Class Reflection

Looking back it truly does amaze me how much I have learned this semester.  I came into the first class terrified of what was going to be asked of me and if I would be able to accomplish the goals.  Now I just feel excited about all of the cool things that I can share with my own students.  Digital storytelling, blogging, and using a wikispace are things that I will definitely continue to use in my future.  Enjoying the blogging was probably what surprised me the most about this semester.  Through blogging I was able to collect resources from peers and colleagues. I even learned how to store them on Diigo for future use.  My students absolutely adore their class blog and I can't wait to see how they evolve integrating literacy and technology.  This class was relevant and resourceful.  I would recommend it to all fellow educators.

Literacy Project

For my literacy project I decided to use Kidblog to create a class blog.  I have to say that it went very well and I was pleasantly surprised at how well my students were able to navigate to their page right away.  The first task was to create a blog post about their favorite animal and give at least two details about why it was their favorite animal.  The students were so excited to start and I really only had to help a few after modeling how to accomplish the task.  I can really see how beneficial this tool is going to be for helping them with editing and also with communicating to an audience through technology.  Our next steps are going to be to respond to blog posts both with our peers in class and also in another class.  My intention is to use the blog both as a classroom resource and a communication tool.  I love it and so do they!

Check it out!
Mrs. Bohle's Class Blog

diigo take two

I didn't quite realize that all of my library websites were marked as private.  Here is the link again with the new edited version.  This is such a learning process, but I think that I am starting to get the hang of it.  I have enjoyed looking at others' diigo accounts because everyone has such great resources.  I will admit that I stole a few of the really fun ones.  I hope that you enjoy some of the sites that I have found using my diigo.

Digital Storytelling

We did it!  This is my first attempt at Digital storytelling with the help of my amazing friend Ms. Kearns.  We decided to work together on the project because we both wanted to use the same idea of bucket filling that we had implemented in our classrooms.  The digital story explains the problems that our students were having with classroom community and how we guided them to turn it around.  The students loved posing for pictures to give examples of how to be great bucket fillers.  Once we had the pictures we used Windows Movie Maker to create the story of our bucket filling project.  The pictures and the voice went pretty smoothly, but when we decided to put music in the background it took a lot of brainstorming.  Finally, after using Google as a resource, we figured out that we had to make a video with the voice and then embed it into a new file putting the music as that voice over the old video.  I am very proud of our trouble shooting.  The one thing that I would change if I could is that I would make our voices the same volume.  We couldn't figure out how to go back and change that once we had it all recorded.
Hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it!  (You might want to turn the volume up to hear my squeaky little voice :)

Student Glog from Glogster

A student of mine created a glog on Arbor Day just on her own for fun. I thought that it turned out great and the other students commented on how much they learned from it.

diigo

I really am enjoying putting pages on my diigo page.  It sort of forces me to think about all of the cool websites that I have used over the years and compile them into one place.  At first my thought was to keep my passwords on the notepad, so that I can have all of them in one place also, but then I found out we were sharing the pages.  Maybe I can set up another account with passwords.  I am always forgetting them!

This is my diigo account so far, but I want to add lots more to it.

Glogster Much?

Do any of you use Glogster?  My students have been working on a research project and I decided to try out Glogster as an option for them to present their research.  Our school has an upgraded account, so it made sense to use it.  After making the class list and showing students how to use it, I then sent home a letter explaining what it was to parents and gave students the option of playing around with it at home.

I have found that the students love it and have been creating lots of glogs on their own time.  The other neat feature is that students can comment on each other's blogs.  The thing that I don't like is that the comments post right away and they don't have to be approved by me.  So far this has been fine because I spoke to my class about leaving positive comments.  It does make me nervous though because I have no control.  The other piece to it that I don't like is that students can send each other messages.  I don't think that I can view these in any way.  Does anybody know if there is something that I am missing and can change the controls or something?

I do have lots of ideas that my students can glog about.  This glog came from the integrating technology and literacy site and used a book to facilitate discussion on bucket lists.  My students have to read each week and do a project related to their book.  A glog would be a great way to share books with the class.  You can check out this middle school teacher's project on the integrating technology and literacy site.

RSS - Muddling My Way Through

With the help of Richardson and experimenting with Google reader, I think RSS is making a little more sense.  I didn't even realize that I was using reader before reading chapter 5, but since I had subscribed to my group's blogs their posts were obviously coming up on my reader.  They were extremely helpful, especially Jessica's animoto because I will be doing the New York project as well.  Check it out, it's very well done.





