Mind/Shift shared a photo via Twitter on my Facebook feed. The image was a modified London Underground Map. The purpose of the map was to provide students with options for transitions when writing:
Map created by @jamieclark85 – click on image to visit his website for further information and to download the map.
I love it when people use slick design combined with relevant ideas to communicate with their students. When Mind/Shift posted the photo, they acknowledged the source via his Twitter handle. A quick search on Twitter, led me to his profile where I quickly made him someone that I will follow. It also pointed me to his WordPress blog which I also followed so that when he posts more gems, I will be one of the first to know. Having done this, I perused his blog, downloaded some of his files for use in my classroom and then created this post. During all this, I found another link to UKEDChat, who had written about the use of maps in classrooms to help students make connections with ideas, given links to an online tool to create your own map, and provided photos from teachers around the UK who have already put this idea into practice.
And then I watched this:
“This media we call ‘social’ is anything but…”
Now, granted, I have not engaged in a conversation with Jamie, we are not friends – yet we are “friends”. I have watched this video three times today and I have been amazed by the number of people who have shared it. When I first started using social media I was a Facebook only person. That has expanded over time to include my blog, Twitter, Pinterest…and more. But how I use social media is also changing. My feed is spattered with pictures of sunsets, plates of food, people’s kids, and snapshots of idyllic lives being lived. But it is also full of politics, world news, educational links, discoveries, ideas, passions, and things that make me think, wonder, and want to connect with others either by sharing what I find or by using what I find in my classroom.
I agree that we need to look up more. I wish I could embed a video of the giggles let loose from my daughter’s two-tooth filled mouth as we pushed her on the swings in the park today. But that would have meant I couldn’t be grabbing her little legs with my hands and staring into her adorable little face. I didn’t want her to see a rectangular box as she swooped down, but our crazy, happy faces almost touching hers. And yet without social media, I don’t think I would be the same teacher I am today. I don’t think I would have the ability to connect with people who are liked-minded, to make new connections, and to renew connections from years ago.
I am grateful that I get to add @jamieclark85 to my tribe. I am grateful for the reminder to look up.
Internet – friend or foe? I am going to go with friend.
Do you have a wiki? Do you hear that work and kind of brush it off? Do you wish you had one but don’t have the time and are not sure you would even use it?
I was you!
My class are knee deep in their How We Express Ourselves unit and we are writing poetry like it is our job. They are loving it and so am I. But what to do with it all? We have writing folders for paperwork and we have computer folders for online documents but that just wasn’t enough. I wanted somewhere for the kids to publish their work in a way that worked for them, allowed them to see each others work and be inspired by it, comment on each others work and enter into a real community of poetic learners. Cue: THE WIKI.
I had never made one. But I found a really cool poetry wiki of a high school class and I knew that is what I wanted. This surprised me because as you will see, the wiki itself is not particularly beautiful – and I like beautiful things. But it was really, really functional (my husband would be so proud!) and so I knew this was it.
Here’s how simple it is to do:
1. Go to Wikispaces and in the “Join Now” box on the left-middle of the page, click “I’m a Teacher”.
2. Choose a username (this can be changed once every 30 days if you so choose), a password, and enter your email address.
3. Fill in some biographical information to prove you are using this for educational purposes and name your wiki (this can be changed later if you wish).
4. Your Wiki is ready!
5. Look to the far right/top of the screen for your information:
I am the Avocado Alligator and my one wiki is called “4Dpoetry”.
6. To add your students, click on your wiki, click on “Settings” (top right) and then click on “User Creator” on the left column:
7. Here is the thing I really love. After clicking on ‘User Creator’ you have the option of how you will add your students:
I chose the second option and a small box opens for you to type in names (one on each line). I made up names by putting together a color and an animal with the same initial letter and then the number 44 just in case someone else was as clever as me! After typing in the names of all your kids (or enough pen names to be able to match one to each child) hit ‘next’ and you get this screen:
You can see I added “PolkadotPanda44” to my list of usernames. I kept it all as one word. I then kept the first box checked ‘no’. The second box kept as ‘Column 1’, and the third box as ‘These users do not have email addresses’. I also had Wikispaces generate the passwords for me. Basically, get to the page and just click ‘continue’! You may find there is a warning if your name is a double-up, so be creative and add perhaps two or three more names than you will need so you can delete any that may not be suitable (already in use).
When you ‘continue’, you have the option of printing a list of usernames and passwords. We have a studybook with a section for usernames and passwords so these went in there. I allocated usernames with some input from the students.
