Blogs I Reviewed

Blog Reflections

• Blog #1- Christina had a wonderful post about Storybird.  I had never heard of it before.  Not only is it a great find for an aspiring English teacher, but she also had wonderful ideas for adapting it to suit her content field.  She sounded not only inspired, but enthusiastic as well.  I loved reading about it.  I loved that it creates a safe place for students to collaborate online because it sort of constructs a private "room".  From here, students collaborate to build a story, or reflect on what they have learned.  Absolutely wonderful!  It's free to use and with the right creative mind, the educational possibilities are limitless.
• Blog #2- Chelsea had a really organized and great post about SmartBoard tutorials.  This is great from my perspective because I have honestly never had any exposure to SmartBoard (learning nor teaching) until this class.  Any amount of exposure I can get to this technology to feel more comfortable with it and how it can be used to make learning more engaging is A-OK in my book.
• Blog #3-  Rachel posted about a couple of article finds on Feedly.  In the first she discussed the importance of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math).  Though these are NOT in any way my primary content fields, I whole-heartedly agree with the concept of an integrated curriculum.  She also read an article about a struggling school that utilized the "flipped classroom" concept and made a great comeback.  I really like the idea of letting the students put in the work.  I think it really is beneficial for them, and it lets the instructor sit back and enjoy watching the learning take place.  The teacher is still there to guide and direct the students, should they miss any key points--but all in all, it is much more concrete for the students to direct their own learning.  To teach something, one must have a pretty solid understanding of the subject matter.
• Blog #4- Danielle found a wonderful tool called Sonic Pics.  It is a story-telling application, but it is unique in that narration can be added to still pictures.  She had a great idea for using this as a sort of "get to know you" activity at the beginning of the year.  Students can create a sort of self-narrative and present it to the class.  Or perhaps if it is a lab-type setting and there are enough devices present, students can simply move from station to station to watch each other's stories.  Wonderful!

Connections to Teaching

I really like all of the storytelling technology available.  As an English teacher, I think the fact that there are so many different variations of this type of application is awesome!  I think for some kids it is a real challenge to be interested in reading.  Perhaps they perceive reading as "boring", or maybe a student is a struggling reader and therefore quickly loses interest and ambition for mastering literacy.  Using these storytelling technologies may indeed provide for a necessary segue for some students to garner interest in the subject.  The ability to create is also a wonderful thing.  Because it is more engaging than simply writing a narrative with pen and paper, today's students will be eager to achieve more with the technology.  They will strive a little harder to create, which is the highest level of learning.  

Check out some of this technology here and also storybird, which was mentioned before.  I'm anxious to discover more of these sorts of tools!  Engaging students and encouraging literacy are among the highest of my priorities as an educator.

Answer Garden

Answer Garden is a really nice way to tap into what students already know about a subject or to measure what they have learned.  One perk is that there is NO REGISTRATION.  How fun!  Answers are limited to 20 characters and can easily be embedded in a blog or other website.  Answers generate a graphic word cloud.

The great thing about this is that it is able to quantify feedback from a group.  This allows the classroom to work collaboratively.  It also provides for the opportunity to foster the "classroom community" we all love to talk about.

One draw back is that there is not a really concrete way to prevent bullying or foul language.  One deterent suggested is to remind students that we are looking for serious answers, not childish behavior.  The idea that this is deterrent enough.  Otherwise, teachers can moderate answers from seperate computers, have an administrative password, or have a smart filter for foul language.  To me, this is all Greek and requires further investigation.  Here's what I like about this resource:

• The page outlines how this tool keeps up with the next generation's style of learning
• It provides a few ideas on how to use it with specific content fields (math, social studies, etc)
• Students can use it to brainstorm ideas
• It engages students by letting them see each other's responses
• It acts as a great visual because if there are frequent student responses on the same word, the word becomes larger
• As a teacher, it is useful to be able to rest your cursor over a response to see how many respondents there were.  This can be helpful to guide you in how you should gauge how you are meeting your instruction goals as a teacher.  It lets you know where students truly are with the knowledge.
• The site provides a reference to which Core Standard this specific tool addresses
• THERE IS A VIDEO TUTORIAL!!!
• As mentioned before, there is an acknowledges safety concern and suggestion on how to address aforementioned student tomfoolery.

This is a very interesting way to engage as well as to gauge students.  As an aspiring teacher, I think this is a very useful tool worthy of investigation.

