BP#12_2010011_WK2_one minute message

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BP5_2010011_Web 2.0 T2-xtranormal

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BP5_201012_Web2.0T2_Neok12.com

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BP9_2010013_Web 2.0 T3-Wordle

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BP4_2010012_RSS Feeds

BP_4_2010012_RSS Feeds

I have listed my five RSS feeds below in no particular order. I have listed my rationale behind choosing each one of these feeds as well as the name of the RSS.

Education WhiteHouse.gov- I choose to follow this one because I think it's important for all teachers to know what is going on in regards to education. In our school we departmentalize our subjects and Social Studies is my gig. There is a wealth of information here that I am able to use in the classroom as well as keep me current as a citizen.

Polk-fl.net/pd360 – is a great site they have available to our district for the educators. They show videos for just about anything that would help us in the classroom. I watched a series of them on being more positive in the classroom and how well it worked and tried a few of the tips and they were great. There are also articles available about the news that is most current.

Baynews9.com – this is our local news channel and they have been helpful to me in many ways. My students love to come in and share stories about local news but don’t always have the right information. I have been able to bring up this website and share what it has to say and has been a good way to discuss current events. I have also gained ideas for projects from the Everyday Heroes they showcase on this website.

Landmark-project.com/classweb/tools.html – is another great place to go and I frequent there because it gives me ideas for my website I use for my students and parents. They have fill in forms, mailing lists, as well as HTML tutorials. This is helpful because they give you samples to look at, which is very helpful to me.

Web 2.0 Tools and Applications – Go2web20 – this has been my favorite place to frequent by far because there are so many places to visit that it could take months to see them all. This is where I have found all of my tools so far to use for this class and have also found things I am interested in personally. I love movies and there was a movie clip place and I spent some time there watching clips from some movies that I might possibly be able to use in the classroom.

BP9_2010012_Web2.0_T3_Zoodles

I am really enjoying trying out new sites in search of tools I can personally use. On this blog I want to highlight www.zoodles.com where you can set up activities specific to age and level of your student. It has games, a variety of subjects, characters, animals and a place for you favorites. The basic is free to all and you can upgrade depending on how much you use this. There is a great tutorial video at the beginning explaining the features that are available. I did set up a basic account and created an account for my class as a whole. One feature I really liked was how the whole screen is used when doing this to help keep it safe for students. Also, the favorites button shows what games or activities they work on the most. I went in like a student would to see how user friendly it was and was able to look around and figure out how to play.

If a teacher wanted to scaffold this to meet different needs it would be really easy. You would set up an account for each student that needed the extra help or possibly a lower level without it being really obvious to the other students. I plan on using this as a center with my computers twice a week. The student can feel like they are playing games and I can be confident that they are learning the skills I want then to learn.

My first step would be to demonstrate it as whole group and see what the reaction is. If the students seem eager to play those will be the first ones I assign activities to. My experiences as a teacher so far have been that everyone learns differently and some may gain the most benefit from Zoodles. Let me know what you think....

BP5_2010012_Web 2.0_T2_Story Something

I just found a web 2.0 tool that I love. It is called Story Something. They have some stories already created and one of the coolest features it has is you can switch out the names to make it more personal. There was a story called Flapdoodle on the Farm and for the boy’s name I replaced it with my son’s name and replaced all the names on there.

They have a section where it breaks down the stories by themes and ages. Under each story it tells the name of the story, the author, who illustrated it, how many words are in the story and the ages it is appropriate for. It also gives you the genre and a brief description of what the story is about.

Once you personalize the story you can email it to a friend or print the page. I found one called Best Friends at the Movies and replaced it with my daughter’s name and her best friend’s name and emailed it to them both. They got a real kick out of it! How fun!

When I first went on this I was hoping there was a way for the children to write a story and put it on there. You can but that is not as easy as using what is there already. For those students who are just not interested in reading might be more engaged using a tool like this because everyone loves to see their name in print and they could choose whatever kind of story they want.

I’m thinking this could be a cool way to send home stories for kids to read to parents to help build fluency as well as comprehension. One adaptation that could be done is having your students personalize the story and then make up comprehension questions on their own and partner up students. There are more ways I’m sure… please look at this website and let me know what you think and how else this could be used! Thanks!

http://www.storysomething.com/

BP#2_2010011_EduUses4Blogs

I took some time to look at a few sites and found one by Thanh Nguyen and even though it was very simple, it was very informational. He broke it down into four main functions:

1. Classroom Management
2. Collaboration
3. Discussions
4. Student Portfolios

After reading this I decided to use a piece from each one and use it at my school in a different way. I am the grade chair for our 3rd grade team and we have had so many meetings and trainings that we have not had a chance to meet much as a team to brainstorm and collaborate. I plan to try this out with the team to see if we can use it to manage our time better while collaborating. We can discuss or brainstorm upcoming tasks and possibly have a section for our struggling students where we can all have access to the information we need.

In his blog, Thanh listed numerous educational benefits. They are as follows:

· Highly motivating to students, especially those who otherwise might not become participants in classrooms.
· Excellent opportunities for students to read and write.
· Effective forums for collaboration and discussion.
· Powerful tools to enable scaffolding learning or mentoring to occur.


Under his classroom management he talked about using it to inform students of class requirements, post handouts, notices, and homework assignments or act as a question and answer board. My thought for mine would be to use it to post information given to me to pass along, upcoming deadlines and a place to brainstorm. The benefit for us would be a time factor. We are all on different schedules and my hope is that we can add items when it is convenient for us.

The discussions Thanh talked about were discussing topics outside of the classroom. I would use it to discuss scheduling issues, field trip ideas, etc. They could post ideas and repost if after reading someone else’s comment they wanted to add or take away from a previous comment. In the end we would still have a solution, but our time would be spent in a wiser manner.

He also talked about student portfolios being available for the students to review and analyze, but my thought is to have it available for our struggling students and make available for the whole team since we are departmentalized and need access to information with greater ease.

I am anxious to get this started. My only concern is you still have to get teachers to check it and make comments…. What do you think?

BP1_2010011_iGoogleScreenShots

BP3_2010011_Web2.0 TI -Quizlet

Our school district has decided to focus on vocabulary in our schools. I was looking for website that would give me a new spin on how to introduce vocabulary and make it stick.

http://quizlet.com is a great site that was created by Andrew Sutherland when he was 15 years old. He is the President for Quizlet LLC as well as a web developer and college student. His mission is “to make learning vocabulary not a chore”. This site is free and he says will remain free. He now has a small team he works with and they have an office where they are always working on this.

I found it very easy to sign up and continued to be user friendly throughout the process. I created a set of vocabulary words and definitions for our last two stories to see how long it took what would be available. I was done inputting the information within 20 minutes and now my students will have several ways to review them.

They have one option of making general flash cards like we are used to seeing them. The vocabulary word is on the front and the definition is on the back. This is nice if you wanted to have it available on the computer for them to go back and drill themselves when they had free time. But, what I really liked was a test was automatically created from the words in a matter of seconds. There were some matching and some multiple choice. This could be printed out or the class could do it on the computer and a score is generated. The correct answers are in one color and the answers that were wrong were in another and a percentage and letter grade was given.

They had two games available: Scatter and Space Race. Scatter is very similar to a matching or concentration game and Space Race is where the words scroll across the top and the student has to type in the definition and they can rack up points. This is a site worth checking out. Go to it and let me know what you think…….