Learning Out Loud

Another saved magazine article, this time from “Tech & Learning:” Tech It Easy with Very Young Learners. Sites recommended are

• Voki – animated speaking avatars
• Voicethread – digital storytelling
• Edugloster – interactive poster
• Bubblejoy – create a video greeting card using your own video
• Moshimonster – create a monster game
• Shidonni – create an animal
• TalkingPets
• Kerpoof – tell stoires and created animated movies and greeting cards
• StoryBird – write a story and add pics
• Fotobabble – make photos talk

I clipped this article from a tech magazine & put it in a folder to look at later. Here it is about 2 years later and I’ve decided to catalog the info here. Starter ideas: What was most interesting about     ? What was confusing about     ? Summarize what you just heard.

My thoughts for using: Have students create a “journal” file in MS Word. Once a month, they’ll add a short entry (dated!). At the end of 6 months, they should bold the entry they want me to read.

Following is a general outline for a Professional Development hour occurring during Pre-Planning 2010-2011, August 10, 2010.

First things first:

http://www.online-stopwatch.com/ — set timer to 1:15. (There is a stopwatch timer in your Smart Notebook software. Search on “stopwatch” and drag it into your document).

Smart Training this week:

Wednesday – Smart Slates (Leeann, Susie, Rebecca, June, and Erin) — here in the Computer Lab

Thursday – Smart Table (Leeann, Sarah, Diane, Janet, and Dawn)

Friday – Smart Response System (Leeann, Leslie, Andrea, Laura, and Jenny T)

RenWeb

Website
Password – email
Access to your classes

Use http://todaysmeet.com/ for ideas, questions, thoughts (“Just got a great idea!…,” “Can this tool be used to…?”)      OR http://neatchat.com/

Backchannel

a real-time online discussion that occurs simultaneously with a verbal presentation. Student backchanneling solves a few challenges that all teachers face at one time or another: having time to hear every student’s question or comment, providing a voice for shy students, and improving the relevance and timeliness of teacher responses to students and their responses to each other.

1) BEFORE typing anything in the chat box, sign in using your first name. If you are sharing a computer, decide if you want to sign in with one or use both of your names (e.g. Leeann and Anita).
2) Everyone type in your favorite color (for students, this would be “taking roll”)
3) For the next 3 minutes, talk about something fun you did this summer. If you want to address someone’s “thing” specifically, first type in @username.

From Free Technology for Teachers.

Introduction

Shift Happens (4:13)

Quick Facts About Books vs. E-Books:
From the Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, July 20
Amazon Says E-Book Sales Outpace Hardcovers
Amazon.com Inc. said it reached a milestone, selling more e-books than hardbacks over the past three months. In a statement Monday, July 19, Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, said the growth rate of Kindle device sales had “reached a tipping point,” having tripled since the company lowered its price to $189 from $259 last month. Over the past month, the Seattle retailer sold 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books he sold, it said.

From the Wall Street Journal, Monday, August 2, 2010
Barnes & Noble on Block
Barnes & Noble Inc., put itself up for sale Tuesday, succumbing to pressure from shareholder activists as digital books erode the traditional business of the nation’s largest bookstore chain. A few years ago, such figures represented a fearsome retailing force, attracting ire of rivals and publishers who fretted that one company controlled the country’s book-reading tastes. Since then, it has been hobbled by larger technological forces, with books becoming mere digital files, peddled by anyone with an Internet connection. “Anybody with their eyes open knows that the retail book market is increasingly challenged,” said Mike Shatzkin, chief executive of Idea Logical Co., a New York consulting firm. Each new report that shows e-book sales are growing more rapidly than expected only intensifies the problems facing the bookstore chains, he said.

Abbey is Pretty Demanding (1:20)
Priceless Education (3:23)

Blogging

What is it? Blogs in Plain English (2:58)

Is It Safe? In Blogspot you can “restrict readership to your blog. You can make it private. People will need membership to read the blog.”

Why do it? 2010_07_30_Why Let Our Students Blog (1:55)

Who’s done it?
Duck Diaries
Kindergarten Tales
Mrs. Cassidy’s Class
2KM @ Leopold Primary School!
Miss Cashen 4-5-6 Learning
Miss Tyler-Smith’s Grade 5 Blog

Wikis

Wikis in Plain English (3:52)

Search Engines

Google Video (3:15)

Worthwhile Websites

Zamzar.com – convert YouTube Videos
http://www.blockposters.com/ – print a poster from an uploaded image
http://www.bighugelabs.com – image generator (magazine cover, billboard, and much more)

Spies Like Us – Technology Ethics

Cool Cat Teacher Blog – Camilla, GA

Skype

3rd graders in Jacksonville, FL –> Helsinki, Finland (2:42)
“Skype Jobs” for Students – Langwitches Blog
50 Awesome Ways to Use Skype in the Classroom
Virtual Author Visits in Your Classroom
Around the World with Skype from the K12 Online Conference 2010 (20:49)

For a Smile

Joe’s Non-NetBook (1:44)

Later:

Google Reader & RSS Feeds
Smart Response System Demo
Document Cameras

It’s already June 22 and I’m just now getting back to this blog! I even had to look up my password! But I promised myself that as soon as new insights sailed through my beloved Goo-der, I would document them. A few that come to mind are:

