Tweet This!

I've posted a few thing about Twitter before and have had a few people that seemed to be interested in looking a little into it. I really think this is great for all teachers to use and I have found it very helpful every single day. I'm not exaggerating when I say that. These amazing sites that I post come from following amazing teachers on Twitter and my Google Reader. I'm hovering around 600 followers and the information exchange has been non-stop since January.

Being apart of this PLN I have put together was simple and rewarding. If this is something that you think you want to be apart of, please email me by clicking here. If we get enough people, we can use some PLC time and I can show you the full force of the PLN. I'm also wil be in my room working on various things on the Tuesday of MME testing. If you have questions about the blog, Twitter, Smartboards, etc., please feel free to swing by room and I'll help you out.

Please do not hesitate to drop me an email with any other ideas or suggestions that other teachers might find helpful. I'm always looking for good ideas to share and write about. I hope all of you have a great week.

- Give it a try!

99 Polls

99Polls is a quick and easy way to get information. In under five minutes I was able to create and post a poll to my blog about Twitter and Teachers. You sign up for free and get started. Your homepage collects all of the data from your poll. This is great if you have polls set up on your blog, school homepage and any other locations. I love to get feedback from my students about lessons that I have taught, but I always feel they hold back because they do not want to offend me. It is really important to assess your own lessons, but feedback from the students is something teachers should not shy away from. The harshest criticism can help create the best lessons.


Try using this simple site to gauge the learning of a particular lesson one day. You might be interested is the response you get from your students. This is just another great and easy way to make the classroom a better place.

- Give it a try!

Digital Natives

Digital Natives are people that have grown up their entire life with with 21st Century Technology. Digital Immigrants grew up in a time before 21st Century Technology and are learning to use it now. Here is an interesting slide show that explains Digital Natives. As teachers, these are the students that are in our classroom. If you are a Digital Immigrant, how are you trying to reach the Natives.

Digital Natives

View more presentations from Nick Skytland.

Thanks to Kathleen McGeady for sharing this slide show.

60Second Recap

I found this site today and I have to share it with everyone. As an English teacher, it is tough to get students to read "Classics". They complain about the language and want to know how this will ever be important. I spend countless hours coming up with lessons to intorduce the novel in a fun way in the hopes to hook some of the reluctant readers. 60Second Recap is a great site to use to really help students get a handle on what the story is about.

Here is their Mission Statement:

"60second Recap™ wants to make the great works of literature accessible, relevant, and, frankly, irresistible to today's teens. Through 60second Recap™ video albums, we seek to help teens engage with the best books out there ... not just to help them get better grades, but to help them build better lives."

I love this mission statement. It really expresses the goal of all literature teachers. I watched the first video on Hamlet, my favorite Shakespeare play, and was very happy with what I saw. Hamlet, played by Jenny, is taking an online quiz, "Are you Mad?" It gives a nice bit of information about different aspects of the play. There are videos on Motif, Theme, Plot, Symbols, and the Characters in the play. It was a very well put together piece.

60Second Recap currently offers recaps of some great pieces of Literature. Here are just a few:


Animal Farm
Brave New World
Fahrenheit 451 (On my Top 5 All Time List)
The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn
Catcher in the Rye (On my Top 5 All Time List)
The Great Gatsby (On my Top 5 All Time List)

There are many more great pieces of Literature that get the 60Second Recap treatment. I strongly encourage all Literature teachers to give this site a look over and use them with your students.

-Give it a try!

See The World From Your Classroom

Here is a great site teachers can use to explore different parts of the world. Here are some of the places you can go:

Explore the Taj Mahal
Stonehenge
 
Mount St. Helens

The Supreme Court

US Capitol Virtual Tour
 
Louvre
 
Just click on this link and you will have access to 100 Great Trips you can take your students on.
 
Give it a Try!

Math + Jeopardy = Awesomeness!

