Tool #8: Taking a Look at the Tools

THINGS LEARNED:
* The netbooks are something we used frequently last year, but we did not access the camera capabilities. It was good to see how to access this and ways to incorporate this use in the classroom.
* As for the iPad, knowing what Apps are allowed and how to obtain those for student use is very helpful. The use of the iPad in class will be very exciting - this is something new for many of our students and will definitely keep their attention.

MANAGING THE DEVICES:
As for managing the devices.....I will have two iPads, 6 netbooks, and 4 Macs.
The netbooks will be numbered and assigned to specific students. These will be rotated between the students assigned to each. I am hoping this will allow me to be better monitor who has used and who has accessed information on each computer.....just in case there is a need to track student use.
As of today (and this may change as soon as the first day of school ends) I am planning to set up the Macs to be a full time station. As with lab activities, groups or individuals will rotate to these Macbooks to complete a specific activity. Having done this in summer school, we found the easiest thing to do was have these logged in already to save students time when they arrive at these computers.

With just two iPads, I am still considering the best way to manage and use these within a lesson. There will be the convenient days where a fellow teacher is not using theirs, which would then allow us to consolidate two or four more, providing another means of access for student groups.

I will also be purchasing a vga connector to project several of the apps for classroom presentation.

The overall idea will be to number & label all devices, monitor their use regularly, return and plug in everything BEFORE the students are ready to move to their next class, and make the students responsible for the technology. . . . and make the students active in the use of these devices to increase their comfort level and make them more efficient with their use.

Tool #7: Going Global - Online Digital Projects

I have created an Edmodo account for the purposes of this tool. After reviewing the links at "The Flat Classroom" site, I felt this one would be most manageable for our needs. The url for this will follow the same url as the blog and grouply - check it out (and I do need to add LOTS but it's a start)

I would like to propose two ideas:

1st - create a project that would connect the other classes with whom we are teamed at Spring Oaks Middle School. This next year, that will be a new direction for us so I think this would be a way to immediately get the students on board with that mindset as well as the teachers. Initially, the first "project" could be a means to connect with each other, learn about teammates (students as well as teachers) and then add new activities as the teachers begin planning together

2nd - create a project to team with Ms. Spicer's high school students at Spring Woods HS. The initial project would be the same.....connect with the class to which our students are assigned and learn about each other. As we begin new topics or units, the high school students could serve as peer tutors as well as provide activities and direction.

Tool #6: Using Web Tools to Promote Discussion in and out of the Classroom

OK - this tool has too many to comment on, but here goes.....

Wallwisher - very cool and something that could easily be used as an exit ticket for a daily question or a post as a student travels between stations. Students could even be allowed to create walls of their own for classmates to post on as part of an assignment

Voice Thread - this seems like a fun way for kids to get involved with a classroom project. I played with this a little, but am not one to like my own voice to be recorded. I don't think out students have that same problem ;o) I found a thread created by a teacher regarding safety - this can be used to model for the students what a product might look like to give them ideas and guidance.

http://voicethread.com/?#q+lab+safety.b154449.i825889

Grouply - I learned about this site this summer when teaching summer school. The high school teachers at Spring Woods use this and the kids were very engaged, very involved and had no problem catching on to how to manage the site. Once members are invited to participate, they have the opportunity to chat, record messages, post remarks and more. I have just started to work with this, so the product below is far from impressive. I am anxious to see how it develops during the new year and if it is something that will work well with our blog.

http://sciencerocks8thgrade.grouply.com/

Any of these tools as well as the others are great for students that might otherwise be hesitant to speak out in class. Posting a remark with the comfort of time to revise and review comments may be more appealing to some students - in addition, they LOVE to text and post on Facebook. This may be a way to get them interested by allowing activities they already love to do.

Tool #5: Producing with Web 2.0 Tools

Glogster is a very fun way for students to pull together bits of research or information and present what they are trying to share, whether it is with the teacher or the class. Our campus has a membership, and this is one of those tools that was easy to fall back on regardless of what the lesson was. This compares to, but takes the place of, making posters which often need to be thrown away and started over as mistakes happen. There is nothing more to do here than to click and delete, retype misspellings, or to change colors if the product is not as the student hoped. It also takes it a step further, allowing videos to be embedded in the glogster as well as active links to areas that were discovered in researching the assignment.

http://sciencerocks8thgrade.blogspot.com/is the link to our class blog. This plays many roles in our daily activity.....whether it is to post in a familiar site the daily assignment or if it is used to provide students quick links to avoid typing & retyping lengthy url's.......

Wordle is a fun way to have students take key words from their unit and create an image that connects all the words, overlaps ideas that are repeated, and then allows them to save the created wordle as a jpg. Once this is done, the jpg can be placed in a document, followed by having students hyperlink each word to its definition.

Tool #4: Moving Up to the Clouds

Using Google documents in class will be a new focus for the 2011 - 2012 school year. I am placing a form here on this post to actually see if this method of using a Google App will work better than the advised way of sending the link. When I created the form the first time and tried to share it, I was not getting the desired result.

SOOOOOO......any of you that might view this page, please enter your answers and hit submit. I'll see what happens and continue to practice with other Google documents and ways in which sharing will be helpful in the classroom.

For our team and peer communication, this is very helpful in tracking and monitoring data. We used a spreadsheet last year when we implemented the "ICU" program to assist students with their homework. At the end of the year, we also used this to compare and determine awards we were planning to give students for the end-of-the-year awards ceremony. Through the use of a word document, planning and building a unit could be easily managed.....as each team member researches and finds activities or ideas for the topics, these could be added to a shared document. As we each create our own documents, these too could be posted for other teachers to access.

PLEASE FILL OUT THE FORM BELOW AND I'LL GET BACK TO YOU ALL WITH THE RESULTS

Tool #3: Finding Online Video and Image Resources

There are an unbelievable number of sites that provide streaming which can be accessed for classroom use as well as planning. YouTube is always a preferred favorite, as well as United Streaming, Discovery Channel and the History Channel. There are many wonderful videos on Netflix, but the district currently has that blocked from in-school use.

Flickr has a fun link for using images to spell words or titles which can be used on webpages and blogs. The site is http://metaatem.net/words and can be very fun to play with. I've used this on our family blog to post names of a family member who might be highlighted in that blogs' post.

Adding video clips is a nice touch to a blog or webpage. It gives an added "entertainment" that will keep the interest of the student and often be very helpful to provide added information for whatever the post may be trying to share.

The video above as well as the following "Bill Nye" clip are just two examples of what can be incorporated within a blog, used as a classroom warmup, or something with which to conclude a day's lesson.

Web Albums are useful when trying to give an assorted viewing of a concept. We kept a web album running last year in the right panel that would scroll through a collection of volcanoes. This was interesting for the students to see a continually changing collection of images that related to what we were talking about.

Tool #2: Building Community in the Online Environment

Tool 2 complete - I have visited several blogs of peers and was very impressed. Not just with what they have but with how far they have moved through the tools of this class.

Having used a blog in class last year, the process is pretty easy and also very similar to facebook or other types of social networking. I am very comfortable sharing thoughts on the blog - for my classroom blog, I did engage the "moderate comments" feature. I never had an issue with a student's comments but decided it was better to be safe......this allows the kids to give their feedback, but requires me to select a button before allowing the comments to be visible publicly.

The "Technology Integration in Education" site seems interesting. There is a large source of sites and information from which to pull so I will be accessing that frequently as I begin planning for the new school year. I also have set up an account on Diigo and would like to explore how this can be utilized. I'm thinking of ways to incorporate this in teaching, but also for team planning and collaboration with our team.