Sunday, February 27, 2011
Animoto in My Classroom
Animoto is a fun and easy tool for a teacher and students to use. As a teacher I will use it to captivate my class and introduce new material and create slideshows of events (field trips, parties). Once students are taught how to use this easy tool, they will present projects digitally in a creative way. My own children quickly picked up how to use Animoto and went to work right away creating numerous projects. My daughter made an Animoto about pets in our family and I made two, one about myself and one I could use to introduce a lesson teaching Manhattan, KS geography.
Twitter in the Classroom
Below are two articles I found about using Twitter in the classroom. It is far more informational and creative than I am! The first article describes what resource Twitter can be for the teacher and the second one shares how to use Twitter in the classroom. I think Twitter in the classroom is definitely applicable in a college setting and in the right high school settings. For an elementary class, each student would HAVE to have access to a computer or ipad. I am not sure it would be as necessary in a small class setting but certainly a benefit to students that have a hard time speaking out.
25 ways to teach with Twitter by Sonja Cole
June 4, 2009
Here are 25 ways that teachers can use Twitter to ask for help, get lesson plan ideas, book and professional resource recommendations, connect with other professionals, and even host an online book club.
First, a guide to Twitter shorthand. You will see examples of these in the sample tweets that follow:
@username: creates a link to that user in your post.
RT: Retweet, to copy someone else's post in a new update. Give them credit by adding their @username.
#: hashtag, helps to organize your tweets into categories for easier searching.
DM: Direct message, send a tweeter a private message instead of an update that all your followers can read.
1) Ask for recommended books, lesson ideas, or teaching tools.
Sample tweet: Can anyone share their successful SMART board lessons for 2nd grade?
Sample tweet: What are some good books to read aloud to 4th graders? I switched grade levels this year and need some ideas!
2) Be sure to thank the people who respond.
Sample tweet: @RickToone @evelynsaenz Very cool digital stories! Thanks for pointing me to them. http://www.squidoo.com
3) Ask for help or advice about a professional question.
Sample tweet: Is there a way to find out when your teaching certificate expires?
4) Write a book list one tweet at a time, or link to a book list on the web.
Sample tweet: Grade 3 #summerreading: Clementine by Sara Pennypacker, the most lovable troublemaker since Ramona Quimby
Sample tweet: #kidlit Updated list of China books for kids. Thanks for all your rec's. http://tinyurl.com/clt683
5) Tweet about a useful web resource, a particular blog post, video, website, book, product or service that teachers would find useful.
Sample tweet: Fantastic edublog giving teachers practical tips for integrating technology into the classroom. www.iLearntechnology.com
6) Provide a daily tip like a word of the day, book of the day, random trivia, useful fact, teacher tip or helpful resource.
Sample tweet: Summer Reading Tweetfest coming June 1. A daily summer book recommendation for kids. #kidlit
7) Share new studies of interest to other teachers.
Sample tweet: Supporting Struggling Writers Using Technology: Evidence-Based Instruction and Decision Making http://tinyurl.com/qzzq6q #edtech #education
8) Celebrate timely events. Recognize author birthdays, African American History Month, and other holidays or events.
Sample tweet: May 5th - Happy Teacher Appreciation Day!
9) Tweet about your school's website, blog and/or podcast. Add a new tweet to let your followers know when you make updates.
Sample tweet: A link to ESL Summer School Information can be found on the home page http://bit.ly/14DHwX
10) Link to a book trailer or video booktalk you create.
Sample tweet: New video booktalk for Chu Ju's House is up on Bookwink.com. http://www.bookwink.com
11) Start a Twitter book club and tweet your reactions to the book as you read.
Sample tweet: Just finished chapter 1 of Graceling and I'm hooked. What do you think is going to happen next? #reading
12) Invite followers to an event (online or offline). Events can include open-house programs, author visits, extracurricular activities, meetings, your online book club, webchat, etc.
Sample tweet: Live Chat: Helping Students Find Their Inner Reader. Today at 4EST. http://www.edweek.org
13) Link to photos of your classroom.
