Web2.0 Professional Development

In late June, I led two three-hour professional development sessions for teachers at my school.  One was geared toward teachers in grades 5-12 and the other was geared toward teachers in grades K-4.  Initially I was planning on creating two separate presentations, but then a 2-week trip to Europe changed those plans.  I decided, instead, to create one presentation that would have something for everybody.  I covered all the tools with both groups, but spent more time on different tools for each group and focused on how they could be used differently with each group.  The feedback from both sessions was positive, so I'm glad it worked out!

View presentation here or watch it embedded below.

Web2.0 - grades 5-12 on Prezi

GoogleDocs+Prezi+Screenr = Collaboration

Each year the 8th graders do a research project on the Cambodian genocide before reading the book, Children of the River.  This year we decided to revamp the project completely!  First, we wanted to integrate the new research model and we also wanted to have the students create a product other than a powerpoint.   So, I sat down with the two eighth grade language arts teachers and the eighth grade special education teacher to map out our two week plan (in the end it turned out to be 2 1/2 weeks).  The finished project was awesome and required a huge amount of collaboration by the students with googledocs, prezi, and screenr. 

Step 1 - Research
The first day we spent going through the first steps of our research process (PLUSS) - Plan and Locate and Use.

• I began with the PLAN step - we talked about organizing our information by creating areas of focus.  These areas of focus would allow us to place the information we find in an appropriate area which organizes our research.  As a class we brainstormed topics to use for our areas of focus.  
• Next, we moved to USE - I created a practice sheet for going through the USE step.  I had pulled out a few paragraphs of information that we could go through as a class to practice identifying the important information and paraphrasing it.  So, first I assigned one area of focus and then when they broke out into their group work, they had to come up with a second area of focus to use in this practice worksheet.  I walked them through the first few sentences as a class.  Then, they worked with the people at their table to go through the rest of the information - reading it sentence by sentences, deciding if it is important information, determining what area of focus it belonged under (coming up with their own area of focus), and paraphrasing it.
• Finally, we moved to LOCATE - I showed them the pathfinder I had created for them using LibGuides.  I gathered a variety of sources that they could use in their research.

After my instruction, the students were assigned their topics and had to begin their research with PLAN.  This required them to gain background information on their topic and determine the areas of focus they would use.  I used our subscription to Britannica to find good overview research articles for them to use for this step.  The students had to read through the article and come up with their areas of focus to use to fill out their graphic organizer before being allowed to move onto the next step of research.


The embedded Issuu includes almost all of the documents and lesson plans I created for the research portion of the project.



Step 2 - Create a Prezi
Once the research was completed, the students set up their prezi accounts.  One student created the Prezi and shared the link with their partner so that they could both work on their pezi together.  We talked to the students about limiting the amount of written information they put in a presentation because they would be adding more information while talking and recording their presentation.
The students had a little trouble thinking outside of the powerpoint mode when creating a prezi.  Some of them still have that "powerpoint" feel, but a lot of the students truly embraced the flexibility and creativity that prezi afforded them.  The little people that move across the screen while collaborating were a big hit too :)

Mekong River on Prezi

Khmer Rouge on Prezi

Step 3 - Write a Script using GoogleDocs
Once the prezis were created, the students had to write a script to use when recording their presentations.  We broke out googledocs again and the students were able to work simultaneously on writing their scripts.

Step 4 - Record a Presentation using Screenr 
After two days of practice, the students were ready to record.  It was a great scene to see the students dotted across the library at tables, on the floor, in between the shelves, and on the soft-seating recording their finished product.

Step 5 - Watch Finished Presentations
It took about two class periods to watch the completed presentations.  A googleform was created for each class for the students to submit the link to their recorded screencast which made pulling up each one in class a quick and easy process.  After each presentation, the students had to think-pair-share about one thing they learned about Cambodia and/or the Cambodian Genocide from the presentation.

Museum Box

The 5th grade Social Studies teacher asked me to come up with a research project to introduce the Explorers Unit.  I gave her a few options and she liked the idea of having each student create a Museum Box on the explorer they are assigned to research.  The students then presented their boxes on the day that their assigned explorer was going to be studied.

