Yup – I got an ipod Touch today! it’s soooo freakin cool! I still have my video ipod and I’m going to keep that for a while since it’s 30GB and the touch is only 16. I have a ton of audiobooks, so I kept those in the video ipod (along with everything else) and put music and videos on the touch. The coolest thing about the touch is the wi-fi access! I have a wireless network in my house, so I’ve been playing with that. It’s going to be really cool to not have to pull out the laptop, or lug it around in places with free wi-fi. I’m especially looking forward to using it at FETC in January. Maybe I’ll even do some live blogging. The keyboard is a bit sensitive, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

To keep this post somewhat education oriented, I’ll talk about another new toy I’ve been using – Classblogmeister . It’s a great tool to keep kids safe online while allowing them to blog. I used Learnerblogs for the past few years, but all of a sudden last year I couldn’t access them at school. They weren’t being blocked, but the IT guys could not figure out why the pages wouldn’t load. Learnerblogs was cool because of all the different templates, but in order to have security for the kids I had to set up individual accounts for each student using the gmail+name system. That was time consuming. With Classblogmeister I copy and pasted names from my class roster into their system and had classes set up quickly. Classblogmiester doesn’t have many templates to choose from, but my students will live I have been having some issues with Classblogmeister, but I’m forging ahead with it and I’m going to introduce it to my students tomorrow. I just hope that I can actually access it at school……..

I would like to teach my students how to use Diigo (I need to see if it’s blocked or not, but the IT guys know that I will make sure that it is used properly and they will usually unblock things for me). I think that Diigo will be a great tool for my kids to do some group research on our next unit (The History of Computers). I’m thinking about splitting up the class into generations of computer development and having them do a presentation. I’m even considering Voice Thread for the presentation – again I have to see if I can access it at school.

What I need are tips/tricks to teach my students how to use Diigo. I understand how it works and I can use it, but these are 8th graders and I need to present it well for them. Since I have just started using Diigo today, I was hoping some more seasoned people would reply with their experiences about using the tool.

Thanks!

In Reading class we are reading Tangerine by Edward Bloor. This is probably the 4th year that I’ve taught this book and every year I learn more about it and like it even more! It’s always a slow start, but we’re getting through it. I’m supposed to do a book in about 4 weeks and then the LA teachers do a book in their class for the second half of the quarter. Luckily I only have one LA teacher to coordinate with and we are really flexible with each other. Also, she tends to read the book more in class and I tend to have the kids read more at home so that we can discuss in class. The idea is to not have the kids have to read too many books for homework. In addition to the books we read in class, they all have to be reading an independent book for our Reading Counts program.

The computer classes are going well. We’ve finished the Online Safety unit in all computer classes. 6th graders are making Wanted Posters for the WizzyWigs, characters from the Netsmartz curriculum that I use. I’ve moved onto teaching the 7th graders how to use Word more effectively and 8th graders are about to begin a Unit on Digital Photography.

I have decided NOT to use blogs in my classes this year. One overriding reason is the time and effort it takes me to set up all the accounts. In order to ensure safety, I created gmail emails for each of my students in 8th grade computers and reading classes – thats about 100 kids. Then I had to go create each of the blog accounts for them, because I had to keep the gmail email passwords private (I did the gmail+name trick so that all passwords and emails came to one gmail account that I had control over). This week I found a new tool that I am going to use – www.myhaikuclass.com While it does not have blog features, it does have a discussion area where the kids and I can have message board type discussions. It also allows students to upload assignments to me, which I think is cool! There is an email feature, but the teacher has to ENABLE the feature for students to email each other – I won’t be doing that for liability reasons, but I will be able to email the kids and they can respond to me. One other great feature is that the kids do not need to have an email address to sign up and I can have each kid sign up on their own through a special link. That will save me hours of time. I plan to use this program with 8th Grade Computers and Reading classes.