Finally, create a page for each student by clicking on the + sign next to “Pages and Files”:
I made a page for each student and the home page explains the purpose of the Wiki. When you add a new page, you do have to put something on the page in order to create it (I just wrote on each page, “This is the poetry page of the Golden Gorilla” etc). The rule for us is that on the wiki, we are always referred to by our Wiki Name. I haven’t investigated the use of the ‘Projects’ feature but my initial look tells me you can create an assignment and assign different students groups to work on tasks together. It looks good but I don’t have a use for it just yet. Check out the Wikispaces Blog for more information on the Projects feature.
Here is what I like about this:
1. It is free
2. You don’t need email addresses for your kids
3. The editing interface is super simple
4. The speech bubbles let you start conversations with other users
5. The clock icon shows when edits have been made and by whom (in case work is “accidently” deleted!).
6. It is really easy to add screenshots, upload photos, or to import images via web addresses.
Most of all, I love that my kids love it! When we started, I had the homepage as my domain but not my own animal/color name or page. I changed my name to be like the kids and I created my own page. I started adding work to my page as a model for what they could add to their page. They were excited that I had gone from ‘sterborg’ to ‘AvocadoAlligator’ and used the message feature to get in touch. Here is what one student said:
“Welcome to our Community”. I didn’t need to tell them that this was their special place – they were telling me that it was ours. Perfect!
I saved the best for last, though! You can go to “settings” and click on “Exports/Backups” and from there, download a PDF of your Wiki. If you have set it up the way I have with a page for each child, these pages become “Chapters” and all their work (including formatting) will be stored in one document:
At the end of the unit, we can print a copy of our poetry anthology!
If you are more of a visual/auditory learner, check out this video explanation:
A parent of one of my students recently sent me this video:
Shawn Achor encourages us to think differently about the correlation between success and happiness. Many people would say that if you become successful, you will be happy. Achor argues that if your focus is first on being happy, success will follow and your happiness will be longer lasting as it is built into the fabric of who you are, rather than pinned to reaching your latest goal, target or sales figures.
Students in the fourth grade class next to me, have recently watched this video and started a 21 day happiness journal via Hapyr. Each day the students choose to write three things they are grateful for and/or a happy memory they had in the last 24 hours.
I have recently become a big fan of TEDEd: Lessons Worth Sharing. This is a great resource for teachers who want to find a video (from TED talks or on YouTube) and then create a lesson for students by ‘flipping’ the video = providing guided content after watching the video that students can do at their own pace (at home or school). One of the great things about it, is that if you find something you like but the creator hasn’t asked quite the questions you were hoping to have your students dig into, you can ‘flip’ the lesson yourself and rework it to suit your own class.
The second app I found through Google Apps is MindMeister – which was also referenced in this post. I signed up for a free account and created the following (click to enlarge):
MindMeister allows for a collaborative approach to brainstorming or planning. You can add icons/images from the built-in library or source your own images. Links to websites can also be added. Files can be uploaded and attached but not with the free version. For the most part, this is fairly easy to use. I didn’t use any tutorial to get started and didn’t have too many issues as it is fairly intuitive. When you are finished, you have a number of options for sharing (similar to sharing a google Doc) or exporting in a number of formats including PDF or an image file.
As we begin the Exhibition, I am looking for tools that will help with the planning and organizing for my students. I have previously used MindNode Lite, but this doesn’t seem to have the same range of features (sharing, exporting options) and MindMeister just seems a little more useful perhaps?
This morning I was taking a look through Google Apps for Education. Here is one I thought was pretty interesting and worth sharing:
EDCANVAS
If you are familiar with Padlet (formerly known as Wallwisher), this is fairly similar. It is a place for you to store your research on a particular topic. Sources of information can come from: your Google Drive (documents you have saved), YouTube, Flickr, Dropbox, Google Images and Searches, specific web addresses, files uploaded from your computer, and previously bookmarked links. Basically, anywhere! When you find the resource you want, simply drag and drop to your canvas, add a description of the resource and move on to adding more.
Sign-up is through your google account – which all my students have – so is seamless and easy, and upon signing up you are invited to watch a 30 second video explaining how it works. I would recommend watching as it really is 30 seconds and it really will answer any questions you might have.
Once created, you have options for sharing your Canvas publicly, sharing it with select people, or keeping it private. You can email, tweet, facebook or embed your canvas – or even share via QR code. My only complaint is that the embed code doesn’t appear to work with WordPress (grrr).
