BP14_GoogleSites

I have really been working on this website, and I feel like all the hard work that I've put into it is going to help manage the school year better than ever! I added new information this week, and I'm going to continue to do so. I've created an 'Important Information" page where I've uploaded my syllabus and schedule. I thought that parents might like to see the information. They should be able to download these documents by visiting the site.



Under the 'Important Information' page, I added a rubric for writing so that my students will have easy access to my expectations. I found a student friendly writing rubric on Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators, and I modified it a bit so that my students might better understand it. I plan to teach the rubric to them so that I can answer any questions about vocabulary they don't already know.



And finally, I've decided to let the kids start a blog to display all of their work, much like what I'm doing right now. I want them to have a place to display their media projects where parents and also students that we may be connecting with through ePals will be able to see it. I am really looking forward to this year. I hope that my students benefit from all this work as much as I think they will.




Shrock, K. (2010) Discovery School's: Kathy Schrock's guide for educators. Retrieved August 29, 2010 from http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/assess.html

BP13_GoogleSites2

I had to change the cartoon because the animated character's skirt was too short to pass with my school's administration. So here's the new video.



AND here's a screen shot of my new homepage. This is only the top part of the page. I started to plan out how the assignments will develop over the year. Click here to see the site and check it out for yourself.



I've been busy this week writing my syllabus, and planning how this semester will unfold. I hope that my plans so far will fit into the AR plan, as I'm finding it challenging to keep everything straight. It's neat how creating the website that will steer my students through their assignments is helping me to organize my thoughts and plans. I think it helps to have had such a good example with Full Sails educational management through the online system. I hope that I've kept everything simple enough for my third and fourth graders.

I will have to make sure that the students in my program have email addresses on the Google Educational server that my school uses. They will only be able to log into the discussion boards with it. I used Google Groups to create the discussion boards for both third and fourth grade. Currently, I will be starting them with a simple question about how they feel about these changes. I also plan to create a Google Form to assess their learning interests and styles. When the student clicks the link on the home page to answer the question, he is redirected to Google groups where I have already prepped the board with a question. All they have to do is pick the question to answer, click reply, and type their answer.




I am really getting excited about all of this, and I hope that the students are motivated by it's novelty and technology.

BP12_Google Sites

I've finally found time to start my classroom website. Fortunately for me, our school uses Google to host our gmail. Although we don't have access to everything Google at work, we do have access to iGoogle, Google Docs, Google Mail, Google Sites and Google Groups. I chose to use Google Sites to create my classroom website that I'll be using with my AR project this year. Here's the home page of the website.




I embedded a youtube video that I created on www.xtranormal.com. Here's the video.



I had to put the burp in to make sure the kids were paying attention. :) I plan to change the animation with each assignment. Xtranormal's animation site is very easy to use, and I feel confident that my students will have a blast working on this project. I will have the first assignment outlined by next week. I anticipate that the students will need to spend 2 to 3 weeks on it. I'll post their assignments to the website to showcase their work.

So far this is what the assignment pages are looking like. They are subject to change, as this is a work in progress.



I initially thought that I'd have to link out to a discussion board hosted by another site until I started creating this website. As I built the pages, I thought that the students would be able to leave comments, but soon realized that this may only be a feature for the owner of the site. I still have some exploring to do, and I will post as I continue to create this site this week.

BP11_Xtranormal.Commercial

BP10_GoAnimate

Follow this link to my comment on Tamika's post about GoAnimate.

BP9_PodOmatic

Follow this link to my comment on Kevin's blog about Pod O'matic.

BP8_Xtranormal

I am so excited about finding Xtranormal as a web 2.0 tool. First of all, it satisfies my inner cartoon fanatic! Secondly, it allows me to use animation to present the same old boring content to my students. I tend to use a lot of phonics instruction as well as sight word memorization when teaching my remedial and special education reading classes. I am certain that using these animation tools will make the content much easier to enjoy for my little ones.

This is my first attempt to animate with xtranormal. It was so easy! All I had to do was register for an account. The buttons and tabs on the website are so easy to figure out without any training or tutorials. I picked out the 'actor' or animated character that I wanted to use from several free choices, and then I was directed to a page where I typed in my texted script. I was able to pick from several choices of voices and accents for my character. There is an opportunity to record your own voice over the video, but I didn't try that option. I was able to choose from two free backgrounds. There were also several musical background choices as well as ambient background noises like children playing and pigeons for example.

Besides using this tool to create content for my younger classes, I will try to use this with my older students. I am going to introduce it to them on the Promethean board, and then allow them to work on publishing their own scripts at the computer lab. I hope this will increase their motivation as well as reinforce their english grammar and literacy skills.

I did have to pay for points used to publish the video, but it is very affordable. The application has it's own type of currnecy to use within the program, much like the lindens used in Second Life. I probably wouldn't have paid anything, except that I truly do see myself playing with this application a lot in the future.

BP7_Commercial for Internet4Classrooms

BP6_Creaza

Follow this link to my comment on Draney's post about Creaza.

BP5_Quizlet

Please follow this link to my comments on Tracy's blog.

BP4_Google Forms

I used Google Forms to create the survey assignment in the Training and Motivational Development class we had in July. It was very easy to do, and although I haven't used the survey yet, I do plan to do so because it ties into my Action Research project.

I wear a couple of hats at my school. The title "Learning Specialist" is a fancy term that means I fill both Special Education Teacher role as well as the Reading Specialist role in my school. I manage a caseload of several students with IEP's as well as teach these students. I serve on our school's SST committee. And I teach reading to students identified as needing remedial reading services by not meeting standards on our statewide achievement testing as mandated by "No Child Left Behind". Although many of our students pass these tests, often teachers complete checklists to refer students who aren't learning as quickly as they'd like to see them learning in a larger classroom setting.

