How will you integrate technology into your curriculum today?

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!

Now that we’re two weeks into 2009, and the holidays are well behind us, it’s time to think about setting some professional goals. Why not learn how to do something new in the world of technology? (You knew I was going to say that!)

Here are a few ideas to get your wheels turning:

Learn to use a new piece of software. All of the software currently installed in the lab and on the laptop carts is also installed on your teacher laptop. Select a program and start playing around with it on your own. I have handouts for several of these programs too, so just ask if you need one.

Use your digital camera to take pictures of your students on a field trip or participating in an exciting project. Use the pictures to create a fun PhotoStory and put it on your web page. If you don’t have a class web page yet, why not make that your new goal?

Become more familiar with the SmartBoard software. Search for ideas on the internet, and adapt files that you find to meet your needs. Bring the SmartBoard into your classroom for a week or two and try to use it in a lesson each day.

Create a wiki, a very simple web page that students can edit and add pictures to with your direction. We’ve already had a couple of teachers use wikis with their students, and the kids loved the idea of creating their own media. I’ll be posting more about those projects later on.

Use Google docs to share information and collaborate with others in your grade level. Visit another school or classroom virtually using Skype. Enhance your writing projects by having your students blog.  Go on a virtual field trip with Google Earth. Use Jing to create your own tutorials for students to use.

I have a couple of new goals for myself, too. I’ve had Camtasia for some time, and I need to take advantage of its ability to create tutorials and screencasts for teachers to use. I also want to learn how to create forms in DreamWeaver  to put on the web pages.

So, there you have it. What are your goals? What will you learn this year in the exciting world of technology?

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?

Here’s an example I created by entering my blog address:

The larger the word, the more times it was found in the text. So, I can quickly see that I’ve used the terms “teachers” and “training” quite a bit, which did not surprise me. However, the words “new” and “year” appeared frequently also, and I’m not sure why I’ve used those so often.

This might be a helpful visual when teaching about the overuse of common words in student writing. Either type in or paste in some text from student projects and let the students analyze the results.

You can also enter the username for anyone who uses Delicious for bookmarking and see what tags they are using. Here’s mine:

It’s simple to see that I have lots of sites tagged with Web 2.0! Enter anyone’s Delicious username and quickly see if they’re interested in sites that you might also be interested in exploring.

One final example: Use this cool tool to create colorful word clouds of student names at the beginning of the year. You can also designate that the words be displayed in “almost” alphabetical order. I created the following cloud using first names of the classroom teachers at my schools.

Classroom uses:

• Visualize overuse of common words in student writing
• Enter vocabulary words and let students practice reading them.
• Enter a passage from a story and see how often particular words are actually used.
• Enter text from a historical document and analyze the results.
• For younger students, use this to practice typing in spelling words. They don’t need an account to use the site, and they’ll love playing around with the results!

Update (8/22) Tina Coffey has a post with several terrific examples for using Wordle in the elementary classroom. Be sure to check it out!

What other ways can you think of for using Wordle in the K-5 setting?

West Salem teachers, I have great news! Our new set of Qwizdom remotes (clickers) has arrived. South Salem teachers have been using these for a few years now, and the other 2 elementary schools haves sets as well, so now we can share quizzes and other activities division wide.

On the student surveys, several students at South indicated that using Qwizdom was their favorite technology activity . South teachers, if you have not been using these, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to keep your students engaged in any subject review at any grade level. West teachers, we’ll have an inservice early in the year to introduce you to this new system.

With the division wide emphasis on assessment next year, these remotes will provide a quick and easy way for you to determine how well your students understand concepts in all subject areas. Most of the time, we use multiple choice questions, but you can design other questions types as well. Start thinking about how you might use these throughout the year with your students! If you’ll give me the questions, I’ll even set up the quizzes for you. (Oh yeah, I’ll need the answers too!)

Would you like to have a classroom web site without having to learn to use a web editor such as FrontPage or DreamWeaver? Have you considered starting a blog but it just doesn’t seem to exactly fit your needs? Would you like to create pages that your colleagues could also edit if you chose to give them permission? Then you may want to take a look at Google Sites.

Google is providing web space for schools and businesses to use either as web pages or for simple collaboration with others within the organization. Go to Google Sites, enter your school email address, and click the Get Started button. You will need to wait for a confirmation email before you can actually log into the site. (Note: my confirmation came into my junk mail folder, so be sure to check there. Gotta love mail filters!) Click on the link in the email to get started.

A few of us have already been experimenting with sites. Once you’re logged in, click on the Sites link, and you’ll see “Pam’s Pages” which I created just for playing with the features. The direct link URL looks like this: http://sites.google.com/a/salem.k12.va.us/pam-s-stuff/Home Notice that “salem.k12.va.us” appears in the address, but the site is actually stored on Google’s servers.

You may notice that even though you can see all of my pages, you cannot edit anything. However, I set it up so that Tina could edit my pages since we were working together to plan the March 7th inservice. Presently, my site is set up so that anyone in the world can view it. However, if I wanted to, I could make the site completely private by changing the settings, or I could set it up so that only people signing in with a Salem school email address could see it. I can also set up additional sites that I could make public or private as appropriate.

Google makes it easy to add a calendar, countdown timer, videos, and of course, text and pictures. Set your site as public and share the URL with your parents and you have a quick and easy class web page that you can edit from any computer that is connected to the internet.

You might want to set up a site just for your grade level so that everyone could add links and lesson plans to share with each other and/or with students. It’s also a terrific collaboration tool to use when working on budgets, class lists, and other grade level items. Simply share it with the other members of your grade level, your principal, and anyone else who needs the information. Nobody else will even know that the pages exist unless you explicitly share with them or make the site public.

So, add this to your “to do when I have time” list and give Google Sites a test run. I think you’ll like what you see, and as always, don’t hesitate to ask for help!