In addition to simply being a place to store resources, you can play your canvas to share your work with others. Videos you have placed on the canvas will play within your presentation, documents will load up from your Google drive, websites will open and can be navigated on screen within the presentation before moving on to the next part of your canvas. I find there is a slightly higher quality to adding downloaded documents as opposed to uploading from your Google Drive, but that might just be me.
In our previous unit under the theme How We Express Ourselves my students were asked to create a Voki avatar to persuade people to send their kids kids to our school – essentially answering the question “Why Riverstone?” from their perspective. We had used Voki in the past, and I wanted to revisit it in a more formal (rather than optional) way to really see if this was something worthwhile to do.
My class has Voki Classroom accounts. This is different to the regular, free version of Voki. What it does differently, is that it allows you access to your kids work prior to publishing. As the teacher, you set the assignment and send this to each child’s account. They log in (with usernames and passwords that you have access to) and click on the appropriate task, read the instructions and carry out the assignment. When they are finished, they submit it to you for review. You can ‘approve’ it or send it back to them to work on it some more.
Here are what I consider the key strengths of Voki:
you get an oral presentation without the pressure of performing live in front of an audience. Yes, I know performing live is valuable, but so is hearing people applaud your clear, confident, expressive speech that normally may have been muffled and quiet and spoken into your armpit.
some kids will knock your socks off! I was crazy impressed with the majority of the Voki’s that were produced for this assignment and some kids really stood out from the rest – and not necessarily the kids you would expect either. I love that.
it is really intuitive. We had used it before but even then, all it took was one class lesson on the Smartboard and they were off. There were a few glitches along the way but that was my doing – not Voki’s or my kids!
Which leads me to my recommendations:
make sure you set the assignment up first! I know, this seems simple, but in all the organizing, actually sending out the last assignment to their accounts was missed off my to-do list. Major bummer.
keep a printed list of usernames and passwords – they are easy to remember but we use a lot of sites and so having them handy is a must so those who forget can quickly access them
start with some fun, non-assessed assignments – let them play with Voki! I started with a book review from a character’s perspective and each child introducing themselves.
Prior to beginning the assignment, I shared the following with my class. Click on the image to enlarge. Click to download a PDF version.
After you have approved their work, it is very easy to embed the finished Voki in your blog. I have found in the past that there are many embedding codes that don’t work with WordPress (the blogging platform we use at school) but Voki is not one of them. At the conclusion of the assignment I was able to easily export the Voki’s to our class website to share with the students and their families. Here are a couple of examples of our Voki’s:
When they were uploaded, each student was tasked with drawing five names from a hat, finding that Voki online, and reviewing their work using the following form. The grid of persuasive strategies is from the awesome website, ReadWriteThink.
In addition to this personalized, specific feedback, we watched all the Voki’s as a class and rated them ‘live’ using the online student response tool: Socrative.If you have not used Socrative before, please check it out! It is really cool – and as the byline says, “as easy as raising your hand”. Once you set up a teacher account, students log on with any device and plug in your ‘room number’. You control the pace of the questions or allow them to go at their own pace. As they answer your questions, their responses show up live on screen. We watched each Voki together and then rated them on persuasive effectiveness on a scale of 1-5. Check this video out for further information:
I would highly recommend the use of Voki in your classroom. I like the education version, Voki Classroom, mostly because of it’s editing/reviewing options and because your recordings can be up to 90 seconds (as opposed to 60 seconds in the free version). It is easy to see where each student is at on the project and feedback can be delivered instantly to them from your account to theirs. I love that you can embed the finished Voki’s and the quality of both the avatar and the voice options are excellent. In addition to the stock backgrounds, you can also upload your own images = the first Voki featured in this post actually has a photo of the front of our school as the background. This feature allows you to incorporate aspects of visual language into your curriculum by challenging students to come up with the most appropriate look to their Voki that suits their message.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 13,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 3 Film Festivals
Next year, I will be teaching the one fifth grade class at our school. In addition, I will be the Technology and Innovation Advisor – a position that is new to our school. What does a person in this position do? Good question!
Primarily, the role has three responsibilities:
facilitating faculty professional development on the integration of technology in a way that sparks innovative ideas in the classroom
opening up my own classroom as a ‘practice studio’ – trying out new ideas that incorporate technology and in doing so, allow for innovation
working with teachers to facilitate the use of technology within their program of inquiry which, in turn, should lead to innovative ideas and development in teaching strategies
What does that mean in ‘real life’?