Here is an example of a completed project.  (just a screenshot, not the interactive box)

We used this project as an opportunity to introduce the middle school PLUSS research model.
P - plan
The students brainstormed some keywords they could use in their searches.  We also discussed determining important information and paraphrasing.
L - locate
I showed the students the pathfinder I created for their project and the students began filling out their graphic organizer with the information that they found. 
U - use
We discussed citations and the students continued with their research.
S - show
I  showed the students how to use Museum Box.  In order to to use Museum Box effectively, the students also had to learn about file extensions (jpg vs. bitmap vs. png), how to create a  folder, and how to upload pictures and files to a website.
S - self-reflect
The students completed their project by reflecting on their research.  It provided them with the experience of self-reflection and it provided me with feedback on the research process.

Research Documents

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Publisher Software from YUDU

Graphic Organizer

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Digital Publishing with YUDU

I'm Published!!!

This past April, the high school librarian and I presented at PSLA on Building a Culture of Reading in a school and/or district.

The presentation was a huge success.  Several people e-mailed our principals and superintendent singing our praises about what a great job we do promoting reading!  Another result of the presentation was that someone from School Library Monthly, asked us to write an article for them!

So, later that month we sat down together and sketched out an outline, created a Google Doc, and then collaborated on the article together.

After many, many editing sessions we were ready to submit.  Getting down to our word-count limit was the most difficult task ... we just had so much to say :).  I know we are both proud of the completed article!

User-Friendly? - part 2

So, here are the nuts and bolts of how I rearranged my library to be genre based.  The entire process took just over a year and I'm loving the change.

Step 1
I determined the genres I would use and where each genre would be housed.  I decided to go with the following genres (I've also added the colors I decided to go with):
Historical Fiction
Chick Lit
Realistic Fiction
Humorous
Mystery
Sports Fiction
Horror
Action/Adventure
Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Easy Reader
Classics (no color)

Step 2
I purchased transparent colored labels and decided what color each genre was going to be.

Step 3
I weeded heavily and shifted my books around to create an area of space to begin

Step 4
I chose a genre and methodically went through my fiction section from AAA to ZZZ and picked out all the books that fit in that genre
I began with historical fiction because the open shelves from my weeding were right where I planned on housing my historical fiction section.  So, I'll use my historical fiction as my example for the rest of the post.

Step 5
My aide changed a few things in Destiny for each book.
*each title received a genre code in front of the current call number - ex)  HISTORICAL F XXX
*the sub-location of each book was changed to the appropriate genre
My aide then placed a transparent colored label over the existing spine label for each book and then shelved the books.

Step 6
I created a wordle for the genre by looking at titles and authors of the books that were housed in that section.  I had the wordle created into a poster.  I placed a few of the labels on the poster, to create a square of the color that was assigned to that genre.  Finally, I hung the posters above the beginning point of each genre section.  This is crucial for making it easy for your users to find the appropriate genre section.  
  

After pulling out all the books of one genre from the fiction section, I re-shifted the remaining fiction collection which opened up some more shelving.  So, I just repeated the process over and over until I had about 2 library carts full of those books that just don't seem to fall into one genre.  I slowly worked my way through that cart - asking students for their feedback, reading online summaries, and  looking at the recommended subject headings for that book.  Going through those two library carts was tedious, and sometimes I wished I could have created a separate category just for those difficult books ... but I found it better to just make an executive decision and house the book in a specific genre.

I created a google form and polled my students to get some feedback from them.  While of course, there were those who didn't like the change, the overwhelming majority loved it.

"I like that I can find the mystery ones (I like them the best) right away in their own section."

"I like fiction organized by genre because I know where to look for the specific kind of book I want."

 "Because I know where all the fiction book are which I prefer"

User-Friendly? - Part 1

I had been rolling an idea around in my head for several years ... reorganizing my fiction collection by genre.  Finally, last year, I decided to actually go for it.  It genuinely took an entire school year + a few months into the second school year.  Now that it is 99% finished, I have no regrets.  I am so glad the library has been reorganized.


