Responding and Reflecting; Collaborating and Collecting

If you've ever used Wallwisher, you know how powerful such a tool can be in creating collaboration and on-line dialogue between students.

Lino It is a similar tool, with an easier interface. Use Lino It to collect feedback, write together, and synchronously respond and reflect. This online bulletin board allows anonymous and instant posting, and only the posters (and the administrator) can move or peel off the stickies that have been added. Super easy with few frills to distract students.

Another neat feature is History, which highlights the ten most recent additions, allowing users to quickly see what was added since their last visit.

Check out example of students responding to Paul Laurence Dunbar's "The Sparrow" which was read in juxtaposition to Poe's "The Raven."

Applications for the Reading/Language Arts Classroom:

• Demand Exit Tickets: all students respond to an open ended question based on the day's lesson.
• Collect Ten Word Stories, ala Sparky Teaching's Ten Word Stories page.
• Ask students to list running questions about a difficult text piece.
• Encourage students to collect colorful figurative language and "cool sentences" from their reading. Some of these can later be submitted to Notable Sentences... for Imitation and Creation (see my write-up here).
• Add a "What's New and Notable" bulletin board to your teacher's page. Include assignment updates, links to current events, etc. See my Lino board at the bottom of my main class site.
• Share files and videos which are related to classroom discussion topics.
• Get instant student responses to poems, song lyrics, facts, and quotations, perhaps as a warm-up to each day's lesson.
• Allow students to record thoughts and questions as they watch a video or read a chapter.
• Check out more ideas at this blog.

Notes and Caveats:

• Limit the number of users on a single board to five or less. Otherwise, you'll have too much traffic and many redundant responses.
• If you care to know who posted which items, instruct students to include their initials on posts. My students decided to assign a different color to each student to differentiate responses.

The Case for Digital Portfolios

Check out Throwing Away 6th Grade - OR - The Case for Online Portfolios.

I don't have a lot to add to what you'll see at this post. But in short:

• I teach sixth grade.
• My students generate a lot of products.
• We have online digital portfolios.
• I get it.

Am I doing as much as I can with them? No. But at least I'm headed in the right direction.

How about you?

By Everaldo Coelho and YellowIcon [LGPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Teachers' Domain: Digital Media Lessons Aligned with Core Standards

Are you seeking to integrate technology and media into lesson plans, but don't want to spend hours at the computer or reinvent the wheel? Teachers' Domain offers you incredibly complete, well-paced lessons that incorporate the best of what is freely available from public broadcasting. From the Teachers' Domain site:

Teachers' Domain is a free digital media service for educational use from public broadcasting and its partners. You’ll find thousands of media resources, support materials, and tools for classroom lessons, individualized learning programs, and teacher professional learning communities.

Resources are well categorized, and searchable by topic and grade level. Once you've registered at the site (it's free), you'll see that all lessons are aligned with the Common Core State Standards (aka the National Standards) as well as state standards, when available.

I also appreciate that rather than search through hundreds of plans, I can drill down to the specific skill or topic I'd like to see, as shown in the screen capture below.

If you need some help navigating the site, working with video files, or planning instructional units, Teachers' Domain offers online courses and teaching strategies in a number of formats.

Visit Teachers' Domain and see for yourself how easy they've made media integration. Then continue to check back as more resources are added.



Why Continue to Invest in Technology?

Tis the time of year when budgets are planned and votes are taken to approve said budgets. In most districts across my state of New Jersey, and probably across your state as well, jobs and programs will fall under the budget axe.

So when a parent or board member asks, "Why should we keep putting money into technology?" we should be prepared to answer.

I recently stood to defend technology at a board meeting in my own district. In order to remember what I needed to say, and in order for the audience to possible recall it later as well, I organized my thoughts into an ABCDE format. Note that it's short on statistics and buzz words; that's entirely intentional. Don't over-think this for yourself, or over-complicate it for your listeners.

Active Participation
When we were in school, the traditional model consisted of a talking head at the front of the class, and a sea of nodding heads filling the seats. Nodding either with dumb agreement, or with sleep. Either way, learning was typically a passive act.

