Lately I have been hearing the term “The Cloud” used more
often. At first I was not sure what that meant. What was this cloud? Was it a
specific program, software, or some term that the internet world had created?
And then I was asking myself, do I need to know what this “cloud” is? Is this
something I will have to get or use in order to maintain everything I am doing
on-line? Well the answer is; I was already using “The Cloud” without knowing
it.
“The Cloud” is space out in the unknown of your computer.
When you use programs such as Google or DropBox – you are using “The Cloud.” What is
happening is that you no longer need to have flash drives, thumb drives, your
physical computer – you can access all your files from any location throughout
the world. For instance I can create and save a file from a computer in one
location, walk away from that computer, drive 3000 miles across country, and
finish working on that file in another location on another computer.
Incredible!
What is really happening is that the sites, such as DropBox
(same concept as Google Docs if you are using that), are providing the storage somewhere
out in cyberland for your files to live. You do not need to carry any devices
with you or take up any space on your hard drives. Those large files you may want to save, you can now save without having to wait long for them to download as well as for them to take up all your space.
For a teacher something like DropBox is an incredible tool to use. I
access my DropBox account at home, correct, update, and/or change a file, then
access it at school through my account. No forgetting flash drives at home, no
forgetting copies at home; it works out great. I have all my students using
DropBox also. They have expressed how it has made things easier for them.
“The Cloud” is something you are probably using already. It
is just another term used to describe the cyber space that we are all now
connected to.
How would you describe “The Cloud”? Are you using “The Cloud”?
How do you feel about using “The Cloud”? Do your students use it? How are you
feeling about all these quick changes in technology?
Social Bookmarking is a way for you to save, organize,
monitor, and access on-line resources. Social bookmarking is a tool that is
available to any on-line user. You are able to save the URL or a screenshot of the first page
of a website for future access. If you are like me, I come across several dozen
sites that provide me with information that I am currently using or want to use
in the future. And I don’t want to have to remember how I searched for these
particular sites or write down the URLs and then try to remember where I wrote it.
Prior to learning about social bookmarking tools, I would save the sites in my
favorites. And although it worked out well with creating files for the variety
of topics I was interested in, it did not help me to organize and access them
as quickly and as conveniently as an on-line social bookmarking tool. Yes I
admit I have become that person that expects technology to provide things for
me immediately. I don’t want to wait, look, or spend the time looking when
something can do it for me quicker.
How do we choose what social bookmarker to use? Well, this
answer is up to you and your preferences. There are many social bookmarkers out
there but for the purpose of not overwhelming us, I will briefly discuss Diigo. Other bookmarking tools to check out
are LiveBinder, and Sqworl. All three of these bookmarking tools are
easy to set up and easy to use.
Diigo has been around
for awhile. After the bookmarking tool Delicious
(2003) popularized the use of on-line book marking tools, Diigo (2006) followed in its footsteps with
its popularity.
Diigo allows you to save
the URL from a site, make annotated comments about what the site is, how you
would use it, what you would use it for, and/or any other information that you
may want to remember why you wanted to save the site.
Diigo also allows you to
use tags to help
organize your resources. Tags come in handy because you can really get carried
away with saving sites and then when you have to go back and think about what
site is it you know you saw the information on, you can click on the tag of
interests to find all the sites within that category.
Diigo also has a bookmarklet tool. What a
bookmarklet tool does is it provides you with just one-click to do many
functions. For instance, when you find yourself on a site that is of interest
to you and you want to save this site you just click on the Diigolet icon on your toolbar
(you have to load the Diigolet icon onto your computers toolbar by following
the directions provided by the Diigo
website.) Once you have this loaded, you are able to use many of the tools
provided. Within the Diigolet, the bookmark
tool allows you to save the sites URL by capturing the title of the
website, your annotated information about the site, create tags or use the tags
they provide, and also allows you to share you findings with other groups.
There is also the highlight tool that allows you to
highlight information of importance to you on the site so that when you go back
to the site you will notice only the information of importance to you or if you
are sharing the site, the information that you want others to see, is
highlighted.
The other tool that works well is the sticky-note tool. This
works just like a post-it note. Click on this and a note page appears. You can
type in a reminder, information, a question, or anything that you want to make
a note about for the site and/or page.
The read-later
tool is great for those sites you may not want to save but want to read at
a later time. The tool will save the
site for you to access it later to read.