RATIONALE

1.  Bookstores
Bookstores don't organize themselves using the Dewey Decimal system.  They use the BISC - Book Industry Standards and Communication which was developed by the BISG - Book Industry Study Group.  According to their website:

• BISG motivates and moderates debate about current book industry practices and about the future of digital publications on the international book trade
• BISG develops, maintain and promotes standards and best practices that enable the book industry to conduct business more efficiently and cost-effectively. Our standards cover a wide range of business processes, including product identification and description, business communications, product and carton labeling and digital discovery and delivery.
• BISG conducts and publishes primary research related to the size of the U.S. book industry and in areas of topical interest such as the environmental impact of the book industry and consumer attitudes toward digital publishing.

 2.  Help Me Find a Book!
I wonder if libraries ever performed any market research on using Dewey for classifying their entire collection?  Now, I cannot claim that I performed any sort of market research before I made the decision to change.  However, I was constantly asked by students to help them find a book - they didn't have a specific one in mind ... they wanted recommendations.  So, the first words that would come out of my mouth were, "Well, what are you in the mood for?  Mystery, fantasy, sports, romance ...?"  Once I knew the genre they were looking to read at the moment, I say, "Ok, let's walk the shelves and I'll pull out a few options for you."  Being the librarian, I was uniquely aware of my collection - what books/authors I had available and where they were on the shelves.  So, the student and I would walk through the shelves and I would begin pulling off a book here and there that I thought would interest them.  After providing them with a few options and telling them a little about each one, they would make their decision or ask me to show them more.

I realized my collection was only friendly to students looking up a specific book or author.  For the students that knew they wanted to read a scary story, but didn't know an exact title or author that they wanted, the collection's organization was not meeting their needs.  They needed me and my knowledge of where the scary stories were in my fiction collection in order to find a few options to sort through.  Sure, they could look up scary stories in the library catalog, but the number of results in a bit overwhelming and then looking through the entire fiction collection to pull a few out for themselves to decide was not something that middle school students felt like doing.  I wanted the library to be user-friendly and to promote reading ... I felt like my fiction collection, as it had been organized, was far from doing that.

Book Shelves photo used under Creative Commons license from http://www.flickr.com/photos/33377700@N00/443545349/. 

The Good, The Bad, The Challenges

The start of a new school year always brings changes.  This year, the middle school where I work is dramatically changing its schedule.  The good news is that I no longer have to teach classes.  I will now have a completely flexible schedule.  The bad news is that the students no longer have any free time (study halls) to come to the library to select books, work on projects, read for pleasure.  Of course, every change brings new challenges, and I have two main challenges for this year.

My first challenge will be to build a stronger collaborative environment with my teachers.  Previously, I just did not have the time and flexibility in my schedule.  There were certain teachers and projects that I worked with, but overall, I was too tied down to with classes to reach out to more teachers.  So, I'm trying to be proactive before school starts.  I have created a packet of information to advertise what I have to offer at the library - description of offerings, example projects, and our research guide.  (see below)  I plan on starting small.  I want to focus on language arts and history, then I will broaden my scope to target science and specials as well.  I will be meeting with teachers individually and talk to them about how I can help them and what the library has to offer.

My second challenge will be to provide library opportunities for students without study halls.  I'm thinking about lunch passes of some sort, but that will needs to be worked out.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions that you have.  How does the library scheduling work at your school?  When do students use the library? 

GLOG DESCRIPTION OF OFFERINGS

Example web2 projects for LA

View more documents from Miss Makatche.

PLUSS research guide

View more presentations from Miss Makatche.

Desk photo used under Creative Commons license from dcJohn.

It's Been Too Long

Eternal Learning of the Open Mind is open again for bogging.  I took the past year off from writing any posts.  Sometimes you just need a break ... but it's good to be back.

I have decided, though, that this blog will look a bit different than it has in the past.  Before, the focus was primarily on using technology.  I am going to expand it to include all my work as a librarian ... what I do to promote reading, how I help teachers with research, how our projects integrate technology.  I'll still highlight new technologies that I love, but those posts will be part of a larger variety of posts.

Open sign used under Creative Commons license from Tanakawho.

Newbie Presenter

This past weekend was my first presentation (other than at school, of course). I was a presenter at the 37th annual Pennsylvania State Librarian's Association Conference.