Sample tweet: K-3 Teacher Resources Photo Gallery - Share and Browse Classroom Photos http://tinyurl.com/px7so4
14) Share teaching humor.
Sample tweet: Funny teacher videos because we could all use a good laugh. http://bit.ly/SbG7u
15) Retweet someone else's post that you found interesting.
Sample retweet: RT @charlottetracks Great podcasts for kids on our new podcast page: http://tinyurl.com/cq9q4wet
Sample retweet: RT @Bookwink Great #summerreading video review of "Museum Mysteries for Kids" similar to Elise Broach's MASTERPIECE http://bit.ly/dt5MD
16) Say thanks when someone retweets you or mentions you in their tweets.
Sample tweet:@KateMessner Thanks for the RT. I have a video of Masterpiece as well http://bit.ly/zHTsD
17) On Fridays, recommend other tweeters that your followers should check out.
Sample tweet: #followfriday @kidderlit Twittering the first lines of children's books. I love it!
18) Answer someone else's general question, and reply to those who ask you a direct question.
Sample tweet: @LizB Occasionally booktalk books I haven't read or didn't like but always explain why. Too scary for me might be perfect for someone else.
19) Schedule to meet fellow teachers at a conference, or organize a professional tweet-up in your area.
Sample tweet: Trying to plan a tweetup to coincide with a big technology and education conference (NECC) and all are welcome!
20) Make a personal connection by sharing your favorite teaching resource, lesson idea, new book, blog post, etc.
Sample tweet: The most exciting fiction book I've read this year is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Recommend it to everyone age 12 and up.
21) Ask others for favorites.
Sample tweet: What are your favorite Twitter tools for teachers?
22) Post requests for people to come and speak at your events.
Sample tweet: Sign language experts needed for Deaf Awareness Assembly at our school.
23) Find summer work or school employment postings. If you see someone else looking for a job, retweet their request.
Sample tweet: Anyone in the Orlando area in need of a tutor or summer babysitter? Certified teacher in need of a job with great recommendations!!
Sample tweet: Anne Arundel County Public Sch is #hiring a TEACHER ASSISTANT-Annapolis,MD http://tinyurl.com/qnzje4 #job #tweetmyjobs #jobs
24) Ask for something free. Post your classroom wish-list or tweet about your school fund drive and request online donations.
Sample tweet: Fundraiser for Solidarity School win a $600k villa + $100,000 cash for $50 ticket - http://bit.ly/8NwNJ
25) Join a Twibe. A twibe allows you to follow a group of like-minded people. As I'm writing there are 333 Education twibes for all kinds of people tweeting about education, but new twibes are forming all the time. To see the list of Education twibes, visit http://www.twibes.com/category/education.
Sample tweet: Just joined a twibe. Visit http://twibes.com/edtech to join.
A former teacher and Middle School Librarian, Sonja Cole now hosts Bookwink.com, video booktalks for kids. She is also an active Tweeter @bookwink.
Rankin uses a weekly hashtag to organize comments, questions and feedback posted by students to Twitter during class. Some of the students have downloaded Tweetdeck to their computers, others post by SMS or by writing questions on a piece of paper. Rankin then projects a giant image of live Tweets in the front of the class for discussion and suggests that students refer back to the messages later when studying. The Professor's results so far have been mixed but it is clear that more students are participating in classroom discussions than they used to. A video about Rankin's classroom experiment follows.
It's funny to hear this history professor admit that "there are some topics we discuss that need more information" than Twitter's 140 character limit allows. Some! Said like a true Twitter convert. It's also nice to hear a teacher talk about technology and say, "it's going to be messy but that doesn't mean bad." Welcome to the social web, where that's a great attitude.
Rankin wrote a few pages of thoughts about "The Twitter Experiment" on her school web page as well. "Most educators would agree that large classes set in the auditorium-style classrooms limit teaching options to lecture, lecture, and more lecture," she wrote. "And most educators would also agree that this is not the most effective way to teach. I wanted to find a way to incorporate more student-centered learning techniques and involve the students more fully into the material."
