BP9_2009112_busuu

I enjoy learning languages, but I can never seem to find the time to enroll in an actual class. Before I taught in Memphis, I had students who spoke languages other than English. Now, though all I have is native English speakers. As of this year, my class has been the inclusion classroom for the multi-handicapped class next door. One of the students is a native Spanish speaker. The other teacher and I have been working on ways for the students to communicate, including teaching my class Spanish. I haven't had a formal Spanish class since college, and I am very rusty so I was excited to see this Web 2.0 tool that teaches different languages, Busuu.com.

You learn directly from native speakers around the world. The site also has free interactive learning materials, which are currently available in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. You have two options for your account: 1)Free or 2)Premium. The free account includes a picture based vocabulary, writing exercises, reading comprehension exercises, video chats, and interactive exams. The Premium account right now costs about $45 for a 3 month membership. The prices are given in Euros, but luckily, there is a personal currency assistant for you to use to change it into dollars. The premium account also lets you hear audio for more than 3,000 key phrases, listening comprehension exercises, printable pdf's for more than 150 units, access to more than 35 grammar units, audio podcasts for more than 150 units, video units, and no advertisement is shown.

Since I never know how much free time I will have, I am going to begin with a free account, but the pricing seems to be less than a continuing education classes that last about 3 months. The format seems pleasing and easily usable. I think that I can use this website to improve my Spanish. It seems like it would be a viable option for anyone wishing to improve their knowledge of a language.

BP8_2009112_e-learning

I was very excited to find this Web 2.0 site. The internet has lots of educational games, but sometimes kids get bored playing the same ones over and over so I like to find different ones as much as possible.

The people at the e-Learning for Kids site have met two of my requirements. It is pleasing to look at and play, and it is free. Since my school budget never goes far enough, free is very important.

I also like how the games are separated by subject and age level. There are games for children ages 4-12 as well as information for parents and teachers. The subjects include science, language arts, English language, math, health & life skills, and computer skills. The topics are relevant to the things that students should be able to do at each age level. The games are clear and easy to play. They are not too simple nor too difficult. They are easy to navigate and check to make sure that you didn't accidentally choose to quit the game. Additionally, it is available in 5 languages if you have a need for a different one.

In my classroom, I would differentiate the activities based upon need. For example, in the language arts courses, I could place my Tier III children on Learning Letters because they need to work on recognizing the alphabet. My Tier II children could work with the Word Recognition game to practice short and long vowel sounds. My Tier I students are pretty advanced this year so I could let them go to Putting Words Together first. When they get proficient at that game, I could move them up to Pronouns or Similar & Opposite Words.

In math, we have the option of reviewing counting, sorting and classifying or money. I would probably introduce these games as a form of review after I knew the students were fairly proficient.

BP7_2009112_DIIGO

As I was researching social bookmarking, I came across several references to Diigo (http://www.diigo.com). I decided that I definitely wanted to find out more about this Web 2.0 tool.
I like using Delicious, but it seems that Diigo may have even more to offer.

One of the aspects of Diigo that appeals to me is the ability to highlight portions of the web page that I bookmark. Sometimes I am reading through something, find something really interesting, bookmark it, and then when I come back, I have no idea why I bookmarked it in the first place. The ability to highlight portions of the page or to attach sticky notes to specific parts of web pages will solve that problem. Even more importantly, these highlights and sticky notes are persistent so whenever I go back to that page I will see them. Not only can I see my thoughts on Diigo, but I can also share these with others. I can easily collaborate on research with my colleagues while getting their thoughts and feedback as well.

Plus, if I have a topic that I want more information on, I can search Diigo to find out what other's have tagged. Not only will I get the site, I will also gain insights by seeing who else has bookmarked it as well as other similar pages and sites that they have bookmarked.

Diigo also allows you to find people like me--those people who share your same interests. Once you find them, you can connect in lots of ways: invite them to add you as a friend, send messages, invite them to a group, or add them to your watchlist. These similar people may be able to point you in the direction of some great resources that you just have not discovered yet. I also know that when I get on a roll of finding new information, I often do not have time to fully explore it right then. Diigo also has a handy Read-later feature just for times like that.

