2012 to 2013

December is always a crazy month for me. If you have read my profile, you will notice that I am a music teacher so December naturally has a holiday program. It definitely consumes most of my energy! I haven't been totally absent from my tech world so I had to get in one last post before the year ends. This post does not come necessarily from an educational search but it does have classroom applications also.

I was looking for a way to send a video message that my elderly mother could open and see without actually downloading a video. I also wanted it to be private and most of all FREE. I did a little looking around and of course one of my first searches for great web tools is with Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers. I am always forever grateful to people like him who take the time and energy to do extensive research on web tools. I trust the sites he recommends and his thoughts on classroom applications.

My search led me to Kincast. Yeah, his post was over a year ago, but I didn't need something like this a year ago! And yes, like most web 2.0 tools, I believe they have changed since Mr. Byrne first wrote about them. However, Kincast offers a way to upload or record directly videos of any size that you can share privately. For my purposes, which is to share videos with family, this is perfect. The free version gives you unlimited sharing and 30 minutes of cloud storage. There are paid versions, monthly and yearly,  that offer more storage and other options. People that you share with do not need an account or password to view your videos (again I needed EASY for my mother) and only need to click on a link in their email.

File size for uploading is 4GB per video. In the free version, once you hit the 30 min limit, they will ask you if you want to upgrade. If you choose to stay on the free version, they will delete your oldest videos to make room for your new one. You can also delete videos whenever you want. Kincast has a great HELP page with FAQs.

For the classroom, Kincast could be an easy way for teachers to share student videos privately with their parents. Even though the site is private, please note that the site is not intended for use by anyone under age 13 and their privacy policy states that you must be 18 to create an account. This is an important factor for teachers and I remind you to always check the privacy policies of websites if you intend to use them with your students. You should also be aware of your school district's internet policies.

Happy New Year!

Missing November and Differentiantor, Respondo! and Byrdseed

Oops- looks like I missed November all together. Well my new job has been slightly demanding. I had a performance with third and fourth graders on November 16th, which went quite well I might add, and I have another coming up for Christmas on the 11th of December. Needless to say I have been extra busy and it seems to be consuming a lot of my time. I know, excuses, excuses. What can I say? I'm really not a slacker ☺

So I had created a Google site to help my new staff find some easy ways to integrate technology and to learn some tech tips. They haven't had much at this school although there are some teachers who are all over it and want more and more. I was looking for sites for integrating technology in the literature classroom and came across an interesting site called the Differentiator. The initial site I got this link from was Web English Teacher, a site I will need to return to on my quest for literature and technology links. Moving on-

Differentiator comes from a site call Byrdseed. Differntiator helps you re-evaluate and re-design assessments. It is a great tool and you really need to see it and try it to fully understand how it works. When you first go to the site you will see an example that once you click on it you will be given option to edit with the categories of Thinking Skill, Content, Resources and Product. Playing around I came up with this one:
Students will define the rules of composition using a website and create a chart in groups of two.
Not really the best example but I just wanted to see what I could do.

And since we are on a site linked from Byrdseed, we ought to look at Respondo! while we are at it.
With a similar looking front page, users click to edit and give your students a creative literature response question. Again, I think it is a nice tool that will get you thinking about some fresh ways of looking at things.

Byrdseed, by the way, is a "place dedicated to differentiating instruction for high level learners". Many of the ideas are not necessarily technology integrated but hands-on activities. There are some wonderful ideas that are worth your time exploring if you are looking for new ways to engage your students.

WatchKnowLearn and Reading Bear

Avoiding what I should be doing, I was looking through my reader and Larry Ferlazzo's post about phonics caught my eye. He happens to mention a site called Reading Bear.  I went to view the Reading Bear site and was quite impressed. This is a great resource for teaching phonics. Their site says they have over "1200 vocabulary items and 50 presentations". If you read the About Us section of Reading Bear you will find that this site is completely free and funds are provided by a Memphis area donor who wishes to remain anonymous. I am amazed and truly grateful as a teacher that something like this is out there for teachers and free. You do not have to create an account to use the site. If you choose to do so, you will be able to save scores and progress. Teachers can also make accounts for their students. Excellent site. Do, do, do take a look!

