What Does it Mean to Be Talented or Gifted?

This really is the big question when it comes to the TAG program.  Right now it means that students had qualifying scores on a battery of tests.  That’s what gets you into the program.

When I look at the students in my classroom this year, I see quite a variety of individuals: quiet vs. talkative; focused vs. distracted; organized vs. unorganized; introverted vs. extroverted; lovers of mathematics vs. lovers of language; socially adept vs. socially challenged.  The list goes on and on.

My goal right now is to learn about some of the underlying characteristics that most TAG individuals have in common.  One thing I have noticed is intensity.  My students tend to do everything to the extreme.  When they are into something, everything else around them sort of disappears: students who learn by talking start talking more and more, louder and louder; students who like to plan and organize make the most elaborate diagrams, “forgetting” to get started on the assignment.  As the teacher in the classroom, I find it both exciting and exhausting!

I have found the archive of a presentation on characteristics of gifted youngsters.  I will be listening to this over the next couple of days and reflecting on what I discover.  (http://ocw.uci.edu/lectures/Lecture.aspx?id=279)

Starting Again

Last year I used this blog to reflect on what I learned through the amazing self-paced course: 21 Things for Educators.  As I discovered and tried out Web 2.0 tools, I found that I learned and remembered more when I reflected on my experiences.  Even though this is a public blog, I don’t think I’ve had any visitors.  Still, the blog has been a valuable tool for me.

Now I am starting up my blog again, but this time I am going to reflect on what it means to be a Talented and Gifted teacher.  I will include the disclaimer now that these thoughts are my own.  As with all things, they are subject to change as I learn more.  Time to begin!

Communication Tools Update–Backchannels

This morning at our staff meeting I tried out TodaysMeet for Backchanneling. It was great! It was only between one other person and me, but we kept up a pretty good conversation. Yes, we got a little off topic with some of our remarks, but that’s probably because it was only the two of us reading the thread. When I look back over our transcript, I have a good idea of all that was discussed.

I can see how Backchanneling would help keep sidebars from interrupting a meeting. These types of conversations could be carried on silently among those interested. People can bring up divergent topics to discuss later, and any one who missed something can either scroll back or ask for the detail to be repeated. I have a hard time listening to the discussion when I have comments and questions. I need to share these with someone, and Backchanneling lets me do this. I think it’s pretty cool!

I like TodaysMeet because it seems to be a pretty private Backchannel. Members join in the conversation by going to the web address you provide. When I created the Backchannel I was able to choose how long the chat would remain available. After the chat ended, I was able to print and save a pdf transcript. I’ll have to look into all the archiving options, but this seemed like the sort of chat I could use.

The big question is, could 5th graders handle this? I hate to admit it, but some of them probably need this in class as much as I did at the staff meeting. Once I receive a wireless signal in my room, I’ll have to try it out.

Using Technology to Support Diverse Learners

This is a great website for information about what resources are available to help learners, mostly with communication arts. It focuses primarily on digital texts, and many features that are often inluded that benefit learners. I’ve just begun to explore digital texts on my own, but I have to say that playing with the features (writing notes, looking up words, highlighting) is fun, and can be a way to increase engagement.

One of the most important things to me when looking at audio enhancements in the fluency with which the text is read. I was intrigued by NetTrekker since it has a feature which allows the websites within its searches to be read aloud. The only problem is, I didn’t think that the robot-like voice would really help struggling readers comprehend the material. Maybe it’s better than nothing, so I’ll have to try it out and see how students actually respond to it.

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.

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.

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:

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.

Trying Wordle

I’ve seen Wordle clouds many times over the past several years & have always thought they looked great, but I just got around to making my own the other day.  Now that I’ve found out how easy it is, I think it’s an even better tool.  I’ve already had each of my science classes create a wordle  together to introduce our force and motion unit.  We’re working on a Wordle for what it means to be an engineer, but we need a few more ideas to make it really interesting.

I can see how Wordle is a great tool to get students thinking without having to write a lot of sentences.  I’m going to ask students to create a Wordle based on the next nonfiction book that they read.  I think they’ll enjoy doing this more than just writing a reflection, summary, or even review of what they read.

Obviously lots of other people are using Wordle, too.  There are many ideas, tutorials, and examples on YouTube and SlideShare:

http://www.slideshare.net/katygal/19-interesting-ways-to-use-wordle-elementary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J-s68cO7-A&feature=related

One of the things I like most is that using Wordle is so easy, but there are many possibilities for using it.  I’ll be posting a few examples soon.

Learning More

I am still really excited about this blog, but, like most things, it can be hard to find the time to keep up with it.  It definitely is the kind of thing that I need to set aside time to do.  So, I am making the commitment now that I am going to work on it 2 mornings a week. 

Even though I haven’t gotten very far with blogging, I am already wondering what else I can do with it.  How can I turn this into something that people actually read?  Should I created a classroom blog & update it with my “newsletters?”  For now that seems to be the most logical step.  As useful as this blog is to me as a portfolio, I feel like I should be working on something more.

My Plain Jane Blog (for now)

I still really am trying to figure out all of the features of blogging.  Right now, I’m pretty much just writing posts and adding them to my homepage.  There are an awful lot of options that I see on the Dashboard and other menus.  One I think I should get in the habit of using soon is the tags.  I’m not sure that I really need it for myself, yet, but if I’m proficient at using it, it would probably be handy for a classroom page.

Another thing I want to get better at is adding links to other online pages.  Again, right now this is all pretty much for me, so I don’t really need to include links for myself, but if turn this into a site for our 21 Things study group at school, links would be really helpful for sharing information with other teachers.

My WikiSpace right now this is used as a forum for out FIRST LEGO League team

My Delicious Link I’m using this as a source of professional webpages I like