Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 12/19/2013

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 12/18/2013

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

PLN - Got one?

One of the buzz words/acronyms that has been flying around for some time is PLN.  The abbreviation stands for personal learning network. However, I like to think of it as a professional learning network because I use my PLN to help me do a better job as a tech integrationist.

Here's what a PLN can do for you.

  1. It will help you build a community among like minded educators.
  2. It will shower you with unique ideas, links, articles and videos.
  3. It will prevent you from having to Google everything because now you will have a reliable network from which you can pluck resources.  


So what does a professional learning network look like?  Well for me it started off slowly with Twitter.  I began by subscribing to a bunch of educators who were recommended to me by a friend and then eventually by Twitter itself.  (Twitter generates suggestions based on who you currently follow.)  You can follow me @JillBergeron2 and see who I'm following.  Wanna know more about Twitter?  Check out this amazing guide put out by Edudemic.

From Twitter, I moved on to Diigo, a social bookmarking site. When you sign up for Diigo, be sure to sign up for a teacher account through Diigo in Education.   This has been such an asset to me in my job and here's why.  Diigo will send you bookmarks either every day or every week (your choice) that are specifically related to education.  You can sort through other teach bookmarks by use the tags.  Again, just like Twitter, this is a site where you can follow other educators whom you respect.

RSS Symbol
My third foray into building my PLN has come through MyYahoo RSS reader.  What a reader will do is pull the most recent posts (typically just the headlines) from a set of blogs to which you subscribe.  It collects all of these headlines in one place for you to browse at your convenience.  What you need to look for is the icon to the right.  Click on it and it will ask you which reader you want to use.  I like Yahoo because it's always an option on any site, but there are plenty of others to choose from.  Then find some blogs that appeal to you.  Edutopia and Edudemic are good places to start.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 12/17/2013

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Friday, December 13, 2013

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 12/14/2013

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 12/12/2013

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Head, Heart, Bag, Bin

Last week our sixth grade social studies teacher, Andy Hulm, presented to our faculty a catchy framework for thinking about how we teach and how students learn.  Andy had just returned from a trip to his native England following a family gathering and a visit to his former school.  One of the teachers there shared with him his teaching philosophy which is outlined in the
graphic below.



One of the ways in which this can work is by having students write on post-it notes for each category. These thoughts can then be transferred into a writing assignment.  And so while this can be utilized with a number of technology tools, it can also be used with pen and paper.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 12/11/2013

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Monday, December 9, 2013

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 12/10/2013

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Friday, December 6, 2013

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 12/07/2013

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 12/06/2013

    • From the students, integration demands creativity, problem-solving, perseverance, collaboration and the ability to work through the rigorous demands of multiple ideas and concepts woven together to create a final product. Integration is not simply combining two or more contents together
    • By weaving the arts into and through our content in naturally aligned ways, we are providing relevance to student learning, and giving them an opportunity to connect their world to our classrooms
      • The keys to using Arts Integration successfully are:
        • Collaboration between arts and classroom teachers to find naturally-aligned objectives
        • Using an arts area in which the classroom teacher is comfortable (for many, this starts with visual arts)
        • Creating a lesson that truly teaches to both standards
        • Assessing both areas equitably
    • Sample Arts Integration Lesson Seeds
  • Transforming student learning through tech. Substitution, augmentation, modification, redefinition.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Mandela and the Mockingbird

Right now, our eighth grade students are writing reflective essays in response to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.  Tomorrow as they continue through this process, it will be in the shadow of a life spent fighting segregation and injustice.  With Nelson Mandela's passing, nations and individuals alike will mourn the death of a leader whose influence extended far beyond his own country's borders.  Chandler's students will see these quotes in Ms. Dretzka's classroom as they reflect on a book that also sought to challenge a policy of institutionalized segregation.


Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Educational Resources and Tech Tools 12/05/2013

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Parent CATIE 12/3/13

Yesterday, Chandler School hosted its third Parent CATIE (Conversations About Technology In Education) forum.  As a school with a one to one laptop program, we seek to educate all members of our community in the best uses of technology.  To that end, we invited parents to join us for a session on safety and social media.  We opened the session with a light-hearted video of Louis CK discussing the overwhelming urge to use technology because you can!  We then moved into a survey where we asked the parents to think like their children and answer four questions on how kids use social media.  We then compared the responses of the parents with those of the students.  Turns out, parents do know their kids!  Based on the information provided to us by the students, we then went over how to set safety filters on YouTube and discussed how children, and teens in particular, are using SnapChat and Instagram.    Below is material we covered with links included.

Social media safety
YouTube  
5 Ways to Keep YouTube Safe and Fun for Kids
  • Enable YouTube Safety Mode
  • Visit Zui.com instead
  • Use Internet Filters
  • Keep the Computer Public
  • Speak With Your Kids


Snapchat (for use on mobile devices only)


Instagram
  • hashtags (#somuchfun)

Social Media Tips

Google Cultural Institute

The Google Cultural Institute is an amazing collection of images and documents curated by leading institutions around the world.  The have partnered with Google to help bring these amazing works, some of which never see the light of day in their own facilities, to a global audience.  Whether you teach history, art or math, there is something in here for everyone.  The two videos below give an introduction to the online institute.

The first video will make you want to use the site.




This second video explains some of the wonderful offerings put forth by the Google Cultural Institute.