And to top it off.....as I scrolled to the bottom of the page to find out more I saw that it comes from WatchKnowLearn.org. Another WOW for my day! WatchKnowLearn is free educational videos in a very nicely organized way. Music alone has 889 videos. Over 7,000 in the History category. You may have found many of the videos they have listed but to have everything organized all in one place is pretty cool. The videos come from all different sources but are considered kid safe for ages 1 - 18.

Again, this site is done by some very generous people. Generous with time and money and the belief that everyone should have the opportunity to learn. Thank you to these folks and others like them that have made educating others their mission in life. And thank you Larry Ferlazzo who leads me to so many wonderful sites.

Flipping the Classroom

I talked about the Flipped Classroom a few months ago and if you go back to that post there is a great info graphic that talks about what it is. I've been thinking, pondering and trying to brainstorm about how I can flip my general music class for my middle school students. I just introduced, Edmodo,( which I talked about in this post --> Edmodo ) to my 7th and 8th grade students. If you have not explored Edmodo and are looking for a very user friendly micro blogging environment that is safe and secure, go check it out. Moving on- I really would like to do this and I'm going to figure out how soon but in the mean time, in my research for ideas, I came across an excellent set of videos that would be great for a flipped history class. Crash Course in History videos can be found on YouTube Edu. They are 42 high quality videos that present history; each average 12 minutes long. I watched the first one and felt that they were definitely appropriate for high school students, perhaps middle school depending on your students. Crash Course also has 35 videos for Biology. I recommend taking a closer look at these if this is your course, either as a student or teacher, and perhaps use them to flip your own classroom.

Well this still brings me to no big solution for myself in flipping my classroom, but hey, I'll figure it out. And when I do, you will definitely hear about it.

History teachers- you may also enjoy History for Music Lovers also on YouTube.

Remembering 9/11

There are many thoughts and opinions about how we should teach about the events of September 11, 2001. Larry Ferlazzo, who I have mentioned before, has a "Best of" list for teaching about 9/11. If you are looking for resources you should definitely look at his list.

If you haven't figured it out by now, I am a fan of dogs. So I am most interested in the search and rescue dogs from 9/11. There are a few books out on the topic that offer amazing pictures of these dedicated canines. One that I own is Dog Heroes of September 11th: A Tribute to America's Search and Rescue Dogs by Nona Kilgore Bauer. You can purchase the book through many retailers.




Perhaps you might find this video from explore.org a touching tribute to these dogs.

Google Doodles

https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&tab=ww

So I totally admit this is not a cool web tool for education but being a Star Trek fan I found the Google Doodle today pretty awesome.

Although- I do think Google Doodles can be a great spring board to discussions. I always keep Google as my default homepage so when I turn on my projector I don't have to worry about some less desirable story showing up in front of my class. (Thank you Google for that.) Many times there has been a Google Doodle that either myself or someone in the class will notice and comment wondering what it is about. So naturally we have to click and go investigate. We have had some great learning moments that might not have been what I planned to do in class that day, but we all walked away having gained knowledge we didn't have before.

You can even search Google Doodles and view past ones. Something to use perhaps as an introduction to a lesson.

So don't just zip past that Doodle! Teach out of the box once in a while.

Vocabulary Tests online

VocabTest.com is a wonderful resource for assessing or practicing SAT vocabulary. A colleague of mine and expert Literature teacher, Jennifer Borth, uses this site for her students. She uses the Vocabulary Workshop Book Levels. Students are able to take a variety of tests using the vocabulary words from the book they are using. When finished, they can email the results to their teacher or they can print out the results. The tests are date and time stamped and show which words were correct and those marked wrong thus helping both the student and teacher know where help is needed.

