March resources in netTrekker

Did you know that netTrekker has groups of resources to go along with themes each month? You can find these Monthly Projects by looking in My Portfolio in netTrekker. Each registered user of netTrekker has their very own portfolio to store things in ... so if you don't have My Portfolio in the sidebar when you visit netTrekker, make sure you register using your school code and the teacher code.

Inside My Portfolio, look for a folder called Global: netTrekker portfolio. This is a collection of resources and projects from netTrekker users. In this portfolio, you can find a folder for Monthly Projects. Each month has its own folder containing project ideas and resources already pulled together for those projects. (There are also instructions on how to copy resources from that portfolio into your own portfolio.)

For the month of March, you can find resources and project ideas for:

• Famous American Women
• Music
• Nutrition and Johnny Appleseed
• Pi
• St. Patrick's Day

I just found out that OUR WHOLE SYSTEM has a trial of netTrekker's new product called igotta until April 9th. Here is more information about igotta: http://www.nettrekker.com/pages/igotta

We also have Defined STEM available through netTrekker until March 31st. Here is more information about Defined STEM: http://www.nettrekker.com/us/solutions/search/premium-upgrades/defined-stem

title created using letteringdelights.com

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From Lit Trips to Wordle ...

My workshop today scheduled for today was on Google Lit Trips. We ended up talking about Wordle. You might ask what the connection is between those two things ...

Our Instructional Technology Department has a wiki where we post resources for the workshops that we do as well as a range of other resources. As I was guiding teachers to that wiki to the Google Lit Trips page which is linked to a LiveBinder full of resources, they saw something they liked on the wiki's front page. On the wiki's frontpage, there is a word cloud created with Wordle.

One of the participants said she had seen an advertisement showing something like that, and she made a copy of it to remember it. I told them about the website I used to create that word cloud. I saw some interest in technology and decided to seize the opportunity. My workshop participants were not classroom teachers and although they may find Google Lit Trips interesting, they might be more likely to use something like Wordle. (By the way I did still share Google Lit Trips information and resources)

These ladies started looking at the gallery in Wordle to see what others had created. As soon as they saw some examples, they started working together to brainstorm how they could use Wordle and who they needed to tell about that site. I started looking at and discussing the gallery with them. We talked about what kinds of projects we thought were being done based on the word clouds in the gallery. (That would be a neat project to do with students since it could work on inferencing skills as well as critical and creative thinking skills.)

One of the ladies decided to try to create a word cloud. She was so impressed with how easy it was to just type in the words (or to copy and paste), and she got so excited about the ability to change the font, the colors, and the layout of the words. She told me that she would not get any work done tonight because she was going to be playing with Wordle. I love that! Find a technology tool and play with it to see what is possible!

While looking at the Wordle Gallery with those teachers today, there was one word cloud that really caught my attention. It was a word cloud made with the world Tangled. Now if the person had just typed in the word Tangled several times, then that one word would just be very large. I noticed that in one word the A was capitalized (tAngled) and in another word the D was capitalized (tangleD) and so on. I thought the repetition of that one word forming a word cloud looked really interesting.

After I got home from the workshop, I noticed that one of my coworkers (Steven W. Anderson) had posted about Wordle on our department blog just yesterday. I made sure to send that resource to the school I was at today. Here are some other Wordle Resource that might be helpful:

• Ways to Use Wordle in Your Classroom
• 50 Interesting Ways to Use Wordle in the Classroom
  
• Using Wordle for Comparision (example uses inauguration speeches)
• 43 Interesting Ways (and tips) for Using Wordle in the Classroom
• Word Cloud Resources, Tips, and Tools (provides some options for making word clouds besides Wordle
• More than Wordles
• Tips, Tricks, and Resources for Word Clouds including an idea and directions for putting wordle image over another picture

(I know that I have written about Wordle before on my blog, so you could do a search of that blog to find out more but I have tried to link the ideas here.)

If you have other ideas for ways to use Wordle, please share them with me. I know there are some other great word cloud creators out there, but I have mainly used Wordle (which is why I guess I keep writing about it).

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What Makes a Good Interactive Whiteboard Lesson?

Have you ever wondered what makes a good IWB lesson? Just like with any lesson a teacher creates, the purpose and objective(s) should be clearly stated. The lesson should also state what will be covered in the lesson, what the standard course of study goal and objective is, and instructions on how to deliver the lesson. Because I am talking about "interactive" whiteboards, obviously the lesson must contain activities to get students to the board. 


What would some activities be? Anything from the Lesson Activity Toolkit in SMART, resource packs in ActivInspire, or anything that the teacher creates designed to get the students to touch the board during the lesson.

Why would a teacher want to add instructions for delivering the lesson? When a teacher shares the lesson with other teachers (via Learning Village, Promethean Planet, or SMART Exchange) the peeople using the lesson need to know how to deliver the lesson to their students.

In ActivInspire, teachers should add Page Notes to each page with instructions on what to do on that page. To add Page Notes go to View, Browsers, and click on the "Sticky Note" icon. This will open Page Notes and the teacher can add instructions on each page. Can you just imagine teachers saying "Thank you" when you add this important piece to your lesson plan!

What about page design? Directions to the students should be "front-and-center". Font size should be big enough for everyone in the class to be able to view the board; it should not be smaller than size 24. Choose fonts that are easy to read (for example a sans serif typeface, Century Gothic, Arial, etc.). Be careful of the colors you select. Some colors do not look good together and they look different on the computer and on the interactive whiteboard. Too much text and/or images on a page could cause students to shut down and not pay attention. Images should be relevant to the lesson; do not put images on pages just for the sake of inserting images.

What ideas do you have for creating a good interactive whiteboard lesson? 

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Are you feeling some EDSITEment?

For a new blog post, I decided to go find something I had not really looked at and explored before. That search led me to EDSITEment: The best of the humanities on the web. Maybe I should figure out what that means ...

A quick glance at the EDSITEment homepage tells me that I can find lesson plans, websites, and student resources. You can also find great calendar information on the homepage (today there is a historical fact and a lesson to go along with it). There is also a Best of the Web area providing informative sites for teachers and students to check out. At the bottom of the homepage, you can find that EDSITEment is connected to Thinkfinity bringing together even more free lesson plans and resources.

So the first area I decided to look at was the lesson plans. I am pretty impressed with the variety of subject areas covered as listed here:

Explore our library of humanities lesson plans by subject, theme, and grade level. Find Art & Culture lessons on anthropology, art history, folklore, mythology, religion, and more World Language lessons on languages and the cultures of which they are a part; History & Social Studies lessons on American (including our popular AP U.S. History index) and World History, civics, government and society; and Literature & Language Arts lessons on great writing and great literary works throughout the ages. (from EDSITEment website)

You are able to do a keyword subject search. If you do an advanced search, you can limit the grade level, subject, and/or resource type. I also discovered that when you do an advanced search, the results will also list resources from the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as resources from Verizon Thinkfinity.

I just clicked on the Calendar link at the top of the page ... there are also links to NEH Connections, Reference Shelf, and an area called After School (I saw an area on History in Household Objects ... might have to go check that one out).

Oh there are so many great resources on EDSITEment, I think I am going to have to do more than one blog post to cover them ...

Ok now I am feeling some excitement (or should I say EDSITement) about my future blog posts ... who know what I'll find? When you go check out the EDSITEment resources, please let me know what you find and think will be the most useful for you!

image from EDSITEment homepage

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Why Wordle?

At a recent workshop I was showing some teachers what a Wordle was. I used one I created from my blog as an example.

We talked a little about how easy the program was to use (for teachers and students) and how they would explain what the image showed when they created some with their kids. But there was one question that caught me a little off guard. Why would I use this in my class? I tried to give the teacher as many examples as I could (summarizing text, survey results, etc) but she still couldn't wrap her mind around it. I wanted to hear from other classroom teachers and have them tell me what they used it for, in the hopes that not only this teacher would understand but I would have an amazing list the next time I talk about Wordle. (And so would you!)

I did what any good educator does; I turned to my PLN on Twitter. I sent out a tweet:

If you had to explain to some one why use Wordle, what would you say? Use the hashtag #whywordle Thanks!

Within a matter of moments I had several great responses:

•@colport-I use it as an assessment activity at the end of a topic, alongside concept maps from all groups in a class.
•@aldtucker-It's COOL! Good visual representation of themes, versatile
•@kmadolf-Focus on key words, ideas, themes. Fun to play around with font, color, layout. Can use to check own work for repetition. (I liked this one. Students can enter, say an essy, into Wordle and see if they have any words that they have used too much.)
•@dpeter-Visual representation. Cognitive and Concept mapping. Makes the "difficult" manageable. Shows strength of words.
•@adzbutterworth-I use Wordle to summarize texts and as an interesting way to present my class with keywords.
•@FireWOW-We used it to examine our district's core beliefs. Very powerful to see which word(s) came up frequently/seldom (This was another idea that I think is amazing. Take your district/school/classroom mission/vision/rules to see what is over emphasized and what is lacking.)

