Why Blog? Think About This...

Scenario 1

The scene : First week back at school in an Australian classroom after a long summer break.  Class of 10/11 year olds.  Students asked to get out their diaries and write about their holidays.  They write, then perhaps the teacher reads it and responds with an encouraging comment and maybe a sticker.    The book returns to the child’s desk.  The writing is never read again.

Scenario 2

The scene : First week back at school in an Australian classroom after a long summer break.  Class of 10/11 year olds.  Students asked to write a blog post highlighting how they think their holiday may be different to those of children in other parts of the world.  The posts are published and the teacher sends out one Tweet using the #comments4kids hashtag.   The students receive instant feedback – within 1 hour there are lovely comments from Alabama – a teacher who comments and promises to show his students when they are at  school the next day (assuming the snow does not close the school)    In the following days, more comments come in from teachers and  students in Hawaii, Vermont and Pennsylvania.  They are sharing their experiences of summer, of Christmas and later on, of sports too.    The class considers good commenting skills so that they can reply to their comments and then reciprocate to their readers.  Cybersafety is discussed to ascertain the amount of information to include.   An atlas is brought out – where exactly are Alabama, Pennsylvania, Vermont  by the way they ask? (they seemed to know where Hawaii is)

Which is the more meaningful exercise ? 

Your thoughts.....

Thank you to http://bit.ly/1iBdPOC for sharing this awesome blog post!

Teacher Tricks for Google Drive ~ More Great Tricks

Preview                                                                                                                     

A quick way to check student's writing project is, rather than opening each individual file, use the preview feature.  This provides you with a quick view of where students are at in their writing. This illustrates how that works.  Check it out!

Research within doc                                                                                                   

Using the Research Tool within Google Drive, students can speed up the process of looking up information while working on their projects.  This tool enables them to stay within their document or file AND look up information.  Cool, yes?

  
Revision history                                                                                                          
When students are working together (and even sometimes when they are working alone), it is really great to have the ability to go back to a previous copy of their work.  Google Drive has the feature to allow users to go back to any revision in the history of the document.  A very useful feature.

Power Searching in your Google Drive                                                                         
The Advanced Search in Drive is very helpful when you are struggling to find a file.  It allows you to search by part of the name of the file, by the type of file, by the visibility of the file, by who owns the file, etc.  This is very helpful when your Drive starts getting full of tons of great files.

Check out more tricks for Google Drive by also reading Google Drive Tricks for Getting Organized

What tricks or tips can you share with us?

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Teacher Tricks for Google Drive ~ Organizing Files

If you have started using Google Apps with your students, you have probably found there are many good things with this tool.  However, from a teacher management tool, there are a few tricks to note to make the teacher side so much nicer.  

Probably the biggest frustration for me with Google Drive is the organization (or lack of) the drive with your files.  Even more so, once students start sharing items with you, it can get super duper messy, really fast.

Here are some tricks that may help with the clutter:

Some teachers have their students, once they have completed their work and are ready for grading, to fill out a form.  That form's data then serves as the launch pad for the teacher to access the students' work.  Here is an example of this:  Assignment tracking form   When students copy and paste their work's link, they need to make sure they have marked the File to be accessible to anyone who has the link.  For more information on how to use this tool, check out this post in at the Cool Tools for 21st Century Learners blog.

You can use folders in Google Drive to your advantage when it comes to organizing. There are two ways to make this work for you.  The first way is for the teacher to create a folder and then share that folder with their class.  This organizes the teachers drive into class folders and anything you  put into that folder is automatically shared with the students.  Once the teacher creates the folder, they mark the folder to be shared with each student and they give the folder the proper rights. For the utmost of organization, you may want to create a folder for each student within that class folder.  A conversation about respecting others work will need to occur since technically kids could have access to other kids work this way.

The other folder option is to have each student create their own folder and then share that folder with you, the teacher.

When using shared folders,these are the rules apply.  First, whatever sharing rights are given to the folder, those are the sharing rights that any documents in that folder will have.  Second, you can have as many folders within folders as you can tolerate.  So imagine, a class folder, and then within that folder, chapter or topic or specific assignment folders.  Whatever helps you, the teacher!

Any time students are sharing with you, having a consistent naming scheme is extremely important for your teacher inbox to stay somewhat organized.  If students are left on their own to name files, your organization in your shared drive will be less than great.

Here are a few more links that talk about the use of folders for teacher Google Drive organization:

Free Tech of Teachers

Google Drive Workflows to Use with Students

What do you Teach Blog

Google Docs Grading Tips & Tricks

Click here for MORE Tricks & Treats

Which trick have you tried and did it help you be more organized?  Do you know any other tricks (or treats) to share with other teachers?

21st Century Teachers Meet ~ Our November Notes

On an almost monthly schedule, I meet with grade level teachers in 3 elementaries to talk about technology and 21st Century "stuff" that is happening in their classroom.  Here are some cool ideas and tools that came from the last meetings that I want to share out with you.

One conversation was about Augmented Reality and how to use it in the classroom.  At face value, I didn't even know what this was.  With a little extra research, it did get me thinking about how this could be exciting to use in the classroom.  Read here for more details.

Augmented Reality Brings New Dimensions to Learning ~ Edutopia

A teacher shared her use of the online plan book from PlanBook Edu.  The advantages of this tool were that it is online and easily accessible, that peripheral files and links could be attached to the specific assignment, helping the teacher keep all parts of the lesson together and organized, it was printable and able to be saved and its cost of $25 per year gets you many great add-on features. Check out this video for more information.


Another 21C share was a teacher who is using a Google Form to have students self reflect on their work.  This is a great use of Google Forms.  Click here to see her example form.  Could you use this idea in your classroom?