I'm happy with how the presentation went. There are a few things that I wish I would have done differently in hindsight. I wish I would have taken 5 minutes at the beginning of the presentation to make sure everyone in the audience was able to get to the online portion of my presentation. A few people were having trouble finding the link on the conference wiki. I also wish I would have scheduled about 5 minutes between each application I was talking about to answer a few questions. Oh well, next time I'll try to remember to do those things. Live and learn:)


I began with a short presentation embedded below:


At the end of the presentation, I linked out to a poll by Poll Everywhere. I wanted to get an idea of where everyone in the group was at in terms of using applications like glogster, wordle, audacity, etc.

Then I launched into the content of my presentation using a LiveBinder I created. I absolutely LOVE LiveBinders for presentations because your presentation then becomes a resource binder for those in the audience. My session focused on creating multi-media book projects. I talked to teacher librarians about how to make book projects 2.0-style and allow students to learn important 21st century skills - creative commons, visual literacy, communication, etc.

Book Projects 2.0

It is amazing how a presentation that can take hours upon hours to create and organize, is over in 1 hour and 15 minutes. I wanted more time, but the time I did have was great and the participants were wonderful!

Number 1 photo used under Creative Commons license from http://www.flickr.com/photos/49968232@N00/2115400318/.

Collaborative Writing Made Fun and Easy

Last month my fifth graders completed a unit on Internet Safety. Our culminating activity (which only took 1 1/2 periods!!) was a group essay.

To facilitate the collaborative writing process, which can be difficult, we turned to Etherpad, making the whole process fun and flow smoothly.

So, I'm disappointed to hear that Etherpad will be shut down and access to previously created pads will be lost on May 14. Google had recently purchased Etherpad, released their API, and now they are shutting Etherpad down. Luckily two "clone" sites are available, so I will be using one of them in the future:
PiratePad
TypeWithMe

Process
1. I introduced Etherpad to the students, which only took about 10 minutes. Then I allowed the students to test it out and practice with it for another 10 minutes. Since it was my first time and their first time using it, we worked out all the kinks and brainstormed some ideas on how to use Etherpad effectively to create a collaborative essay. This was also a great teachable moment on discussing the difference between academic writing and text/chat writing because they were switching back and forth between both!

2. Now the students were ready to really begin. Before their next class, I created 5 pads for each class and posted the invite URLs online. All the students had to do was click on the link corresponding with their group and everyone was on the correct pad and ready to write!

3. The class was silent even though they were constantly checking in with one another and communicating about their writing process. Here's just a sampling of the conversations occurring about their writing in the chat box.

4. Once they finished their final products I showed them what the TimeSlider button did. They loved seeing a video of their entire writing process enfold before their eyes. It is the perfect end to a collaborative writing process.

TimeSlider video (I imagine this link will not work after May 14, 2010).

Finished Products





















Classroom Ideas:
Write a group story
Lab reports
Group projects
Summarizing (book, lesson, presentation, video) activity


Teamwork photo used under Creative Commons license from

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22177648@N06/2137737248/

Book Review Podcasts

I just finished working with an eighth grade Language Arts teacher and her students on creating book review podcasts. (I've blogged previously on podcasting - here and here.)

Podcasts are a great way to build students skills not only in technology, but in academic content as well. I was inspired by the poster Langwitches created in her "It's not about the tools . . . it's about the skills". It is such a powerful visual reminder that having students record a podcast is not all about the podcast skills. It is about the writing, speaking, communication, etc. skills taught and reinforced in the process. It is about allowing students to build these skills in a real-world, hands-on experience.

One thing that really struck me throughout the recording process was the growing self-awareness that the students developed about how they sounded while speaking. Common remarks during the first day of recording included: "Do I actually sound like that?" "I need to record that again because I was mumbling" "I can barely hear myself. I need to speak louder next time." The ability to hear what they just said and receive immediate feed back allowed the students to analyze their recording for quality speaking skills. Without much coaching, the students listened to and reflected on the quality of their recordings (speaking skills) and then took measures to correct or improve upon their recording.

We used Audacity to record our podcasts. Alternatives to audacity are GarageBand (for Mac users) and Myna.

Timeline
1 Period - Write book review podcast script
1 Period - Introduce Audacity and let the students play/practice
2 Periods - Record vocal portions of podcast
1 Period - Import music and a sound effect

How To
Book Review Podcast Directions
Full screen version.

Audacity Instructions
Full screen version.

