Teaching with Technology

Flip through the Technology ABC Voicethread below!

• Which terms/sites/items have you used before?
• Which ones are new to you?
• How can you use these things in your classroom?

As you flip through the Voicethread, click on the link to explore more about each “letter,” leave a comment or two if you are familiar with some of the topics and have ideas on how to use them in your teaching , and stay tuned for some more detailed posts!!  I’d also be interested to know if you can think of anything to add.  AND, if you want to learn to use something new in your teaching, I’d love to help!  Leave a comment for that too!

About this Project

Awhile ago, maybe even this summer, some discussion arose in Twitter and/or Plurk about the idea of a technology ABC poster (I’m sorry, I can’t remember exactly WHO started the discussion to give credit.  If it was you, leave me a comment please).   And through those discussions, Pam Elgin and I came up with the idea of a Technology Word Wall and started adding to the list using things that our teachers might use.  Pam recently worked very hard to create PowerPoint slides for this project on each letter, which you will soon see in our schools’ computer labs.  Meanwhile, I thought it would also be fun to post the final product in virtual form via VoiceThread, complete with links to each of the topics.  Hope you learn something from it!

Update:  Pam has posted the actual powerpoint file for you to download or print slides here!  Thanks, Pam!

Okay, I realize that title might be a bit deceiving. I don’t really have a “real” little sister. But I did have a sister about 11 years ago in college: a Little Sister with Big Brothers/ Big Sisters. And I just found her on Facebook, 11 years later! It’s a long story. Let me start at the beginning.

When I was a freshman in college at Emory and Henry, two of my friends and I decided to become Big Brothers/ Big Sisters. We were all three matched with a family of three girls…5, 8, and 11. I was matched with the middle sister, Amber. It was wonderful having my close friends matched with the entire family…we often did things together. The “Littles” quickly became a HUGE part of our lives on campus. We saw them at least once a week, and they frequently spent the night or traveled with us. I even took Amber home over a few holidays and on vacation to the beach with me. As I look back through my college scrap book, her face is everywhere: bowling, skating, plays, amusement parks, playgrounds, the beach, sledding on cafeteria trays, reading, painting, making Easter eggs, celebrating Christmas, PTA programs, and on and on. We were matched all four years, and she came to graduation. However after graduation through uncontrollable family circumstances on her end, I lost her. By then she was about 13.

Because she was such a big part of my life, I continued to wonder where she was and how she was doing. My old friends would often ask about her…she’d become such a big part of my life for those four years.

Then, this past summer, I decided to join Facebook. Yes, that horrible “unsafe” world that we hear about over and over in Internet Safety programs. I originally felt that I just needed to know what it was all about since technology is my job. I quickly found out how powerful it could be, but in a good way. I learned that it was a wonderful way to get in touch with old friends and even family located in far away places. I found my close high school friends, my cousin in China, my college buddies. I was able to see family pictures of my friends and family, and get to know my step-mother’s side of the family much better.

But then it happened! One of my college Big Sister friends found me there and THAT started a ball rolling that ended up with me finally finding Amber again after 11 years, despite her new married name.

The first time I heard from her, I cried. I had been so worried about her all these years, but to find out that she’s okay totally made me so happy, and brought back all those wonderful memories from college. I was able to see pictures of her family…her 2 year old son, her husband, and her trip to Disney World and to St. Augustine. We have talked back and forth, and I found out she’s now a nurse–and LPN on top of that. I’m so very proud of her, and so very relieved to be back in touch. Next month I’m going to visit–she only lives 2 1/2 hours away. I can’t tell you how happy I am to have found her again!

Now, I’m not advocating that minors should join Facebook, or that you should post whatever you want on your Facebook page, or allow anyone and everyone to see your personal information. Not at all. Whenever we post on the internet, we should take internet safety very seriously. In Facebook, though, there are security settings that allow you too keep your pictures and information private to everyone but your friends, if you want. Facebook also recommends that you only become friends with people you know in person. I think that’s a great recommendation.

