Salem provides web space for all employees, so this is probably your most reliable option. However, it can also be time consuming to create your own web site. For that reason, we do have some templates available to help you get started. Here’s an example of one that Mrs. Beamer at West recently created. If you would like to start with something cute but easy, let me know and I’ll send you more information.

For more flexibility, but a steeper learning curve, you might want to create your site completely from scratch. Katie Crotts at South has a really cute kindergarten site that you might enjoy looking through.

You can update your web pages from home by using either FrontPage or Expression Web. You can find those directions here.

Other options include creating a blog or a wiki. Edublogs is designed specifically with educators in mind, but the free version does include advertisements. This is a wonderful blog site, and they will remove the ads if you upgrade to an Edublogs Supporter account for $40 a year. With this comes the ability to remove ads for up to 30 additional blogs.

Google’s blog platform, Blogger, is very easy to use. The only issue with this site is the Previous – Next Blog links that show up by default at the top of the page. These literally take you to random blogs, many of which are not appropriate for school use. There is a simple script that can be added to the code to remove these links, so if you want to use Blogger, go ahead and get started. Let me know when you’re set up and I’ll help you get rid of the navigation bar.

Wikis are very simple and quick web pages. There are several options online, but my personal favorite is Wikispaces. If you go to this page, you can apply for an ad free wiki. Our India wiki is a good example, but yours does not need to be this involved.

There are also numerous web sites that provide space for web site creation. I have not used any of these, but if you’re interested, please check them out. Be sure to check for ads and make sure you can live with them if there are any. If you find one you really like, let me know and we’ll find a way to make it work for you!

Weebly

Google Sites

Bloust

Yola

ClassJump

SchoolRack

Hipero

I can’t wait to see what you all come up with!

How will you integrate technology into your curriculum today?

Kathy Beck and Linda Lerch from Iredell Statesville Schools presented a very informative session about using Skype in the classroom.  Skype is a free program that can be downloaded here, and it’s quick and easy to install on both Windows and Mac computers.

There are several sites to help teachers find other classrooms to connect with:

• Skype Other Classrooms Edublogger Post
• Using Skype at School
• Skype in Schools Wiki

Basic Information:

free pc to pc calls
free audio calls (can conference up to 25 people)
free video calls (just one to one)
group chat rooms
instant message
small fee for mobile phones and land lines
requires little bandwidth

high def speed 384 kb/sec
standard 128 kb/sec

Search for contacts – shows country and city so you can narrow it down

If web cam not connected, will only see ‘call’ button
If web cam is connected, can also choose video call

Classroom Ideas

• students can talk with each other
• send files to everyone in group to view and interject with text comments
• keep archives of text messaging conversations
• students can use video to practice for a play
• debates
• organize school events
• work on school newspapers
• collaborative research with students around the world
• learn about students and life in other countries
• learn a language
• ESL
• penpals
• have experts come to them
• hold a poetry reading in which actual poet reads to your class
• brainstorm teaching ideas with a mentor
• virtual field trip w/o buses and entrance fees
• include an ill student in daily discussions (child can unplug camera if he does not want class to see him)
• conduct a conference call for a club
• virtual substitute – monitor your class while you’re away
• quick connection to teacher
• traveling parent for child in midst of homework crisis
• assist children with special needs ~  describe the day
• skype conference with parents who cannot come to school
• hearing impaired could use the chat mode
• blind can use audio mode
• Read Alouds
• have an author read a story over skype
• other readers from local businesses
• local theater groups
• Collaborate with other teachers
• professional development

Need to teach Skype etiquette

dialing etiquette – let it ring once or twice
movement can be distracting while using a webcam (stand still)
have questions prepared
skype from a well lit room
think about time differences

Note: This reminds me of when IM was new and different. The young teachers used it for fun to connect with their friends and families used it to keep in touch. It took a while before teachers learned that these same connection and collaboration skills could be used for professional reasons. Quite often, a new tool begins with personal uses and then reaches out to the school and to the classrooms.

More NCTIES Posts:

Opening Keynote
Photography Problems
Digital Tools for Digital Kids
Assessment with Technology
SmartBoard in Upper Elementary
Skype in the Classroom
More Than YouTube
Closing Keynote

Another NCTIES presentation featured uses for the SmartBoard in the upper elementary classroom. Lynn Keith, Suzanne Blaszak, and Jennifer Keith from Providence Spring Elementary School near Charlotte shared numerous ideas with us.

