I’ve been reading all about these Edublog Awards. Took some time to actually find the winners and not the nominees. Here is the link that include the catagories and each winner is under the catagory.
Ok, so really, I’ve been meaning to post at least twice a month. After viewing many other fantastic blogs, I’ve decided that each of my posts don’t have to be something of mammoth proportions. If I’ve stumbled upon something interesting enough to share I should write about it. Even if it is a single item. That’s OK! Size doesn’t always matter. Quality over quantity. That’s what I teach my students, shouldn’t I listened to my own advice.
I recently attended the IETC conference in Springfield, IL. Fantastic presenters, great information, and wonderful site recommendations. I will be sharing some of that information with you.
Occasionally, I’ll come across a site that can help others. I thought I would put them all in one place. Whether it’s donating money, trees, rice, food, or cans, it’s great that just by visiting a website we can help a cause.
Send a free postcard to a service man or woman over seas. Xerox has had this program in place for awhile. Just click on the site, choose a postcard, add your information (nothing personal, don’t worry), and click send- away it goes. Let’s Say Thanks.
Give free mammograms to women who need them. Click once a day and make a difference.
Donate soup to your city’s local food pantry through Click for Cans. Vote for your town’s football team. The team with the most votes, will get soup donated to the town’s food supply in their name. Great cause. For some reason Green Bay seems ot win this EVERY Year. Come on Chicago!!!!
Free Rice has been around for a little while. But did you know it has had a ‘face lift?’ Not only can you check your vocabulary knowledge, you can also work on math problems, spanish, science, and some other curriculum areas.
Here’s a site that’s good for the environment. JOGO Green! Jogo is a Portuguese word for game. Answer 10 questions, correctly and plant a tree. You also learn about helping the environment, in the process.
A Few Words from the Site:
Who Plants the Trees?
We’re able to plant trees with money received from advertising revenue. So don’t be annoyed by the advertisements you see on our question pages. They’re the ones funding all the trees! When you answer 10 questions correctly, we have enough advertising revenue to plant one tree through a fantastic organization called Trees for the Future(TFTF). TFTF provides technical knowledge on agroforestry and sustainable development, along with planting materials so that communities can return their degraded lands and struggling farms back to sustainable production.Please comment if you know of any other sites that help people or the world.
If you are visiting from Milburn go to SMART Board page for all the cool links and downloads I told you about. SMART Board Page
I have felt both honored and privileged to have been the first teacher in my district to use the new mobile SMART Board. In a little over a week I will be presenting a basic SMART Board class for all the teachers in our district. I approach this task with a bitter-sweet feeling. On the one hand, I am so excited to get this kind of amazing technology into the classrooms of our wonderful teachers. At the same time, this one, mobile, SMART Board will be moved out of my room for a very, very, long time. I won’t get to continue using it for my students.
I began learning everything I could about this tool over the summer. I started using it with all of my students 3rd – 8th graders on the first day of school. The children have come to expect to Smart Board as part of the lesson-everyday. I began simply using it as a ‘white board’ in which I wrote down notes, math problems, or character lists. I would save these notes from day to next and we would continue where we left off. As I became more comfortable I was saving our day’s work and uploading it to my website. Parents and students were thrilled- especially math.
Locating already existing SMART Lessons has been an obsession of mine. Why not? Why should we have to recreate something that already exists. Especially, if it has been made by someone much more knowledgable than I. Smarttech has been a place I’ve spent any a long night. Smart Exchange has award winning lessons that anyone can download. These actually won prizes and are worth looking at. More recently, I’ve found myself listening to podcasts while exercising. I love pdtogo.com. I have been listening to Ben and Joan on SMARTBoard Lesson Podcast for awhile now. They just completed their 147 SMART Board podcast. They have been saying after 150 they will be finished. Recently they have alluded to doing something different. Guess we’ll have to tune to hear what’s going on.
Recently, I’ve been creating my own lessons. Implementing ideas I’ve learned through some fantastic sites and some challenges that have been set up. Another challenge site that I began but wasn’t able to keep up with was through wikispaces. I had heard about it from one of my Diigo groups Whiteboard Challenge. I visit to see what everyone had come up with.
While there are always new and interesting things to do with the SMART Board, I had to be careful to not get too overwhelmed.
Advice:
Try one thing new at a time. Use that new tool/technique until you are comfortable with it
Read other teachers’ blogs about SMARTBoard use Tom Barrett has an awesome blog
Ask questions
Use it. Technology is only as good as the person using it.
