oh if you want to check out my saves you can do that here.

What do you think about Diigo? If it is something you already use, what do  you like about it. If you don't what do you think you will like most about it? Leave some comments below. 

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Fun with Learning

This week while I was researching some resources for one of my schools I came across a neat little game to help young students learn the Alphabet without having to sing it.

Promethean Planet has an interactive resource to aid students in learning the Alphabet.  It is an interactive puzzle where the students are able to come up to the board and interact by moving the puzzle pieces around so that they fit into their desired location.  When the puzzle piece is in its correct location it will lock in place and is no longer able to move.  If the student does not place the puzzle piece in the correct location the piece can still be moved around on the board.  Each puzzle tile has a Capital and Lower case for each letter of the alphabet along with an image to help reinforce their learning.

As I was touring a school this week I saw a teacher in a Kindergarten classroom that was having her students looking at an alphabet handout that was being displayed using the document camera.  I went into the classroom and talked with the kids to see how they like the new equipment all of them were really excited and were telling me how much they liked getting to go up to the board and touch it.  I asked them if they would like to play a new game to help them learn their alphabet letters.  They all were nodding their heads in agreement.  I loaded up this swf file onto a flipchart and all of the kids were clapping and cheering and all of them had their hands raised to come up to the board first.  It was great to see all of their faces light up as they were working on the board.  I even had them stop for a moment to turn on the Dual User feature so that two students could be at the board at the same time.  You think I had brought in their favorite candy and let them run wild.  They were all engaged and telling each other where the pieces were to go.

If you are a teacher give this a try by clicking the image above and downloading the file to your computer.  Then you will need to open up ActivInspire and click Insert then Media and choose the alphabet.swf file to place it into your flipchart page.  One hint to help you out would be to make sure after you insert the file and re-size it appropriately then save the flipchart so that when you reset the page after the lesson it will move all of the puzzle pieces back out around the edges.

Image provided by Promethean Planet

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How do you teach problem solving strategies?

How do you solve problems? What strategies do you use?

After doing a search in Thinkfinity, I found some interesting online games in CalculationNation  created by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics for developing and practicing problem solving strategies: SlamBall and Fraction Fued. So here are a few of my ideas about how these could be used with students:

In Fraction Feud, students rely on number sense to create fractions greater (or less) than their opponent’s fraction). At first, the teacher can play against the computer to demonstrate the game while talking out loud about her decisions (providing a model by using think aloud process):

• ex. From the numbers given, I am going to choose this number for the denominator because that will leave me with this number for the numerator. Since my opponent used these numbers to create their fraction, I think I will use these numbers. Since I have to go first and make the smallest fraction, I think I will use these numbers because …

Students can work with partners to play Fraction Fued game. Students will be encouraged to first play together against the computer and share their thoughts/strategies with each other. If students would like, they may play against each other toward the end of the designated time. Following the playing of Fraction Fued game, students can write in their math journals about what strategies they used that did and did not work for them and their partners as they played the game.

For the other online game, the teacher can provide students with the link to the SlamBall game with the only instruction being that this will be another chance to practice problem solving strategies. 

Students may continue to work with a partner or may choose to play this game alone. Students will again be encouraged to start off playing against the computer but then may choose to play against each other. The object of the game is to slam the ball off the sides of the game board to send it on a path that collects the most tokens. One side of the game board may be moved around and you can choose to start the ball in an upward or downward motion. 

The strategies needed to success in the game are different from the strategies needed to succeed in the fraction game. At the end of the designated time, students will write in math journals about what strategies they used that did and did not work playing this game.

After students play both games and write about strategies, the class can have a discussion about what worked and what did not in each game. The teacher can have some guiding questions to get students thinking about their thinking and to keep the discussion going:

• What strategies did you use that worked well?
• What strategies did you use that did not work well?
• How did you decide what to try? If that did not work, how did you decide what to try next?
• Did you find the same strategies worked all the time? Why?
• Did the same strategies work in both games?
• What strategies will you try when you play either of these games again? Why?
• What do you mean by …. ? (asking clarifying questions)

These two games provide students with the ability to engage in a fun computer activity, while practicing two math skills. One being fraction size and the other spatial geometry. The goal is to develop flexibility. Flexibility is the ability to choose different approaches in response to the situation or problem. That skill is best developed by trying a variety of options and sharing with others about what did and did now work.  This lesson/activity is designed with pieces that encourage the development of that skill.
  

