Last Official Post!

I have written a lot about different online resources and tools this semester, but I know I've barely scratched the surface. I have recently learned about two more online tools, Common Curriculum (for online planning) and Easel.ly (an infographic creator, great for visual learners like me!). I wanted to mention those briefly, but I also want to go ahead and address another thought I've been having about education and technology...

As I mentioned, all of my posts this semester have been about online tools, which means that none of them have really been about online content. As we have delved deeper into lesson planning this semester in General Methods, I have grown more worried about content. I know it will be addressed in my Reading in the Content Area class next semester, but that doesn't stop me from wondering about it now.

Considering the amount of information and content on the Internet, asking "Where do I start?" is a huge question with many possible answers. But fortunately, one of my classmates mentioned a great website with credible information that, while not subject-specific, has real world relevance: NBC Learn.

One of the great things about being a future English teacher is that I know I will plan time for discussion. One of the not-so-great things is that I don't know if discussion will go well, or if it will go at all. Having something like NBC Learn, a site with school-appropriate, relevant videos and information, in my back pocket will be hugely beneficial. I'm grateful to my classmate for mentioning it, and I'm grateful that I have this blog to remind me of it.

Writing this blog has been a fun experience, and I will probably continue to add to it as I discover more tools and resources that I can utilize in my teaching career. Maybe I'll make a symbaloo with links to all the sites I've written about here. If I do, I'll be sure to come back and share it on this blog!

Thanks for reading :)

Smore: The Flyer Site

I'm sure that I've mentioned this before, but I am a highly visual learner. I love seeing things graphically represented and I honestly believe that different colors and shapes can help make information interesting and memorable. And one tool that can help organize information this way is Smore.

Smore is a site that allows you to make visually appealing and informative flyers. I can definitely see myself using Smore to introduce a unit. I could both project it on the board and hand out the flyers to all the students (although with some of the backgrounds and color schemes, a black and white printed version might not be very readable). I also really like Smore as a tool through which students can demonstrate their learning. I think it is both easy to use and complex enough that it will definitely be an engaging tool for high school students.

Here's a quick sample Smore I made below!

Storify

One of the bloggers that I'm following created a Storify, and now I'm very interested in this tool. Storify allows the user to clip content from all over the web and publish it in a "story" format with your own words explaining what is happening. If that wasn't very clear, check out this Storify about Facebook's manipulative attempt to influence users' emotions.

I think Storify will be an excellent resource in the English classroom (and especially in a journalism classroom!). It's an easy way to showcase research and present information without ads, which is something I love and will be very, very happy to have in a classroom setting.

Other users of Storify include the BBC, Al Jazeera, Yahoo, Dell and HBO.

I've always loved stories and I am a highly visual person. I can definitely see myself using Storify both as part of my direct instruction and as an assignment for my students!

First Lesson Ever + Blendspace

This upcoming Monday I will be teaching my first lesson ever to a group of sophomores. I'm nervous, but excited, and I'm on the way to being pretty thoroughly prepared.The lesson is on two different concepts/skills: what makes a good research question and how to use the internet to find good sources for a research paper. I have spent a lot of time in the past few weeks looking through websites, PDFs, images and videos on these topics and I have compiled them into a Symbaloo, which I've embedded onto my website. I was having trouble figuring out how I wanted the lesson to be structured, so, despite the fact that I really didn't want to use a Power Point, I went ahead and created a Google Presentation on the two concepts, with links to outside sources that we'll explore together as a class and in small groups, and embedded it onto my website. I also created a WebQuest and a Google Form for students to fill out their answers on the website.

I hope it's not too much information to be delivered in a mini-lesson. I also hope that the students will really pay attention once they have their laptops out and not get distracted. We'll see what happens!

I'm really glad that I've been able to use many of the tools we were introduced to in Methods & Ed. Tech class to create this lesson. Speaking of tools...

While looking through the main Pinterest board for educators I discovered BlendSpace. BlendSpace allows teachers to create lessons and quizzes that their students can access all from one link. I was able to view one of the sample lessons, on photosynthesis, and really did like what I saw. Basically it looks like you can have six components for a lesson. For the photosynthesis lesson, the teacher's first component was a video, the second was a diagram, the third was a PDF of a worksheet, the fourth and fifth were diagrams, and the sixth was another video (he didn't incorporate a quiz). Students can leave comments on any one of the components. I thought this was a great way of visually organizing all the information students will need to know for a particular lesson/unit. I'm thinking about trying this out for my second lesson, on Nov. 3rd!

Pinterest for Educators

Since we're on the topic of content curation in class, I think it's time I write about a very popular site: Pinterest. I've been on Pinterest for a while now, and I really like it as a site "for fun" for several reasons, reasons that I think translate over to why I also like it as a source for educator tools.

Pinterest Pros (generally speaking)

1. The graphic representation appeals to me as a visual learner. 
2. It's very easy to organize ideas.
3. Ideas can be organized into multiple places if there is overlap. 

