Thanks to everyone in the class for helping me to learn about instructional applications of the Internet.
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. - Seneca
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
I, Q Instructional Website
On Friday I ordered books to sell for our school's upcoming author visit with Roland Smith. As the conversation unfolded, I found that I was talking with the author's pr person who is developing the website for his new I,Q espionage series. As she described the site, I realized that her website incorporated all the elements of a really good educational site!
Information - videos of the author answering questions, a section about revision and the writing process ala Ian Fleming, information about the locations described in the book
Interactivity - Q&A with the author, a forum where readers can discuss the books
Connectivity - links to other websites like the CIA, FBI, and Mossad
something to make tweens and teens want to come back to the site - 2 games and also contests with the prizes of pre-release books or technology
The website won't be up until the first of September, but the opening screen is already on the author's site at http://www.rolandsmith.com/ and it looks great.
I am finding that more and more authors are including curriculum tie-ins, standards driven information on their websites. Our K-4 buildings are hosting Debra Frasier in the Fall, and she encourages schools to have vocabulary parades where students dress up as a word. Her website is http://www.debrafrasier.com/ . In advance of her visit she sends schools copies of her books and notebooks with classroom activity ideas.
Information - videos of the author answering questions, a section about revision and the writing process ala Ian Fleming, information about the locations described in the book
Interactivity - Q&A with the author, a forum where readers can discuss the books
Connectivity - links to other websites like the CIA, FBI, and Mossad
something to make tweens and teens want to come back to the site - 2 games and also contests with the prizes of pre-release books or technology
The website won't be up until the first of September, but the opening screen is already on the author's site at http://www.rolandsmith.com/ and it looks great.
I am finding that more and more authors are including curriculum tie-ins, standards driven information on their websites. Our K-4 buildings are hosting Debra Frasier in the Fall, and she encourages schools to have vocabulary parades where students dress up as a word. Her website is http://www.debrafrasier.com/ . In advance of her visit she sends schools copies of her books and notebooks with classroom activity ideas.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Exciting Webquest Feedback
Applications of the Internet for Education are pretty incredible.
For my webquest, "Ask Roland Smith", I asked students to research an author's life and works and then write an introduction and develop questions to ask the author when he visits our school in March. I emailed the author the link to my wq and was pretty excited to get this response a few minutes ago:
I absolutely love your “Ask Roland Smith”… In fact, with our permission I would like to put a link to it on my webpage (with full credit going to you of course). I think it is a great resource for educators and students. Thank you for your hard work.
Best,
Roland
www.rolandsmith.com
Check out the new series I,Q @ www.iqtheseries.com
For my webquest, "Ask Roland Smith", I asked students to research an author's life and works and then write an introduction and develop questions to ask the author when he visits our school in March. I emailed the author the link to my wq and was pretty excited to get this response a few minutes ago:
I absolutely love your “Ask Roland Smith”… In fact, with our permission I would like to put a link to it on my webpage (with full credit going to you of course). I think it is a great resource for educators and students. Thank you for your hard work.
Best,
Roland
www.rolandsmith.com
Check out the new series I,Q @ www.iqtheseries.com
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Podcast - Benefits of Author Visits
In the upper-right-hand corner of the page is my podcast, "Benefits of a School Author Visit".
The music is Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4 (Italian). My son, Robbie (two days after he had his 4 wisdom teeth extracted!), narrates the introduction. I thought that his voice would provide good contrast to the author's (Andrea Cheng). Andrea recorded her comments on gcast (www.gcast.com) - it's free and as easy as making a phone call (no other technology required).
Funny, when I tried to use Audacity a year ago, I wrung my hands and gave up. But now, this summer, after watching a few vodcasts on how to use Audacity, it seemed pretty easy. Certainly easy as compared to Dreamweaver, anyway. It is quite helpful to me to see someone using the software while they are describing what they are doing. Then when I go to do it myself, I know where the menus and buttons are.
“Benefits of a School Author Visit – An Author’s Perspective” is just one in a series of podcasts about the educational advantages of author visits in schools. Within this series, author visits are described from the viewpoints of a teacher and curriculum coordinator; a PTO parent volunteer; a student; and a visiting author. The goal of the podcasts is to describe the positive impact that author visits have had in our district in such a way as to encourage other school districts to try them.
I think if you scroll through my podcasts, you can hear some of the "raw" data from the other participants.
I plan to incorporate this into my website about How to Do a Meaningful Author Visit.
The music is Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4 (Italian). My son, Robbie (two days after he had his 4 wisdom teeth extracted!), narrates the introduction. I thought that his voice would provide good contrast to the author's (Andrea Cheng). Andrea recorded her comments on gcast (www.gcast.com) - it's free and as easy as making a phone call (no other technology required).