I don't think these activities would be as successful without the reflection piece. The reflection activity gives students a chance to solidify what they have learned a strategy to be. The reflections and discussions occurring throughout the lesson encourage students to think about their thinking (metacognition). Students may have some difficulty with this at first, but hopefully with continued practice they will begin to realize some of the reasons that they make the choices to use certain strategies at certain times. Sharing with a partner and participating in full class discussions will allow students to hear about strategies they may not have thought about before. 

image source

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Edmodo Quiz Tips

Some of you may have already heard by now, but Edmodo launched their quiz feature recently. I started exploring it this past weekend and I'm really excited about what it has to offer teachers.

Teachers now have the ability to create quizzes and assign them to a single student, a group, or a combination of both. Teachers have the choice of four question formats that include, multiple choice, fill in the blank, true/false, and short answer. Also, there is a timing feature that allows teachers to set a time limit. What I really like about the quiz feature is teachers can attach a file or supporting link to a question. As a result, students will be more engaged and have to use higher order thinking skills when asked to evaluate a video, article, image, etc.

Below are a list of quiz tips and FAQs about Edmodo's quiz feature. For more information, you can also check out the Edmodo blog.

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Re-Opening my Eyes to Instruction

This week I had a great opportunity to be in Alpharetta and Atlanta Georgia.  While in Atlanta I was fortunate enough to be able to go to the Ron Clark Academy and sit in on a class.  This was the first time that I have ever been there and in my normal fashion was late getting to the school.  As we came into the classroom I found a seat on the far side of the room and had walk through the room to sit.  I quickly moved across the room as quietly as I could, while doing so I noticed that non of the students were disrupted by my tardiness and that Ron Clark kept their attention the whole time.

The room was alive with action, Ron Clark was talking, students were responding and interacting to his queues all without giving a second thought to the number of people that were staring at them around the room.  As I looked around the room I thought to myself, wow how can these kids be able to keep focused with almost double their number in adults sitting there watching.  Then Ron turned the tables on us, the adults, he had the students grab an adult to help them work out different math problems he had posted around the room.  So our student led us over to the one of the questions and he was working it out so fast that when it came time to answer it on our ActivExpression we did not even have the unit on and working.  Then we did another activity with the students and we were all engaged in the classroom activity.  Me I was awestruck at how well behaved and comfortable the students were with us in the room.  Almost like it was old hat to them.  I came to find out a short time later that these students had only been in the school for just around 30 days.

At the end of the lesson Ron Clark gave the adults in the room the opportunity to ask questions of the students.  I was amazed again at the students responses.  There were very well spoken and thanked us for asking the questions.  One question that I had my co-worker asked a young girl in the room was how she and the class felt about having all of the adults coming through on a regular basis.  She responded with that is was almost second nature to them and they were happy to have us in the room because were excited to see the students learn and they thrived on the energy.  I heard the question come up about whether or not they were treated differently now that they were at the Academy by their peers.  The answer came out that things had not really changed all that much.

In talking with someone a little bit later who said that these students had come from so many differing situations and felt so proud of what these children had accomplished in just a short amount of time was remarkable.  Me I could not believe it.  Which led me to share on another co-workers blog post It started with a simple question..   what I learned this week and that is, "regardless of a child's situation if they have a goal and are focused on that goal they can overcome and accomplish anything."

Now I am not the type of person that gets overcome by certain things but as we were leaving all of the students in the classroom were shaking our hands and thanking us for coming in and sharing their day with them, but one little girl came up and said I don't shake hands I give hugs and thanked me for being there and sharing in her day.  I could not believe it and was overcome with some emotion that this young child whom had never seen me before was comfortable with hugging a perfect stranger and thanking me for being a part of her class.

Of course we, the adults, all came out into the hallway to go down the slide at the Ron Clark Academy where all of the students from the classroom were at the bottom waiting for us singing and cheering us on as we got to the bottom of the slide.  As we emerged form the slide the children shook our hands and gave us a sticker that said we were "Slide Certified"

This experience has given me a new perspective on my own personal and professional life.  A kind of re-opening of my eyes to certain things and breathing some new life back into this routine which we all get in from time to time.

