Linked to Learning

I reaaly enjoyed playing around with MixBook. I know sixth graders would like this way to create a book together. I feel like you would have a collabrative project yet students would all have a specific contribution, no slackers. The travel brochures we have all done for social studies look silly compared to this idea. The possibilities to share with other classes and even create a little competition are exciting too. I really loved this tool.

Quizlet is what I think the kids have always wanted!!!!!!! I got hooked playing the geography games. I played a few with misspelled words and I still hope I can convince next year’s class as well as last year’s class that taking pride in your work is such a reflection on the quality of what you publish!! I want to get more acquainted with Quizlet!!

I thoroughly enjoyed all these new playthings. Wow!

I loved using Animoto! How easy!! I would love to try every one but time is valuable in the summer and half a day can pass you by before you know it. I did a quick show using pictures from Barrow, Alaska since that is part of the setting for the novel, Julie of the Wolves. I have it embedded in my wiki page but I do not know how to move it into the section with the picture credits. Advice?

I went to Anne Davis’s conference site, Putting the Pedagogy Into the Tools. I so enjoyed what felt like a visit with someone new and hearing her ideas. It is hard some days to balance everything in the classroom and still feel like you have the time and energy to learn something new. These online conferences are great; I can learn when I have time. I got carried away looking at Anne’s site and thinking about all the things I would like to try in my classroom.

I feel like the past several years the students have been in Power Point world. Have any of us paid any attention to where we got the fabulous pictures we used in our (boring) PP shows?? I don’t think so. I feel so responsible now to teach and guide my students to use pictures responsibly. I really enjoyed searching through all the incredible photos. I would like to see our Geography Club utilize this site to study places around the world through the eyes of so many photographers. The grasp of setting in any novel can be enhanced as well. We read Julie of the Wolves in our class and I loved being able to “go to” Barrow, a key city in our setting.

Image by msmail

I have always been fasinated by everything I can have access to with the internet. The pictures, maps, diagrams, poems, and songs can add so much to the classroom that I just forged ahead and yet in the back of my mind I knew about the big C and just chose to ignore it. I am interested in cc and the only place I have seen it is on the wiki spaces. I will be looking for it now. The big thing is I must teach my students to be responsible internet citizens. I wnat to learn more about this and make it part of our internet experience in class next school year.

Vicki Davis’ blog about using wikis was exciting because I could feel her excitement that students were taking responsibility for their own learning and that does not happen enough. I complain about it all the time. I first checked out the wiki Flat Classroom Project and I was a bit overwhelmed. I quickly went to several others and was relieved that I understood what I was looking at. I realized what I did get from Flat Classroom was the aspect of learning in a worldwide arena or classroom. The FHS Wolves Den was a super online document that was very well organized and useful for middle school students anywhere. This website is a great collection of information, games, and ideas. I also enjoyed the Turn Homeward Hannalee wiki. These students were obviously organized by the teacher and given certain chores to complete. I think students can certainly branch out and have ideas of their own but need guidance at first. I liked the variety of tools used by the students. I felt like the students took great pride in this website . Most importantly to me was how this could be used as a final evaluation for a novel instead of a test with 100 multiple choice questions to be answered as A,B, C, or D.

My most exciting idea for a wiki is to use this website as a collaboration for our school geography club. I feel like the creation of this site would invite more students to join us even if they cannot meet with us after school.

I have enjoyed skimming through some provocative (and sometimes boring) information I have linked to my Google Reader. Today I finally read something I really found powerful enough to write about in this post. How can we take this course and suddenly become successful 2.0 teachers?? We can’t simply take blogging for example and turn it into just a new way to give the same old assignments. Clay’s blog http://beyond-school.org/2008/05/29/prophecy-revisited/ questions and discusses how teachers have to totally change the view of learning and not just the device used (laptop vs. pencil). The comments continued to help me understand why I am taking this course and how I need to learn so much more to stay in touch with my future students. I look forward to checking this feed often. Wow, again.

Wow!! Skimming is an important skill to use with all this information. It seems that is once again I have learned what I need to share with my students as they navigate the web. I love how Google Reader will collect information for me. I have already starred several blog entries I may want to read again. I am excited and many times overwhelmed with how education is changing. Can I keep up? I feel teachers must take on the role of “learner” and this challenging new world of ideas. http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2008/04/operationalizin.html.

I know we feel that the more students write the more proficient they will become. Blogging does get the students writing when the old journaling is usually a bore to them. I think this ranks behind two other important tasks. The amount of reading that takes place is incredible, particularly for the student that does not like to read novels/stories. Most importantly though is the student is required to think in order to become part of the process. Many very good students just want to know what the teacher thinks and then regurgitate those ideas on a test and walk away satisfied. I think I was a student like this. I just wanted to be “right” and would never have taken chances of having my own ideas. How scary!!!

If a writer (blogger) is invested in trying to communicate ideas, then that writer will take on the responsibility of elevating his vocabulary and enhancing his descriptions without the teacher writing in red pen in the margin. The biggest problem with this idea is that students have been emailing, texting, and IMing with little attention to forming ideas. The teacher has to TEACH and coach good blogging, I think. I found my class became very proud of its blog and then the quality was better.

I was fasinated with the connection each student made in the Biology blog,Imagine Turning On the Faucet and Nothing Coming Out. The opinions were strongly based on research. Each student challenged the other to learn more. This is education as its best.

I am so fasinated and awed by the Web 2.0 video. I had to call my adult children and talk to them about this. I know I love to teach and I now have the awesome responsibility to prepare my students for the future that is changing so rapidly. I know I am fortunate to teach at a school that very much embraces the idea of technology. My mind spins as I think of all the possibilities for learning. I know we must also consider the safety of our students as they navigate all this information available to them. I have already utilized blogging with my reading classes this year and it has been a fun experience but I loved how it connected all of my classes. We even shared across campuses. I have always enjoyed getting together with other teachers to share ideas and technology allows us the opportunity to do this. I plan to do so much more to connect my students with their own learning styles and I think technology makes them learn to be lifelong learners and global citizens.