At our last professional development, focused on technology, Rabbi Tavi Koslowe shared some of his favorite Web 2.0 tools.  You can click on this link to his Gemara Blog to see the full list with links;

http://noamgemara.blogspot.com/

Out of the ones he shared, I really love zamzar which is a file conversion service.  I am always so annoyed when a student sends me a file that cannot be opened on my computer.  Often when students work with each other this is a huge point of conflict.  I am so excited to share this and use this tool to end that frustration. 

Another one that he shared was dippity.  This tool allows you to create timelines.  All year I was struggling to put up a timeline in class that showed both the Jewish history and secular history that we were learning in ancient times.  Students really want to see how the timelines interconnect and where the events fall in relationship with each other.  I am so excited to use this tool next year to either create for my students or have my students help create that allows them to see the timeline of history.  

I just watched a session from the ISTE conference called “Tra-Digital History: Bringing History Alive!”. It was about using technology to teach students history. The big goal of the use of technology by this teacher is to teach students to think and learn about history the way historians do. When I first learned about blended learning, I thought it meant using online programs/curricula to teach the content of your subject area. I have learned that it means using technology in any form with a teacher also teaching. In this workshop, the teacher is clearly teaching and giving students that face to face instruction and more importantly interaction that students crave and need. He is using technology to bring primary sources such as pictures, firsthand accounts, documents, maps to the fingertips of his students. He then has his students examine and question them to discover the history the way a historian would. He also had students use them as a jumping point for creative work related to the historic events. It reminded me of how science teachers use investigations to teach scientific concepts and methods of science. It reminded me of how first and foremost when figuring out how to implement technology in our classroom we need to think about our goals for the subject area and what tools could help our students best reach those goals.
http://www.isteconference.org/ISTE/2011/program/search_results_details.php?sessionid=60843135&selection_id=72057244&rownumber=1&max=1&gopage

Virtual Worlds

We were asked to join Second Life and explore its virtual world.  Many of the participants in the course were uncomfortable with it.  When I first saw this a few weeks ago, it intrigued me.  How much fun would it be to create an identity and interact with other online identities?  My children used to love Webkinz which is a similar forum for children where you get a stuffed animal and put in a code.  You create your house etc.  Then after that we had a parent evening with a psychologist who spoke about boy/ girl relationships etc.  It was a great presentation.  Many parents had questions about technology usage.  One of the areas she came out strongly about was the negative influence of virtual worlds on our children’s abilities to interact with each other.  It really struck me and stuck with me.  I am not sure why I am more comfortable with something like Facebook or twitter and less comfortable with something like Second Life.  I do see it as having more potential to draw in both children and adults in an unhealthy way.  There is something so real and engaging about it with the visual world that is created, that it worries me it will be too hard not to get drawn in, in an unhealthy way.  For now I am not trying it.  I wonder if my grandchildren will roll their eyes at me the way I rolled my eyes at my grandparents’ reaction to the internet!

After trying out voice thread a few times, I saw a lot of potential of using voicethread for shared reading experiences in English, especially poetry.  We have an English Department meeting on Wednesday during which we are working to review our reading curriculum.  As part of this, the teachers also share ideas and brainstorm about how to fine tune their reading instruction.  Using a poem and guiding questions from each grade’s English teacher I put together short shared reading experiences for their classes.   I am very excited to share this tool with them and to see how they begin to use it in their classrooms.  In addition to giving students additional shared reading experiences, it also allows students to find their literary voice in a way that might not be possible in a classroom where not everyone gets a turn.  While this means they will not be writing a response, they will be speaking their thoughts.  My guess is that this will bring out different strengths and different kinds of expressed thoughts for some children.  I also think it will feel safer for some children than speaking aloud in front of peers in class.  I can’t wait to see how the English teachers run with this and what kind of extensions they come up with to use this tool!  If anyone else has used it, please respond how so I can share it with them.

Below is one of the links, they were quick and easy to create, my guess is that there is even more that can be done with it, feel free to respond to this blog with input or ideas.

8^th Grade English

https://voicethread.com/share/2898419/

Twitter VS Edmodo for a PLC

Twitter Vs Edmodo

We have been focusing on technology for our professional development this year.  We have been blessed to have recently received a total of 225 IPads as a donation to our school.  This past week, at our professional development, Rabbi Tavi Koslowe gave an IPad 101 class to get the teachers started on how to use them in their classrooms.  As part of the presentation Rabbi Koslowe shared with the teachers a list of links that would be helpful to them in general in their classrooms and instruction. 

I have been trying to figure out how to bring all of our amazing professional development in technology into the realm of a full-fledged PLC.  I love how twitter enables me to get all kinds of interesting ideas from different educators that I follow.  I wanted to create a more insular group to give it a more personal feel.  I created an Edmodo group that will focus on technology being used in the middle school.  One of my favorite features of it is the library page.  I am hoping to post all of the cool resources and articles that people share as well as the blogs, wiki’s, websites etc that they create.  I am hoping this will begin to create the PLC feel I am looking for. 

Diigo

I don’t know if any of you have tried Diigo for doing research with your classes.  We have been working in grades 6-8 on building research skills with meaningful assignments that require students to delve deep and not superficially into a topic.  Part of this obviously requires students to research a lot online.  This can be incredibly frustrating when students are working on lap tops, school computers, home computers etc.  It is even more frustrating when working with a group.  You can imagine what it is like, not everything found is a “document” that can be saved.  Often it is a webpage.  Diigo is a tool that you can sign up for.  It allows you to create your own “favorites” type list on their server, not on your own personal computer.  Like Google Docs students can then access it anywhere!  To even top that convenience, it allows you to install their toolbar on any computer.  Once installed, a student can actually highlight and make notes on any webpage that is saved onto Diigo.  No more printing necessary!  Students are creating groups that collect sources together so they are able to collaborate and not repeat efforts.  If you have not done so already, try it and let me know what you think! 

Flipped Learning

This past week, a teacher who teaches math to 6th grade tried flipping her math class.  She used Kahn Academy for the vodcast and then followed up the next day with an in class learning activity.  Going into it, we were nervous about the following:

• What would happen if students encountered technical difficulties at home?
• What would happen if students did not do the viewing of the video at home?  How would she know this?  What would she do the next day; not allow them to participate?  How would she make sure they learned the material?
• What would happen if a student watched the video and did not understand it?  How would she reinstruct them before the follow up activity without boring those students who did understand it? 

The teacher did a fantastic job of motivating her students, modeling how to access the video for them, and as luck may have it, none of the above became an issue.  The class had a fun application investigation that normally there would not have been time for. 

A parent of a child in her class wrote the following email after the follow up activity the next day:
" I wanted to commend you for such an interesting and creative assignment tonight. ----- spent a long time thinking about it, writing it up, getting involved. You really got him, and I imagine, other kids engaged, and the names of the suspects were so funny! I hope you save this piece so you can use it again. "
I can really see how this could give those of us who teach on the "yeshiva crunch schedule" a chance to use more hands on/application type experiences with our classes.

I am still concerned about the questions I wrote above, if anyone is using flipped learning and has good strategies for the above please respond and let me know!