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What We Wish We Had Known Before Starting Twitter

If you have read any of my leadership pieces before, you know I am big on reflection. As educators, looking back on our practice is one of the most important things we can do. I try to set aside time each day to just think about how I did a workshop or something I said or a resource I looked at.

I think reflecting is pretty easy. We can look at where we are and how we got there and think about the ways we would have done things differently. What is working and what do we need to change...

So is the case with learning about something. Take Twitter for example. For those that use the service heavily, or even those that don't, they can think of a few things they wish they had known when they were starting out to make the learning curve a little less severe. I included, wish I had know several things.

Keeping that in mind, I sent out a tweet:

Doing some writing for an upcoming piece. What do you wish you knew about twitter before you started? Use #BeforeTwitter

I also posted it on Google Plus and asked a few of my folks in my office the same question. Now that you use Twitter (to whatever degree is comfortable for you) what would you go back and learn early on? Or if you are new what is it you don't understand?

The responses I got back fit into just a few categories...

Before Twitter-"I wish I knew how to make it meaningful to me." This is one that several people said to me. And it goes back to my earlier post. There is a misconception to what Twitter is and what it is not. When I started almost 3 years ago the perceptions were much worse then they are today. How could anyone in education be involved in something so narcissistic? Twitter is only for people who want to share what they ate that morning or for celebrities to spew something even more dumb then they can do face-to-face. It isn't the place for educators to have meaningful conversations or exchange resources.While many of those things do occur, in the education world, there are some huge advantages to using something real-time like Twitter over traditional resources. The problem is, as I laid out before, often times the way Twitter is presented is irrelevant to the people wanting to learn about it. Many sessions are generic in nature. And again, I will be the first to admit that was me. I taught sessions like that. There is so much specific information out there to find that, at this point, it should be easy to differentiate our training so that if English teachers want to learn we show them #engchat first. Or if science teachers want to learn we show them a great list of science teachers to follow. Like anything in technology or learning in general, making the content meaningful is the first and best step.

Before Twitter-"I wish I had known how to find people and build my PLN." Again, several folks said that to me. And people who have been on Twitter for a while still struggle with this. Finding good folks to follow can be a challenge. If you start out on your own, you really might not know a soul to follow. Thank goodness for sites like Twitter4Teachers. This is a great place where you can find other educators with similar interests to follow. When I was starting out, I stumbled upon this site. I was doing a Google search for "Twitter and Teachers" and thank goodness I found it. Otherwise I wouldn't know where to begin. But that is just one way. Twitter search is a great way to find people to follow. Plug in some key words and see who is tweeting. Another thing people may not understand is the idea of quality over quantity. You don't have to follow 1000 people to get a huge amount of meaning out of Twitter. Rather, choose people who provide value to you. Perhaps they tweet great resources. Or maybe they push your thinking. Remember, you can follow folks and they may or may not follow you back. That's ok. I see more and more that people are worried about followers. Oh I need only 2 more followers to get to 50. If Twitter is about seeing how many followers you can have, then maybe you are in it for the wrong reasons. Worry about the information you want to gain while here and forget about the other stuff.

Before Twitter-"I wish I had known I could talk to people." This statement was made a few times to me. And it is always surprising each time I hear it. Twitter is social media and social networking. Social. Engagement is a part of this medium. Now, I am big believer that lurking is ok on Twitter. Nothing wrong with plugging in and seeing the great information that is out there. The beauty of social networking and social media is that it levels the playing field. And really anyone in that space is just the same. If someone says something that you don't agree or you do agree with, say something. Send them a mention. Engage in a conversation. Ask for help if you need it.  I don't mind sending a message out to Sir Ken Robinson or asking Robert Marzano a question. Even last night I had a great conversation with the Governor of Delaware. Sometimes they might not get back to me. Often times, they do. The point is, engage. Twitter is less about consumption and more about engagement so put yourself and your ideas out there and see where they might take you.

