Karen C. Seddon’s DEN Blog

Although EVERY teacher may be a stretch more and more teachers are dabbling with a web presence for their classrooms. Communication with parents and students is definitely improving.  Many teachers recognize what a great resource we can be to our students when we make our lessons, PowerPoints, handouts and even our voices readily available to them. There are many commercial teacher websites where one can easily create a place for classroom information, however most districts are in agreement that teacher websites need to be hosted on district servers. I don’t know about you, but I do not have enough time to learn web site design, but I am always excited when you only need to drag and drop or copy and paste to create a decent web presence.  In this “tuesdays”, I will highlight a fun and FREE way to make some engaging games and activities on your blog or website.

A creative website

ClassTools has a series of free FLASH educational games, activities, and diagrams. You add your content to the template and then you can copy and paste the code (that they create for you) into your school website.  As of this writing, they have 15 available templates that include Venn diagrams, a colorful target diagram, a dust bin game and even a Living Graph.  My favorite, so far, is the Random Name generator.  That comes in really handy when the same students always raise their hand and you want to keep your students on their toes.  (I made one for you to try on my blog by copying and pasting the code they gave me.) Be sure to check out the Source Analyser (can you tell it’s from England?) as a wonderful means to teach web site authentification.

An image to share

Office Online hosted “today’s clip” for April Fool’s Day.   Not everyone is laughing.

A proverb

For April Fool’s Day - “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”  Chinese proverb

An encouragement

If you haven’t looked into having a web presence, I would really encourage you to consider it for the sake of your students.  They understand how important the web is for gathering information and they would actually be reviewing what happened in class on their own time if they could do it ubiquitously! I want to give kudos to Osceola Districts Schools for just releasing a podcast server to the teachers just before Spring Break. Teachers who become district podcast certified are given a blog space where they can upload instructional podcasts to help their students learn in a 21^st century manner.  How is your district encouraging web presence for your teachers? If they are not there yet, perhaps you could encourage them to make space available for the teachers. The advantage is student learning will definitely be happening beyond the classroom walls when teachers make their materials available online. Let us know what’s happening in your district by posting a comment on my blog.

How do you do that?

What are the best practices for having a classroom presence online?  How do you know what is safe and useful to your students? The best rule of thumb is to think about what you would like to find. Wouldn’t it be great if you had all your worksheets or activities available to parents and students? Could you imagine how you can eliminate the “dog at my homework” or “I forgot to bring my papers home” tired old excuses? When you start you web presence, KISS - Keep It Simple Sweety.  Start with upcoming events, daily wisdom, and a few assignments or presentations that you have created. What are you favorite things you make available to your students on your web site?  Let us know in our “tuesdays” Professional Learning Community.

What are teachers saying?

Tales from the Teachers in the Trenches

“Technology makes teaching so much more fun. It is just wonderful and I hope to learn more and more about how to incorporate technology into my classroom. I’m just scratching the surface and just learning, but look out because I’m excited about the potential. ”  Patricia Pike,  Auburndale Central Elementary, 2^nd grade

As always, I am

Ubiquitously yours,

K 

The power of words is astounding. Just the right word at the right time can bring incredible results. Spewing the wrong word at the wrong time can cause results that are equally damaging. As teachers, choosing our words wisely is critical. No matter what subject we teach, vocabulary is an essential part of establishing understanding. Why not investigate the power of words using Web 2.0 tools? There are a plethora of new tools that I can only begin to examine with you in this issue of “tuesdays” but I hope that you will send in some of your findings so we can share.

A creative website
We are mapping just about everything these days. We have curriculum maps, learning focus maps, and strategic planning maps, why not word maps? Visuwords is a creative, online graphical dictionary. Unlike other dictionaries, this one is totally interactive. I typed in the word collaborative and by double-clicking one of the nodes, I learned a whole new word relative to collaborating - quisling. Did you know that a quisling is one who collaborates with an enemy occupying force? It came from WWII when Major Vidkum Quisling was a Norwegian traitor working for Nazi Germany. Today we think of collaborating in such positive light that is didn’t occur to me that it had a negative side to it also. This makes the study of words all the more fascinating. Give it a try with words that are relative to your classroom and see where they lead you. Visuwords is built on Princeton University’s open source database by university students and language researchers and is a free resource to all patrons of the web.

An image to share
This is a Visuword map made with the word collaboration. Some of the images that words create are quite attractive.

