Sites that allow teachers to make their own educational games!

The approaching holidays are difficult for many of my students.  I notice that their attention wanders, their behavior unravels, and their capacity for learning new material decreased dramatically.  So, when I found this site, which will allow me to make educational games, I was very excited!  My kids used Sheppard Software earlier this year to learn their states, capitals and Canadian Provinces, and StudyStack.com to study for their recent Social Studies test.  Now, if they can play while learning their spelling, vocabulary, homonyms, heat and energy, ancient civilizations, or ecology, won't that be more fun!?

I'll let you know how it goes and post links on my portaportal.  If you try any sites, let me know too!

Happy holidays!

Podcasting

 I was glad to learn about podcasting, because I think it will be especially beneficial for my students who have difficulty reading.  My sixth-grade language arts students are finishing a cooperative book, and they will create a podcast to accompany the slideshow of the book.  They are very excited about being able to share their work with their friends and family online... suddenly a class project takes on a new, much more exciting dimension, and we will save paper by not making a copy of the 20 page book for each student to bring home.

I love to read aloud, and my selection of books on tape for this group is limited.  I am trying to find ways to help them read independently, and many of the texts I use (we have a subscription to Reading A-Z.com, which has great levelled non-fiction texts) do not have an audio component.  I think I will try creating a podcast for the kids to listen to as they read along.  I have noticed in the past that students who follow along in a book as it is read to them improve their own fluency and vocabulary.

Other resources I have found are also very exciting.  You've already seen my first Prezi, and I created a second one for my sixth graders on the difference between "there, their and they're."  This came together very quickly (my first attempt took 5 hours!), when I realized that the simplest way to create it was to type all the words I wanted in a list format (each line in a separate text box), then find a bunch of pictures (click and drag to desktop, then to the prezi).  Only when I had all the items on the Prezi did I start to organize them.  MUCH quicker!  The kids were fascinated, and read it aloud to themselves as they watched it.  Instead of autoplay, I let them click when they were ready to move to the next "slide."

Ted.com is a great resource for anyone who is interested in learning more about technology, science, design, and many other subjects.  Perhaps because I watched Flubber this weekend with my daughter, I found this lecture about the invention of new toys especially intriguing.  Although these lectures are fairly high-level, and probably more complex than I would use with my students this year, I imagine 8th grade - High School level teachers would find some of them very useful.

More soon!

M.

Presentations

This week I explored different sites that either host collections of presentations or teach you how to make one.  I found a lot of amateur presentations, some very wordy ones, and a few I would show to my students.  One of the other teachers recommended Pete's Power Point Station, which has quite a large collection of education slide shows, and that was quite helpful.

And then I played with my favorite by far: Prezi.  I watched several tutorials, read some tips, and then jumped in!  I spent a while last night and tonight creating a presentation for class tomorrow.  It's still rough, but I enjoy the ability to move around the page, include visuals, be a little bit playful while presenting useful information.  I think I would have to be careful not to throw too much at my students in this format, though.  I had to tone mine down a bit because I was afraid the audience would get motion sickness, but what I ended up with is a decent mix of fact and fun, I think.  Certainly more interesting (for me, anyway, not necessarily for a left-brain thinker) than reading black words on a white page...

Now I want to get a drawing tablet so I can do my own drawings instead of depending on the images online.  And I want to learn how to do flash animation! And a document camera!

Will it never end??

And speaking of presentations, here is my favorite presentation of the week:  the South Portland Marching Band, featuring their drum major Joey Hendricks, in a custom made sequinned, bejeweled and glittered jacket, created by yours truly and my daughter Gracie.  They won 5 stars in all categories and brought home a gold medal.  Now THAT's a presentation!

The famous Pat Metheny glitter guitar jacket!

The amazing South Portland Marching Band -- what an incredible bunch of kids!

Marvel, Novelist & Wiki Progress

Since I can't log into the moodle site tonight, I'm winging my post, but here's a recap of my progress in the past week or so:

I have added more information to my Study Skills Wiki.  I now have 7 pages and a google calendar widget, as well as a chart for my students to complete after they visit the Multiple Intelligence Quiz links I provided.  I found an article tonight (NPR) that talks about how traditional methods of studying have been proven to be less effective than studying in shorter bursts, varied locations, etc.  Interesting! 