1. A list of “The Top 100 Technology Blogs for Teachers” at http://www.onlinedegrees.org/top-100-technology-blogs-for-teachers/ . Well. I’m still working on sifting through it but am thrilled to have it as a resource.
2. A list of 25 “Edu-Game Websites to Explore” at http://www.teachertracks.com/2010/06/25-edu-game-websites-to-explore-this.html. I’m going back to 22 new computers in my lab and I expect to rely more heavily on web-based activities. I love finding good games as fillers – haven’t explored these yet.
3. HTML Short Tutorials at http://www.html-helper.net/. I enjoy being able to manipulate text using HTML beyond what this Edublogs editor will allow, but I’m limited on just how much I can do. These will take me a little further.
4. An e-book “Web Tools Applied to Teaching” at http://issuu.com/anamariacult/docs/webtoolsappliedtoteaching.
5. I’m heartbroken because I’ve lost #5. I really thought I’d saved it in Delicious, but have searched there as well as my internet history and this incredible “encyclopedia” of web tools (organized alphabetically many of which had “How this can be used in the classroom” tips). Hopefully, it will turn up again soon…

I don’t want this class to end. I truly enjoyed being led by the hand through so many adventures and will try to continue to find ways to continue the journey. I will also encourage others to participate – maybe a few this summer. I did want to highlight a few tools that were of specific interest that I couldn’t cover in my voicethread. 1) Creative Commons 2) Flickr 3) K12 Online Conference – I hope to watch many more “epidsodes” this summer; 4) Jing! – I know this will be used and used in my classroom – it’s already begun! 5) Delicious – I absolutely love it. Best organization tool I’ve encountered in years; 6) Google Docs – per our assignment, I’ve already started a document to help me organize future professional development “hours” for my teachers. It’s turned into a kitchen pot of ideas organized by topic. And the collaborative uses (and need for it) are endless!

Shelley – thank you so much for sharing a drop of your wealth of information!

Social Networking. I have a Facebook account. I’m a member of Classroom 2.0. But I’m shy – even behind a computer. I selfishly enjoy others’ shared nuggets. My goal is to overcome that and share on my own accord. This blog has been good practice; now the challenge will be to continue it as if this K12Learning2.0 class goes on forever. Today’s exploration of Classroom 2.0 (and others we were pointed to, but CR 2.0 remains at the top of my list) led me to more things to look into “soon” such as Web 2.0′s Top 1000 List. Oh and, I felt drawn into joining the CR 2.0 group, Connecting Content and Technology. The interesting common factor I’ve noticed about so many tools and ideas is that my peer teachers seems to be at least 2 years ahead of me! In many of the cases I searched, discussions occurred in 2008 or even 2007 with no 2010 updates. I’ve clearly got a lot of ground to cover!

www.alotofinternet.com
There are times when I wish I could see more than one window at the same time (without having to adjust my window sizes manually to try to fit 2 on my monitor!). That’s what this site is for! Thank you, Goo-der; students will love this!

http://www.sleedo.com
One of my interests right now is teaching students (and teachers) how to efficiently use search engines (and comparing how different ones work, e.g. Google vs. Microsoft Clip Art!). To make this exercise a little more exciting, Sleedo popped up in my Goo-der. It’s a standard search engine with a humanitarian twist. Like FreeRice.com, every time you execute any search, it donates 10 grains of rice (actually $ to the World Food Programme). See Richard Byrne’s post in Free Technology for Teachers.

My immediate thought upon seeing PageFlakes was, “Oooo – turbo iGoogle!” Now, if only there were a way to transfer my igoogle to one of my PageFlakes tabs… So many tools, so many choices of organization. I can see creating numerous tabs:

1) Personal;

2) Professional;

3) a tab per grade-level with references to all the projects/activities we do throughout the year.

I’ll have to play more to figure out private vs. public and how to best set all this up. My immediate thought is that the 3 “tabs” I’ve mentioned above will actually need to be 3 separate accounts. Can’t wait to learn more about this flexible tool.

I’ve been hearing about Google Docs for quite a while, but haven’t used one until this class when I typed my first X in “the spreadsheet.” I’ve definitely had the need for the interactivity Google provides – at least 2 times last week come to mind. 1) Three teachers (myself included) were brainstorming a list of phrases to “spontaneously” describe students in a music class taking turns “playing” American Idol; 2) Three teachers (myself included) were writing a “press release” to inform parents about new technology coming to our school. And a 3rd will happen this Wednesday: 3 of us will be dividing up the names created by 300 students for our new live “Morning News” show. We’ll compile the list (deleting duplicates) and then distribute it to 12 teachers to vote on their top 2 choices. Then we’ll re-compile the list and have those same teachers vote on their top choice. Now that I’m smarter, we’ll be doing this on a Google docs spreadsheet (we’re also tracking who entered what name). I don’t know what it will be like entering data at the same time, but we’ll find out!

For a student use in the computer lab, my first thought is to have a collaborative project between 5th graders and 2nd graders where 5th graders draw numbers to take turns adding 2-3 descriptive sentences to a story (I’ll give the class 3 “starters” to vote on – hey – maybe we’ll “vote” using a Google poll!). Then the 2nd graders will draw numbers that determines which of the paragraphs they illustrate in Paint. Finally, the 5th graders will insert the illustrations in the Google Doc story.

I tried using Quietube last year but couldn’t get it installed on IE at school (and our IT won’t allow other browsers) – so I gave up! But duh! At least if it’s something I’m planning ahead of time, I can easily “quiet” it at home and email myself the link. Not sure why that didn’t occur to me until I saw it in the print of this task, but there you have it! Thank you!