Feedly 2-- Net Neutrality

This article is all about the concept of net neutrality. What is Net Neutrality? "Net Neutrality describes the the Internet that we now have, one in which the government under Federal Communication Commission (FCC) guidelines ensures the equal treatment of all information that is sent and received online." Basically, under the net neutrality guidelines, larger corporations would be able to control the speed/flow of data based on monetary gain. This means that free services may no longer be free. This means that if Pizza Hut paid a company like Comcast for faster transfer of data, that it may be much more time-consuming to order a pizza online from Dominos. If a corporation doesn't like you, it would have the means to control information!

This has already been an issue between Comcast and Netflix! This is already happening. Netflix finally caved to Comcast and paid a certain amount of money for their customers to have faster streaming and access to their services because Comcast allegedly deliberately slowed down the amount of data being transferred so that streaming became very difficult for Netflix customers.
This is important in education especially because there is a wealth of information available FOR FREE. If the people don't vote to keep the internet fair and neutral on September 10th, then cable companies will be allowed to slow down or prevent access altogether! This is huge! Education has been a right we have fought to universalize for centuries now. If we really believe that everyone has a right to education, then how could we allow this to happen? If we are teaching our students about equality, how can we be ignorant of these corporate schemes?
It will be a very dangerous world indeed if information becomes limited or withheld altogether. Because major cable internet providers are desiring to merge, this means that one collective company could control as much as 70% of the market. This monopolizing of internet access would be largely detrimental to education as a whole. There are already enough funding issues for many school systems. The internet is an invaluable tool to allow teacher to collaborate, enrich their lessons, and get more resources to provide the best learning experience possible!
This is an important matter for the general public, teachers, and students as well. I think this would be a great way to make an important topic relevant in the classroom. We could have a class discussion on this topic so that students could sound off and discuss something that would ultimately affect them. This helps them to consider their role in the world and why they should be informed citizens. It may also help them to learn how some aspects of the world function and how they can empower themselves to change it. This not only helps students to think critically, but it helps them to understand the importance of being well-informed and why it is important to vote on matters and to get all the facts. Students could be assigned a writing assignment reflecting on the gravity of this upcoming issue, or there could be an in-class debate so that students could experience arguing for or against a topic. Debate is a great tool because students have to learn to think for themselves. In some cases, they must also learn how to provide an argument for something they may not actually agree with.
You can read more about net neutrality here (found in the edutopia blog).

Feedly--Free Technology for Teachers!

What excellent opportunities teachers have to always improve within their jobs!  I just watched a tutorial about what feedly is, and how to use it.  It's pretty simple, but this guy does a great job walking newbies through the start-up/transition process.  Apparently feedly is being chosen to replace google reader??  I didn't even realize that google had such a thing, I'm already learning!  If you want to watch the youtube tutorial for feedly, you can find it here.

I have just set up my own feedly account.  I had always just sort of come across blogs via pinterest.  Blogs have never been something I have actively sought out on the internet.  I am already, however, seeing the multiplicity of benefits.  

I began by browsing through the different topic groups, adding a few blogs to my feed and categorizing them.  I very quickly came across a blog that addresses education and technology simultaneously.  And its free.  A headline from this blog caught my eye, so I gave it a read.  Here's what I learned:

Last week Open Ed (a free service that offers a huge resource cache of educational videos and games with a variety of browsing options) released a new tool that can be used for creating practice assessments that are Common Core aligned.  What this means is that the tool will allow teachers to put a specific image with a question.  What really impresses me about this idea is not just that you are incorporating more media into your questions as a teacher, but that students are able to SEE suggestions of materials to review if they miss a standard on the assessment.  This post includes embedded videos that demonstrate this assessment tool!

Apparently, tomorrow (July 2nd) at 3:30 pm Eastern time, Open Ed is hosting a free webinar that teaches how to create the assessments.  Folks can register for this event here.

This would be really cool for people in the Biology Department.  I think a lot of us learn visually, so incorporating an image with a question makes soooo much sense!  In English, I haven't had any creative inspiration.  What may have helped my learning is having a graphic of a map that depicts where an author is from or where the work is from.  My spacial geography skills are sort of lacking, so this could be doubly helpful.  An easy application would be to identify on a map where Stratford-upon-Avon was located in England, as this was Shakespeare's place of birth.  Perhaps an image of the cottage would cement the information.  Or incorporating different images of stage types in Elizabethan times with questions about theater organization during Shakespeare's career.

Okay, so maybe I could think of a few.  How neat!  What do you think?  Any good ideas for your content area?