Tennessee DEN

I stumbled upon a great site today at www.teachernet.gov.uk.  At first, I thought, "This is the UK.  They’re going to say maths instead of math, color will be spelled colour, and the talking will all sound like Tony Blair or Gordon Brown."  I almost kept stumbling.  Then I thought, "You know, one of my favourite [sic] websites is from the UK so maybe I should look around."  I’m glad I did.

TeacherNet has a lot of useful information about assessment, teaching practices, and classroom management (all global issues I assure you!).  But then…

I found a link to www.teachers.tv.  I had to register (free), but it is a site filled with excellent videos that are both free to view and free to download (sorry unitedstreaming!).  Of course, this is where all the British accents come into play.  I watched about six videos when I came across one that listed the Top 10 websites for maths (I think they have one for about every subject).  I couldn’t help myself.  I started pausing the video long enough to check out sites.  Here are my favourites (okay, I’ll stop spelling like I did when I lived in England!).

Scott Kim, Puzzlemaster.  This is a terrific site filled with logic games.  Click on "Web Games" and try the "Double Maze."  I dare any kid in my class to tell me they were bored by it!

Puzzles.com.  This little site is filled with terrific logic puzzles (solutions included).  It includes illusions, tricks, toys, and more.  Kids will have a real head-scratching time here.

GCSE Bitesize.  The BBC has some really cool stuff available for kids and teachers.  This site is no exception.  Nearly any subject you can think of is covered.  Step-by-step tutorials are availble for "revision" (what we would call re-teaching).  There is a teacher section and some games as well.  There is even a moderated message board to ask questions of others when you need help.

I encourage you to sign up for the videos.  Let me know what you think!

I sat through a wonderful webinar today with Donna Neblett from Discovery (who else, right?).  Donna took us on a quick down-and-dirty tour of ThinkLink reporting and assessments.  I had already seen a little of this at NECC, but once again I was totally blown away by the possibilities this software has to offer.

We will use ThinkLink this year as a pilot to see how it does for us in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades.  I was prepared to just do Math and Language Arts, but if I understood Donna right there should be a Science component soon.  In fact, there are several upgrades coming when they roll out a new website on August 7th of this year.

Let me just comment on a couple of quick things about what I saw today.  First, I was reminded just how terrific the drill-down is on reports.  Teachers can see what standards are known and unknown by students, what specific students know or don’t know, and even if the students are missing easy, moderate, or hard questions in that area.  The impact this could have on teaching and re-teaching is enormous for us!

Second, not only are there pre-made assessments to give four times a year, but there is a totally separate bank of questions to pull from to make up practice tests/quizzes with one or more questions of your choosing.  Again, you can choose from easy, moderate, or hard questions.  For most teachers, this might be a great tool to re-assess specific kids who may have failed a classroom test or had make-up work from an absence.  For the kids in my computer labs, this may turn out to be their five-minute warm-up each day.  After all, the kids get 2 chances at each question and ThinkLink grades and stores the information in a gradebook for me to pull up later!

This year, our principal is so excited about the possibilities of ThinkLink, he has given me an extra planning period just to process the data for the campus and keep teachers informed.  This means individual teachers will not have to take responsibility for learning the system in its entirety while we pilot the program.  I think that will be a big plus for us!

So, if you are a STAR DEN member, and you have not activated your free account in ThinkLink don’t waste another day!  If you are not a STAR DEN member, what are you waiting for?  The wonderful FREE resources available through Discovery are worth the teen-tiny-itsy-bitsy details involved in taking your DEN membership to the next level!

Wacth this blog throughout the year as I comment on how we’re doing with the program.  I’d love to have some comments from others who have used the program or are just starting along with us!

Recently, I set up iGoogle as my homepage on my computer.  I decided to do this so I could have better access to my gmail account, blogs I read, news items, and other such important necessities of life.  I also added a widget that tracks my del.icio.us tags.  I didn’t pay much attention to it until a few days ago.

The widget not only lists my tag lines, but also gives me a random "hotlist" of websites and blogs that might interest me.  Today, I was intrigued by a website called Phonevite.  After intrigue, I would have to say I was impressed….very impressed.