Now that I understand how to subscribe to different things, I have been hunting around trying to find a good digital story telling site.  This led me to Larry Ferlazzo, who then had directions for how to add his site to my feed.  Funny how these things all work together!  Now I have some feeds in folders and a little more clarity on voice threads and story telling.  Oh, and a ton of websites in my diigo.  Before you know it I will be a true technology whiz!

Now I just have to figure out how to use RSS to help my students with their research projects.  Hmmm....

Good think Stacy is in my reader!

I did it!

I have to say it is extremely exciting to me that I actually created an Animoto.  My students are starting research projects on the changing earth.  The whole idea of the video was to get them started thinking about their topics.  I decided to display questions regarding things such as how landforms are made, what the earth is made of, the layers of the earth, and how the continents have shifted.  I gathered pictures that I thought would interest my students to go with each topic.  I left each question open ended because the idea is to peak their interest to find answers for themselves.  At the end of the video I brought up questions for students to start thinking how they will find the answers and what they will do to present the information to the class.  I will show the video to them tomorrow and let you know how it goes!

Richardson Chapter 3

This chapter was perfect for me to read right now because I am in the midst of trying to start a class blog.  I decided to try Kidblog because it looks easy and obviously kid friendly.  The chapter reminded me the importance of checking with my principal first to make sure she is OK with me starting a blog.  I also need to get the parents on board.  My first thought is to just post a question a week and let my students post responses.  Eventually I would like to post homework and other things that students might need to access from home.  Maybe one day it will even be as cool as Mrs. Schmidt's Classroom Blog.  She has all kinds of fun stuff like even skyping with authors.  OK, maybe skyping is a stretch for me, but it sure is an awesome way to get students excited about authors.  Wish me luck in my new blogging adventure!

Getting to Know Animoto

I am beginning to think that I can handle this whole Animoto thing.  After viewing some really cool ones from sample animotos, the ideas began coming to me and I started to look for pictures.  We are doing a unit called The Changing Earth right now in science.  My idea is to get pictures of some really cool landforms and put them into categories.  This will get my students thinking about good topics for a research project that they have to do.  I compiled a few pictures of basalt columns, picked out my music and am now on my way.  This might be kind of fun if I can figure it all out!  I was particularly inspired by International Dot Day Trading Card Project and might use that template if the earth one doesn't work for me.

Richardson chapters 1 and 2

I have to start by saying that technology is something that intimidates me to the core.  Anytime that I am faced with opening a website in front of my students or trying something new on the Smart Board, I can feel my anxiety level rising.  "What if it doesn't work, what if something inappropriate pops up, what if my students can't wait to go home to tell their parents that Mrs. Bohle has no idea what she is doing."  These are the "what ifs" that start dancing in my head.  It is the subject area where most of my students are more comfortable and have more knowledge than I do.  So, as I am faced with this class, it brings me both excitement and fear.

It is an interesting fact that as the rest of the world around us is changing so fast in the use of technology, education seems to be dragging their feet a bit.  Of course this is not true for all teachers, but a vast majority of us are holding onto the old ways of teaching literacy.  Students now are able to find information with the click of a button through social media.  They also are able to create blogs and websites to give themselves an outlet of writing and sharing information.  This is the exact reason why it is important for teachers to be comfortable with the technology and teach our students the correct and positive ways to use blogs and websites.  I like how Will Richardson emphasized that we must first learn ourselves how to navigate our way around blogs and such.  Then we can become more effective in teaching our students the ways of our world.

I am excited to learn many of the tools that Richardson suggests.  While reading chapter two many ideas began to swirl around in my head of things that I would like to include on a class blog.  I found myself scribbling notes in the margin such as; daily writing prompt, bucket filling, on-line book club, and math word problems.  I even began to think of a fun title for the blog.  These are huge steps for me because the task of creating a class website or blog has always seemed so daunting and unknown to me.  It was particularly helpful for me to look at other class blogs and websites.  Ann Davis's really stuck out to me because it was such a friendly and positive place to be.  I also really liked Mr. C's Class Blog.  This one was informative to both teachers and students.  At first the site seemed a bit overwhelming to me, but everything was labeled in a way that ended up being easy to navigate through.  I liked how he posed questions to his students and how he had videos for teachers.  Both of these examples provided me with great ideas to try in my classroom.

