Mission accomplished, in one regard. Although class is over, I now simply have a foundation to build upon; therefore, mission unaccomplished! It is now time to take all of these technologies and use them in the classroom. I have yet to implement these technologies in front of a class, which will take practice. Fortunately, the mission is not impossible in that by implementing these technologies, I can help students learn for the world that they will be facing in the not-so-distant future. 

There are many useful technologies introduced in the blog so far. There are some that I am sure I will use, and others that I need to develop more confidence using before I will introduce it in the classroom. The blog itself is a wonderful way to stay connected to class, whether it is during class time or not. Wiki spaces can be used to develop an online text book, post and publish assignments, thoughts and ideas, and share knowledge. Most importantly, wiki spaces allow students to do the work in a hands on manner. Google docs are a great way for students to collaborate and again, it's hands on. Wordles, Inspiration, and Prexi are a great way to offer visuals for students. Podcasts are another fantastic way to have students collaborate. I plan on using all of these technologies in the classroom. 

It is important to continually try new things in the classroom. I will review this blog often to recall other technologies that I am not as comfortable with in order to practice and reach a level of mastery. Teachers are continually modeling for their students, whether it is intentional or not. If a teacher is progressive, proactive, and willing to try new things, students will do the same.

Using these Ohio Academic Content Standards: 

English Language Arts, Reading Applications: Literary Text
  Grade 10: Analyze how an author’s choice of genre affects the expression of a theme or topic.

Technology Standards, Technology and Communication Applications
  Grade 10: Manipulate communication design elements (image, language, sound and motion) based on intent of the message (e.g., inform or persuade).

students will collaborate on a Wiki page to develop classroom discussion while reading 365 Days by Ronald J. Glasser, M.D. Using a google docs form, I created space for students to type five words that describe their feelings after the chapter readings in a wiki page. Using these words, the class will create wordles highlighting words most frequently appearing. The worldes will be used to ignite class discussion. 

After reading the book, students in each class will build an Inspiration page that will display different literary genres and discuss how they represent a unique point of view. Each page will be displayed class by class on the wiki page. I will update the images accordingly.

The final activity will involve students making an image based video using Marvin Gaye's "Mercy, Mercy Me" as the background music. Groups of four students will collaborate on each video. The images should represent the many points of view discussed in class through the wordle images and Inspiration images. Each video will be posted on the wiki page.

Jing is a way to make and share videos. You have to go to the website and create an account. After that, download Jing to your computer. It is similar to QuickTime, but is functional for a PC. You can take screenshots to save on your PC desktop as well as create videos. The video will be automatically saved to the web if you use the "share" feature. Take the url of your video, paste it to microsoft word to create a hyperlink, copy and past the hyperlink to your blog so the whole world can view your video. This is a wonderful way to create tutorials for students. Students can go to your website and review a lesson. In this way, students have a review right at their fingertips, and if students are absent from class, they can watch a tutorial of the lesson. Videos can only last for five minutes, which is one drawback, but creating a video part one and part two is one way around this. Check out my tutorial on how to use Jing. I made it in class, so there will be some background noise. It was the first tutorial I have made and plan on practicing often so I can confidently use this in my classroom. 
http://screencast.com/t/dzbCRReN3It6 

 
JING VERSUS QUICKTIME

QuickTime is very similar to Jing and offers many fantastic features. One caveat: QuickTime will save your videos to your computer whereas Jing will save your videos to the web. There is not a five minute video limit in QuickTime. 

Becky and I were able to create an entire google doc together.... At the same time..... From two different computers.....in different locations! It was done through Skype. Skype can be free to use. It is a way for people to communicate. For us, it was an easy way to discuss information and work on a google.doc together. For the classroom, students could be able to Skype authors of books they are reading, classrooms in countries they are learning about, professors, museums, the sky(pe) is the limit! 

Podcasts are a wonderful way to have students learn, explore, and display newfound knowledge. By having students create podcasts, many different content areas can be incorporated into one project. Students can write a podcast script, brainstorm an outline, use different artwork, explore the web for related information, and discuss what they have learned in math, social studies, science, language arts, or any other lesson. They make a good informal assessment tool for teachers. By listening to their students' podcasts, teachers can have a good understanding of how their students knowledge on a particular topic. Check our sample Podcast:

TodaysMeet is a way to post messages in a live, chat format. As you can see from the photo, my class just wanted to say HI! It so simple to use, students can communicate with one another, ask questions, and learn from one another at any point during the day. 