Rankin's experiment is similar to another effort at Pennsylvania State University at University Park, written up this Spring in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Another related example is available from Marquette University. Education consultant Jane Heart maintains a directory of more than 1000 learning professionals on Twitter.
Twitter truly is a paradigm shaking technology platform, but Rankin's use of it at the University of Texas also illustrates some of its shortcomings. Most importantly, Twitter search and archiving are notoriously short-lived. The service was really intended for fleeting tweets about casual activities, and it seems to have been architected that way. Short lines of poetry, ruminating about the history of the world, penned by young scholars standing in the doorway to the rest of their intellectual lives? Not so much. These students will be lucky if they can retrieve their earliest Tweets at the end of the term.
Asking students to discuss their classes in a very public forum has got to raise concerns for some people as well. Rankin says participation isn't required, but it's because of these kinds of concerns that private, education focused services like EdModo have a market. That closed communication comes at the expense of public knowledge sharing, but classroom innovators may not be able to have it both ways in the long term.
The tide certainly seems to be turning though, in favor of education augmented by these kinds of technologies. A March draft proposal for UK primary school education guidelines, for example, includes nationwide instruction in the use of tools like Wikipedia and Twitter.
For many other ideas about how to use Twitter in the classroom, check out this presentation deck on the topic.
You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Sean Ammirati, Doug Coleman Dana Oshiro, Steven Walling and Lidija Davis.
25 ways to teach with Twitter by Sonja Cole
June 4, 2009
Here are 25 ways that teachers can use Twitter to ask for help, get lesson plan ideas, book and professional resource recommendations, connect with other professionals, and even host an online book club.
First, a guide to Twitter shorthand. You will see examples of these in the sample tweets that follow:
@username: creates a link to that user in your post.
RT: Retweet, to copy someone else's post in a new update. Give them credit by adding their @username.
#: hashtag, helps to organize your tweets into categories for easier searching.
DM: Direct message, send a tweeter a private message instead of an update that all your followers can read.
1) Ask for recommended books, lesson ideas, or teaching tools.
Sample tweet: Can anyone share their successful SMART board lessons for 2nd grade?
Sample tweet: What are some good books to read aloud to 4th graders? I switched grade levels this year and need some ideas!
2) Be sure to thank the people who respond.
Sample tweet: @RickToone @evelynsaenz Very cool digital stories! Thanks for pointing me to them. http://www.squidoo.com
3) Ask for help or advice about a professional question.
Sample tweet: Is there a way to find out when your teaching certificate expires?
4) Write a book list one tweet at a time, or link to a book list on the web.
Sample tweet: Grade 3 #summerreading: Clementine by Sara Pennypacker, the most lovable troublemaker since Ramona Quimby
Sample tweet: #kidlit Updated list of China books for kids. Thanks for all your rec's. http://tinyurl.com/clt683
5) Tweet about a useful web resource, a particular blog post, video, website, book, product or service that teachers would find useful.
Sample tweet: Fantastic edublog giving teachers practical tips for integrating technology into the classroom. www.iLearntechnology.com
6) Provide a daily tip like a word of the day, book of the day, random trivia, useful fact, teacher tip or helpful resource.
Sample tweet: Summer Reading Tweetfest coming June 1. A daily summer book recommendation for kids. #kidlit
7) Share new studies of interest to other teachers.
Sample tweet: Supporting Struggling Writers Using Technology: Evidence-Based Instruction and Decision Making http://tinyurl.com/qzzq6q #edtech #education
8) Celebrate timely events. Recognize author birthdays, African American History Month, and other holidays or events.
Sample tweet: May 5th - Happy Teacher Appreciation Day!
9) Tweet about your school's website, blog and/or podcast. Add a new tweet to let your followers know when you make updates.
Sample tweet: A link to ESL Summer School Information can be found on the home page http://bit.ly/14DHwX
10) Link to a book trailer or video booktalk you create.