Before Twitter-"I wish I had known I didn't have to read everything." I can't tell you how many times I have heard this. It goes to the statement that people don't have time because there is just too much information to sift through and they don't know how to organize it all and it probably isn't worth it anyway. There is a well known thought that Twitter is like a river of information. Some people get in their raft and ride those rapids everyday. Others stay on the shore and watch it go by. When they want to find something they wade in, find what they need and come back when they are ready to go at it again. You don't have to be on it 24 hours a day, everyday. Many times, good, quality information is past around over a few days. Can't miss resources or blog posts that make a difference will go around and around and around. So if you have taken the time to follow high-quality folks, chances are you will get the good stuff. If not, there are other ways to make sure you don't miss stuff (but you will have to wait until the next post to learn about those).

Before Twitter-"I wish I had known about hashtags." This is the big one. More than 90% of the responses I got to my questions about what folks wish they had known said once they learned about hashtags, things changed for them. This is the sole reason I changed the way I do Twitter PD. I always start out with the idea of the hashtag. Using Twitter search can yield great results. But once folks learn about hashtags it completely changes how they use Twitter to find information. Hashtags can also help in finding good, high-quality people to follow. If you are talking to people about Twitter, show them the hashtags you use. If you don't know which ones to use check out this huge list and do some searches. A good one to tell everyone about is #edchat. (In full disclosure, I am biased towards edchat because I helped create it.) Hashtags can also lead to chats which help deepen Twitter conversations. So, if you don't know that much about hashtags now, get to know them. They are just little pharses that were created to help track conversations but have turned in to a powerful delivery system of information, resources, and more for educators. 

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Adding a PowerPoint File In a CPS Test

A lot of teachers use PowerPoint. For those PowerPoint users that also use CPS, I just wanted to let you know that you can create a test in CPS (CPS calls them lessons). It’s very simple. Click on the “prepare” tab and the “lessons & assessments” sub-tab. Click the new button and choose “lesson”. Name the test and click “ok”. Click on the name of the test and choose “PowerPoint File” from the “add file(s)” drop down.

Navigate to and open the PowerPoint presentation you want to add to the test. Now click the “engage” tab and the “lessons & assessments” sub-tab. Place a check in the box to the left of the PowerPoint test you just created and click “engage”. Your PowerPoint file will open and the CPS program will scan for your receiver. The type of test will look very much like a “verbal engage”. You will be able to advance the slides or for that matter right click and go to a previous slide or any slide. Click the verbal button to choose the type of question you want. Remember, a verbal engage starts right away. I hope that helps.

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Special Characters in IWB software

  

This morning I was at a school and watching some very talented teachers working on their IWB's. One of the teachers had a math problem on the screen and the problem was talking about the temperature of water. She didn't have a degree symbol, and I started to think about how to get one into her software. So, I sat down to investigate. 

I am not sure if everyone knows about the character map tool that is in Windows. If you click on Start, Program Files, Accessories, System Tools, you should see the character map. This character map allows you to insert special characters into the different software packages. I went to the character map and found the degree symbol. I can copy and paste the degree symbol, or I can use the Keystrokes (Alt + 0176). This simply means that I can press and hold down the Alt key on the keyboard and then type the numbers 0176.

Now that I have it in my IWB software, do I have to follow the same steps every time I want to add another degree symbol? I am glad you asked that question. No, you do not have to follow all the steps. I can add the degree symbol to my Gallery (for SMART) or to my Resources (for Promethean). All I have to do is drag it to My Content (which is SMART) and My Resources (which is Promethean). Once in those places, I have to option of naming it to Degree Symbol. I have this symbol at my fingertips whenever I need it. Cool, huh!

Anytime you need to add new symbols, why not try using the Character Map.

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How do You Celebrate Writing?

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is celebrating the National Day on Writing on October 20th. According to their site, the first National Day of Writing was first on held October 20, 2009 and since then more than 30,000 pieces of writing, including poems, videos, essays, letters, audio recordings, blog entries, artwork, email and text messages, and short stories, have been submitted.


Why celebrate writing?

1. People in every walk of life, in every kind of work, and at every age write more than ever before for personal, professional, and civic purposes.
2. They write through text messages and IMs, they use video cameras and cell phones, and, yes, even traditional pen and paper
3. The social nature of writing invites people in every walk of life, in every kind of work, and at every age to make meaning through composing.