I spent a while on Marvel last week.  Frankly, I had no idea that there was such a rich resource of scholarly material available in one location.  Did everyone else know this?  Or were they like me, thinking that if it was "out there" you could find it on google?  In any case, I feel much more comfortable navigating on that site and I will certainly encourage students to use it.  I will recommend they access it directly through the Mahoney page to avoid overwhelming them with resource choices on the main Marvel page.  I remember many of our conversations at the start of this course, when we were concerned about the quality of the information our students were finding.  The Marvel sites certainly limit students' searches to more "respectable" sites, which should reassure teachers.  I do think that Marvel could spend some time re-designing the site to make it more user friendly, as I have heard several kids say they don't use it because it's confusing, and frankly, I found it confusing as well.

My other discovery was Novelist.  I found a list of about 20 authors I "need" to read for myself (I love historical fiction and British mysteries) and compiled a list of books to help me with my Halloween/ghost story unit.  I found the site to be easy to use, very informative, and well explained by the tutorials.

Have a great week!

And now for something completely different...

I realized yesterday morning that I had been dreaming about creating websites.  Hmm.  Too much time on the computer, perhaps?


I find, as a result of this course, that I am looking at many tasks, both educational and personal. differently.  I'm thinking of ways to work "smarter," not "harder"; to improve communication with friends, family, students, parents, and co-workers; to use technology to improve my teaching methods at school and in my private calligraphy practice (I'm the president of the Casco Bay Scribes, and often teach workshops); and to organize myself more effectively.

It's quite exciting!

I read this article on Edutopia today, which introduced yet another technique that was new to me -- Prezi's.

Take a look and see what you think -- very visual, with movement and the "webbing" connection.
Here's a tutorial.

Consider the possibilities!

M.

Congratulations... it's a Wiki!

This week brought another new challenge, and despite my initial trepidation, I started a Wiki -- you can take a look at it here. Since I often work with students who need ideas and strategies to help them have a successful school year, this is what I decided to focus on as my "test drive."  My primary concern was about security, but once I discovered that I could modify the security settings, I felt much happier.  At the moment, I have locked some pages so they cannot be changed (so my students don't add interesting information to my biography!) and the entire site is open by invitation for editing, although anyone can view it.

I do find that the wikispaces formatting is a bit awkward at times.  If you want to go back and change the size of the lettering, for instance, you are right back at square one -- and you must also change the font and color from the default.  Trying to center things is also occasionally awkward, but I'm sure I'll figure it out.  I have been able to add pictures and make links to new pages and external sources quite easily.  I even added a widget!  The result is fairly professional looking, if simple.

This week, if all goes well, I will have some of my students take a Learning Style Quiz and post some of their results on the wiki.  I'll keep you posted!

Trying to add a video

Let's see if this works.  I'd like to be able to add videos to the classroom blog...

School House Rock -- Adjectives

Progress

Despite being sick as a dog for over a week, I've made some progress:  I added a bunch of new sites to my PortaPortal, which the kids in my classroom use on a regular basis.  I also discovered how to change the settings to "click and drag" so I could reorganize the contents of my folders, with the newest links on top.  The kids are currently learning their Spanish numbers, Canadian provinces and capitals, and latitude/longitude.  Studying through these games is fun for them, and they love to compete and compare scores.  If my portaportal gets much bigger I may re-think its organization, but for now, we are all enjoying it!

I have started designing a googlesite, based on my thoughts from last week.  I talked with my head teacher about it, and we also discussed the difference between a site and a blog.  Since our class is a small resource room for kids with academic needs, we want to be sure any site is very easily accessed and navigated.  I'm starting small and trying to keep it well organized, cheerful and easy to read.  We think we will use this as a way to keep in touch with parents instead of through the parent portal "newsletter" function, which seems a bit "clunky" compared to these two applications.