Another share was in the area of teaching students to blog and to give other students feedback and peer review.  We talked about how this has to be a learned skill.  Here are some resources this teacher shared for teaching this skill.  Feedback is a great way to help students be responsible for their own learning and to help students learn and grow in their learning.  Providing each other with feedback is even more critical and by learning how to give good feedback, they are better able to work and learn with others.

Peer Review Worksheet

Peer Review Lesson Information

Here is a tool that I think many teachers will want to try:  it is called Sign Up Genius.  Its purpose is to help teachers (& others) simplify the process of managing volunteers and sign-ups of any sort.  It is an awesome free tool that you should give a look if you have needs for making such tasks simple and easier to manage. This looks like a nice tool to simplify communication with parents and others in the classroom. Click here to watch on overview video.

Learn Zillion is a great website that has Common Core lessons for students.  You can explore this for many different purposes.  Maybe you would like to find a video lessons and resources to support a common core goal at your grade level and you would like to use this lesson to supplement your whole group or small group instruction.  With a teacher account, you can access the common core standards and the lessons correlated to the standards.  Lessons include video tutorials, teacher resources, and other supplemental resources and printables as needed.  If you would like to enrich or reinforce individual students using the Learn Zillion lessons, you are able to setup classes and students in this tool and assign content to the students.   To learn more, explore here.   And...... it is a free tool which is funded by the Bill Gates Foundation.  This is a great tool to use to personalize learning and make it more independent.

Writing Mentors
One teacher had an idea to use the power of Google Docs to support student writing and the peer editing and revision process in a interesting way,  The idea was since Google Docs has the power to allow others to revise and edit one's work while not sharing the same time and space...... why not utilize other grade level students in the role of writing mentors.  For example, 4th grade students could be writing mentors to younger students and through Google Docs provide revision and editing feedback to these students.  On the flip side, older students could play the role of writing mentors to these 4th graders. Again, the power of Google Docs is that this can occur while students are in different places and spaces.  Great collaborative idea!

Email Penpals
Google also gives our students the ability to use email to communication with others. Typically, in our Google Apps world, our students are able to email within our school domain.  However, for this special project, we are going to put a digital spin on penpals and use email to communicate with students in other regions of the United States.  I will keep you posted on this project and its success.

Connecting Reference Skills with Curriculum
Every year, we review reference books with the fourth grade students because it is part of the WKCE test.  We are always looking for ways to make a real-life connection that is engaging and allows creativity for the students.  This year we took an idea from the WEMTA listserv emails and decided to create a lesson on Wisconsin which is a required curricular piece for 4th grade as well.  Students learned about the reference books, collected information and organized it into a Google Presentation.   Click here to see a sample student's work.

What have you done in your classroom this month to  promote 21st Century Learning?

How Does Blogging Relate to Thinking Skills?

There is a direct relationship between Blogging and Thinking skills and here is why.  The power of blogging is firstly, in that students are writing. The second power of blogging, is that, if the questions or prompts are posed correctly, then students should be thinking deeper and thinking more critically, and being more creative in their thinking and writing. The power here is the questions.  Here are some sites that can help you by suggesting some ideas or strategies for asking deeper questions. 

Taxonomy of Socratic Questioning

Marzano Question Stems
Bloom's Taxonomy Book Review Questions

Visible Thinking Routines for Blogging

Common Core ELA Question Stems by Grade Level & Standard

Grade K	Grade 1	Grade 2	Grade 3
Grade 4	Grade 5	Grade 6	Grade 7            Grade 8

What other tools do you to help you create good questions for students?  To make them think deeper and more critically?

Be a Lurker and Learn

When one searches for the definition of a Lurker in Google, here is the definition that comes up at the top of the search results.














Do not be afraid of the negative tone of this title.  Lurking, in this sense of the word, can be a great way to learn.  It is the starting spot for many in a very normal progression of using social media tools for professional or personal development.   

1.  Lurking in Twitter and find a few other educators that you find interesting or ones that post tweets that of benefit to you.  
2.  Find a few educational hashtags to follow.  The Tech PD website can give you some suggestions.  
3.  Participate in a Twitter Chat, again lurk and learn or maybe even begin interacting and participating in the conversation.  Here is a list of most of the educational Twitter Chats that occur weekly in Twitter. 
4.  You might now be ready to send a tweet or two and be a part of a twitter conversation.  

Seriously, be brave and take the plunge, but feel free to lurk first before you jump.

Cool New Tool Alert ~ Newsela

Found a super, cool tool today that I want to share with teachers.  The tool is Newsela.  Here is what is so awesome about this tool.  

• It is a perfect tool when working on reading skills with students.  
• It provides daily current events articles that Newsela has lexiled for student use.  
• It allows kids to "close read" non-fiction articles, a Common Core Standard at many grade levels.  
• Some of the articles even have comprehension quizzes tied to them. 
• Teachers can setup classes with students and assign readings, track students reading and scores.  
• The best part... currently, this tool is free!

Read More About This

More About Newsela
An Example Article in Newsela

NEWSELA, A Resource Worth Reporting @ Reading.org

Newsela ~ News You Can Use in the Classroom

Creating Presentations (& More) Collaboratively

We like the Google Apps tools because of their ease of use for students, but also for their ability to collaborate with others ~ including students working with students.  So, how can we use the Presentation tool in the Google Apps suite to get a lot of bang for our buck.

Here are some ideas for using Google Presentation with students for presentation and even more......

So, how do I get started with Google Presentations?  Watch this quick (3 minutes or less) video...

Resources to Help You Get Started
Tech PD :  Google Presentation
Tech PD:  How to Create Google Drive Templates

What questions do you have about Google Presentation?  What ideas have fired up from this training or from this blog post?