VOCABUZZ! is a new vocabulary game students can play against one another. They score more points if they are the first to get the answer correct. But they don't know if they beat their opponent until the clock runs out.





This site is truly teacher and student tested and they love it. It has made what could be a dull study to engaging and fun. Gold star for this site!✩


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Postscript to Puffin, iPads and eBooks at my school. Sad to say that the eBooks did not work, even with Puffin. I ended up downloading a section from the eBook, putting it in my Dropbox and then opening it up on the iPad. Flash components do not work but you can at least read it and no heavy text book to carry around. Our students should be able to do the same by using their eBackpack in lieu of Dropbox.

BYOD in Middle School and Puffin

I am working at a new school this year. Same diocese but different parish. This year the middle school students are BYOD (Bring your own device). During the end of the previous school year I gather that parents and students were given information and what to expect at the start of school. Recommendations were given but not stressed and left laptop or iPad options strictly to parents. So this week, here they come. PCs, Macs (all varieties- air, pro, etc) and a few iPads. So here is what we discovered.

Students were asked to make sure they had the latest Adobe Reader installed and the latest Adobe Flash Player. Well you probably guessed that many students did not, especially the Apple products which typically don't come with these programs preinstalled. Nice, huh? So we had students that could not open the eBooks and did not know why. I spent quite a bit of time updating and installing the needed Adobe products and have most of the Macs working now. There is one that is still giving me issues but I'll figure it out. I also had to make Adobe Reader the preferred pdf reader on the Macs to make the eBooks work. So here were the steps I took for the Macs to be able to open and use the Glencoe Literature books.
1. Download and install Adobe Reader for Mac
2. Download and install Adobe Flash Player for Mac
3. If not available, download a pdf file; Choose "open with" and select Adobe. When asked if you want to make Adobe the preferred/default reader, say "YES"
4. Log in to the Glencoe site and locate the eBook. Open and it should work. Or at least it did for me.

I did have one Mac that would NOT work so I download Firefox and installed the plugin for pdf reader on Firefox. That also worked.

Now we are looking at a work around for the iPads and flash. I was reminded about the free web browser app Puffin. I downloaded it on my husbands iPad and tested a few flash sites. Worked great. Will have to try it on the eBooks and see what happens. Puffin is free and seems to work smoothly. So far I have not noticed any glitches. It will be interesting to see how it works for the students.

So I've played a bit of a tech helper this week. It was fun. I enjoy helping the kids and I really like a challenge!

End of Summer and TED radio

School has begun and the race has started and here I am entering the last week of August. Where did the month go? I finished my first week of school last week. I am teaching in a new school this year and if the rest of the year goes like the first week I will be a very happy camper! Wonderful place to be!

I haven't spent much time perusing finds and such but I did hear something interesting today as I was driving about. I hope that if you are reading this you are familiar with TED talks. As described on the site "Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world." You will find talks by notable people such as Sir Ken Robinson, Daniel Pink and Steve Jobs. There are so many fascinating talks that will        truly stimulate your mind.

Again, as I said, driving in my car today listening to my local public radio station, KERA, and to my surprise I found myself listening to TED radio. Yippee! This really was a nice surprise. I'm not sure if I really knew there was TED radio, but now that I do, I will most definitely be listening to the shows. There are archived shows on their website and I have link to one that seemed appropriate for the start of a new school year. Building a Better Classroom Enjoy!

Vocaroo - online audio recording

Our STAR Camp, a tech camp for teachers, begins tomorrow. We will be focusing most of our time on the web tool Voicethread, which I will discuss in another post. But we will also be giving teachers a list of web 2.0 tools to evaluate and create a Voicethread about them. So I am sitting here this evening looking at a list of sites and adding more to the list. I came across Vocaroo during my search.

