My Week, 10/19/09

Cutest Koala
Originally uploaded by Erik K Veland

What a busy week! I keep saying that, don't I? This week was full of professional development and some really cool Science posters!

On Monday, I had a staff session on Social Bookmarking, where I explained to teachers in my building that social bookmarking is a way to organize and store your favorite websites and share them with others. We talked about Google bookmarks, Portaportal, Delicious, Diigo, and StumbleUpon. I haven't quite figured out that last one and really stick with Delicious and Diigo. Is there anyone out there that uses StumbleUpon? If so, why do you use it or what is that you like about it? Come convince me!

The teachers who attended thought this was a great way to share resources! Here are some of the comments they had to share:
From our guidance counselor, Amy:

"I think it's great! I'm always finding pages and bookmarking them and then I can't find them when I go to a different computer. These will be wonderful!"

From one of our 8th grade teachers, Deborah:

"I think it will be a convenience to me because I will have material readily available to me whether I'm at work or at home".

My presentation from Monday is uploaded here.

Last week, I hinted at using the program Comic Life for this week. So on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I worked with the 7th grade Science classes using Comic Life to create posters of the Six Kingdoms: Archeabacteria, Eubacteria, Fungi, Protista, Plantae, and Animalia. See what I learned this week? The students had a great time and I loved seeing them help one another with the program. Each poster was truly a spirit of themselves and their creativity-there isn't one that looks alike. They discovered fonts I didn't know about. Three or four students found fonts that looked like animal tracks or had borders to go around their letters for the title. I think all of us thought they did a great job and now that they know the program, we are already thinking of what they can use it for next!

Which brings me to Friday! Well...I'm taking a break and I'm headed to Radford, one of my favorite places and my college. Have a great weekend!

FETC Fall Virtual Conference Tomorrow!

The FETC Virtual Conference is tomorrow! I blogged about this back in August and here's your friendly reminder about it! Visit http://virtual.FETC.org from 10am - 6pm EST tomorrow for some great FREE professional development opportunities. Register here.

I'll be working with students tomorrow most of the day, but I'll catch you up on what sessions I was able to get to.

Here's the schedule:
10:00 - 11:00 Dedicated Exhibit Hall Time
11:00 - 12:00 Keynote Presentation: Unleashing Teacher Creativity and Effective Instruction in the Digital World*
12:00 - 1:15 Unleashing Teacher Creativity and Effective Instruction in the Digital World* A Panel Discussion with "Beyond Textbooks" Advocates
1:30 - 2:45 Three Types of Immersive Interfaces: Implications for Learning and Teaching*
2:45 - 3:15 Live Chat hosted by Pano Logic in the Networking Lounge
3:15 - 4:30 Beyond Drill and Practice: Developing Automatic Recall of Math Facts for All Children*
4:30 - 5:00 & *5:00 - 5:30 Tight Budget? Learn how K-12 Districts are Saving Up to 60% with Parallels and Achieving Their Student Technology Needs
5:00 - 6:00 Building 21st Century Classrooms in the Clouds! - A Desktop Sharing Presentation*

Today's Kid Reporter...Go Vote!

How cute is this! The Today Show is holding a contest to find a kid reporter. They have videos online of each child's submission and you can vote in their semi-final round.

While I watching one submission, it occurred to me that some of these videos were very similar to students creating digital stories or videos. One child, Vanessa Radke, did a report on how to conserve water. She had all the facts in her report and made it professional, yet entertaining to watch too. It reminded me of an alternative assessment. You have to think that she did research to learn more about this topic and give tips and then report on it.

Another child, Noah Johnson, did a report on trains and why they were important in American History. He interviewed one of the conductors and tour guides and did a great job of putting information into his report.

I guess it's the journalism major in me coming out, but go check this out!

What do you think? Do you get any ideas for videos students could do? Post away in the comments below!

Smart Tips on Lesson Activity Toolkit 2.0

Looking for some ideas on how to use the Smart Notebook program more effectively? I found a free webinar today that Smart did back in May. You do have to register, but it's free, and so worth it!

During the webinar, I got great ideas for how to use the Lesson Activity Toolkit 2.0. This has pre-made tools that can work with any lesson. I also found out that if you click on the toolkit, underneath that there is an example folder, full of examples of every tool in the toolkit. There's a wealth of activities here! I recommend watching the webinar soon!

I'm so excited to share these, that I'm going to change my plan around a bit on the smartboard/airliner training and include some of these activities in my next training session on the 28th.