If you would like to celebrate writing on the official National Day on Writing (or any other day), here are some good resources:

• Resources on Writing from NCTE
• Tips for Writers from NCTE
• Why I Write Testimonials
• National Gallery of Writing

image source

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"Wonder" What's Happening

A few weeks ago in my blog post on "What I Learned This Week ... " I mentioned a teacher at one of our elementary schools had her students create "Wonder" books and how I introduced her to Wonderopolis. This week as I was talking to teachers in their grade level planning times, I was talking about resources. I was showing some science resources my coworker, Melissa Edwards, had found and one of them was on Wonderopolis (Does Matter Really Matter). 

After I finished the workshop, a teacher came up to me to show me what she was doing. She had materials that were several years old on reading strategies. Within this packet of information, were several pages of "wonders". What this meant was that students "wondered" what would happen next in a story. She was very excited that I shared Wonderopolis with them and how she was going to start using Wonderopolis as part of her reading strategies.

As you can probably tell, Wonderopolis is one of my favorite go-to web resources. I always mention the archived Wonders and the fact that students can comment on the Wonder of the Day and that Wonderopolis always answers back. Be sure to go and check out all the past Wonders as well as the current ones.

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Edmodo Promethean Users Group

In our department we have steadily grown a following through Edmodo among our school Tech Facilitators, Staff and Faculty.

But what you may not have known is that if you are a teacher that has an ActivBoard in your classroom we have a District wide Edmodo group that you can be a part of. The Promethean group will help you to learn more about the board and software you are using in the classroom with your students as well as it being a location where you can ask questions of our Instructional Technology team. Not only that you can use this as a collaborative space where you can ask questions, share resources, provide feedback and just tell us how things are going in your ActivClassroom with your students.

Right now there are not that many members of the group so I want to propose a challenge to the teachers within the district to sign up in Edmodo and become a member of the Promethean Users group. To sweeten the pot a little bit I am going to have a contest of sorts to get everyone involved.

In order for you to become a member of the group you will first need to go to wsfcs.edmodo.com to sign up within your school. You will need your school code to do this and your on-site Tech Facilitator has the registration code for your school. When you are on the Edmodo website you will click on the I'm a Teacher button and fill in the info box that appears along with the school code from your Tech Facilitator. Congratulations then you will be logged into Edmodo. Now you will need the Promethean Users Group code from the Tech Facilitator as well for the next step. After you have the code look on the left side of the screen to see a button that says JOIN, it is small and under the default profile picture which looks like chalk outline of a person. Click on it and enter the code and you are now a member of the Promethean Users Group.

So here is the contest for the rest of the Month of October. Once the group has 50 members I will draw one name a random to receive a prize, if we reach 100 members I will draw two names to receive prizes. The winners will be announced in the Edmodo group so you will need to periodically check to see if you are a winner. Oh and by the way while you are there checking for your lucky number you can peruse through the resources that are already available, answer the survey question and start collaborating with other teachers from around the county.

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Create a Comic Strip or a Comic Book

Comic strips are a good activity for students. They allow teachers to see if students understand the concepts taught in class. They also allow the students to show their creative side while having fun at the same time. The sites allow you to drag and drop characters, backgrounds, dialog boxes and add your text. They are very easy to manipulate. Here are 4 comic strip sites that are free and school friendly.

http://superherosquad.marvel.com/create_your_own_comic

http://www.pikikids.com/

http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/

http://www.pixton.com/

Superherosquad.marvel.com allows you to drag and drop super heroes (as the site name implies). This site also gives you the option to create a comic book. Pikikids.com gives you the option to upload your own photographs. The students could use their phones to take the pictures. The photography teacher in me advises you to teach your students about composition and lighting before you send your students out on their photo excursion. Makebeliefscomix.com allows the user to write the comic strip in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Latin. Pixton.com has a link for schools.

No matter what subject you teach, these comic strip sites give you the opportunity to assign a fun activity to your students.

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Why Diigo Rocks!

Recently, I was asked why do I use Diigo for my social bookmarking tool. The more I thought about it the more I needed to write about all the great features Diigo is not just for regular ol' users but has some great features for educators too.

First, what the heck is Social Bookmarking? Most people are familar with favorites or bookmarks in their browser. Basically, when you come across a website you want to make sure you come back to later or want to visit a lot, you bookmark it (or for you Internet Explorer users you favorite it). But there is a flaw. Unless you have some add-on installed or special program, your saves don't travel with you from computer to computer and device to device.