Pretty nice site. I remember seeing this site one other time but I clearly had forgotten about it. Vocaroo lets you record audio online, save it, download it, even get a QR code linked to it. I was quite impressed. There is no time limit in recording but they do state that internet interruptions could easily affect your recording time.

QR code for my Vocaroo

I was considering the possible classroom uses and I really could have used this site last school year. I had recorded some first graders reading and wanted a safe place to put their voices and share with their parents. I couldn't find anything and didn't do anything with the recordings. If I had remembered Vocaroo, I would have recorded them here, gotten the QR code and sent it to their parents to listen to. That would have been pretty cool. Still may do this since I still have the recordings.

Vocaroo is worth exploring. I am looking for other audio recording sites that are free to use. Preferably something that would let me record and distribute securely.

Weebly

I was first introduced to Weebly a few years ago while I was working on my master's degree. I didn't see anything special and to be honest with you, I really didn't spend much time with it. I have since rediscovered Weebly and am thoroughly impressed with the updates and features.
Here is a link to a site I made just playing with some of the things available: Adventures with Rose

One of the nicest things about working with Weebly is the ease of adding elements. A simple drag and drop adds an element and the directions to upload pictures or add text is very easy to do. I did not find changing, adding, rearranging elements to be frustrating at all. With the free account, you do have some limitations and this is the one thing that does frustrate me. For instance, you are not able to upload videos. Now you can link or embed them if they are hosted on YouTube, TeacherTube or Vimeo. All fine and good, but I really wish you could upload even short videos without upgrading to the Pro account. I guess that is one of the trade offs you make for all the other really cool things about it. Audio is also only under the Pro account.

Getting a Pro account is pretty easy though and if you can get 5 teachers to sign up using your reference code you are upgraded to Pro for free. Not a bad deal and actually the price for the Pro is very reasonable. Now why go to Pro? Well you get more student accounts. And this is where Weebly really has a nice advantage over other websites. You can created classes and each student can create their own website. You can make the class sites public or private that can only be accessed with a password. What a great place for your students to publish their writings or create a digital portfolio. But you also don't have to worry about strangers lurking about your classes websites. No email address is needed for the student accounts. If your students are under 13 you do need to get parent permission to use the site. There are many sample blogging parent consent letters out on the web, so look around and adapt one for your situation. And hey, if you now think you want to try it, and you are feeling generous, why not use this link and help me get that Pro account? http://education.weebly.com/referral.php?oTOXFMo3ZIAb897n

So will I switch and use Weebly with my students? I will probably try this with at least one class. I am moving to a new school and they will be BYOD in the coming school year. This could be just the thing to make my class ROCK!

Summer is for exploring

So here I am, once again exploring websites. I have a habit of looking for one and thing and finding many other things that are even closely related to what I was originally looking for. Isn't that how all the famous discoveries happen? By accident? Remember though, with any site, you should always preview and look for anything that would not be suitable for your students.

 iFakeText
Fun site that lets you create a fake iPhone text conversation. The one on the left is a conversation between my dogs. Your students could use this web tool to create conversations between any two people or animals or anything you like. Such as 2 different shapes. No account needed and no mention of under age 13 use not permitted. The site does contain adds.

Newspaper Clip Generator
Create what looks like a newspaper clip. You choose the paper's name, headline, date and write a brief "article".  Once generated, there is a download link for your image. You can't direct link to the image and the images are deleted from their servers after a short time. It is recommended that you do not use real names of people or newspapers. There nothing in their privacy about use by under age 13 and there are no accounts created. Drawback: The site is not independent of other generators and they may not be appropriate for your students.

Copy Paste Character  ♬ ☺
Looking for a special character? ✿ This neat little site lets you copy a character by just clicking, go to where you want it and paste. Simple. ✯ And if you use a Mac, there are also emoji 🐶 to use. If you prefer the html code for the symbol that is available also. ☠ Fun! No account is necessary to use this website. I do not see any other issues you may have with your students, whatever their ages.

