Karen C. Seddon’s DEN Blog

I hear a sigh of relief. I see the faces of curiosity. I smell the spirit of creativity wherever and whenever I visit schools these days.  The tests are over! The tests are over!  It’s time to do some creative things.  What’s wrong with that picture? How can we separate creativity from the normal learning environment? Somehow, we manage to dedicate a whole quarter (if not more) to the serious business of preparing for the test. I was at the Palm Beach Tech Conference last week and Mark Benno from Apple shared a very cool video that I thought you would enjoy.  This “tuesdays” is all about that creative flow that helps our students to be all they can be.

A creative website

This little toe tapping website has a powerful message.  Be sure to watch this little 2 min. video, Not On The Test. It’s a powerful message and a great way to help those of us who love creativity in the classroom help get the word out.  It’s not so easy to prove that students learn better in a creative classroom, but it’s very easy to observe.  Did you know that young people who consistently participate in comprehensive, sequential, and rigorous arts programs are 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, 3 times more likely to be elected to class office within their schools, 4 times more likely to participate in math and science fairs, 3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance and 4 times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem.  I got those facts from Tom Chapin’s website.  Is your toe tapping yet?

An image to share

Hedges, Kathryn. dsc07881.jpg. 2005. Pics4Learning. 8 Apr 2008 <http://pics.tech4learning.com>

A proverb

“Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you’re alive, it isn’t.”  Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull

An encouragement

The encouragement I would like to give all teachers is to trust your students. We tend to not offer students the ability to try new technologies or creative projects if we are not comfortable with them.  The reasoning goes something like this, “If it took me 2 hours to learn this, it will probably take 4 hours for my students.”  Ironically, it is probably the exact opposite. They most likely need half the time to learn new and creative ways to accomplish the task at hand.  Our job as educators is to give them time and opportunity.   Let us know what creative projects have been successful in your classroom by posting a comment on my blog.

How do you do that?

How do you give the students time and opportunity to be creative? There no ONE way, there’s a multitude of styles and environments, but mostly importantly you must establish trust and accountability. When equipment is limited, use stations, centers, labs and rotations to give the kids a chance to put their hands on the creative tools of today: mp3 players, digital cameras, digital camcorders, SMART Boards, etc. Establish and practice a dignified signal to get their attention and complete silence when needed, but don’t overuse it. Teach them to appreciate the opportunity for you can surely say, “I giveth and I taketh away.”  Once the students understand the power of having a time to become producers of their content, they are very careful to guard the opportunity. Let us know what classroom management tips you have for creative projects in our “tuesdays” Professional Learning Community.

What are teachers saying?

Tales from the Teachers in the Trenches

“We have audio enhancement which is a really cool thing to have in the classroom.  The kids get a kick out of it because they get a microphone that they can pass back and forth when they are reading or when they have to make a comment.  It kind of puts the spot light on them and allows them to express their ideas and there isn’t anyone in the classroom that can’t hear what they say.  It really makes an impact on them. ”  Tim Hefner, Flora Ridge Elementary, 5th grade

As always, I am

Ubiquitously yours,

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 

Today is Super Tuesday in the political world and Fat Tuesday, the final day of Mardi Gras. Now how can you compete with that? You can’t! So let’s just have a little “tuesdays” fun with creative technology. I am out and about asking teachers to describe how technology has impacted teaching and learning in their classrooms and without a doubt, there is a greater desire to create electronic presentations particularly in video format. Most of us (me, included) are still too overwhelmed by video cameras and file formats, what works with what and so on. This “tuesdays” I’d like to take a look at an amazing website I learned about at FETC from Hall Davidson.

A creative website
As we become more and more digital, it’s becoming more an more complicated to understand file format and what works on what machine. Media-Convert will help you understand the vast file formats that are out there AND the best part is that they will convert the files for you into a format that you want. I had a nice surprise while using Keynote (Mac’s presentation software) because it let me convert it to PowerPoint, Flash, a video and even a pdf. However, not all machines are alike and we want to make our creations accessible to our students and other teachers. Using Media-Convert is the best manner of converting audio files, video presentations, documents, spreadsheets, and all electronic creations in our classrooms. It’s incredibly convenient because you upload your file to their site, they do the converting and then you downloaded it to your machine. Best of all, it’s online. You need no software on your machine and you have access to it anywhere you have access to the Internet. That’s so 21st century! DO NOT use this site with your students. Because it is FREE the ads are obnoxious. For that I am sorry.

An image to share

Huber, Joe. neworleansfloat1.jpg. 2006. Pics4Learning. 5 Feb 2008 <http://pics.tech4learning.com>

A proverb
“You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.” Clay P. Bedford

An encouragement
What is the last step of the writing process? Publish! Everyone who writes wants to be published. This certainly applies to electronic creations. I want to encourage you to share your presentations, documents and lessons with others. There’s no telling how you may be encouraging someone else. It may be a teacher looking for the perfect lesson. It may be a student who needs to see the same concept from a different angle. Creating our lessons digitally allows us to “publish” our documents and it encourages the students to be more diligent and professional with their assignments when they know they have a wider audience. Students today know the value of communicating online. Let’s give them the skills to be published authors in all electronic formats. Let us know some of your experiences with publishing your works or student works on my blog.

How do you do that?
Here are a few quick steps for converting a file using Media-Convert. Click this link and scroll down to How to convert a file. Click Choose File and upload the file from your computer that you want to convert. It will automatically detect what kind of file it is! (now that’s pretty incredible in itself). Scroll down a little bit more and look for output format. The drop window will give many possibilities to choose from. I went from a PowerPoint to a pdf. The combinations are limitless. Think of all the times you took little videos with your digital camera and they wouldn’t play on someone else computer. Change the format here. Think of your students that don’t have the same programs that you do. Change to pdfs. here. Almost all computers will read a pdf these days. The point is - go digital, find a format that works most universally for your audience and then publish! For those teachers who are already publishing electronic creations in the classroom, please consider joining the conversation in our “tuesdays” Professional Learning Community.

What are teachers saying?

Tales from the Teachers in the Trenches
“Technology affects my students all day, every day, especially with the collaboration that is happening between them. We use BlackBoard to share presentations, websites and even Gaggle.net email. ” Autumn Stiene, Dundee Elementary School, 1st grade

As always, I am
Ubiquitously 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