But I did want you to know that there are some very good things about social networking…and that it can, if used correctly, really enhance or rekindle real live relationships. I can offer many stories to support this claim, but finding my long lost Little Sister is definitely, by far, my favorite!

Wordle is a really fun, east web tool that turns words into art called “word clouds.” These word clouds emphasize words that are used more often in a piece of text. Wordle makes text clouds from text you enter, from blog RSS feeds, or from delicious tags. There are even options to change font color, type, and the design of the words.

Lots of people, including Pam Elgin, have been tossing around ideas for the use of Wordle in classrooms. Here’s a few you might want to try!

About Me

Have students type their name three times (this will make it bigger than other words). Then have them type words that mean something to them. This would be a great back to school activity.

Describe a Famous Person or a Literary Character

You could do the same activity, but with a famous person.

Adjective Collage

Create a collage of adjectives. In the Wordle Text box, type the noun you want to describe three times (this will make it appear bigger than the other words). Then list all the descriptive words you can think of to describe the noun. Here’s an example:

First Name Welcome

This idea is a great one from Pam. Create a Wordle with the first name of the students in your class to hang on your door. (Example by Kristin Kap)

Type in Spelling or Vocabulary Words

Use for student practice with spelling or as a way to introduce new words in a unit! Students will love making designs and changing font, color, and layout after they have finished typing in their spelling words.

Use as a Hook or a Visual Cue

Create a Wordle to introduce a new unit of student or to help give students a visual of a concept. Here’s one for question words:

Create a Funky Twist on an Acrostic or ABC Book

If you want the words to fall in somewhat ABC order, make sure to check “prefer alphabetical order” under layout.

Quickly Make a Funky Sign

Brainstorming on a Topic
(Music example by hbryson)

Book Review

Have student list all the words they can think of to describe a book or a chapter. Remember to have them type the important words more than once so they are bigger.

Vocabulary Words to Practice Reading
(Dolch Word List)

Letter Hunt (for Kindergarten)

You could do different versions with different fonts!

Pre-Reading Strategy

Show students the words from a poem or story and have them predict what it will be about. The Wordle below is from the poem Cannonball by David Crwwley.

Misuse of Common Words

Have students type in a story to see what words they use the most. Make sure they choose “Do Not Remove Common Words” under “Language” to see them all. Here’s an example from one of my summer school student’s blog (most used words include I, like, and):

And another in which the student started almost every sentence with “He.”

I could go on and on and on…I LOVE this tool! What kind of things can you think of?

Word of Caution: Be cautious about the Gallery. I’d recommend you NOT allow your students to browse through it….anyone can make a Wordle, and some are not as nice as others.

Update: Just learned something new, thanks to JBlack’s Awesome use of Wordle! You can keep words together in Wordle if you use a tilde (~) mark between words. So here’s another idea (and yes, I promise to stop now)!
Idioms
Create a Wordle with Idioms. To keep words together, put a ~ between each word in the idiom. (Spill~the~beans.) This may be a little tedious for younger kids, but shouldn’t be too hard for older ones!

If you haven’t had a chance to set up a del.icio.us account, I highly suggest you do so! It’s probably my favorite tool!

del.icio.us website

What is del.icio.us? Here’s a video to explain.


How to Sign up

Delicious Handout (pdf)

(A Video from Liz Davis):

Click Here to Install Browser Buttons (Internet Explorer)

Using the Delicious Network (Another video from Liz):


Whether you sign up or not, you can always look through the bookmarks of other people!

Salem ITRT del.icio.us Accounts

• Dayna Wells
• Pam Elgin
• Mike Sebolt
• Tina Coffey

Here’s another great website chock full of ready-made templates from last year’s VSTE (but that was passed on by fellow participants this year):  Integration in theKey!!  Sherri Miller and Eric Postman have put together this awesome website with templates for Kidspiration, Inspiration, Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.  They promise to keep adding more, so place bookmark this website and come back to check frequently!  I sure will!!