July- Time to explore- PhotoFunia

I was looking at a blog that I bookmarked a long time ago called Techno Constructivist by Carl Anderson, a teacher from Minnesota. Way back in January 2010 he made a post with a list of sites that were, at the time, safe for kids to use. The sites had no age restriction, required no accounts and could be used freely without violating COPA. So I started perusing the list and, as I would expect, have found that some of the sites have changed. We all have seen sites that start free and end up with those special subscriptions that have all the cool stuff.

Well here is one on the list that I like, PhotoFunia. This is a free online photo editing site. No account needed to play, but they do have a statement about the site is intended for over the age of 13. There are so many options of how you can use your picture. I decided to use one called Big Painting.

Now tell me that isn't cool! I could play for hours on this site transforming my image to all sorts of things. There are tabs for Effects, Labs and Filters. All have a variety of fun effects. Of course I had to do another. Here is the same pic but with the Lego effect.

So much fun! There is also an app for your smartphone.This site would give your students many options to explore. Again, remember the age 13 clause. As an art teacher, this site would give an opportunity to discuss how each technique gives the picture a different feeling. The lighting, intensity of the colors, illusion of texture would all be points to discuss. Go check out PhotoFunia and have some fun with your photos.

ISTE 2012 and new discoveries

This time last year I attended my first ISTE conference held in Philadelphia. It was pretty amazing and there was soooo much to see and learn. I loved it and it would have been great to attend ISTE last week. Next year it will be in San Antonio so I will definitely be attending that one. Very excited!

So I spent the day perusing twitter looking at all the #ISTE2012 tweets. I knew this would be a good way to see what was trending and grab some links, etc from those who were there. A few years ago I did the same thing with TCEA following it virtually. Not quite the same experience but I was still able to learn many new things. I also went throughout the ISTE 2012 program online and looked at the listed sessions to see which had links posted or handouts. I was able to gather quite a list and put it all in a Google doc to access later. I haven't spent much time exploring all the links but here are two that I like.

When Picnik went away, I was looking for a similar online photo editing site that was free, of course. I wrote about one I found called Fotoflexor. Really like it and would definitely recommend it. I have come across another that looks and behaves much like Picnik did. This one is called iPiccy. Very easy to navigate the site and if you were a Picnik user you will find it very user friendly. It had nearly all the same tools and free. So now there are two great options for online photo editing.

http://www.smore.com

The next site I looked at is called Smore. It is still in beta but you can try it now. You can make some pretty cool flyers/posters and share or link. Here is one I created about my pretty pup, Rose. Once you have created an account and make your flyer, there is a settings selection so you can make your flyer private. You can also keep your "profile badge" off so it cannot be seen. Features like this make it a promising web tool for students to use. The site offers templates to use or create your own. Choices for styles, backgrounds, colors, and fonts. Short learning curve and nice looking when finished. Go take a look at Smore where you can "design beautiful online flyers and publish instantly".

Animoto and the Internet wait

I sit in a local Whataburger, using their free wifi, because the internet is down at my house and apparently no one knows why. So frustrating. So I am on the work order list for Friday, the earliest they could do, between 12 and 4. Grrrrr. Not exactly the best place to be sitting but I really needed to get online. Grrrrr.

So Animoto- well I have written about Animoto before. Awesome web tool. Free upgrade for educators. Quick learning curve. Makes very professional looking videos so you look like you are even more talented than you think you are. I love it!