The first month of school has gone by quickly. Most of the grades I teach are off to a wonderful and strong start on some project or another. I have been piloting the use of the SMARTBoard. Everyone loves using it and are so excited with all of it’s wonderful features. 3rd Grade read ‘The Monster Who Grew Small’ and are beginning to write their own stories. We will try to work with a new web tool called tikatok. I have been in contact with the creators and think that this will be a wonderful addition to my curriculum. 5th grade math has been introduced to tutpup and spends almost every night playing against kids all over the world. I love the special teacher functions. 6th grade literature students have read a few good short stories and each student wrote their own ‘Found Poem.’ Next week I will introduce these students to our class Wiki. PBWIKI has a new feature in which students don’t need an email account to sign up. 6th grade Pull Out students are beginning to work on a collaborative project with another school from Arizona. We set up our skype account and plan to talk to the other school through this wonderful technology, as well as interview some professionals. Both 7th and 8th grade Pull Out students created their own wordle about themselves. I put those in the hallway along with some other wordles- famous speeches through history ( see below). The 8th graders are beginning to work on a project to strengthen their visual-spatial reasoning. The first activity they did was go to a visual-spatial website where they had to build a house from a different perspective. They also enjoyed Bloxorz from coolmath-games.com. The students are excited about all the technology we are using and so am I. The first Wordle is from Martin Luther King’s I have a Dream. The next one is from Abraham Lincoln’s – Gettysburg Address.
The first thing I learned over summer vacation was this: Once your house hits the 10 year mark, EVERYTHING goes. In my case- Furnace, Fridge, windows, and even a few cabinets fell off their hinges. YIKES!!!
So, with the huge hole in my wallet and not much income pouring in, I spent much time at home learning about some wonderful Internet tools and services. I would like to share some of the more memorable of these with you here. This post is as much for my viewing audience as it is for me to be able to look back and find some of my favorites as the year progresses and senility sets in.
I was proud of myself when I finally figured out how to save Youtube and Teachertube videos on my computer and get them so that I could watch them later. What was even better is the capability of saving these videos to show my students even though these sites are blocked at school. Through the use of download manager- a Firefox add-on and figuring out how to use Isquint, I was off and running.
I really got into the social networking world this summer. I think I joined way too many groups but enjoy discussing a variety of topics that they all have to offer. I’m an avid reader so when a colleague told me about Library Thing, I was hooked. I also stumbled upon Shelfari, I like the layout of this one. I like that you can put your reading list into blogs and wikis.
Of course I visit and join discussions in both Plurk and Twitter. I joined a GIfted Education Ning and a Classroom 2.0 Ning. I find that I don’t visit these as much.
I enjoy being creative and when I came across the following sites they allowed for some of that creativity to ooze out of me. Gloster is like making a poster online. Add pictures, text, links, and then post it to your site. ON a personal note I was introduced to Scrapblog. I am a hands-on scrapbooker, but I can see the benefits of this site.
I became addicted to Scrabulous. Yes, it is STILL available. While on the topic of ‘fun’ sites. I had fun with Abbey me and Bubble Comment. I found that I could listen to radio stations that I ‘created’ with my favorite playlist. Two such sites are Pandora and Jango. Not sure which one I prefer. Pandora is blocked at school, though. While we’re on the topic of the more fun sites I must share Magic Pen and Switchzoo.
As far as some sites I can use with my curriculum I was excited when I came across Newsmap. I would love my students to analyze this and do some research on the biggest topics. Someone from Plurk passed this along. A 10 minute e-mail account. This would be great for setting up students who don’t have accounts. I am always looking for a free picture site (CC). Flckr is blocked at school and the older students are tired of pics4learning. Morgue File is a site where students can use pictures for free. They need to attribute the artist/photographer, but that’s it. I love bringing Geography into my class. The students just don’t get enough of it. I love the competitive nature of this World Geography game. Another game I plan on using with my SMARTboard is Geospy. Place spotting might be a cool challenge for some of my older students.
As far as professional development I began using Jing in April. The people at Jing project improved it over the summer. I find that I use this quite often. I was also pointed to a site called Jog-the-web. I haven’t been able to spend much time here. I can see some great possibilities, though.
I would like to use both Voice Thread and Skype more often this year. I see the possibilities of these sites and welcome the challenge to my classroom. As a final note I would like to share this, now one-year old, video about technology. Feel free to comment, share your favorite or new sites, and join me on twitter or Plurk (Love2Teach on both).