With technology, and especially with on-to-one programs, all students are involved simultaneously. Technology throws learning back into students' laps. Technology allows students to control both the processes and products of learning. The teacher is just as necessary, but now fulfills a much different role. Excellent teachers create opportunities which allow work and dialogue to continue well after classroom hours.

Buy In
Everyone wants to know, "What's in it for me?" Students are no different. They embrace learning when it's more personally meaningful to them. The Internet allows students to connect what they're learning with the real world in real time. It helps them to realize that what they're learning is neither discrete nor isolated from the "real world."

Technology also allows students to become content creators. When I poled students at the beginning of the year and asked them if they had ever created content to post on the web, they were amazed at the possibility. That capability is now totally taken for granted; they are a part of the Internet.

Collaboration
Middle and high school students are social animals, thriving on peer relationships. We can harness this natural inclination in a healthy and productive way by using technology that allows students to work together. Whether we create team oriented problem solving scenarios or simply permit students to peer edit and comment upon classmates' work, we're demonstrating that the teacher isn't the only one in the classroom with the answers. Equally important, we're encouraging students to ask the questions and seek their own solutions.

Differentiation
A little-touted benefit of technology is its ability to differentiate instruction. For the most gifted learner, technology provides opportunity. For the struggling learner, technology offers opportunity. Within a single assignment, a teacher can offer and accept incredibly diverse responses, given the number of applications and programs with which students can express themselves.

Equal Access
Knowledge is Power. That expression is cliche only because it's been said for generations, and is absolutely true. Equal access to the world's information, via the Internet, overcomes socioeconomic variables, offering true freedom to pursue learning.

If my points are too simplistic for you, I apologize. But for me, this five point plan for discussing the benefits of technology is one I can rely upon. It's simple, yes, but absolutely proven in my classroom experiences with students.

Want more? Heather Wolpert-Gawron has put together responses to five common complaints voiced by technology naysayers. Says Wolpert-Gawron:

Frankly, there are many reasons to avoid providing technology as a more common and frequent tool in education. However, as stated in "Strictly Ballroom," one of my favorite movies, "a life lived in fear is a life half lived." Fear cannot shut us down from our mission: to educate students for their future.

How do you respond to those who say that tech spending should be cut in order to trim the budget?

Microsoft Word's Most Ignored Feature for Teachers

Learning Essentials is a free application designed to enhance teachers' and students' use of Microsoft Word. Word owners can easily download the program, for free, for use at home or school.

Learning Essentials is a suite of templates, tools, and tutorials which integrates easily and assists teachers and students in creating reports, projects, and assessments. Students and teachers use existing Microsoft Office programs more productively with the aid of ready-made assignments and helpful shortcuts.

The best way to see the features of Learning Essentials is to download the demo (tour) at the Microsoft site. You'll get a tempting glimpse of what's included in both the Educator Tools and Student Tools.

Another way to get a look at some of the application's features is to check out the Creating Writing Assignments tutorial at GreatSource/iwrite, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's companion site to their excellent Write Source books. (Another hot resource to see there is the series of videos on How to Write a Research Report).

While there, also check out the tutorial titled How Can I Use Learning Essentials for Writing Instruction?

Then, when you're ready, download Learning Essentials and give it a go. Let me know what you think!

And check out the resources at GreatSource/iwrite as well! Tons of tutorials and awesome resources for young writers. If you're in the market for grammar or writing texts, definitely request a sample of one of their books. I'm not a fan of grammar, never was, but this well-organized and well-written series serves as a fantastic classroom resource for students engaged in meaningful reading and writing.

ChangeThis: Support and Spread Great Ideas

Ever find yourself aimlessly surfing the Internet, looking for something to get you going? Most likely you're procrastinating, avoiding the very tasks that you know are important, or urgent, or both.

Go to ChangeThis. The mission of ChangeThis "to support and spread great ideas." And they accomplish this by sharing proposals and manifestos from some of today's top thinkers and leaders.