A proverb
“Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” Psalm 119:105 - King David

An encouragement
I would like to encourage you to create a love of words in your students. They normally see vocabulary as a chore, but with the rich tools available to us online, we may just peak their interest. These are a small collection of dictionaries and thesauri that I have also placed in my del.icio.us account to share. Click the tags for dictionary or words and you will easily get to this list.

What are some of your favorite and little known words? Where do you think I came up with Ubiquitously Yours? Let us know your favorite words by posting a comment below.

How do you do that?
How do you study words in the classroom? There are so many ways. Today, I see Word Walls everywhere I go. One teacher was doing her Word Wall in PowerPoint with her kindergarten students as they sounded out the names of their classmates. One of my favorite activities when I taught 5th grade was to bury overused words and use the thesaurus to find better descriptions. How I wish I had these online tools! We literally buried words like: nice, good, pretty, wonderful on tombstones. Although it sounds morbid, the tombstones were RIP (Rest in Peace) plaques decorated with our overused word and planted besides them were beautiful substitutes for these worn-out adjectives. How do you get your students interested in the vocabulary of your classroom? We would love to hear how you study words creatively on our “tuesdays” Professional Learning Community.

What are teachers saying?

Tales from the Teachers in the Trenches

“Every morning we start the day off using our projector to introduce the letter of the day. We’ve introduced the students to Audacity so they can record themselves. We have Leap Frogs and other Leap Frog items that they use on their own. This year has been awesome with our kids and we hoping that they will grow and continue using technology in 1st grade and help their teachers out! ” Christine Alfonso, Sunrise Elementary, Kindergarten

As always, I am
Ubiquitously yours,
K

“I’ve never been any good at math.” How many times have parents and students been allowed to make that comment as if it is no big deal? We don’t allow them to say that they are no good at reading or writing, but somehow it’s acceptable to not be good at math.  Math phobia can be removed with time and opportunity.  As we get closer to standardized testing times across the country, why not give the students a 21^st century way to enjoy math?  Have you ever considered allowing them to compete with students across the globe?  The Internet makes it possible and so very authentic. 

A creative website

I am very excited to bring you a FUN and FREE math site whether you are a math teacher or not. World Maths Day is next week, March 5^th.  The goal is to challenge students around the world to compete against each other on a quest to set a world record in answering mental arithmetic questions.  Last year, more than 287,000 students from 98 countries correctly answered over 38 million questions!  This year they hope to break the 50 million mark!  Answering mental math questions is a lot harder than it looks.  This initiative is part of VMathLive where they are raising up Mathletes who compete in real time games of speed and skill.  Math can be VERY exciting.  Don’t let them tell you they are no good at math.  Practice makes perfect! 

An image to share

Microsoft Office Online

A proverb

“The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple.”  S. Gudder

An encouragement

I would really love to challenge ALL teachers, not just math teachers, to take some time on March 5^th, World Math Day and get all our students involved.  Do you know what a great message that sends to the students when the Social Studies teacher or the TV production teacher takes some time out of their busy schedule to give them the opportunity to practice mental math skills?  While you are on the World Math Day site, there is a very small link in the bottom right corner, (click here for country details).  An amazing teachable moment awaits you there as you try to identify where all these nations are.  (Don’t worry, they will show you!) Let us know if you get involved and what the impact was on the students by posting a comment on my blog.

How do you do that?

I know how pressed you are for time and how the FCAT or whatever standardized test you have is looming over you, but I believe that is the very reason you need to step back and try this very challenging and engaging math experiment. If you don’t have a lot of time, create one account and project the site on a screen and play it a few times with the whole class.  If you have no access to computers in your room, consider booking the computer lab for March 5^th.  If those are not possible, give the kids the information and a log-in and let them find a way.  It’s amazing how much access they have to My Space these days.  They will find a way.  Let us know if you found World Math Day a valuable math experience or not  and if you had any “Mathletes”  by going to our “tuesdays” Professional Learning Community.

What are teachers saying?