Enter Diigo. When you save to Diigo your saves go anywhere because they are saved to the cloud. Sounds mystical doesn't it? The social part is because you can make your saves public and share the wealth of knowledge with others. Say you are a science teacher. Your fellow science colleagues can go and view your saves because you have made them public.

There are loads of other features as well, like highlighting on a webpage, adding sticky notes to pages, saving pages to read later without actually adding them to your collection and so much more.

One of the most powerful features is the tagging. Basically, if I save Google.com and don't tag it, I will have to remember the name of the site or something in the address. That can be tough when you start to get 1000-2000 saves like I do. Trying to remember exactly the name of a site I want to share just isn't going to happen. Instead I use tags. With tags I can categorize my saves. So, looking at Google.com I might tag that as "Search" or "Search Engine." So this way I look at my tags and find what I need. Now, I do at this point have too many tags but its super easy to go back in and reorganize things.

Another feature I love is the ability to auto-post to my blog. If you look at the post previous to this one you will see 10 of my favorite saves from last week. I set that up through my preferences. I tell Diigo what saves I want to post (either everything I save or specific tags) and what time I want it to post. And presto! A fresh blog post of resources to share.

And the groups are great too. Have a special interest or area that you want to find resources for and share with? Maybe you have an Interactive Whiteboard or you are interested in Pre-K education. Or perhaps you are in a 1:1 school. There are groups for all these where members can share their saves to not only their inventory but to the group as well. Diigo will email you once a week with all the new content. Pretty neat, huh?

Anyone can do any of those things. Joe Smith off the street can sign up for a Diigo account and do all of those things. But if you are an educator, watch out! So many more features await you.

First thing to do is get a regular Diigo account. Then visit the Educator Area and apply for the Educator upgrade. Once you get upgraded you can access all the new features in the Teacher Console. You can create class groups and student accounts.

The next step is to create a group. This could be one group for all your students or individual groups for individual projects. You give the group a name and it gets a unique URL. And one of the best features is you can make the group private, meaning only who you want to see the information will be able to.

Once the group is created you can create student accounts. No email addresses needed. You create the username and password. Then you can add those created accounts to the group. If you have already created accounts you have the option to just add those accounts then.

The advantage here is that anything the students save goes to the group. So if students are working on a group project they can share their saves together, automatically. Or as a class, if you are working on something everyone can contribute information they find.

There are so many more features to learn about. Check out this video from the good folks at the Palm Breeze Cafe to learn more.



And don't take my word for it. I asked this on Twitter.








And these are a few of the responses I got back...

There you have it. Head over to Diigo and get started.

Oh if you want to check out my saves you can do that here.

What do you think about Diigo? If it is something you already use, what do  you like about it. If you don't what do you think you will like most about it? Leave some comments below. 

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Exploring New Territory

While working in a school this week with different grade levels a Tech Facilitator told me about one of their Kindergarten teachers who was going to make their first Skype call with another school. Now I was thinking that they were going to make a Skype call here locally within the school district or maybe at the most here in North Carolina. I was surprised, and a bit excited, to hear that they would be talking with a classroom in Hawaii. When I talked with the teacher involved she said that they were going to be talking with the school and then she had also setup a Twitter account so that her students could tweet out their feelings about the call. I could tell that the teacher was a little nervous about making the first call, but that is normal since you really do not know what to expect the first time.

Their first call was this week and everything went really well when we talked about it and the students had already began to post their tweets on Twitter. The only thing that the teacher remarked about was that she was going to look into getting a different microphone so that the participating class would be able to hear the students better during the call.

This Kindergarten teacher has taken a big step and seems to have gone outside of her comfort zone. I have to commend her for taking things to the next level and exploring new territory. I hope that this quick blog will help to inspire you as well to explore new territory and to step outside of your comfort zone.

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Shodor.org\Interactivate is a Great Resource for Math and Science

http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/ is a great resource for Math and Science. It is a java based Math & Science courseware that includes lessons, discussions and standards for the teachers and activities, tools and a dictionary for the students. Shodor contains over 70 lessons based on the activities for grades 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12. The discussions will help the students understand math and science concepts. There are over 100 interactive activities that allow students to explore the many areas of math and science. The dictionary lists the terms the students encounter in the website. The tools are a subset of the activities index page and can be used as stand alone applications in analyzing numbers and data.

