The economic crises is driving increased interest in “Alternate Route” teaching programs. http://bit.ly/BrGKZ
Jul 082008
I really like this. A fast method of multiplying two digit numbers mentally.
Blogs, Wikis and Podcast Workshop – November 9, 2006
Professional Development Presentation Notes – Mike Hetherington
Blogs
Last year’s class blog. 6th grade Room 613 Student Blogs – 2005-2006 – an example of a group blog. All students post to one class site. Students can comment on each others blog posts. Each student has their own category, but not their own blog.
This year’s class blog site 6th grade Room 613 Student Blogs – 2006-2007 – Just started Monday 11-6. One homeroom set up so far, the remaining 3 will be set up over the next few weeks. Each student has their own blog, while teacher has administrative control over all posts. All comments moderated prior to publishing. Can view all blog posts using a PageFlakes page.
Other Student Blogs
Priestsic6 – A middle school blog
World Literature 4/5 – a high school blog
Recommended Educator Websites -
Stephen’s Web OLDaily – Stephen Downes
Two Cents Worth – David Warlick
Cool Cat Teacher Blog – Vicky Davis
Random Thoughts – Nancy McKeand
Benefits of Student Blogging
Detailed Instructions – how to set up a group blog for your classroom using learnerblogs.org.
Getting Started -
Visit Edublogs.org and set up your own blog. Use your school email address so you can access your blog password
Go to Presentation and change the look of your blog.
Go to the Write tab and make a post. It can be on any topic you choose. Hyperlink to at least one site or picture.
Visit another new teacher new blog and leave a comment on their post.
Link to another new teacher blog in your blogs sidebar. Do this in the Manage Links Catagory.
You can also go back to the main edublogs page and watch some of the tutorials ( blog posts and editing your sidebar are both helpful for the beginner.)
If you have extra time and would like to start to set up a classroom site, go to Learnerblogs.com and get started.
If for some reason edublogs and learnerblogs are not available, make a blog at Blogger.com
WIKI"S
Visit Wikipedia – the grandest wiki of them all! Click on a few links and look around.
Visit some of the wiki’s I am using in the classroom this year.
Parent Conference Sign-up form
A study guide generated by my 6th grade students (this was all work done from home.)
The 6th Grade Social Studies Curriculum (in progress.)
Getting started:
Go to Wikispaces.com, register, and make a wiki space for yourself or your team.
Add some information and link it back to your blog address.
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PODCASTING
Fun to use in the classroom. Podcast from Room 613 (last year’s class.) Many other student podcasts
Has more complicated technical issues compared to blogs and wikis.
Use handheld recorder or the laptop to record
Download Audacity for free as your sound mixing program. Audacity.com
Get podsafe music from free music sites.
Upload voice and sound files into Audacity and mix, edit, etc.
Save entire file as an mp3. You will have to upload the LAME mp3 encoder to do this in Audacity.
Upload to a server space, such as Bluehost.com and then link to that file from your blog.
For more details see an excellent explaination of Podcasting from Maple Grove Primary School
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You can visit here for more interesting Web 2.0 links
Web 2.0 Sites for Educators
November 10th, 2006
30 Boxes – http://www.30boxes.com
Create an on-line calendar and to do list. You can tag your to do list and also share calendars. Try out the sample calendar.
del.icio.us - http://del.icio.us.
Access your bookmarks from any computer. Organize, tag and share your bookmarks.
GuruLib – http://www.gurulib.com An awesome way to keep an on-line book list. Go to this site and check out the sample bookshelf.
Flickr.com - on-line photo sharing site.
BubbleShare – http://www.bubbleshare.com A great way to share your digital photos on-line in a slideshow presentation.
Pandora.com – http://pandora.com Listen to your favorite music, generated by the music Genome project. Try Springsteen or Sinatra for starters.
http://wikispaces.com - Free wikispaces for educators. You are reading a wikispace. Click on the take a tour link. Wiki’s are a quick and easy way to create web pages that can be accessed and edited by multiple users. See some ways I’m using wikis in Room 613 :
Parent conference sign-up form – http://613signup.wikispaces.com
Student generated study guide - http://studentguide1.wikispaces.com
Curriculum links - http://hwpsocialstudies.wikispaces.com
Digg – http://digg.com Read, submit and vote on today’s most popular news stories.
YouTube – http://youtube.com - Video uploads from around the world.
Diigo.com – http://www.diigo.com – another social bookmarking site. This one is similar to del.icio.us but also allows you to highlight and bookmark specific passages from your favorite sites.