Here is a link that will take you to a site that has a Jeopardy game set up for you. You can decided on how many teams and the difficulty level. It can go up to 8th grade, but I'm sure some HS students could use the refresher on certain aspects of Math. I think we all could. This would work well with the Smartboard in your room. See how it works in your class.

Give it a try!

Posterize Yourself

Thank to Dee for sharing this cool site. :-)

Blockposters.com was sent to me by a fellow teacher and it looks like a winner. It's a very simple 3 step process.


1. Upload the image of your choice.

2. Decide how big you want the poster to be.

3. Download your poster as a PDF.

The website chops up the picture into seperate pages that you can print our and assemble yourself. Student projects or class rules could be turned into larger posters you can hang in your room. Have a look around and let me know what you think.

- Give it a try.

iNudge - Make Beautiful Music

• 
  
  iNudge.net

Here is an interesting site for the Music Teacher in the district. You can create you music with this free device. Here are some of the things you can do on iNudge.

• * Select 1 of 8 different Sound Patterns from the small Matrixes icons on the right.
  * Use your mouse to draw notes on each 16 Step Matrix.
  * For each Pattern, adjust Volume, Mute, Clear, or set Audio Pan from Left to Right.
  * Click on the Tempo numbers and click up or down to change the overall Tempo.
  * Get & Share allows you to Send Mail, Get Link, Get Embed code or Spread in communities.
  * Use the Feedback Forum to tell us what you think, leave your comments or make suggestions.

This could be a fun site to have music students play with or little children to use to learn about notes. Play around with it and see what you can so with it.

-Give it a try!

Math Teachers Unite!

It was brought to my attention that it is World Math Day on March 3rd by Kelly Tenkely and her iLearn Technology blog post. I thought this would be a fun site to share with the Math teachers in the district. It's a free site for students 5-18 years old and they can practice Math with various games leading up to the main event on March 3rd. The main event is a competition that involves 60 second games and points are awarded to the student for every correct answer. The goal for a students is receive the most points and enter the Hall of Fame. It looks like a nice way to change up the pace for a day and really let kids have a chance to use their math and take some pride in their skills. Plus, wouldn't you want to brag if your students made the Hall of Fame? You know I would. :-) Check out the World Math Day site or iLearn Technology for more details.

-Give it a try!

Helpful Science Websites

Here a couple of great links for Science teachers to check out. I did some searching and asked some friends and this was what they suggested. Some of the pages looked interesting to a non Science person, so I hope they can be helpful to your students.

• HHMI's BioInteractive
• Great Site for Science Teachers!
  Tags: Teachers, Science
• 
  
  Science Netlinks: Lesson Index
  Great place for science links.
  Tags: Teachers, Science

Posted from Diigo.

Side Bar - Another cool thing about using Diigo is that these links were posted on my blog from the site. All I needed to do was add a few comments at the top and the post is good to go. Diigo Rules.

-Give it a try!

Typing Practice

iLearn Technology posted a few thoughts and links about two cool typing sites. I wish I had these instead of dying of dysentary on the Oregon Trail. @KTenkely does a marvelous job explaining the sites. One is based on Rock Band where kids have to hit they keys to keep up with the music and the other focuses spelling words as they float across the screen. See if it can be helpful in your class.

Typing Practice

Give it a try!

Stats For The World - Gapminder

Here is a site that D. Nardone passed on to me so that I could share it with the wonderful teachers at South. The website Gapminder is a site that focuses on statistics on the world. This page will take youto different graphs they have put together. They have graphs for the oil production of different countries from around the world. There is a graph on the life expectancy of people in other countries. There is even a graph on dental care of the people of other countries! This looks like it could be a very useful tool in Social Studies and possibly Math. Thanks again Dee for the share.

-Give it a try!

Document Camera Tips

I found this great blog post and I wanted to share it with all of the teachers out there that have document cameras. It's a blog my Melissa Edwards (@mwedwards) called "Technology: Figuring Out How The Pieces Fit" This is a wonderful blog that offers great tips and links to very helpful sites. Read her post and look at the many different ways you can use the document camera in class.