Polar Coordinates Activity

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Quick Tips with ActivInspire

You have found all these great resources in Learning Village and you want to write on them using your ActivBoard; or you want to copy them and put them into your flipchart. What do you do?

Once you have pulled up your file from Learning Village that you want to write on, open ActivInspire. On the toolbar is a button with a picture of a blue screen and black scribbles on it. This is called "Desktop Annotation". By clicking on Desktop Annotation, you can then write on the document even though it is not in ActivInspire.

The next thing that you can do is to click on the button next to Desktop Annotation; Desktop Tools (this is a picture of a blue screen with a hammer and wrench on it). Once you click on Desktop Tools, your file from Learning Village can be brought up. Move your mouse over the icon, select the picture of the camera and then the last picture of a camera with a square on it (area snapshot). From there, move the white box over what you would like to take a picture of. Once you have everything highlighted by the box, click on Current Page or New Page and your image will then be placed into your flipchart. Then click on the icon again and click on the picture of the flipchart to open your flipchart up again.

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Meeting the Teacher Evaluation Standards

I recently attended an Edmodo webinar that spotlighted Brunswick County Schools and their district wide initiative to launch Edmodo. The initiative started with an email campaign to teachers and usage spread immediately. As they began training teachers, they focused on using Edmodo for the teacher evaluation instrument and as a communication tool for PLCs. They wanted their teachers to have true conversation about student learning and decided Edmodo would be the right tool to use. The initiative started a year ago (October 2010) and now all their teachers use Edmodo to communicate and share resources to support their PLC.

In addition, Edmodo provides teachers a way to document how they are meeting the standards on the teacher evaluation instrument. Using Edmodo teachers can model ethical behavior and appropriate use of social media. Teachers are demonstrating leadership by facilitating PLC discussions in their Edmodo groups. Working in Edmodo with their students, teachers can target students individually to leave feedback or provide support resources all in a safe online environment. Teachers who join the professional communities in Edmodo can develop their professional learning network (PLN) and reach out to teachers worldwide, making it easy to connect with other professionals globally.

I personally have been using Edmodo for the past few months to connect with other teachers and it's been a valuable tool for sharing and learning best practices. I see and hear about teachers using Edmodo for their PLC meetings and how its been a successful collaborative tool. Edmodo was recognized and honored by the American Association of School Librarians as Best Website for Teaching and Learning. Learn more about Edmodo and how it can transform you classroom by checking out their blog.

Image from http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1708

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Puzzle Pieces?

Last week I was fortunate to attend Thinkfinity training. Thinkfinity is a free collection of lessons and resources for in the classroom, afterschool, home, and even professional development. This great site is sponsored by the Verizon foundation. They offer general things and specific resources for states based on their guidelines. When searching by standards, I noticed lots of resources for Common Core and 21st Century Skills.

In my opinion, one of the best things about Thinkfinity is the Content Partners they work with. I think of their partners as puzzle pieces working together for teachers and students.

"Verizon Thinkfinity Content Partners produce the program's nine discipline-specific, standards-based Web sites. Each site includes lessons for teachers, activities to use in and out of the classroom, games for young children and teens, adult literacy resources and reference materials for anyone in the education field, as well as for parents and afterschool practitioners."

• National Geographic Education
• Science NetLinks from AAAS
• econedlinks from the Council for Economic Education
• readwritethink from the International Reading Association and NCTE
• ArtsEdge from The Kennedy Center
• Smithsonian's History Explorer
• Illuminations resources for teaching math from NCTM
• EDSITEment! from the National Endowment for the Humanities of Art
• Wonderopolis from NCFL

The teaching resources available from these Content Partners are aligned to National Education Standards.

I think that Thinkfinity has found lots of puzzle pieces to encourage, support, and engage learning experiences for students and teachers!

image by Patrick Hoesley found at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60057912@N00/4579775685/

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Super Secret Twitter Tips

This is the last in my series on everything Twitter. You can read this first on How I do Twitter PD and the second on What People Wish They Had Known Before They Started. 

Today lets look at all my tips, tricks and resources for getting more out of Twitter. 

I get asked all the time one of three questions:

1) Where do you find all those links you post?
2) How do you make sure you don't miss everything without staying on Twitter 24/7?
3) How do you organize everything you find from Twitter?

