Lucier_Telitha_Read/Respond to Allison Pope

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2009

BP6_20091108_Researching&Blogging. Web 2.0 toolsGR

One web 2.0 tool I found important to me as an educator and my learning environment is called Graspr. Graspr, is also known as the instructional video network and contains many videos that include educational and arts and crafts areas. This website has a wealth of knowledge in many other areas as well. Graspr contains videos for sports, recreation, home, garden, food, and drinks. I would use this site with my students to first show them as a model of the artistic processes of what I want them to learn. After viewing the video we would hold a question and answer discussion to find out if anyone needed any other instructions before actually starting the process. If there is something I viewed and I needed specific assistance with, I would contact whomever created the video with my questions or concerns before showing it to my students. Graspr also has an online community to allow people to connect and share their experiences and expertise. This site has tips on video production and an area to share your knowledge with questions and answers. A video that I viewed was ‘How to make a plaster paper mache face mask’ by the Handy Goddess. The video was clear and loud enough to understand the instructions. She actually plastered her own face, but used vaseline before applying the plaster to her skin. My concern would be for any students with dust allergies and they would not use their face as the model. They would apply plaster to a plastic mask. They would need to apply several layers, at least three layers of plaster strips onto their mask. This may take two or three days to complete. If the student wants to add any extra details to their mask then they need to add them before painting. A stick could also be added to hold the mask or you can place holes in the sides to tie it around the face. After it has been smoothed out and all the extra details have been added, then it will be ready to paint. Acrylic paint, tempera or spray paint works best. After all mask are completed have a masquerade party, or display them in an exhibit.

Graspr image retrieved November 08,2009 from

http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/archives/graspr.pn

Lucier_Telitha_Read/Respond to Toni Orr

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2009

BL9_2009112_Researching and Blogging about Web 2.0 Tools

Glitterfly.com I found this great new fun site to use with my students. As you can see the students can really be creative with this site and images. The can really change up their projects with this. My students do a projects called "All About Me" that begins with them not even being able to create a Power Point to a full movie with sound and narration. This site can perk up the most dull Power Point project and give them a chance to expand it beyond a regular project.

The site also gives you a url like this to linkhttp://www.glitterfly.com/ to many different places. There are so many possibilities to use this site with projects that students can really be creative with. I love to create different things and know that this saves as a gif extension. I am still learning many of these things so my question of the day is can you import this into iMovie and keep the glitters and flitters available? It was so cool to just click on the

icon and your sparkle picture is posted to your blog!

The chart above has some other Web 2.0 tools that I had taken the time to explore but then there are many sites that I have never heard of like Black Planer, Multiply, H5. This page also has links to be able to create your own layouts, fun backgrounds. You can also link and add pictures to your own websites as well. Think that I will try to add this picture to my iWeb site as well. So many toys, so little time to play with them!

Tried to import this to my iWeb site but was unable to get it to work. I think one of my followers would have the knowledge of how to do this. If you know post the answer so we can all see!

Lucier_Telitha_Read/Respond to Hardy Reeves

Just a couple of quick reasons on why www.yacapaca.com is used in my classroom.

Lucier_Telitha_Web 2.0 Movie

http://lindenhillschool.edu20.org/home

Lucier_Telitha_Student Blogs

When I first had the idea that it might be fun to have my students create blogs I had no idea that the parents would love it so much. I've gotten some great responses from them. It's nice, when trying to incorporate technology into my class to have support from my parents. The students are still on the fence about the process but I'm winning them over I think. So far they've chosen their separate biomes and they've examined some energy roles present in their biomes. It's been a great process for us all. Now I just have to convince the rest of the faculty that a learning management system would be a great idea...


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod

Lucier_Telitha_Week 3 Web 2.0

I’ve fallen in love. This latest web 2.0 tool that found is called edu2.0. It is a Learning Management System. This is very exciting for me because two (or three) classes ago I was able to use a program called Lectora. This program was great and very easy to use. Edu 2.0 is an LMS, but a free one. I was very excited when I saw this because I wanted to be able to use Lectora for my school, but it was rather cost prohibitive. Edu 2.0 is FREE!