This past year I’ve noticed that a bunch of educators in our system have started blogging. One of the easiest ways to keep up with all these new blogs (in one place) is to use RSS. Here’s a simple explanation created by commoncraft:

I use Google Reader, but there are other feed readers out there like Pageflakes or Netvibes. If you want one already set up for you, check out this one on Pageflakes–it’s all set up for Salem City Schools, complete with RSS feeds for the blogs I know about (let me know if I’ve missed yours), local weather, and local news. You can bookmark it and use it like it is or create your own account so you can add your own things.

SCS Feeds Page on PageFlakes

Download Video: Posted by tcoffey at TeacherTube.com.

Update (1/7/08)

I’ve noticed that Pageflakes sometimes runs really slow at school. If you are having trouble, you can use Netvibes instead. I’ve set up the same feeds there too. Netvibes does take awhile to load initially, but if you login and save the page, the next time you visit, it will load a lot quicker. Click here to try: After you click on this button, make sure to choose “yes” to preview the page and “yes” to add it to your page, even if you do not have a Netvibes account yet.

We have two new pieces of equipment at East Salem thanks to a Food Lion Grant. They are called Flip Videos. These cute little devices will record video with the push of a button…and they attach directly to your computer to remove the videos when they are done. And, if that wasn’t cool enough, they also come with their own video editing software, running right on the camera itself (so nothing to install beforehand). When we bought them, our hope was that they’d be used by kids! So, what better way to tell the teachers about them than to let the kids do a demo? I found a few kids from Mrs. Chittum’s class and handed them the cameras…no instructions on how they worked. In less than 30 sec. they were taping one another…then we were off to do interviews! Here’s the video they made to show the teachers how these little gadgets work:

Download Video: Posted by tcoffey at TeacherTube.com.

If you are interested in having your students use these in class, see Luci to check them out.

I’ve been frequently asked about learning to use the Smartboard. Well, here are some links that will help you get started!

First, if you are on a computer that doesn’t have the Smartboard’s Notebook software (for instance, if you are working from home), download it by clicking the link below:

SMART software

After you’ve played a bit with the Notebook software, you might want to download some pre-made lessons. You can search for content from within the Notebook software (see picture).

You can also search by grade and subject on the SMART Technology Website:Download pre-made lessons from SMART Technologies

You may also want to check out this handout to help you out:

Creating Lessons with Notebook Software

A couple of other things to explore:

Lesson Activity Toolkit

My delicious links for the Smartboard

Beth Swain recently send out an email talking about the upcoming technology and math inservices she will be offering. I think these are going to be great, and I highly recommend them!!

1. November 27th, 3:00 to 4:00 pm, G W Carver Computer lab- this workshop will focus on websites for teaching SOLs from the patterns, functions and algebra strand. There is something for every level K-5. They have basic patterns to balance scales plus much more. I am sure you will find something to take back to your classroom to use. You will have time to play and explore the sites during the workshop. (RSVP to Beth by Nov. 19)

2. January 15th, 3:00 to 4:00 pm, G W Carver Computer lab – this workshop will focus on using the Smartboard in your classroom. I have activities/ideas/games for k-5. You will get hands on experience with the smartboard. Many of the activities are templates that you can customize to your level of students. The focus of this workshop will be on math vocabulary and the SOLs in the number and number sense strand. (RSVP to Beth by Jan. 4)

She plans to schedule 3 more workshops to focus on other Math strands. Recertification points will be given for attending all 5.

I’ve had a chance to see a “sneak peak” at what she will be sharing, and I think you will walk away with things you can use in your classroom right away! I’ve had people asking for ideas to use in remediation time and things to do with the Smartboard, and these workshops will give you ideas for both! Hope you will be able to join us.