Funny, when I tried to use Audacity a year ago, I wrung my hands and gave up. But now, this summer, after watching a few vodcasts on how to use Audacity, it seemed pretty easy. Certainly easy as compared to Dreamweaver, anyway. It is quite helpful to me to see someone using the software while they are describing what they are doing. Then when I go to do it myself, I know where the menus and buttons are.
“Benefits of a School Author Visit – An Author’s Perspective” is just one in a series of podcasts about the educational advantages of author visits in schools. Within this series, author visits are described from the viewpoints of a teacher and curriculum coordinator; a PTO parent volunteer; a student; and a visiting author. The goal of the podcasts is to describe the positive impact that author visits have had in our district in such a way as to encourage other school districts to try them.
I think if you scroll through my podcasts, you can hear some of the "raw" data from the other participants.
I plan to incorporate this into my website about How to Do a Meaningful Author Visit.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
I want more....
Yesterday I had an epiphany about websites and website creation. You see, I have never created a website - ever - at all. I've always been on the outside looking in. I had thought that I'd be satisfied to use freewebs or a similar hosting service for my website project, but now I'm beginning to think that won't give me the interactivity I need. I want more.
I read Bill and Heidi's Moodle post about how they make websites with ease and with a variety of tools. So why am I making this into such a big deal? Bill and Heidi are good models, and sometimes that's all it takes, someone to give you a nudge and then pull you along. Internet blogs and forums are famous for encouraging and helping people with all sorts of things - from car repair to losing weight.
I started wondering if there is a predetermined evolutionary process that schools go through in regard to technology. At our school, the majority of the teachers don't use computers with students, and they only use Blackboard infrequently - usually entering grades once or twice a quarter. There are no podcasts or teacher websites. I wonder what the next developmental stage is and how to speed things along. Can I act as a catalyst?
I had thought that this summer I was going to stay in the shallow end of the website creation pool with my ducky floatie, but now I want to go further, to learn a bit about how to use Dreamweaver or Expressions - to swim in the next part of the pool. I know there will be times that I will feel like I might drown, but I have faith that there are always the sides to hang onto, Chip is the lifeguard on duty and classmates will throw me a line, if I ask, so although I know I'll feel like I'm in over my head at times, I think I'll be okay.
Oh, my free trial Expressions' download is 97% done! Wish me luck - SPLASH
I read Bill and Heidi's Moodle post about how they make websites with ease and with a variety of tools. So why am I making this into such a big deal? Bill and Heidi are good models, and sometimes that's all it takes, someone to give you a nudge and then pull you along. Internet blogs and forums are famous for encouraging and helping people with all sorts of things - from car repair to losing weight.
I started wondering if there is a predetermined evolutionary process that schools go through in regard to technology. At our school, the majority of the teachers don't use computers with students, and they only use Blackboard infrequently - usually entering grades once or twice a quarter. There are no podcasts or teacher websites. I wonder what the next developmental stage is and how to speed things along. Can I act as a catalyst?
I had thought that this summer I was going to stay in the shallow end of the website creation pool with my ducky floatie, but now I want to go further, to learn a bit about how to use Dreamweaver or Expressions - to swim in the next part of the pool. I know there will be times that I will feel like I might drown, but I have faith that there are always the sides to hang onto, Chip is the lifeguard on duty and classmates will throw me a line, if I ask, so although I know I'll feel like I'm in over my head at times, I think I'll be okay.
Oh, my free trial Expressions' download is 97% done! Wish me luck - SPLASH
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Bloggers Block
Yesterday, at the bookstore I saw a book called Best Bloggers. In it ,one seasoned blogger said that he never had to think long and hard for topics to write about in his blog, they just found him. I keep hoping that two topics will find me each week!
There was an interesting story about tweens cheating, lying, and stealing in online virtual worlds. The producer of Whyville said that kids are basically good, but she hires monitors to watch what is going on in the site. If a player is caught saying a bad word, a piece of duct tape is placed over the offending avatar's mouth and s/he cannot talk for several days. But kids have figured out that they can say words on the forbidden list by inserting a few extra spaces and capital letters. Some steal points and bend rules, saying that no one know who they are because they use made-up names, and hey, it's not real, after all, it's virtual. That raises an interesting question about the social consciousness these sites like Neopets, Club Penguin and Whyville may be instilling in our youth. And then I wonder..... How true are we to ourselves in SL?