Because teacher's have to schedule their days quickly as the year begins, and I have to teach my reading classes during the same times that they are addressing these standards, scheduling has always taken a great deal of consideration on my part. I have to ensure that I meet the time requirements, and I don't push into their "specials" classes, lunch time or their foreign language classes. In years past, I have spent hours and days worrying about how to best meet everyone's needs. I would have numerous emails opened in several tabs across my browser. This year, I took advantage of the Google Forms application to solve this problem. It's my new favorite thing in the whole wide world.

It presents itself as an easy to answer questionnaire in the form of an email. I have several types of questions, including multiple choice, fill in the blank and short essay styles. The teachers answered the questions, and the spreadsheet automatically filled their answers in the correct spots. It's the easiest scheduling I've ever done. I can't believe how much time I've saved already. Here is how the spreadsheet looks:

BP_Diigo Group

Here is a shot of my Diigo group page.

I re-invited my classmates to be members of my Diigo group today. I was not very active with Full Sail this week, and had not realized that there were no members of my group. I also don't remember having an invitation to join ripples, and it's not listed on my groups page.

BP3_Internet4classrooms.com

INTERNET 4 CLASSROOMS

This has been a LIFE SAVER in my classroom on numerous occasions! Internet4Classrooms has the most user friendly database of online activities, tests, lesson plans, worksheets, etc. I've found on the internet.Any activity for grades PK through 8 can be located by a simple grade leveled search based on national education standards.




There are free tutorials that offer practical directions for educator related tasks using popular software programs.




This site also has examples of published standardized tests from several states to use when preparing students not to be "left behind'.

BP2_ iGoogle Screenshots

This is the home tab of my iGoogle page. It took some time to find a Facebook gadget that would work on my page. I haven't used twitter in a very long time. I set it up with an email address that I only seem to use for spam collection these days. It's amazing that I could remember the password!




Here is my FSO tab on the iGoogle home page. I have been wary of Linked In. Once when I did a Google search of myself, this popped up. I'd prefer not to be that accessible. So I've made this profile unavailable for public searches. Please contact me through email or iChat if you need to be added to my contacts list.

I posted two screen shots of the AR/CBL tab on the iGoogle page because I want you to see why there is nothing in the diigo gadget. DCA Business wanted me to log in in order to access this gadget. I tried every email address and username/password combination I could think of to no avail. I searched to find out how to set up an account with DCA Business to no avail. So, I am unable to get the diigo gadget to work. Also, when I do go to this tab, the pop-down login screen harasses me the entire time I am on the tab. If anyone has suggestions about how to get into this gadget, please let me know.

This is a screen shot of the ETC tab on my iGoogle home page.

International Community School uses a Google server for our email services. It is one of the best decisions our tech department has ever made! We've cut down printing copies significantly by sharing forms on Google Docs. You are looking at a screen shot of my home page when I log into the system at work. The "start" page is our iGoogle page. I can use it to chat with colleagues directly from the home page and tell if there is email that needs my attention. I can see my todo lists for the day and calendar obligations as soon as I sit down at my desk.


I set up a Facebook page especially for professional contacts. I allow students, their parents and colleagues that are not close personal friends to join this profile as friends. I am able to access it (usually - it's acting up tonight) directly from the social networks tab on my iGoogle home page. I can see fund raising opportunities that affect my school as well as post pics of the kids at work. It's nice to have this kind of contact with parents. It's also nice to be able to hide my personal profile and keep these worlds separate. :-)

BP1_Google Reader

I have been using Google Reader for quite some time. As an avid Google fan, I like to poke around the applications every now and then. When I noticed the new tab at the top of my email inbox, I clicked on it. I watched the quick tutorial and added a couple of blogs like my local newspaper and a celebrity gossip blog. I enjoyed the ease of seeing the headlines of those sites, however my FAVORITE thing about Google Reader is the "Recommended Items" feature. Whenever I have a few moments to myself, I prefer reading the recommended items to almost any other leisure activity! It's so much better than television and the magazines in the checkout line at the grocery store. I'd prefer to see what is being posted here than on Facebook most of the time!

The "Recommended Items" feature customizes its suggestions based on the information that google has stored about your interests based on the searches you complete with Google while logged into your Google account. To streamline the recommendations to your tastes even better, it is equipped with user friendly icons at the bottom of each post that allow you to "like" or "unlike" a recommendation. Google Reader uses these preferences to find more blogs that are similar to the ones the you have indicated that you like. IT IS AWESOME! I find the most interesting things here like the article I shared in Wimba about the boy who saved his sister's life by using skills that he'd learned from playing WOW. http://www.nextnature.net/2010/05/norwegian-boy-saves-sister-from-moose-attack-with-world-of-warcraft-skills/

I like that Google is often publishing blogs about their new products and features as well as security threats AND how to avoid them. By far, Google Reader is one of my MOST FAVORITE things about the internet these days.

For my first blogging assignment, I chose 5 sites to follow for professional purposes. These five RSS feeds are:

Teach42 to stay on top of the latest gadgets and their applications in the classroom.

Digital Writing, Digital Teaching is another blog that focuses on the use of technology in an educational setting.

The National Association of Charter School Authorizers to stay informed of political issues dealing with the state of Charter Schools in America.

TEDTalks video feeds are some of the most forward thinking minds in Education and beyond.

Edutopia share some of the latest groundbreaking practices & ideas in Education.