Wonders All Around

Learning Alongside My 5th Grade Wonders

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Content Area Tools

Finally, a “Thing” that is familiar to me!  Before starting this Web course, I didn’t have my own blog, use Delicious, set up a Wiki, or create Google docs.  But I did use the Web to locate content for my classroom!  I think that I’m pretty proficient when it comes to this.  Two of my go-to sites are WritingFix.com and ReadWriteThink.org.  These two sites have enough ideas and resources to keep me going all year long…seriously!

Thinkfinity.org and MORE are two lesson clearinghouses that are new to me, but I noticed that ReadWriteThink is a key feed to both sites.  Depending on what I’m looking for, I can see how going to one of these websites, rather than doing a Google search, would be much more efficient.  Being able to search by content standards on the MORE site is also definitely a useful feature.

 

Here are two lessons that I was able to quickly find that fit with what is going on in my classroom right now:

In science students are summarizing what they learned about the digestive, respiratory, and circulatory systems.  I had them write a short bio from the point of view of each system.  These turned out pretty well, but I think that next time around, I’d like to use “The most important thing…” format shown here.  This structure includes 3 really great details, which some students needed to be reminded to go back and include when doing the original assignment.  It also emphasis the most important thing, rather than just having it included somewhere in the writing.  The only thing that I like more about my assignment is that it’s not so structured.  Students felt free to get creativeand begin their paragraphs with, “Hi, my name is Respy, your respiratory system!” or something like that.  Students could still certainly add something like that, but many will probably feel tied to the structure.

 

For our persuasive writing unit, students use the Box and Bullets graphic organizer to plan their thesis and supporting details.  I believe that different graphic organzers work better for different students.  As much as I like to to plan vertically, others prefer webs and horizontal plans, such as this one.  I know it’s a little difference, but sometimes these little differences are what help a student to internalize the lesson.  Also, if I can present several versions of graphic organizers, students have the opportunity to try out each one and see which really works best for them.

 

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Communication Tools

I have to admit that I’m not quite ready to make the jump from asynchronous Web 2.0 tools to real-time tools. I strongly believe that communication is the key to learning, and I have students “turn and talk” all the time in class, but taking this to the Web has me a bit nervous.

I can see the potential that Skype has, but what would it take to find the right contacts? I could see talking with people in the health care field as part of our study on the human body. We could talk with people at museums and historical societies when we study historical fiction. Of course, we could collaborate with students around the world.

I’m intrigued by the idea of Back Chatting. I know that taking notes help me get more out of a presentation. I think I’d get even more out of “texting” and getting responses to my thoughts. with practice, I think my students would, too.

I do feel that asynchronous Web 2.0 communication leaves me longing for a bit more. After I read an interesting article, I want to share it with someone else. I want more than just to write down my ideas; I want a response, if not a conversation.

Now that I’m not so new at this, I’m ready to share my blog with others. I’m a little nervous about the critiques I may receive, but I’m getting to the point where I need more cdialogue with others if I’m going to take my technology learning to the next level.

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Google Docs

I’ve spent a bit of time trying out Google Docs. I really like the idea of using this more. Saving documents in a Cloud and being able to access them from anywhere with an Internet connection has a lot of appeal to me. True, I mostly do my work at school, but there are times when I am working from one place, and a particular document is saved on a hard drive in another place.

The thing that has kept me from using Google Docs more is just the habit of saving things to a hard drive. To make saving things in a Cloud really useful, I feel like I need to save all of my documents there–none of this, “Where did I save that?” for me! For now I’ll probably keep using my hard drives, but if you ask me the same question in a year, there’s a good chance that my answer will be different.

See, I haven’t used Google Docs that much, but IO do have a few things saved here:

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Echo SmartPen

I decided to try out the Echo SmartPen in my classroom as a way to share classnotes and instruction with students at home. It has a lot of possibilities, but so far I haven’t gotten into a routine of using it well.

It has been great for helping students learn and review at home. I’ve created math and science study guides, and parents have commented on their usefulness each time. One parent said it was helpful to hear the information the way I explained it. I know there is a lot of information out there, and many students have a hard time determining what is important and working on learning this key information. Creating your own review/learning pages helps with this.

The downside to creating your own study guides is the time involved. I’ve tried to manage this by working on portions of the project at a time. It’s still a bit overwhelming because, even when I write out my script ahead of time, I feel that everything needs to be perfect when I record.

I’ve also had students create and share review guides. This has gone very well. Students like sharing their presentations, and, of course, it helps them learn the onformation better when they teach it to someone else.

The Livescribe site doesn’t allow for me to easily search for already-posted pencasts from other teachers. Hopefully this is a feature they can add in the near future. With all the time it takes to post these pencasts, and with how useful they are, it seems a shame for them not to be used by as many people as possible.

To view sample pencasts created by me and by students, visit ourgreatlearning.edublogs.org.

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