Tales from the Teachers in the Trenches

“We have assembled a “Pod Squad” of students who create podcasts for our school. They use reading vocabulary words as the basis of their messages. They are creating the podcasts with Picassa,  Audacity, PhotoStory and more. The part I liked the best is that they are telling me that they are downloading these programs at home and showing their families. It doesn’t get any better than that! .” John Patience, Boggy Creek Elementary School, Instructional Technology Specialist

As always, I am

Ubiquitously yours,

K 

I was left wondering about something this past week that I’m not sure how to solve or even if it’s necessary. I was asked for help with keyboarding for students. The teacher was very concerned about the lack of keyboarding skills being taught today when our students type more than ever. That really got me wondering. When I was a kid, you learned to type in 9th grade whether you wanted to or not. It was not my favorite class at the time, but is by far one of the tangible evidences of a public school education that has helped me excel in so many other areas. What do you think? Do students need to have formal keyboarding skills? Does it need to be taught right away? We obviously can’t wait until 9th grade anymore!

A creative websiteI’m of two minds when it comes to formally teaching the students keyboarding. I see the absolute necessity of how I needed to learn keyboarding and its benefits to speed and accuracy. It also affords me the ease to create using a computer with no drudgery. However, I do watch this generation in marvel as they develop their own text messaging skills without any help from us! Have you tried to text message like your teenager? In the meantime, I would like to highlight a neat little online keyboarding skills builder that you can examine: Keybr.com and Learn 2 Type is a FREE typing test and typing tutor that helps you master the keyboard over the self taught hunt & peck method. There is also kid friendly version for your consideration and a FREE school version where teachers can monitor their students’ performance and improvements.An image to shareMicrosoft Office Clip Art onlineA proverb“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” Harry S. TrumanAn encouragementThe reason I am of two minds about teaching keyboard is not only the kids amazing ability to create their own systems, but the lack of creativity. I would really like to generate a dialogue about this dilemma because I can see strong points for insisting that students learn how to type on the QWERTY keyboard in a manner that will build speed and efficiency. I also see the lack of time and resources need to invest in such a rote skill. How early do you start? Children today put a mouse in their hand as if it is a normal appendage. Are they really handicapped by not learning to type like we did? Let us know some of your opinion about teaching keyboarding skills on my blog.How do you do that?Learn 2 Type has their own little video tutorials that walk you through how to use the site to build up speed and accuracy. I took the typing test five times to generate a certificate and discovered how they make their money - they charge for the certificate! Since I didn’t care for a certificate it still made the FREE part of the site very appealing. You do suffer from adware overload, but the test capabilities are awesome. My highest score was 57 WPM and my lowest was 36. The other keyboard at Keybr.com had interesting charts and tracking features and a lot less ads. Should we be teaching keyboarding in our elementary schools? Let us know what you think in our “tuesdays” Professional Learning Community.What are teachers saying?Tales from the Teachers in the Trenches“My 4th grade class paired with a 1st grade class while researching Arctic animals for a webquest. My students set up the laptops, added favorites to the computers and assisted the 1st graders in reading the information and summarizing what they learned about their Arctic animals. It was a great learning opportunity.” Shelley Gerber, Lincoln Avenue Academy, 4th grade teacherAs always, I amUbiquitously yours,K

We live in such a fast-paced age with information that comes at us through multiple forms of media. Even our television viewing has been transformed since the DVR and the ability to record live TV. We are a clickable, on demand society. As we use the Internet more and more, bookmarking websites in our Favorites is common-place, but don’t ask me to remember the address! It’s no different with our cell phones. Who remembers phone numbers anymore? You just click speed dial 4 and your best friend’s number automatically rings. Bookmarks work much in the same manner. There’s only one problem. Your cell phone is easily carried around with you. Your home computer is a little heavier!

A creative website
Furls are the answer to the “I can’t remember the website” dilemma. Why not have a place on the Internet where you can bookmark all your favorite websites and have access to them “ubiquitously!” (sorry, I couldn’t resist) Furl websites include www.furl.net, http://simpy.sourceforge.net/, but the most popular is del.icio.us. You have no need to be tied to one computer anymore. With your bookmarks saved to an internet site, you simply log on to the Internet, log into your favorite social bookmarking site and all your favorites are there, no matter whose computer you are using. Best of all you can share! Pretty cool stuff.

An image to share.
Public domain images that are high quality go overlooked on the USA.gov site. This image is from the collection, Earth Art. Isn’t it beautiful?

A proverb
“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” Buddha

An encouragement
Now what do social bookmarks have to do with the classroom? Just about everything. As we give our students projects and research to do, they can spend half their time on unnecessary surfing. Sending them to your del.icio.us site gives them the exact places that you want them to go. They can even leave comments about what they have found, learn to paraphrase information they are looking for and share sites with other users. I would also encourage students to create their own social bookmarking site such as iKeepbookmarks.com because they definitely cannot bookmark at school. Why not encourage them to develop research skills that will enable them to quickly return to websites for further investigation and more detailed reading any time, any place and at any pace (and may I add from any computer!) Let me know your favorite uses for social bookmarking on my blog.