I helped out today at one of our diocesan tech workshops and we were doing Animoto. Some things we learned last week and this week while teaching the teachers.
1- there are requirements on images and videos that you can use in Animoto. Kind of important. Especially the video part. We discovered, yes you can put in videos, but they will be in 10 second clips. So if you are using video, understand that if you video is more than 10 secs Animoto will trim your video to 10 sec. Advice: film in short 10 sec bursts. It does work and you can still use the fabulous Animoto look for your polished final video.
2- One of our teachers does not remember what her promotional code is so we are trying to retrieve that. She sent an email to the folks at Animoto and we are waiting to see what response she gets. I'll let you know.
3- Student created videos cannot be accessed. There really is no way to view a video unless you have the link, embed code or download the video yourself. A nice feature.

All the teachers loved Animoto and are excited about bringing it to their students. Thank you Animoto for creating a classroom friendly tool.

Here is a great site from our professional development director: Hold the Mayo There are some good links and resources for the workshops we have done.

Teacher Tech Camp and Paper Slide Videos

This week we began our teacher tech camp or as we call it STAR Camp. STAR stands for "Stellar Teachers Aquiring Resources. We came up with this name the first year we offered the camp in the Dallas Diocese. Our original intent was to do a virtual field trip with NASA but it didn't pan out. We kept the name anyways. This year we are offering two camps. One now and then one in August. The camp this week is a digital camp. Days one and two are using digital images and days three and four will be focused on video. The first two days went quite well. Wednesday we begin video and we are introducing paper slide videos.

I was introduced to paper slide videos at a Discover Education pre-con event at TCEA. However I actually have seen this type of process before in a video done by INXS:



Lodge McCammon though was where I heard about the process for use in the classroom. Paper slide videos are often used for the "flipped classroom", which is a whole other discussion. There are many links out there that you can search and see examples of how that works. Here are two:
Jerry Overmyer - Vodcasting and the Flipped Classroom
Flipped Learning
and a link to a great info graphic too large for me to embed but check it out:
Flipped Classroom Info graphic

As I write this, we finished Day 3. Our "students" completed 2 videos using a Flip camera. The did a paper slide video and then did a video where they act out the lyrics to an educational song. We took the songs from Discovery Education. If your school has a subscription to DE, it is a fabulous resource for songs for the classroom. Their finished products were awesome! Below is one example of a paper slide video some teachers made to explain classroom rules:

There are so many uses for a paper slide video. My personal favorite would be to have a collection of these types of videos to be used for tutorials. It would take some time, (a summer project perhaps) but you could create an entire library of these videos and use them throughout the school year. It would make it easy for students when studying for a test to refer back to a video that explains the concept. Not exactly a web tool but certainly a great tool for the classroom.

End of the School Year and FotoFlexer

The school year came to a racing end, crashing about me. I have been trying to catch up to my life for 2 weeks now. I am leaving my present school so I am packing over 25 years worth of classroom stuff and I have a lot of stuff! My internet went down in a recent storm (big surprise) and it has been a struggle to get things going. All such wonderful excuses for not sharing any new tools that I have used. BUT- I have a really good one for you!

I wanted to do some online photo editing quick and easy. I used to use Picnik and loved it but we all know Picnik was absorbed and is no more. So sad. I really liked it. User friendly and a very short learning curve. Kind of what we all like as teachers since most of what we do, we do in very little time. So looking around I came across Fotoflexer. Really like this. You can subscribe or work without a login sort of like Picnik used to be. You can upload pics from your computer or from many places like Flickr, Facebook or Picassa. It also gives you many tools to use including effects, fonts, shapes, doodling and others.

A little screen shot there for ya. I think I will like this as much as I did Picnik although I really miss the butterflies flying and grass growing stuff as I waited. 

Even without logging in to an account I was able to use all the features and save my new image to my computer. Pretty nice for a free photo editor online. I recommend you investigate FotoFlexer. 

http://fotoflexer.com/

TechChef4u App

Back in February I attended TCEA and went to a session titled "Hot Apps for HOTS". Excellent session from the ladies at TechChef4u. Well now they have an iPhone app!


