Another Ted Talk

My daughter saw this video and recommended it to me. Thought after watching it that it would be something you can share with your students and use yourself. If you haven't watched the Ted talk series, this would be a great one to get you started.

Creative Thinking

This morning's email included an update to the Committed Sardine blog by Ian Jukes and his consortium. The posts in it are always interesting. In the post of this week, someone had commented on this article from Psychology Today. It made me think about how many times we teachers rush kids along and don't give them time to think and get their creative juices going. We sometimes have so many rubrics and parameters for our projects that we destroy the natural and normal creativity our students have. Maybe this is why all students identify themselves as artists when they are in kindergarten and not so much when they get to the upper elementary grades. Is there anything  you can do to nurture creativity in your class? How about in yourself? One of the good reasons this class is shorter this year is that revising shouldn't be of the same material every year. Each year of teaching should have some elements that you haven't done or tried before even if you are teaching the same curriculum. After all, the students you have are different too. (Getting off of my soapbox now.)

21st Century Classroom

Hello all,

An interesting infograph was in one of my Diigo bookmark groups today. Especially I took note of the fact that 91% of teachers have computers in their classroom but only 20% think they have enough--it never ceases to amaze me that while many teachers long for what we have, people still resist letting their students make the most of what is available to them. Anyhow, take a look at this infograph. Incidentally, I will not put this into this year's tools, quite a few teachers are beginning to use infographs to show students concepts visually and asking them to create their own. If you are interested, let me know and I will point you in that direction.

Using Videos in Your Class

There are so many wonderful video resources available to us these days. When you are using these, it is helpful to remember that if we send our students to videos during class time, there is a band width problem; that is there is too much information coming from the internet to our little niche at school so since videos tend to clog up the "information highway" they should be previewed and downloaded whenever possible (that will improve the quality as well). That being said, this is a site that will tell you some of the best ways to search and give you video sources that you may not know about. If you need to download, see your technology coordinator to help you find out how. Here is the link.
One of my listservs had this link that lets you cut any YouTube video to use just the part you want. Check it out as well. Hope you will find it helpful.

More About Learners Today

Good morning everyone,
The two K class members have made an impressive start and I am hoping that the rest of you will be inspired by their good blog entries.
In my list of bookmarks from Diigo was this entry yesterday. I read a book about this effect several years ago although I cannot remember the title of it and it is in Florida but this is a digest of what it said. Mike Fisher seems to work for ASCD and as such is a serious blogger. You can read the blog for yourself but you can see that the digital native often feels out of place in the world of academia. I'd love to hear your comments; is this true in your class, especially those of you who teach older kids or who have your own kids that might fit this stereotype?
Here's the link. 
While I was getting ready for class I went over some of the Diigo bookmarks that others had shared with me and was fascinated to see this one. It would be great to hear how you feel about this person's blog writing.

Hope you had a great 4th of July.

Search, Find, Know

Good morning, all.
I am still looking forward to reading your posts and hope that some will be forthcoming soon! It's been a frantically relaxing week for us; spent some time camping with our grandchildren so I haven't been connected for a while. I did come across an interesting site which might be especially interesting for Kathleen but enlightening for all of us, myself included. The Search Find Know site has lots of information about locating resources and a new search technique as well as links to other technology resources. He talks about 21th Century Literacies as well.

One of the things I meant to include in my handouts, speaking of literacies, was the ISTE (International Society of Technology in Education) NETS standards. They are competencies that have been developed as National Educational Technology Standards for the country and I believe are something all teachers should keep in mind when they prepare lessons using digital resources. Here are the links to them. NETS for Teachers and NETS for Students.

Hope you all are enjoying some rest and relaxation and looking forward to reading more of your blogs SOON!

Engage, Enliven, and Energize Your Teaching!

This blog has been set up to encourage you and your classmates to explore and become more familiar with the many ways you can engage your students and make learning stick through the use of Web 2.0 tools.  This exploration will take place between now and August 15, 2012 when everything is due for credit. It is my sincere wish that at the very minimum, you will find something that you can use next year and that you will continue to grow and explore and to become more comfortable with the digital world.

It will be a different experience for you not to be the teacher. And please remember that we are learning together. I am including some tools in this year's course that I have not learned about until recently. Some of the tools from last year have disappeared. I do not pretend to know all about every Web 2.0 tool and you may find some that you can't understand or ever want to use and others that provide an aha moment. We can learn from each other. Your personal blogs are meant to give you a place to reflect on what you are learning; everything from joys to frustrations--brains learn better when they can reflect and we often can't do this in our day to day class management.  Read each other's blogs and take advantage of the views and ideas of our little learning community. Technology is only a tool but it might help your students with some concepts that are difficult for them.

Please don't be afraid to ask each other or me when things don't make sense to you or you are having difficulty with a particular task. I can always arrange a Skype session with you or we can set up an online meeting. But you will have to ask. You will only get as much from this experience as you are willing to try. And much as you would like someone to fill in the "rough" places, part of the joy of learning is in the struggle. 

You have some forms to fill out when you find something good (or horrible) and I hope you will jot down some ideas that might go with topics you teach.

There is a wiki that goes along with the blog.That wiki is found at this address. Each year the wiki changes depending on who is in the class and what tools are new and which are gone. Web 2.0 tools come and go and start free and become paid or other things. I will tell you when each lesson is ready for your use. Today is Lesson One and you will be asked to do several things to get your "blog" credit. Right now, only Task One is ready


Many people think that because the students are "digital natives" that they know how to use all this technology. They have an affinity for it that we do not but in reality they are ignorant in many ways. In class we were discussing why kids seem not to like Web 2.0 and assignments that address 21st century ways of teaching and learning and the skills they need. We mentioned that they might now feel they have the time to learn the new tools and complete the assignment, that assignments that require you to think should be more difficult than ones that you can just memorize or have been doing forever. Here is an interesting  set of information about  young people and technology that is from the New York Times. It makes for some interesting reading.

To complete the credit for your first day of class, please be sure you have sent me your blog's address and have made one blog entry reflecting on 21st Century brains, learning, and what you read and heard. Sharing a site with your classmates via the bpssummer diigo group is a bonus.
And here is where you can download the national standards for students and teachers in the use of technology. Since we are a laptop school, you should be aware of these.

You'll find that wiki here.
There is also a Summer set of tutorials here.
More Brain articles are here.

A Vision of K-12 Students Today

- Watch more Tech Videos at Vodpod.

And have fun. Many of these tools are interesting and just plain fun.