Where these tools can be used with any browsers, Diigo also provides other tools such as screenshot (allows you to
save a visual of the site) and quick-note tools, that can only be used with
specific browsers.
Sharing your Diigo
bookmarks or creating a shared bookmark group, is a great tool to use in the
classroom for your students or among your colleagues. For you students you can
create a group that allows them to access certain sites on particular topics.
And for your colleagues you can create a shared bookmark group that houses
sites that are related to issues related to teaching, content area topics,
and/or tools for teaching. Creating shared groups is easy to do. Using the
highlight tool or the sticky-note tool can became a positive benefit for any
shared group. These tools take away from the time it may take to read a site
and also allows for collaboration on both levels.
Make sure you create lists for all your bookmarks. List help
you further organize your sites. Create different lists for your different
areas of interest and/or for you classroom. Lists allow you to create a list on
your topic of study and share it with your students. . On the main library
page, go to the “My List” section. Click on edit and here is where you can
title your lists, give a description of your list, as well as make your list public
or private. Your list will show up on your left side toolbar within your
library.
Think about using Diigo in your classroom. By creating groups and lists, you can organize your topics so that students can easily access the information they need. You can also create an group and have your students do the research on the topic and add the sites for other students to use.
Check out this video on how to incorporate Diigo in the classroom.
Don't forget to visit the Community tab within Diigo. to find sites that others have
bookmarked to share. I do not know how Diigo has this set up, but it seems to
target bookmarks that are of interest to most of my bookmarks. Diigo mysterious!!
At first I did not like Diigo.
I thought it was too simplistic and “wordy.” To me it just looked like a list
of sites with words attached to them. And although all the sites of interest
were in the same spot, I had a difficult time finding what I needed without
reading all the titles or using the tabs and then reading all the titles. After
playing around with all the settings I was able to organize even further with
the use of the “My Lists” feature. Now, like when I saved my sites in my
favorites, I was able to organize them into groups that I can easily access and
find. And although this sounds like it was doing me a service, I still was not
completely pleased with the site. I started looking at other sites because I am
a visual person. What this means when using a social booking marking tool is
that I don’t always remember the name of the site or the tab I could have put
it under, but I can tell you some features that the pages of the site consisted
of. I find things quicker on a visual level. It is like when that person comes
up to you and starts talking to you as if you are great friends, you know the
face but for the life of you, you can’t remember the name. Diigo must have heard my cries because they
now have a screenshot feature. This allows you to bookmark the site by saving
the screen you are looking at. You can capture the first page of the site or
any other page within the site. The only downfall is that you have to be using Google Chrome,
Mozilla FireFox, or Apple
Safari browsers. This is not a
downfall if you already use them or are willing to use them, which I have done.
Here is my Diigo Library. I say it is a work in progress. Enjoy and feel free to save any sites into your Diigo account.
What social bookmarking tool do you use? Do you use Diigo?
What do you think? What neat feature do you use with Diigo? What challenges
have you encountered with Diigo? How do you use it in your classroom? Would you
use it in your classroom?
Being new to teaching I am excited about using technology in the
classroom to connect with my students. Last semester was my first time
teaching my "own" class. I had begun to integrate technology into my
classroom. And let me tell you, not only did the kids have fun, but I
had fun also. How incredible to be able to play with great technology
tools and then benefit from the learning experiences of the kids. I am
so excited about integrating technology into their learning as much as
possible, and to continue to have a fun time doing it.
One
of my technology goals this year is to work on using the SMART Board
the smart way. Currently I am using it mainly to view PowerPoint
presentations, show websites, and/or show VHS/DVD videos, to name a
few. I mainly use it as I would a projector. I have been using some of
the tools such as the slides, pens, and highlighter. I also have had the
students brainstorming or writing on the board. Although I feel
that this is a good start to using the SMART Board, I would rather find
ways to use in as an interactive tool.
I
have begun to research how to use the SMART Board as an interactive
tool within the secondary level. The activities that I have come across
have been mainly for elementary level students.
I watched
this video to get more information on how to use the SMART Board on an
advanced level. The video gives some great ways to use the tools as long
as you have the activity tool kit.
How
have you been using your SMART Board in your class? What tools have you
been using? What interactive activities have you created? What have you
noticed about the engagement of students in the classroom?