Sample tweet: New video booktalk for Chu Ju's House is up on Bookwink.com. http://www.bookwink.com
11) Start a Twitter book club and tweet your reactions to the book as you read.
Sample tweet: Just finished chapter 1 of Graceling and I'm hooked. What do you think is going to happen next? #reading
12) Invite followers to an event (online or offline). Events can include open-house programs, author visits, extracurricular activities, meetings, your online book club, webchat, etc.
Sample tweet: Live Chat: Helping Students Find Their Inner Reader. Today at 4EST. http://www.edweek.org
13) Link to photos of your classroom.
Sample tweet: K-3 Teacher Resources Photo Gallery - Share and Browse Classroom Photos http://tinyurl.com/px7so4
14) Share teaching humor.
Sample tweet: Funny teacher videos because we could all use a good laugh. http://bit.ly/SbG7u
15) Retweet someone else's post that you found interesting.
Sample retweet: RT @charlottetracks Great podcasts for kids on our new podcast page: http://tinyurl.com/cq9q4wet
Sample retweet: RT @Bookwink Great #summerreading video review of "Museum Mysteries for Kids" similar to Elise Broach's MASTERPIECE http://bit.ly/dt5MD
16) Say thanks when someone retweets you or mentions you in their tweets.
Sample tweet:@KateMessner Thanks for the RT. I have a video of Masterpiece as well http://bit.ly/zHTsD
17) On Fridays, recommend other tweeters that your followers should check out.
Sample tweet: #followfriday @kidderlit Twittering the first lines of children's books. I love it!
18) Answer someone else's general question, and reply to those who ask you a direct question.
Sample tweet: @LizB Occasionally booktalk books I haven't read or didn't like but always explain why. Too scary for me might be perfect for someone else.
19) Schedule to meet fellow teachers at a conference, or organize a professional tweet-up in your area.
Sample tweet: Trying to plan a tweetup to coincide with a big technology and education conference (NECC) and all are welcome!
20) Make a personal connection by sharing your favorite teaching resource, lesson idea, new book, blog post, etc.
Sample tweet: The most exciting fiction book I've read this year is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Recommend it to everyone age 12 and up.
21) Ask others for favorites.
Sample tweet: What are your favorite Twitter tools for teachers?
22) Post requests for people to come and speak at your events.
Sample tweet: Sign language experts needed for Deaf Awareness Assembly at our school.
23) Find summer work or school employment postings. If you see someone else looking for a job, retweet their request.
Sample tweet: Anyone in the Orlando area in need of a tutor or summer babysitter? Certified teacher in need of a job with great recommendations!!
Sample tweet: Anne Arundel County Public Sch is #hiring a TEACHER ASSISTANT-Annapolis,MD http://tinyurl.com/qnzje4 #job #tweetmyjobs #jobs
24) Ask for something free. Post your classroom wish-list or tweet about your school fund drive and request online donations.
Sample tweet: Fundraiser for Solidarity School win a $600k villa + $100,000 cash for $50 ticket - http://bit.ly/8NwNJ
25) Join a Twibe. A twibe allows you to follow a group of like-minded people. As I'm writing there are 333 Education twibes for all kinds of people tweeting about education, but new twibes are forming all the time. To see the list of Education twibes, visit http://www.twibes.com/category/education.
Sample tweet: Just joined a twibe. Visit http://twibes.com/edtech to join.
A former teacher and Middle School Librarian, Sonja Cole now hosts Bookwink.com, video booktalks for kids. She is also an active Tweeter @bookwink.
How One Teacher Uses Twitter in the Classroom
By Marshall Kirkpatrick / June 1, 2009 4:04 PM /Teachers are always trying to combat student apathy and University of Texas at Dallas History Professor, Monica Rankin, has found an interesting way to do it using Twitter in the classroom.Rankin uses a weekly hashtag to organize comments, questions and feedback posted by students to Twitter during class. Some of the students have downloaded Tweetdeck to their computers, others post by SMS or by writing questions on a piece of paper. Rankin then projects a giant image of live Tweets in the front of the class for discussion and suggests that students refer back to the messages later when studying. The Professor's results so far have been mixed but it is clear that more students are participating in classroom discussions than they used to. A video about Rankin's classroom experiment follows.