I have yet to use googledocs with students except to send the 8th graders a format for earthweek and a brief note, which they then saved on their desktops.  Some of my students get confused by technology and need time to practice before using it for important tasks, so I am thinking of ways to do that in the coming weeks, with study guides, etc.  The 7th graders do not yet have gmail accounts, and I want to check with SK to see how to go about setting them up (do we do it as a class, get parent permissons, and give you their passwords?)  I know that once gmail and docs get going they will be very useful.  For example, in the 7th grade, three times (that I know of) students who had the bulk of their South Portland History Project on their computers were out of class, and their teammates were struggling to work without their scripts.  If it had been on googledocs, we would have all had access.  This project is already so massive, though, I can understand why we didn't attempt to add another layer of complexity at this time!

Now I'm learning about wiki's, which, from what I can tell, are almost like a "group" website.  I particularly liked the Discover Utopia Project, which I think might interest the 8th grade LA teachers when they teach "The Giver" later in the year.  Their Code of Conduct for blogging was very well thought out.

I must say, I truly appreciate the opportunity to learn all these new applications, and it is very exciting to think of ways to use them with my students.  Even though my 6th graders don't have laptops, I plan to get them on either our teacher computers or into the computer lab frequently to have them practice skills, increase background knowledge for books we are reading, take assessments, improve keyboarding skills, read "Tumblebooks" and hopefully, start writing on our blog.  The computer keeps them interested and engaged, and since fine motor skills are a challenge for many of them, I hope that typing their work will make it easier for them to share their ideas.

Have a great week!  Maggie

Biting the Bullet

photo from www.soxfirst.com

Well, it's time to make a website.  I debated for quite a while, liking the informal, "chatty" feel of a blog, but when I made my list of items I would like to include, I realized a blog just wouldn't do it.  My list:

General information about our Resource Room, our philosophy, etc.
Study Tips, links to flashcard makers, etc.
Study guides for particular classes (with the permission of the teacher)
Links to videos or sites that are directly connected to a particular mainstream unit, to help them understand the topic (multiple intelligences)
Helpful information for students  (similar to some of the resources in their planner, or maybe a link to my Portaportal or delicious site?)
Calendar/Information about events  (I have a student who asks me daily when flu-shots are!)
Newsletter -- what the kids have been up to, examples of work, "bragging!"  This might be a link to blog?  (My favorite blog is still Teacher Tom, and if you haven't checked it out, you will enjoy his enthusiasm and obvious love for his students!)
Links to Homework now (particular mainstream teachers that our kids work with this year, to make it easier for parents to find homework info)
Videos or pictures of student work

As you can see, my list keeps growing, so I expect completing my site will take a while. I have started it in google sites after watching all the videos I could.  I'm currently trying to make it colorful, neatly organized, and very easily accessible for parents AND children.

Hope to link to it shortly.  I've been sick for about 10 days now, so I'm a little behind schedule, and very thankful for an extra week!

Maggie

GoogleDocs

Well, this week has been illuminating.  I have revisited Google Docs for the first time in 2 years, finding, to my delight, that the program is much easier to use, with many format/style options.  I created a presentation (a sample slide show on the metric system, with text and photos imported from the internet).  I like the fact that you can click and drag the slides to rearrange them, rather like keynote.

Then I made a document, and my daughter and I worked on a silly "Fortunately, Unfortunately" story, while chatting online.  Lots of fun.  One thing I didn't like, and I haven't figured out whether I can change this, is that I couldn't tell what changes she made without comparing the new version to the old version.  For some reason I thought each contributor's comments/changes would be in a different color, but we couldn't make that work.

I imported a Word document as well, and that worked fine, I just tweaked the format a bit.

Then I created a short form/questionnaire, and discovered that the spreadsheet responses are a GREAT resource for teachers, committee chairs, etc.  Incredibly handy and tidy way to collect and assess information.

The one thing I didn't remember was that all participants need a gmail account, and I don't know the gmail addresses of the other participants in the class, so that's a drag.  But I can see that there is a lot of potential here!  I can't wait to use these applications in my classroom.

Delicious and PortaPortal

I am trying to give Delicious a fair shake, although I had started my PortaPortal page (user name MaggieMcNeice) and was having such a good time adding links for my students (as well as myself) that I found myself resisting a change to Delicious.  But, I watched the videos, etc., and set up a Delicious page, and started collecting bookmarks.  I like the fact that if you have the icon on the toolbar you get an automatic prompt to save a bookmarked site to Delicious. And I guess it's helpful to see how many people have bookmarked a site, although I tend to make my own decisions about a site instead on relying on others.