I’ve already set up a site for my school – nothing is on it yet, but thanksgiving break is coming up, that will give me a chance to work on it (I hope). I plan on using this site for my classes. Eventually I hope to have my classes working with the LMS at least once a week. I can see having self-guided lessons about science on this site as well as tests and quizzes. As much as I try and push for the latest software to be bought for the Alphasmarts it has yet to be purchased. This is an alternative method to accomplish my same goal of using technology to further the literary needs of my students.

In the end I hope that I can get most or all of the teachers using this site to aid in meeting the educational needs of our students. I feel that it is very important today, even though our students have varied levels of learning differences, that we include technology. The world is heading that way when it comes to business or leisure. It is up to us as educators to ensure that or students are literate in the traditional sense and in the new meaning of the word.

Lucier_Telitha_Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is the method of using a service like Delicious to bookmark or save website urls according to topic and then sharing them with others. Delicious is a site which educators and librarians are using to help students and patrons to learn and share with each other (Gustafson). Gustafson, who was a college student in 2008 used social bookmarking to store and keep track of research for school projects. This is one use for social bookmarking: storage of research.

According to another technophile, Carolyn Hanych, "Educators need time to learn how to use new technology tools and how to successfully implement them into their instruction" (Hanych). This is a valid point, though a hard one to see through in the light of busy teaching schedules and personal lives. Though, if people are willing to learn, there is much to accomplish in the way of making professional lives easier. Social bookmarking allows one to store bookmarks in a way that is not computer-specific. It also allows for the sharing of bookmarks with colleagues. This allows for the building upon research of others (Jackson).

Social bookmarking is an all around useful tool for making one's life more streamlined. Instead of having to create a computer-specific bookmark for a site on a topic for class, an individual can save the information online using a site like Delicious and thus have access to the sites on any computer.

References

Gustavson, B. (2008). Who says librarians (and teachers) don't like tags? Retrieved November 8, 2009 from http://blog.delicious.com/blog/2008/03/ who-says-librarians-and-teachers-dont- like-tags.html

Hanych, C. (2009). My plan to use social bookmarking as professional development. Retrieved November 8, 2009, from http://chanych.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/my-plan-to-use-social- bookmarking-as-professional-development/

Jackson, L. (2006). Sites to see: social bookmarking. Education World. Retrieved November 8, 2009, from http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/sites/sites080.shtml

Lucier_Telitha_Web 2.0 Video 1

I've decided that as one of my fun new projects designed to torture my students I'm going to have my freshman class create blogs. Along the side of my blog you'll see links to the blogs for all of the students in that class. There were of course some voices of dissent when the idea of blogging was brought up. Since I'm using it as a graded assignment they quickly caught on. Each student was asked to choose a biome to study for the year. They were then asked to post about a few things

1. What is the biome, and why was it chosen

2. What are some characteristics of the biome

3. What are some key organisms that live in the biome

I also asked them to include a little about what they were looking forward to in their freshman year here at Linden Hill. The responses were all great! Stay tuned and see what else we'll crank out!!!

Lucier_Telitha_Comments on Megan McKinley's Post

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2009

McKinley_Megan_Researching and Blogging about Web 2.0 Tools

I learned how to use www.repper.com. It was this really cool site where you could take any picture and create a pattern using the picture. You could also use preloaded patterns to start with as well. To change the pattern, you simply clicked the edge of a highlighted portion of the pattern and drag it to change the pattern in any way. So, from one picture you could make an unlimited amount of patterns. I thought this would be an awesome Web 2.0 tool to use in my Journalism class because in the yearbook we are often struggling with new and exciting ways to create layout designs for each page. A yearbook is so large that often it begins to look repetitive and boring, or it takes so long to do each page that by the end the pages become less visually exciting. This would be one really easy way to use photos that the students have taken all year long to create different and interesting backgrounds for each page. The website says that the patterns you create can be used as Creative Commons, but I would do more research before using any of the patterns in a published yearbook, in case there are more copyright policies that the site does not state just to be safe. If nothing else, the students can create interactive backgrounds that they could use for their online profiles, etc. It would be really fun to give one class the same picture and see the vast differences in patterns each student makes from just one starting picture. It would even make an interesting writing prompt in English about how differently each student works

Telitha said...