This video is a demo from xtranomral! You can make your own, or better yet, have your students show what they've learned by making their own.  This could be a great alternate assessment! It costs money to use, but educators get a discount.

Here is a strange voki image of Mr. B himself! Voki is a way for students to build their own images. For students learning about historical figures, they can go to voki.com and build their own character. Here, they are able to choose the looks of their character and give that character a voice. For example, they might come up with an image of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and have the image say, "I have a dream."

Or, check out convert to cartoon. This site will convert any picture to a cartoon for use in animation. Check out Mr. B as a cartoon! Students could put together their own comic strips containing information of a unit lesson. This would be a fun project for social studies classes to show what they've learned, in a fun, cartoon format.

OR, check out goanimate, where students can create characters AND videos! Which Mr. B do you like best?

Google Docs can do many things for the classroom. Documents can be created on the web which can be accessed and altered by you, your students, and your colleagues. This is a fine way to collaborate with your colleagues and students. It is necessary to have a gmail account to utilize google docs.

In the classroom, students can use this to collaborate with one another on group projects. The teacher can use google docs to create quizzes and collect data. I have used google docs to create a parent survey that would be useful for a teacher to gather information about students in an upcoming school year. It is easy for parents to access and supply responses of basic information regarding their children. Collaboration is a perk of google docs. People can collaborate on documents from other cities, states, and countries. In the classroom, students could not only collaborate on group projects with their fellow classmates, but with students from other classrooms around the world. 

Click  to learn more about google docs! 

Using google.docs, it is easy to develop simple quizzes for students, surveys for parents, and communicate and collaborate with other professionals. 

Wordle is a wonderful tool to help students that are visual learners. Simply go to http://www.wordle.net/ to use. You can copy and paste words, use your delicious.com account name, or type words into wordle and all of the keywords pop up in a fun and colorful image that highlights key points for visual learners. My picture is a worlde about the G&L guitar company. I simply copied and pasted the wikipedia page for these instruments and made my own worlde.

Inspiration is a software program that helps students and teachers build visuals. Teachers with interactive whiteboards can build one during a lesson as the entire class participates and helps develop their own visual. It is easy for students, especially those that are visual learners, to make connections and organize information in Inspiration. Please download my file and view my very own Inspiration model about my hometown, and the hometown of my students. Although it is a work in progress, it can show you just how fun and easy it is to make connections on a particular subject. Also, it is easy to add links on to your Inspiration visual.

This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.

Teaching students about online safety should be an important part of lesson planning. Creating a sense of community in the classroom is important for learning because it offers students the opportunity to feel safe to be in the classroom and talk about what they want to talk about. It increases participation and learning. This same principle can be applied to the web. If students feel a responsibility for keeping themselves and others safe and feel responsible for the well being of one another, they will stay safer and learn more on the web. Digital Citizen ship refers to the responsibility web users have to stay safe on the web and have to keep their use legal and appropriate. Check out digital citizenship:

http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/Nine_Elements.html  


Alan November has given many lectures about how to teach students to use technology both appropriately and functionally.  He stresses socialization and students being responsible for peers. He believes that there are typically three skills to succeed: information processing, work globally, be self-directed. For teachers, applying these three skills in the classroom lessons will teach students how to function on a more global level.

Often times, teachers come across websites, write them down, and lose the piece of paper they are written on. If they are emailed by colleagues, the emails are frequently deleted. In order to permenantly save url's to the web, delicious.com was developed.

Technology has changed the way teachers can network with other teachers as evident through delicous.com. This site will allow you to browse through other teacher's lists of url's in order to find a perfect match for any task, lesson, reference, information, or game for students. For example, if a teacher needs ideas for a lesson plan, or an entire lesson plan on ancient Egypt, they could search a colleagues delicous.com account and find precisely what is needed. If a teacher wanted educational computer math oriented games for third grades, they could find a url at delicous.com. It is also a social network in that it is possible to save other people's lists of url's. This site will benefit teachers for this purpose. Since it is on the web, it is never deleted unlike a "My Favorites" option on a computer that can lose url's if the computer crashes. Check it out! It's FREE!

http://www.delicious.com/

For math teachers, wolframalpha.com is a wonderful site to utilize. Most importantly, it can help students too! This site will calculate any math problem. It is also filled with information about dates in history and much else. This is one sight that is definitely on my delicous.com account!

http://www.wolframalpha.com/