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
Goodness! I can't imagine how much you get accomplished in a week when you are not sick! Good learning and great application of what you have learned this week, Maggie. Your portaportal sounds functional and helpful, your google sites ideas brewing, and your google docs thinking expanding, too. Speak to Steve about the best way to get gmail accounts for kids. You can have them set up their own at home, but I think we are beginning to want a standard protocol in the naming for all kids. Also, it is good to notify parents, although I don't think we need to seek permission.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy learning about wikis this week. Remember: you do not have to integrate all 12 tools into your teaching practice!