I can see some great advantages to using this tool for organizing not only my websites but also my thoughts.

BP6_2009112_Flickr

When I searched the web for lesson plans using Flickr, I got a bit frustrated. I did find some lessons that looked promising, but I also found a lot of pages that just had Flickr embedded somewhere on the page. I am going to have to find a way to search smarter.

During my search, though, I found a few blogs discussing the use of Flickr in the classroom. One of the concerns was the fact that anyone can use Flickr. There are no safeguards in place that protect the children who are trying to use it. I believe this is why my school district has blocked the Flickr website. At the same time, most of the discussion centered around students who were old enough to type in the search function by themselves. I did find some interesting links to Flat Stanley type lessons, but the links would not work. I think a Flat Stanley type lesson or geography based lesson would be wonderful if you could control the kinds of images that the students were able to see.

I decided to post about an idea that I would like to develop for a lesson to use in my classroom instead of one that had already been posted to the Internet. One of the lessons that we do in math concerns symmetry. My idea is to take pictures in Flickr that have been tagged with the word symmetry and decide if they are truly symmetrical. We could discuss how we know something is symmetrical, etc. In order for this to truly work, I would have to find a way of getting the pictures to my class. Since Flickr is blocked by the district, I would have to work around that problem either by bringing in hard copies of the pictures or digital copies.

BP5_2009112_SocialBookmarking

The Internet contains a wealth of information--so much that no one person can access it all. It seems like almost every time that I look for information about a topic, I find what I am looking for and more. In the beginning, I began to bookmark pages on my browser. However, I got very frustrated because I couldn't access these links from all the computers that I used. I could never seem to remember that perfect site when I wanted it or the computer where I first found it. If I could remember which computer I was on, I would have to search through seemingly infinite lists of sites. Then I got better about organizing the sites in my bookmarks, but then my problem was that I couldn't remember where I put what.

This past summer at technology camp, I was introduced to social bookmarking tools such as Delicious. Now many of those problems that I had are solved. I can access my links from any computer. I can tag my entries so that I can find them more easily later.

This week, though, during my research of educational uses for social bookmarking, I have found out even more. I had never thought through the ways that I could use my social bookmarking account. Up until now, I have just scratched the surface of this powerful tool. Here are some ways that educators can use this tool.

Collaboration

1. Teacher to Teacher

Fryer (2007) states, "Grade-level teacher teams can collaboratively find and share resources." I have bookmarked things with people in mind, but it never occurred to me to collaborate with others on my grade level or even in my school using Delicious or any other bookmarking tool. My challenge here would be to "encourage" other teachers in my building to sign up and use a tool such as Delicious. We have varying levels of competency in using technology as well as the desire to do so.

2. Professor (Teacher) to Student

Christine Greenhow (2009) states, "Teachers can collectively assemble, annotate, recommend, and share scholarly resources, such as books, journal articles, websites, and contacts." I can remember my professors placing information in a file in the library for us to access to provide extra information about whatever we were studying. Using a tool such as Delicious would be much more efficient.

3. Library Media Specialist to Teacher (or student)

According to Baumbach (2009), on Delicious, you can "create a tag for each subject area, each teacher or each project and then generate a URL that will show only the links with that specific tag." Therefore, finding resources for specific teachers or topics would become much more efficient.

4. Student to Teacher (Professor)

Students can show their teacher where they read something online. Using Diigo, the students can bookmark it, share it with their teacher, and highlight the parts they think are important. Then the teacher can go back and assess their choices. In Hargardon's (2007) article, Dave Erhart states, "Diigo allows you to differentiate instructions starting from a basic level, where students must find a main topic or vocabulary words by highlighting and making comments to more sophisticated skills, in which the might be asked to highlight and discuss bias in an editorial."

5. Reasearchers at all levels

Cannata (2009) states that researchers at all levels, including students and faculty, can quickly set up a social bookmarking page for their research studies. Baumbach (2009) stated that you can "contact others who have similar interests to collaborate on ideas, projects, papers, publications, and/or presentations."

Baumbach, D. (2009). Your new BFF. Florida Media Quarterly, 34(2), 9-13.