How To Be Creative by Hugh MacLeod at ChangeThis

Don't be intimidated by that. The ideas are presented in concise, attractively packaged pdf presentations, short enough to read on the fly, but involved enough to actually challenge your thinking. Think TED Talks on paper.

Some of my favorites:

• How To Be Creative by Hugh MacLeod
• 25 Ways to Distinguish Yourself by Rajesh Setty
• Brainwashed: Seven Ways to Reinvent Yourself by Seth Godin
• Being Clutch, Or How Not To Choke Under Pressure by Paul Sullivan

So if your brain needs a kick in the pants, check this site out! See you in a few hours.

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions

I'm pleased to participate in Leeswammes's Literary Giveaway Blog Hop, which allows blog readers to visit many excellent blogs (see the list below) for the chance to win awesome books and other prizes. At my Teach with Picture Books blog I'm giving away a Caldecott Honor picture book (of course!) and a Newbery Honor Award chapter book.

For my readers here, I wanted to also hilight the sensational nonfiction title being ofered as a giveaway: Guy Kawasaki's Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions.
My guidelines, as always, are simple:

1. The giveaway is open to US residents only.
2. To enter, email me with the title of the book you hope to win in the subject line. Want to win all three? Send three separate emails.
3. You don't have to follow me to win, but it would be a nice gesture. Pity follows are happily accepted. Following my blog will increase your good karma, but not your chances of winning.
4. Contest will close at midnight EST on February 24th EST. I'll notify winners shortly thereafter.

For those who wish to glean ideas about teaching from books "out of the field," you'll love the soon-to-be-best-selling Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, written by Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist of Apple, and generously provided by the man himself.

Reviews of this book say it all:

"Guy's book captures the importance - and the art - of believing in an idea that delivers something entirely unique to the customer. The power of a really good idea to transform the marketplace and individual customer experiences is huge, and this book offers a wealth of insights to help businesses and entrepreneurs tap into that potential."

-Sir Richard Branson, Founder of the Virgin Group

"Kawasaki provides insights so valuable we all wish we'd had them first."

-Robert B. Cialdini, author of Influence: Science and Practice

"Guy has written the small-business manifesto. There is nothing more important for entrepreneurs than to enchant their customers, and Guy explains exactly how to do this."

-Jane Applegate, author of 201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business

So many of the ideas presented for excellence in business via interpersonal relationships can be applied to the teaching profession:

• creating and marketing yourself as a professional;
• achieving trustworthiness;
• designing excellent experiences or services;
• engaging in productive relationships with colleagues and bosses;
• overcoming resistance;

• avoiding pitfalls and complacency.

Years ago when the bestselling Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die was first published (and before it made all the lists), I touted its ideas as totally applicable to teaching. I feel the same way about Enchantment, and I think you will, too. Also be sure to check out Guy Kawasaki's previous best sellers, The Art of the Start and Reality Check.


Good luck with the drawing, and be sure to visit these other awesome blogs for more chances to win:

1. Leeswammes (Int)
2. Teadevotee (Int)
3. The Book Whisperer (Int)
4. Uniflame Creates (Int)
5. Bookworm with a View (Int)
6. Stiletto Storytime (USA, CA)
7. I Am A Reader, Not A Writer (Int)
8. The Bookkeeper (Int)
9. Chinoiseries (Int)
10. Ephemeral Digest (Int)
11. bibliosue (Int)
12. ThirtyCreativeStudio (Int)
13. Nishitas Rants and Raves (Int)
14. Roof Beam Reader (Int)
15. Actin Up with books (USA)
16. Sarah Reads Too Much (USA)
17. Book Journey (US)
18. The Blue Bookcase (Int)
19. Read, Write and Live (Int)
20. Silver’s Reviews (USA)
21. Graasland (Int) - From Saturday evening onwards
22. Teach with Picture Books (USA)
23. Books in the City (Int)
24. thebookbee (Int)
25. The Scarlet Letter (USA)
26. Seaside Book Nook (USA)
27. Chocolate and Croissants (Int)
28. write meg! (USA)