Some days, I absolutely love my job more than anything else in the world. I had quite a few of those days this week while having the opportunity to work with two third grade classes (Mrs. Pillis and Mrs. Travitz) and a traveling principal (Ms. Ratcliffe) to learn about the Galapagos Islands. Here’s what we did:

Google Earth
We started the lesson by “traveling” virtually from Salem to the Galapagos Islands using Google Earth.

National Geographic Website
Then we watched a short 2-3 min. video intro (two students per laptop) about the islands from the National Geographic Website.

Digital Pictures
Ms. Ratcliffe let us borrow a CD full of awesome digital pictures she took on her trip. We discussed her pictures of the land and animals and the ship she traveled on to get a feel for what her trip was like and to learn more about the animals and the islands. You can see a few of her pictures here.

National Geographic
We then used the National Geographic site again to learn even more about the Galapagos Islands and Galapagos animals.

We arranged for Ms. Ratcliffe to talk for 15 min. with our students about her trip. Each class prepared three questions to ask her. We used a program called Skype–it allowed us to talk to Ms. Ratcliffe through video. The students took turns walking up to the computer with a camera and asking their question. The kids loved it…they were on the edge of their seats!

Writing
The students went back to their classroom and wrote about their experience.

VoiceThread
To finish off the project, I imported about 15 pictures from Ms. Ratcliffe’s collection into Voice Thread. Students chose a picture and recorded a message about the lesson (what they learned, their favorite part, a question they still had, etc…).

It was so much fun to watch how excited the kids were about learning–and how much technology added to the lesson. I also liked how both the teachers and students were looking forward to doing it again.

“Skyping with Ms. Ratcliff was fun because we got to ask her questions about her being on the Galapagos Islands. She’s a principal at Patrick Henry High School. She got to stay in a hotel on a big ship. How she got to the Galapagos Islands was she got on a boat that could hold twelve people. When she got to the Galapagos Islands, she got to see all the animals that lived there. She got to see animals like the Blue Footed Booby and the sea lions, and she even got to see the Albatross bird. She said it was fun.”

“We got to look at some of Ms. Ratcliffe’s pictures. The next day we went into this room and we saw Ms. Coffey call her on the screen and then people went up to tell her a question. It was fun, but it was only 15 minutes. I liked it. We could see her on the computer. I didn’t think a computer could do that. The computer was weird because it had a camera on the computer. It was so fun!”

“What I learned today is that the Albatross egg is bigger than 6 chicken eggs put together and the tortoise’s feet are 10 inches [sic] long and they are 445 pounds and they can come up to my chest. It can live up to 600 years old. the Blue Footed Booby had blue feet but only when adult. When their babies, their feet are normal. “

“Ms. Ratcliffe went to the Galapagos Islands and we got to see her on the computer, and we got to ask her questions. Our class and other classes. It was fun. It was great. We were the first two classes that got to talk to her. We all had a very good time and the teachers had a good time too and I bet everybody that was in there wants to do it again. I know I do.”

“Skype with Ms. Ratcliffe was really fun. It was fun to ask my question to her. I never did that before. It was a great experience. I loved it.”

“I liked seeing the crab pinchers. It was fun seeing her. She is very nice to let us talk to her. “

“Today was an exciting day. We got to talk on a computer because there was a computer that had a video [camera] in it, and we got to talk to a principal at Patrick Henry High School. It was really cool. She went to the Galapagos Islands. It was awesome. “

“I thought it was a really cool to experience with the computer. It thought it was fun. The weirdest animal was the Blue Footed Booby and the Albatross. They kind of look different from any other animal I have ever seen. It’s just so cool to see other animals and I like them and the computer thing is cool. The questions are cool and I think that we should do it again.”

“Skype with Ms. Ratcliffe was fun. I saw a Blue Footed Booby. It’s a bird. I also saw Albatross–two of them. It looks like they are kissing. I liked it a lot. She is a principal at Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke.”