One technology tool that I think is very important for our students is to simply learn to type.  First of all, computer testing is going to quickly become the norm for these students.  It will be impossible for students to write narratives and informational text if they don't know the correct buttons to type or take forever to find a letter key.  Also, the world of business will not be functional for them and students won't be able to find jobs without typing or word processing skills.  Students will have a very  hard time becoming successful in life with out these skills.

Safety on the Internet, as mentioned before, is probably my biggest fear.  Our school does have a filter, but there have been several occurrences at our school where students are caught looking at things they shouldn't.  Obviously, teaching the students appropriate actions is a necessity.  You never know what you will find even when putting in an innocent search word.  I have also given a lot of thought to how to keep my students' identities safe.  There was mention in the book of using class numbers instead of names.  I think that this is probably what I will do because my feeling is that you can never be too safe.  My students have class numbers anyway, so I believe that this is a logical solution to the problem.  It is also of utmost importance to stress to students how many people have access to what they are putting out and the importance of keeping private information to themselves.

I think that teacher blogs are important for many reasons.  First of all, it gives students a place to find information that they might have missed.  Instead of an "absent folder", I could simply post work for students to download.  It also gives them a place to write and practice the skills learned in class.  I also think that blogs are a great place for parents to find information.  They will feel more connected to my classroom.  Another reason to have a blog is to stay connected to other teachers.  It was extremely helpful for me to check out blogs created by other teachers and schools.  Merriwether-Lewis Elementary School was very beneficial for me to look at.  I was able to navigate around to teacher websites and see what types of designs and work that those teachers used.

Most importantly, I think that it is important for students to be interacting and contributing to the blog.  It really is a great way for them to integrate reading and writing.  It gives them practice publishing to a specific audience and receiving feedback from the audience.  It also of course builds community whether just in the classroom or to the entire outside world.  In a nutshell, I am excited to overcome my fear and explore blogging with my students.

Blog Post 1

Literacy has been constantly changing since the beginning of time, but now in the age of technology literacy is changing at an even more rapid pace.  New literacies are the redefinition of literacy to include how to learn, comprehend and interact with technology.  Some examples of technology that have redefined literacy are things such as the Internet, web pages, blogs, instant messaging, software, and wikis.  The terms are changing so quickly and literacy is being redefined so often, that it is important to stay on top of the new technology as teachers to give our students current information.

There is a place for teachers to go in order to find the standards that students should be learning for a global and digital world.  This is referred to as NETS or National Education Technology Standards for Students.  NETS focuses on the importance that students must be given pre-college time to use, analyze and explore technology in the classroom.  The standards and profiles are created by instructional technology experts and educators around the world.  I found the site to be extremely user friendly and found it useful to see what my fourth grade students should be exploring and using in our classroom.  The standards are also broken into six sections.  Creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration, research and information fluency, critical thinking, problem solving and decision making, digital citizenship, and technology operations concepts.

Of course it is also important for teachers to stay on top of technology themselves.  There is also a site with standards for evaluation of the skills and knowledge a teacher needs to teach, work and learn in a digital society.  This is referred to as National Education Technology Standards for Teachers.  NETS-T is broken into five categories.  Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity, design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments, model digital age work and learning, promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility, and engage in professional growth and leadership.

I am already analyzing ways to use new literacies in my classroom and forming ideas around NETS.  It is perfect timing because my students are beginning a research project on the changing earth.  The students will need to locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media such as stated in standard 3b.  The students will also need to present the information with some sort of publishing mode.    My students already publish pieces of work in writers workshop by typing, printing and putting the piece in a published folder.  I now have the idea to publish the pieces on a blog or website.  This way all of the students can read each other's work.

I am very excited to lean new literacy and implement a multitude of technology into the classroom.  I hope to create a blog that my students are able to contribute to.  I also want to make my webpage more interactive form them.  This will give my students a place to go for resources and activities.

Coiro, J., Leu, D.D., & Leu, D.J. (n.d.).  Teaching with the internet k-12: new literacies for new times. Retrieved from http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~djleu/fourth/one.html

International Society for Technology in Education. (2012).  NETS.  Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students

Blogging Day 1

Thanks for visiting my blog.  Our first class was filled with lots of different activities introducing us to different types of technology.  We learned about wiki and how to create a blog.  I also was given the time to post on a student's blog.

I am practicing putting up pictures.  This is a co-worker and my son.  We have our classroom bears.