Give it a try!

RSS Feeds You Information

Have you ever found a website that you really liked, but don't always have the time to go back and check to see if there are any new articles? Do you visit a website that seems to post new stuff at random intervals? An RSS(Real Simple Syndication ) Feed can save you the time. By setting up a RSS Feed (I use Google) all of my favorite websites are scanned for new articles and stored in a folder. I can now access that information when I have time. It's a great time saver! I found a couple of links that will walk you through how to set up your reader.

Newbie's Guide to Google Reader by Josh Lowensohn is a nice article explaining the wonderful uses of Google Reader.

Google Reader Tour - This is the link to Google's walkthrough.

I like using the RSS Feed because it can help me organize my websites by content (Brit Lit, American Lit, Sports, World News, etc.) and I can look at them when I have time. If you have a smart phone, you can access your feed on the phone and read the articles from anywhere. This is just another tool to add to the box to help keep yourself organized and up-to-date on the latest information.

After setting up your reader, just click on the RSS Feed button on your favorite website, andit will send you the newest articles. Try following your favorite tech teacher.

-Give it a try!

History Alive!

As a short lived Social Studies teacher, I know I would have found this website very useful in my classroom.

Digital History is a huge site developed by The Chicago Historical Society, The University of Houston, The National Park Service, and other groups dedicated to preserving history. They have enabled their search engine to find primary sources of information. Here is a link to the New York Times reporting on the Dred Scott Case. Primary sources can be tough for students to find on the internet, so this is a great tool for students to have access to very valuable information. Here is another link to the Journal of Christopher Columbus. Students will no longer be able to say they could not find a primary source for their paper. It is a great tool that I can even use in my English classes if I wanted students to watch the video and read the text of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Simple searches can open a world of possibilities for your class and your students.

An interactive timeline is a great visual tool for students. Links to speeches and other wonderful sources could help make the Social Studies Classroom a more interactive environment for student learning.

Give it a try.

Math Fun

I stumbled upon a really good site for the Math teachers to look through. For those of you who know me, I'm not a Math person by any means, but this interactive site looked helpful and interesting to me.

Math Playground is a site that has tons of great resources. The best part of the site, is that many of the lessons and games they have on their are interactive. This means you can utilize your Smartboard in class. Most kids learn better if they are allowed to get up and interact with the lesson they are learning. These games could be used for review or shortened class periods to reinforce the lessons you have already covered.

I played Alien Angles for a couple minutes and it was interesting. Students need to set the correct angle they give you to allow the Aliens to land their craft safely. Some of the games might not be helpful at all levels, but there are some that could be very helpful to struggling learners as they try to catch up in class. 

Interactive Sudoku is a fun game under Logic Puzzles. It forces kids to think of the big picture as they place the numbers in the appropriate boxes.

Word Problems is a bit young for High School, but you may find some parts of it useful for your classes.

Math Videos has a ton of useful video Algebra, Geometry and other useful Math areas.

Take a look at the site and see if there is anything you could use. Give it a try.

I Need My Teacher To Learn

Some people might think that this song might be a bit cheesy, but I think the message is important. Thanks to @xmath2007 for sharing this on Twitter.




Here is the link if you cannot watch the video above.

Why You Should Tweet!

Yes, I tweet. Feel free to make your twit joke now. I started to use Twitter at the start of the school year after an article I read about using it for schools. You might be surprised to know that Grosse Pointe North has a Twitter account. So does the school district. There is a very good reason they tweet. Information. Spreading information is key in our job and Twitter is just another way to do that.

Getting started is not as scary as you think. Here is a link to get the skinny on Twitter. It's on a blog by Kate Klingensmith and she always has something interesting to say on various topics. I also bookmarked it on my Diigo account as well. A simple Google search will bring up many articles and blogs telling you why tweeting as a teacher is a great thing. I will tell you why it is a good thing from my experience.