Google would be another good alternative – Google Docs and Spreadsheets are great, and they can be shared and collaboratively edited. After reading Clarence Fisher’s post today, I started thinking about teaching RSS to the 8th graders next year. Since I use Google Reader, it would be easy for me to teach the kids how to use it. Keeping everything in Google makes sense.

For the past two years I’ve used blogs with the kids as a means for them to respond to writing prompts. I want more of a true blog next year, with student reflections. I’m thinking about having the kids write something reflective twice a week. Their reflections could be about anything school related; a book they are reading, how hard the science test was, how much they hate math , etc. Just to get the kids writing. I will grade it only on completion, I will not judge their writing or their spelling or their grammar. I will comment when I can and I will encourage them to read their classmate’s blog and make appropriate comments. I think this will help their writing overall. For blogs I use wordpress.

I’ve also been thinking about the email accounts that I mentioned in my previous post. The kids need email accounts to register for all the wonderful online stuff. Pros: I have control of each and every email account, I have the passwords if someone should forget theirs (I don’t let the kids change their password from the default one) Cons: It takes a long time to set up each account, I will have to monitor all the mail when they start sharing documents Alternatives: Have each student set up their own gmail account. They would have to give me their password so that I can monitor them (but in reality, I probably wouldn’t log onto what could be 100 accounts to monitor them). Am I being too over protective? – these are for 7th and 8th graders. I would love to hear thoughts on this – help me decide how to handle the email issue.

I have been using Bloglines to read my blogs, but every now and then I notice weird things with Bloglines. Since I’ve been posting more, I’ve been noticing that my new posts aren’t showing up as quickly as I’d expect in Bloglines. A few months ago I started getting repeat posts in Bloglines, sometimes a few months worth! At that time I set up a Google Reader account, but then Bloglines got better and since I was used to that format I went back to them.

A friend of mine uses Google Reader and he likes it better than Bloglines – he agreed that he likes Google Reader better because that was the one he used first (the same reason I gave for liking Bloglines better). But – I have decided to give Google Reader another shot. Bloglines is still slow in updating and I do still get lots of repeat posts.

I imported my feeds from Bloglines into Google Reader and I have been navigating the new reader and I have decided I like it. There was one thing that I think needs updating (I need to send feedback to Google on this) – since I originally set up the Google Reader last month or so, I had tons of unread posts, but I had actually read them all through Bloglines. In order to mark them all read, I had to click on each feed and then click a Mark All Read link. With over 100 feeds, that was more time consuming than it had to be. It would have been nice to have a global Mark All Read option.

If that’s my only complaint – I think I’m going to be fine with Google Reader…..

An example of this is something that The Reflective Teacher posted a while back – The Literature Pocketmod. I thought it was really cool and I began thinking of ways to use it in my classroom.

We have state tests coming up and I decided to use it to review the terms the kids would see on the test. Well, being the geek that I am, I decided that I needed to figure out a way to have the kids do this project on the computer. The challenge was to figure out what went on each page before it was folded and cut so that when it was folded and cut everything would be in the right places.

After a few false starts I think I have it figured out. One big obstacle was how to get text upside down. Word does not allow for upside down text – even if you rotate a text box 180 degrees, the text stays right side up! I solved this problem by typing text in Photoshop Elements and inserting it into the word document as an image and then rotating the image.

I’m in the process of finalizing the template and instructions and creating a sample of my own. I have found that the kids will be able to understand complex projects like this better when they can see a finished product. I’ll come back to this post and link the template and instructions when they are finished.

PocketMod Planner

PocketMod Template

PocketMod Sample – this is graphic heavy – be patient with the download

I will use this project for my 8th grade computer class. I think it will be too difficult for my 7th grade Reading classes to do on the computer, but I will still have them complete a handwritten Pocketmod to review those test terms.