Pageflakes - http://www.pageflakes.com Click on "make a new site" for a sample of how this works. Pageflake allows you to add constantly changing content to your own site. By aggregating RSS feeds, pageflakes allows you to read the latest material coming from your favorite sites. Anytime something new is posted to the selected sites it will appear in your Pageflakes aggregator. Note – I use this to keep track of posts from multiple student blogs.
GMail - http://gmail.google.com - Google’s free webmail service. Almost unlimited storage capacity and great search capabilities.
Google SketchUp - http://sketchup.google.com A free download. Lots of fun. Allows you to draw in three dimensions.
Blog Providers:
http://edublogs.org Free wordpress blogs for educators
http://learnerblogs.org Free wordpress blogs for students
http://blogger.com Free blogs from Google
Examples of classroom blogs;
This year’s Room 613 Student Blogs page – http://hetherington0607.learnerblogs.org
Last year’s Room 613 Student Blogs page - http://hetherington.learnerblogs.org
Detailed instructions for setting up a classroom blog similar to last years blog (a group blog.)
Web 2.0 and Student Blogging – Presentation Notes
August 24th, 2006
Today I presented two sessions of "Blogging and Web 2.0" to groups of colleagues as part of our professional development "Technology Day." Here is the outline used for both presentations, which were very well received.
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- Presented the local version of "Did You Know", a fabulous slide presentation on future trends originally produced by Karl Fisch of Arapahoe High School in Littleton, CO. Thank you David Warlick and Stephen Downes for spreading the word about Karl’s slide show. The rapid worldwide proliferation and adaptation of "Did You Know" as an educational staff "must see" exemplifies the "exponential" development of communication and social networks. Word spread throughout the school today after the first showing and I’ve been requested to present the slide show at our next faculty meeting. One excited colleague remarked afterward; "Now I see where the technology is taking us. I see where we are heading."
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- 2005-06 Blogs
Room 613 Talk - http://room613talk05.edublogs.org. – Edublogs site – Teacher and Student posts by teacher. We used this space from August 2005 to January 2006
Room 613 Student Blogs – http://hetherington.learnerblogs.org – Room 613 goes more student centered. All posts and comments still fully moderated by the teacher, but written and submitted by my 75 – sixth grade students.
Rules for Blogging – guidelines for students – Lots of latitude here. It’s a wide highway, just stay between the guard rails.
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Some of the best posts from Room 613 Student Blogs. This is but a small sample of some outstanding student work.
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SS Assignments
Turkish letter to friend in America on death of Kemal Ataturk
History of India (various subjects including M.Gandhi)
What did I learn from this… a student’s perspective from Eric
A comment for the students from one of our parents
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At least 50% of our posts were voluntary, here are some examples of students writing, learning and teaching in a a variety of topic areas.
Play reviews for The Giver (field trip to East Hartford H.S.)
Sara’s work - some very creative posts from our most prolific writer
My Trip to the L.O.B. - The students summarize their trip to the legislative office building in Hartford where they presented blogging and podcasting.
Comments to our student posts from around the world:
http://hetherington.learnerblogs.org/2006/01/24/australia-2/#comment-1809
Sixth grader AnnB’s essay evokes tears of pride from a reader halfway around the world.
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How to make a student group blog like Room 613 Student Blogs using learnerblogs – see specific instructions on this page.
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- Personal Blogs in Education for Professional Development
MHetherington.net - http://mhetherington.net/blogs
See sidebar on this page for recommended educational bloggers
How to start – make a blog for yourself and see how it all works. Also, read some of the blogs shown in the sidebar to get a feel for how people create blog posts, topics, and reflections.
Edublogs – free WordPress (like this site and Room 613) blogs for educators. http://edublogs.org – easy to set-up – 5 mins max. Instructions are at the site for beginners and veteran bloggers.
Learnerblogs – free WordPress blogs (from the author of edublogs) for use by students http://learnerblogs.org – easy to set-up and can be fully moderated by the teacher
Blogger – free, also easy to set-up – http://www.blogger.com Next blog button can be an issue if using with students
Optional Assignment – make an edublog blog for yourself and publish your first post by answering the following – How can blogs be used in education? Post a link back to this page – http://mhetherington.net/blogs and I will also link to yours. Good Luck.
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Some other topics in Web 2.0
Flickr – store, tag and share your photo’s on-line
Wikipedia – on-line open source encyclopedia
Del.icio.us – save and tag your favorite websites on-line
Bloglines – A web-based personal news aggregator. This is where your can follow the latest post from your favorite sites and blogs.