Well I am so glad you asked. There really aren't any secrets. It's just great resources that I use to leverage more out of Twitter to find what I am looking for or to keep myself organized.

So lets look at what I use...

1) Where Do You Find All Those Links That You Post? Well my brain is hardwired to Google so I just think of something and it gets tweeted. Ok, if only that were true.Actually a lot of what I find to post comes from the work I do. And all goes back to where I started.

Almost 3 years ago, when I created my account I was looking for a way to share the resources I was looking for with the teachers across my district. Twitter was a great and easy way to do it. And that has continued in to my current role. I get to spend lots of time looking for resources for teachers across my district. Sharing is caring so I figure if one teacher in my district can benefit there are probably others out there too.

So the long and short of it is I usually start with a Google search. And that will yield some good results... sometimes. One of my favorite resources is the wisdom of the crowd. And there is no better place for that then Diigo. With Diigo search I can look for specific tags of items that folks have shared. Most of the time I get better results there than anywhere else. And I keep my links there too for anyone to be able to find. Most every link I have ever posted ends up there, eventually. And I don't hesitate to revisit and post something I already posted a while back.

Google Reader is another place. I follow lots of different blogs on lots of different subjects. And I almost always find great content there. Sometimes it's like going down the rabbit hole. I will check out a post on one of my favorite blogs, FreeTech4Teachers, from my good friend Richard. He will post something that will lead me to something else, that leads me to something else and so and so on. I can get really deep looking for stuff, finding great content to share along the way. 

A lot of what I post is retweets from other folks. Again, letting the wisdom of the crowds do the work for me to find great content. It goes back to following people for their quality, not following as many people as I can. And retweets extend the reach of your network. You and I might follow each other, but someone who follows me, might not follow you. So the RT extends the content and grows the network. It's a win-win!

2) How Do You Make Sure You Don't Miss Everything Without Staying On Twitter 24/7?Believe it or not I do sleep. Not well since I have a 2 year old that thinks 3 am is a great time to get up and play. But I do take breaks, often. One of the biggest misconceptions is that you have to be on Twitter all the time to see all the content. Keep in mind, if stuff is really good or "not to miss" lots of people will pass it around over the course of several hours/days. You are bound to see it at some point.

Hashtags are a great way to keep up with stuff. Lists are another. Both allow you to go back in time up to 2 weeks to find stuff. While hashtags are a great way to track conversations and to find people to follow, many will post resources and hashtag them so others will find them. You can then put all your favorite people in a list so that you can see their posts any time. (And if you use something like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite it is easy to set up columns to follow those things any time.)

There are tons of great websites too that will find the most important stuff for you. The Tweeted Timesand Paper.il are two sites that, when you connect them with your account will analyze the resources of the people you follow and find the best ones and present them to you in a newspaper format. (These are 2 more ways I find great content too.)

KnowAboutIt is new service I have been playing with. Instead of finding the most important content it gives you every link that comes through your stream along with the tweet and who tweeted it. You also get a daily email of the most popular content along with what they call Hidden Gems, content that might interest you based upon what comes through your stream.

The point is you don't have to be on all the time or feel like you have to see everything that comes by. Be smart and use these tools and let them do the work for you.

3) How Do You Organize Everything You Find On Twitter? I have a group of monkeys that does all my filing, filtering, evaluating and organizing for me. Sadly, not true. But I do have lots of tools that I use to help me keep track of everything I find.

One I have written about before is Read It Later. This is, hands down, my favorite tool. When someone posts something and I don't have time to check it out I just add it to my Read It Later list and go over it when I do have the time. The best part, I can access my list from anywhere on any device. So if I am sitting some where for a few moments I can go through my list.

Diigo, which I mentioned before for finding loads of great content is where I put my content too. I have always been a fan of Diigo because of the great stuff they offer educators but really I like just being able to save my links there and give them tags so that I and others can find them easily. 

The point to all this is that Twitter isn't work. It's not supposed to take up massive amounts of time or energy. Sure you have to spend some personal capitol keeping up and growing your network but as you have seen there are loads of great tools out there that you can put to work for you to find amazing and valuable resources for you and your classroom.

What do you use? What are your favorite Twitter tools to keep up with or organize your stream. Leave some comments below.

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