If
you have not used the SMART board, what other technology have you been
using? If you do not have a SMART Board do you think you would or would
not use one in your classroom? How would you see yourself using it.
Looking forward to hearing your answers and learning from each other.
On Feb. 9th 2012, Saint Joseph
College (SJC) hosted the iCitizen Town Meeting. The meeting was held to
give the opportunity to have a discussion on how to create a positive
climate within the school systems that will help to prevent and stop
bullying and cyber bullying. Marialice Curran Ph.D, assistant professor
of education at SJC, and SAGE put together a well verse panel to discuss
these topics. Below is the url to the video courtesy of CT-N.
What
are your thoughts about creating a positive climate? What are you doing
personally to create a postive climate, in your classroom and in your
personal life? Do you feel that creating a postive climate in our
schools will help stop cyber bullying and bullying? Is it important to
have a positive climate in every state?
According to www.dictionary.com,
empower means to give power or authority to; to enable or permit. Now isn’t
this exactly what we as teachers need to do for our students. Empower them to
become responsible for their own learning. In my class I tell me students, if
you don’t know the answers don’t feel ashamed, embarrassed, or not intelligent
but feel empowered that you don’t know the answer but have the ability to learn
the answer. For some reason, the more and more I keep saying this in my class,
the more students are willing to share that they do not know or do not
understand and this allows me to have the other students that know the answers,
to teach each other.
In his book, Empowering Students with Technology, Alan
November gives many suggestions on how we need to allow students to take
control of their own learning through the use of technology. But in order for
them to do this, they need to understand how to use the technology the proper
way. One way, like Michelle
– Skyping with Alan November, had stated in her blog is “that it’s so important
for students to learn about validating their information through multiple
reference sources.” Students do take for granted, and I am sure many adults,
that what they read on-line is the truth. How many people will state to you, “I
read it on-line”; As if all of a sudden this technology has come along with all
the right answers to all of the worlds questions. Some of that may be true but
unfortunately there is no on-line police to catch those that do not share the
truth. Students are just as easily able to believe what they read on-line as
anyone else, and teaching students how to do it the right way will empower them
to succeed. Mr. November discuss the importance of understanding how to read a
URL correctly and what you should be looking for; who wrote it, the domain name
– private or commercial, and the institution it is coming from. How many
students know the breakdown of a web address/url? I know I did not until I
started reading books like Mr. November’s. These are the things we need to be
teaching our students in our classrooms if we want them to be empowered. I have been searching on line for more
information on this but have yet to come across anything as well as Mr.
November had written about.
Mr. November had so many great points in his book. There has been talk about how in the future some classes may be offered on-line. He did make some great points when he mentioned on-line learning and how peer interaction on-line becomes an
even playing field for students. All the students are in there together and there
are no "clicks" to join. You work on the projects either independently or
collaborative. Technology helps students to take down the barriers that may
otherwise hinder their collaboration in a face-to-face arena. And although this is a plus for some students there are some disadvantages toward on-line courses.
It is books like Alan November’s and
sites like Aviva
Dunsingers’s, that allow us as teachers to learn how to empower our
students in the learning process, as well as empowering ourselves within our
profession.
I unfortunately was not able to stay for the whole SKYPE
session with Alan November, What were you thoughts about the SKYPE experience?
What is the main point you got out of your conversation with him? Do you think
technology empowers students or teachers more?
Aviva, Aviva, Aviva – I hope you can hear my admiration in
this. I am so impressed by what Aviva is doing with her students. I want to
take her class!! Can I regress, please, please, please, please!!!!
These are the sites that when you read them, you get
inspired as a teacher to do better for your students. Learning about the
different tools allows you as a teacher to empower students to become
responsible for their own learning. I say thank you to Aviva and to all other
teachers who are so willing to share their learning’s with others. We can only
grow as professionals if we are willing to share and learn from each other.
Aviva’s site
contains numerous ideas about how to incorporate technology tools into the
classroom which in turns allows for students to practice reading, writing, arithmetic,
collaboration, communication skills, and creativity skills – just to name a
few. Being a secondary teacher, you may think that I would not be able to apply
much of what Aviva is doing for her 1st and 2nd graders.