Cannata, C. (2009). Folksonomy, tagging and taxonomy for effective learning: Perspectives of learning 2.0 in the XXI century. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 4(2), 26-32. Retrieved November 8, 2009 from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=42309028&site=ehost-live

Fryer. W. (2007). Social bookmarks 101. TechEdge, 27(1), 22-23. Retrieved November 8, 2009 from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=27680230&site=ehost-live

Greenhow, C. (2009). Tapping the wealth of social networks for professional development. Learning & leading with technology, 36(8), 10-11. Retrieved November 8, 2009 from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ842796&site=ehost-live

Hargardon, S. (2007). A little help from my friends: Classroom 2.0 educators share their experiences. School Library Journal, 53(10), 44-48. Retrieved November 8, 2009 from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ786410&site=ehost-live

BP4_2009112_Storybird

Web 2.0 tools abound, but the tricky part is finding one that can be used in Kindergarten. The really tricky part is finding one that can be used in Kindergarten and that is free. I came upon Storybird, which is designed to let friends and families collaborate on a story. Two or more people can create a Storybird by writing text and inserting pictures that are uploaded to the site. One starts it; then the other writes a bit or picks out a picture; then the first one takes over again. Then you can share your Storybird privately or publicly on the network. Right now making, sharing, and reading Storybirds is free. According to the site, they will always be free. However, later in the year, the site will introduce new options such as printing and premium services, which will not be free.

I am still exploring the site and reading different stories. I have not created a Storybird yet, but I would like to make one with the students in my class. Initially, what I would do would be to read a story from Storybird to them. Then we would reread it and pay close attention to the elements of the story--how the pictures relate to the words, is the grammar correct, etc. Then I would read the following story, my town. It is a great story, but it has grammatical errors, which could have been purposeful. First, we would read the story. Then we would reread the story and begin to analyze what needs to be corrected grammatically. Finally, we would collaborate on a story together making sure that the pictures match the words and that our grammar is correct. Using the site to collaborate on a story would allow us to begin to learn the process of writing and editing in a simple way. Since it is collaborative, the children would all be involved in the writing and editing and have a sense of ownership. One story is much quicker to edit than 20 stories so they wouldn't get so incredibly tired before the process is over.

my town by purplebeckyv on Storybird


purplebeckyv. (November 2, 2009). my town. Retrieved November 2, 2009 from http://storybird.com/books/my-town/.

BP3_2009111_RSSFeeds

I chose six different feeds to include on my RSS reader.

1. Educational Technology by Ray Schroeder, University of Illinois at Springfield--It includes, "news, techniques, and theories of effective use of technology in education." http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/blogger.html
I thought that I could always use ideas about new technology and how to use it in the classroom.

2. NPR Topics: Education--It includes, "NPR news and commentary on education, schools, colleges and universities, and emerging trends in learning." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1013&ft=1&f=1013
I thought that NPR would have a different perspective than what I usually get on education and should have some relevant content.

3. Free Technology for Teachers--It includes, "a review of free technology resources and how teachers can use them; Ideas for technology integration in education." http://www.freetech4teachers.com

I can never have too many ideas and resources. The fact that they are free is just an added bonus.

4. Hoagies Gifted Education Page--"the all things gifted resource"
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/whats_new.htm

I like to see what is new in gifted education just in case I can adapt it to some of my students. Gifted educators often think outside the box more than regular educators.

5. Learning Now--"Learning.now is a weblog that explores how new technology and Internet culture affect how educators teach and children learn. It will offer a continuing look at how new technology such as wikis, blogs, vlogs, RSS, podcasts, social networking sites, and the always-on culture of the Internet are impacting teacher and students' lives both inside and out of the classroom."
http://www.pbs.org/teachers/learning.now/info/

This site looked wonderful. Unfortunately there have been no posts in almost a year. Since I am an optimist, I went ahead and chose it just in case.

6. edublogger--Sue Waters talks "about emerging technologies on edublogs."
http://theedublogger.com/

I went ahead and added this last site just in case Learning Now never posts again. I think that I can learn a lot of useful information from Sue Waters as well as from the links that she posts.