Phonevite is a simple tool that allows you to record a phone message and send it to a list of numbers you wish to receive the message.  You can record your message online using a microphone or simply by recording using your own phone.  Your phone number is what shows up on the caller ID of your friends or co-workers.

I know, most schools have a program like that in TN if you signed up to use STAR Student provided by the state.  However, will your principal let you use it to call the teachers on your team?  To call 4 or 5 parents about a scheduled meeting?  Or to call students in your class about late homework assignments?  I thought not!

Phonevite is really set up to invite a group of people to an event or party.  As such, you can choose to allow recipients to respond by keypad (1 is yes, 2 is no, 3 is maybe).  However, you can also choose to let them record a message back to you.  When you go back into the control section, you can see the status of your calls, how long they took, what answers were keyed in, and listen to the messages left for you.

I teach middle school, so getting in touch with team members is really important at times.  Not everyone checks email messages 25 times a day like I do, and making 5 or 6 calls can get tedious.  So Phonevite is definitely something I will be trying this year.

Oh, did I mention that you can schedule your call to go out on a date and time somewhere in the future?  Check those phone calls off your to-do list and get on with life!

You can see a brief introductory movie at the Phonevite site.

At our Silver Spring Institute, Joe Brennan taught us a lot about camera angles, various ways to lay out shots, and much, much more.  So it should be surprising that he was the first one I thought of when I saw the video below at LiveLink.  No, there really isn’t any educational benefit here…just a nod to a great video storyteller: Joe Brennan.

There is a fairly new website out there geared to new teachers.  It is called the New Teacher Hotline.  This is how they bill the site:

We at the New Teacher Hotline podcast know your pain, and we’ve got the aloe of veteran experience to soothe your blistered skin. Join Dr. Glen Moulton, a supervisor of instruction and lifelong teacher trainer, and Michael Kelley, the author of Rookie Teaching for Dummies, twice a month as they help you stop, drop, and roll your way through your first few years of teaching.

The site is up to ten podcasts so far.  Each podcast lists links of the topics covered.  By clicking a link, you can see all the podcasts that contain that topic.

Listeners are asked to submit questions for future shows as well.  You can subscribe via iTunes or through RSS.  Check it out and share it with the new teachers at your school! 

To those of us who know her, it comes as no surprise that Teryl Magee, our own TN Leadership Council Chair, would be placed on the Spotlight page of the DEN website.  You can read all about Teryl at this site.

Her bio brings two questions to the front of my mind.  First, how does one person find time to do all that stuff?  Second, what is the Fantasy of Trees?  Congratulations, Teryl.  Enjoy the FL Institute for all of us!

I am an avid follower of David Warlick’s blog (as most of you are as well, I’m sure).  He has a very interesting post about Knowing-Networks that I find fascinating to consider.  He is commenting on some articles he read about the digital divide (prompted by postings to Twitter).  His conclusion (?) is that the digital divide is not so much about access any longer.  Kids have access to computers because several dollar sources have helped put them in schools all across the country regardless of socio-economic levels.

The divide now is related to the social network capabilities of Web 2.0.  Blogs, Twitter, collaborative sites, and more have all allowed us to formulate "knowing-networks."  These networks are based on the cummulative impact of accessing the power of the brains of people we know, trust, and admire. 

Taking his thoughts a little further, I would say that even a social networking site like MySpace is becoming more and more like Web 1.0 every day.  Kids are posting things there, but the connectivity and interaction is being lost in the deluge of such a massive idea.  Visitors go to sites and read what was happening with their friends, but a lot of the collaboration is missing simply because it is too much.

The DEN is a huge place: nearly 25,000 members and growing.  But our power isn’t in 25,000 people.  Our power is in the connections we make with 10 or 15 people who are passionate about the same things we are.  Those 10 or 15 people are our "knowing-network" that empowers us to change the way we do the ordinariness of our lives.

I won’t take the time to list my 10 to 15 people in this blog.  Some of them I’ve never met.  Yet I follow what they say closely, respond to them at times even.  Others I see a couple of times a year, but those times are specifically special.  A few I collaborate with more closely.  The common thread is that it is the power of Web 2.0 that has built this "knowing-network."

If we can get our students to develop a knowing-network, how much power would they have at their disposal?  How would our standardized test scores look then?  How prepared would they be for the world of work after leaving school?

What do you think?