wallwisher.com

This morning, I received an email with yet another website that we could use in the classroom. The website is www.wallwisher.com. Wallwisher is an online notice board maker. It's a website used for making announcements, keeping notes, starting discussions. The website claims that it is basically an online way of keeping postit notes! You can also post images. I did not look too much into the website yet, but I have viewed an example wall. The example wall is a question that people have posted responses to. It looks like a great way to communicate thoughts and opinions. I have not decided how I could use it in the classroom yet, but I'm sure it would be effective in some way. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Turnitin.com

This past weekend at my class at Drake, we discussed the issue of academic dishonesty. We read an article that talked about the issues with cheating and how much of a problem it is becoming in schools, especially at the secondary level. In the article there was a website called turnitin.com. This website is for teachers, and probably mostly for teachers at the secondary level. On this website, teachers may put in students' work and the website will cross-reference the writing and check for chunks of texts that appear in other written pieces that already exist. The website checks automatically for plagiarism! Another great thing about it is once a teacher puts a paper into the system on the website, it is in the "bank." Meaning, if a student tries to turn in a paper that a friend and/or classmate has already done, it will show up when the teacher plugs it into the site. There were a few teachers in the class that use this website in their district. They all spoke very highly of it and said they think it's a great idea. I too think that this website is a great idea. I do think that it is a good idea to be honest with students and let them know from the very beginning the importance of academic honesty and that you expect them to follow the rules. They need to be aware that you will be checking them just to be sure. It's sad that these types of websites even have to exist, but I think it's a good thing they do at this point.

KeepandShare.com

At work today, I came across a new and interesting website. We were looking for a calendar put lesson plans into. We decided that the caldendars in Outlook do not have enough room in them to input much information. My colleague came across Keepandshare.com, which is a website that has calendars, documents, a place to upload photos, a place to input your favorite websites, and I'm sure there are many other things that I have not even came across yet. Like many of the sites we have looked at in class, you need to sign up but it is free! The cool thing about the website is after you create things, you can then share them with others. You can also bring in other documents from your computer and work with them through this website. I see the website probably being used more by teachers, but I was thinking it would be a great place for secondary students to organize things. They could keep their planners online with all their assignments, they could keep their actual homework assignments in this one place, and they could keep track of websites that are helpful to them. Check it out and let me know what you think. If anyone has suggestions on how this could be used at the elementary level, I'd love to hear them!

Web-based Teaching Unit

The other class that I am taking this semester is English 510, Computer Methods for Language Teaching. For our final project we are to create a Web-based teaching unit. Already in the class, we have been working on creating websites. I have had more than enough lessons to realize that creating webpages is difficult! However, I'm wondering if it is because of the program that we are required to use. We are required to use Adobe Dreamweaver CS4. This program is extremely complicated and I am not sure it is worth a teacher's time to create webpages through this program. After seeing the other programs for creating teacher websites, which we have touched on briefly in class, I am wishing that I could use a different program. I see the benefit of creating units for students to learn online, but I'm wondering when teachers find the time to create their own.

For my web-based teaching unit, I am using a curriculum that is already in place in our district called Text Talk. This is a read-aloud curriculum which teaches students tier 2 vocabulary words. So far, I am planning to have the unit go something like this...I will start out with an introductory page of the cover and a brief summary of the book, then go to an author's page with a brief introduction to the author. Then, I actually plan on using the online video software to create a read-aloud of the book. After the read-aloud I made 2 of the vocabulary activities into online quizzes using Hot Potatoes. I thought about creating a game after the read-aloud also. I would be interested to see if anyone had any suggestions on how to make this web-based teaching unit even better and more usable for the students. I guess I should mention also that the unit is for 2nd graders!! So, I am trying to keep in mind the level of the students also. Please share any suggestion you have, especially if you have experience creating webpages :)

Keyboarding

I wanted to create this post before our class this week. As I was looking at the syllabus, I noticed that we are going to be talking about keyboarding and why we teach it, different software, and about teaching the writing process through technology. I wanted to see what opinions you all have on keyboarding and teaching it in school BEFORE we talked about it in class on Wednesday. When I was in school, I took a keyboarding class in middle school for the first time. Then, in high school I took Keyboarding I and Keyboarding II. I honestly think that this is why I am a fairly fast typer and also why I know how to do quite a bit on a computer and if I don't know how to do it, I can usually figure it out quickly and without much help. Did all of you have experience with keyboarding in school??
The elementary schools that I have taught at have not necessarily had a keyboarding class. One of the elementary schools that I am in right now teaches keyboarding in the 4th grade. I think it is very introductory and I've only seen it taught briefly. But, I do know it is using timed typing and it teaching different skills each lesson. Also, they use the little keyboarding books that you sit right beside the computer. I am anxious to see the different online options for teaching keyboarding this week in class. Please share your experiences with keyboarding in schools and have you seen keyboarding in any of the schools you've been in and/or worked in and at what levels??

freerice.com

One of my co-workers showed me this great site...www.freerice.com. On this site kids/adults can go and do activities on various subjects. For each question that is answered correctly, the site donates 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. The activities that I tried were vocabulary and language. For vocabulary you choose the correct meaning for the word. For the classroom, I thought this would be great to practice for ITBS since the students have to answer questions about vocabulary words that they have not necessarily seen before. The other activity that I chose to try was the language activity. I chose to do the one in Spanish, since I speak some Spanish. This activity you chose the meaning of the Spanish word. I could see this being used in the language classroom. I think that this website is one that kids would like, as you can see the rice bowl filling up on the side as you answer questions correctly. I would be anxious to hear other ideas on how you could incorporate this website in the classroom. While I don't think there is a lot of meat to the activities, I do think the idea behind it is good and the motivation is high for the students to answer the questions correctly. Let me know what you think of the site!!

How would I use a blog in my classroom?

Since I have been using this blog for a couple months now, I decided that I have had enough time to think about how I might use a blog in my own classroom.

I've decided that I think it would be great to create a blog and let parents know about it and use it as a way to bring your classroom inside the students' homes. I would envision the blog as a way to communicate with parents, offer resources that could be used at home, and also to keep parents updated as to what is going on in the classroom. I could post the week's homework to let parents know what to look for in backpacks and/or what they could be working on at home with their children. I would NOT use the blog for anything negative. I would only use it to communicate the positives of what was going on in the classroom. There are plenty of other ways to communicate with parents for the negative things when necessary. I would also post websites that students and parents could visit together, pertaining to what we were doing in class. I would make it my goal to update the blog once a week, probably over the weekend. This way parents and students would know what was coming up in the next week. However, I would try my best to check the blog throughout the week to keep up on communication with parents. In thinking about privacy issues I would need to be sure that parents and students know that if they are trying to communicate about something personal or that only pertains to their child alone that the blog would probably not be the best place to communicate, but rather through email or over the phone would be best in those types of situations.

I am sure that there are some things that I have left out and/or not thought through the best. I am open to suggestions and thoughts as to how you see this working in my classroom!