FETC

I'm off to FETC tomorrow! What's FETC? It stands for the Florida Educational Technology Conference in Orlando, FL-it's the one you don't want to miss, and I'm not! The conference officially kicks off Thursday morning and I already know the first session I'll be attending, the first timers session, of course! From there, I'm not too sure, but I know I want to hit some math and language arts sessions, because those are the areas we want to target at my school this year.

I'll be live blogging when I can and reporting back later when I can't! I will report back on the great exhibit hall demos and the reception with Philippe Cousteau, who is currently the Chief Ocean Correspondent for Animal Planet on Thursday. I was one of the lucky winners to get a ticket to this event!

So keep watching this space for updates!

Video + Math

I recently read an article in the December 2008 issue of THE Journal on the 2008 Teaching Innovators that intrigued me. Ronda Stonecipher, a teacher from Texas has been working with students on videotaping their struggles in concept areas, especially math. It's a very interesting article that you can read at http://www.thejournal.com/articles/23703_3.

Being at a new school, this is something that we could implement now and have for many years as another teaching tool. I'm very excited to see if we could implement this.

Win a Wireless Lab

CDWG and Discovery Education have announced the seventh annual “Win a Wireless Lab” sweepstakes. The program gives K-12 schools the opportunity to win a 21st-century classroom, complete with tablet or notebook computers, wireless cart, interactive whiteboard, student response system, projector, printer and document camera. The 2009 program will award five grand-prize winners. The best part? You can enter once a day until May 1, 2009! Go to http://cdwg.discoveryeducation.com/1208 to enter.

Even if our school isn't selected for one of the grand prizes we could still win a video projector from Epson or NEC Solutions, a notebook computer from Acer or Sony, or a digital camcorder from Canon. Random drawings will take place on Feb. 5th, Mar. 4th, Apr. 4th, and May 6th. You must have entered to win at least once in the preceding month to be chosen from this random selection.

So let's get out there and start entering!

Uglies

I try and keep this blog specifically to technology in education, but everyone once in a while I think it's important to add a little something else. This is one of those times. One of the things I was most happy about this past summer was that I was finally going to get a chance to catch up on my reading. It felt like it had been ages since I got to sit down with a good book. So I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered my school was going to have a book club! I have been enjoying the books so much and have discovered a new found love for adolescent lit. It's funny, because I never really liked it when I was an adolescent. Apparently I was too busy reading older books.

So far in our book club we have read Unwind by Neal Shusterman, Schooled by Gordon Korman, and Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. One of the first things that I noticed with these books is the language. I assumed that some of these books and plots would be a bit too young feeling for more. Wow! Not at all! The content in these books are nothing like I remember. I'm not sure, but I think pre-teens and teenagers are getting more sophiscated in their reading styles then 15 years ago.

While I have enjoyed all the books so far, I don't want to back track, therefore I will comment on the most recent book Uglies. Our club meets this Thursday so this should get my mind running with ideas to comment on.

At first, I thought this book was going to be too much like the first book Unwind. I wasn't too sure about it and didn't immediately like the idea of uglies vs. pretties. One of the repeating thoughts I kept having was how these kids what so badly to look pretty and be popular and can't wait for the impending day when they get their pretty surgery, a rite of passage for all 16 year olds. They couldn't see how beautiful and smart and amazing they already were! But isn't that
so true of all of us? When hasn't one of us thought about looking prettier or wanting to change some part of our being? So this made me relate to the main characters more and understand why their society starting this surgery.

So this made me start thinking about how kids could show what beauty is to them. Two ideas immediately popped into my head, the first using PhotoStory 3 and the second using glogster.com. Using PhotoStory, students could take pictures and words and create a moving definition of beauty. I like this program because you can take still pictures and use the effects to make the pictures feel as if their part of a movie. It's a very quick program too and uses a wizard like quality to guide students through the process of creating their "photo" story. With glogster, you could do something similar just in the form of a digital poster.

Do you have any other ideas? Add your comments in the section below!

The EduBlog Awards

In my last post, I talked about the Edublog Awards or the Eddies. An annual event since 2004, this is where the best education blogs of the year are decided by other educators. While I didn't get a chance to talk more about this before the event was over, voting ended on Saturday; I would like to talk a little bit about the blogs I voted for and some others that might be interesting for others to view. There were 16 categories overall, so if you don't want to read this long post, now's the time to get out!