It's funny to hear this history professor admit that "there are some topics we discuss that need more information" than Twitter's 140 character limit allows. Some! Said like a true Twitter convert. It's also nice to hear a teacher talk about technology and say, "it's going to be messy but that doesn't mean bad." Welcome to the social web, where that's a great attitude.
Rankin wrote a few pages of thoughts about "The Twitter Experiment" on her school web page as well. "Most educators would agree that large classes set in the auditorium-style classrooms limit teaching options to lecture, lecture, and more lecture," she wrote. "And most educators would also agree that this is not the most effective way to teach. I wanted to find a way to incorporate more student-centered learning techniques and involve the students more fully into the material."
Rankin's experiment is similar to another effort at Pennsylvania State University at University Park, written up this Spring in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Another related example is available from Marquette University. Education consultant Jane Heart maintains a directory of more than 1000 learning professionals on Twitter.
Twitter truly is a paradigm shaking technology platform, but Rankin's use of it at the University of Texas also illustrates some of its shortcomings. Most importantly, Twitter search and archiving are notoriously short-lived. The service was really intended for fleeting tweets about casual activities, and it seems to have been architected that way. Short lines of poetry, ruminating about the history of the world, penned by young scholars standing in the doorway to the rest of their intellectual lives? Not so much. These students will be lucky if they can retrieve their earliest Tweets at the end of the term.
Asking students to discuss their classes in a very public forum has got to raise concerns for some people as well. Rankin says participation isn't required, but it's because of these kinds of concerns that private, education focused services like EdModo have a market. That closed communication comes at the expense of public knowledge sharing, but classroom innovators may not be able to have it both ways in the long term.
The tide certainly seems to be turning though, in favor of education augmented by these kinds of technologies. A March draft proposal for UK primary school education guidelines, for example, includes nationwide instruction in the use of tools like Wikipedia and Twitter.
For many other ideas about how to use Twitter in the classroom, check out this presentation deck on the topic.
You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Sean Ammirati, Doug Coleman Dana Oshiro, Steven Walling and Lidija Davis.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Podcast Reflection #5 K-12 Online Waiting for Superman Fact or Fiction?
"Waiting for Superman" came out last semester. My Foundations class watched clips on YouTube, I read a huge Newsweek article about it and we discussed it in class. Politically I lean to the right but struggle as my new profession seems to lean to the left. Finding my place somewhere in the middle I must educate myself on issues. This podcast is a good way for me to fulfill that need. Commentators discuss the merits and faults of the documentary.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Podcast Reflection # 4 Podcast Ms. Rose's Class Podcast Page
Wow! This is the teacher I want my children to have! This is the kind of teacher that gets me excited to be a teacher. Having a class read/directed podcast weekly instills pride in the class and a sense of community not to mention fostering teamwork. I know that personally, our family living long distance and my husband that deploys occasionally would also appreciate the weekly updates.
I can see the podcast idea being expanded to personal podcasts for the children where they read their journal entries or something they have written in class.
Podcast page: http://msrosesclass.pbworks.com/w/page/29734448/podcast-page
I can see the podcast idea being expanded to personal podcasts for the children where they read their journal entries or something they have written in class.
Podcast page: http://msrosesclass.pbworks.com/w/page/29734448/podcast-page
Monday, February 7, 2011
Podcast Reflection #3 Tech Chick Tips - 0080 TCT – Happy New Year!
Listening to the Tech Chicks gets me excited to explore and plan for my future classroom. I listened to their New Year's podcast and went to the various websites they shared as they podcasted from inside of a car! I think the calendar site http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/20-free-printable-calendars-planners-2011/ will be a fun resource personally and could see it implementing it in the classroom by having small groups make calendars in themes. Maybe a multicultural unit? Another site I am anxious to utilize is http://www.knoword.org/ .
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)