Oh how wrong that it to assume this. I can easily see using Twitter with my 9 –
12 graders to help increase their writing skills as well as their etiquette
skills while being on- line. The unfortunate thing right now is our district is
apprehensive about using Twitter in the classroom. I am working at it though,
and I am one that does not give up. I am going to have to share the video administrator
Justin Tarte created called, "Why
Educators should be using Twitter- Justin Tarte" - Thanks Aviva.
It is also very inspiring to see all the tools she is using
with her students as collaboration activities.
Group Blog
Narrative eBook Project
Kindergarten Around the World
Like Aviva, I am using Edmodo in
my classroom. I have been using it as a classroom organizer of assignments, due
dates, and notices as well as a way to communicate to the students, other teachers
and parents. I never thought of having the students use it as a writing tool.
Thank you Aviva!
I am also using a blog in our classroom, Kidblog. It has become another important
tool in our classroom. I will be moving toward using another program next year,
but started with the simplicity of Kidblog
to see how it would work in our classroom. I have been pleasantly surprised at
how engaging the students are with it and how they look forward to the next
blog. They have never complained about blogging but they seem to complain about
writing papers even though the questions are not questions and/or responses are
not composed differently, they still are doing the same work. Overall the
students have enjoyed posting their ideas, thoughts and learning’s. Next year,
like Aviva I will have the kids create and run the blog posts and replies.
Aviva shares so many ideas that she is doing in the
classroom that can be tweaked to your content or grade level, your imagination
is the only thing that will hold you back (or your district at times, but don’t
let that stop you from exploring options). Thanks Aviva!
The one thing that caught my eye on
Aviva’s site, and that I have been thinking a lot about lately, is how to make
a virtual connection in our classroom. I want the student to experience the
world outside of their “world.” I have been thinking how and with whom we can Skype with. I have ideas and
have been reaching out to others and I am sure something will happen. But recently a new, more exciting idea came to
me when I was playing around with our new iPads.
And then after reading Aviva’s site about how she had become a virtual
mentor, something clicked (very excitedly I will say). What about having my
students become Mentors to younger kids either within their districts,
community, and/or world? If I can find the right teacher, we can set up times
where the students can talk with each other on a one-to-one bases as well as
group conversations. WOW! And for my students of Early Childhood Education, they can apply
what they are learning by the interaction they are having with their Mentees. I
thought of using the iPads.
so they can have more of a personal arena, of course it would be nice if the
connecting students had iPads.
but it is not necessary. Oh and of course right now we don’t have Wi-Fi, so
Skyping may have to be the tool of choice. But it can work…..time to get
networking.
This is when I say Thank You to all the Aviva’s out there
that share their ideas and allow us as teachers to become creative about the
learning process.
What do you think about my idea? Do you see any concerns
about trying this? Do you have ideas of how I can network this idea? What did
you find of interest from Aviva’s site? What things can you see yourself using
in the classroom and how will you tweak it toward your content or grade level?
Recently, my colleague had taken the 5 iPads we have in our
department and used them for digital storytelling. The students in her class
used the iPads to video tape their skits about how to properly handle
confrontations (Teen Issues course). The students broke into groups, wrote out their
skits, assigned the roles, and then recorded their skits on the iPads. Students
were able to delete any videos they did not like, view the videos to make
corrections, and then evaluate their final recording based on the rubric the
teacher had provided. Once their recordings were completed students were able
to place the video clips in a time line by using the application Storyrobe(The app does cost .99 per iPad). The Storyrobealso
allowed for audio input, so students had to narrate their story. The videos
came out great and the students were so engaged with the activity. Although
there is the capability to share the video, I am unable to share with you the
videos done in the class because the students are in them but watch this video
to see how easy it is to use Storyrobe.
The iPad can become a valuable asset toward the
incorporation of digital storytelling in the class room. There are many
applications in the Apple store, that can be downloaded for free or for a small
fee that will aid in the ability for students to become engaged in their learning.
Click on the picture below to be linked to a very simplistic site that houses information on applications and valuable
resources on how to incorporate digital storytelling with the iPads into your
classroom.
I can’t wait to start incorporating digital storytelling
into my classroom with the use of the iPad!!!
What are you thoughts about using the iPad as a digital
storytelling tool? Do you use one in your classroom or personally? Do you see
any cons about using iPads in this way in the classroom? What applications have
you used for digital storytelling? Do you think students would benefit from
using the iPad as a digital storytelling tool in the classroom? Why and/or Why
not?