How do you do that?
Using delicious is really a breeze. I’ve created a special delicious account for “tuesdays” so that you can experiment with its ease of use. The most effective part of using this social bookmarking site is the ability to “tag” your favorites. Create hints that best describe the website and these hints or “tags” give you the ability to search by topic. You can even add other users of delicious to your network and search through their sites. This can lead to other people in their networks who in turn share your favorites and the sharing can get exponential. Give it a try. Create an account and use a name that will actually identify you so that others who would like to share with you would be willing to join also. For those teachers who are already using social bookmarking in the classroom, please considering joining the conversation in our “tuesdays” Professional Learning Community.

What are teachers saying?

Tales from the Teachers in the Trenches
“With the introduction of iMacs in my classroom, I am able to teach the students (K-5) cross-platform on both Macs and Windows. I am able to show them the benefits of more than one platform and it is very important to show them the differences and give them a lot of exposure to help them make their own decisions to what platform they may want to use in the future.” Sherry Black, McKeel Elementary Academy

As always, I am
Ubiquitously yours,
K

It is so hard for classroom teachers to leave their students to attend conferences.  It is also very difficult to prepare for a substitute and for schools to pick up the cost of travel, registration and sub pay. Yet, conferences offer teachers some of the greatest professional development opportunities anywhere. My absolute favorite technology conference is FETC (Florida Educational Technology Conference) in Orlando each year.  I have learned more, gained more skills and broaden my network of tech buddies more than any other place.  This “tuesdays” I am writing from FETC!    

A creative website 

Don’t be discouraged.  You can be at FETC! This is the perfect time to learn to be “a podcatcher,” one who subscribes to a podcast.  The best podcast available for teachers who want to learn about the latest and greatest in instructional technology is without doubt - Conference Connections by the Apple Distinguished Educators. Even if you get to go to FETC, you cannot possibly attend every session and hear every speaker.  The Apple Distinguish Educators record as many of the top speakers and sessions as possible and host them for you FREE in iTunes.  I have learned more about technology since I’ve been podcasting than all of the years I’ve been going to conferences. Look for them a few weeks after the conference is over.

An image to share

An image to share.

My feature image is the logo for Conference Connections (just a hint to really check it out!)

A proverb

“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” Jim Robin 

An encouragement

With standardized tests just around the corner, it may seem crazy to mention professional development, but keeping yourself current in your field also keeps you sane.  Can you imagine if you only had standardized test preparation to look forward to?  Technology integration offers the answers to engaging our students. Learning unique ways to utilize technology comes from hearing/seeing what others are doing and then “tweeking” it to meet the needs of your students.  I really would like to encourage you to listen to the following episodes of Conference Connections: Secondary Leadership with David Gordon, Tales of a Classroom Blogger (both from FETC 2007), David Warlick, TEC SIG luncheon (long, but great) and Mitchel Resnick: Sowing the Seeds for a More Creative Society.  Let me know your favorites in the comments.

How do you do that?

Using Conference Connections is really easy, but don’t you hate when people say that and then assume you know how to do something?  To listen to Conference Connections podcasts, you have options.  You can go to the Conference Connections website and click the RSS feed button.  This will notify you in email when there is a new episode.  Then you can click the link they send, go back to their website, listen to it on your computer or download it for later.  The way I prefer to get them is to subscribe in iTunes.  Open iTunes and click on the iTunes store and type Conference Connections in the search window.  Click subscribe and then any new episodes will be automatically downloaded to your iTunes.  Just be careful to delete the ones that you don’t really care about.  Overtime, you could have quite a collection.  Synch you iPod and the podcast is automatically ready for you to listen while you do the dishes, vacuum or other fun jobs. (It does make those chores go quickly!)

What are teachers saying? 

Tales from the Teachers in the Trenches

“Technology has been a huge help building background knowledge for my students. Sometimes we forget that we’ve lived a whole life and they’ve only been around for 10-11-12 years so there’s a lot of things they don’t know. It’s a whole lot easier to show them something than to describe it.”  Ramona Fischer, Boone Middle School

As always, I am,

Ubiquitously yours,

K

http://www.ecubedcreative.com 

Grace Wycliffe (SL)