Final Product

To place all the podcasts in a place for all students to have access to them, I uploaded the podcasts to a glog - quick and easy! Each class has their own glog page with their podcasts like the picture to the left.

I wish I could share the direct link for you to listen to a few, but unfortunately I cannot.





Podcasting Skills and Literacies photo used under Creative Commons license from Langwitches.

Bulletin Board Happiness

I have to send out a big thanks to Tara Ethridge for introducing me to WallWisher. She has written two blog articles about using WallWisher here and here.

WallWisher is a sort of online bulletin board. It allows users to post sticky note type messages and attach photos, videos, documents, and links.

I thought I would give it a try in an upcoming lesson to fifth graders about Internet safety. Before we delved into the topic, I asked them to share their thoughts, tips, rules for staying safe online. Normally this would be done as a class discussion with raised hands and people taking turns speaking. However, using WallWisher provided each student equal opportunity to express their knowledge. I loved the experience as much as the students did. I plan on repeating this activity at the end of our Internet Safety unit to compare their two boards and let them see how their knowledge and understanding has grown and evolved.

How To:
Creating a wall on WallWisher is so easy! Simply create an individual account and then set-up your wall(s). Students do not need to create accounts to be able to interact with a wall, you just have to allow anonymous posts when you are creating your wall. Once students click on the link to your pre-created wall, they can immediately post. They can change the default "anonymous" name to their own, but it is not necessary.

Example:
Click here if you cannot view embedded example below.


Classroom Ideas:
Class brainstorming
"Ticket out the door" activity
Before and After a lesson/unit activity to show learning
Resource gathering - students (or teacher) can add links, videos, photos, documents
Alternative to a standard poll

How would you use or have you used WallWisher with your classes?

Bulletin Board photo used under Creative Commons license from http://www.flickr.com/photos/69676244@N00/2315822008/.

Typing Time

I'm sure we've all seen it . . . the one-fingered, hunting, pecking typer. Since our school does not provide keyboarding classes, the majority of the fifth graders enter the middle school with a complete lack of typing skills. Many teachers bemoan the fact that projects requiring computers (and, therefore, typing) take longer than they should if the students had even basic typing skills. So, I found a few sites that students can use to practice their typing skills.

Sites
Typing
- thanks to ilearntechnology
- excellent resource
- ideas for encouraging kids to practice typing
- list of typing tutorials/games

Typing Web
- provides courses by key rows
- provides courses by level of proficiency
- games available
- registration is optional

Classroom Ideas
Let students practice their typing if they finish a project early
Create typing contests for your students
Have students set goals and track their progress

Typing photo used under Creative Commons license from http://www.flickr.com/photos/95492938@N00/1418402951/.

30-Minute Projects with Miss M

I have been having a fun time this year coming up with alternative ways to assess student reading for the Language Arts teachers in my school - read here and here.
While some projects may take several class periods, I was asked to provide some ideas for a quick, one-period projects. So, I tried to come up with some quick 30-minute projects/assessments for teachers who cannot always spare much classroom time.


IDEA 1 - Bookr
How To:
Bookr allows you to create a photobook/photostory. What helps to make this project so quick is that all the tools necessary are in one place.
As long as the students come prepared with a short summary, character sketch, description of favorite part, theme analysis, etc., this can easily be completed in 30 minutes.
Creating Accounts
Students do not need accounts to use Bookr.
Steps
1. Students type one sentence or phrase per page.
2. Student find a picture (using the built-in flickr photo search) to support that text.
3. When the students finish their photo books, they should e-mail them to the teacher for assessment.
Example:

or view book here Soldier X
by Don Wulffson by Miss Makatche

IDEA 2 - BLABBERIZE
How To:
As long as the students come prepared with a short summary, character sketch, description of favorite part, theme analysis, etc., this can easily be completed in 30 minutes.
The finished product is fun and quirky. As I were testing Blabberize out in school, some eighth grade students in the library at the time all wanted to give it a try. So, this one is basically kid-tested and approved.
Creating Accounts
I created one account and was able to have more than one computer creating their blabberize at the same time. I recommend having only one account per class that all students log into because this will make grading the final products much easier since they will all be available on the same account.
Steps
1. Students find a picture of an animal/person/statue (basically anything with a mouth)
I would recommend having a folder on the network available with a variety of pictures from which the students can choose. This helps in two ways: It will save time and it will ensure that the students only choose a picture that has a good mouth area to work with the blabberize concept.
2. Students place the mouth movement area on their picture
3. Students record their written piece and publish/save
Example:


