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

Imagination. Can you use your imagination during the high stakes testing season? You bet. The best antidote for test anxiety is imagination. Let’s encourage the students to use their imaginations because will stretch their thinking abilities. Let’s add a little fun and creativity to their routine. All children naturally love to draw. It’s only as they get older that they think they can’t draw. Sir Kenneth Robinson, one of my favorite speakers from TED Talks, says we are educating children out of their creativity. Could it be true? Let’s give them time to use their creative imaginations.

A creative website
We have had so many unique Web 2.0 tools come into education in the last few years that you can barely keep up with them. I am so tickled by this cool site called Imagination Cubed. This exciting new way to brainstorm was created by “…the same nice people who brought us that dishwasher churning away in the next room - General Electric!” What makes this interactive whiteboard so much fun is that there are no accounts so you never have to register or have your students give any personal information. You can even invite 2 other people to simultaneously use your white board! Can you imagine what teachers and students will come up with when they get their imaginations going? When you have finished your creation, you can even email it, save it or print it (if you must). Imagination Cubed is pretty drawn creative.

An image to share

This image is my dabbling attempt with Imagination Cubed.com. I was just fascinated with the beauty, ease and fun. Give it a try!

A proverb
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.” Albert Einstein

An encouragement
I think we need to remember that no matter how old, or how big our students may be, they are just children and children still need to play. These electronic crayons in their hands may just be the tool to release the creative juices that fuel their desire to learn. I love the sayings on the opening of the Imagination Cubed site. “GE - imagination at work”, “share ideas”, “share creativity”, “drawing builds creativity”, “imagination draws us together.” So many of our large corporations understand that investing in creativity brings them a great return on investment (ROI). Look at Google. Each employee is given 20% of their work time to create. As a result, we have Google Earth, Google Docs, Gmail and more. Investing in creative projects in school will be our greatest ROI. Let us know how you feel by posting a comment below.

How do you do that?
The strength of Imagination Cubed is that you DO NOT need to create an account! Simply go to
www.imaginationcubed.com and watch the little demo. Find the on-screen menu buttons to select a tool. There is even a little palette to choose colors and sizes and patterns. (That’s where I found the clouds.) Create your masterpiece. You do have a limited amount of ink so you need to be sure to watch the ink level gauge in the upper-right corner of the screen. You can even click the replay button and it will reenact what you have done. So what do you do with this masterpiece? You have the option to email it to someone, save it as a file or even to print it. Once you leave the site, it’s gone! I have not tried more than one pen, but it has the capability for 2 more to collaborate with you on the same drawing. How can a tool like this be an educational tool? We would love to hear from you on our “tuesdays” Professional Learning Community.

What are teachers saying?

Tales from the Teachers in the Trenches

“We instituted a year-long training series for our teachers trying to get them involved, excited and more knowledgeable about technology. We’ve done Picasa, we’ve done Movie Maker, and it’s so exciting to hear them when they tell what they’ve done in their classrooms and how their kids are reacting to it. Our students are such digital natives. We see them on a daily basis with their cell phones, iPods and mp3 players and we really want to be able to engage those students. We think our teachers are making great strides to learn how to do that this year.” Linda Sanders, Lake Gibson High School, Media Specialist

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

A creative website

Using Skype is the perfect example taking care of business on the spot. Skype is FREE software that you download to you computer so that you can talk, chat or even make video calls for nothing!  Skype-to-Skype user calling is over the internet and is remarkably clear. I was introduced to Skype about a year ago and was always going to download it and it somehow it sat on the bottom of that heap.  Fortunately for me, I saw Melissa do an outstanding demonstration of it at FETC and then Tom said, “Just do it!” and I’ve been Skyping ever since. One of our teachers demonstrated her nightly conversation to her sister in Greece (in Greek, of course). Think of the educational possibilities. Ok, I know your mind is already spinning around authors and poets and experts speaking to your students.  Keep thinking. Keep thinking.

An image to share

For some very high quality photos, check out FreePixels.

A proverb

“A single conversation across the table with a wise person is worth a month’s study of books.” Chinese proverb

An encouragement

I would really like to encourage you to become a Skype user because everything we do in education really comes down to relationships.  If you could make a quick Skype call to an expert or another classroom to collaborate, you will bring an engagement level to the classroom unlike mere text.  Please understand that most districts are unsure of how to handle Skype. Does it require a lot of bandwidth? Will it affect the network? I would like to see teachers utilize Sykpe like a field trip with permission slips and preplanning so that everyone is aware that a Skype interview/conversation/collaboration is happening on campus and test it first before blocking it immediately. As a teacher, make sure that you clear this with your administrators before doing anything at school, but in the meantime, try it at home with family and friends and think of the possibilities! Let us know some of your ideas for classroom uses of Skype on my blog.

How do you do that?

Since you are going to “get’r done” right now (right?), go to the download area of Skype and follow the directions on the screen. Once you have the client on your computer, find the Add Contact button and start searching for your friends and relatives. It’s always important to relate to a tool personally before you attempt using it for instructional purposes.  If you want to call me just to see how it sounds, please do!  My Skype name is seddonk. I just used Skype Thursday evening for a meeting with four teachers and we discussed a research project.  The best part was that we didn’t have to leave our families, drive home and viewed the same website together from our own machines.  It was VERY effective. Oh, the possibilities! For those teachers who are already using Skype, please consider joining the conversation in our “tuesdays” Professional Learning Community.

What are teachers saying?

Tales from the Teachers in the Trenches

“My students daily address the need to create, connect, and communicate. Skype gives us the ability to connect and communicate ubiquitously. Image talking to a scientist from NASA, marine biologist from SeaWorld, your homebound student, your family in Europe, or your best friend in Alaska. Connect a webcam and video conferencing is the icing on top. However, the ability to talk to multiple people at the same time with crystal clear connection and collaboration is priceless. Fun, easy, and free! Skype away!”  Fotini Guzman, Pleasant Hill Elementary School, Computer Teacher

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

I’m still trying to process all that I learned at FETC this past week, but one of the highlights was spending time with DEN members.  I spoke with Steve about adding my “tuesdays with Karen” in the DEN blog and he said to go for it.  Although it is not Tuesday, I will put last’s week in now and see you on Tuesday!