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.