DEN "Trick or Treat" Virtual Conference

Welcome Great Pumpkin
Originally uploaded by anadelmann

DEN's Fall Virtual Conference takes place on October 24, from 9am - 4pm.  I've been participating for two years now and really enjoy the information I receive.  In total there are 7 one hour sessions full of information.  I encourage you to try this FREE and easy way to grow your professional development network and learn about some FREE ideas to use in your classroom. 

One of the ideas I've learned about from past DEN experiences is adding web 2.0 tools to DE Streaming, which I then came up with the idea of using these tools with Schoolfusion.  I've also learned how to change closed captioning on DE Streaming videos and how to insert DE Streaming videos into Google Earth.  The list could on. Okay...I know it's a Saturday, but take one hour and try one session.  Here's a suggestion: Try the 11 a.m. session on "Thinking Outside the Slide".  This sounds like a session on PowerPoint and I'm sure will include some tricks on how to better use PowerPoint.  It's late enough that you can sleep in and early enough before your day really starts.

I'm intrigued by the session at 1 p.m. entitled "What on Earth is a Gloggle?"  Sounds like it could be a mix of Glogster, Blogging, and Google Earth?  What do you think it could be?

Click here to register, if you're interested.

And here's the whole schedule:

9 a.m. Can I Help You With That?  The Student as Collaborator, Creator and Director with Justin Karkow

10 a.m.  Do You Have the Audacity to Podcast?

11 a.m. Thinking Outside the Slide

12 p.m. Putting the Bling in Your Builders with Steve Dembo

1 p.m. What on Earth is a Gloggle?

2 p.m. Be Nice and Share: Publishing Your Media-Infused Projects for the World to See

3 p.m. Can I Help You With That?  The Student as Collaborator, Creator and Director, encore presentation with Justin Karkow

Still not convinced?  Click here.

Busy Week!

Ice Cream
Originally uploaded by Ms Cupcake

It's been a busy week! It started with our Differentiation Day on Monday, where our librarian and myself helped teachers learn how to use Schoolfusion more effectively. We even had time to talk about some web 2.0 tools that could be embedded, such as Blabberize, Voki's, My Studyio, and Glogster (if it's not blocked). Everyone seemed impressed with Blabberize especially. I've received great feedback! Some discussions from the day however, led me to realize that I may need to provide some workshop time on basic tools with Office products, especially Word and PowerPoint. Our librarian was willing to help me with those sessions and I would love the chance to collaborate more with her.

On Tuesday, I worked with our art teacher to start documenting samples of student work for an e-portfolio project our CTE and art classes will be piloting this year. I worked with both the eighth grade classes and soon we will be using PhotoShop Elements to crop pictures and do another project where the students will add filters and manipulate digital photos.

Wednesday was quieter as I was in a TRT meeting in the morning and finished up preparing for the Study Island training session for Thursday afternoon.

On Thursday, I worked with the Science teachers to prepare for the Comic Life project and prepared for the Airliner Training on practice writing for Friday.

Which leads me to today, where I worked on the Study Island Training Video and stopped by some classrooms to see what everyone was up to. I saw a great lesson on discounts in a 7th grade classroom. They reviewed percentages and discounts in their warm-up activity and then "went" to the Ice Cream Parlor and had $25 each to buy as much ice cream as they wanted. BUT, they had to remember that the $25 included a 5% tax and 15% tip. Then they had to calculate how much money they had left over. It was very interesting to see the students helping each other and then get frustrated when they figured up their order and had to take something off because they didn't have enough money left over for the tip! I thought this would be a great smart activity, as well. 8th grade was also doing discounts and I saw one 8th grade teacher using the Smartboard and had a graph with Sales price, discount price, and total price and the students had to figure out the total price and write it on the Smartboard.

Like I said, busy week!  How was yours?

Six Kingdoms to Comic Life!

Comic books
Originally uploaded by Stinus

I'm working with the 7th grade Science classes next week using the software program Comic Life to create posters on The 6 Kingdoms. I went over the details of our project with one of the Science teachers today and did a refresher with her on Comic Life. We took a class last year together on the program and I learned how to not only make comics, but also change the boxes around to use it as a way to present information. The plan is for students to do research on the kingdoms and find 2 facts per kingdom, plus pictures to show examples of each.

I've started to suggest Comic Life to teachers as a substitute for Glogster, which seems to be blocked at my school right now. Here's the example we did today to show students next week what we're looking for:

I'll give you an update on how it goes next week!