IDEA 3 - GOOGLE FORM
How To: Here is the quickest assessment of the three. While the students are not creating a product, the Google Form will provide the teacher with an easy, compact way to assess students' independent reading.
Creating Accounts
Students do not need to create accounts.
Teacher will have to have (or create) a free account with Google.
Steps
1. Teachers should embed form on website or wiki or blog or provide students with link to form.
2. Students simply fill out the form and hit submit.
Example:

or view form here.

Stopwatch photo used under Creative Commons license from http://www.flickr.com/photos/77436208@N00/2737425814/.

Character Traits with Wordle

I have been working with one of my eighth grade language arts teachers to create book projects 2.0 style. Since I've been on a Wordle kick lately, I thought I would come up with a book project using Wordle.

I had recently given my mom, a French teacher, the idea of using Wordle to have her students work with adjectives. Her students created word clouds of French adjectives describing themselves using Wordle. So, I thought, why not transfer that idea to characters in a book.

The students chose one character from their book on which to focus. They then filled out the worksheet embedded below to determine the character traits they would include.

Character Traits

View more documents from Miss Makatche.

Using Wordle Advanced (see previous post), students created their Character Trait word clouds.


Finally, the students will present their Character Trait word clouds to their classmates. They used the worksheet with the reasons/examples demonstrating why the character presents a trait to develop their oral presentation.

Cloudy in the Library

To continue our goal to build a culture of reading at the middle school, I decided to enlist the help of Wordle. I wanted to come up with a way for students to share with their classmates what books they have been reading. Wordle popped into my mind as a way to allow students to create fun "lists" of what they have read - aka "book clouds". Students have been hanging their newly created "book clouds" throughout the library.

TIPS

Creating Lists

Have students create a list in a Word document. This will prevent and solve any problems that arise from students running out of time or having technical difficulties with Wordle.

Create a numerical scale for them to stay within when creating their lists. I had students assign their names as 100. The maximum number they could assign a book title was 60 and the minimum number was 20. This prevented any titles from being too large and competing with their name or from being so small they could not be seen. I recommended that the students use the numbers as a rating system for how they liked the book - the more they liked it, the higher the number.

Encourage them to create a fairly lengthy list. I printed out their circulation logs to help them remember some titles they read. I recommend at least 25 titles.

Example List:
MISS MAKATCHE READS:100
Hunger Games:55
Fablehaven:50
Someone Named Eva:44
Soldier X:23
Sisters of the Sword:38
Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life:26


Using Wordle Advanced

Pasting the list into Wordle Advanced allows you to keep book titles together.

Wordle - Advanced Tools via kwout

Personalizing

Students can continue to hit the RANDOMIZE button until they find a configuration that they like.

The students can tweak the color, font, and layout by using the toolbar at the top of their word cloud.

EXAMPLE


Cloud photo used under Creative Commons license from http://www.flickr.com/photos/35375520@N07/3680331543/.

Book Review 2.0

I was approached by one of my eighth-grade language arts teachers at the beginning of the year about book reports. She requires her students to read 2 books per quarter and wanted to try some innovative ways to "track" their reading. So, I created a list of ideas for her (which I hope to blog about later), which she will pull from throughout the year.

For her first book project, she decided to go with Glogster book reviews. Glogster is a very teacher/student-friendly site with a separate education portal. So, we set her up with an account and created her student accounts as well . . . very simple!

In order to help her students write a quality book review to incorporate into their glog, I volunteered to do a 20-25 minute mini-lesson on writing book reviews. I did not feel like an expert on writing book reviews, but I found Steve Peha's ideas very helpful.

Here are the 3 resources I created to help the students learn: (all embedded below)
1. Google presentation - unfortunately the speaker notes do not embed along with the google presentation, so some slides at the end may not make complete sense


2. Handout

Writing Book Reviews

View more documents from MissMak.

3. Example


I am really excited about the direction we are headed. Each quarter the students will have critically evaluated their books utilizing a variety of media. Gone are the days of the standard written book report/review!