For lifetime achievement, I voted for Will Richardson, "the father of blogging". I've talked about his book Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms before; I highly recommend his book and his blog if you are looking for more information on any recent technology. However, I also have to mention both the blogs of David Warlick and Nancy White. White's blog was new to me, but after viewing it I felt right at home reading her posts and felt this would be a good one to add to my Google Reader. I've been in PDS sessions with both Richardson and Warlick and they both are great educational minds and make me think about how I can better use technology with content areas.

For best class blog, I voted for Learning Area 20 from Australia. In this blog, the teacher writes about subjects or adds pictures and then asks questions. The students respond on their own blogs, which are listed in a blogroll on the side page. One of my favorite posts on this blog asks the students to come up with a list of things that are uniquely Australian. The kids came up with some great responses such as Kangaroos, Crocodile Dundee, and my favorite Koala Bears! I also liked Risley Roarer's Blog in Brian Crosby's class. There was a good post addressed to Senators McCain and Obama about the issues important to them. Then the students needed to brainstorm issues important to themselves and write a post about it.

For social network, I couldn't have voted for any other group than Classroom 2.0. I am a member of this social network and get a lot of good feedback from members when I need it. I looked at many of the other social networks and struck by how similar they all look, in most cases I felt I was looking at the same pages. However, Classroom 2.0 is more knowledgeable to me and don't see myself registering with another group.

For best wiki, I voted for eToolbox. It's actually the Wissahickon School District's wikispace in Ambler, PA. Wikis are great for storing information and research and provide a great place for collaboration and this wiki has it all! What I liked best about it was that it was very organized, didn't overwhelm me (as some wikis can do) and provided great ideas using blogs, Comic Life, and Google Earth, some software I am currently working with teachers on. But I also liked Educational Origami, which had great ideas about Bloom's Taxonomy and incorporating it with technology and Learning in Maine, which has a wealth of topics on it's wiki for both Mac and PC.

Best use of video, came down to Flickschool and TEFL Clips. Flickschool won out with my vote, but only barely. It has some great design and creativity going on here and it helps highlight some of the great ideas in the posts, especially one on GarageBand. I liked TEFL Clips because it has lesson plans on it that can help other teachers who don't have as much experience with using video in the classroom.

I wasn't as impressed with the best use of audio nominations, as I guess I was looking for more basic ways of using audio. Most of the blogs I viewed had a quick post with a link to a podcast. I was looking for more of a blog entry with a podcast playing less of a role. While these blogs are very inventive, they just weren't quite for me. So I voted for Project Xiphos, which was more to what I considered to be a traditional blog. I also liked Wicked Decent Learning as well, because it wasn't overwhelming me with the use of audio, but instead gave me a good balance between reading and audio.

Best elearning blog was a hard decision for me as there were some great nominations, but it came down to Elearning Technology and Presentation Zen. I went with the first blog as I felt that there were some great topics here and much information for anyone looking for help with educational technology. I feel the best books and now blogs, are the ones that make me do something and Elearning Technology has some challenges involved that will make me learn something. Presentation Zen had this same feeling going on, but more from a design stand point for me than from an educational stand point.

Best Tech Support Blog was a great category too! I had several blogs I liked and while I voted for Teach42 by Steve Dembo, another one of my regular subscriptions; I also enjoyed Teachers Love SmartBoards, GeekED, and Langwitches. The last one was completely new to me, but I was very impressed with it and think I might add this one to my reader as well.

The Best Librarian Blog surprised me as I figured there would be a lot of information about books and technology, but there really wasn't. I voted for the blog that best captured my idea of the category which was the one by Joyce Valenza. She had a good amount of both books and technology and I wouldn't mind catching up on what's she's doing. I also liked the Blue Skunk blog as well.

I wasn't quite so impressed by the Best Teacher Blog either. I voted for ICT in my Classroom, which has a good amount of ideas for teachers, but I also liked Clif's Notes, The Journey, and Box of Tricks. The Journey has a great post on the Top 100 Educational Tools for 2008, while Box of Tricks seemed to be for those who like to think more "outside the box". It has an unusual look to it's front page, but one that grabbed my attention and made me look further at this blog.