Firstly, it means I am super excited for the possibilities. I work with an amazing group of teachers and I am excited to have the opportunity to take a glimpse inside their classrooms and see how other people “do” school. For me, that can be one of the best forms of professional development out there.
Secondly, it means I am going to have to be super prepared and organized. This isn’t foreign to me, but I am going to have to step up my game! As a faculty, we each have areas we would like to focus on and this has been described as akin to wanting to select a la carte services from a menu of options. Thankfully, I have my PLC to help with their brilliant ideas!
Thirdly, it means I get to share some great ideas (other people’s mostly!) that I have picked up along the way. The one idea that I can claim as my own is the understanding that as teachers, we first need to make the mindshift or change our own world view on how we want our classroom to look and THEN we need to seek a tool to help implement that change. I know I am repeating myself, but it still hits me as being so important. Six months ago, Twitter was what small birds did and was mildly annoying. It is now a source of a wealth of information that I wouldn’t be without.
So, what sorts of things will we be doing?
Blogging
One of the things that many people are keen to start with is blogging. For some, this will be their first blogging experience. So what is blogging? To answer this question, I want to quote from the YIS IT Department:
Thinking, Writing, Reading, Connecting
Blogs are about thinking, reading, writing, commenting, connecting, sharing – not just one individual’s thoughts. Try to make as many options for connecting and sharing as possible to make the blogs more than just an online workbook. Take a look at this heirarchy of blogging from Will Richardson’s first book (Blogs Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom, p. 32) to give you an idea of their potential:
Posting assignments (Not blogging)
Journaling, i.e. “this is what I did today.” (Not blogging)
Posting links. (Not blogging)
Links with descriptive annotation, i.e., “This site is about…” (Not really blogging either, but getting close depending on the depth of the description).
Links with analysis that gets into the meaning of the content being linked. (A simple form of blogging).
Reflective, metacognitive writing on practice without links. (Complex writing, but simple blogging, I think. Commenting would probably fall in here somewhere).
Links with analysis and synthesis that articulate a deeper understanding or relationship to the cntent being linked and written with potential audience in mind. (Real blogging).
Extended analysis and synthesis over a longer period of time that builds on previous posts, links, and comments. (Complex blogging).
Kim goes on to say:
Since we’re just starting out with blogging, we might be asking students to do very simple blogging now, and we certainly have the potential to develop complex blogging skills and tap into the true power of blogging. I’m also working on finding other schools around the world that are working towards this type of blogging to be “buddies” with our students.
As we ‘find our feet’ as a school, I am hopeful that we will begin to do the same.
Personally, I would like to move toward the idea of a Faculty Blog in which faculty share their experiences with technology and innovation. I have seen an example of this in the form of Striking Educational Flint – a school blog from Flint Hill School in Virginia. I love that it links to individual teacher blogs and that it also presents a school-wide approach to ideas and innovation (and use of technology) in the school and beyond. I am also really interested in starting QuadBlogging – and am really looking forward to signing my own class up for that in the Fall.
In addition, I want to spend some time over the summer taking a look at the following blogging platforms to see what would work in which grades. Many of these I became aware of after reading an awesome blog, Free Tech Tools 4 Teachers.
Wix is a free service for creating and hosting beautiful websites. It is has recently been updated so that sites created in Wix are visible on all devices including iPads. When I first saw this, I was eager to share with my very tech savvy class – I am keen to see what they will come up with – especially after viewing this video which outlines some of what can be done with Wix.
Weebly for Education allows for the creation of class blogs by the teacher as well as individual student blogs. It’s finished user interface looks more slick than the likes of Kidblogs which I used with my fourth graders and I like the intuitive way you can go about building a blog with this tool.
Webs is awesome. Some people might think it too basic, but for elementary school bloggers, I would highly recommend it. What I like most about it is the ‘drag and drop’ feature for adding things like text, pictures, pictures with text, slideshows, videos, audio recording, buttons and more. It it intuitive, looks great and is easy to set up. Love it.
Yola is another free site that looks awesome. A step-up perhaps from Webs in that it doesn’t appear to have ads or pop-ups, it is a slightly more sophisticated version of a website builder. The following ‘how to’ create video outlines all the best features and personal experience – it really is that easy!
Because we already have Google Accounts ,Google Sites is already available to us. This looks like a fun way for kids to store an online portfolio of work and I really like how easy it is to customize and add to content.