Wordle

Wordle is not a new application, but sometimes it's helpful to remember those little tools in our technology toolbox that don't get used on a regular basis, but are perfect for certain jobs. So, I went right over to Wordle to create a word map of President Obama's speech to students.

I sent this over to my history/social studies teachers to use as an additional resource when discussing the speech with their students.
I think it would be a cool project for students to create their own Wordles, even if just on paper, of the main ideas and messages that they took away from the speech or that inspired them.

Classroom Ideas

• analyze historic documents (Gettysburg Address, Declaration of Independence, etc.)
• analyze students' own writing - show words commonly used/overused and check to see if main idea or theme truly comes through
• create a character description Wordle
  
• create an autobiographical Wordle
  
• DigiGogy's blog post on the Wonders of Wordle
• Slideshare - Ways to use Wordle in the classroom
  

Cultivating a Culture of Reading

Sometimes trying to cultivate readers in middle school has felt like trying to grow a garden on a sidewalk. The only places where reading was encouraged and promoted was by their language arts teachers and me, the librarian. We provided the cracks in the otherwise barren surface, hoping readers would spring up even under the "harsh" conditions.

So, in an attempt to harvest a greater crop of readers, I formed a reading committee at the end of the school year. I invited teachers of all subject areas to participate. To my pleasant surprise, I received a lot of interested from math teachers to social studies teachers to language arts teachers. We met 2 times over the summer and came up with some fun ideas to create a rich environment for cultivating a love of reading.

Our goal is to create an environment where teachers from all subject areas are promoting the importance and the love of reading. All our initiatives are voluntary (except the SSR) because we want students to choose reading instead of only doing it because it is required.

One Book-One School - We will be encouraging all teachers and students to read Three Cups of Tea

Reader of the Week - Each week a teacher or student will advertise a book over the morning announcements and (hopefully) a blog I would like to set up for this

"I'm reading" Signs - each teacher will have a sign outside their door where they can post the book/magazine/newspaper that they are currently reading

Book Discussion Groups - 3 times a year teachers will choose a book on which to host a discussion group and then students will sign up to participate in the various book discussions

Silent Sustained Reading (SSR) - 15 minutes every Monday morning (it may not be a lot, but it is a start!)

5th Grade Orientation - presentation to parents on the importance of reading and how to encourage their child to read

I would love to hear what do you do to promote reading with students!

Seedling in pavement photo used under Creative Commons license from http://www.flickr.com/photos/50835495@N00/46083890/.

Seedling in soil photo used under Creative Commons license from http://www.flickr.com/photos/86048711@N00/171923662/.

Test Driving Edmodo

With the emergence of Twitter this past year as a mainstream source for news (Iran and Venezuela), updates from government officials, info from businesses, etc. I want to make sure my students understand microblogging. I do not feel comfortable having my 5th grade students set up individual twitter accounts, so I am planning on using the education friendly Edmodo.

Setting Up Accounts
I have already created my account and created my classes. Each class receives its own access code. As students create accounts on Edmodo (no e-mail address required!) they enter the access code to join their class.

Features
Edmodo provides a calendar and a file management system along with the microblogging. While Edmodo lacks the @ and # that Twitter uses, it provides for them in a slightly different way. Instead of using @ to direct message someone, you can choose a specific person to send it to by choosing from a list. Instead of using a hashtag to create "groupings" on a specific topic, students can tag their posts (tweets). While these are slightly more cumbersome and a little less authentic, I believe students will still learn the fundamentals of microblogging that will easily transfer to twitter or plurk.

Edmodo - Home via kwout

Classroom Ideas

• Resource Sharing - ie: You are doing a project on the Oregon Trail, find a website that you would recommend to others to use for this project. Briefly, in about 15 words, summarize the website/why you would recommend it.
• Submitting final products - students could message you directly and attach their file
• Bell-ringer activity/Exit Ticket activity - students respond to a prompt at the beginning of class or the end of class
• Reminders - remind students about project deadlines, tests, homework
• Online Discussions - discuss books, current events, music, etc.

I'm sure that I will discover more about Edmodo as I begin to use it with students this year. Look for a future post about additional features I am not yet aware of and more ideas for use in the classroom.

Steering wheel photo used under Creative Commons license from http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035555243@N01/50927878/.