But I find the layout of the Delicious pages rather messy and uninteresting.  I think it is complicated to navigate compared to Portaportal, at least for kids who have difficulty with say, more than 20 math problems on a page, or worksheets without lines to write on.  Portaportal has those tidy little boxes, and the ability to put a happy little "wow" or smiley face next to your link.  And it's pretty.

Sigh.  Sometimes I am such a girl.  (Years ago, we went to buy our first car -- I chose the color and my husband chose the engine type and all the boring stuff.)

I will continue to collect links on Delicious and see where it takes me, because I am learning that sometimes it takes a few weeks to truly understand the value of one of these sites.  I'll keep you posted!  (pun intended)

And now, for something delicious:

An amazing Hot Fudge Sundae Cake from AllSweets.com (I may have to try this recipe!)

Maggie

Watch this video! It may change the way you think about Technology and Education!

Children in New Delhi learning at a computer in the Hole in the Wall project.

Hi, everyone,
On my RSS feed today, I came across this video.  Take a few minutes and watch it, and I think you will be quite interested!  Sugata Mitra explains how his experimental "Hole in the Wall" process demonstrates that children are quite capable of learning on their own, even in empoverished and illiterate areas.  His experiments show that by working in groups, with positive encouragement (he calls this the "Grandmother Cloud"), students learn even complex things, remarkably quickly and deeply.

I was watching my students last week as they struggled to learn the 50 states online.  Two of the boys enjoyed the game, worked hard at it independently, and made some definite progress.  One boy got very frustrated, put his head down several times, and needed my encouragement to continue.  The other kept trying to interact with his neighbor, either to help him get an answer or solicit help himself.  Since my goal was just to have them learn, not assess them, I encouraged them to give each other hints and support.

I wonder what would happen if I put them all on one computer?  It would be interesting to see if they would all learn equally or whether some of them would "check out" and let a leader do the work?  I may have to do an experiment and see!

One of the reasons I mention this is that we are discussing student group learning and Delicious.  In a way, by having students share their bookmarks, we are encouraging them to share learning.  But after watching this video, I wonder whether that is enough.  I loved seeing the intensity and excitement on the students in the videos, and I want to see that on my students as well.

What do you think?  Do we need more active ways to have students collaborate via skype, chat, etc. while researching?  Should they work in a group on one or two computers, and be encouraged to discuss their research aloud instead of learning in an isolated setting?  Active vs. passive learning...

It's worth thinking about!

I've been having so much fun online!

Hey, everyone,
Check out my portaportal, (guest id MaggieMcNeice) because I have found some amazing sites!  The 6th graders are studying the 50 states, and I got some good games for them.  I found a free digital music site called Jewelbeat that may help the 7th graders spiff up their SoPo history movies later this month.  I discovered BookWizard (a Scholastic site that gives readers the opportunity to find books similar to others they have read, and at their reading level.  And Edutopia just posted an article about the best technology tools for schools, which you may enjoy here.

Now, I'm off to do my homework!

Have a great week.
M.

RSS Feed

 Sumi - who insisted on sitting on me while I typed.

This past week I discovered the RSS feed technique of collecting and quickly perusing websites and blogs of interest.  I subscribed to NPR, several teaching blogs and site, and a couple of calligraphy blogs.  In the process of searching for sites to subscribe to, I found some I hadn't heard of before.  After a few days of getting the feed, I trimmed it a bit, so I wouldn't be overwhelmed by posts.  I also realized I could read them just in "list" format, which was much faster than the "expanded" mode.  I started to create folders, learned how to "star" items, tried out the "recommended" items, which are based (at least in part) on my history.  Found a few good items that way as well. 

Some of the info I get on the RSS feed duplicates posts I receive on Facebook (NPR, New York Times, Edutopia, Teacher Tom), but I can also see, if I were researching some topic in particular, that I could quickly gather information this way.  It still doesn't beat my old friend Google, though.  Whatever would we do without Google??

I have yet to attach my feed to a blog, partly because I don't know how to do it -- apparently I need code?  And partly because I still experimenting with the feed.  It might be worthwhile exploring how to do that, though.