Pinterest Pros (for education purposes)

1. If you Google search "tools for educators," the second link that pops up is to this amazing Pinterest page full of helpful links. (Essentially, there is a vast quantity of resources for educators on Pinterest that are accessible all from one jumping off point.)
2. You can access professionally-developed tools from companies as well as see examples of activities from teachers themselves. 
3. There are also links to educator blogs that I might not discover on my own. 

There is one other point I'd like to make: the difference in value for me between Pinterest and Twitter. I think both of these sites have their own sets of benefits and drawbacks; however, I think that for me personally the ability to organize ideas on Pinterest puts it a step above Twitter. On the other hand, the fact that Twitter is so often updated with new resources is a feature that I also really value. In the end, I think that Pinterest's easy organization function makes it the right tool for me. 

A Good Basic Article + A Great Informational Website!

So I just found this article, Integrating Technology into the Language Arts Classroom, and I really like it for exactly what it is: a list of ways to move the literature-based ELA course to the 21st century. It is a pretty basic list, but I think that something like this will be an excellent reminder for when I am teaching. I know I'll probably be pretty overwhelmed, so it will be helpful to have something like this to remind me of the essential ways that technology can be used in an ELA classroom.


The article also led me to this website, WebQuest.Org, a website devoted to explaining how to find, create, and share a WebQuest. According to the site's authors a WebQuest is "an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web." I might incorporate this format in the second lesson I teach at my site this semester, so I will definitely be referring back to this website! 



Have a good Tuesday night, everyone! Go Royals! 

Research Rules! : Symbaloo Style

Right now I'm working on ideas for my first ever lesson that I'll be presenting to a classroom of students. I'm mostly excited about hashing out the details, but I'm also somewhat nervous about the presentation of the lesson itself.

My mentor suggested I talk about how to research, as her students will be turning in a research paper as part of the next unit.

So far, I don't know what to do for my anticipatory set, but I do have an idea for the body of the lesson: taking them through the majority of the links on a symbaloo embedded on my website.

Symbaloo is a fantastic tool for organizing resources. It is essentially, at its most basic level, a graphic way to organize links. The organization is fantastic because its a simple color coding system.

For the purposes of my "Research Rules" lesson, it will be an easy way for students to think about where they are in the process of writing their research paper, and then go to the section on the symbaloo for resources.

I'm thinking of setting up my symbaloo in the following way:
1. Primary sources (links to where you can find free texts online)
2. Ideas (links for ideas on how to or what to write a research paper about)
3. Secondary sources (links to where you can find academic articles regarding your topic, now that you've chosen it)
4. Writing and citing (links to places where you can save your work and sites that teach you how to cite... possibly even to easybib.com and citationmachine ? Not completely sure if that is something my mentor would approve of, though, so I'll check with her first!)


Here is a link to symbaloo's website, and here is a link to my symbaloo (it's still in progress!) for the Research Rules lesson.

Evernote: My New Favorite Tool

I have read about Evernote online in a few different places, both education-oriented and non-education oriented. I finally took the leap and downloaded the program for my computer and the app for my phone over this weekend and...

I absolutely love it. Evernote is a program/service that allows you to organize information in almost any form on a computer, tablet or phone into one place. There is also an extension for the Google Chrome browser that allows you to clip an e-mail, a page, a full article, a selection of a page, or a screen shot and save it for later in a note.

Evernote is organized in the following way:

Find information --> add to Note --> add Note to Notebook --> add Notebook to Stack (if desired).

This will be a great tool for organizing information for research papers and projects. Also, Evernote has a share function so students can collaborate information and share it with others.

My only problem thus far is that it seems difficult to export Notes to Word, so just in case something happens to your Evernote account all your information is lost. It is possible to save Notes as PDFs, so that is a great alternative; however, I think it would be an excellent feature to be able to export Notes as .doc files.

Protagonize!

Here's a great English education specific website that's free! It's called Protagonize. This is a website where anyone, not just students, can submit their writing and have it reviewed by members of the community.

I have a couple of concerns with this tool, specifically because I can't moderate what others are saying. Since Protagonize is not an education-specific site, there might be language and content unsuitable for a school setting. Also, it is possible that some of the reviewers who comment on students' work might provide unreliable feedback. In the end, I would have to make sure that I personally am also looking at all of the students' work.

Nonetheless, I think that for upper-level students, whether that's honors students or upperclassmen, Protagonize could be a great resource. And I will definitely encourage any students who are serious about writing (as a college endeavor or as a career) to utilize this great tool.

Collaborize Classroom

There are a myriad of technological tools available to teachers; sometimes the sheer number of available resources is overwhelming. One of the main purposes of this blog will be to catalog technological tools that I believe will have a place in my future classroom (whether that be middle school language arts or high school English).

One of the tools I have encountered that I am excited to use is Collaborize Classroom. This website is incredibly useful as a way to check students' understanding and to promote discussion. It is a website but it is also available as an iTunes app. 

Some of its features: 

• password protected so only teacher and students can access
• take a poll 
• hold a debate
• supports attachments
• analyzes results (shows what percentage of students chose which multiple choice option as the correct answer, for example)
• allows you to sort students into groups

I think this website will be a great resource for discussion post/forums and for grouping students together. It reminds me of Canvas with a little less functions, but it's free! I'm excited to have the opportunity to use this tool in the future.