Thing 22

November 30th, 2008 by

The resources just go on and on. My question is how do I keep up with all of this? I joined the Classroom 2.0 and spent a great deal of time exploring the site. I am considering using Sketchup and was thrilled to see a project using it.  The videos are an incredible resource, and the forum is helpful to find answers to things you are struggling with in the classroom. the tags make it easy to navigate. I have already saved some things to favorites. I plan to go to this site often to help “spruce up” some of the lessons I teach. I also joined an enrichment social network site for gifted teachers hoping to find new and innovative ideas.

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7c

November 30th, 2008 by

Practical Theory had an interesting post about the unrealistic expectations we sometimes put on our students and the fact that we often don’t put those on ourselves. It made me think of this class. The flexibility has helped me to learn a massive amount of information. If it had not been flexible, I would have thrown in the towel during certain weeks because it would have been impossible to meet the deadline with family commitments. Don’t our students also have weeks like that?  The other said, “We talk about the things that frustrate us… students handing in stuff late being top of the list for many of us, but when we do, we try to remember how many deadlines we miss ourselves. Remembering the shared humanity of everyone in the building can really lead to putting in place policies that are humane. We must expect our students to work hard, we must expect our students to learn to make deadlines — we must set the bar as high for our students as we set it for ourselves, but we must also remember to set up structures that help students when, inevitably, they sometimes miss the bar. We should do so if for no other reason than we hope someone does that for us when we fail. “

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Thing 21

November 28th, 2008 by

Pageflakes was an new experience for me. I think it could be an awesome teaching tool. Topics I might explore are Problem Solving Stategies, Odyssey of the Mind, Future Cities, and Robotics resources.
I would also love to have students create pages on topics such as Grammar, Writing, Research.

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Thing 20

November 28th, 2008 by

My son introduced me to Google Docs and I am sold on it. We used them to keep track of wedding information, and we could all add details instead of making a number of phone calls or emails.
For the classroom, the students can collaborate on a report or powerpoint. They can interact with a document the teacher has created. They can edit from anywhere. For the Robotics team, they could share their calendar of events, their documents for their presentation, and permission notes and information for parents.

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November 28th, 2008 by

The Power of One

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Thing 19

November 28th, 2008 by

Since I have many enrichment activities that I oversee, I decided to look for videos on all of them. I found a great one on Future Cities that actually had our school  in it. I also found a great Odyssey of the Mind video from the world competition that would be good to give our new teams a taste of the competition. I learned how to restring a guitar. I even got to see my favorite song performed Friends are Friends Forever. Pay Attention was a very thought provoking video that all teachers should watch. Fraction Official Video and Area and Perimeter Rap show some innovative ways you can teach math lessons. Better yet, the kids can create their own. State and Capitals Cartoon Song is a fun way to reinforce those states and capitals. The Power of One is an inspirational video that would touch our children and ourselves to live outside ourselves.

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Thing 17

November 28th, 2008 by

Podcasts have a vital role in education. The students can learn so much from eachother. We learn best when we teach something, so how perfect to create a podcast about your topic! I visited the student podcasts that highlighted their city. I also checked out the grammar tips. What a cool way to reinforce the rules and make them your own! I just wish you didn’t have to listen to the commercial first.

I plan to have my publishing tools class do a podcast and imbed it in their wiki. I will assign technology etiquette topics to each child. It is so important that they learn how to use the Internet properly.

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Thing 16

November 9th, 2008 by

Library Thing seems like it could be a handy tool if you were trying to generate a list of biographies, fairy tales, etc, that your students could select for a book report. They could also comment on their books on your site for the other students. Is there a way to set it up where only your class could see the comments and not the whole world? That would make it much more appealing to  me.

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Thing 13

November 9th, 2008 by

The online conference was awesome! I  was so inspired by the keynote speaker. Here she is, in a small town Georgia school making a huge difference. Those students are connecting with kids around the globe. What a practical way to work toward world peace!

I agree with the need to find time to grow using food for thought, time to think, encouragement, mentoring, and goal setting. I plan to explore the second life website, and I had a lot of fun creating my own avatar.

I have saved that site as a favorite and plan to use it as part of my food for thought in the future.

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Thing 10

November 9th, 2008 by

Creative Commons is a totally new experience to me. I haven’t noticed it before on any pictures or sites.It will be a great resource for the students when we are searching pictures for different projects. The potential negatives is that there are so many pictures to search that it may be a time drain for the perfectionist student that has to have just the right picture.

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