I have also added some new categories and quite a few sites/blogs to my portaportal.  I found some great resources for my students, some good teacher sites, and some other interesting bits and pieces.
I like the clean visual layout of portaportal -- it's easy to navigate and click on links to all the different pages.  This will be very helpful when I have my students start to use it.

M.

Just Started my Portaportal

I can see that Portaportal is going to be very handy, especially if I have to turn in the laptop I am currently using, and risk losing all my bookmarks.  I have categories for school (reading, writing, math, science, social studies, teaching) and for the other side of my life, calligraphy.

One of the concerns I have heard many teachers express is how to know that a site is useful and appropriate for their students.  We want to be sure that we are giving our students the best resources available.  If a site has been vetted by other teachers and added to their own Portaportal, that is certainly a step in the right direction. I know I will be checking out other teachers' pages to see what they recommend.

When my kids were in elementary school, their favorite teacher had an incredible webpage (Yay, Mr. T!).  He encouraged kids to check out all the links he had collected for them, and in so doing, gave them the freedom to explore the web in a safe way.  As long as they were on a link from his website, parents were assured they were not in danger from the scary www.  (This was a few years ago, when not everyone was as comfortable with the internet as they are today.)

Although I am not as tech-saavy as Mr. T, I hope that my portaportal page will eventually become a similar sort of resource for my students.

PortaPortal

Isn't synchronicity wonderful?  I hadn't even heard of PortaPortal until this week, and today one of my tutoring students proudly showed me her new teacher's PortaPortal page, which led to a math game that you will ALL enjoy.  Well... if you were alive in the 80's, you will for sure!  Check it out here.

Meet "MathMan"!

 I mention this for two reasons. First, because watching my student navigate to the teacher's PortaPortal page and then to the game was enlightening (she's only been in school a few days, and very proudly and independently found her way there without a hitch).  Then, watching her play the game, explain her winning strategy, and do fairly complex math problems mentally, all while laughing and smiling, was a HUGE thrill.  This is a student who often stresses about new things, challenging tasks, etc, yet she was happily taking risks and pushing herself, under a time constraint.

Wow.

Make learning fun... and just see what happens!

Enjoy the game!

Exploring the World of Education Blogs & Sites

Sunset from Bug Light Park

Well, as summer winds down, I've been having a blast exploring education blogs.  Teachers are using technology in incredible ways!  If you take a look at my blogs and sites lists, you will see some of my favorites.

A teacher in rural Georgia has connected her kids to the world with technology.  The list of the programs and skills these highschoolers now understand is impressive, and will definitely help them maneuver college and become successful in the job of their choice.  The students all looked very engaged, and I particularly liked a part of the video that showed a student leading the class.

One blog shows how to convert a highlighter and Wii remote into an interactive computer "whiteboard" tool for use in the classroom (for about $50!).  Another has videos of kids performing math "raps."  I can see that the 8th grade science kids will get a lot out of Sciencefix.com, which displays and discusses videos about inertia, the visible light spectrum, natural selection, etc. Many of these demonstrations could be reproduced at home or in the classroom, giving students a way to participate in the activity and make their own discoveries, instead of just being "forcefed" information.

As a person who does not enjoy math, I was thrilled to find hooda.com -- it has an impressive array of math games, as well as tabs for teachers that give information on each game, the skills it covers, and supporting worksheets.  The tutorials section was a disappointment, however, because some of the visuals did not display, and others were  a little bit "low-tech."

On Facebook, I have been getting regular updates from Edutopia (the George Lucas Foundation's education blog), which is where I learned about Heather Wolpert-Gawron's tweenteacher.com site.  Heather is an experience middle school teacher (she has taught elementary through high school) with an incisive wit and a lot to say.  Check her out!

New Beginning

Already I can see that a classroom blog will have many applications, especially in a Special Education setting, where teaching needs to be tailored to each student's needs.  I also like the idea of giving students a voice and involving them in their education in a participatory way.

The URL for my blog "MMbitesizedchunks" speaks to the fact that I am good at taking lots of information and breaking it down into manageable bits for students to understand. Check out this article.   I look forward to using a blog to do this with my students this year.

Off we go!