I am so excited about this app especially since I will be helping my school introduce and integrate 60 new iPads. This app should be a must have for anyone doing the same. You can always rely on the reviews and there are links out to their blog, TechChef4u, and to the AppyHour4U podcasts. As you can see from the app screen shot, you are able to search apps based on grade level and category. Nicely done. Downloaded my app this morning and I suggest you do the same!

App Description: TechChef4u offers multiple resources to support teachers and parents in their search for FREE quality apps to support their children and students. While the TechChef4u app is an educational app store that provides searchable and categorized lists of 500+ FREE apps for PK-12, the app doesn’t stop there. Check out these other features.


Here are screen shots from the app store:

Uploading files

In case you were not aware, I teach music and write a blog called The Singing Hound wherein I share my experiences using the SongWorks principles. I wanted to share some of my Smart Notebook lesson files but wasn't sure how I could do that inside of my blog. I didn't and don't see a way to upload anything here except for images, videos and sound. Nothing about document files and especially Smart Notebook files. In my search to find a solution I came across a post from the Blog Doctor describing various ways to do this. The one that worked for me was to create a Google Site to host, upload the file there and then link to the download address using this code:

Read more: http://www.blogdoctor.me/2007/02/upload-files-to-blogger.html#ixzz1vLDxFGr9


This seemed to work quite well so I thought I would share this information for anyone trying to do the same. You can read the full directions for doing this at the link above. There may be other solutions but this will work.Thank you Blog Doctor!


**my apologies for the missing code** You can see I have it now in place :-)

Copyright

Every year in our teacher tech camp we talk about copyright. One summer we did a whole session on the subject: mistake. It is such an important topic but very difficult to teach and pretty boring to listen to. So what to do? You have to do it. Teachers really do want to do the right thing. And it is our responsibility to help our students understand the importance of following copyright rules because no one else is telling them. A recent post at FreeTech4Teachers had an excellent video from Common Craft about copyright. It is simple and very clear about how copyright works and the use of Creative Commons. Definitely will refer teachers to this video and recommend they show it to their students. Follow this link to the Common Craft site for the video or go to the FreeTech4Teachers site.

The Flipped Classroom

I attended (and presented at) the Region X "Innovate 2 Educate" day of technology. It was a great day and many thanks go out to all the presenters for sharing their talents with us. The keynote speaker was Kevin Honeycutt from Wichita, Kansas, and he was awesome! Another post to follow on him. If you ever have the chance to talk with him or hear him speak, it will be well worth your time.

One of the sessions I attended was on the Flipped Classroom with Kimberly Howard. There is a big push in many schools to use this format in the classroom. I think this method has a lot of merit and needs to be closely examined. Teachers may find it initially time intensive to prepare for it, but once you are past that, it will be easy, easy, easy. I plan on using this in my classroom next year. I'm sure I will have plenty to talk about!

To basically define the Flipped Classroom this is where the "lecture" or teacher centered activity is done at home via prepared video by the teacher and the "homework" is now moved to the classroom where a teacher can be a guide for the student.
Take a look at these links and the info graphic that follows:

The Flipped Class Network

DMS Flipped Math Classroom

Prezi presentation from Kimberly Howard (presented at Region X)

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

End of the School Year musings and Social Bookmarking

So the end of this school year is fast approaching. I always feel like I have more to say than I have time to say it in. There have been some frustrating moments in the year but also many exciting happenings. I was evaluating how our technology has improved at my school. I recently sent a survey out to the teachers inquiring what form of technology did they integrate in their lessons. It was a commendable list of things ranging from Edmodo (a very popular choice) to presentation tools like Prezi and Glogster. This list was quite encouraging especially remembering how little teachers would use in the past. So this is a step in the right direction.

One of the questions I asked was what technology infused projects or assignments were given to students. Here is where we lack. Outside of Microsoft Word (which technically is using technology), the list was quite short. This area is where we need to focus in the year ahead. I love walking down our school halls and seeing all the wonderful posters, book reports and models but I often wonder how teachers can branch out and encourage their students to do the same assignments but in another way other than using a poster board. A challenge indeed.