There was an interesting story about tweens cheating, lying, and stealing in online virtual worlds. The producer of Whyville said that kids are basically good, but she hires monitors to watch what is going on in the site. If a player is caught saying a bad word, a piece of duct tape is placed over the offending avatar's mouth and s/he cannot talk for several days. But kids have figured out that they can say words on the forbidden list by inserting a few extra spaces and capital letters. Some steal points and bend rules, saying that no one know who they are because they use made-up names, and hey, it's not real, after all, it's virtual. That raises an interesting question about the social consciousness these sites like Neopets, Club Penguin and Whyville may be instilling in our youth. And then I wonder..... How true are we to ourselves in SL?
Monday, July 14, 2008
Homage to Olive
With this blog I'd like to pay homage to Olive Riley, the world's oldest blogger, who passed away on July 12th, at the age of 108 in Australia. Olive had a great zest for life and her blogging interests certainly kept her mind fresh. According to a great-grandson she enjoyed communicating with people all over the world - including some in Russia and the U.S. This reminds us that instructional computer applications are not just for the young, but can be shared with and prepared by people of all ages. In her final blog Olive wrote of singing a happy song every day of her life - pretty neat advice.
Monday, July 7, 2008
webquest templates
I constructed my webquest called "Ask Roland Smith" at zunal.com.
Here is the link http://zunal.com/webquest.php?user=13865.
This was the first webquest I've ever done. I looked at a number of webquest templates and chose this one because it looked easy to work with and because it has separate pages for each stage of the quest. Also, it was free. It is kinda neat to be "published" and have a URL that can be accessed by anyone anywhere. But while I was working on it, there were times when I regretted not having the freedom to add graphics here and there or to differentiate the text to made something stand out. It was simple to make, but then I couldn't customize it. Isn't there always that sort of trade-off in life? I wondered if I could just make the webquest in a wiki or something from scratch. I wasn't sure if that was ever done. Then Alex shared his wonderful PowerPoint solution. Now that I've done a webquest, I feel more confident about experimenting with out avenues next time. Isn't that was learning is all about!
Here is the link http://zunal.com/webquest.php?user=13865.
This was the first webquest I've ever done. I looked at a number of webquest templates and chose this one because it looked easy to work with and because it has separate pages for each stage of the quest. Also, it was free. It is kinda neat to be "published" and have a URL that can be accessed by anyone anywhere. But while I was working on it, there were times when I regretted not having the freedom to add graphics here and there or to differentiate the text to made something stand out. It was simple to make, but then I couldn't customize it. Isn't there always that sort of trade-off in life? I wondered if I could just make the webquest in a wiki or something from scratch. I wasn't sure if that was ever done. Then Alex shared his wonderful PowerPoint solution. Now that I've done a webquest, I feel more confident about experimenting with out avenues next time. Isn't that was learning is all about!
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Web 2.0 and politics
Today's political candidates and their campaigns must be techno-savvy.
Last night I got a phone call from my congresswoman explaining that she was conducting a live townhall meeting and asking me to please stay on the line so I could participate in the event. I really didn't have time, but I was tempted to see how it works.
John McCain's website includes the candidate's blog and "McCain Space Community" where you can sign up for your own site. The senator encourages his supporters to "get the word out" by posting on social networks.
Meanwhile Senator Barack Obama's website has "Obama Everywhere" with links to facebook, my space, you tube, flickr, digg, twitter, eventful, linkedin, BlackPlanet, Faithbase, Eons, Glee, MiGente, MyBatanga, AsianAve, and DNC Partybuilder. You can sign up for text messages from him and even download ringtones with Obama greetings in which you hear the phone ring and then, "Hello, this is Barack Obama......"
Candidates at all levels of govenment can interact with their would-be constituents through blogs and websites. Technology and Web 2.0 is changing the political landscape. Informed citizens must be techno-savvy, too. And there-in lies another reason for teaching students to use technology in school.
Last night I got a phone call from my congresswoman explaining that she was conducting a live townhall meeting and asking me to please stay on the line so I could participate in the event. I really didn't have time, but I was tempted to see how it works.
John McCain's website includes the candidate's blog and "McCain Space Community" where you can sign up for your own site. The senator encourages his supporters to "get the word out" by posting on social networks.
Meanwhile Senator Barack Obama's website has "Obama Everywhere" with links to facebook, my space, you tube, flickr, digg, twitter, eventful, linkedin, BlackPlanet, Faithbase, Eons, Glee, MiGente, MyBatanga, AsianAve, and DNC Partybuilder. You can sign up for text messages from him and even download ringtones with Obama greetings in which you hear the phone ring and then, "Hello, this is Barack Obama......"
Candidates at all levels of govenment can interact with their would-be constituents through blogs and websites. Technology and Web 2.0 is changing the political landscape. Informed citizens must be techno-savvy, too. And there-in lies another reason for teaching students to use technology in school.
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