“Ms. Ratcliffe is a principal at Patrick Henry High School. She went to Galapagos Islands. My favorite part was when Ms. Coffey recorded the whole program, and then she stopped recording, and Ms. Ratcliffe kept saying stuff over and over again. ” [opps--we did have a few minor technical difficulties :)]

“I learned that a turtle could be taller than a first grader, and a Blue Footed Booby has blue feet.”

“We just skyped with Ms. Ratcliffe and it was amazing to see Ms. Ratcliffe on a computer. I want to Skype to Rome.

 Want to learn a little about Web 2.0 things or ideas for using technology in your classroom?  You might want to check out the social networking group on Ning for educators interested in using Web 2.0.  It’s called Classroom 2.0.  There’s some great discussions, pictures, videos, and blog posts and it’s also a great place to try out social networking for the first time.

I’m hoping to accomplish two things with this blog entry…

First of all, I wanted to remind you that both G.W. Carver and East Salem have Title I laptop carts with 16 BRAND NEW laptops on them. For smaller classes, these carts could be used for whole group instruction, but they could also be used for small groups. Consider using them to do a center or differentiated activity or pairing your students up on them for group work!

Second of all , I wanted to show you this neat website, BubbleShare, that will allow you to make and share slide shows with just a few clicks! I’ve used the site to post these pictures of Mrs. Maxwell’s first grade students using the Title I cart to sort words in Kidspiration!

You might have heard of You Tube or Google Video. If you have been reading this blog, you’ve seen some examples of videos from those sites. There is another video source for teachers out there: TeacherTube.  The good news is that Teacher Tube is directed at teachers, which means that most of the content there should be appropriate for teachers. The one drawback is that Teacher Tube has yet to find a way to interface neatly with edublogs (like You Tube and Google Video) but some other sites will allow you to embed the video directly in your page.  Click here to see a list of some of my favorites.

Have you heard about Discovery Channel’s new 11 part mini-series event called Planet Earth? It airs on Sundays at 8PM e/p.  You can check out information on the show here.  Those of you who know me well know that I rarely watch television. I don’t have anything against it, but I just can’t sit still long enough to actually watch a show (unless I’m doing something else at the same time). Now, interact with video? I love to do that…and Planet Earth’s web page allows just that. And the added bonus? They even provide a tour of some of the places on the show with their Video Tour of Planet Earth using Google Earth. Watch video, explore scenes, view pictures….it’s awesome. I could see kids really getting into these features too, especially if you are doing a project or report on animals or habitats.

(Big thanks to Steve Dembo at Discovery Education for tipping me off to this awesome resource. )

Pam Palmer and I had the chance to attend the Teacher Training Institute (Put on by the Blue Ridge PBS and Blue Ridge East Technology Consortium) in March. One of the requirements for attendance is that we share what we learned. We’ll be glad to talk to you one-on-one (and have already shared some info individually), but thought it might be nice if we posted some of the info for future references. Pam helped me write this post…

Digital Storytelling:

One of my favorite sessions was done by Meg Collins, an ITRT from Roanoke County. I probably should write an entry JUST on digital storytelling…it’s such a great way to get kids thinking and writing and using 21st Century Learning Skills. Here are some quick links to give you an idea of what it’s all about:

• Photostory 3 (free program for Windows XP)
• Movie Maker (free program for Windows XP)
• Meg’s Portaportal (check out the Digital Storytelling Section)

Advanced Smart Board:

Check out all the great Smart Board Resources on Elizabeth Cox’s Smart Board Portaportal!

United Streaming:

Did you know that the teacher section of United Streaming has a bunch of really cool resources? You can build quizzes, writing prompts, and assignments, search by themes, find lesson plans and more. It’s a great resource!

Lessons:

We had the chance to sit in on some demo lessons by Master Teachers…you can find a bunch of ready-to-go lessons on the NTTI site.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Copyright–Tom Landon, from Blue Ridge PBS, has a portaportal with great resources about copyright. You can read detailed information about copyright here.
• Internet Safety–Joe Showker, an ITRT in Rockingham County, has a portaportal with Internet Safety Resources.