Most Influential Blog Post was a great addition to these awards and I really liked 10 Tips for Growing Your Learning Network, The Time is Now, and Planning to Share Versus Just Sharing, the one I voted for on the EdTechPost blog. I voted for this because it exemplifies what I've been doing most lately, planning to share instead of just sharing. I need to take the time to share my knowledge instead of saying I plan to share this. Yes, it's a tall order and I don't always have the time, but it's a necessary part of my job. The Time is Now post on the Bit by Bit blog was also very influential in this day and age. I don't want to ruin it, so briefly, the post describes the change in television and technology and how necessary it is to keep up with those changes. 10 Tips on the Power of Educational Technology blog is also a very important topic as teachers need to keep learning. With the incorporation of PLC's, PLP's, and Social Networking, it's never been more important to keep that learning up!

My vote for the Best Resource Sharing blog went to that of Larry Ferlazzo. I really liked the way that Ferlazzo presents information, so that I don't feel bogged down by all the information, instead learning in a lighthearted way. His post on his Best posts of 2008 was a great way for me to see what else he has been up to throughout the year. He also has a post for sharing your idea for the Best Education-Related Book You've Read in 2008. The deadline is December 31st if you would like to add your own. I also enjoyed reading Teach J, a blog for teachers and students of Journalism, one of my favorite subjects, and Edina Public Schools NUA Program, which has great ideas for writing.

I voted for Angela Maiers as the Best New Blogger. I've seen her name pop up more and more recently and she's got some great ideas, such as ChalkTalk. Every Friday, Maiers writes about some of the best resources on the blogosphere. She also writes about resources for 21st century literacy. However, I would be amiss without adding that Huzzah and Dkzody's Weblog were very good too.

There were several good nominations in the Best Group Blog category and while I enjoyed Scholastic News, 360 got my vote and it's a math blog! Everyone knows math is my least favorite subject, but this blog is excellent and made me want to share it with others!

Finally, for Best Individual Blog I voted for Jennifer Dorman's Cliotech. I met Jennifer at a Discovery Weekend in Valley Forge, PA in 2006 and was really impressed with her ideas and educational philosophy and have really enjoyed her blog posts and the great websites she has found. She keeps me very up to date with all the new educational websites out there! I also very much liked Mobile TAFE from Australia and The Edublogger.

Now, if you've been paying attention, that's only 15 categories, not the 16 I said there are. The last category was the Best Use of a Virtual World in a blog, like Second Life. I know very little about the Virtual World environment and feel I just don't have time to keep up with it or really the desire to either. So while I looked at the blogs, I didn't really feel I understood what these were for and decided not to vote in this category.

Here's the link to see the winners, I hope you find a blog you like and subscribe to it!

Oh Gosh!

Yes, it’s been almost two months since I last posted! The blog was never far from my thoughts, but I never really got around to it either. There were plenty of ideas, but no time to write! However, the 2008 Edublog awards have inspired me to get back to my blog and share, share, share! I will try to post a few of my thoughts from November and December and get back to posting weekly. I am in the process of writing up my picks for the Edublog awards and should have that posted soon as well.

Now for today’s topic, let’s talk about Teqsmart.org. I found this website around Halloween as a way to help me in the training of using the Smart Airliners. What a large resource of Smart Notebook files! One of the first things I found was an airliner practice file in the "How To" section. What a life saver for all of us! I had previously watched our librarian use the airliner with 6th grade students one day and while most of them did well, a few struggled with moving objects and writing and I knew we would have more people struggling as soon as the airliners became available. This file gives you the chance to practice moving objects with the stylus. You can learn to move a basketball through a hoop, hit targets, guide a whale through a maze, move rocks to rescue a trapped dog, connect the dots, and move the bones from the guy on Operation. The idea is to help with your hand/eye coordination as you learn to use the airliner. I’ve seen a few teachers around the building using it, including Ms. Ivory, who used it with her math classes before completing an exercise on proportations. The kids had fun taking turns and trying the exercises and then gained skills they needed for using the airliner with the content.



Some of the other examples I found were graphic organizers and templates for Deal or No Deal and Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? I also found an interactive map for the Electoral College, that even helped me understand it a little better! For teachers in my building, all of these are also located on the staff shared drive under Teachers Resources, Technology Resources, and then Airliner. I started reading their blog too and enjoyed the details of how teachers are using this website too. I need to subscribe to it and see the updates, as well.

A review of this website from my November 5th Technology Newsletter is located on my wiki archives page.

Enjoy!

Story Structure Rubric

Here is the other rubric I used with this lesson plan: