So many options, so little time!! Before this week, I hadn't spent too much time looking at blogs. WOW!!! My thought now-why buy another magazine?? My focus this week was educational blogs but I am certain there are blogs about EVERYTHING you can imagine and eventually, I'll look into those blogs as well.
My favorite blog is Edutopia. A wealth of current information about all things educational. There are videos for inspiration and teaching activities and ideas as well. The articles chosen are timely and intriguing. I actually follow Edutopia on Facebook and seemingly always feel the need to go explore whichever article they post. The other blogs I found interesting were The Tech Savvy Educator, The Thinking Stick and The Innovative Educator. There are many, many ideas and articles of interest on this blogs.
As I reflect on my learning of blogs, I want to incorporate blogging into my classroom. Kids are naturally tech savvy and spend a lot of their time in front of a screen so perhaps, as educators, we should ask them to write in their most comfortable venue. I may start this project with this YouTube video:
Creating my own Google Site was challenging for me because of a hard week of a tummy ache. It's hard to focus when your body is hurting but...I persevered and my site is up and running. There was a benefit to the process while I wasn't feeling good. It was a great lesson for perspective when my students are having a difficult time while they are struggling with illnesses, are too busy with activities or having a tough time emotionally. Although I can empathize with them, I can also talk to them about the characteristic of perseverance. Speaking from experience, I can tell them life can be tough but it's about rising above it and being tougher!
With that said, the project of creating a Google Site is the topic for the week. My site has many things my students will need for the upcoming units of study in 8th grade language arts. There are links to many documents, websites, YouTube videos, Google Earth Tours, a Picasa album of my current students as 4th graders, a survey on bullying, projects that are finished as well as upcoming presentations. It's like an all in one organization of things we all need to cruise along in Language Arts. Check it out! 8th Grade Language Arts
Of course, because I teach the advanced language arts students, my ideas are geared towards having my students creating sites as assignments for future projects. With the use of technology, student motivation always increases. I see a collaborative effort to have groups create sites about the Holocaust to share with their classmates and parents. To get them started, I'll have them watch the following YouTube video.
The students will probably find it easier to just build. It seems they just 'get' technology easily but for those students who need it, I'll provide videos and assistance at each step. I'm looking forward to seeing the projects the students come up with-their brilliance and skills never cease to amaze me.
This technologist in training will continue training and incorporating all I learn into my classroom-my students will be better in technology and more prepared for the real world.
There are so many aspects of Google-this week was so much fun!
Picasa is a free download to organize, edit, play with and share photos. It's user friendly and so much fun! Photography is one of my hobbies so this was like taking a kid to the playground to frolic through the many features of Picasa. I've spent many hours playing with pictures of my beautiful granddaughter, Avyana. Here's a photo to share her beauty with the world.
I hadn't previously understood how easy it was to share photos with others through Picasa and Google. Now, I can share with my daughter, my extended family and my friends when I want to share pics of Avy! Also, I'm excited about the potential to incorporate the features and share knowledge of this awesome program with my students. We use photography in several projects and this will take the confusion out of submitting photos for A Day in the Life of an AMS 8th Grader, Photo Essay of the Genres of Literature, and The Playlist of My Life. There were times in the past that turning the actual photos digitally was the most difficult aspect of the project. Here's my photo folder to check out pictures of another hobby of mine-gardening. To learn about Picasa-check this out!
And for some instructions on how to share your photos-click here.
YouTube also has a lot of cool features I wasn't aware of until I looked into it this week. WOW! Entertaining, educational, and easy to use-You Tube could easily be a teacher's best friend. There are two features I learned about to make You Tube a little less of a monster to maneuver through and less distracting than the old search and find method of my past.
The first feature I'd like to discuss is Quiet Tube. This actually creates a page that will play only the video without all the comments at the bottom of the page. I use You Tube to introduce some controversial topics to get kids thinking-those distracting comments can ruin that plan very quickly!
(If only we could get rid of the advertisements as well!) I was thrilled to learn about Quiet Tube! Here's a really quick video to explain the benefits and how to use it:
Also making the cut for this week's blog is the Tubesnack website that allows you to work within YouTube. Tubesnack allows you to collect and organize your videos for class. I created a playlist to organize all the grammar and punctuation rules from 8th grade language arts standards. In the future, I will probably keep the play list to 5-6 videos but I have a monster of a playlist to pull out and show any time I need some reinforcement on a certain rule. Love knowing how to create them-it was so simple to create. I know it will be a feature I use a lot in the future. Check out my playlist here.
I'm becoming so techy-my students might think I'm one of them! Honestly, I wouldn't want that but I do truly love learning all of the cool features Google has to offer!