Megan this is fantastic. I love the picture that you have with your post. Also the APA at the end is a great reminder for me. That is one thing I struggle with still (and probably forever)! This website sounds like a really great tool to use with your class.

NOVEMBER 6, 2009 6:10 PM

Lucier_Telitha_3 Web 2.0 Tools

Springo visual web searching

So I checked out a few different web 2.0 sites this week and I found a really neat on that allows people to search the web through a visual method rather than through reading. It’s a really interesting way to view different websites because it approaches things from a totally different learning modality. The site’s name is Springo. I can see that this would be a good tool to use with my students because of the language issues that they already have. Working with students who have dyslexia, it makes it a no-brainer for me to use something that would incorporate a visual component. I also think that my students will like this format because when you look at it the colors and pictures really pop – they draw the attention of the viewer.

VoiceThread visual and audio collaborations

Voicethread is another web 2.0 site that I’ve been looking at. This site allows me to make my own videos and slide shows for my students. I like this site because it is easy to use. Also this particular site is one that was recommended by our Academic Dean before I even knew what a web 2.0 tool was. This is one that can be easy for the students view and to add comments to. Also it allows me to create videos that can be used by other teachers in other schools as well. You can view the Voicethread that I created to share information about electricity with my General Science classes.

http://voicethread.com/share/722696/

Wordle visual word remixing to create images

The last tool that I have used this week is called Wordle. I like it because it creates a really interesting visual using terms from papers or websites that I have my students use. Again because I have students with language learning differences a visual that I can use with and to enhance learning is one of my favorite tools.

Picture by Wordle at wordle.com

Lucier_Telitha_Flickr Lessons

So tonight I’m looking for lesson plans that incorporate Flickr. Go figure a lesson plan that incorporates pictures. I totally dig this because of the visual aspect that it adds to a lesson plan. This is great for students who either can’t read very well or don’t understand English. It could also work to enhance a lesson that is difficult.

Like right now in science: We’re studying electricity. The ins and outs of this are proving tricky for my students to grasp. We’ve done a few static electricity experiments and some battery experiments and the boys have the general idea, but I’m afraid that they’re not getting the specifics that I’d like them to get. I can see using Flickr to enhance the lesson by showing pictures of a circuit and other related items. Another really great idea would be for the students to complete a webquest or a ‘flickr-quest’ concerning different elements of the electrical circuits.

I found a really neat lesson plan posted by By Kenneth Beare at About.com. He commented on the idea of using Flickr to teach ESL lessons. In his post he recommends having the students look at pictures that the instructor picks or having the students pick their own pictures. Beare then gives a list of questions like “What’s happening in the picture?” and “Tell me what objects you see in the picture.” I think that these are some really neat things that could be done with Flickr. I can definitely see me pushing my colleagues to use it more.

Lucier_Telitha_1 Web 2.0: Storybird

So for my latest assignment I had to research and write about a web 2.0 tool that I could use in my job. I looked at all of the offerings that the site had and not many of them had implications for my teaching. In the end I found that Storybird was a great site because it allows me to create books and publish information for my classes. I was able to use it to create a short child-like storybook about biomes. A biome is a specific type of habitat or environment like a desert or a mountain region. My freshman class will be looking at biomes in this upcoming chapter and I thought this might be a great way to introduce it to them. To view the book, click the link below.

http://storybird.com/books/the-biomes-of-the-world/

I think that this is a very useful website and I plan on sharing it with my coworkers. I find this useful in a couple of different ways. As I’ve mentioned before I work in a school that was founded to specifically cater to dyslexia and similar learning differences. In my school there are two English classes that each student takes every day. The first is titled Language Training. In this class the students learn how to make sense of the English language and how to spell. The second English class that each student takes is called Literature and Composition. As the name implies this is much more of the classical English class. The students read books and write reports. I can see Storybird being used in the Literature and Composition class as an alternative way for the students to write their book reports. I can also see it being used in a class like History or Science, which I teach. In my classes I might use Storybird so that the students can create a book about what they’ve been learning – this could be in place of a weekly quiz. I can also see implications for the use of Storybird when it comes to longer writing projects, specifically in my Freshman Science class. I’m rather pleased with this new resource that I’ve found.

Artwork by:

Agocs, Irisz. Retrieved from http://storybird.com/iriszagocs/ on November 2, 2009.