Tips from your TIS

If you’d like an online space to store, organize, and access all your favorite web sites or if you have a number of bookmarks on Safari and would like to transfer them easily to a PC, check out del.icio.us.

‘del.icio.us’ keeps an online record of all the web sites you would usually ‘bookmark’ in Safari, Internet Explorer, or Firefox. Because it’s online, you can access your account from any computer, anywhere. Each time you bookmark a site, you have the option of ‘tagging’ that bookmark with a keyword. This creates an organized and cross-referenced list of all the resources you bookmark.

What makes del.icio.us unique is your ability to share your bookmarks with others, and follow what other people bookmark. Each ‘tag’ creates a unique web address to which you can direct colleagues or students easily. For an example, check out the account I created of resources for social studies teachers. To see what others are bookmarking, click on the ’saved by …’ link under each bookmark. This opens up another page where you can choose to browse what other people have tagged with similar keywords. What began with one bookmark connects you with a network of resources organized by people all over the world.

If you are interested in learning more about this tool, visit the help page or contact a TIS.

Groupwork. It can be a powerful learning experience for students, but a headache for teachers to manage. So much so that I was often tempted to avoid assigning group projects rather than develop new ways to keep students interested and individually accountable. Yet, many companies depend upon results from teams of people working in distant places, and even more so as the world becomes smaller, technologically speaking. Teaching these life skills may be almost as important as teaching our content.

Wikis are a large part of this new global collaboration trend. Many of us may know of Wikipedia, but this extraordinary example is only one of many wikis online. In fact, many teachers are now using wikis as tools for group work in their classes. Lee LeFever and the Common Craft Show provide a good introduction to this Web 2.0 tool. As you watch this short 4 minute film, be thinking about how this tool could be used to redefine groupwork in your classroom.

With a wiki, students can add and modify content to pages you set create. They can have discussions, ask you questions, and post new resources. And, an added managerial bonus, every change a student makes is recorded, easily viewable from their profile or the history of a given page.

Group results, individual accountability.

Two popular hosting agencies for wikis are WetPaint and Wikispaces. Each are now offering ad-free versions of their commercial wikis, with settings that keep your students’ identities and work secure. WetPaint hosts its own education support page and Wikispaces is offering its premium services to K-12 educators free of charge. Visit these sites or contact your technology integration specialist for more information about using wikis in your classroom!

If you would like to view examples of wikis created in each of these wiki providers, I recently created this wiki with a group of elementary teachers in wikispaces, and WetPaint is highlighting this teacher’s work with 9th graders.

Ever try to explain something over the phone? It just doesn’t compare to actually showing someone what they should do — it isn’t as effective as being there.

When I would introduce students to a task I wanted them to complete with the computer, I sometimes felt stuck with a similar dilemma. If I explained it to them in the computer lab, many would be off task, distracted by the computer. Yet, if I explained it to them in my classroom, often I was required to use a chalk board and then some would inevitably forget what they should do. What if there was a way for me to record my audible directions, visually demonstrate the required steps, and provide those directions at the click of a button?

Jing makes this possible.

The Jing Project has created a tool that allows you to take pictures of anything that is displayed on your screen. It can also take video, capturing sound from a microphone (often embedded into your machine if you are using a laptop). What sets Jing apart from other screen capture tools is that it can …

1. Store the image or video on a remote server space, and
2. Create a link to that image or video that you can easily include on your web page or in an e-mail.

This means that you don’t have to worry about e-mailing large videos to people and that the videos you create are easily shared with others.

In the scenario above, if I was going to have students complete a number of activities on one or two websites, using Jing I could record myself navigating to those activities and dictating directions. I could put a link on my web page and direct the students there for directions. Their first task when they get to their computers would be to listen to my directions, as I take attendance.

Jing can be used to share anything you can see on your desktop. Here’s a link to their online tour.

ePals is now offering SchoolMail, Schoolblog, and In2Books free for schools. These services were formerly available only via a subscription. Further information can be found in the article below from THE Journal.

http://www.thejournal.com/articles/21246

WEB 2.0 is all about sharing, collaborating, and receiving feedback. A great resource out there for you to check out is VoiceThread. Voice thread is a site where you can upload pictures, movies, pdf’s, and presentations, and add your own verbal and written comments to them, for the public, or a select few to see. The fun, and power of this site, is that others viewing your upload can listen to your comments and add their own. So what does this have to do with the classroom? Rich story telling with real pictures and the author’s voice. Group collaboration and sharing. Student/teacher conferencing over presentations or individual documents. The nice thing is that the Pro version, usually $30 a year, is free for educators and gives you unlimited use of the site. As for security, you can select to moderate any posting you make and your uploads can be kept private to just your group of friends, in this case, your classroom. Take a minute to check it out and feel out the potential in your classroom when everyone has a voice. Here is my posting Feel free to add your comments to it.

Here is a posting by a student. It is a report on black bears. What a great way to incorporate media into everyday projects!

Keeping student groups on task can be difficult, especially working in the computer lab. How do you keep kids accountable for being involved? Google Docs may be a solution.

In Google Documents, students can work simultaneously on a project–writing a paper, peer editing, inputting data–and a log of participation is created. You can reward students for their hard work (and know which ones were hardly working) all from a click of your mouse.

Visit the site yourself and invite a colleague to collaborate in real time!

http://docs.google.com