Podcasting – an example – The Room 613 Panther Podcast
Louisiana educator Nancy McKean over at Random Thoughts asks the question: Why does your class blog? Her question generated consistant responses from a surprising number of teachers. Why does my class have a weblog? Here is how I answered Nancy’s question.
My 6th graders’ education-oriented class blog, Room 613 Student Blogs, has been up in its current "student centered" form for about two months now. With over 250 student posts and 750 student comments, it has taken on a life of it’s own. As I see it, here are some of the benefits of student blogs (in no particular order of importance): 1. Creates a learning community feel in a place away from the traditional classroom. This learning community is open 24/7 2. Provides an authentic audience for student writing, an audience of peers, parents, and a potential worldwide audience. The embedded hit map on our site allows the students to determine the location of their readership. This also is a nice connection with geography. 3. Allows for multiple feedback loops among the networked students, teachers and other interested parties. Learning in a class blog setting is now a social activity. 4. Allows a wonderful outlet for creativity. 5. Supports differentiation. The blog gives some of our more verbally reserved students a forum for their thoughts. 6. Encourages reading. To make a meaningful comment, or to choose their favorite post, the students first need to read what’s out there. 7. Encourages and teaches research skills. Encourages students to extend their research beyond the assigned work. 8. Builds technology skills. This past week I presented our Room 613 Student Blogs site to our district Board of Education. Based on their responses during the presentation and in comments afterward, they were very excited about the prospects of student blogging. Support for the medium beginning to grow!
[…] But, that’s OK, because I know I can use them again in the future. This time around, I’m wishing I had read Mike Hetherington’s posting about the benefits of student blogging before I made my presentation yesterday. I did mention almost all of the benefits that he points out, but I missed number 5. Oh, how I wish I had mentioned that blogging supports differentiation. Ah well, hopefully everyone who attended my session will be anxious to find out my inner thoughts this weekend, and will read this post! […]
People can get caught-up in old patterns, literally, in their way of thinking.
Peter Shilling, Director of IT at Academic Commons, wrote an interesting article called Technology as Epistemology.
"The patterns and categories we use can constrict our ability to understand new things. Education has the contradictory tasks of teaching us to work within patterns, but also to think beyond them."
"The same phenomenon of filling in the information gaps occurs when we try to proofread our own writing. The way we learn, when we learn, and the technologies we use to learn all impact what we know as well as the neural pathways we use when accessing our knowledge."
Many of todays students have developed different neural pathways and therefor process information differently than their older teachers.
"Today’s students have formed their habits of mind by interacting with information that is digital and networked… Not only do our students possess skills and experiences that previous generations do not, but the very neurological structures and pathways they have developed as part of their learning are based on the technologies they use to create, store, and disseminate information. Importantly, these pathways and the categories, taxonomies, and other tools they use for thinking are different than those used by their teachers. Although the patterns and categories we use are never perfect ways of creating meaning, they influence the way we think, remember, and anticipate information."
The new habits of mind of our multitasking students, which some interpret as an inability to maintain focus, could be an adaptation that will serve them well in the new information environment. Skimming multiple sources and locating the right information is now a critical skill. The amount of information students are expected to process is far greater today than the information available to us in the pre-internet days. Dr. Shilling makes a salient point regarding the nature of information today. Using search engines and networks, we now work more often at primary source and data levels of information, levels not available to the average person just 10 short years ago.
"Part of this shift in learning brought about by today’s digital, networked information results from the fact that we now often work, share, and search at the data level as opposed the level of conclusions, narratives, catalogs, or indices."
Does this effect the world of education? You bet. Teaching students to reach logical conclusions based on their search of accurate and current data is essential to their success in today’s information rich environment. Dr. Shilling states the challenge quite eloquently:"What it means to master a field of study has changed. Rather than developing an encyclopedic knowledge of all literature on a single topic, today’s students need to know how to find, evaluate, and contextualize information in all different formats on more interdisciplinary topics, but they also need to know how to locate and use the underlying data as well as the technology to sort and present it."
You can read the rest of Dr. Shillings article at http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/technology-as-epistemology
The more we know, the easier it is to learn more. Tim Fredrick reports from the NCTE conference that Kylene Beers, author of "When Kids Can’t Read, What Teachers Can Do," put on quite a presentation. She also reported that doctors at Yale University have been doing brain research and are finding that when the brain takes new information and assimilates it with prior knowledge, that information is more easily stored in long-term memory. I see evidence of this in my everyday teaching experience. If a learning framework is in place, it is easier to add additional knowledge to that framework. As we gain additional knowledge, the brain does not reach a saturation or overflow point, in contrast, it is more receptive when it can fit new information into a pattern or context with prior knowledge.