They have shared their presentation here, and it’s full of ideas that can be used with older elementary students ~ well worth the time to download and explore. In addition to content ideas, they have demonstrated many of the advanced features of the Notebook software.

Some other items discussed during the presentation:

Daily uses for the SmartBoard

• morning routine
• calendar
• pledge, class rules
• weather
• number of days in school – place value items
• money
• use infinite clone for money
• homework
• attendance

They noted that the SmartBoard Notebook software is powerful, and it takes time to explore and find things.

One of the activities they shared involved numerous colored circles on the Notebook slide which were linked to other pages with math problems. Students tossed a koosh ball towards the board. When the ball contacted the board, one of the links was activated and then the students solved the math problem on that particular slide. You can download the file at the SmartBoard Exchange. (You’ll probably need to log in first.)

Create board games and use the dice from the gallery to play.

Use the built in camera to grab screenshots from other documents to use in your Notebook file.

Play Jeopardy. There are lots of templates online that can be used with the SmartBoard. Be sure to sure to check out Jeopardy Labs too.

More NCTIES Posts:

Opening Keynote
Photography Problems
Digital Tools for Digital Kids
Assessment with Technology
SmartBoard in Upper Elementary
Skype in the Classroom
More Than YouTube
Closing Keynote

Vicki Davis uses a Ning with her students. She teaches them to communicate as professionals. They are not allowed to use IM speak. Even though it resembles Facebook and My Space, she does not use Ning for social reasons, but rather for educational networking. She takes advantage of the ability to make the networks private when appropriate and also told us that the good folks at Ning will remove the ads from the site if you email them.

She says her students already know how to use new technology and set up new accounts. To use new Web 2.0 tools, they need to be taught how to create hyperlinks and how to embed code.

We want to build digital citizenship. Online behavior should have offline consequences. Schools should not punish everyone and take the tool away. (You don’t lock a bathroom because of a bad word on the wall!) Use RSS feeds to monitor blogs and wikis that students are using and deal with problems as they occur.

Vicki spent some time talking about various learning styles and how these can best be used in networking:

• linguistic
  • blogging, forums, writing
• logical mathematical
  • virtual worlds, programmers, administration, organizers
• naturalist
  • outdoor video, photography, gcast, roving reporter, google earth, geocaching, maps
• spacial (pictures)
  • photography, camera operator, voicethread, animoto….kids like to be behind the camera, not in front of it
• bodily kinesthetic
  • acting, presenting, get on film, want to move
  • need to learn difference between production quality and content quality
• musical
  • record audio files, audacity, voice thread, animoto
• interpersonal
  • cell phones, forums, blogging or pics, discussion facilitators
• intrapersonal
  • reflections, reading and opinions, debates

Teachers need to let kids write about what they’re interested in and create personal interest projects. She suggests letting them
invent something of their own!

Kids still need teachers, but not as the sage on the stage. They need for the teachers to plan the process and to coach them as they grow and learn.

Some links that were shared:

Think.com
elementary to early middle
have to apply (We have accounts in Salem.)
very strong profanity filter
will disable if not used within period of time

Westwood Schools Wiki
uses wiki for her classes
embed google calendar for assignments
students have own igoogle page

ClassTools.net
let kids create review games for each other

Toondoo
cartoons and embed
fun way to teach how to embed

Here’s a slideshow that Vicki used at NCTIES:

You can find more resources by Vicki Davis on her wiki.

More NCTIES Posts:

Opening Keynote
Photography Problems
Digital Tools for Digital Kids
Assessment with Technology
SmartBoard in Upper Elementary
Skype in the Classroom
More Than YouTube
Closing Keynote

Teachers have been working in teams with others in their grade levels or content areas to gather materials and think about how best to share the strategies they use every day to help their students grow and learn. Since the fair will be virtual (completely online) we will have an archive of best practices used throughout the school division that teachers can revisit and search as long as desired. We may even want to add ideas to the list of resources in the future.

So, how are we going to present these ideas? That’s completely up to the teachers! However, I will be working with the other ITRTs to create a web presence for the projects. I’ll also create folders on the G drive where you can save your pictures and documents as you create them. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Take lots of pictures, both of your students working and of their actual work (unless the work is already digital)
• If you have a Word document with lots of explanations and graphics, we can save it as a pdf to put online.
• Create a PowerPoint with your pictures and explanations.
• Create a PhotoStory with narration or text explanations.
• If you’re planning to use graphs in your display, why not create some in Graph Club?
• If you’re working with older students, use MaxCount or Excel to create the graphs.
• Use VoiceThread to display photographs and either narrate the pictures yourself or let the students explain what they are doing
• Create a class wiki on a specific unit
• Create a simple web page displaying pictures and information about your topic
• Have someone video your class in action
• Have students create a podcast from a script they have written about what they’ve learned.
• If you’re using timelines, don’t forget about TimeLiner.

