Are Books Dead? - Using Technology to Enliven Books & Rejuvenate Readers

Another great session by Ed Tech Consultant, Gail Lovely, this session explored many book titles and has lots of ideas for extension projects in your language arts classrooms.

The presentation has it all...
Are Books Dead?

If you use any of these titles in your classroom, or would like to explore some of these project ideas with another book your class is reading, let me know. I would love to help!

New Wiki's to Explore

Many of us have used Wikipedia for research with our students. I have learned about a few more wiki sites from the same folks who established wikipedia that I think you will enjoy...

- Wikipedia Simple English Version - for those of us that think the regular version is too hard for our students at times
- Wiktionary - advanced version
- Wiktionary - simple version
- Wikibooks - books online

I will add these resources to the Student Resources section of the HTE homepage, when we return to school, for ease of use.

Google Educator

I can't believe I never knew about this before...

Did you know that Google has an educator site with TONS of classroom resources??? If you did, you were one up on me.

Check it out when you have a chance...
Google Educator Site

Tiny URL - A tip for you

I have used the site Tiny URL before, but I do not believe I have ever shared it with all of you.

It is a GREAT way to take a VERY LONG website address, or URL, and condense it to an address that you can give to your students to take home.

No more http://fhsdjk;fdashre.com/%$#@!?fhdjs;fhdsjak;hfdjska/HJK:hhdj/43253khfjadshj
It ends up being something like this - www.tinyurl.com/#####

It makes the sites much easier to put on handouts that go home, or website lists you will enter in class :-)

Just simply do this;
- Find the page you would like to use
- Copy the website address from the browser address bar
- Go to the Tiny URL website - http://tinyurl.com/
- Paste the long address you copied into the box at the top of the page
- Click the "Make A TinyURL" button
- It will generate an address you can use to get to your original site

VERY COOL, VERY EASY and very useful for anyone that uses websites in their classroom regularly.

Digital Story Telling

I have been using Photo Story to create "movies" with my Digital Photo Club for a couple years now. I would love to expand this to other, more curricular, areas. Windows Movie Maker is also a more advanced option.

Would you like to explore Digital Story Telling with your students? There is still background writing and storyboarding before hand, so writing skills are being met. There are also communication and technology standards that can be met at the same time.

Anna - How about all those photos your kids took at the farm... How sweet would it be if they narrated them and we made a movie??? I just think it would be priceless, and what better way for others to learn about the dairy farm, than from them.

Comment back if you are interested...

ABC's, 123's and WWW's - Using the Internet in Early Learning

This session was fun and brought to light ALOT of websites you can use in your classroom. Many of which are curricular in nature. I do think this may focus more toward our K-2 and Special Ed teachers, but there may be ideas that others can use as well.

The presentation link below will allow you to view all the sites that we talked about in the session, some of which we are all already using, but others we just don't have the time to find on our own. That is why I love sessions such as this.

Some of the topics that caught my eye for you;
- Real and Make Believe - gamegoo
- Patterns - there are quite a few links at different stages of this objective
- Art Zone - Shannon, you will love this one!
- Musical Sketch Pad - Susan, this one is for you!
- Online projects - The Tooth Fairy count starts January 1st, 2008 :-)
- E-Pals projects - I did this a few years ago with 2nd grade and it worked great. I would like to get started again if anyone is interested.
- The Spaghetti Book Club - Book reviews for kids by kids

The presentation link below will take you to a site that allows you to see the slideshow on the site, not download it as the others have been. The links are live, so you can just click on the to see the websites.
Presentation

If there is anything you find that is helpful to you, be sure to share the link with me so I can add it to our Student Resources on the HTE homepage for ease of use.

Don't forget to send in a comment and let me know what you think :-)

ACTIVarena - Release Date January 2008

For all you ACTIVboard users in the building, there is something new coming down the pike!

How about being able to use TWO pens on your board at the same time??? This will be possible in January 2008 using their new software called ACTIVarena.

Do you feel this would help student collaboration in the classroom?

I am thinking of starting off with one or two rooms to see if it is worth the investment. We would have to purchase some special pens and software for this upgrade.

Comment to this blog and let me know what you think and how you might use this in your classroom. Maybe you could be one of the first to have this technology in our building, and across the county :-)

Podcasts, Wikis & Blogs

There is alot going on at the conference about Podcasting, Wikis & Blogs as you can image. These things are hot right now in the technology world and hitting the educational field like a storm.

As you may know there are MANY classes at our school (3rd-5th grade so far) using blogs as part of a response to writing. I believe they have all found it helpful for their students and a good writing tool in their classrooms.

NOW - I ask those of you blogging in your classrooms now... Is there merit in adding Podcasts (recorded audio files of the kids reading their writing) to your current blogs? I now have the knowledge to do this, and would like to try it out, if you feel it would help your students. I do think that if the students are reading/recording their work aloud and listening to it instead of just posting the words, it might cause them to edit a bit better. What you hear is what you get and they need to be able to convey their thoughts fluently. It may also help the other students that would then have to listen to, instead of read, their classmates comments. Comment back and let me know. I am curious to hear what your thoughts are on this.

If anyone else would like to start blogging with your classes, please send a comment back to this post. Please remember, when adding a comment you will respond anonymously (unless you have a blogger account of your own) so please be sure to sign your name to your post.

Below is a link to a presentation I have seen in the past, again by Patrick Crispen, for those of you that would like to know more about blogging.
Presentation

Office 2007 - What's New, Tips and Tricks

I went to a GREAT session with Patrick Crispen, a featured speaker from the University of California that I have seen speak many times, and he always has wonderful ideas and tips.

This session was on the new features in Office 2007. I think we all have "made our way through" the programs as we have started using it, but none of us, including me, have had any real training per say.

Patrick's Power Point, linked below, has lots of great tips and tricks to use in the new program. Items I just could not find, now I was able to figure out where they were. In addition, he brought to light some great NEW features I haven't had time to explore. Patrick has also given us all his notes so you can see what we talked about in addition to his Power Point presentation.

For those of you in graduate school right now, have I got a trick for you... Did you know that Word 2007 will format your APA references for you AND track and save your references once you add them to Word on your computer???? I almost shed a tear for all the time I have waisted doing this "by hand". Send me a comment back to this blog if you want to learn more about this when I return to school. Please remember, when adding a comment you will respond anonymously (unless you have a blogger account of your own) so please be sure to sign your name to your post.

OH - and wait until you all see the COLOR CODING features in Excel that will allow us to "sort" students on any spreadsheet you create. How about our Performance Summaries... After entering all that information, wouldn't you like it to just highlight the kids that have scored the lowest in red, the middle in yellow and so on???? I know this would make it a much more useful tool for you and our administration.

VERY COOL.... I ooohhed and aaahhhed a few times in this presentation.

Presentation
Once you click this link, you should be able to save the file or just view it.