Perhaps in getting teachers to use some simple tools, they can see how these tools can also help their students. One such tool would be to create and organize internet bookmarks. Very simple yet very productive. My personal favorite is Delicious. I would have to say that 99% of my bookmarks are here. I have begun using the stacks feature to create groupings of links. This has been especially helpful when teachers ask me to find links for their students. A science teacher at my school has asked me many times for links to topics that her students are studying. I find and create stacks, send her the link, which she shares with her students. I am told the students try to finish their work so they can go explore the links. Lifelong learners in the making. My stacks are not particularly large and sometimes it is tricky finding interactive features. Nonetheless, it adds to their learning experience. Here is a link to a stack I put together for her class when they were studying geology.

Some thoughts about Delicious that you should consider: First of all Delicious is a "social bookmarking site" and could likely be blocked at your school because of the "social" nature. In the site you are able to search the community's links so doing a search might turn up some links that you don't want your students to be exploring. Secondly, in the terms of use, Delicious does state that their site in not intended for those under the age of 13. If your student population is mostly under this age you might consider some alternative bookmarking sites.

This list contains some great for teachers and adults but some not so great for the under 13 crowd:
Live Binders- Terms of use state that you must be 13 to register for an account and there are public binders that are easily accessible. So- good for teachers- not so good for under 13
Diigo- now this is a social bookmarking site that initially I did not like. It just did not seem user friendly. Too many options? However, looking back at it I see they now offer an education account. So Diigo now looks very promising for classroom use. I'll have to play more with this education account and post about it later.

Smart Notebook 11

I attended a Smart Board User group meeting yesterday at Bishop Dunne Catholic High School. (Kudos to them for hosting) The group was organized by the private schools in the area as a means to offer teachers a place to share ideas, lessons and information about Smart products. It was a great meeting and I disappointed that I had to cut out early. But...before I left the big talk was the roll out of Smart Notebook 11. Supposedly it will be available for download sometime next week. There was a "tweet" that it could be on April 23rd. After seeing all the new things that come with it, I am very excited. If you use a Smart Board or want one, check out their site and watch the video. It will give you a quick overview of what's new. A couple things that caught my eye were #1 the Embedded Web Browser and #2 the Audio recorder. The audio recorder is so neat. It lets you record audio right in the notebook page and attach it to an item. There is no need to go out, record something in Audacity, save the file, find it and then attach it. Nice and simple.

Another nice resource to read about SN11 is at the WhiteBoard Blog. A website out of the UK and they definitely announce the download date as the 23rd. Yippee! I can't wait!

One other thing to note about sharing and Smart. Heather Lamb, a Smart Board guru, hosts a virtual Smart Board User group in Texas. Besides going to her site to find out more about the virtual group, she has hints, tips, tricks and lesson ideas using Smart products. Be sure to check it out.

ThingLink

I have admitted I am not much for Twitter, but I will have to go on and reTweet this link out. I read about ThingLink on two different websites this morning so I had to check it out. ThingLink is great! I see so much use for the classroom, whether by a teacher and students or teacher alone. You do need an email to use, but I have not seen a Privacy Policy nor do I see anything in Terms of Service about under age 13. Someone correct me if you do, please.

Basically, ThingLink lets you upload pictures and tag them. You can then share with a link or embed the image. I created one and then put it on my class wiki. One of the tags in the image is a link to a website with more information for my students. This would be great to use in foreign language classes labeling things with the translations. Anything where you could label something- maps, artwork, parts of speech, the list is endless. Love it! Here is an example on the parts of speech.


Richard Byrne apparently talked about this a month ago (how did I miss it?!) and has a great tutorial/video about creating the images. Larry Ferlazzo also makes a post on ThingLink.

Definitely a site worth exploring. Below is the one I created for my class wiki.