Using the Collective Knowledge for Benefit ...

I was scheduled to meet with elementary school teachers yesterday …

On paper, the training was supposed to be Promethean “ActivInspire Beyond the Basics” … that can mean sooooo much.  Since I did not do trainings at that school last year, I was not really sure what “beyond the basics” meant for those teachers …

But I wanted the time I spent with teachers today to be beneficial for them and guided by the questions they had …

That is where LiveBinders comes in …

(Stay with me … I will make a connection … eventually)

I knew teachers had some questions about “clickers” (expressions and votes), so I wanted to have some resources to be able to give to them. Since I did not know the exact topics that would be covered, I wanted to have more than enough resources!

I went to LiveBinders and searched for binders using the keywork Promethean or ActivInspire.  I found binders on Activexpressions, Activotes, registering, creating questions, and lots of interactive sites to be used with the ActivBoard.

I could have done a google search or even looked a few sites I have used in the past. However, I was able to use the knowledge of the collective group to my benefit.

When people create a LiveBinder, it is normally because they have found information they want to pull together and remember or share. I was able to save time and searching by looking at the binders others had searched to create!

I liked most of the resources and sites in these LiveBinders but there were a couple of resources or pages that did not really match with my focus or the direction of the school system, so if copying was enabled on the LiveBinder, I made a copy and took out the pieces I did not want to include (I made sure to still give credit to original creator).

Then I needed a way to pull together all the LiveBinders I was finding …

I could make a list on a wiki or webpage …

I could create a symbaloo …

I could make a presentation pulling them all in …

Did you know that you can put a LiveBinder inside a LiveBinder inside a LiveBinder? I could have made one LiveBinder by combining all the LiveBinders I found … (I have done that in the past).

Then I remembered something else I could do on the LiveBinders site! I made a virtual shelf to showcase the specific binders I wanted. After making that shelf, I could embed it on a webpage or put the link somewhere easy to access!

So that is what I did … I put the link to the shelf on the website of the Instructional Technology Department!

Teachers may still have to search a little to find the information they are looking for … but the searched was narrowed (and would not take as much time) since I pulled together resources in LiveBinders that others has already put together!

We had a good day of learning together … and the teachers went away with places to go find the resources we talked about as well as a direction to find even more!

The focus of today was on Promethean and not LiveBinders, but at the end of a couple of the sessions, a few teachers said they were able to see some ways LiveBinders could be used and now wanted to learn more about LiveBinders!

I never know what is going to make an impression and motivate learning …

Hurricanes, Primary Sources, Images, and Vocabulary ...

What do you think of when you hear the word Hurricane?

Do certain names pop to mind?

Do pictures of water, flooding, and damage?

What if nothing comes to mind when you hear that word if you have never really had any experiences with one?

I grew up in NC and our Outer Banks tend to get hit hard by Hurricanes. My uncle used to be in the Coast Guard at the NC Coast. We have been on vacation at the beach when we were evacuated for a hurricane.
None of my memories compare with any of the hurricane experiences of the people in areas like Florida and Louisiana ...

On the LEARN NC site, I found a portion of the digital textbook for NC History that is related to hurricanes, flooding, and NC History:

5.3 How does a hurricane form? 

• This section is provided by NASA and contains images, defintions, and explanations. I found the differences between a tropical disturbance, tropical depression, and tropical cyclone to be quite interesting. There is even a chart that could be used as guided practice for reading a form of informational text. 

5.4 Understanding Floods

• This section is provided by NOAA and contains vocabulary for various types of floods: river flood, coastal flooding, inland flooding, and flash flood. I may need to use this to give me ideas on how to explain to my daughter the flash flood warnings we kept getting over the weekend!

5.5 Mapping Rainfall and Flooding

• In this section, you can find videos, images, charts, and graphs that would be great for learning about visual and digital literacy as well as how to interpret and analyze information presented in different formats.

5.6 The evacuation

• I think there is a great opportunity to dicuss some problem-based learning related to the largest traffic jam mentioned in this section and the lane reversal plan to help prevent that in the future. This could also be used fordiscussing the skill of cause and effect.

 5.7 Rising Waters

• At first I was not going to include this section, but this is a great example of an oral history in an interview format. You can download the recording to play but the transcript is also located below.

I now realize that I could go on and on and on ...

This digital textbook was originally written for 8th grade. I have found many ways to adjust, alter, and select parts of these primary and informational text sources to be used for many grades in many areas of the curriculum.

Asking questions, making connections, and creating comparisons are concepts that repeat throughout the Common Core Standards. Primary Source Documents come in handy in order to compare and contrast a firsthand and secondhand account of the events in history.

Think about the ways hurricane coverage, effects, and descruiction could be used for making connections as well as for comparing and contrasting ...

Think about the other sources that could be used to pull together that information ...

Think about the wide variety of research skills that could be used ...

As well as learning about perspectives and information text ....

You could also check out Wonderopolis Wonder #334 is What is a Hurricane?

photo credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video via photo pin cc

Need Ideas for Ways to Use the Document Camera?

A couple of years ago, I posted a list of 10 links offering suggestions for things teachers could do usign document cameras. When I checked the links in the post recently, I found that only three of the links still worked .... yikes! So I am posting part of the post again and adding in some more current links (working ones)!

Document cameras can be used to take pictures, videos, and even as web cams. I think teachers just need more information on the many ways these tools can be used. I know they also need the time to try things out. Even though there are document cameras in many classrooms, I do think that tool has been overlooked.

Here is a list of links to a wide variety of ways document cameras can be used in the classroom:

• 101 Ways K-12 Teachers Use Document Cameras
• 100 Ways to Use Digital Cameras from Scholastic
• Ways to Use Doc Cameras with Students (from Learn 2.0)
• Document Camera Idea for Elementary, Middle, and High School Classes
• Ideas for Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Music, Art ...
• Teaching 'N Technology Document Cameras in the Classroom
• 101 Ways Kennewick Teachers Use Document Cameras
• Document Cameras Enhance Student Learning
• Doc Cameras in the Classroom Handout
• Using Document Cameras in Pre-K and K Classrooms