Any of these suggestions can be used online, and many of the projects will most likely have more than one component. Since I’ve been given the responsibility for creating this virtual fair, I’ll be talking with the teachers in each of my schools within the next couple of weeks. I’m excited about the opportunity to work with you and help you share your wonderful projects!

Our school division superintendant, Dr. Alan Seibert, will soon join a group of educators who will be traveling through India and visiting schools there. Earlier this fall, he asked teachers who might be interested in doing some collaborative projects to contact him, and Tina Coffey and I then met with him to discuss ways we could facilitate those projects using technology. Thus, Trek 2 India was born!

We created this wiki to help teachers and students follow along with Dr. Seibert on his journey as well as to provide a place for him to share his pictures, videos, and stories. But, as usual we had an ulterior motive! We wanted this to be an example of a way you could incorporate wikis into your curriculum.

What is a wiki? Well, wiki is a Hawaiian word for quick or fast, so a wiki is a quick (and easy) way to create a web page. It can be edited from any computer with an internet connection, and once people join, they can edit the wiki, thus making it a true collaborative project.

Two of the most widely used wikis in education are wikispaces and pbwiki. Students can use wikis for collaborative projects on any unit in social studies or science, or to share reflections on books, or favorite authors….and the cool thing is, those projects will remain on the web for the students to use for review when testing time rolls around in the spring!

You can create simple wikis with just text and links, and that would be awesome! Also, if you take a look around the Trek 2 India wiki, you’ll notice that we also used several “embedded” objects. That means that these objects are actually stored on other web sites and are pulled in when you click on the page. (It’s easy to do! Just ask!)

You might be interested in using some of these yourself! Check out these sites that we used:

• Glogster (poster site – home page)
• VoiceThreads
• Google Maps
• Flickr
• Weather Underground
• Wikipedia (several images from here)
• ClockLink
• Dumpr (fun image editing site)

You can also upload pictures, videos, and podcasts directly into your wikispaces site. If you do set up a wiki for your class, be sure to take advantage of the ad free sites being offered to educators by wikispaces.

My hope is that we can move forward from there and have the students create their own content. Have them use their understanding of the topic in a project that can be shared with others and used for review later on in the year. Examples might be:

• PowerPoints or online slideshows
• Word documents with original images
• KidPix images and slideshows
• Timelines
• Take digital pictures related to a topic
• Create videos
• Participate in VoiceTheads online
• Create blog posts on appropriate topics
• Create a class wiki on a specific unit
• Create webs in Kidspiration
• Podcasts on almost any topic
• Create original map mysteries in Map Machine

All of these projects can be posted on the school website so students can use them for review as necessary. Let’s keep moving forward with our use of technology in the classroom!

What other projects do you have in mind for this year?

This year, I would like to work with every classroom teacher at least once, and hopefully more than that, either in the computer lab or using the laptops. We have several terrific programs that the students can use to create their own projects on the computers. Let me help you develop some projects that will enhance your curriculum and increase student learning. I will be contacting you as the year progresses to set up times for us to collaborate, unless you contact me first!

As we begin this school year, please consider how you can increase your use of technology in your classroom. You all have wonderful ideas, but if you need something to get you started, here are a few suggestions:

1. Create a class blog in Classblogmeister. Even the very young children can manage this with a little assistance. Students enjoy writing for real world audiences, and they love to read and comment on each others’ blogs. You could assign topics, or let them use their blogs for journal writing during your lab time.
2. Create a VoiceThread. Take digital pictures (or let the children take pictures) and upload them to this site. Then have the children leave comments on the pictures, either explaining the picture or leaving a comment.
3. Create a digital story. Upload pictures into PhotoStory and let the students record the story as each picture is shown. PhotoStory is already on all of our computers. This would be an awesome follow-up to a field trip or other major event.
4. Have your students work in MaxShow or PowerPoint to create their own slideshows showing what they have learned during a particular unit. Then let them share their presentations with the class.

What other ideas do you have for this school year? How will you prepare your students for their lives in the 21st century?