Reasons Why I Tweet as a Teacher:

1. It gives my students to be connected to the class at all times. If I have something I want my students to know about, I no longer have to wait until the next day. That information is there in an instant. I always seem to come across something on TV that I would love for my kids to watch, but I can't tell them in time. Now they could know.

2. It can keep me informed about the world around me when I'm out and about. You can follow many different news sites and receive information from around the world. In the information age, having access to the information is important.

3. There are smart teachers out there. There are many great teaches out there that tweet about great sites they use in class or practices that have worked well for them. It would be crazy to not want to be in contact with them. Sharing is a huge part of what teachers do all day. Why not reach out and share your ideas with other teachers and take the ideas they have if you want. Learning is global. It's important for you start thinking and sharing that way.

4. Sick Days! On the occasion that I'm not feeling well, I can send a tweet to my followers to let them know that I will not be in school and they have an extra day on their assignment. Kids love to hear about extra time on assignments. Now they can show up to your class knowing what to expect.

5. Parent contact. Not all parents are on Twitter, but the numbers are growing. This is another way for you to reach out to parents and share information. Let them know that the online gradebook has been updated. Let them know about the project that is due next week and that the information can be found on your website. Communication is very important in our job. This is just another tool for our box.

6. I talk too much! I  have had to learn to be concise with my information. With only 140 character, I have learned to put the focus on the important information. If I could only do that for my story telling.

There are many more uses for Twitter, but those are some of the big ones. Think of the many different things you could do with another from of communication. Give it a try!

"I Can't Find Any Information!"

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard that from my students. Another one I love to hear is, "What do you mean I can't use Wikipedia as a source?" As an English Teacher, I have spent many long hours teaching students how to conduct proper searches on the internet. In case any of you do not know, all Freshmen at Grosse Pointe South are taught about proper searches and proper citation. They should never be able to tell you that they were never taught how to properly cite information or where to look that information up.

With that having been said, sometimes I just want my students to look at a few specific websites for a specific project. I have started using a great site I want to share with you great teachers. The site is called Diigo and it is a bookmarking site. By creating a free profile, you can add specific pages to your account and direct students or other teachers to look at them. That is not the only thing you can do with this great tool though.

Highlighting - You can highlight specific information before you bookmark the site. This can save people time when there is to much information to read through and all you want is a few lines.

Sticky Notes - You can places notes on the highlighted areas to remind you of their relevance. There have been too many times where I have bookmarked a site and I could not remember why I saved it a day or so later.

Groups - You can create specific groups and send pages you find to that group only. You can make the group a public group (anyone can join) or a private group (you select who can join). After some time, I will make the teacher's group a private group to keep nosy teenagers at bay.

Email - You can directly email any site yo find to yourself or other teachers. You can create an address book and send the site directly to students or to other teachers in your department.

Teacher Account - You can request to sign up for a Teacher Account from Diigo. This will allow you to sign up students to join your specific groups that you have created. I have a Teacher Account, but am not using it with my students yet. I'm just creating groups and keeping them open to the public. I put links to them on my website so they can view the groups without an account. It could come in handy if I want to email them sites to look at over the weekend.

Linking Accounts - Diigo allows you to link your blog and Twitter accounts to your Diigo account. This way, if you bookmark something, it can be posted to you blog and your Twitter. You can set up a your account to post all the bookmarks you have made to your blog. It can be set for a daily, twice daily or weekly. This is a great way to save you time. You can also link your iPhone to Diigo as well. Download the Diigo App and you will have access to anything that you have bookmarked. It migth be available for other phones, but you would have to check for that.

The best way to start bookmarking after you create your account is to download the toolbar. It will sit at the top of your browser and you just click the bookmark button when you want to share a website. There are many other great parts of Diigo that you can use. It's best to log on and play around a bit. Have fun!