But there were two that were really stuck out:

•@mrsmac75-As a starter for students to try and guess where we're going with our lesson and create their own learning outcomes.
•@ktenkely-I use Wordle as warm up. I hate the question, "What are we doing today." I give word clues about what we are doing in class.

That is so cool! Use Wordle to introduce students to a topic. So here is what you do. Lets say I am going to teach a lesson on the U.S. Constitution. I am going to gather all the text that I am using for my lesson, enter it into Wordle. To start my lesson I would show my students this:

















Then as a class we would talk about the larger words (the words that appear most often in the text) and the no so large words (the words that do not appear as much).

The possibilities are endless really. There is a really great presentation from the Ideas To Inspire website; Thirty-Eight Interesting Ways To Use Wordle, that gives some more great examples.



Jen Wagner (@jenwagner) created a really cool site called Guess The Wordle. Each day she posts a Wordle and student (or classes) can guess what topic they think the wordle is related to. They get progressively harder throughout the week. What a great idea as a way to start the day off each morning!

How would you answer my teacher's question? What ways do you use Wordle in your classroom, or what ways have you seen others use it?

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Creating Video with Sound on the Lumens DC 166 Document Camera

It’s relatively simple to create a video file using the Lumens DC 166 document camera. It’s not as easy to create a video file that includes sound. So here is the way I did it. The first step is to click the video record button in the Ladibug software. You have to click the advanced button to see the video button. I do it this way so that I can choose where to save the file. I don’t want to save the video file on the hard drive of the video camera. The video is saved as an avi file. The next step is to open the video in a minimized window. This will open in Windows Media Player. I moved it the bottom half of my computer screen. I plugged in my headset (microphone/headphone combination) and double clicked the sound icon in the system tray to make sure my speaker and microphone was not muted. I opened Audacity. I played the video from the document camera and narrated the video while I recorded my voice in Audacity. Audacity has many options to edit the sound recording so it’s ok if you make a mistake. When I was happy with my sound recording, I exported it as a wav file. Then I opened Windows Movie Maker. I’m only going this option because Movie Maker is free. It wouldn’t be my number one choice, but that’s ok. Import your video file and your audio file into Movie Maker. Make sure you switch to the timeline mode of Movie Maker. Drag your video file to the video area of the timeline and the audio file to the audio/music area of the timeline. Save the project. You don’t have very many video editing options in Movie Maker. You can only cut part of the beginning or the end but keep in mind it is a free program. You would have a lot more options if you used Adobe Premiere Elements but that would run you about $50.00. The last thing you need to do in Movie Maker is to save the file so that it can be played on any computer. The file is saved as a wmv file and can be played in Windows Media Player. If you are going to record your lessons and place them on your website be sure to break up the video files so that they are not so memory intensive.

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Have you visited LiveBinders Land?

I got an email asking if I knew anything about LiveBinders ..... hmmmmm .... yeah I use it a little bit ... :)

A LiveBinder is like a virtual 3 ring binder where you can store websites, files, and all sorts of digital information. I replied by sending several LiveBinders resources, so I thought I would put those links here too.

"LiveBinders is a simple way to share knowledge"

• Here are some covering a wide variety of topics: http://mwedwardstechnology.blogspot.com/p/livebinders.html

• Here is a blog with links to a lady who has created LOTS of livebinders: http://mwedwardstechnology.blogspot.com/2011/02/are-you-konnected.html

• Here is a LiveBinder on creating LiveBinders: http://livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit?id=3342

• Here is a LiveBinders Tips and Tricks (video of a webinar): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIh6oCEuGHQ

• Here is a short video on LiveBinders for Teachers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uKktih3YNg&feature=related

• Here is a short video showing how to insert a file into a LiveBinder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHuXpNkFssQ&feature=related
  

• Here is a blog on LiveBinders that includes a video and lots of examples: http://wsfcsintouch.blogspot.com/2010/11/bring-those-boring-binders-to-life-with.html

• On the LiveBinders site, there is a tab full of feaured LiveBinders for all to see, use, and even copy: http://livebinders.com/welcome

image from LiveBinders

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