Did You know- updated June 2007. ‘,width:’425′,height:’350′” width=”425″ height=”350″ align=”" />
I’m sure I’m not alone in the complete awe I felt a I was watching the Olympic opening ceremonies. In fact I know I wasn’t alone as I was live ‘Plurking’ with several people around the country that was watching the very same thing as I. I wish this was happening when school was in session there are so many things I’d want to do with my middle school kids. I would like students to predict if the Olympic games did come to Chicago, what would ever top this? What would they do that really signifies United States. What makes us special? Forget topping it, what would create the same feeling of complete and utter amazement. The timing, the rhythm, the numbers of people, the huge LCD screen on the floor of the ‘Birds Nest’. I need to think a little about this, but I may still have the students view the following links- pictures. I may come up with some sort of project. Keep visiting for more on that.
Here is a slide show put together by Chicago Tribune of the Opening Ceremonies. Simply Breathtaking. These pictures are amazing. Here is a very cool interactive map of the medals.
As far as the lovely attire the athletes were dressed in, US was quite stunning in their Ralph Lauren ensemble. One of the more interesting outfits was that of the Hungary team. I thought France was also very classy. Venezuela’s athletes donned a more traditional running outfit. Argentina’s outfits look like something they could wear to dinner on vacation somewhere. I love the clean look of white. Finland looked that they were ready for a night on the town, something they may all wear again. I have to stop and wonder if this is like a Bride’s Maid thing. Where everyone always tells the girls “Just shorten it and you can wear it again.” Do the athletes hope their outfits can be worn again? I think many of them could be worn again, without alterations. I enjoyed the ceremony as well as the marching in of the athletes. I hope the rest of the Olympic games continue in this manner. A feeling of peace, love, and mutual respect. Let the Games Begin!
I am another one that has found the wonderful world of wordle. If you haven’t tried it out, go there, now. I would like to use it for my students to introduce themselves to me. An all about me type of thing. Once they get familiar with it, I think I would like them to make one for a book they are reading. In Illinois the students need to read Rebecca Caudill nominated books. Around March, they vote for the best one. This could be a quick type a book report without being a ‘book report.’ Here is one that I played with to go along with the book ‘Twilght‘ by Stephenie Meyer wordle-twilght
Whenever I see something I can get for free I am so excited. I pass it on to everyone I know. Here is something I found from one of my lovely twitter buddies. A book we all should read, or listen to. You can get The World is Flat in an audio version, for free check it out here: http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/giveaway
Enjoy! Pass on any other free stuff you come across. This free audio download is only good until Aug. 4, 2008.
There is also a diigo group called free things. Worth subscribing to.
When I say gifted, I truely mean gifted. Several tests have been administered, observations made, and some of those quick gifted generalizations are present. I know, I know, there is no such thing as the “typical’ gifted child. I just spent the last two weeks teaching some gifted individuals. These kids are testing in the top 5% of their school population. I was teaching 6 year olds how to exchange Ruppees into Euros. I just finished up teaching 7 year olds about independent and dependent probability. Some of them were ready for reducing ratios and double coincidence. WOW!!
I’ve been teaching at a program that is through Northwestern University called Center for Gifted Development. I had students from all over the country, and several from Korea, China, and a few other countries. The kids enjoyed the class. They looked forward to coming in every day. They were hungry for information. These students aren’t ‘perfect’ by any stretch of the imagination. About 60% need to move, constantly. Others need to be standing while I teach. Still others need fidgets and quick transitions, while a few others, need plenty of warning before moving on to something new. A great deal of differentiation is still needed. Those people who say that teaching the gifted population in easy need to try for a day. Some of the kids didn’t know some basic skip counting techniques, while others were ready to exchange currency. I love the challenge that this population gives me. I love the support I’ve felt all week teaching these gifted kids. Sometimes the parents are more intense than others. But, they just want what’s best.
As I reflect on the past two weeks I wonder what direction our government is going in to help our gifted youth. There are so many misconceptions regarding these high learners (they’ll teach themselves, they’ll get it eventually…) These are NOT true statements. These kids need direction too. From kindergarten on up they need appropriate education. We have this new law that’s all the rage right now. RTI = response to intervention. This is written for the special ed. population. But, what it states is: Any student not getting their needs met in a regular ed. classroom should get additional services. Can’t this be applied to our gifted learners. There is NO money in the IL budget for gifted education. We need to get it back. This week I was surrounded by people who believe in gifted education. I loved the empowerment I felt when discussing these children with professionals who really understood the educational AND socio-emotional needs these children have. Don’t get me wrong, many people get the gifted thing- but just not enough. I hope some of you read this and know what I’m talking about. I am always looking for fellow gifted educators to learn from and share ideas. Please feel free to comment.