During first period the blogs were not working well. Again, some kids could post and others couldn’t. I noticed a lot of extra HTML stuff when they copied and pasted from Word, so I was having the kids remove the tags. That took forever and most of them did not manage to get a lot done. Towards the end of that class I remembered a site that Stumble took em too recently – writetomyblog.com. I had the kids check to see if they could access it since we have just about everything blocked, and it was blocked. Even though we start out with just about everything blocked, we can ask for sites to be unblocked and 99% of the time they are unblocked for us. I emailed the IT guy and by third period he had unblocked the site for me

During third period though, we kept getting errors and I never figured out what the problem was during that period. I kept thinking about it, though and I realized that I was able to publish from writetomyblog when I typed straight into the blog, and the errors were happening when we copied and pasted from Word. 

At the start of fifth period I tested my theory about the copying and pasting and I was right. We can copy and paste from other web pages, though – the kids could copy and paste the questions that needed to be answered from my blog to writetomyblog.

What I like about writemyblog is that there is NO registration needed! You jsut go to the site, type what you want and publish it to your blog. The best features are that you can spell check your post and add tables. It also has the capabilities to change fonts and sizes and colors, but not all blogs support that.  There are many other things that writetomyblog can do, but I love the basic things the best. As a matter of fact – this post was published from there!

In the 6th and 7th grade classes I teach them to use Office Products more effectively (they think they know how to use them already – I show them lots of things they never knew – hehe) Usually in those classes I end up with about the last 2 weeks to do something different. I used to teach PowerPoint during the last two weeks, but there are so many other other products out there that are better in many ways.

This quarter I decided to have the 6th and 7th graders do digital stories using Windows Movie Maker. I decided that since we had less then 2 weeks from start to finish, that I was not going to scan any pictures for the kids – they had to bring in pictures already in digital form. Well – wow! I can’t believe the issues that is creating.

At the beginning of the quarter I strongly suggested that each student get a flash drive – not all did so they have no way to transport the pictures to school. I suggested a CDR, but not everyone has a CD burner at home. Some kids tried to save to floppy disks not knowing the disk was too small to hold many pictures. And it’s not just the kids – their parents don’t know how to use the technology either. It’s just so frustrating when I try to do what I think will be a quick, fun project and it turns into a nightmare.

Instead of a chapter test, I had my 7th grade reading classes write a news story about an incident that happened in the novel we’re reading. One student was taking longer than usual. This student is constantly in motion and often needs reminders to pay attention. During this assignment he kept looking on the computer of the student next to him to see what she was writing and he just didn’t seem to be putting much effort into doing his own work. I’ve been a Special Education teacher for about 20 years and I have found that if I push some kids, they actually do the work and then they feel great about themselves. This student is usually one of those who thinks he needs help, but can actually do the work if he takes the time to focus on the work rather than complaining about it : ) (Note: The students in this class are not special ed [well some have IEPs] – it is a reading class for students who earned an average score on the state tests)

Well, Friday I was reminded that things aren’t always what they seem. This student was far behind the rest of the class. He had one paragraph written and seemed to be dawdling on writing any more…..until I took a closer look. I realized that he WAS trying to work, but his typing skills are so bad that he couldn’t do the work. He was actually in tears before I noticed and I felt horrible! He wanted to do the work so badly (he was afraid he’d get an F if he didn’t finish that day) that he wouldn’t even go to the restroom to wash his face and get a drink of water, even when I told him to go.

I finally asked him if he’d rather finish the assignment on paper and he said yes and look so relieved! I also asked him if he wanted me to email his mother and tell her that he needed a typing program at home, and he said yes. He will not get to take my computer class this year because he is in another all-year elective, so he won’t even get basic computer skills at school. I did email the mother and she responded quickly agreeing to get the typing program. I also asked the student if he wanted to take a break from the assignment or if he wanted to work on it over the weekend and he said he wanted to do it over the weekend. I told him he did not have to hand it in typed unless he chose to.

Here I was thinking that I was doing something fun for the kids by having them type a writing assignment – and post it on their blog – but for this child it was torture!

(Note: there are no links in this post because I get errors when I try to post with links – I will add links as soon as I can)

Here’s a slide show of the web 2.0 tools that I either currently use, or want to use in my classroom.

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