School Rack offers a free service for teachers to build and host their own classroom websites. This doesn’t look as slick as some of the other options and because there is an upgrade feature, I am always wary that I am not getting the “works” and will be ‘forced’ to upgrade to get what I want. I could be completely wrong and I do like that it is a site especially structured for teachers. Just not for me – it seems too much like an electronic mark book than a blog for sharing innovation and ideas.
Web Node is another slick looking option that does not carry advertisements on your blog and is free. I like the templates and again, the simple ‘drag and drop’ interface would make it suitable for all ages.
Smore looks awesome! Self-described as “beautiful by default and impossible to screw up” this looks like an awesome ‘one stop shop’ for publishing content online. What I really like (apart from what seems to be a ‘standard’ drag and drop interface) is the fact that the content you produce on your computer will look exactly the same when you access it on your smartphone or iPad. Smore pages could be linked to from within any of the other blog providers listed. This could be great for one-off projects (the site markets itself as a ‘flyer creator’) or for young bloggers finding their feet.
I haven’t even started to explore Wikis as a tool for a more collaborative and interactive classroom! That is probably what I am hoping to get most out of this position – the opportunity to explore, across the school and within my own classroom, how we can use technology to become more collaborative, more connected, more interactive. It is exciting!
What would you want in a Technology and Innovator Advisor?
How would you want their support in your classroom?
Gone are the days when it was “cool” to not know what Twitter was. Or any form of Web 2.0 technology that enables you to connect to the bigger picture. I took a while to become a fan of Twitter and now, I can’t imagine my life as an Educator without it.
But first, came the change in my mindset or my world view and then came for the need for a tool to support that change and that tool happened to be Twitter.
That is worth me repeating. Seriously.
First came the change, then came the need for a tool.
I really don’t mind if you use Twitter or not. What I do think is important, is that you challenge yourself to maintain a connection with other people wanting make the same kind of ruckus you are making – or wanting to make. Over the last six months or so, I have become more active on Twitter and would site this tool as being in the top ranking of the Professional Development that I have gotten as a teacher.
Why? Because I am connecting with other Educators and we are not bound by geography. We are able to quickly share in 140 characters or less, what is going on in our classrooms and to connect.
Just today, in the last half hour or so, I have:
Learned about the Top Ten Things NOT To Do in an iPad 1:1 Program. I particularly liked number ten: Do not let fear overcome your mission. This could be said for almost anything we do and plays nicely back to yesterday’s post about the Resistance.
Been inspired by the amazing work happening at my former school, Yokohama International, in a post titled Tech Pilots Taking Off. It really is inspiring to not only read about a phenomenal program, but I am both blown away and grateful for the thorough documentation of the implementation and goals for this program. The example set here of initiative, forward-thinking, collaboration and leadership is truly outstanding. What’s more, it is not being hidden but put out there for others to use, copy, emulate, remix and build upon. Did I mention I am inspired?
Been taken through a very thorough analysis of what it means for a project to be authentic. “What Does It Take For A Project To Be Authentic?” gives great understanding about the use of the word authentic as it applies to Project Based Learning (PBL) or just learning in general. It cleared up a few wonderings I had and has given me a new lens through which I can take a look at the assessment of and for learning that occurs in my classroom.
Spoken often of the amazing work in inquiry-based learning that I experienced first-hand in the classroom of Tasha Cowdy. I was so excited to see Tasha post about the Morning Meeting routine she establishes with her kindergarten class. It is phenomenal and so empowering and a must-see for anyone interested in inquiry teaching and learning.
Been reminded of a tool I was introduced to a a couple of weeks ago called Thinglink but have not explored fully. Turns out I can now benefit from other’s explorations via the post 26+ Ways to Use ThingLink in the Classroom.
Been introduced to a new app called Kids Journal which I have not downloaded (yet!) but could be a fun tool for easily documenting summer activities such as the Summer Bucket List challenge we just set our fifth graders as a ‘prewriting’, information gathering exercise for their first sixth grade writing assignment in the new school year.
And this is just the surface! I use Instapaper as my ‘read later’ service. When on Twitter or browsing the internet, one click of ‘Read Later’ and all these goodies get stored on my Instapaper account – kind of like my own awesome newspaper of awesomeness.
I keep my Twitter account mostly for following educators but also writers, artists, musicians, curators, innovators, movers and shakers. I want to know what is new and exciting in education but also around education – we are not in isolation.
If tweeting is not for you, fine. But I encourage you to find some way of connecting yourself to big ideas in a way that works. You will thank yourself and your parents and students will thank you even more.
sonya terborg 